- 2 days ago
Billionaire Boys Club Ep01 HD Online
#EnglishMovie #cdrama #drama #engsub #chinesedramaengsub #movieshortfull
#EnglishMovie #cdrama #drama #engsub #chinesedramaengsub #movieshortfull
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00When you think the Billionaire Boys Club, it was money, greed, it was success.
00:07The Billionaire Boys Club.
00:09Rich men's sons who all wanted to be tycoons.
00:12They wanted young people, no one over 25.
00:15A privileged group of rich white boys.
00:18Joe Hunt was their guru.
00:20He seemed to have it together.
00:23No one knew at the time about the dark underbelly.
00:26Do whatever you can to get the money.
00:29Doesn't matter how you get there, you just have to get there.
00:32It was a matter of smoke and mirrors.
00:34It was a classic Ponzi scheme.
00:36You had no system, you fleeced us.
00:39Joe Hunt really was the cult leader.
00:41He was the puppet master.
00:43He was chasing wealth and power at any cost.
00:46Even murder.
00:47Members of the BBC were in way over their heads.
00:51Why would rich kids get into the business of killing?
00:55If you know the person in charge is capable of murder,
00:58you are going to stay in line.
01:00He said that it was a perfect crime.
01:02He always thought that he would get away with everything.
01:06It had money and power.
01:09It was the OJ of 1984.
01:12A bombshell was dropped on the prosecution
01:15in the Billionaire Boys Club murder trial.
01:17I didn't kill anybody.
01:18Read the jury.
01:19Find the defendant, Joe Hunt.
01:21The conspiracy at Kirschak Shaw free trial.
01:40My name is Judd Nelson.
01:41I played Joe Hunt in a 1987 miniseries, The Billionaire Boys Club.
01:45Mark.
01:46And in 2018, I was in the movie The Billionaire Boys Club, where I played Joe Hunt's father.
01:52And the story is more weird than you even think.
01:56The Billionaire Boys Club.
01:58The Billionaire Boys Club.
01:59The Billionaire Boys Investment Club.
02:01Its members, 30 young men from wealthy families.
02:05Under Hunt's leadership, BBC members pooled money for a variety of business ventures.
02:10Hunt, according to prosecutors, led his wealthy protégés into increasingly questionable financial dealings.
02:16A sensational story of high-stakes investment scams, mind control, and how it all led to murder.
02:23Sue Horton is writing the BBC story for St. Martin Press.
02:26Her book is new out next year.
02:28This story is what the nighttime folks are made of.
02:31It's what people love to hear, stories of people who are rich and lurid and do terrible things.
02:37The 80s was a time when people not only wanted to have a lot of money, they wanted people to know they had a lot of money.
02:45The BBC fit right into that mindset.
02:51The Billionaire Boys Club was unique because they were a combination investment group and social club.
02:57They were a bunch of attractive, well-dressed young men organized by a singular character, Joe Hunt.
03:17I think I just turned 25 when I actually started with the BBC.
03:21It was just the image of the company.
03:24You had to be on the young side.
03:27My name is Jerry Eisenberg.
03:29I was the in-house counsel for the BBC companies from January through August of 1984.
03:37I remember Joe.
03:38He was a great presence.
03:39He was powerful with his ability to speak and to drive his point home.
03:43He was very confident in his abilities to be successful and could make you believe what he wanted you to believe if you were susceptible to wanting to believe it.
03:54You have a confident message.
03:56People will follow you.
03:58In the miniseries we did, Joe's like, okay, I can play that game.
04:01Now, our corporation is looking for guys like you who, frankly, want to start at the top.
04:06If you have any idea for a company, you start out as president of your operation.
04:11You run your show.
04:13It doesn't matter who you are.
04:14He can talk.
04:15He can convince you.
04:16It's just crazy.
04:19Very quickly, the BBC became a social phenomenon in L.A.
04:23The first time I was aware of the BBC was when I was doing a personal appearance at Tower Records with the Thompson Twins.
04:41And afterwards, the Thompson Twins said, do you want to go for dinner?
04:45And I said, sure.
04:45And right across from Tower Records was a restaurant called Spargo.
04:53It is the restaurant of the stars, a virtual who's who of Hollywood.
04:58But it's not just the food that's made Spargo the most successful restaurant in L.A.
05:03First, you need a table.
05:04For the uninitiated, that might take a month.
