The Megyn Kelly Show - Fraud Week： How Crypto Convict Made Millions Before Getting Caught, with Ray Trapani and Jonny B Good

00:00:00.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:11.980 Ray Trapani was always fascinated with money. Those who knew him as a child knew that he would

00:00:17.060 someday become a millionaire, but they couldn't imagine how. In the mid-2010s, he was broke and

00:00:23.400 hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. But then he and a business partner set out on a mission to

00:00:29.380 create a Bitcoin debit card. The company they created and the technology they promoted,

00:00:36.180 however, was all a lie. And it did not take long for everything to come crashing down.

00:00:42.460 Today, we bring you the story that was the focus of the Netflix documentary,

00:00:46.180 Bitcond, with the man at the center of it all. Ray Trapani is the founder and former COO of

00:00:52.660 Bitcoin company Centratech. He's joined today by his high school best friend and co-host of his new

00:00:57.620 podcast, Creating a Con, the story of Bitcond. Johnny B. Goode, that's his friend.

00:01:06.460 Guys, welcome to the show. Thanks for having us. Nice to see you. Okay. So I watched the

00:01:10.920 Netflix documentary and Ray, I got to tell you the truth. I found you completely charming in so many

00:01:16.680 ways. And I ended the series thinking he's definitely still a criminal. Am I wrong?

00:01:21.760 Yeah, you're definitely wrong in that regard. I've changed a lot.

00:01:28.520 You have. Okay. Well, like, what did it? Getting convicted? Because you didn't have to serve jails.

00:01:33.220 I can see how actual prison time would reform a guy. But what did it?

00:01:38.980 So I was addicted to drugs since I was 12. So then basically, once I got arrested, this time is the

00:01:45.880 first time being sober since for, you know, 15 years of drug use. So that really is what changed

00:01:51.920 me. You know, all these crimes I did, I always did them under the influence.

00:01:57.300 I really feel like not for nothing, but we've interviewed many felons on this show. And some

00:02:03.780 guys did a lot of frauds over the course of their lives in their 20s and their 30s, and then wound up

00:02:08.820 using their talents for good, like helped the state. And I know you did work with the government

00:02:13.660 ultimately, but like, just FYI, this could potentially be a lane, a lane for you because

00:02:18.220 you're a talented guy in many ways. And you actually successfully pulled off a lot of these

00:02:24.020 capers. But I just want to say that for the record before we get going, because I think you could have

00:02:29.220 a great life in front of you. And I hope it's all used for good. Now, Johnny, I, you were in the

00:02:34.260 documentary a bit, but not as much as Ray, who's the star, because it's his story. But you guys,

00:02:39.080 what, you've been best friends since you were kids?

00:02:40.540 Yeah, we've been best friends since third grade or fourth grade. And we've, we grew up together in

00:02:48.960 the same town. I always considered him like a brother to me. And we just took very different

00:02:54.120 paths in life, but we always remained best friends. Despite if you wrote, if you wrote us down on paper.

00:02:59.800 Did you know, like, okay, you know, Ray, yeah, you know, is he one of those guys, like he cheated on

00:03:05.980 the test? Was there like a strain of dishonesty or potential future fraud? Or did he always color

00:03:12.520 within the lines? What's that?

00:03:14.240 No, this was, this was like, a lot of people asked me, did you like, were you shocked? It was very

00:03:19.880 natural progression throughout Ray's whole life. It was like a progression of criminality. Ray's been

00:03:25.680 involved in criminal activity since he's 12 years old. So this was not really a shock to me.

00:03:31.340 It's interesting because it sounds like Ray, like we meet your mom and she seems totally lovely,

00:03:40.360 but around you growing up, you, you know, one important thing, which is your dad split.

00:03:46.340 So you didn't really have a father growing up. And then now you've since come out and said you

00:03:50.640 actually suffered abuse too, uh, sexual abuse as a young man. So explain how you think you got to the

00:03:58.380 point where crossing the legal lines just kind of wasn't a thing for you.

00:04:03.640 Yeah. So basically as a kid, um, from eight to 12, I was being molested pretty much regularly.

00:04:09.280 And my mom, my dad had left and my mom was working 12 hours a day in the ICU as a nurse. So from that,

00:04:16.920 and then I also, Oh, it was, I felt like it was happening. And it was so obvious to everybody in my

00:04:21.000 family that everybody always knew. So pretty much I, at a very young age, I was like, it's me against the

00:04:25.940 world. And because of that, I also like viewed my grandfather as like a, he was a, he started a

00:04:33.660 union in New York city. So pretty much anybody that's connected with the unions has some sort

00:04:38.060 of connection. So he presented as like a mobster figure. And he was also like the one that always

00:04:42.280 had cash would help my mom get the house or get me my first car. So I was just like, that's who my

00:04:48.300 idol is. And I viewed it as like, it was criminal activity based. Right. So I was like, that's what

00:04:53.500 the route I'm going to take. In the documentary, I talked about trauma for about two hours before I

00:04:59.640 said, I always want to be a criminal, but they just took the last line and made it seem like that

00:05:03.660 was just like my opening thing to say. Right. That did come out of nowhere. So that makes more sense.

00:05:10.520 So you, it was the first like actual step toward criminality, the use of drugs or just walk us

00:05:18.120 through like that first line crossed as you remember it. Yeah. The same person that was

00:05:23.220 abusing me, uh, like had me smoking weed at 12. And then from there, I, I, I, I became friends with

00:05:30.100 one of like the biggest drug dealers in was little brother, but the biggest drug dealers in Long Island

00:05:35.500 for weed. And I just started selling weed. That was like my first step into crime.

00:05:40.500 Hmm. And have you, you've never said who this person was who hurt you?

00:05:44.800 Uh, no, it was my stepbrother. How did it finally stop?

00:05:50.080 I, I got bit, I grew up, you know, I started like dating. I, what happened was like, I was always

00:05:54.940 questioning my sexuality up until 12. And then I got a girlfriend and I pretty much, um, had my first

00:06:01.600 interaction with a girl sexually. And I was like, Oh, well, I'm definitely not, I'm definitely not gay.

00:06:08.200 So then that's kind of what just like, I pretty much at like 13, 14, I just was always with that girl.

00:06:14.520 She, she had a troubled, uh, childhood also. And my mom, we had like a crazy household, but she

00:06:20.540 basically moved into my house. I got like 14, 15, um, like kind of, uh, getting away from her family

00:06:26.600 as well. So, uh, that's kind of what just guided me away. Then they got a divorce pretty much like

00:06:31.880 right around that same time. So he was just out of the picture completely. I also have two boys by

00:06:37.440 the way. So I, I, uh, I have two little boys now, you, you know, yes, I'm sure you're very protective of

00:06:44.040 them. Has he contacted you to say, what are you doing? Or I'm sorry, or threatened you? Like, how has

00:06:50.180 he reacted to you going public with that? I have no idea. I mean, I haven't heard from him since I

00:06:55.100 was 17. So, I mean, he, he was always like, uh, he was very different than me and my brothers were

00:07:01.120 like beach bums. My brothers were big surfers. And then they were like kind of a dirty fingernails,

00:07:07.160 rock band type of guy. So I honestly, they probably live in like the boondocks and I really

00:07:13.040 have no idea what's going on with them. You, you know, wind up getting a little older. And then we

00:07:19.480 were talking about you sort of your first foray into crossing legal lines and you had the family

00:07:23.940 influence and you kind of thought this was what people did. So what was it? Was it drugs?

00:07:30.200 At first? Yeah. I, I mean, I was doing drugs and I started selling drugs and then pretty much

00:07:34.700 quickly that evolved into fraud because I, it was like drug based fraud. So I, I, um,

00:07:41.820 had someone, someone stole a pad cause I was doing Oxycontin and then someone stole a prescription

00:07:46.620 pad and just gave it to me. And I, I just had this kid write out this prescriptions. And I basically

00:07:51.160 had like, at first like me and my girlfriend went in and when the scripts worked, they filled

00:07:55.920 and at the time Oxycontin, like I, I was, um, you know, like the, the opiate epidemic really

00:08:03.280 hit my generation hard. So everybody was doing Oxycontin. It was like, no one was talking about

00:08:08.000 the negative effects of it and everybody was just trying it. So the pills sold very fast and I was

00:08:15.180 fully addicted by 15, 16. And then this happened about 17 years old. That was like my first fraud.

00:08:20.760 And I got arrested for that case as well. What year was that? Uh, so if I was 17,

00:08:27.580 uh, I was born in 91, that was 2008. Okay. And Johnny, did you, were you there for this? Like,

00:08:34.780 do you remember Ray get involved with drugs and, you know, sort of going down this lane?

00:08:39.580 Well, I mean, like he, like he said, um, the opiate epidemic hit our generation pretty hard. So this was

00:08:45.540 like, everyone was taking these pills. Um, in the high school we went to, we didn't even know it was

00:08:51.580 a synthetic heroin at the time, but people used to be selling blues or oxys for two, $3 a pop.

00:08:57.080 And then all of a sudden they went to $45 when everything started cracking down,

00:09:01.500 which then everyone turned to heroin experts because they were addicted.

00:09:04.560 All of these things were super common growing up. So, you know, we, we were talking the other

00:09:09.580 day about if you go through our yearbook, there's, we probably know more people that died from

00:09:13.560 addiction than anything else. Um, so yeah, it was kind of par for the course.

00:09:18.720 I know you grew up in Long Island, right? But what, like what kind of an area was it?

00:09:22.400 Long Island's got all sorts of different neighborhoods.

00:09:24.160 Oh, a beautiful picturesque place called Atlantic beach. Love it. Um, it really is.

