Hello, friends, I am Robert Evans, and this is yet again Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history. Now, my my guest for today's episode, who is coming in cold to our tale about several bastards is Sharne the Machine Lonnie Units. I think I'm the first person to give you that nickname, but probably or not. Now, you are a filmmaker whose work is currently being featured at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. Right, it was in New York. Yet it wasn't New York. It wasn't in New York. Yeah, that was cool. That is very cool. Uh. And you are also the co host of the Ethnically Ambiguous podcast on the Stuff Network, the very network that we're all a part of. Correct, So that's cool. Ye. How's it going? You know, I'm glad to be here and must terrifying to be here. Do you like conmen? Do I like conmon? I like watching movies about conmons? Well, then you might like grifts. I mean I feel like a grift in my own life. You know, I'm just a fraud. Yeah, that's how everyone who gets to do what they like for living fields. It's natural. Uh. Does the name Jacob Wohl mean anything to you? You know, I've I've heard it about um, but I could not tell you anything about it other than he's white. He is white. Uh. And the working title of this episode is a tale of two Grifters, even though there's more than two grifters. I just know I was trying trying to force it and trying to force it all rights to talk about some grifters. So grifters and common thrive in times of unrest and chaos. This is obvious enough that I'm probably wasting a little bit of my time by even saying it. The current president of the United States is a man who ran a fake university that defrauded thousands of people out of tens of millions of dollars. But we're not talking about him today. Are subjects for this episode are grifters of a much lower and a much sadder cast. Let's start by talking about the Krassinstein brothers, Brian and Edward. You know about these guys, please tell me together. They have more than one point three million followers on Twitter, and they operate a left wing media empire. Is not the right word can I ask a question, Do they have a shared Twitter? No, they have two different Twitters judging very hardly, but they retweet everything each other says, and it's it's really you know, your left wing, your right wing or whatever. The Kress and Stein's are like the shrillist and like least effective chunk of the there, like the drump you know, like that sort of yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that kind of thing that should have been played out two years ago, but it's still. Yeah. They're crapulent. So they're frequent and pacific's critics of President Donald Trump. As of the writing of this episode, Bryan's Twitter image is a graphic of an impeachment clock with the President's face on it. So not a lot of subtlety. But starting back in two thousand three, the Krests and Stein's worked a different gig, running the websites top goal dot com and moneymaker Group dot com. It seems a little bit scammy right off the It's kinda get scamm here. So both of these sites were presented as independent aggregators of different online investment programs. Basically, someone would visit moneymaker group dot com and read about different opportunities in various investment programs and whatnot. Most of what the Krassenstein brothers hawked through their websites were what are called high yield investment programs or hyaps. According to Investipedia, quote, high yield investment program is a fraudulent investment scheme that purports to deliver extraordinarily high returns on investment. High yield investment schemes often advertised yields of more than a hundred percent per year in order to lure in victims. In reality, these high yield investment programs are Ponzi schemes, and the organizers aim to steal the money invested, like a pyramid scheme. Yeah yeah, yeah, like a like a pyramid scheme with a little little dash a limon. So the SEC takes a somewhat milder tone towards high yield investment programs, calling them unregistered investments typically run by unlicensed individuals that are often frauds, but not always frauds. In an interview with The Daily Beast Ed, Krassenstein really dug into the tiny bit of daylight provided by the word often quote of high ups aren't scams? I know of several that have been legitimate. The FBI definition is not that they're all scams. It says a large amount of scams, and that is true. So if you're defending your business by saying only a large amount of it is fraud, but I'm a good one. Yeah. The Crescent Stein Brothers defended themselves from charges of being scammers and Charlatan's by basically claiming that they didn't actually run any of these scams. They just took ad dollars from the people who did. And in Ed's words, freedom of speech protects advertisers, which sort of true. Partially true, of course. In actuality, sites like talk gold dot com and moneymaker Group were in a little bit more of like a a swampy area. On talk Gold and moneymaker Group, moderators hosted discussions of various high up opportunities through paid ads in organic comment threads. Users would be informed of various potential hy up investments. Eventually, many of the hypes would stop paying out, as all Ponzi schemes do, and hyup threads would begin racking up customer complaints into the thousands. The moderators would then move those high up threads into a separate section of the website marked closed programs. And scam warnings. Basically, the business is that these guys operated a g website where they would talk about different Ponzi schemes that you could invest in, and then once enough people realized that it was a scam, they would move it to a section of the site that said it was scams, like, oh, we got we we were we spotted this one. We're protecting you like that's that's we got this. But they're getting money from all of these people in order to host them on their site. So they're scammers. They're scammers, yeah, or they're legally distinct from but ethically the same as scammers. I would I would say, in order to protect ourselves legally at tiny bit. By August of two thousands seventeen, the scam Warnings section of their site had more than thirteen thousand threats, but investigators found that only a minority of the scams advertised actually made it over to the scam warning section, which means the Krass and Stein's probably guided their