Pearl - April 12, 2025Beta Male Robbed Banks To Pay For His Wife's IVF Treatment
Episode Stats
Words per minute
201.89497
Harmful content
Misogyny
24
sentences flagged
Toxicity
2
sentences flagged
Hate speech
18
sentences flagged
Summary
Reid Domingo was raised in Wales, had an idyllic childhood with all the privileges of a private school education. So how on earth did he end up serving nearly four years in an American jail for bank robbery? Well, Reid joins us now to share his remarkable story.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
If you are thinking about IVF, it is going to be incredibly expensive.
00:00:04.480
The insurance didn't cover any of it, so we had to cover all of the costs,
00:00:07.660
both the medical procedures and the medication.
00:00:11.360
He should have just found a new wife and said,
1.00
00:00:13.220
look, you got your tubes tied, I want a kid.
1.00
00:00:16.680
And that's when this sort of takes a direction that nobody was expecting
00:00:20.120
because the option that you chose was to rob a bank.
00:00:26.640
a lot, not all the time, but a lot of the time, a woman really is behind it.
1.00
00:00:31.140
I mean, you guys got to start doing what women do to you back.
1.00
00:00:37.400
And today I'm going to be reacting to a man who robbed banks to pay for an IVF treatment.
00:00:43.700
As you guys know, we keep waiting longer and longer and longer to have children
00:00:47.040
and men are the ones that are going to eventually have to pay for it.
0.95
00:00:49.860
When women make bad decisions or different decisions that maybe I could say,
1.00
00:00:54.340
don't, you guys will pay for it if we're a single mother,
1.00
00:00:59.040
If we're homeless, we'll make the government take care of us.
00:01:01.640
They just won't let us face the consequences for our decision.
00:01:04.960
So here we have a man who's robbing banks to pay for his wife's IVF.
00:01:11.520
had an idyllic childhood with all the privileges of a private school education.
00:01:15.580
So how on earth did Reid Domingo end up spending nearly four years
00:01:21.520
Well, Reid joins us now to share his remarkable story.
00:01:25.780
This is really about a journey to becoming a parent,
00:01:29.560
that desire and what you will go to to become a father.
00:01:33.280
So just explain a little bit about the IVF journey
00:01:38.480
She underwent nine rounds of IVF over five years.
00:01:42.480
So what was kind of the circumstances leading up to that?
00:01:48.660
She doesn't even look that old that she got married.
1.00
00:01:50.740
In her early 20s, Patrice lost one fallopian tube through an ectopic pregnancy
00:01:56.140
and then after the delivery of her third child, she had the other tube cut
0.81
00:02:00.540
because she wasn't expecting to get divorced and let alone have any more children.
0.99
00:02:05.740
So you had moved to America to work for your father's company, a biotech company,
00:02:12.340
and that's where you met Patrice and settled down in America.
00:02:17.060
And where we know that if you are thinking about IVF, it is going to be incredibly expensive.
00:02:24.060
And so tell us about that funding of, before we get onto the main story,
00:02:32.360
how difficult was it for you guys to pay for it?
00:02:38.300
Yeah, so again, women make a decision, society will pay for it.
1.00
00:02:41.640
So women wanted to go to college, society started subsidizing education in the 70s.
00:02:46.720
Women wanted to wait to have kids, now the government's going to subsidize IVF.
1.00
00:02:51.420
So women, like if something's free from the government, just assume women are at the end of it.
1.00
00:02:56.800
As you said, the insurance didn't cover any of it.
00:02:59.200
So we had to cover all of the costs, both the medical procedures and the medication.
00:03:04.080
At the time when we first started this process, we both had good jobs.
00:03:08.120
As you said, I was working for my father as a director of sales
00:03:10.880
and Patrice was the regional director of 15 gyms for group exercise.
00:03:16.260
So we had the means to fund it ourselves to start off with.
00:03:19.760
And because we were just trying to circumvent or circumnavigate the fact that she didn't have any tubes,
00:03:25.000
we're both healthy individuals, it was supposed to be one time and that was supposed to be it.
00:03:30.520
So each round costs about approximately, say, $15,000 to do one round of IVF.
00:03:37.760
So then by the end of that, you accumulate a debt of $250,000.
00:03:46.100
So you sort of, to pay for this, you liquidate nearly everything you own.
00:03:53.720
He should have just found a new wife and said, look, you got your tubes tied.
1.00
00:04:02.580
I mean, you guys got to start doing what women do to you back.
1.00
00:04:06.760
Like, we do something to you guys and you guys are like, no, let me do the right thing.
00:04:18.180
Tell the women that you're going to do better and you're just a starter wife.
1.00
00:04:26.940
And that's when this sort of takes a direction that nobody was expecting.
00:04:30.560
Because the option that you chose was to rob a bank.
00:04:35.560
And obviously, I never, never thought I would find myself in that situation.
00:04:41.680
You know, whenever a guy does a bad thing, a lot, not all the time, but a lot of the time,
00:04:48.940
Either it's the guy's messed up from his childhood, which was a woman.
1.00
00:04:51.960
Or he does something because he wants to make money for women.
00:04:56.240
Or he's trying to commit crimes so women will sleep with him.
0.92
00:05:00.400
Three years of heavy pressures, financial pressures that I was bearing.
00:05:07.380
And even though I wasn't customer-facing, I went through bank training that told me what
00:05:14.520
And it was based on that training that was in conjunction with all of the pressures that
00:05:19.520
one day I just thought, you know, that's the solution.
00:05:22.280
Well, you were writing sort of software for them, I think.
00:05:27.980
The one thing you did keep was your motorcycle helmets because you loved your bikes, which
00:05:32.460
came in very handy because I think you ended up being called the Easy Rider Bandit, I think.