00:09:31.900 Sorry, go ahead. Uh, so it really is like on the, on the surface it's, you know, everything's

00:09:39.220 beautiful and perfect, but there's like a darkness that kind of, you know, lies underneath. Um,

00:09:45.820 and not just the drugs in Atlantic beach, I think like the, the culture in general.

00:09:50.520 So, and I think that's kind of the same with a lot of these small towns.

00:09:54.940 Ray, I can't believe you got away with taking, um, somebody swiped a doctor's prescription,

00:09:58.660 uh, pad, as you point out out of a doctor's office. And then you started writing prescriptions on it.

00:10:03.300 Like 2008 was not, you know, 1998 when we really had no clue. And the opioid crisis was first start,

00:10:11.040 you know, like it's amazing to me that they wouldn't double check the doctor's signature.

00:10:15.540 Like how did you not get caught right away on that one?

00:10:19.880 So there was the method. Um, so basically the doctor's offices close at around six,

00:10:25.100 seven o'clock. So you make sure you go to the pharmacy after the doctor's offices close.

00:10:28.360 Cause they always call to verify, but they'll fill the prescription without the doctor verifying

00:10:32.220 if the doctor's offices close. So we would just do that. But the pharmacies were all in on the opiate

00:10:36.500 epidemic. Walgreens got sued. I believe that's where we always went. And, uh, you know,

00:10:41.520 if you see a bunch of skinny crackhead looking kids coming into your pharmacy one after the other

00:10:46.480 filling prescriptions for oxycontin, you would assume something's wrong. Um, we didn't get caught

00:10:52.020 until we went to like a mom and pop pharmacy. And that was when they were like, oh, this is definitely

00:10:56.600 something wrong here. And they called the cops. So everybody was in on that, that whole opiate

00:11:01.640 epidemic. That's fascinating and frankly, believable. Um, so, okay, you get caught, you don't wind up

00:11:09.080 serving jail time. You get kind of a slap on the wrist, right? Uh, yeah, for that, I did drug court

00:11:14.240 for pretty much like, uh, every single time I would get arrested, I would always go to rehab and then

00:11:18.940 go like do some sort of drug, um, outpatient type of thing always. But I always had very good lawyers,

00:11:25.860 obviously. And you're, you know, you're a good looking guy. Do you feel like you were able to charm

00:11:31.960 these judges? You're like, I'm just wondering how that played because, you know, you're going to have a

00:11:35.940 lot of people out there being like, if he was a black kid from Chicago, he would have been put

00:11:39.680 behind bars. Yeah. I hear that regularly. And, um, I don't know the correct answer. I'm a handsome

00:11:47.580 white guy. So, I mean, I don't really have the answer for what would happen if I was a black guy.

00:11:52.460 Really? I don't know. Right. Right. But I'm sure, I'm sure like it somewhat has to play into, you know,

00:11:58.940 like I, I don't know, you know, I can't really give you an answer for that one.

00:12:02.660 Hmm. Well, we'll let the audience take a look at the YouTube and make up their own

00:12:06.520 minds on it. All right. So then you wind up graduating to a car, like getting a lovely,

00:12:15.120 like car rental service going, exotic, Miami exotic, right? That's what it was called.

00:12:21.140 And this was, but it was not in Miami or was it actually in Miami?

00:12:24.500 Yeah. So I, I basically like during that time of drug court, I started working in construction.

00:12:29.180 My grandfather got me a union card. I started working. I was like, I hate this. This is

00:12:33.680 terrible. I don't know how anybody could work a job like this. This honest job is not for me.

00:12:39.540 Yeah. I was breaking my back doing scaffolding at the new world trade center for like a couple of

00:12:43.720 years there. And then I basically was, I went and visited my friend down in Miami. And, uh,

00:12:48.860 that's when I, at first I found this loophole in Venmo when I first moved down there and I was able

00:12:55.300 to just send money without having money in the bank account to back it. And, uh, I just like kind

00:13:00.780 of exploited that loophole to the maximum extent. And, you know, we made like a good amount of money

00:13:06.380 on it. I don't know the exact figure, but from there I was like, I came back to New York. I told

00:13:11.620 my girlfriend, I was like, I'm moving down to Miami. She didn't even believe me. And then I was

00:13:15.000 like, you're the come with me. Oh, you're staying here. And I just, uh, the next day put my TV and

00:13:20.940 everything in my car and drove down there and, uh, kind of continued with the Venmo thing for a

00:13:26.300 little bit there, built up a few hundred thousand. And from there we parlayed that into opening a

00:13:31.580 exotic car rental business. Yeah. The Venmo scheme is actually very interesting to me too,

00:13:35.940 because I, I read you, we're talking about how if the way it works is like, let's say you wanted to

00:13:43.420 Venmo three grand Johnny, but you had, you know, $2 in your account on Venmo. There was this period

00:13:50.180 where Venmo would send it, even though you didn't have the funds and they might shut down that account

00:13:57.580 of yours, but they didn't come after you for it. Yeah. Uh, Venmo PayPal, they all had the same

00:14:04.480 issue. I don't know how they allowed this, but basically they would front the money. Um, as long

00:14:10.160 as you had one transaction done through your account, they would just front the money as soon

00:14:14.280 as you sent it. And the other person would get it and be able to cash it out. And your account

00:14:18.660 would just go negative three, like basically bounce against the bank account. And, uh, you'd

00:14:23.120 get a $35, like, I don't know, whatever the fee would be. And then, uh, your Venmo would just get

00:14:29.220 banned. And back then, like, they didn't even bill you for it. It was just like your Venmo was banned.

00:14:33.660 So it was like, all right, we're going to find like a hundred people to do the exact same thing.

00:14:37.340 And I, I just like created like fake Instagram accounts, like to find like college kids that were

00:14:42.900 broke that needed money quick and, uh, give them a thousand dollars out of the transaction,

00:14:47.260 take the other couple thousand. And, um, we just did that for a little bit there.

00:14:52.600 I mean, I have to give you points for ingenuity. I like who would have even

00:14:55.600 thought about this. Like, how did you discover that this could even happen?

00:15:01.200 Um, I was just sitting on the balcony. This is something Johnny speaks to a lot as far as like

00:15:06.260 how I view systems. Um, I mean, maybe Johnny can expand. Yeah. I mean, even going back to when

00:15:12.040 we were talking about like the pharmacy thing and, and the Venmo thing, Ray just has a very unique way

00:15:18.220 of looking at systems and then like figuring out a way to exploit them. You mentioned earlier how,

00:15:24.700 like, um, you know, he's very intelligent in a lot of ways. And if, if he would have applied that

00:15:28.900 somewhere else, like he could have done it. I mean, you did do some amazing things, but you could have

00:15:33.240 done some kind of really world changing things. Um, it's always fascinated me. And it's like,

00:15:39.240 it taught me a new way to look at things in general, right? Can look at a system and like

00:15:42.940 immediately figure it out and figure out where the flaws lie.

00:15:47.220 It is kind of a gift and it could be used for good. If you put on the white hat, you know,

00:15:53.040 you spent a lot of time wearing the dark hat. Um, but now I think you're kind of in transition

00:15:57.920 period where you're, you know, you're totally owning up to what life was like before. And it's

00:16:03.760 a new start. Okay. So let's get to, you're running the exotic car company. You've got this money that

00:16:08.900 you kind of stole or not kind of, you did steal via Venmo. And, um, that was your seed money for

00:16:15.040 getting all these Lamborghinis and Ferraris and renting them out to people who wanted a beautiful

00:16:19.360 rental car. And among those who came in were some celebrities. And this would later prove very

00:16:25.700 important. These connections that you were forming while doing this, who were they?

00:16:30.680 Um, we had pretty much every celebrity you can ever think of as, but they're mostly like rappers.

00:16:36.200 Um, that's like, everybody comes to Miami and just rents cars and spends all their money. Like

00:16:42.600 as far as that business down in Miami, it's one of the best businesses. I wish I would have stayed in,

00:16:46.340 in that business, but you know, everybody from Rick Ross, little Wayne, young, young ma,

00:16:51.000 like all these names, but Floyd Mayweather, DJ Khaled, those other guys are every time

00:16:55.600 they're down in Miami, unless they live there now. A lot of them live there now, but, um, it's just

00:17:00.620 pretty much what everybody does. Everybody wants a nice car. Even when I go down to Miami, I always

00:17:05.360 would want to get a nice car. So you're making good money, but you're spending a ton. And this

00:17:10.040 would ultimately be a problem. Uh, what were you spending all the money on? Um, so I, that's one thing

00:17:16.740 I always talk about now. Like at that point I was trying to go legit with that business. And of course

00:17:22.740 I had bad spending habits. I was, I'm degenerate gambler, um, drugs, uh, going out to the club,

00:17:30.360 but also my partners were not the best partners. And they were also like stealing money from me and

00:17:36.840 kind of just embezzling money from the company. So that became a big issue as well. And then like,

00:17:43.640 you know, but we were also just going out to the club every day in Miami, you go out to the club,

00:17:47.100 it's $10,000. It's not a cheap night ever. Um, but anything you can imagine, we also had like a

00:17:53.480 beautiful penthouse apartment in Boca or that we all lived in. And, um, you know, our offices are

00:18:00.400 just pretty much anything you can imagine as far as like Miami scene for young kids is what we were

00:18:06.280 spending our money on. Hmm. So you're earning big, but you're spending big. And it turns out there was

00:18:11.520 an embezzlement problem on top of all of it, which isn't a great recipe for keeping the business afloat.