05:07We went into Spargo, and there was a huge fuss on the other side of the restaurant.
05:12And it was the guys from the BBC.
05:18They were young.
05:20They were dressed in suits that looked like they came out of the pages of Vogue.
05:26They acted like $100 bills were napkins.
05:30It didn't matter the rich and famous of that.
05:32It was all about these guys.
05:35They really seemed to have it together.
05:38No one knew at the time about the dark underbelly.
05:40Joe Hunt was born Joe Gamsky.
05:55He was from a Wisconsin-based family.
05:57But they moved to L.A. for all the reasons people moved to L.A.
06:00The sunshine, the glamour, the possibility of reinvention.
06:05When Joe was a boy, his father was looking for whatever job he could find.
06:11And he got hooked up with this doctor who ran a hypnosis institute.
06:17Joe's father signed on as his assistant.
06:20Joe's father learned to do hypnosis, and he hypnotized Joe during his adolescence repeatedly to succeed.
06:28And then he taught Joe about self-hypnosis, about how you can convince your mind of anything.
06:35And as long as you internalize that, that is your reality.
06:38Whatever you believe is what's true.
06:41Also, at the time, he was in a public school where the teacher basically said,
06:46you know, I can't teach him he's so far ahead of the other kids.
06:48So he'd already had the idea that he was extremely bright.
06:52Joe's mother was determined that he should have the best possible education.
06:57So she was responsible for helping him get a scholarship and go to the Harvard School.
07:07This is the exclusive Harvard Prep School in Coldwater Canyon.
07:10It is where the elite of Los Angeles educate their sons.
07:13The Harvard School for Boys, now Harvard-Westlake, was a college prep private school, and very prestigious, and still is.
07:25The school is a microcosm of a very wealthy society, with very few exceptions, one of them being Joe Gamsky.
07:34Joe has personally posted audio recordings about his past, what has happened, what he believes is the truth.
07:41In one of the audios, Joe talks about his family.
07:45We grew up in a lower middle class area, and I remember a couple years my family was on food stamps, so we were not a family of riches and privilege.
07:53I began as the youngest faculty member and one of the few women working there.
07:59It was definitely a man's world.
08:02At the time that Joe was my student, I didn't have any knowledge of his background.
08:07He certainly seemed like a cheerful young person, but he would never have been a cool kid.
08:18All ninth graders at the Harvard School are required to take debate, or at least were then, and Joe really found a niche for himself there.
08:27He was at the top of that team by the time he graduated.
08:31So that was a very big deal for Harvard and for him.
08:37I think it meant more to him than it did to the other guys that were on the debate team.
08:41They wanted to do well, but Joe had that thing that he just had to prove.
08:47Debate gave Joe an arena where he could be measured by what he could do competing against these much more privileged kids.
08:55Joe wanted to prove nobody else was smart as him.
08:57In debate, you're not expressing your own deep belief.
09:04You're expressing your argumentative skills.
09:08We had a particularly memorable encounter.
09:12The 10th grade play was Shakespeare's Macbeth, and I was working with him one-on-one to help him shape an essay.
09:19The factual support of his argument relied on a different ending of the play, and his reply to me was, it could have happened the way I imagined it.
09:28To him, in some ways, the facts were irrelevant because what was important to him was the argument that he had made.
09:35He can create his own reality, and there's no check on it from anyone else.
09:44That was an early clue to who Joe Hunt was and what he was capable of.
09:49I think so many of the things that happened for the Billionaire Boys Club couldn't have happened in a later decade.
10:06They had to have happened in the 80s.
10:08When people think of the 80s, they might think it was pretty excessive.
10:12Flash and dash, style over content.
10:14There was a lot of extravagance in every area.
10:17There was definitely a feel that you could make money.
10:22Reaganomics contributed a lot to this.
10:24Now, let's talk about getting spending and inflation under control and cutting your tax rates.
10:29There was less regulation on companies and investments, and the stock market was booming.
10:34There became this sense of entitlement in the 1980s.
10:37I mean, when you see everyone around you making a lot of money, you can think to yourself,
10:41Well, look, I work hard enough. I should be making money, too.
10:44I am entitled to this, literally, right?
10:46In the movie Wall Street, the character Gordon Gekko has this line that just really summed things up for all of the 1980s.
10:53Greed is good. Greed works.