readers to quite literally tens of thousands of fraudulent investments. One of the hyups on top gold dot com was the Leopard Fund, which was created by a guy who was convicted of five counts of wire fraud. In two thousand twelve, CSM Finance, another hYP scam, asked its investors to download special software that in reality, was a virus that stole money from their Liberty Reserve accounts now Liberty Reserve. It was like a digital currency exchange before bitcoin UM. And the guy who found that was actually like busted back in two thousand sixteen and sentenced to twenty years in prison. So this whole ecosystem is nothing but scammers UM, and they're essentially positioning themselves as like scam brokers rather than operating a scam themselves because that's too risky. They yeah exactly. It like separates them from actual accountability, Yeah exactly, just enough that they're probably not going to go to prison um, which, of course, if you're in the scam business, that's really where you want to just outside of prison, getting all the benefits but not actually going in. Yeah exactly. So that same year, sixteen federal agents rated several homes in Fort Myers, Florida that were owned by the Krasenstin brothers. They took computers, financial records, and a bunch of other stuff. Much of this was later returned, but late last year, the d o J seized about a half a million dollars worth of their assets on suspicion of massive wire fraud. I found breakdown of the d j's asset forfeit your case on the site behind MLM, which essentially seems to act as a watchdog group for the whole MLM industry. Since everything to do with these kinds of scams is purposefully complex, I relied on them in the Department of Justice to actually help me break down what the Krassenstein's were doing. Behind MLM describes their websites as quote easily the two largest publicly accessible ponzi promotion platforms on the Internet. The Department of Justice alleges that the brothers actually ran a huge constellation of websites, all purporting to report independently on the Hyatt marketplace, while actually just being funnels to direct rubes to scams in exchange for kickbacks. Quote from the Department of Justice, the Krassenstein's various high up related websites overlapped extensively in their functionality. For example, Taco dot com and Moneymaker Group dot com serves substantially identical functions and gold radar dot com and web life dot org serves substantially identical functions. To the casual visitor, it would have appeared that these sites were being operated independently from one another. The Krassenstein's network of apparently unrelated hyup sites promoted the appearance of a thriving hYP industry with numerous independent players. They're fucking shady, They're fucking shady as hell and yeah. So when Ed Krafstenstein was asked in essence if the fact that they had consent him to forfeit half a million dollars and sees property to the d o J meant that he and his brother were guilty, he said, quote, this was an agreement we made with the government because the cost of fighting the civil complaint would have likely cost us more money stressed than what the government was requesting via the forfeiture. We both have newborn children and couldn't keep dragging on this civil matter any longer, and as attorney fees were adding up. This is why civil forfeiture is such a hotly debated topic in America, which really pisces me off, because civil asset forfeiture is fun up for a lot of reasons. Namely the fact that it's primarily used as an excuse for cops in the South and the Southwest to take cash and vehicles from brown people and anyone who's not white, and like, then you know, it'll be like the case of the State of Arizona versus a two thousand seven Toyota camry, or the case of Texas versus fourteen thousand dollars in cash. What's happening here is the Krassenstein's were caught committing massive wire fraud, and the d o J rightfully took the yat. But you see the little the year was this when this happened, that's not a long time. It's not a long time ago at all. It's it's a kind of appropriation, right, like getting caught for committing a really shady act and then trying to attach yourself to a legitimate and justice. I don't know what the word for that is. It's yours there, posers, man, I don't know what's a better word than that. But like, there's obviously awful people are just using oblivious people to their advantage. It's just like yeah, yeah, oblivious and desperate, like you wouldn't be on those sides unless you were desperate. And speaking of oblivious and desperate, starting in you know, the end of two thousand and sixteen, the beginning of two seventeen, all of us were a little bit desperate because yeah, thank you, thank you, and so the krassin Stein, since they seemed like they couldn't scam in the old way, realized that with all of this desperation over the election of Donald Trump and all of the fear and the left and big chunks of the center, there was another opportunity for them to make a bucket of money. So they landed on making themselves into figureheads of the hashtag resistance. I hate them, Yeah, they're they're pretty shitty. Both brothers built up their best Twitter following by repeatedly tweeting variations of impeach Trump. At one point, Brian posted it eleven times in a single tweet. They also followed over four hundred thousand accounts and you know, to get people to follow them back as such. On his LinkedIn profile, Brian currently calls himself a Twitter personality, which it's the job title you've aired if you list that as a thing on your resume. Now, the former Finance advisors have rebranded themselves now as journalists. Uh. In two thousands seventeen, they launched a news website called Independent Reporter at i R dot net, a website that used to be titled Investor Relations but was repurposed in order to capitalize on the profitability of partisan news. Yeah, here's think progress quote. Among the nine writers listed on the site, two or the krassin Stein's three haven't written anything in six months, and two haven't contributed anything since two thousand and fifteen. The two remaining writers, Whitney Hippolyte and Heidi Milkert, have likewise written nothing on the site since two fifteen. They are also the Krassenstein's wives. Oh it just got worse and worse the more you talked. It's about to get so much worse. So last October, the Krasenstein's embarked on their