Sayed began his career as a lawyer but quickly abandoned the ethics of his profession, turning instead to forgery and fraud to win cases. His schemes caught up with him, and he was eventually disbarred and imprisoned. When the January Revolution broke out, Sayed managed to escape custody. He reinvented himself under a new identity, calling himself “Saeed”, and crafted the image of a respectable lawyer once again. But behind this disguise, he pursued a new line of crime: stealing cars. His method was calculated—he would take vehicles, then pose as a “middleman,” offering to help owners recover their stolen cars, while secretly extorting them for money. This double game continued until a carefully planned police sting operation exposed his crimes and led to his arrest and conviction.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, a picture this. It's late Thursday night, maybe nine
point thirty. You get that quiet hum of a security checkpoint,
those harsh floodlights cutting through the dark, and this Korean
sedan just pulls up. The driver. He looks sharp, confident,
like he belongs there. They identify him, professor sayad, a lawyer.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
The picture of respectability, right totally.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
But then you know, the computer screen flashes yeah, and
the story changes fast. Yeah for prior convictions and not
just that this calm, professional guy, he's a fugitive walked
right out of prison months earlier when security basically collapsed.
It's quite the reveal, it really is. And look, this
isn't just about a shady lawyer cutting corners. This is well,
it's a deep dive into how a really brilliant legal
(00:44):
mind deliberately chose crime, how he weaponized his knowledge. Today
we're tracing the pass of El Avocada, the lawyer, from
a promising lgrad to a master forger and then something else,
entirely a professional car thief.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
And that's the core question for us, isn't it. How
did that legal training actually shape his criminal career. We
want to figure out how he went from law school
to fugitive. How he built this fake identity and ran
a criminal operation that was frankly incredibly successful because he
understood the system's weaknesses.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
It wasn't just random crime, no, not at all.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
It feels very calculated, a transfer of skills, you could say,
from law to crime.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
So let's rewind, go back to Giza and Baba around
two thousand and two. Was his background.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well, the story starts with his mother. Actually, his father
passed away and she really sacrificed, carried the financial load
to get him through law school. Her big dream for
him was stability, you know, a respected lawyer holding the law, the.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Classic immigrant dream in a way, or just a mother's dream.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Absolutely, and he had the potential. Sources say he was
naturally gifted, incredibly smart, picked up complex legal stuff almost instantly.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
But that intelligence, it went sideways.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
It seems like it pretty quickly. He developed this this perspective.
He saw the law less as a tool for justice
and more like a game, a system to be manipulated. Right,
you mentioned filawe like a hustle, exactly, a kind of
clever maneuvering, finding loopholes. He seemed to think that being
smart meant exploiting the system, especially if the client could pay.
(02:14):
Ethics weren't really part of the equation, so he.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Basically decided the rules didn't apply to him because he
was clever enough to get around them.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
That's the feeling you get, and legitimate law firms they
weren't going to go for that. So after about two years,
around two thousand and seven, he realized that wasn't his path.
If he wanted big money, real success, as he defined it,
he needed to work with people who didn't care about
the rules either.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
So he leans into the corruption, opens his own small
office kidkat Area, and he starts winning a lot.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, but how he was winning that's the key. It
wasn't brilliant legal arguments. It was tazwir forgery.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Ah. So the success was built on faking it completely.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
He figured out, look, why argue the law when you
can just change the facts. Altering official documents, case file,
even small changes could swing a judgment entirely his way.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
And he wasn't doing this alone, presumably, No.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
He built a network professional forgers, people inside government agencies
he could bribe to steal or tamper with records. It
was sophisticated he was delivering wins for his clients, but
it was all built on.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Fraud, and personally life seemed good.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
On the surface.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
By twenty ten, he's married, two kids, got this image
of success, and he seems to have genuinely believed it
was all down to his own cleverness, his fullawe. His
mother apparently pleaded with him, you know, fear God, but
he wasn't hearing it.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
But that kind of operation, it can't last forever. It's
inherently risky.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Exactly, and it didn't last. In twenty ten that security
officials stumbled onto forgery in an official document during some
routine review. It traced back to him.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
That was it.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
That was pretty much it. Arrested, tried, sentenced to prison,
and the bar association they struck his name off the
rolls immediately. His respectable life, the one he literally forged,
was over officially anyway.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
But then chaos intervenes. January twenty eleven, the revolution, prisons
break open.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Right, mass escapes cross the country and said, who is
already known inside as sid a l Avocado, the lawyer.