00:18:17.100 All right. So then how does this parlay into the subject of, you know, the Netflix documentary,

00:18:23.060 your podcast, tons of articles, you know, this story just blew up once you guys got caught for

00:18:28.820 what you did with Centra, S-C-E-N-T-R-A. Take us from exotic, Miami exotic, the car rental thing to

00:18:36.820 the birth of this crypto company. Yeah. So basically there was a point there where I go,

00:18:43.100 like the business is about 400,000 in debt. And I, uh, I go to Vegas and I basically said,

00:18:51.920 I brought my last hundred thousand to Vegas. And I just was like, I played in the world series of

00:18:56.100 poker. This was my genius attempt to try to make the 400,000 back played in the world series of

00:19:00.940 poker. And then I basically played back or at with the last of it in hopes to try to make it all back,

00:19:06.820 or I was going to kill myself. So I, and then I lost it all. And then I just took about a hundred

00:19:11.620 Xanax or like 50, 60 Xanax. And, uh, I basically just fell asleep for 24 hours and woke up. And then

00:19:18.080 from there I fly back. And, uh, my two business partners are arguing with each other about where

00:19:24.740 this money went. They were basically blaming each other because one, one of them, the check was

00:19:29.120 cashing one of their names for like over a hundred thousand. And they were just saying this guy wrote

00:19:34.480 it out and he cashed it. And I didn't know what was the truth. And I ended up deciding to get rid of

00:19:40.460 one of my partners and go with the other one who ended up being my partner in Centratech. Um, so

00:19:45.640 after we had gotten rid of the first guy, this other guy was just like, one day I just saw him like

00:19:51.180 trading. I thought it was stocks. And he was like, Oh, this is like the new thing, cryptocurrency.

00:19:55.520 And, um, I was like, ah, whatever that means, you know what I mean? I had no clue, but then he kind

00:20:01.420 of broke it down for me. And from there he ended up losing a bunch in while he was trading. And from

00:20:07.960 there he was trying to like sue Coinbase for what they call a flash crash. Um, I don't know if anybody

00:20:14.100 really know what that means, but basically the price just went down from a couple hundred dollars

00:20:18.060 down to zero and then right back up. So anybody that has a trade position gets liquidated right away.

00:20:24.320 And, um, so he was trying to sue and through trying to sue, he went on Reddit and found out

00:20:29.360 about these companies that are creating ICOs, which is basically a cryptocurrency version of an IPO.

00:20:35.320 And, um, they're like just young kids raising hundreds of millions of dollars.

00:20:41.460 So Johnny, this is one of the things that they talk about. And I know you guys address is like

00:20:45.940 the industry is totally unregulated. I mean, it remains completely unregulated for the most part,

00:20:50.720 but this, if you were looking to start a fraud, this would be a great lane to do it in.

00:20:55.760 Yeah. And Ray, Ray kind of taught me that, um, people like Ray and Sorby, when they're thinking

00:21:02.940 that was his partner at the time, when they're thinking of like what to do, they, they look for

00:21:07.540 unregulated markets. That's like, you know, it's like chumming the water for sharks pretty much.

00:21:12.280 Um, and to raise point, since he's been caught, things have not gotten better. They've gotten,

00:21:20.460 it seems like worse in the crypto space. Um, where, you know, we were joking before,

00:21:25.320 like at least Sentra tried to hide, hide it behind some legitimacy, but a lot of the coins that are

00:21:32.200 coming out today are just, they're like open scams with no concept other than get rich quick.

00:21:38.040 Hmm. What's amazing to me in watching the story is the fraud was so bold. The claims you were making

00:21:48.380 were so bold, false, but bold. And it took a while for anyone to figure it out. You made

00:21:55.060 tens of millions of dollars before anybody was like, what the hell's happening here? Before you

00:22:00.800 got an SEC letter. It's crazy how long it went on and how much money you made despite,

00:22:08.040 what seems to be an easily, you know, pierced veil of legitimacy. So can you just give us a couple

00:22:14.660 of things that you guys did to make this company? Well, before we get to that, explain what the

00:22:19.120 theory was that you were selling? Cause I still don't totally understand. It's like a credit card

00:22:22.700 for crypto. But one of my big questions was how on earth could you ever fool anybody into thinking

00:22:28.700 such a thing is legitimate because they'd be looking for their crypto credit card to arrive in the mail

00:22:33.000 and then be, they'd be looking to use it and they'd find out really fast. This doesn't work.

00:22:38.380 No one accepts this. This actually isn't worth anything. Uh, yeah. So there's a lot of things

00:22:43.240 to break down there. So basically the, the, when you create one of these companies, you create it

00:22:48.120 based on a concept. And originally when we were raising the money, we had said that we were in beta

00:22:55.160 testing, right? So we, we gave them a, this is a timeline of when the cards would be ready for

00:23:00.540 mass adoption basically. So the whole time we were raising the money, people weren't expecting

00:23:06.180 cards. They were just basically looking at us, you make videos using like what was beta tested.

00:23:12.280 And, uh, from there they're investing on the concept, not as much as like, Oh, I pay now I get a

00:23:19.040 card. And basically the concept was, was how, how it really works and how it works today. We were,

00:23:24.860 what people don't realize is that we ended up actually developing it by the time we got arrested

00:23:28.380 and we had the cards working with the wallet. But so how it works is essentially you have

00:23:32.940 cryptocurrency in a crypto wallet. And then when you, you have a debit card or a prepaid card

00:23:39.040 and the prepaid card is backed by a pool of fiat currency. So then as soon as the person swipes,

00:23:45.780 it pays in fiat currency, but on our side, on the backend, we, we take out the cryptocurrency

00:23:50.760 value of how much they spent in fiat. And so we just have a pool that blocks it, uh, like cash,

00:23:56.800 us dollar, whatever country, um, you know, euros, us dollar, you know, whatever country the card's

00:24:03.460 being used in. So just explain it. So the way it would work, the way you'd sell it is okay,

00:24:07.560 Megan Kelly, here's a card, you buy it. And then what, how would you tell me this is all going to go

00:24:12.160 down? So you're going to be able to swipe your card and then it's going to subtract that amount

00:24:16.920 in cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, whatever crypto you're using out of your crypto wallet.

00:24:22.480 And where would you say I could use this card?

00:24:25.800 Anywhere.

00:24:27.540 Like at the Walgreens?

00:24:28.700 It's a Visa card. It's a Visa card. Yeah. You can just go to the store and use it.

00:24:32.580 Like it's, they have them now. There's other companies that were our competitors that made

00:24:36.900 the same lies that now own Staples Center. They made the exact same lies as us. They said they

00:24:41.820 had Visa and MasterCard. They own Staples Center and Staples Center. They just settled. Um, so it

00:24:47.460 works. The concept works.

00:24:49.580 That's unbelievable. Okay. So we've gotten there. The vision actually was realized, but

00:24:53.760 it wasn't totally real while you were doing it and pushing it.

00:24:58.060 Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

00:24:59.440 So the, um, yeah, go ahead.

00:25:01.720 No, we completely lied in the very beginning. That's a hundred percent true. And that's what we were

00:25:05.900 arrested for. People don't, people like, uh, Netflix, like, uh, sensationalize the part about

00:25:11.720 just like the, the crime part, right? We completely lied. We made up a fake CEO. We, um, you know,

00:25:18.820 didn't have Visa and MasterCard in the beginning. We were, but once we raised a few million dollars,

00:25:23.100 we actually worked, we hired 40 plus developers in-house to develop this product. And we built

00:25:28.140 towards what we were trying to develop. And we got there by the time we got arrested,

00:25:31.520 but that's just not talked about ever.

00:25:33.380 Hmm. That's the bitter irony of the whole thing.

00:25:40.220 All right. So you're committing this fraud. You're getting people to donate on based on the

00:25:45.740 beta testing. Like it's going to be the next big thing you should get in now while the getting's

00:25:49.720 good. And then at some point early on, I guess there was like a crypto guru who wrote a favorable

00:25:59.440 article about Centra tech. And I, I, my impression from the podcast guys is that

00:26:05.380 you were like, hell yeah. Great. Right. Like you weren't expecting this. And it turns out this guy

00:26:13.380 didn't even mean to be writing it about your company. Hold on. There's a little clip, I think,

00:26:19.300 from the Netflix special about this guy. Let's play it. And then you guys can explain it in stop one.

00:26:24.560 Clearly there was a reason why all this big money was coming in. People in our chat room started

00:26:33.260 saying Cliff High wrote this article. You guys see that. And, and me and sort of like jumped in.

00:26:37.500 They were like, of course we know Cliff High. Like we love Cliff High. Like, yeah, he's the man. We

00:26:41.380 had no fucking idea who he was. The whole banking system is failing. But in the, in the meantime,

00:26:47.740 we're all going to be dealing with real money in the form of gold, silver and cryptos. And the cryptos

00:26:53.320 are going to be, um, the fluid part of it. And he was like a crypto guru type of guy. He's just some

00:26:59.440 like old nerd. He was saying this is going to be a big thing. He put out this press release telling

00:27:06.520 all his big investors to put out their money for Centra. We went from having like 200 people in our

00:27:15.860 Slack channel to having like 2000 people within like, you know, a couple hours. Time to go to

00:27:21.340 the stratosphere. This company has taken off. Unbelievable. So it was just dumb luck.

00:27:30.100 So the, so we had raised a few hundred thousand completely like just grinding it out, going in

00:27:35.320 different chat rooms, pitching our idea. Then that article came out and within a couple hours,

00:27:40.520 a few million came in. Oh my God. I kind of feel bad for Cliff High. Do you feel bad?

00:27:46.000 I do too. He's a super nice guy and he's actually very intelligent. What he does is he uses like,

00:27:51.420 almost like an AI type of system that searches the internet for things. And he didn't do his due

00:27:56.800 diligence before he put out his press release that had us in there. It basically combined the

00:28:00.920 name Centra with a bank. And that was why that confusion happened.