00:05:40.600
So because of this work with the bank, you do have access to these manuals.
00:05:44.260
And those manuals contain information that gave you the means to rob a bank, which you
00:05:52.740
I mean, you'd carry on, you'd crack on with your day, rob a bank, and then crack on with
00:05:57.040
Yeah, I don't want to sound flippant about it, but I basically used to schedule the bank
00:06:03.180
So because I was a software engineer, I'd come in very early in the morning, six o'clock.
00:06:10.920
So I would go to lunch around 9.30, 10 o'clock in the morning.
00:06:15.940
I would go out, rob a bank, go pick up some lunch, go back to work.
00:06:31.140
And right before I was ready to leave, Patrice calls me and says, OK, don't forget, meet
00:06:37.000
And don't forget, you're picking up our daughter, which we call Chummy.
0.50
00:06:43.560
So I went, I picked up Chummy, and I was going to go to the gym.
00:06:50.840
And I thought, if you're efficient, you can get this done.
00:06:53.180
So I drove to a bank, parked under a tree in the shades.
00:07:01.160
I exchanged cards with Patrice, who berated me, you've got five minutes before your class
00:07:05.780
And it's like, sweetheart, I'm just robbing a bank, you know.
00:07:11.820
There is no way I could tell Patrice what I was doing.
00:07:15.500
Because I would burden her with that knowledge.
00:07:17.580
And every time we were out, if we saw a police officer or a police car, she would think,
00:07:25.300
Yeah, the two people that I met when I first went to the United States in 1986.
00:07:34.560
One is a sergeant in the San Diego Police Department.
00:07:37.500
The other is the special agent in charge of the DEA.
00:07:42.900
And then eventually, the FBI was contacted by a manager at a different bank who recognised
00:07:51.280
The FBI knock on your door, at which point, I mean, it must have been terrifying for everybody
00:07:55.160
in your family, particularly for Patrice, who had no idea that any of this was going on.
00:07:59.420
Yeah, it was at five o'clock in the morning, 3rd of June, 2002.
00:08:12.840
And when I get to the door, I was like, somebody's going to be on the ground.
00:08:26.380
So your house is then turned over, as you would expect it to be, and you are then carted
00:08:42.300
And you said at no point do you condone any of your actions.
00:08:55.280
And where we find you now is the fact that Patrice and your daughter came over.
00:09:02.500
Your daughter was educated for some of her life here.
00:09:04.860
And then went back for various family reasons to go and look after parents.
00:09:13.820
And it was only eight weeks ago that you told your 25-year-old daughter what had happened.
00:09:20.540
And I think as any parent, you are there always to protect your child.
00:09:25.000
When everything went down in 2002, our daughter Angelique, who we call Chummy, was four years of age.
00:09:32.320
How do you explain to a four-year-old your father's going to prison for robbing banks?
00:10:02.740
Released and deported back to the United Kingdom.
00:10:05.260
Ultimately, Patrice and Chummy came and lived with me here in the United Kingdom.
00:10:09.140
Based on the information that we'd received from the federal government about returning in 2013,
00:10:15.940
Patrice went ahead to try and set things up for us with the expectation that in 2016,
00:10:22.020
upon Chummy completing her A-levels, we would all go back.
00:10:28.420
Your 25-year-old daughter who said, you know, this is my background.
00:10:37.900
When I told her, I am so blessed as a father to have the little girl that I do.
00:10:47.460
But more than anything, it was like, oh, daddy, that fills in all the blanks.
00:10:52.520
Now I know why you never came and spent Christmas with us.
00:10:55.720
Why you didn't come over in the summertime when I was out of school.
00:11:05.320
If you come in and rob banks, I mean, that'll kind of do it.
00:11:08.840
The problem with that is the fact that their top line thing, they kept on telling me you
00:11:13.900
need to do something else, do something else, do something else.
00:11:16.440
Ultimately, I embarked on something in 2019, which I believe was the final step.
00:11:21.700
They said it would take about a year, but obviously in 2020, we were-
00:11:25.040
I mean, to be honest, I say don't let him back in.
00:11:31.480
I understand like people want to, he's like a good looking business guy.
00:11:35.600
Like he looks, you know, like a guy you'd see in like a normal neighborhood or, you
00:11:42.060
But if you come into the country and commit a crime, I don't really want you to come back.
00:11:46.100
Like that's your, do you know how many people are dying to get into America?
00:11:55.780
But if you're not an American and you come commit a crime on American soil, I don't think
00:12:03.100
Sorry to the daughter, but just say this is, maybe she'll understand.
00:12:06.960
She'll be like the only women that understand consequences for actions, right?
1.00
00:12:13.360
So unfortunately it wasn't until November 22 that the US government finally gave me the
00:12:20.240
decision and they said, no, we will not give you a waiver.
00:12:23.860
So you just have to sit and wait to see if anything changes and keep, keep fine.
00:12:31.800
He can, you know, do this sob story or whatever, uh, but yeah, you robbed a bank.
00:12:40.660
Um, your story, because it is fascinating and there's a lot more details that we haven't
00:12:51.360
So if it was up to me, I would stamp Naseki and I would, I would let in instead, I would,
1.00
00:12:57.740
I would let in the, the guy that's been here illegally for 20 years and hasn't committed
0.93
00:13:03.540
Well, I guess it is a crime, but you guys see what I mean?
00:13:06.060
The severity, like I would prefer someone that's been here illegally and has not committed
00:13:11.300
a crime over somebody that was here illegally and committed a crime.
00:13:17.060
I think I'm catch 22-ing myself because that is a crime, but one is far worse, right?
00:13:25.080
Although, because you do, you are robbing Americans of their tax dollars because we all