He just walked out with everyone else.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
He's a fugitive now, yeh, what's his first move, does
he lie low?
Speaker 2 (04:17):
No, That lawyer's brain kicks right back in first priority
identity management. He immediately gets new official papers forged, changes
his name from Sayed to sayid okay.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Slate change but significant.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Very He knew he couldn't practice law officially ever again,
couldn't open an office, so say the lawyer. That became
his cover story, his professional disguise. He'd meet people, potential clients, whatever,
only in public places, cafes, mostly still.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Playing the part, just without the actual license or office exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
And then comes this moment, completely random, apparently it changes
everything again.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
What happens.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
He's at a cafe doing his side the lawyer thing.
He spots a parked car outside, same model as his own,
a Korean Sedan two thousand and seven model, pretty common car. Then,
just on impulse, apparently, he walks over, takes out his
own car key, and tries the door. No way it opens.
He tries the ignition, the engine starts.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
You're kidding His key worked in a random identical car.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
That's the story, and the source calls it a devilish
idea that hit him right then and there. He doesn't hesitate.
He drives the car off, parks it on some quiet
side street and m baba wow.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Okay, so that's that's a huge leap from forgery to
grand theft auto. Just like that.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
But he doesn't just ditch it again. The calculated mind.
He searches the car first, finds the owner's details.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Smart or cunning, I guess right.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Then he waits, lets the owner's stew for two days.
Then he makes the call, introducing.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Himself in well hit the lawyer, the helpful mediator. Oh
this is brilliant in a terrible way.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
What's his story.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
It's a masterpiece of deflection. Yeah, he says, basically, look,
my clients accidentally bought your car. The paperwork was bad,
they didn't realize it was stolen. Now they're stuck. They
contacted me, the lawyer, to sort this mess out.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
So he's positioning himself as the solution, not the problem.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Precisely. He frames it like a business dispute, a mistake,
suggest maybe they could just split the difference, avoid official headaches,
get the car back quickly, and the owner it dost
be desperate by this point.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Totally desperate. The owner immediately agrees to pay offers twenty
thousand Egyptian pounds to get the.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Car back, and SAYID facilitates the return, does.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
The whole transaction in under two hours, gets the cash,
hands back the car.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
So that twenty thousand e GP. How much was that
roughly in context?
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Well, it was a decent chunk of change. But the
real shock for him was the efficiency. Think about it.
He made maybe what the equivalent of twenty five thousand,
thirty thousand dollars USD today, maybe more depending on the
exact conversion back then, in just three days, with almost
zero effort compared to his forgery.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Skins us Yeah, that's a powerful incentive.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
It completely changed his trajectory. Forgery required years, works, bribes,
constant risk of long sentences. This accidental car theft insane
ROI return on investment.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
So the lawyer persona, the cafe meetings, Yeah, that just
becomes window dressing for the new hustle.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Pretty much. He ditches the pretense of even fake lawyering
and goes full time into professional car theft. This accidental
success showed him a much faster, seemingly easier path.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Did he need to learn how to steal cars properly?
Or did that quick mastery he had with law apply
here too.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Seems like the latter. He just got it, became an
expert almost overnight, focused on specific areas in Baba. Mohandsen.
Aguza targeted popular models he knew he could get into easily,
and he's doing.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
This repeatedly throughout twenty eleven.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Multiple times a month. Yeah, and you have to remember
the backdrop twenty eleven post revolution chaos.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Right, the security vacuum we talked about exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Police presence was minimal, courts weren't functioning properly, people were scared.
It was the perfect environment for him to scale up
this operation without much fear of getting caught, and his.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Methods stayed the same. The helpful lawyer mediator that.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Was Plana the ransom strategy, always the friendly middleman. But
he had a plan B, which was if the owner
refused to pay or if he couldn't reach them quickly,
he didn't just abandon the car. He'd have it dismantled,
immediately sold for parts to shady dealers.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
So he always won. He engineered it so there was
no losing scenario for him.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Exactly, a no lost business model built on theft and exploitation.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Which brings us to this crucial point, Why wasn't he
caught sooner if he's stealing multiple cars a month?