00:28:05.180 Oh my Lord. You can't make this stuff up, right? It's like this poor guy. Now, since he's come out,

00:28:13.700 he's like very sorry that he did all this and all that, but the damage is done. All right. So

00:28:18.860 how long were things rolling around, rolling along post the Cliff High mistaken article with all the

00:28:25.620 money pouring in? So, so how long was things going on? Well, like until the New York Times reporter

00:28:33.020 came sniffing around, like what, how long were the glory days before somebody was really kicking

00:28:37.620 the tires? It was really like a year period where everything was going good. My timelines are

00:28:43.600 terrible though, from my substance abuse. I really like, I'm not going to hold you to it. I'm just

00:28:47.660 looking for a general feel. All right. So we're like around a year. And what, what kind of dough are

00:28:53.060 you bringing in? Um, at the height, like what happened was crazy too, is that everything we had

00:28:59.000 raised, they said we raised 32 million, but that was at the same time as we raised that money, crypto

00:29:04.620 went up like 10 X. So it became a few hundred million, uh, pretty quickly. So we were making

00:29:11.160 about 2 million a day at, at some points. And then what people, there's another part that people

00:29:15.280 never really covered is, uh, I figured out a way to basically control the price, uh, from like this

00:29:22.080 decentralized exchange that ended up getting shut down. But, uh, there was like a way back then that

00:29:27.040 you could essentially feel like artificially control the price. It's amazing. Like you, you've

00:29:33.860 got these genius powers that were used for evil, but it's wonderful to hear you talking about them

00:29:39.520 and letting us all in on the secrets in a way. Cause it's like, this thing is still big and it's

00:29:43.460 still out there. And there are tons of people who are buying crypto as we speak. I mean, I guess

00:29:48.900 we should ask that Johnny could, do you want to speak to this? Is it like, it's not, is it all a

00:29:53.040 fraud? I mean, I know some people say this about Bitcoin and Ethereum and like, it's all fraudulent.

00:29:57.840 I think there's so many things, uh, people hate nuance nowadays. And like, there's so many things

00:30:03.940 that are some things. Yeah. Do you, do your research. Some of them are legitimate. Some of

00:30:08.660 them are not legitimate. And just because one of them is a scam or, I mean, in crypto's case,

00:30:14.860 a few hundred of them are a scam. Doesn't mean they all are a scam. You know, I would just say,

00:30:20.280 stick to the basics. And if there's a coin named after like, uh, uh, an animal probably don't buy

00:30:27.180 that one. Uh, so let me just ask you, Ray, were you shocked, shocked when Sam Bankman freed

00:30:34.540 got arrested and his company imploded? No, not at all. Um, I wasn't, I wasn't shocked. I think

00:30:41.960 in cryptocurrency, pretty much like 95% of it is fraud. Uh, like if it's not considered fraud,

00:30:49.220 it's insiders, you know, like the insiders are the ones always getting rich. And even

00:30:53.660 like the controlling the price thing. Now it's just done by AI bots and they call them

00:30:58.560 market makers. It's all the same thing. All of these projects are making crazy money now

00:31:03.820 and they, their, their new loop loophole is, is just don't offer any product. Just let's

00:31:08.500 just tell everybody they're going to get rich off a picture of a dog.

00:31:11.920 Wow. So do you like, do you own any crypto now? Either one of you guys?

00:31:19.140 Oh yeah. A little bit. Yeah. Same.

00:31:21.180 Well, so why, why, why would you trust anybody who's in the market now?

00:31:25.540 So like the, the ability to like Bitcoin and Ethereum, in my opinion, are great

00:31:30.240 investments. Uh, I mean, not financial advice or whatever they want you to say there, but

00:31:34.840 I think there, there's a, there's a great thing to be able to just send money to someone

00:31:39.200 in China instantly without any bank involvement. I think that's the real use case. In my opinion,

00:31:45.240 there's some, uh, smaller use cases. Maybe if you want to like put a cryptocurrency in

00:31:49.700 a game and make it something like that, or there's a couple of fun use cases, I guess

00:31:54.280 people can make out that are, there's probably legitimate projects trying to do it. But for the

00:31:59.100 most part, you just want to be able to spend, I mean, send money anywhere. Like I can send

00:32:04.300 money to Johnny without having to go on the bank, or I can send money to anybody without

00:32:08.200 having to go on the bank. Hmm. Um, okay. So back to, uh, your company, uh, Centratech.

00:32:16.160 This guy writes the article, the money's pouring in. And when you say it was worth more like between

00:32:20.680 two and 300 million, that you're not suggesting you had that money in the bank, right? What are

00:32:25.800 you suggesting about how, how do you put, get that number on the company?

00:32:28.620 So the, the market cap of the company was 600 million. Uh, the cent likes we created a hundred

00:32:35.020 million center tokens that was worth $6,000 of the coin. And we had sold those and we kept 32

00:32:40.480 million. So this, um, that's alone about 150 million of company owned center tokens. But then

00:32:48.140 we also raised 200,000 Ethereum, which were at a time over a thousand dollars. So that's another 200

00:32:54.520 million. So at one point that our company is has 350 million. If we wanted to liquidate it, we can,

00:33:00.420 we were liquidating a lot to be able to pay our employees and, uh, you know, do whatever we wanted

00:33:05.140 to do. So realistically we had liquid, like it's tough because like you would say that's not liquid

00:33:11.120 maybe because it's in cryptocurrency, but we could have sold any amount of it at any time and made it

00:33:16.340 liquid instantly. Hmm. All right. So things are rolling and you're living the high life, enjoying the

00:33:23.820 money and the Armani suits and the, all of the accoutrements, the fancy watch, uh, the Rolex and so

00:33:31.040 on. And then a writer from the New York times named Nathaniel Popper gives you guys a call. And he

00:33:40.000 wants to figure out a couple of things about the company, including why on your website, I guess you

00:33:48.760 decided to go with just everyone went to Harvard business school. Every single person there went to

00:33:53.620 Harvard. Like you didn't, but Johnny's laughing. Why didn't you like mix it up a little, you know,

00:33:58.520 like this guy went to Wharton and this guy went to like, why did you, it seemed effortless to just

00:34:04.100 say everyone's Harvard. Well, the, the funny, there's a funny story there actually, because

00:34:08.600 what happened was someone had said something about us and we all, um, Sorby was like, everybody

00:34:16.020 created LinkedIn and we all created those LinkedIn separately in different houses. And then we all put

00:34:22.340 Harvard. And then right away when we noticed that I changed mine to UCLA pretty, pretty quickly. Um,

00:34:28.180 I don't know what Farkas did. So that was just the original thing was the Harvard thing. And it's

00:34:32.100 pretty funny. Like that was just all of our instantly like, Oh yeah, we all went to Harvard.

00:34:36.160 Oh, can you explain Farkas? Cause we haven't talked about him. We talked about Sorby,

00:34:39.500 your buddy who you knew from earlier and, and who is this third guy? Cause he becomes important.

00:34:44.660 Yeah. Um, I feel bad. I always talk so bad about him. He's, he's a nice kid. He's just,

00:34:49.380 uh, he's Sorby's fiance's brother. And he kind of got roped into this. In my opinion,

00:34:54.760 he shouldn't have got any jail time. I, I even told the FBI that, um, and they basically just said

00:34:59.900 kind of something along the lines of, if someone's telling you that you're doing your fraud, you can't

00:35:05.700 be like, I didn't know, you know, like, but he really didn't like, even though he was involved in

00:35:12.880 the conversations, I don't think he comprehended what me and Sorby were talking about.

00:35:16.500 Hmm. Like he saw like, Oh, we're trying to build a company.

00:35:21.580 He's in the documentary. And I think it's fair to say, can't stand you.

00:35:27.100 Yeah. Yeah. I think what they did also on Netflix is like, they showed him a clip of me talking about

00:35:31.560 him to like rile him up before he talked. Cause there was points there, like, um, like other edits

00:35:38.120 where I think he was talking more highly of like, I don't think he has any real issue with me. His

00:35:42.580 issue is that like, I'm talking bad about him and I'm not trying to talk bad about him. I'm saying,

00:35:47.340 I don't think he was even involved in like the actual crime of everything.

00:35:53.160 Who was the brains of the operation between you, Sorby and Farkas?

00:35:57.920 Sorby was definitely the head honcho. Um, for sure the main guy. Um, and I was second in command.

00:36:04.400 He was, he was the original idea guy. And I was just the guy that would manage the employees.

00:36:09.780 And then I found out some other loopholes throughout that time. But yeah. And, and the

00:36:13.600 funny thing is me and Sorby both went to the same high school. Did you guys go to college at all?

00:36:19.420 Uh, I think Sorby went to St. John's for a year and then he got kicked out for.

00:36:25.120 So not Harvard. Okay. All right. So you set it up. The website is, you know, kind of, and you,

00:36:32.020 and as I understand it, Johnny, they stole the website from another tech company.

00:36:35.920 Uh, the, well, what do you mean? They stole the website or the, uh, the idea just copied

00:36:41.680 somebody else's website, right? It wasn't like they didn't come up. They kind of found a company

00:36:44.960 that looked like it was in business. There's a lot of just copying and then changing things

00:36:49.600 going around at Centra tech from the idea itself to the website to, I don't know, most facets of it.