10:58Gordon Gekko told us, Do whatever you can to get the money.
11:02It doesn't matter how you get there. You just have to get there, right?
11:04If you have to sacrifice people along the way, that's the price you have to pay.
11:09So what does that breed?
11:11It breeds narcissists.
11:12It breeds people that don't want to accept responsibility for their actions no matter what they do.
11:17It leads you to someone like Joe Hunt.
11:19Three years after Joe graduated from the Harvard School, Joe ran into former high school classmates, Dean Carney and Ben Dostey.
11:41They knew who he was, but they weren't friends. They didn't have overlapping social circles.
11:54But Joe was no longer the kind of nerdy guy on the outside that they'd known at the Harvard School.
12:01Joe is wearing a suit and tie, looking much more polished than he ever did before, looking actually handsome.
12:08And his confidence was palpable.
12:13Joe gave him a sort of capsule story of all of the incredibly impressive things he'd done, like graduate from USC in two years, become the youngest person ever to pass the CPA exam.
12:24He was working at a big accounting firm and now was trading commodities.
12:28Dean and Ben listened to Joe and thought, this is impressive, and so decided to ask him to dinner to hear more.
12:41At that dinner with Dean and Ben, Joe expressed his desire to start an investment group and social club.
12:49It was my impression that he had accomplished a great many things and was on his way up, whereas I felt that I had not even started yet.
13:03And the fact that he would consider me for such a group or even talk about it with me was flattering.
13:12Dean and Ben really believed that Joe was on to something and that they were kind of in on the ground floor.
13:19Joe and Dean and Ben began seeing each other every day.
13:31Dean and Joe were best friends.
13:33And Dean's parents thought that Joe was a very good influence on their son.
13:37They welcomed Joe into their house.
13:40The second bed in Dean's bedroom became known as Joe's bed.
13:44And it wasn't very long before he revealed that his plan was to go to Chicago and trade on the mercantile exchange and have a chance to make some real money.
13:56This was all meticulously planned.
13:59Joe would be using profits from his commodities trading to fund the beginning of the BBC.
14:05To go to Chicago, Joe needed to raise a lot of cash, and he knew Dean's family had a lot of money.
14:16And Ben's family had lots of connections to wealthy people.
14:20Finally, Joe pitched them on investing with him.
14:23The pitch was that Joe had come up with this butterfly spread on commodity options that no one had ever done before.
14:36It was unique, it was proprietary, and it was going to change the world and make untold money.
14:46Joe had a lot going for him.
14:48He could speak well, and he was a decent-looking, tall, white guy.
14:52And that in itself, especially in the context of the time, made him believable.
15:00Joe charmed Dean's parents.
15:02Dean's family invested $150,000.
15:05And they also recruited some of their friends to put in their money, too.
15:15So Joe had a significant fund when he went to go trade in Chicago.
15:20I started my career on the floor of the Chicago mark, and the best way I can describe it is that it's a combination between a locker room, a horse race, and a Middle Eastern bazaar.
15:41It's just a thousand times more frenetic.
15:43Joe makes a big impression right off with the other traders.
15:51They're basically playing it safe and making money steadily.
15:54Joe came in and took big positions where the payoff is huge.
15:58He was very confident in his ability to make money.
16:01That aura was very apparent when you met him.
16:04Joe was taking big risks, which led to one investor calling the exchange, which launched an internal investigation.
16:11And they found that he had lied about a lot of things.
16:14He carefully constructed what he told people in a mixture of lies and truth.
16:20Joe had gone to USC, but he didn't graduate in two years, as he told Dean.
16:24He didn't have a background in commodities.
16:29He didn't get his CPA licensed and told everybody that he did.
16:32He didn't have licenses to actually trade other people's money.
16:36The people who were running the exchange were so infuriated that they decided they were going to punish him uniquely by banning him from the exchange.
16:44He stole the funds.
16:46He put them in his trading account, traded them, and lost them.
16:49He just didn't have the experience, so he lost everything.
16:55When you have someone like Joe, who feels entitled to lie, to kind of claw his way to the top, he is someone who then will stop at nothing.
17:19In the fall of 1982, Joe Gamsky returned from Chicago as Joe Hunt.
17:36When you change a name, you then assume a certain persona, and you now have reinvented yourself.
17:44Joe Hunt. It's a cool name. Pick your name, Joe Hunt.
17:47I don't think you're going to be accused of being passive.