Speaker 2 (08:36):
The reporting gap. This is where his legal background, his
understanding of psychology and systems, really paid off. How think
about it from the victim's perspective, Your car's stolen, your panicked.
Then two or three days later, you get a call
from this lawyer, sayid. He says he can get your
car back quick for a price. Okay, what's the alternative?
(08:57):
File a police report, deal with bureaucracy. Wait weeks, maybe months,
maybe never see the car again. The police are overwhelmed
anyway in this period.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
So paying the ransom, even though its extortion, feels like
the quicker, easier, more certain option.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Precisely, it's the path of least resistance, the most rational
financial choice for many victims in that chaotic moment. So
most of them they paid up, got their car back quickly,
and never filed an official police report.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
He understood the system's failure points and the victim's likely response.
That's chillingly smart.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
It kept him under the radar for a remarkably long time.
But you know, even the smartest systems have flaws, or
maybe people make mistakes.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
So the police did eventually start noticing something.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yeah, by early twenty twelve, they started reviewing the few
reports that were filed and a pattern emerged.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
What was it better?
Speaker 2 (09:43):
The timing cars consistently stolen between five am and six am,
usually shortly after the owner parked it for the night.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Suggesting surveillance. Yeah, not random theft exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
This wasn't some joy rider. This was planned, targeted, meticulous.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
And then came the case that broke it open.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yeah, only twenty twelve. A younger victim this time, Saide
pulls the usual routine demands a high ransom two hundred
thousand AGP. Again big money, huge money. The victim tries
to negotiate, offers one hundred thousand and said, well, he
loses his cool for a second, gets angry.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
What does he say?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
He threatens him says something like pay the full amount
or I'll chop the car in to pieces and send
them to you.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Oof. That's not the smooth mediator anymore, not at all.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
And that threat, combined with the location the five am
theft time it click for the police. This match the pattern.
They realized this was.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Their guy, so they see their chance. What do they do?
Speaker 2 (10:37):
They tell the young victim, agree to the price, agree
to the full two hundred thousand EGP, play along, set
a trap, exactly said. Apparently, thrilled about this big payoff,
starts coordinating the exchange. But he's slippery. Howso that paranoia
kicks in the instincts of a fugitive. Maybe he keeps
(10:58):
changing the meeting location multiple times just hours before the
plan handover.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Trying to shake off any potential surveillance.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Right, But the police anticipated this. They didn't just stick
out one spot. They set up ambushes across three different
potential locations he'd mentioned. They covered their bases and it worked.
They caught him, arrested him right there inside the stolen.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Car, and I bet he tried to talk his way
out of it.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Instantly defaulted straight back to his cover. I'm saying, comal
lawyer pulls out the forged ID, the fake bar card.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
But this time it didn't work.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
No, the police weren't buying it. A quick check the
ideas fake. They run his priens, figure out his real name, said, come.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
And connect him to the prison escape.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Everything unraveled, the fugitive status, the three prior forgery convictions,
the whole carefully constructed facade dissolved. The lawyer who chose crime,
whose cleverness fueled his rise and his fall, was finally
caught inside the very symbol of his criminal enterprise.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Wow, it's quite a story. The talent he had.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
That's the real tragedy here, isn't it. It's not just
that he lost his career. It's the complete waste, the
perversion of that intelligence. He was genuinely gifted, but.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
He chose the quick fix, the illegal.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Shortcut, consistently, first with forgery, manipulating the system from within,
then when chaos offered a new opportunity with outright theft,
exploiting the system's collapse. He used his understanding of law, procedure,
even psychology to become a highly effective criminal.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
So, thinking about this whole story, what's the takeaway for you,
for the listener?
Speaker 2 (12:29):
For me, it highlights that gap between intelligence and wisdom.
Sade was incredibly smart. He could master complex systems, but
he lacked the wisdom, the ethical foundation to use that
intelligence for anything constructive. He basically architected his own downfall.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
It makes you think, doesn't it. We're leaving you with
this final thought, Consider that moment in twenty eleven society's rules,
law and order. They felt like they were temporarily suspended.