00:36:55.780 Um, it's amazing to me that you would, again, it's a, it's a bold move to just steal somebody

00:37:02.120 else's as opposed to just come like, that's another indicator, obvious of fraud. And the

00:37:07.100 perhaps most bold move of all Ray was to say that you had struck a partnership with Visa and

00:37:12.520 MasterCard for in connection with your cards, which of course would legitimize it in the eyes

00:37:18.480 of a potential consumer. And this New York times reporter, Nathaniel Popper found out that was

00:37:24.760 not in any way true. Here's a bit more from Bitcoin via Netflix of that sought to. Um, Ray,

00:37:34.720 I've been coming across other questions that have come up around Centra. The first thing is Visa has

00:37:42.360 said nobody has applied to issue a Centra card. I mean, I, I know, I know details about that. I,

00:37:50.640 you know, I mean, but, uh, I mean, I, I can't give you direct answers on that. These guys say that

00:37:59.320 they're issuing a card with Visa. They have pictures up on their website that have cards that have the

00:38:04.580 Visa logo on it. One of the first things I did was call Visa. They said, we have no idea who these

00:38:11.140 guys are and there is no record of an application. They're going to have to take that off of their

00:38:16.520 website. I, I, I, I can't, uh, yeah. Okay. I mean, Visa's just saying this company, Centra, is not

00:38:24.940 allowed to issue a card with Visa on it. Till we do the mass orders, they're never going to speak on it.

00:38:30.620 Anytime somebody tells you, you know, I, I don't really feel comfortable answering that question or

00:38:37.240 these are questions that are very, very, very tough for me to answer to you. You know, I mean,

00:38:41.140 like, you know, that there's something going on here. Oh God, this was not a banner moment for

00:38:49.060 you, Ray. Were you, you were definitely drugged up during these phone calls. No. Oh, I was at that

00:38:54.380 point in my life, I was taking 20 Xanax a day, like 40 milligrams of Xanax every single day,

00:38:59.140 the whole time I was running Centra. Um, but then besides that, I was, so you didn't feel panic.

00:39:03.700 I mean, on the bright side, you probably didn't panic when you got that phone call.

00:39:06.380 Yeah. I was probably smiling on the phone, but, um, yeah, I felt nothing. That was the thing. I

00:39:11.780 really felt absolutely nothing that entire time I was empty in that way. But I mean, obviously it's

00:39:17.440 an edit to make me set. Like they literally just highlighted just my, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, as much

00:39:21.560 as possible, but, um, I definitely was high, high as a kite there. He talks about how, as he's the New

00:39:29.920 Eric times reporters doing his investigation, he's watching the center tech website and it's

00:39:34.660 removing the references to visa and MasterCard taking down the LinkedIn's that say Harvard,

00:39:41.300 like as he calls with, Hey, what about this? What about this? You guys are actively changing it,

00:39:45.720 which is just the worst possible thing you can do. If nothing says I'm committing a fraud like that.

00:39:51.560 So I like, in a way you guys are very sophisticated and in a way you were very keystone.

00:39:56.800 Am I wrong? You're a hundred percent right. Um, you know, we were in over our heads as far as like

00:40:04.040 how big this thing got, right? Like we had done fraud before, but it's easy when it's small scale

00:40:09.160 stuff. But once you're in the public eye in a, in a company gets to the point we did after we had

00:40:14.060 those huge endorsements, um, it got tough because there were just so many eyes on you. So every little

00:40:20.380 thing that you had that was not true would just get called out instantly. So like throughout the whole

00:40:25.580 time we were taking visa down, putting it back on, uh, just to keep an investor. Like that was the

00:40:31.200 thing is that the investors were controlling our, uh, like our decisions on what to do on the website.

00:40:36.880 Like if a guy had invested a million dollars and then he was like, Oh, where'd visa MasterCard? We just

00:40:40.760 put it right back up. We're just trying to keep whatever money we had.

00:40:45.060 So you mentioned the celebs. This is where DJ Khaled and Floyd Mayweather from exotic cars or Miami

00:40:54.700 exotic come back into the story. How did you use them to promote this fake company?

00:41:01.880 Yeah. It's, it's always pretty funny that people follow any sort of a rap or a boxer's financial

00:41:08.120 advice, but that's the cryptocurrency world for you. Um, so yeah, we just basically reached out

00:41:13.920 for an endorsement through their managers, uh, which the manager was like someone we had met in

00:41:18.860 the club scene more so than even the car scene. Um, and pretty much you just pay them and you give

00:41:25.020 them a script and they say whatever you want them to say, you know, they'll promote pretty much

00:41:29.480 anything, especially Floyd. He's crazy. Like I've seen him promoting lawn products, bug sprays,

00:41:34.300 uh, you just give him some money and he does it. Oh God. Even now, even post this.

00:41:40.380 I don't know. He's a crazy guy. I've just seen him promote some wild stuff on there. And, uh,

00:41:45.520 I always just make jokes about like the amount of things that he's promoted. But I, I think if

00:41:49.700 like he's selling boxing gloves, you should probably buy them, but I wouldn't take his financial advice.

00:41:55.200 But you know, it wasn't, of course, Johnny, it wasn't just those two celebs endorsing

00:41:59.360 Centratech. We saw in the Sam Bankman Freed scandal, it was Tom Brady and Giselle and Larry David,

00:42:07.120 like the celebrities at the prices, right? They sell out. Yeah. And I, and Ray has spoken on that

00:42:14.620 before. First of all, like with the Centratech thing, that was kind of before the, it was cool

00:42:20.820 to do that. Cause right afterwards is when all the celebrities started kind of doing that.

00:42:25.140 And a lot of them did get in trouble, but the amount that the check that like a normal commercial

00:42:30.560 can offer you versus a crypto commercial is going to be like vastly different. Um, and a lot of the

00:42:37.520 celebrities, a lot of time, I don't really think they fully understand what they're promoting.

00:42:42.460 Um, they're just like, sure. Like big check. Oh, you guys are legitimate, legitimate enough that

00:42:47.060 you have like commercial spots on these big channels. Okay. I'll do it. Sure. Yeah. That's,

00:42:52.580 that's all it is, is that we, we just, the value proposition was just so much better in crypto

00:42:57.140 because we just had, like, we knew that Floyd Mayweather, we gave him a million dollars.

00:43:01.340 We were going to make 5 million the next day. So we had the ability to do that. When you're a

00:43:07.620 regular company that's promoting a product, uh, I don't think Floyd Mayweather is going to bring

00:43:11.760 you in that much money. So they aren't able to give him a million dollars. So that's why all these

00:43:15.540 celebrities right away, of course, they'll take these big checks. It's a, it's a, you know,

00:43:19.660 to do a couple Instagram posts, it's the easiest thing I've ever heard for a million dollars.

00:43:23.720 What's crazy is like, okay, I don't know about Floyd's situation, but you look at Tom Brady,

00:43:28.820 he didn't need money. Giselle is even richer than Tom Brady is. She's, she was for a while,

00:43:33.860 the highest paid supermodel in the world. Why would they take the risk? This is one of my

00:43:37.560 questions. Like, why would you take the risk with this cryptocurrency company? Like they did

00:43:42.720 with Sam Bankman Freed, but you're just saying it's just the easiest money ever.

00:43:47.520 Um, it's, it's besides it just being the easiest money ever. I think with the,

00:43:51.260 the SBF one is, is a little bit more detailed because it, the public perception was so high

00:43:58.260 of, of who he was and he was donating to campaigns and to every both sides, right and left. And he

00:44:04.160 just, he, no one thought it was going to fall through. I mean, he, there was just too much,

00:44:09.120 it seemed like it was too big to fail. And I think those big celebrities, he probably offered

00:44:13.600 them massive money, like 5 million for just a one commercial. Um, you know, that, that probably

00:44:20.060 took them like a few hours at their lives or maybe even more than that. I think the,

00:44:23.960 the amount of money those guys probably got for those commercials was crazy. I think they're

00:44:28.800 actually, SBF is helping the government as of like two days ago in regards to the celebrity

00:44:34.340 endorsements. Hmm. Hmm. We'll continue to follow that one. The, so Nathaniel Popper of the New York

00:44:40.280 Times is legit and was onto the scent, but there were other guys who write about crypto who also

00:44:47.080 were questioning whether you guys were legit and, you know, never to be daunted by somebody sniffing

00:44:55.300 around, you guys wound up buying a lot of those guys off. I, maybe I'm not cynical enough, but like,

00:45:03.540 I'm amazed that somebody who's saying, Hey, crypto world, watch out for Centratech. They don't seem

00:45:10.660 legit. Could for what? 20 grand just completely flip. And the next week be like, actually I was

00:45:16.660 wrong. They look good. Is that what happened? Maybe 50 times, like not even just like a couple of

00:45:22.960 people, every single one of the people that are promoting crypto, they all are just doing it in

00:45:28.800 for greed, essentially. Um, it was the easiest thing I've ever seen. Like there was one guy

00:45:33.760 that was hard, the hardest one out of like 50 people that we just paid off either a few thousand,

00:45:40.260 5,000, 10,000, whatever it took to get those taken down. And he, after about two weeks of saying no,

00:45:46.300 and continuing to make videos, he's like, uh, you know, my kid's a little sick, you know,

00:45:52.480 you know, send me this. And we sent it to him in the next day, you know, applauding us.

00:45:57.360 I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open,

00:46:03.660 honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political,

00:46:07.640 legal, and cultural figures today. You can catch the Megan Kelly show on Triumph,

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00:46:25.220 Kelly show and Sirius XM at home or anywhere you are. No car required. I do it all the time.