17:50Your name is Joe Hunt.
17:54It's all about how you want to come across to the world.
17:57And for Joe, that means coming across in a way that I think he wished he could have been.
18:03Joe told Dean and Ben he lost everything, but also that he'd learned from his experience in Chicago with the mercantile,
18:14and he knew now what to do better to get them their money back.
18:18And they believed him, partly because he's telling them something they want to hear.
18:22He had convinced me that his approach was still a masterstroke of the decade,
18:33and that it was just a combination of difficult circumstances that caused him to lose the money.
18:38He's an extremely dynamic person, and we believed him.
18:42A person could come across as trustworthy if every once in a while they offer you a little bit of truth.
18:49And then you think, wow, if he was willing to admit that, that means he's honest.
18:56Joe made such a compelling case and played on the sympathies of Dean's parents so well that they invested more money.
19:03And Dean really assisted Joe in selling his story.
19:08Joe and Dean Carney had a very tight relationship, maybe more than others.
19:14Dean felt a need to prove success to himself and to his parents and his peers,
19:20and I think Joe gave him a vehicle to do that.
19:23Dean, being more of a follower than a leader, had really found his leader.
19:33Joe convinces Dean and Ben that this whole idea for an investment and social club is not dead.
19:47With Dean and Ben's help, Joe was able to recruit a number of young men they knew from the Harvard Prep School.
19:57The Billionaire Boys Club.
19:59It was a capitalistic cult of rich men's sons who all wanted to be tycoons, just like Dad.
20:06Kids like Dave and Tom May, the adopted sons of the former chairman of the May's department stores.
20:11Ben Dosti, son of the LA Times wine critic.
20:14And Dean Carney, son of one of the biggest developers in Los Angeles.
20:18In the old days, the rich kids at the school remembered Joe Hunt as a misfit.
20:22Brilliant, but, well, kind of weird.
20:24Suddenly, Hunt emerged as a messiah.
20:29There definitely is an old boy network quality to this, and particularly in finance.
20:34It's a really male-dominated space, and there's a lot of, you know, what we would call finance bros today.
20:39The Billionaire Boys Club was a bro club.
20:41It was full of rich white guys.
20:47All these other members felt they had something to prove to their parents as well.
20:52So this seemed to be a vehicle for a lot of them to have some kind of upward mobility and to prove their validity.
20:59Like, Evan Dicker just wanted to be a member, wanted to belong.
21:04I looked to him a great deal for approval in my actions.
21:07I felt he was a great man, and his approval was something to be valued.
21:11So in the spring of 1983, they decided to have their very first meeting.
21:26All of these guys were in their 20s.
21:27And the core idea Joe sold these kids was that, I'm going to let you do what you're best at,
21:33and I'm going to show you how to turn that into a fortune.
21:36He was investing quite a bit of money.
21:41He had Dean's parents invest.
21:43They told their friends.
21:45And then he's got outside investors.
21:48With all of this, he opens an account with hundreds of thousands of dollars in it.
21:52So he's doing really well.
21:58He had 70 investors that were giving him all kinds of money.
22:02It seemed like the real thing was going on.
22:03Joe's investors and business associates had discussed him in interviews.
22:08He had a system that was top secret that couldn't lose, that couldn't go wrong.
22:16People were just handing him thousands and thousands of dollars, their life savings.
22:21I mean, whatever money they had, they were saying,
22:22Here, Joe, you're the man.
22:24You can do it.
22:25I mean, we trust you implicitly.
22:27Joe seemed to know what he was talking about in explicit detail.
22:35He brought out books and charts and all kinds of paraphernalia to fortify his case.
22:41Joe is a magnetic personality who sold his ideas, his concepts as being irrefutable
22:47and being 100% legitimate and being faultless.
22:52The spiel that he gave investors, it's complete gibberish.
22:56But people didn't want to ask him questions or press him on it because you don't want to look stupid.
23:00And that actually is a technique of control.
23:04People would think, oh, people will kind of leave someone who's not making sense.
23:09But if someone says, this is the answer, this is how you're going to get rich,
23:15you're going to think, I just have to try harder to get it because it makes sense to him.
23:20And he seems smart and he seems successful.
23:22Joe was very self-assured.
23:26I mean, beyond his years.
23:27He didn't necessarily look older than his years,
23:30but he certainly felt that way when you're in his presence.