Was Saya just a product of that chaos, someone who
saw an opportunity in the breakdown and grabbed it? Oh?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
What was this path set much earlier? The moment he
decided that exploiting a loophole being clever was more important
than being honest. Was the car theft just the inevitable
next step for someone who had already fundamentally rejected integrity?
Speaker 1 (13:13):
That's the question, really, opportunity versus character. Where does one
end and the other begin when faced with that kind
of overwhelming temptation? Something to think about.
Okay, a picture this. It's late Thursday night, maybe nine
point thirty. You get that quiet hum of a security checkpoint,
those harsh floodlights cutting through the dark, and this Korean
sedan just pulls up. The driver. He looks sharp, confident,
like he belongs there. They identify him, professor sayad, a lawyer.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
The picture of respectability, right totally.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
But then you know, the computer screen flashes yeah, and
the story changes fast. Yeah for prior convictions and not
just that this calm, professional guy, he's a fugitive walked
right out of prison months earlier when security basically collapsed.
It's quite the reveal, it really is. And look, this
isn't just about a shady lawyer cutting corners. This is well,
it's a deep dive into how a really brilliant legal
(00:44):
mind deliberately chose crime, how he weaponized his knowledge. Today
we're tracing the pass of El Avocada, the lawyer, from
a promising lgrad to a master forger and then something else,
entirely a professional car thief.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
And that's the core question for us, isn't it. How
did that legal training actually shape his criminal career. We
want to figure out how he went from law school
to fugitive. How he built this fake identity and ran
a criminal operation that was frankly incredibly successful because he
understood the system's weaknesses.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
It wasn't just random crime, no, not at all.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
It feels very calculated, a transfer of skills, you could say,
from law to crime.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
So let's rewind, go back to Giza and Baba around
two thousand and two. Was his background.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well, the story starts with his mother. Actually, his father
passed away and she really sacrificed, carried the financial load
to get him through law school. Her big dream for
him was stability, you know, a respected lawyer holding the law, the.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Classic immigrant dream in a way, or just a mother's dream.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Absolutely, and he had the potential. Sources say he was
naturally gifted, incredibly smart, picked up complex legal stuff almost instantly.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
But that intelligence, it went sideways.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
It seems like it pretty quickly. He developed this this perspective.
He saw the law less as a tool for justice
and more like a game, a system to be manipulated. Right,
you mentioned filawe like a hustle, exactly, a kind of
clever maneuvering, finding loopholes. He seemed to think that being
smart meant exploiting the system, especially if the client could pay.
(02:14):
Ethics weren't really part of the equation, so he.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Basically decided the rules didn't apply to him because he
was clever enough to get around them.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
That's the feeling you get, and legitimate law firms they
weren't going to go for that. So after about two years,
around two thousand and seven, he realized that wasn't his path.
If he wanted big money, real success, as he defined it,
he needed to work with people who didn't care about
the rules either.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
So he leans into the corruption, opens his own small
office kidkat Area, and he starts winning a lot.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, but how he was winning that's the key. It
wasn't brilliant legal arguments. It was tazwir forgery.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Ah. So the success was built on faking it completely.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
He figured out, look, why argue the law when you
can just change the facts. Altering official documents, case file,
even small changes could swing a judgment entirely his way.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
And he wasn't doing this alone, presumably, No.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
He built a network professional forgers, people inside government agencies
he could bribe to steal or tamper with records. It
was sophisticated he was delivering wins for his clients, but
it was all built on.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Fraud, and personally life seemed good.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
On the surface.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
By twenty ten, he's married, two kids, got this image
of success, and he seems to have genuinely believed it
was all down to his own cleverness, his fullawe. His
mother apparently pleaded with him, you know, fear God, but
he wasn't hearing it.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
But that kind of operation, it can't last forever. It's
inherently risky.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Exactly, and it didn't last. In twenty ten that security
officials stumbled onto forgery in an official document during some
routine review. It traced back to him.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
That was it.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
That was pretty much it. Arrested, tried, sentenced to prison,
and the bar association they struck his name off the
rolls immediately. His respectable life, the one he literally forged,
was over officially anyway.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
But then chaos intervenes. January twenty eleven, the revolution, prisons
break open.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Right, mass escapes cross the country and said, who is
already known inside as sid a l Avocado, the lawyer.
He just walked out with everyone else.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
He's a fugitive now, yeh, what's his first move, does
he lie low?