00:46:31.380 I love the Sirius XM app. It has ad-free music coverage of every major sport, comedy talk,

00:46:38.540 podcast, and more. Subscribe now, get your first three months for free. Go to SiriusXM.com

00:46:44.640 slash MK show to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MK show and get

00:46:53.120 three months free. Offer details apply. One of the frauds that I think came about from Nathaniel

00:47:05.780 Popper's investigation was the matter of the CEO. So do you want to take that one, Johnny? The name

00:47:15.360 of the CEO and how these guys found the CEO? Michael Edwards, too. If you looked at his photo,

00:47:22.580 looks strikingly like Ray's grandfather was the fake CEO or you actually switched his photo out.

00:47:31.780 So, yeah, Michael Edwards was a fake CEO. People were asking a lot of questions. Who are these guys?

00:47:38.780 Who is this Ray Chapani? These three guys from Long Island. Are they really experienced enough to run

00:47:43.560 this crypto company? So Ray and Sorby did what anyone would do, and they Googled old white man

00:47:49.340 and found the first photo, slapped it up on LinkedIn, slapped it up on the Centra website,

00:47:57.460 said he went to Harvard also, and called it a day. They had a brand new CEO with some legitimacy.

00:48:03.440 And called him a co-founder of the company, too. But this house of cards, too, would crumble

00:48:08.880 fantastically. And here's a little bit of that from the Netflix film, BitCont.

00:48:14.660 Hello. I'm Michael Edwards, founder and CEO of CentraTech.

00:48:21.740 Is that who you really are?

00:48:25.100 No, that's not who I really am. I'm Dr. Andrew Haleiko. I'm a professor at the University of

00:48:31.260 Manitoba. On August 25th, Michael Edwards suddenly left this world. He leaves behind his French

00:48:39.260 bulldog, Stanley, and an accomplished career as an investor and VP for Wells Fargo and Chase.

00:48:46.260 He graduated with an MBA from Harvard University, which prepared him for his most recent venture

00:48:53.100 co-founder and chief executive officer of CentraTech in Miami Beach, Florida.

00:49:00.380 That's pretty creepy.

00:49:04.400 Well, at least I had an MBA and I was well-trained at Harvard.

00:49:10.200 I hadn't realized that they had actually gone to that extent.

00:49:15.340 Michael Edwards was never even a real person. Not at all.

00:49:19.040 We completely created him from scratch. The photos for Michael Edwards were just taken

00:49:24.540 off Google. We just looked up old white guy, looked at all the images, found an old white

00:49:31.200 guy and just took that image. And, you know, that was Michael Edwards.

00:49:36.540 Oh, my God. And then you killed him off, Ray, when the press was sniffing around with an

00:49:44.380 obit, a fake obit about his French bulldog, Stanley. The audacity. Who wrote the obit?

00:49:51.720 That's the nice little touch, though.

00:49:52.780 The French bulldog. And the crazy thing is that guy's like the sweetest man in the world.

00:49:56.880 I feel terrible for that guy. And he took it really well, like as far as like I even seen

00:50:02.380 him recently, like on Twitter, like promoting the documentary.

00:50:05.540 Yeah.

00:50:06.240 No way.

00:50:06.840 Yeah. So he's a, you know, I feel I feel sorry for him, but it's a it's a, you know,

00:50:12.420 hopefully he's not too upset about it at this point.

00:50:14.620 I was actually shocked he he did that scene because when we listened to Sorby's trial,

00:50:20.380 there was like a dial in thing during covid. I I truly felt the worst for him out of like

00:50:25.700 every victim because he didn't invest anything. He's like teaching a class one day and then

00:50:30.780 like the Mounties and the FBI roll up and they're like, we need to talk to you.

00:50:34.560 Um, and apparently he's like the sweetest guy ever. So he seems pretty sweet. Who wrote

00:50:40.240 the obit? Who came up with the French bulldog Stanley? I'm just curious.

00:50:43.960 That's definitely a Sorby thing. As soon as you hear French bulldog, I think of Sorby or

00:50:48.420 or Bert, if anything. But I was never a French bulldog guy.

00:50:54.020 It's incredible. And now you need a new fake CEO. And this is where your grandpa comes in,

00:50:59.760 your 79 year old grandpa. So you put his picture on there and a new profile fake for him.

00:51:07.280 And not surprisingly, Nathaniel was not fooled and pretty soon unearthed the fact that this is

00:51:14.400 your grandpa and not not another Harvard grad. Yeah, no, I don't think we put him even as a

00:51:21.660 Harvard grad. We use his real background and we just put his real name as the CEO. So like

00:51:28.040 essentially I even asked him before I did it, um, which I, you know, I feel bad that I even had to,

00:51:33.620 I even asked him, but it was a weird one because he was like on his deathbed at that point.

00:51:39.760 Hmm. Okay. So, but he has no experience in this lane. So it was clearly just a figurehead that,

00:51:45.260 you know, was meant to stave off further questions. It didn't work. And then just as things are looking

00:51:51.200 pretty dire, like the New York times is onto you. I think the New York times piece had hit and it was

00:51:56.820 extremely unfavorable. Like a, like the, like the tech guy who mistook you for another company and

00:52:05.480 wrote this favorable article income, the South Koreans and resurrected Centra tech for no good apparent

00:52:16.400 reason. I don't understand at all how they sniffed around and said, sure, I, I want in. So explain what

00:52:23.640 happened with them. Yeah. So the, the, even though the New York times article was bad and people make

00:52:30.040 it sound more dire than the situation was, no one started taking their money out. Everybody, because

00:52:35.560 the price was being controlled on the backend by me, uh, kept going up. Everybody was see that they'd be

00:52:41.600 like, Oh, the New York times is just, this is a hit piece. They, they were just like, no matter what

00:52:46.780 would happen, as long as that price was going up, everybody stayed around. Um, and then the South

00:52:52.600 Korean thing comes about, they, they came into the chat rooms and they're like, Oh, we want to invest

00:52:56.900 big money. And everybody says big money, you know, like, we're like, all right, yeah, sure. And they're

00:53:00.920 like, you got to come to South Korea. And we're like, uh, yeah, sure. We're definitely not going to

00:53:05.740 South Korea. But then right away they just send $5 million. We're like, Oh shit. Um, I guess we'll go to

00:53:11.420 South Korea, but I wasn't, I wasn't going to go. I wasn't not going to South Korea. And, uh,

00:53:16.580 Sorby just jumps on a plane by himself and goes down there to present. Basically we hadn't finished

00:53:22.780 developing the app. The app was like in a prototype stage right there at that point, it wasn't finished,

00:53:28.280 but we basically connected it to our bank account so that if he swiped his card, it would look as if

00:53:34.640 the app worked properly. But it didn't, he goes over to South Korea, he meets with these execs and

00:53:42.520 you're supposed to have this dazzling demo of an app that will at least look like it's working.

00:53:48.360 And it didn't. Yeah. The, the app definitely, uh, didn't work. And then Sorby doesn't answer for

00:53:54.300 about eight hours there or whatever amount of hours. And so I'm like, Sorby died. Uh, at that point I was

00:53:59.500 sure. Sorby was dead. Um, right. Right. Yeah. Cause they had already invested 5 million. Right. So

00:54:05.240 it's like, there's real pressure there. It's not like they can just be like, all right, whatever.

00:54:09.740 Um, so then out of nowhere, he answers whatever amount of hours later. And he's just like,

00:54:15.100 the app didn't work, but they still invested. And the only take that I could get from that

00:54:19.860 is that that money was also criminal proceeds. And that's like a lot of cryptocurrency is that

00:54:25.680 they joined in on the fraud. Everybody, like even the YouTubers, right. They're all complicit in a

00:54:31.140 way in this fraud, as much as where the co-founders and where the reason for this fraud, if you're

00:54:36.720 going to know something's a fraud and then you're going to promote it. And then these guys see the

00:54:40.780 app doesn't work and they're still going to invest and, and take a lot of the percentage

00:54:44.640 there. Everybody's complicit at that point. That is a very good point that actually, I hadn't even

00:54:50.960 considered that until you just said, of course, that's the reason why, why, why else would they give you

00:54:55.440 how much additional money did they give you after that initial five? And then the failed app

00:54:59.400 10, another 10, 15 million total, another 10. Oh my God. You're right. That's that. That makes

00:55:05.280 perfect sense. So what leads to the downfall? How do we go from 15 million cash influx? Maybe we are

00:55:14.160 going to be legitimate. We dodged the New York times storm. We weathered it. What, what led to the

00:55:20.840 implosion? Yeah. So pretty shortly after that, me and Sorby, I went and lied on the stand for Sorby in

00:55:27.980 his DWI case. And I got a perjury charge for trying to lie on the stand for him. And after that, we were

00:55:35.780 like, put out a press release that we were stepping down from the company. Sorby stayed on and basically

00:55:40.660 me and Sorby got in a really bad fight because I was still trying to pay back the debts that we had

00:55:46.000 built for Miami exotics. Even though we had all this money, I was like, all right, let's take some of this

00:55:49.760 money and pay off these debts. And he was trying to not pay it. So I got like in a bad argument with

00:55:54.360 him and I left the company. So like people, what people don't realize is I never made any money from

00:55:59.480 investor funds ever throughout this whole time. Sorby had those wallets himself. And this is also why

00:56:06.860 my sentence was what it was. It's just, they highlight me in the documentary because of I'm the

00:56:12.840 one in it. Uh, so I made all my money. I made all my money off selling Sentra tokens myself after the

00:56:19.720 fact. Hmm. Okay. So, but what you, you lied in the DWI. Can I just ask, I know this is probably

00:56:27.240 small ball after the frauds that we've been discussing, but was there any pause about lying

00:56:32.680 on the stand? I don't know. I'm a former lawyer, recovering lawyer. So I just always feel like

00:56:36.280 you take the oath to tell the truth. Right. And then you lie like that had to be scary. I

00:56:43.240 explain it. Um, yeah, I mean, so we had this DWI from before I even linked back up with him from

00:56:52.560 years ago. It was like his 17th DWI and, uh, he was going to lose his license. He, he, he asked me to

00:56:58.120 do it. We flew to New York. I had never, I wasn't with him the day he got it. So we went to the

00:57:02.520 restaurant where he had got this DWI. We kind of studied the room. So I would have like the correct

00:57:06.920 answers. His lawyer prepped me on what to say basically. Um, which is a crazy fact of the case.