griftyest grift yet, a children's book titled How the People Trumped Ronald Plump. They brought Shouldren into Day. They did bring children into this. Here's how they explained the genesis of their opus. In the book's press release, President Trump is a counter example to the examples I try to set from my children. Co author Ed Krassenstein stated, it's difficult when we teach our children how to act one way, but then the president of the United States acts the complete opposite way. This man is supposed to be a role model for our kids, but in my opinion and then the opinions of many other parents, he's simply teaching kids bad lessons and poor morals. I mean, like, yeah, it's all well and good, but knowing where it's coming from makes it like no. Knowing that, like, this is a guy who committed massive Come on, dude, you can't take anything seriously. No, no, no, no. So uh That's what Ed claims led him and his brother Brian to write a humorous children's book, which is essentially Build is trying to make sense of and explain the actions at President Trump through a character named Ronald Plump. They're very, very clever. They do well. They don't even know wheter I'm that good. It gets really bad in the second. Here's another quote from the press release. Quote, Ronald Plump is a man who is elected leader of the town do work city. Do you get it? Because because New York but do work. They're very they're very smart, very hard. Plump's actions go against the morals which we teach our kids. But in the end, hope quality, love, and basic human values prevail. Parents will love this book's humor and storyline just as much, if not more, than their children. So you have this horrified look on your face. Them Yeah, they're so so Like the thing I'm like thinking about is like, not only is like one person has to exist to be awful, like one of the brothers, but not only that there's another version of him, a brother that is equally as bad. And not only that two women married these people. So are the women also like complicit in all of this or like, are like are aware that their husbands are just like actual garbage scammers and they're just like, yeah, I put my name on the website or do they know the names? Like you think like there's like not everyone's shitty, but then they're like, oh, no, maybe they are. Yeah, I mean I think everybody in this case is probably shitty except for their kids, Like, well, who knows they're teaching them with Robert Plump Ronald Ronald Plump. Sorry, Robert human, No, it's okay. But if you think Ronald Plump is not the most creative name for a fake Trump character, it's about to get it gets real bad. So. Characters in the book include We've Bannon, a squirrel who actions, who axis poems hairpiece and controls his thoughts. Even though the book came out more than a year after Steve Bannon stopped working at the White House, the Cress and Scenes knew that some jokes are just so good that they never age. If you guys had seen my face when I heard the name We've bannon, we've bannoned, I almost walked the funk out of here. It's it's it's offensive, right, I'm I fully expect that, like a good twenty percent of people who had to pull their headphones off of their their head just hearing that, Like it hurt to write We've we've banned, No, you can't. Other hilarious ripped from the headslines. Character names from this wonderful story book include oh No, loud, Mere Tuton, a fart themed Vladimir Putin who farts rockets for some reason that I don't think it's ever. It's a better joke on the jokes are there, You're gonna make a fart joke. Poopin is even is even more clever. It's not that clever. But it's better than loudmere, loudmere, what the what the fuck? We're not done. So you're complimenting them on their rhyme scheme with Ronald plump, I'd love to rhyme, you want to guess with their Jared Kushner stand in is named um flaccid Bush. See that's good, that's a fun name. They call him Jared Nepotism. What that was unexpected? Yeah, that wasn't turn. We took a turn. Yeah, it's just poop. It's just poop that somebody turned into a book. I don't know. There's like funny attempts at cleverness. There's no I don't know. I can't think of them. For Jared, there was more creativity involved in the name you came up within two and a half seconds than the entirety of the book that they spent months working on. Thank you. I'll think about it as a compliment, but also sad. So now the hero of the book is a six pack having shirtless Robert Mueller stand in whose name is Robert Moral. Of course that almost sounds not terrible next to jaredy nepotism Moral. Sure, Now, I was not willing to purchase a copy of this book because I want to. I'm glad you have your own morals. Yeah, I have some standards, and this is one of them. But I did read several re views of it. Gizmoto editor Tom McKay was the first person to point out that the book includes a rape sack which Ronald Plump uses to kidnap Elizabeth Warren. I'm gonna show you a picture from this book. I want you to just take it in and then I want you to read the text on the page. My eyes and scared. What the fuck you want to describe that? It'll be on our website behind the bath com if you want to look at it. So this obviously it's Trump. It's a cartoon of a little Trump. Um. He has something on his head that's we've bannon. It's the squirrel that yeah, oh he is the hairpiece is the hairpiece I thought he made? My god? Um yeah, Elizabeth Warren is literally busting out of the sack. He's like carrying her like he's like sucking Santa Claus. Um. And she has a shirt on this has persist. Her arms are jack good for her? Um. And the fucking thing he's going into Trump tower. She's turned he like his heads over his shoulder, like she's getting out of my rapsack. And then the text on the thing says Ronald Plump believed that he could every day grab any woman and just take her away away to his tower and his big burlap sack. Plump took every woman he wanted until one fought back. Oh my fucking god, I can do as I choose, Plump insisted, and was a Trump Plump insisted. Nevertheless, this woman, she persisted, proving a point and proving she's equal. This woman succeeded and showing the people that women and men are created the same and through equality. That's a lot to gain. Okay, surface level good points, but when you really look at the text, that's every what they are a way her ways to make the point about sexism than having the rapes I just