Speaker 2 (04:17):
No, That lawyer's brain kicks right back in first priority
identity management. He immediately gets new official papers forged, changes
his name from Sayed to sayid okay.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Slate change but significant.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Very He knew he couldn't practice law officially ever again,
couldn't open an office, so say the lawyer. That became
his cover story, his professional disguise. He'd meet people, potential clients, whatever,
only in public places, cafes, mostly still.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Playing the part, just without the actual license or office exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
And then comes this moment, completely random, apparently it changes
everything again.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
What happens.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
He's at a cafe doing his side the lawyer thing.
He spots a parked car outside, same model as his own,
a Korean Sedan two thousand and seven model, pretty common car. Then,
just on impulse, apparently, he walks over, takes out his
own car key, and tries the door. No way it opens.
He tries the ignition, the engine starts.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
You're kidding His key worked in a random identical car.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
That's the story, and the source calls it a devilish
idea that hit him right then and there. He doesn't hesitate.
He drives the car off, parks it on some quiet
side street and m baba wow.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Okay, so that's that's a huge leap from forgery to
grand theft auto. Just like that.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
But he doesn't just ditch it again. The calculated mind.
He searches the car first, finds the owner's details.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Smart or cunning, I guess right.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Then he waits, lets the owner's stew for two days.
Then he makes the call, introducing.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Himself in well hit the lawyer, the helpful mediator. Oh
this is brilliant in a terrible way.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
What's his story.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
It's a masterpiece of deflection. Yeah, he says, basically, look,
my clients accidentally bought your car. The paperwork was bad,
they didn't realize it was stolen. Now they're stuck. They
contacted me, the lawyer, to sort this mess out.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
So he's positioning himself as the solution, not the problem.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Precisely. He frames it like a business dispute, a mistake,
suggest maybe they could just split the difference, avoid official headaches,
get the car back quickly, and the owner it dost
be desperate by this point.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Totally desperate. The owner immediately agrees to pay offers twenty
thousand Egyptian pounds to get the.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Car back, and SAYID facilitates the return, does.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
The whole transaction in under two hours, gets the cash,
hands back the car.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
So that twenty thousand e GP. How much was that
roughly in context?
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Well, it was a decent chunk of change. But the
real shock for him was the efficiency. Think about it.
He made maybe what the equivalent of twenty five thousand,
thirty thousand dollars USD today, maybe more depending on the
exact conversion back then, in just three days, with almost
zero effort compared to his forgery.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Skins us Yeah, that's a powerful incentive.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
It completely changed his trajectory. Forgery required years, works, bribes,
constant risk of long sentences. This accidental car theft insane
ROI return on investment.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
So the lawyer persona, the cafe meetings, Yeah, that just
becomes window dressing for the new hustle.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Pretty much. He ditches the pretense of even fake lawyering
and goes full time into professional car theft. This accidental
success showed him a much faster, seemingly easier path.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Did he need to learn how to steal cars properly?
Or did that quick mastery he had with law apply
here too.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Seems like the latter. He just got it, became an
expert almost overnight, focused on specific areas in Baba. Mohandsen.
Aguza targeted popular models he knew he could get into easily,
and he's doing.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
This repeatedly throughout twenty eleven.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Multiple times a month. Yeah, and you have to remember
the backdrop twenty eleven post revolution chaos.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Right, the security vacuum we talked about exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Police presence was minimal, courts weren't functioning properly, people were scared.
It was the perfect environment for him to scale up
this operation without much fear of getting caught, and his.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Methods stayed the same. The helpful lawyer mediator that.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Was Plana the ransom strategy, always the friendly middleman. But
he had a plan B, which was if the owner
refused to pay or if he couldn't reach them quickly,
he didn't just abandon the car. He'd have it dismantled,
immediately sold for parts to shady dealers.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
So he always won. He engineered it so there was
no losing scenario for him.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Exactly, a no lost business model built on theft and exploitation.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Which brings us to this crucial point, Why wasn't he
caught sooner if he's stealing multiple cars a month?
Speaker 2 (08:36):
The reporting gap. This is where his legal background, his
understanding of psychology and systems, really paid off. How think
about it from the victim's perspective, Your car's stolen, your panicked.
Then two or three days later, you get a call
from this lawyer, sayid. He says he can get your
car back quick for a price. Okay, what's the alternative?