23:32People had mentioned that later when they talked about him.
23:35Whatever it was, Joe was like this rock.
23:38He almost seemed like everybody's savior.
23:41He just struck everybody as the person who could help you achieve your goals.
23:52I believe Joe Hunt was a very charismatic leader.
23:59And charismatic leaders come across as benevolent,
24:02that they want what's best for you,
24:04but they actually just care about what you are going to be able to do for them.
24:10So I think it was a game to him.
24:12It was a very destructive, awful, dangerous game.
24:22The BBC had basically created a venture capital firm,
24:34supposedly financed by Joe's commodities trading to fund their business ventures.
24:40They had multiple companies.
24:42Financial futures was for Joe's commodities trading.
24:47Microgenesis invested in engineering projects.
24:50West cars imported gray market European luxury cars
24:55to convert to American regulations to sell.
24:59But what they really did was bring them over and drive them around.
25:02And so Joe could hand out a BMW to this guy,
25:05a Mercedes to the other guy, an Audi to the next guy.
25:11I had been hanging out with them a little bit,
25:14coming to my apartment a little bit.
25:15They actually, at one point, brought me a car, a brand new Porsche.
25:19They did.
25:20They did want to recruit me.
25:21They knew that I knew a lot of people who had money,
25:23and my family was influential in Beverly Hills and Hollywood.
25:27Joe Hunt gave me the keys personally and said,
25:29cars out there for you.
25:30The businesses, they were created perhaps to make money,
25:34but these guys wanted to introduce themselves
25:36as the president or vice president or something of some company.
25:39Joe was giving them titles to make them feel important,
25:48but they weren't doing much.
25:50I really just kept thinking it was a game to them.
25:54They were in at 10, lunch at 12, and out by three.
25:57They worked a three-hour day.
25:59They thought, if you tell me I can make a whole lot of money
26:06and be the president of a company,
26:09and I don't have to really work for it,
26:11then that's good with me.
26:14They had enough ostensible sophistication
26:16to know what they were getting into,
26:18but they only heard what they wanted to hear.
26:19Joe would have said that the heart of everything they did
26:28was paradox philosophy.
26:32Paradox philosophy is an ends justify the means philosophy
26:35that Joe completely made up.
26:37There is no absolute good or evil, just whatever works.
26:41I think it was inspired by what Joe's father
26:43was bashing in his head.
26:45It's situational ethics.
26:46Depending upon your point of view,
26:47what you see is different.
26:48You see this side of the page,
26:49I see that side of the page.
26:51You'll swear on your life it's white,
26:52I swear on my life it's black.
26:54What does that mean?
26:55It means if you're clever enough
26:57and faster than someone,
26:59you can spin it around
27:00and get them to say what they don't see.
27:04One of the philosophical phrases was,
27:07black is white and white is black
27:08and everything is shades of gray.
27:13So if you could reorient your own point of view
27:15and the views of others,
27:17you'd mastered the shades of gray
27:19and were a shading,
27:20which would be the highest level of the BBC.
27:27You know, you can all rise to the level of shading,
27:29but only three people have actually achieved being a shading
27:32and that's himself, Dean and Ben.
27:34Joe Hunt decided to have labels put on groups of people,
27:43the normies and the shadings.
27:46And the normies were people who lived kind of boring lives
27:50and followed laws.
27:53And were people also then who were not gonna make maybe this kind of success
27:58and we're not gonna take these kinds of risks.
28:01These normies were therefore dangerous
28:03and he used to constantly find individual examples of people that I knew,
28:08my parents or friends.
28:10He would then persuade me
28:11that this person was actually seeking to undermine me for all time.
28:15And that, in a way,
28:17to continue to be involved with them
28:19would lead to sort of a fundamental destruction of me.
28:23There is an us versus them mentality.
28:25That fits the profile of a cult in so many ways.
28:29This idea that somehow the world is this bad place
28:33and we need to band together,
28:35it does breed a lot of closeness,
28:37but a lot of paranoia about the rest of the world.
28:40And it is very controlling.
28:59Almost everybody in the BBC
29:01had either gone to the Harvard School
29:03or to Beverly Hills High School.
29:05Among those who joined the BBC
29:10were Tom and Dave May,
29:12whose family fortune was from the May Company,
29:16which was a big department store chain
29:17and then later property development.