have. This is so troubling. Yeah for kids, well yeah, and that that's part of the thing is that like it's it's clearly written until one fought back. Yeah, yeah, like Elizabeth Warren was the first person also, which is but it's also like what is a kid going to get? Kids not going to know anything about like Nevertheless, she persisted, or something like a fucking six year old. They're not going to get the references being made. It's just it's maybe the worst writing that anyone's done. It's bad. I'm disturbed. You should be. It's really bad. I thought We've Bannon was bad enough. I didn't know his face was on it, Like We've Bannon's almost the highlight. Yeah, it's the saving grace. That's a little bit of humor. Speaking of a little bit of humor, you know what I love, Sharine when I get horrified about grifting. Yeah, commercial breaks, let's have some kids. Yeah, we're back, and our souls are trying to exit our bodies through our eyes. Trauma. Trauma. We keep a reverse pressure flow in this room for that exact purpose. So I googled around for some other reactions to the book, because again I was not about to read this piece of ship myself, and I found a Reddit threat about it, where one user states you have to admire their talent for grift ed. Krassenstein himself jumped into the reddit thread and responded to this. We ordered two thousand copies. All profits from the sale of these copies will go to charity. If I'm a grifter, then I'm grifting for the children who are separated from their parents. If I'm a grifter, than anyone who promotes themselves with their work on Twitter are also grifters. At least mine is for a good cause. And the immediate response to that was someone quoting we ordered two thousand copies and saying literally what a grifter would say. Yeah, that sounds like you're a grifter creeping on reading anyway. Yeah, there's ways to prom about your work without being a grifter. You're just a grifter. Yeah, also show their fucking receipts ed, Yeah, fucking ed piece of ship. So yeah, this book is an isore and a piece of unfathomabile garbage. And yes, it's pretty offensive that in addition to trying to appropriate civil asset forfeiture, they're now appropriating the separation of families at the border as like, is there like causes that deserve attention? And yeah, like and they're profit. That's infuriating. They're horrible people. That's infuriated. Horrible people. And they are only the second grossest, most shameful low run con artists of two thousand eighteen. Because this year is the deathless pit of despair. Brian and Ed Krassenstein actually wound up confronting the only grifter on the planet worse at grifting than they are, a young man named Jacob Wool. So they were like, you think you're better than us. They reported him to the FBI. We're about to get to why, Oh my god. So Jake Wohl's story proves that regardless of what side of the political is, La Connor just winds up, they all have more in common with each other than anyone else. Wool was born in nineteen seven Middle I've seen pictures of his child and stuff. He played football at school. There's like pictures of him was posing with guns at shooting ranges. He seems to have grown up pretty affluent kids somewhere in California. Yeah, class act. He's a rich little ship who at age seventeen, started the Wool Capital investment Group. Fun his dad helped. His dad is a stock market analyst. He never talks about that in the interview. Yet years old and all of myself the help of mine. Well, that's how we wanted to get famous as the teenager who runs a heads front. So he started showing up at age seventeen and a bunch of financial news shows to be interviewed, because it's hard to fill time if you're doing a financial news show. Here's a clip of him on Fox News, Jacob the Wall of Walls Wall. He's a seventh year ol high school football and basketball player and by the way, hands fund manager. All Right, first of all, before we even get the bonodtext, we gotta ask how did you get started? Well, I've always an interest in finance and getting started. I thought, what better way than to put myself out there and to just start a hedge fund? And that's what I did. You want to describe his face to me? SERI punsible, punsible, little fucking insect. There's a German word and it's like backshaik or something like that. I can't pronounce it. It's it's there's a German word that the literal translation is a face and need of a fist. And that's how Jacob Wol looks, in need of in need of a fist, like he needs to be puss. I thought, why not hush funds? Why don't you fucking funk yourself? Are you kidding me? Also, the fact that he appeared on Fox News. Isn't that telling enough? Yeah? Well, he appeared on a lot of shows. I also watched another interview that Vice did with him. In this interview, Will argued that the capital requirements on hedge fund investors were too high and that's why the rich keep getting richer because poor people aren't allowed to invest in hedge funds, which seems to me him basically saying I should be to trick poor people who aren't as financially literate into taking their money, and like, you can do this too, I can help. Yeah, exactly, that's what I do want to say. I feel like I get in trouble on my podcast for saying funk a lot, and I don't get taken as seriously. So I'm gonna try to not say funk as much. What if I just say funck a bunch of times and that way, Yeah, well that way. If anyone doesn't take you seriously for saying fun then it's just sexism. There's no getting those people on board either way. I like this, warright, I'm gonna say fuck seven times. Let's do it. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Let's sucking like three fucking, fucking fucking great cool. Alright, We're good. Alright, let's roll on, okay. So um, so yeah, that's why Jacob Bowle thinks that rich keep getting richer in the poor keep getting poores because poor people can invest in hedge funds. That's what they're thinking. So in pretty much every TV appearance he did, it was noted by someone that his nickname was the Wool of Wall Street. Barf. Barf is the only response to that. Now. In the Vice interview when they brought this up, he assures the interviewer that he doesn't like that nickname. He actually hates it. So we're going to run a clip from that Vice interview and see Jacob responding to talk of his nickname. So here's the clip from Vice titled Meet the teen finance Guru who makes more money than you st How do you feel about that? I think that most of the behavior you see in that movie is completely reprehensible. It plays a bunch of clips from the thing. So he's he's anti the Wolf of Wall Street in the interview and he says that, you know, it's it's gross what they did, and it's gross. Don't call me that. Don't call me that, but also keep calling me that, Yeah, it becomes very clear throughout his life that that's actually exactly how he wants to be seen. Uh. In two thousand seventeen, Jacob Wole interviewed Jordan Belfort, the actual Wolf of Wall Street, for his podcast Offended America. In the podcast, he reveals a deep familiarity with Belfort's writing and ideas, and it's pretty clear to me that in fact, there's nothing will once more than to be seen as his successor. Uh. Back in two thousand sixteen, as the presidential election heated up, Jacob will continue to show up on financial news shows. He quickly pivoted to identifying as a Trump supporter and became known for claiming on TV that huge numbers of young people were secret Donald Trump fans. Uh. Just for some reference and estimated of millennials voted for Donald Trump, which is the same percentage of millennials who voted for Mitt Romney in two thousand and twelve. There's no evidence for Jacob's constant claims that young people are secretly below I mean a lot of a lot of far right land yours will make a lot of claims without any evidence at all. Really, yeah, I haven't heard of that. Well, climate change is real. We were talking earlier today. I'm cold and I wore a long sleeve shirt today, but it's mesh. Well, now it doesn't. The fact that you're wearing a long sleeve shirt disproved climate change. But it's mesh. Oh okay, so climate change is real again. In l A. Yeah, in l A. This is cold weather apparel. This is cold cold weather while the city burns down. Um. Yeah. By the way, we have a history of doing free ads on this on the show, do you Yeah, we do. So. I just wanted to let you know that I'm drinking a cherry lime lacroix right now, and it tastes exactly like a melted Lollipop's good? Is that a good review or it's a bad review. It tastes like, um, if you get those freezer pops right and you melt one and then deluded in water, That's what this lacroix taste. But the thing is you keep drinking it. I mean it's doing some right. My throat dries out. It's not great. Yeah, there's this thing they have in the world called water, and it actually quenches your thirst more than like a sugary beverage. Now, maybe you can help me with this. I've heard about this water. I've also heard that fish fucking it. And I don't know if that's the reason you don't drink water. Well, it seems like something disreputable. Let's get back to Jacob Wool. So two thousand and sixteen, the year that Jacob wool pivoted hardcore into being a very vocal Trump supporter, was also the first year that he ran into trouble with regulators. He wasn't obeying every long seventeen year old hedge one manager that loves Trump? What was the subject of an investigation by the natche Futures Association, a non government but government authorized regulator that investigates fraud within the industry. The n f A was interested in Jake because they had actually read through the promotional material he put together for his new hedge fund, Next Capital Management. They found that Next videos were quote unbalanced in their presentation of profit potential and risk of loss. They also found that Wold had worked as a fund manager before he or his hedge fund were actually registered, which is, you know, a crime. The n f A report cites the claim of one investor who says he sent Woll seventy five thou dollars and was told Wol had grown a to eighty nine thou five d dollars in a few months. The investor tried to withdraw his money and Woll only sent him forty four thousand dollars, claiming the fund had suffered sudden losses. The n f A found that basically his training account had made a small amount of money, but he was claiming massive losses as soon as people tried to withdraw the money, which is again a scam. Yeah, I think as a called it a scam, fucking scab. Yeah, yeah, no, it's fine, it's fine. I said again, no again, no it's fine. It's fine. And that's why we did the whole me saying right, okay, so I can say it again. Yeah, exactly, you get at least five or six Fox banked seven. Yeah. Cool. The Daily Beast looked through the an old archived version of NeXT's website from before the investigation, and they found evidence that Wool may have slightly misrepresented his credentials to investors, namely by claiming he had any uh. He wrote on his website that he had quote greater than ten years trading experience across many asset classes. In order for this to be true, what would have needed to start investing as an eight year old? Oh my god, I've been doing it for ten years because I've been listening to my dad. Here's a quote from The Daily Beast. N f A agents showed up at NeXT's supposed offices, which turned out to be a Los Angeles home, where no one answered will did not return their emails or phone calls. When the n f A returned to the home the following day, the exam team noticed someone at the second floor window who appeared to be taking photos or a video of the exam team. According to the filing, They soon received a stern phone call from Wolve's father, lawyer, who allegedly threatened to call the police on the regulators, warning them to stay away or else. So, um, yeah, that's your hiding. Sounds totally legit to leousands. Sixteen was not a great year for Jacobole's career as a hedge fund manager. That year, the Arizona Corporation Commission also gave his businesses a cease and assist order. The a c C claimed that he had violated the Securities Act by selling unregulated securities. Yeah. See. Some of Wol's former clients were Arizona residents who say that he told them he managed a hundred and seventy eight different accounts with up to a hundred thousand dollars in assets. The a CEC believes Wold had roughly thirteen accounts worth as much as five hundred thousand dollars. So he's basically claiming that he was running like a hundred and seventy eight different accounts that had more than like a hundred grand or something. Incredible. Incredible, Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Clients he became suspicious of his company and demanded their money back. Regularly got about half of what they put in out, So he was, you