(08:57):
File a police report, deal with bureaucracy. Wait weeks, maybe months,
maybe never see the car again. The police are overwhelmed
anyway in this period.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
So paying the ransom, even though its extortion, feels like
the quicker, easier, more certain option.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Precisely, it's the path of least resistance, the most rational
financial choice for many victims in that chaotic moment. So
most of them they paid up, got their car back quickly,
and never filed an official police report.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
He understood the system's failure points and the victim's likely response.
That's chillingly smart.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
It kept him under the radar for a remarkably long time.
But you know, even the smartest systems have flaws, or
maybe people make mistakes.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
So the police did eventually start noticing something.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yeah, by early twenty twelve, they started reviewing the few
reports that were filed and a pattern emerged.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
What was it better?
Speaker 2 (09:43):
The timing cars consistently stolen between five am and six am,
usually shortly after the owner parked it for the night.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Suggesting surveillance. Yeah, not random theft exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
This wasn't some joy rider. This was planned, targeted, meticulous.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
And then came the case that broke it open.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yeah, only twenty twelve. A younger victim this time, Saide
pulls the usual routine demands a high ransom two hundred
thousand AGP. Again big money, huge money. The victim tries
to negotiate, offers one hundred thousand and said, well, he
loses his cool for a second, gets angry.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
What does he say?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
He threatens him says something like pay the full amount
or I'll chop the car in to pieces and send
them to you.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Oof. That's not the smooth mediator anymore, not at all.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
And that threat, combined with the location the five am
theft time it click for the police. This match the pattern.
They realized this was.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Their guy, so they see their chance. What do they do?
Speaker 2 (10:37):
They tell the young victim, agree to the price, agree
to the full two hundred thousand EGP, play along, set
a trap, exactly said. Apparently, thrilled about this big payoff,
starts coordinating the exchange. But he's slippery. Howso that paranoia
kicks in the instincts of a fugitive. Maybe he keeps
(10:58):
changing the meeting location multiple times just hours before the
plan handover.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Trying to shake off any potential surveillance.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Right, But the police anticipated this. They didn't just stick
out one spot. They set up ambushes across three different
potential locations he'd mentioned. They covered their bases and it worked.
They caught him, arrested him right there inside the stolen.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Car, and I bet he tried to talk his way
out of it.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Instantly defaulted straight back to his cover. I'm saying, comal
lawyer pulls out the forged ID, the fake bar card.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
But this time it didn't work.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
No, the police weren't buying it. A quick check the
ideas fake. They run his priens, figure out his real name, said, come.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
And connect him to the prison escape.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Everything unraveled, the fugitive status, the three prior forgery convictions,
the whole carefully constructed facade dissolved. The lawyer who chose crime,
whose cleverness fueled his rise and his fall, was finally
caught inside the very symbol of his criminal enterprise.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Wow, it's quite a story. The talent he had.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
That's the real tragedy here, isn't it. It's not just
that he lost his career. It's the complete waste, the
perversion of that intelligence. He was genuinely gifted, but.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
He chose the quick fix, the illegal.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Shortcut, consistently, first with forgery, manipulating the system from within,
then when chaos offered a new opportunity with outright theft,
exploiting the system's collapse. He used his understanding of law, procedure,
even psychology to become a highly effective criminal.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
So, thinking about this whole story, what's the takeaway for you,
for the listener?
Speaker 2 (12:29):
For me, it highlights that gap between intelligence and wisdom.
Sade was incredibly smart. He could master complex systems, but
he lacked the wisdom, the ethical foundation to use that
intelligence for anything constructive. He basically architected his own downfall.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
It makes you think, doesn't it. We're leaving you with
this final thought, Consider that moment in twenty eleven society's rules,
law and order. They felt like they were temporarily suspended.
Was Saya just a product of that chaos, someone who
saw an opportunity in the breakdown and grabbed it? Oh?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
What was this path set much earlier? The moment he
decided that exploiting a loophole being clever was more important
than being honest. Was the car theft just the inevitable
next step for someone who had already fundamentally rejected integrity?
Speaker 1 (13:13):
That's the question, really, opportunity versus character. Where does one
end and the other begin when faced with that kind
of overwhelming temptation? Something to think about.
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