29:22I think that Joe needed these other people for legitimacy, right?
29:26If you can say that the May brothers are on your board,
29:31that helped raise money
29:32and helped give an aura of success.
29:35And he read the May brothers
29:37and their frailties and their needs beautifully.
29:40More than any other members of the group,
29:42they were the ones that were looking for
29:44a way to achieve esteem in their father's eyes.
29:48Their father was really skeptical of it,
29:50but they were really convinced
29:52that Joe knew what he was doing around commodities
29:54and that this was going to go very well for them.
30:00Dave May gave Joe $10,000
30:03and then the very next month,
30:04Joe gave him $5,000 back as profit.
30:09Seeing that huge return
30:11inspired the May brothers
30:13to give him even more money.
30:16I think Joe wasn't thinking,
30:18you know, I'm just going to scam all these people.
30:20I think he believed he was going to make enough money
30:22to cover everybody and everything.
30:24But the only way Joe could get people
30:26to believe in him
30:27was to invent profits
30:29that did not exist
30:30by distributing new investors' money
30:33to earlier investors.
30:36The Billionaire Boys Club
30:37was a classic Ponzi scheme.
30:44Back in the 1980s,
30:46money became its own calling card.
30:47You know, don't ask too many questions
30:49about how I'm making this money.
30:50All that's important
30:51is that I am making all this money.
30:53That's all you really need to know about me.
30:54He's manipulating them
30:56but making it look legitimate.
30:58Taking from Peter to give to Paul.
30:59Ultimately, it can't support itself.
31:01In a Ponzi scheme,
31:02eventually it collapses.
31:04And when it did fall apart,
31:06it just came to pieces.
31:18So in the spring of 1983,
31:20the group was growing
31:21and for once,
31:22Joe was with the cool kids.
31:30But the BBC was at
31:32kind of an inflection point.
31:34They were bringing money
31:35that was supposed to be invested
31:36and return profits.
31:40But their expenses were high
31:42and they were using that money up
31:44faster than Joe would have liked.
31:45They were spending $70,000 a month.
31:48In today's dollars,
31:49that's about $250,000 a month.
31:58Joe's outrunning his capital
32:00and he needs to bring in more.
32:02And he hears about this character,
32:03Ron Levin.
32:07Joe's curious about Ron
32:09because of the things he hears
32:10from a couple of BBC kids.
32:12that this is the smartest guy,
32:13the smoothest operator
32:14you'll ever meet
32:15and very wealthy.
32:18Ron was one of the few people
32:20I had met
32:21you could talk to about art,
32:23business,
32:24physics.
32:25He was brilliant.
32:26He loved being in clubs.
32:27He loved being the guy.
32:29We went to every great restaurant.
32:31He paid for everyone.
32:33Very generous.
32:34And he bought things
32:35for people constantly.
32:36He was constantly
32:37buying things for people.
32:38Yeah.
32:38Complete gray.
32:39Women were all over him.
32:41Ron was bisexual
32:43and attractive
32:44and had money
32:45and so
32:45he kind of appealed
32:47to everybody, right?
32:48One day,
32:49he introduced us
32:50to Andy Warhol
32:51and another time,
32:52Muhammad Ali.
32:53I don't know how.
32:54And they all loved him.
32:55He had access
32:56to so many people.
32:57It was crazy.
32:58Yeah.
32:59He was mischievous.
33:00He would go
33:04to an art gallery
33:04and he'd go
33:05with his chauffeur
33:06and he'd walk in
33:07and he'd go,
33:08I love those paintings.
33:09I'll take that one
33:10and he'd pay.
33:12And then,
33:13he'd send the chauffeur back
33:14and he'd call
33:15and he'd go,
33:15remember that other one
33:16that I saw that I liked?
33:17My chauffeur's gonna come
33:18and pick it up.
33:18Will you bill me?
33:19He didn't walk in there
33:20and steal it.
33:21Now it's civil, right?
33:22It's not criminal.
33:23You know?
33:24I think with him,
33:24it was like
33:25there was a game going on.
33:27He really never knew the truth.
33:28It's like a little kid.
33:30That was the kind of thing
33:35Ron Levin did
33:36and he enjoyed that.
33:39Life was a game to him.
33:41He lived by grifting.
33:42He did create
33:43a legitimate company
33:45called Network News
33:46that basically
33:47would go out at night
33:49with film crews
33:50to film crime scenes
33:52that all of the local
33:54television stations
33:54would buy and use
33:55and it was a profitable company.