00:57:14.640 And, uh, I just kind of went up there and said what I was told to say that he only had one glass

00:57:19.680 of Pinot Grigio. And from there, you know, pretty much got arrested shortly after that.

00:57:25.980 No, I know it sounds like hard to do, but, uh, I was, I was, you know, under a lot of,

00:57:32.160 you know, taking all his annex. I mean, I didn't feel hard at the time.

00:57:36.960 Did he get off?

00:57:38.820 No, no, we, we both, he ended up getting charged for that. I don't know what his result. I think

00:57:43.620 we both got charged with perjury. That was my, ended up being my first felony.

00:57:48.200 Oh, okay. And why do you say Johnny, this part drives you crazy?

00:57:51.980 Because I mean, you mentioned several times about how like, well, everything seems so brash,

00:57:56.880 everything like, like, you know, the audacity of everything raise and Sorby's like, um,

00:58:03.460 their, their weight for risk reward. It needs to be recalibrated in my opinion. It's like, so

00:58:09.480 out of, there's no reason, you know, at this point, raise, raise business partners with Sorby,

00:58:14.680 but it's not like he necessarily likes him. So why, why would you do that? And we've talked about this

00:58:21.080 a lot. And the answer is, Oh, why wouldn't I do it? Like, I know how to talk on the stand. Like,

00:58:27.840 you know, I would do it for you. And I was like that it doesn't really compute, but Ray just has

00:58:32.680 a very different, you know, um, you know, weight of risk and reward.

00:58:39.080 Hmm. Do you, have you ever met Jordan Belfort?

00:58:42.220 No, no. But the funny thing is center started shortly after that movie came out.

00:58:49.200 He's spectacular. I think he's an amazing guy. He's also brilliant and uses powers for evil.

00:58:55.480 And now is on the straight and narrow and espousing a lot of lessons on it. You should definitely read

00:59:00.280 his stuff and watch some of his podcasts because there's probably some gold for you to mine too.

00:59:05.580 I definitely do. I do watch some of his podcasts for sure.

00:59:08.040 Yeah. Um, anyway, that your story is kind of reminding me of his, which is why I ask.

00:59:12.900 So, all right, you've got to step down from the company. Things between you and Sorby are not good.

00:59:17.800 And then is it the SEC letter that the company gets? That's the beginning of the end. Cause

00:59:22.220 finally the SEC was like, Hmm, maybe we need to step in.

00:59:28.200 Yeah, for sure. So I had, I had left the company and Sorby was continuing on. And within like two months

00:59:32.900 after me leaving, the SEC got involved. I was just in the deep end, just gambling hundreds

00:59:37.900 of thousands of dollars every day. So when Sorby called me about the SEC, he was like, Oh, just

00:59:43.120 go meet with this lawyer. It's just the SEC. It's civil. And I was like civil stuff. I mean,

00:59:48.180 if it's just civil, I'm fine. You know, like that's really not that scary. And, uh, so I just met with

00:59:53.440 the lawyer and I was, they were like, well, you have a couple options here. You can cooperate.

00:59:57.340 And I'm like, Oh, what does it take to cooperate? And they tried to meet with me at that time.

01:00:00.760 And I was just on way too many Xanax. They're like, well, you can't even form a sentence right

01:00:06.060 now. So, so it's not going to be a great friendship yet. And by the way, speaking of

01:00:11.960 attorneys, this is another strain of the story. That's crazy. You at some point did hire a lawyer

01:00:19.800 to help Centratech do what? Like, were you looking for somebody to help you cover up what you were

01:00:25.500 doing or for somebody to help you straighten out? Yeah. So what happened with that? It's, um,

01:00:32.860 early on in the company, there was a company that had got charged by the SEC for being a security.

01:00:38.080 And we were just trying to find out if our company was a security. So Sorby had went on,

01:00:43.920 I think he got it, found this guy on Upwork. And, uh, funny enough, my lawyer right now,

01:00:48.860 my criminal lawyer, I spoke to him the other day. He said, there's a guy trying to act as if it's him

01:00:53.420 on Upwork. That's really not him. So this must be like a common new scheme that people are doing.

01:00:58.680 But, uh, yeah, this guy basically put out like his whole LinkedIn and everything that he worked,

01:01:03.900 you know, like as a big time lawyer for politicians and stuff. And Sorby hired him,

01:01:07.640 paid him a couple of dollars. And was giving you legal advice. Like you were,

01:01:09.880 you were listening to his legal advice. Yeah. He basically just told us, yeah,

01:01:13.540 this is what we have to do to, to remain not a security. And we took his word for it, for sure.

01:01:18.020 And tell, tell us what happened with him. He, once the SEC got involved, Sorby had said that was

01:01:25.880 who we used as counsel. And because of that, he ended up getting arrested. And, uh, yeah, now he,

01:01:32.960 yeah. So he got arrested and charged and I think he's out now. And it turned out he was a kid.

01:01:40.280 Yeah. Yeah. It was just like some random young kid that was in college.

01:01:43.460 Oh my God. This is crazy. He wasn't even a lawyer. He wasn't even like,

01:01:49.620 he hadn't even graduated from college.

01:01:51.820 Yeah. He was, uh, he was like, uh, students for Trump at the time in, in college. And he was

01:01:57.520 doing this like on the side while he's like just playing video games and stuff.

01:02:01.800 I, I, you must be a little disappointed in yourself that you didn't spot that particular con,

01:02:05.580 right? He was kind of conning you.

01:02:07.600 I, yeah, I never spoke to him. Sorby did, but yeah, no, he definitely got us. He was, uh,

01:02:11.700 he, you know, I think Ray's a reaction to it is more like, well, that, that was a good one.

01:02:16.900 Like, yeah, I don't like, I don't take like, I'm not like, oh, this guy got us. Like we got to

01:02:21.760 get him back. I mean, it is what it is. We were doing, you know, scammy stuff and he did the same.

01:02:28.040 Yeah. You're like, respect.

01:02:29.440 Got one over on us. Yeah. I guess like, it's not like, uh, respect. I'm not like proud of him,

01:02:34.040 but, uh, it's again, but the very audacious who pretends they're a lawyer and starts giving advice

01:02:41.600 to a crypto company on whether they're a security that's really bold. Again, all these guys out

01:02:47.840 there who could be using these talents for good. All right. So long story short, you wind up cutting

01:02:52.320 a deal with the government because it did, it did turn criminal and you get time served. So did you

01:02:58.660 serve any time while awaiting that final negotiated settlement? I did about five days in, in Florida

01:03:08.280 when I first got arrested and then they released me to rehab. I did like a 30 day rehab and I was

01:03:13.200 on house arrest for about a year. And, uh, no, besides that, that was my time served.

01:03:18.700 Did the government want you to get more than time served?

01:03:22.180 No, no, they, they didn't think I, um, like, like how they break that down is what people don't

01:03:28.620 realize is they really believe that I was never going to commit another crime. And I think in my

01:03:33.060 opinion that the government is smart. I don't think that they're just like out of pocket, like,

01:03:38.340 Oh, he helped us so much. We should give him no time. It was that they truly believe that I wasn't

01:03:42.180 going to be out there committing any more crimes. And I think that's how they gauge it. Um, as far as

01:03:47.260 with Sorby, they felt that it was definitely likely if they gave him less time that he would come back

01:03:51.460 out and do more crimes. And I, I, you know, I happen to agree with the government.

01:03:56.080 He went away for eight years and is still in prison right now.

01:04:00.760 Correct. And Farkas got one year.

01:04:04.920 Yeah. He did about eight months.

01:04:07.960 Am I wrong in thinking that this judge who wound up sentencing you was like a little swoony? I mean,

01:04:15.480 I, I was hearing what she said to you. I'm like, what's the match? She sounds like a school girl

01:04:21.020 who has a crush and not like a judge sentencing a felon.

01:04:25.900 So that's the part is that that's not like I helped the gut, the government. I don't know

01:04:32.560 why they considered me better than other cooperatives that they've dealt with in the past.

01:04:37.780 Um, I was very honest. And then during that time, I also got married, had kids and I, I became a drug

01:04:44.640 counselor for about three years leading up into my sentencing. And Sorby on the other hand was

01:04:49.580 breaking curfew, going to strip clubs. So it's like, there was a pretty clear reason why,

01:04:53.740 in my opinion, that I got time served. And then all my, the money that I made,

01:04:59.120 I owe in restitution. So I pay that monthly. So it's like, I don't, I hear what you're saying

01:05:04.400 as far as like, but that's just what the government's recommendation. It wasn't the judge,

01:05:10.160 the judge, they cut out a small snippet of what the judge was saying to me. She gave me a hard time

01:05:14.720 at first. Um, and it was just basically that the, the cooperation was essentially better than what

01:05:22.060 they typically have as a cooperator. Hmm. Okay. So what about the victims? Because,

01:05:30.560 you know, we've been laughing and there's some aspects of the story. They're just so sort of

01:05:35.460 extraordinary. You can only laugh, but in this case, as with Sam Bankman Freed, there are people

01:05:42.560 who actually got hurt and they're going to watch this and they're going to want to know what you

01:05:47.660 have to say to them. Yeah, no, absolutely. And, uh, out of everything, that's the one thing that

01:05:53.520 I truly regret the most is that people lost money. Um, they also have, you know, they, we were charged

01:05:59.460 with a $32 million fraud. They have 33.5 million to give back. Uh, the only reason that the money's

01:06:07.140 been held up is because there's a class action suit to try to be able to control how the distribution

01:06:12.720 works. So there's, there's more money than we were charged with in seized, seized assets.