know, stealing, you could call it stealing. So the a c C took issue with wolves other business, Montgomery Assets, a re the state investment firm. One of the Craiglist dads he posted, claimed that the company owners had thirty five years experience flipping homes. The Daily Beast notes that Wool and his partner had a combined age of forty five. When Montgomery Assets client claimed that Jacob sent her a letter about a volatility event that he said was about to hit the market. Wool advised her to sell her other investments, all of her other investments, and invest all of her money in his firm. Now. While all this was going on, Jacob began to create a stir on social media, where he was also increasingly active. In between hosting a conservative podcast and uh Offended America, Yeah, Uh might be might be offended because of the theft to defend people. People are mad because you're steal from taking the money. Between that and making increasingly bizarre claims about millennial infatuation with Donald Trump, he started doing everything in his power to look exactly like a two thousand teens version of Jordan Belford. On April fifteen, two sixteen, Value Walk, a site that writes about investment firms and the like, published an article about the corporate culture at Next, which is again his nudge fun Thing, posted a clip from a company promotional video which lists an attractive young Instagram model named Jennifer Cole is his director of Fun. Director of director of Fun. It's a job to make sure everyone's having a good time. It's a cool company. It's Ja and one friend in a house in Laurel Canyon scamming people say she looks she's hot and it's an investment and a teenager come um now. Value Walks Report also noted that his website listed Rachel Fox, an actress who played someone named Kayla on The Desperate Housewives, as the inspiration for his company's investment strategy. Quote. In an interview with Value Walk, Fox claimed not to know Wool and said she only learned of his trading program through a Value walk article. Weird delie that an actress is like a public figure, like like she can deny claim and she had she had done some work as like investing in hedge funds at some point in her career, but like she was nobody's big name. Like it's a weird thing to lie about, just like Google, like celebrities that also invested. A good conman would lay lion say that it's someone like Warren Buffett, but they'd say that they've been tutored in some vague way that would be hard to disprove. And like, you pick someone who's as busy as Warren Buffett, isn't gonna say anything, Yeah, exactly. You don't pick a social media active actress like what are you doing, Jacob Wool. He's a stupid, stupid man boy boy, Yeah, for sure, for sure, boy scumboy, scumboy. Jacob Wowl seems to have had a thing for hiring models to just sort of hang around his businesses. Twitter users put together a number of Craigslist ads from his real estate firm asking for models and such. An Orange County ads stated quote, we need models for promo modeling events including conferences, trades, show seminars, et cetera. We also have other modeling opportunities, including bikini modeling and fashion modeling. If you the type for that sort of modeling, that's nice. The Daily Beast did a domain registry search on Mr Wol's businesses and found something rather interesting. Quote the website registry database domain Tools shows a number of websites registered to Woll's name. Some are definitely Wolds, including the domain for his short lived media outlet Offended America, and domains that are described in the A C C filing as belonging to his businesses. Others with names like Wol girls dot com and Melanie Rio's Management dot com, the name of a porn actress appeared to solicit more salacious business. In response to this, Woll stated, fake websites and Craigslist ads were posted by trolls of mine in two thousands sixteen, and I immediately reported them to the FBI. Woll told The Daily Beast he declined to specify which websites and ads were the alleged frauds and declined to answer further questions yeah convenient. The Daily Beast also talked to the mother of one young woman who was featured as a wool girl. She claims that Jacob lied to her daughter and said that he could make her famous by building a professional modeling website for her, and that she agreed. But instead of doing that, this lady's mother says quote, he took some of her photos, either from Snapchat or Instagram that she had posted and created a page for her called the wool Girl of the Month. From there, he put up photos and made the page seem inappropriate and dangerous, so the would be models mother actually wound up calling Jacob and confronting him on the phone. Quote. I thought he was probably an older man trying to exploit a young woman. When I contacted him on the phone, I could tell he was young and idiotic. I told him, you take that site down, you take any reference to her out of your world or else. He got very scared and was like, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, and apologized profusely and took it down. What a little bit. I like that lady's mom. I like, you gotta, you gotta confront a little ship. Yeah. I mean, she would have done it anyway, even if he was an old guy, but the fact that he was a young guy I made it even more like she just like talking to him like a mom. Yeah, which is the right way to talk to a child. Yeah. So we're gonna get onto how Jacob Wile got banned from the finance industry forever, and then we're going to talk about how he decided to take on Robert Mueller, uh, which is maybe biting off a little bit more than he should have tried to chew. But before we do that, let's talk about and we're back. We're talking about Jacob Woole, the wool of wall st the worst grifter I may have ever heard of, which normally I like to talk about more impressive people in this but he's just so bad. I couldn't stop much. I don't like, I mean, grifter sounds like a badass thing though it does sound, but it's like a shitty thing to be. He's he's the living human embodiment of a single spam email. That's what Jacobill was. Okay, So, in early two thousand seventeen, Jacob Bowl received a lifetime ban from the n f A for his part. Will portrays the National Futures Association is basically a group of but heard activists. Um because the n f A isn't a government body. He basically says, they're just a bunch of busy bodies and they're