33:58But Ron had gotten
33:59the equipment he was using
34:00by basically scamming
34:01these companies
34:03that thought he was buying it
34:05or at least renting it.
34:06Here is Ronald Levin
34:07at a Los Angeles fire
34:09posing as a reporter.
34:10The camera he is using
34:12is stolen.
34:13Cops raided Levin's home
34:15and they found
34:16$350,000
34:17and stolen camera equipment.
34:19We couldn't figure out
34:21why he did things like that
34:22because he was smart
34:24and his businesses
34:24made money.
34:25Was that enough
34:26to support the lifestyle
34:27that he had?
34:28I don't know.
34:33Joe really thought
34:35that he could get
34:35some of Ron Levin's money
34:37and he viewed him
34:38as a target
34:38for investing
34:39in the BBC.
34:40And right at that moment
34:43that seemed to be
34:44his ticket
34:45to get out
34:45from under
34:46the house of cards
34:47he'd built.
34:48So for Joe
34:49this was it.
34:50They asked me
34:51if they could meet Ron Levin
34:52and I said
34:53you don't want to meet Ron Levin
34:55and Joe's like
34:56why not?
34:56I'm like
34:56because you're going to
34:57lose everything you've got.
34:59He's just going to
34:59take whatever you have.
35:01I had heard Levin
35:02was a con man
35:03and Joe just dismissed that
35:05and felt that Levin
35:06couldn't run a con on him.
35:08He said
35:08I can handle Levin.
35:10So Ron convinced Joe
35:17that he had
35:18a special affection for him
35:20and they got
35:21you know
35:22closer.
35:23They were playing
35:24this game with each other
35:25of who's smarter.
35:27They're both seeing
35:28each other
35:28as a dear friend
35:30and a mark
35:31at the same time.
35:32It's not smart
35:33to try and con a con man.
35:35Ultimately
35:36Joe met his match.
35:40After Joe
35:55met Ron Levin
35:56Joe thought
35:57ultimately
35:58he was a little sharper
35:59than Ron
35:59and he was going to prove it.
36:00So from the very beginning
36:01Joe was trying to
36:03invade Ron
36:04into an investment.
36:11And then all of a sudden
36:13Ron Levin said
36:14you could be in charge
36:15of my $5 million
36:16commodities account.
36:18And then he said
36:20whatever profits
36:22Joe made
36:22they would just
36:23split them
36:2450-50.
36:27Well that sounds good
36:28to Joe
36:28and he calls up
36:29the brokerage
36:30and the broker
36:30confirms that
36:31yes we have
36:32this Ron Levin
36:33account here
36:33and he's given us
36:34permission to
36:35let you trade it.
36:36And so Joe
36:37starts making trades
36:38over the phone
36:39with the broker.
36:39For Joe
36:45this was huge.
36:46He was looking
36:47at financial ruin
36:49all around.
36:50His commodities trading
36:51up to that point
36:52had all been disastrous.
36:54Joe needed
36:54this success.
36:56He really believed
36:57that that $5 million
36:58account
36:59was going to
37:00save the BBC.
37:00So Joe
37:08starts making bets
37:09in a matter of weeks.
37:10The account
37:11is going up steadily.
37:12This $5 million
37:13was run up to
37:14almost $14 million
37:15over two and a half months
37:17and I was elated.
37:18And
37:19the first thing I did
37:20was I had a big meeting
37:21with the BBC
37:22and said
37:22boys
37:23we've had a wonderful
37:24good fortune
37:25made $4 million.
37:27You can pay
37:27everybody off
37:28have plenty
37:29of operating capital
37:30then it's all good.
37:37This is the biggest
37:39success
37:39the BBC
37:40has had
37:41or even imagined.
37:42You know
37:43the whole BBC
37:44is thrilled.
37:48There was a certain
37:49swagger
37:49to the officers
37:51and members.
37:52It seemed
37:53Joe's theoretical
37:54butterfly strategies
37:56investing strategies
37:57had legitimacy
37:58and paid off.
37:59Now obviously
38:00some of this
38:00has to go
38:01to our investors
38:02so we're going to
38:03separate about
38:05a million and a half
38:05dollars there
38:06and you Tom May
38:07you get
38:07$400,000
38:08and you get
38:09$400,000.