01:06:19.200 That's actually also like Sam Bankman Freed. Most of his victims, maybe all got repaid,

01:06:26.380 but the allegation in court was they could have earned more on that money had it been

01:06:31.860 invested in the way they thought it was being invested. I mean, is that parallel to your case too?

01:06:38.100 Uh, yeah, exactly. And that was one of, uh, Sharma's main arguments as well is that

01:06:42.700 you've never seen a fraud like this where there was more money seized than actually raised, you

01:06:47.960 know? So it's like a, it's a weird case in that regard. And, um, I honestly haven't even met anybody

01:06:55.440 that's like lost money. I really don't, I don't know. And I, I, I'm sorry to whoever did lose money.

01:07:01.440 Hmm. So this was all wrapped up in 2018. Uh, yes. 2018. Okay. And now what? Like, you know,

01:07:12.300 you're, you married, uh, is it true you met your wife with your ankle bracelet on?

01:07:16.960 Yes, I did meet my wife, my ankle bracelet on. I was, uh, yeah, I was, I was, I actually just was

01:07:23.280 allowed curfew. Like, you know, at first I was on house arrest, full house arrest. And then I went

01:07:28.140 out when I first got my, uh, my curfew is a smaller ankle bracelet. So it wasn't the big one.

01:07:33.240 Oh, but yeah, I mean, I was also like a year on house arrest. Yeah. I was also like, I don't know.

01:07:41.260 Not everybody cares that much. Like if you're honest about what your past was and why you have

01:07:45.780 that ankle bracelet, it wasn't like I was trying to hide it. I was making, you know, like jokes about

01:07:50.140 it. Right. And then I, I don't know. Just pretty much fell in love pretty quick there. Uh, she's,

01:07:58.060 she's a great woman. Is it a, is it a good match? Do you see why she overlooked Ray's past?

01:08:04.980 Yeah, I, I totally kind of get why Ray's very honest about who he is. And I, I think that's a

01:08:10.560 big part of like the draw. Um, and I think it comes across as genuine and you kind of tend to,

01:08:17.820 especially when you're talking to him and like, he's, he's being so honest and, and, and open with

01:08:23.320 everything. You kind of just tend to forget about that. And you're just talking to like a

01:08:27.680 charismatic person. So I can kind of see how, um, how that happened. Do you think he's gonna,

01:08:35.140 do you think he's going to stay on us on the straight and narrow? Like if you had to bet?

01:08:39.760 We, I, we talk about this a little bit at the, um, the end of the podcast where Ray and I were

01:08:46.580 like, we went out to Atlantic beach and we were sitting there and, you know, there's a big test

01:08:51.920 coming up. Ray's eventually going to get off probation and then he's not going to have these like court

01:08:57.060 mandated drug tests. I actually lived with Ray the last time he got off probation and didn't have

01:09:02.740 court mandated drug tests. And after three years or something of being sober, he was back on drugs

01:09:09.260 in like a week or something like that. And I, I, there's always that fear there. Um, and you know,

01:09:16.240 we could just take it day by day. I don't think it's going to happen. And I think he's in like such a

01:09:21.520 good place mentally now compared to where he was earlier in his life that I'm less worried,

01:09:26.840 but it's still a worry. What are you doing for a living now, Ray? Me? Uh, I mean, I'm trying to

01:09:33.520 write a book, did a podcast and I'm trying to start a new business now. I'm afraid. What is it?

01:09:41.120 Just like web development. I mean, I'll definitely never do another crime like web development company.

01:09:45.960 So talk to me about how, you know, that because in other interviews I've done with criminals,

01:09:52.360 especially those who spend a life doing frauds, they talk about the adrenaline rush from doing it

01:09:57.820 and how that is something that is hard in the way a drug addict wants the rush of the drug.

01:10:02.280 It's, you know, some of these criminals want, need the rush of the adrenaline. They'd like,

01:10:06.320 they really like, and are addicted to living life on the edge.

01:10:09.020 Yeah, for sure. But I've also was 24, 25 when I was doing these crimes and now I'm 33 and I've had a

01:10:18.540 massive adrenaline dump after like this all happened. Right. And then, so like, I think when

01:10:24.460 you're sober for a certain amount of time, that's one thing that this, like I speak about this a lot

01:10:29.160 is this case saved my life. Like if I wasn't arrested there, I was dead within probably the next

01:10:34.140 couple of months. I was spending all my money, gambling millions of dollars a month. I was

01:10:39.040 going to be, as soon as I went broke, I would have definitely been dead. Um, so the case saved my

01:10:45.640 life. That's why I'm grateful for like how this all played out. Uh, obviously, especially with like

01:10:50.340 the no time sentence and where my life is today. Um, wait, I forgot my, the original question.

01:10:59.040 Just whether you need the adrenaline of the, of the crime and whether that's going to be a tough

01:11:03.080 habit to break. No, I don't think so. I think just like off drugs, it's pretty easy to not commit

01:11:08.900 crimes and do the right thing. Um, I think as long as I stay sober, there's no worry to society.

01:11:17.160 Have you gotten any therapy? I mean, I don't want to blame it all on childhood trauma, but it does seem

01:11:22.260 like it's an obvious suspect for why you wound up making these choices. Uh, yeah, I've done therapy.

01:11:29.940 Um, I did a ton of like a drug counseling and then I became a drug counselor throughout this time and

01:11:35.420 working with other people that had sexual abuse, like a trauma kind of helped me a lot. Just kind

01:11:41.560 of seeing, I don't know. I feel like I'm a weird person cause I compartmentalize it or whatever it

01:11:47.960 may be. But there's people that like in their fifties and they're still crying about it every day.

01:11:52.620 And I don't know, I couldn't find a way to like break them through it. And I feel like it doesn't

01:11:57.340 hold any weight now that I've talked about it open. Um, that's great. That's a, I think I'm in

01:12:02.520 a very good place. Great scale. No, I, I completely believe in compartmentalization. If you can do it,

01:12:08.200 lean in. So, um, I'm just curious. So like, what's your wife's name? Kim, Kimberly. So when you and Kim

01:12:15.720 go to parties and you meet new people, how, how do you work this into the conversation? Like, ah,

01:12:21.280 so right. How do you let people know this is part of your story? Um, I just tell everybody pretty

01:12:28.160 openly. Uh, I don't people that meet me, they all are like, Oh, he's actually a nice guy. Like most

01:12:35.560 people think when they meet you, they don't know. So, I mean like then there's the big reveal.

01:12:40.860 Yeah. I just kind of tell them my full story. I like, don't hide it at all. It's like, I'm like,

01:12:45.820 yeah, I had a company and then I got in trouble down in Miami and they're like, Oh, what would you do?

01:12:50.340 And I like, I had a cryptocurrency company. We raised, you know, some money and we got in

01:12:54.560 trouble. It's, and, and then like, they just, you know, whatever is he's telling us, telling them

01:13:00.360 the truth. All right. I got to tell you something. My husband and I not long ago went to this dinner

01:13:05.500 party and there were maybe 14 people there and we played a game per the host where he asked all of

01:13:12.280 us to write down on a piece of paper, something, some interesting or fun fact about ourselves without,

01:13:18.640 um, like the host would know who, no, the host wouldn't know. Nobody would know who's,

01:13:25.320 who's it was. So you didn't write your name on the card. Then the host takes all the folded up

01:13:29.500 pieces of paper and the host reads one after the other. And he reads one and then everybody at the

01:13:34.980 table votes on who at the table they think this fact or story belongs to. And the stories were crazy.

01:13:42.780 Some were tame, like a woman who used to play the tuba in a marching band or something. It was like,

01:13:50.540 whatever. And then some were actually bizarre. Like I had two wives at the same time. You know,

01:13:55.820 this is the greatest game ever for you with your friends who don't know this story and haven't

01:14:02.440 watched Netflix or listened to the pod. Am I wrong? I mean, I think you need to do it.

01:14:05.840 Yeah. I mean, I don't know who I would play it with, but it sounds fun.

01:14:10.980 You got to get people like me who didn't know anything about this until, uh, my team brought

01:14:14.720 your story to me. Listen, I wish you all the best. And let me give the podcast another promo. Give me

01:14:20.100 the name again. What is it called again, Johnny? Uh, creating a con, the story of Bitcoin.

01:14:25.340 All right. Creating a con, the story of Bitcoin. And it's you two together going through the,

01:14:29.900 the gory details of all of this. I wish you all the best. I hope things go very well for you in the,

01:14:36.400 in the white hat lane and Johnny to you as well. Thanks for coming on and telling the story.

01:14:42.300 Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you so much.

01:14:45.800 We'll stay on this story and we'll definitely get Ray connected with Jordan Belfort. Can't wait to see

01:14:50.420 where that goes. Meantime, I want to tell you that tomorrow we have two guests on who escaped

01:14:55.320 a dark and dangerous cult and one that had a particular fraud angle to it. We dive into

01:15:02.960 NXIVM with some new developments about this thing next. See you then.

01:15:10.980 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:15:25.320 Thank you.

01:15:41.020 Thank you.

The Megyn Kelly Show - June 12, 2024

Fraud Week： How Crypto Convict Made Millions Before Getting Caught, with Ray Trapani and Jonny B Good ｜ Ep. 816

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