not a government agency. They don't have any real authority to regulate things. And he'll do this in interviews than the vice interview and they don't really push. They kicked him out after all this ship down because they were the ones that they were, like the regulator, the team that wanted to investigate. Did they ever actually investige? Oh yeah, yeah they did, And they gave him a lifetime ban because he broke a bunch of laws. And he would basically say like, well, they're not a government body, it's just a bunch of busy bodies. But the fact of the matter is. The n f A is a self regulating body for the futures industry. Membership in it is required by law for traders and major buyers. Congress has given this non government organization the ability to regulate the industry. They are very much authorized to do this. Ship like fucking rich people think they can do whatever the funk they want. Yeah, and Jacob Bowl did for a long time, did well about a year that he didn't get that long. That's a good point. And his teams, I will say he got caught pretty early, what with his incompetence. Yeah. Also, in two thousands seventeen, the Arizona Corporation Commission issued a cease and assist order against wol for wildly misleading investors and misrepresenting the size of his businesses. He was ordered to pay thirty two thou nineteen dollars in restitution and five thousand dollars in penalties. Wolve's attorney asked for a four week continuance because his big shot client, who lived at the same Laurel Canyon house his company used as an office, couldn't make the first payment, which I just like that. I'm gonna guess his dad's probably paying funding the bill for a lot of this. Yeah. So an Arizona Central article written about wolves legal trouble revealed that quote Wolves troubles in Arizona began in two thousand and fifteen when two residents of the state contacted wol after seeing his media appearances. They note that Wall called the a c C a racketeering organization full of angry Democrats, and while it is true that the a c C head was accused of accepting bribes in exchange for votes on the utilities issue, the man accused as a registered Republican and wasn't actually convicted anyway. So Jacob woll Um, I also, I just think it's funny that his need to be on the news and known as the teen investment grow is what got him caught, right, Yeah, that's not going to be the last time you hear about that that sort. That's why he's like a millennial trash though, you know what I mean, Like he wanted the fucking verified check mark. Yeah, is the millennial investment expert and stuff. Yeah, he thought that was the path to good money. And if he hadn't been so dumb, it might have been. If he'd been a little bit more careful. But he was not, and he's dumb now. In spite of the fact that wolves love of publicity had now definitely destroyed several of his businesses, Jacob was not yet ready to give up the line light or to give up social media. In fact, over the years, his Twitter presence has grown to more than a hundred and seventy five thousand followers, some of those probably hate followers. Up until very recently, he was most renowned for posting numerous stories of his trips to what he called hipster coffee shops in Los Angeles, where he claimed to repeatedly overhear young Democrats secretly admit their admiration and love of Donald Trump. Oh my god, get a fucking hobby, dude, Like, are you serious? Yeah, I'm really serious. It's like a better way to show it, like you're unemployed in like a living husk of nothing, Like I'm going to go to every coffee shop and then pretend to hear things and then lie about what people say when it's also somebody pressed him on, like what he was talking about when he said something was a hipster coffee shop and he was like talking about a coffee bean in Westlake. There's like a thousand coffee beans around the world, like a billion hip your coffee shop, it's not the one in fucking Westlake. Yeah, it's not a coffee bean where you go to get coffee when you can stop. Yeah, yeah, when you have to the coffee bean. Sometimes you just need So During this time, Jacob started to write for Gateway Pundit, a fake news website run by a former John Deer catalog model with no relevant experience in politics or journalism. Gateway Pundit is regularly sided in Fox News for an example of the level of quality and Gateway Pundits reporting. At one point, they picked up a story about how the Kremlin thought Barack Obama was literally insane. According to Media Matters, the story of originated from the European Union Times, an anti Semitic website with a section devoted to Jews. So what this is just the quality of the website he's working with. This is like they pick up stories from anti Semitic keep saying words, and I felt like I'll be like that sucks, and you'll keep talking and I'll be like, wait, that's even that's stupid, and then I'll just like I'm just my face is just a permanent like like hello darkness, my old friend. That would be good theme music for this show. Uh So, there's something unsettling to me about the fact that once finance was closed as a grifting opportunity and real estate should add. Jacoble immediately landed on journalism as the next way to try to make his mark. He founded his own website of The Washington Reporter, which you know he called despite the fact that he lives in Los Angeles. He claimed that The Washington Reporter was non partisan, and his website included a code of ethics prominently displayed on the site. Unfortunately, splinter News revealed that the code of ethics on his website was plagiarized entirely from pro Publica. Oh my god, stole his website, his code of ethics. You can google that, like try her. Yeah, now, write every single paper in college. But I made it look like I did. Yeah, you fake it a little bit better than that, Jacob Wolf sucking asshole. Uh So, when asked about this point by Gizmoto, Will replied, I didn't create that part of the website, but if our policy is similar to that of another reputable site, I think that's fantastic. Oh my god, it's the exact same. Yeah. Gizmoto went on to note quote Wolf said he would not respond to further questions about this non news gossip about whether or not I date Instagram models is none of your concern. He said, no one had accused him of dating Instagram. I was just gonna say, like, what's the last light of the gismoto article accused him of dating Instagram models. That's a