38:10We dig it all up.
38:16So the group
38:17has celebrated
38:18everybody's thrilled.
38:20Then something
38:21is off.
38:22Some weeks
38:23after the trading
38:24had stopped
38:25Joe was in a
38:26conversation
38:27with one of the people
38:28at the commodities
38:29trading house
38:30and the guy said
38:31to him
38:31so when did you
38:32realize that the money
38:34in that Ron Levin
38:34account wasn't real?
38:41And Joe mumbled
38:42something that implied
38:43of course he knew this
38:44but he hadn't known.
38:49Joe for weeks
38:50and weeks
38:51has been bragging
38:52to anyone
38:53who would listen
38:54about how well
38:55he'd done
38:56with his commodities
38:56account
38:57and that his system
38:58worked
38:58that everything
38:59was great
39:00that the BBC
39:01was hypersolvent
39:02and all of a sudden
39:03he discovers
39:04that that's not true.
39:06None of that is true.
39:08There was no money
39:09in the account.
39:11Ron had run
39:12really one of his
39:14many masterworks
39:15of con.
39:17Joe
39:17was just
39:18in shock.
39:24Unbeknownst to Joe
39:25Ron told the brokerage
39:26that his company
39:27Network News
39:28was making a documentary
39:29about investment
39:30in brokerages
39:31and wanted to set up
39:32this fake account
39:33with their outside trader
39:34and follow the progress
39:35of the trading account
39:37and the trader
39:37wouldn't know.
39:38He set the account up
39:40with 5.2 million dollars
39:41which never existed.
39:43The brokerage firm
39:44was taken advantage of
39:45Hunt was taken advantage of
39:47all by Ron Levin
39:48to what ends
39:49I'm not sure to this day.
39:51So the brokerage firm
39:52was in the dark
39:52about everything.
39:53They didn't realize
39:54that there was
39:55no documentary
39:56and Ron
39:57is using this
39:58whole scheme
39:59to try and con
40:00even more money.
40:02He had used
40:02those statements
40:03to go to other
40:04brokerage houses
40:05and have credit
40:05extended to him
40:06and he had actually
40:07managed to con
40:08about a million
40:09and a half dollars
40:10out of those
40:10other brokerage houses.
40:16So Ron
40:17had gotten
40:17a million and a half dollars.
40:19Joe got nothing.
40:23For Joe
40:24this news
40:24was devastating.
40:26The BBC
40:26was in terrible
40:27financial shape.
40:29He didn't know
40:29what to do.
40:32The other BBC
40:33companies
40:34are not bringing
40:34in cash yet
40:35and he's still
40:36got all these boys
40:36driving the BMWs
40:38and Mercedes around
40:39that they're supposed
40:39to sell.
40:42Joe is keeping
40:43this whole situation
40:44with Levin
40:45privately held
40:45among the shadings.
40:51Nobody else
40:51realized how deep
40:53into financial ruin
40:54the billionaire
40:54boys club
40:55actually was.
40:56There was never
40:57any hint
40:57of failure.
40:59There was only
40:59a hint
41:00of either success
41:01or coming success.
41:02Ron had conned him
41:07and suddenly
41:08someone was
41:09superior to him
41:10and he had to
41:11then take them
41:11down.
41:12He made Joe
41:13look bad
41:14and Joe was done
41:15being made
41:16to look bad.
41:16That was clear.
41:20He was pissed.
41:22Joe Hunt thought
41:26that the money
41:27from Ron Levin
41:28was his golden ticket.
41:31He was chasing
41:32wealth and power
41:33at any cost.
41:35Even murder.
41:36He was chasing
41:40the money
41:42of God
41:43and he was
41:45selfish.
41:46He was chasing
41:47the money
41:47and he was chasing
41:48anything else.
41:48He was doing
41:48to love
41:51and to make
41:52him
41:53a good
41:54and to make
41:54him
41:55and to make
41:56him
41:57his
41:58and the
41:59guy
42:00was chasing
42:01him
42:01and to make
42:02him
42:03and to make
42:03him
42:04the
42:04best
42:04that
Recommended
54:07
|
Up next
41:47
49:30
49:30
50:12
1:06:16
1:51:20
1:30:58
58:54
44:04
1:01:33
1:03:56
1:00:17
47:11
46:57
47:14
2:36:47
51:39
41:20
41:32