good article right there. It's some good that's some good journalism shade. No one accuses meving giant dick, stop talking about my so during two eighteen, Wold's biggest claims to fame, where of course his constant tweets about hyster coffee shops and the fact that Donald Trump retweeted him I think twice, mostly because he would just say nice things about the economy. And but then on October seventeenth, a woman named Lorraine started emailing reporters around the US. She claimed to have worked with special counsel Robert Mueller when he was a lawyer in the nineteen seventies, and said that she had been approached by a guy named Jack Berkman, now Jack Berkman is another grifter. We don't have enough time to get into a heavy detail here, but prior to this, his main claim to fame was that he investigated the murder of d NC staffer seth Rich. He claimed to have found a man named Luke who said was an intelligence industry veteran who knew that the d E A and A t F had murdered seth Rich, presumably in order to help Hillary Clinton somehow some cards, even one type of ship. Yeah, some some bullshit. He held a big press conference to have Luke tell his story on the phone to the assembled world media, but Luke never called. So it's just a press conference with nstors. So you can see why reporters immediately suspected something fishy now that Berkman's name was involved. So weirdly enough, the Lorraine story didn't hold up at all to scrutiny. No one by that name worked at the firm with Mueller. The journalists checked into this, but Berkman did post on social media around that time asking for women with stories about being sexually harassed by Robert Mueller to come forward. And then, well, here's a quote from website The Cut ed krass Erstein that the Hill reporters said that when he was looking into the Lorraine claims, he received a threatening phone call from a man claiming to work for Serfire Intelligence. When krass Erstein reached out to Berkman, Berkman told him he's familiar with Surefire Intelligence and that they do a lot of good research and that it's run by Jacob wol So this is a little bit messy, but Surefire Intelligence is essentially a fake intelligence company that Jacob Bowl on its service, supposed to be operated by former Israeli Massad people, but is really just Jacob Bowl. So they started reaching out to a bunch of people saying that they basically had a an accuser of Robert Mueller that was going to come out and give speeches, and obviously a bunch of people started poking holes in this straight away. Oddly enough, fucking the krass and Stein brothers were some of the first people too, I guess because they got emails about this report that they came to his defense. No, no, no, no no. They were some of the first people to connect this stuff with Berkman to Surefire Intelligence and Jacob wol and then reported it to the FN They came to Robert defense saying yeah, yeah, yeah, Robert. So this is how the other scammers come into this. As they come to his defense, they reveal that Jacob Wol and Surefire Intelligence are connected to this emerging scheme, and then they report him to the FBI. Not the only people who reported Jacob Bowl to the FBI, but yeah, that's the fucking Crafts. They don't wanted to dig their nose in, They just yeah, they had to get involved. So now, as soon as Surefire Intelligence dropped into the news cycle, open source journalists began digging into its digital footprint. People from I think the Daily Beast called several of the phone numbers associated with the business, and it was Jacoble's mom who didn't seem to know anything about the scheme. O, god, his mom, pick your mom's phone number? Well, it was just he hadn't even intended to give a phone number, but like he had registered the business to try to do things to make it look legitimate, and he gave like family cell phones and stuff. Oh my god, Uh, well your self accountable, but your own cell phone? Yeah yeah. Eric Toler and editor for Belling Cat awful to be his mother yeah, it would be anyone related to him. Um Eric Toler, and editor at Belling Cat, looked into Sherefire's extensive website, which was posted shortly before the allegations came out, and he found a number of interesting things. So on its surface, the website looked pretty kind of legitimate, but it all sort of fell apart once you did any sort of digging into it. Their Tel Aviv station chief was a picture of Israeli supermodel bar Rafeli, Their investigator, Donald Treehorn was a stock photo model with gray scale applied to it. Their l A based investigator, Mark Teller was really Nick Hopper, a British model, and Simon Frick there's Zurich based financial crimes and stigator was a picture of Oscar winning actor Christoph Walsh. This just suriates me because like, you can get away with stuff if you're just a little smart. I'm glad you didn't get away with it, but like, okay, For example, when I was in high school, my ap English teacher hated me because my older sister was like he was she was like the star child, and then I had him and he was like, you're never going to be as good a sister. So I plagiarized every paper that she had ever written. I found on the computer and I just submitted it as my own the entire year, and he gave me a litwer grades than her, even though it's exact same paper. Um, but you see, I got away with it. And then on my senior speech, I cried because I made up a story but going blind. Um, but like I love that we're getting a little bit of your grifting in here. But oh yeah, I'm a fraud. But the point is, But the point is, if you want to fucking be smart, don't put a well known celebrities photo as supposed to be like a representative of like who you have behind like back in your fucking company? Are you kidding me? Like that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And fucking Jane Mayer of Dark Money found out he I forgot the name he had, but he put in the name of the person who supposedly ran his firm, and he came with a fake name. But the picture was just Jacob Wohl. But the picture reversed and darkened. Its just who did have his face? What dummy with like paint and thats paint is like running your fucking thing. It makes me furious. He clearly knew enough to know that if you alter a photo somewhat, it makes it harder to trace back on Google image search, so they reverse image search. So he did a couple of small changes, but he didn't do it well. And like the picture of Christoph Waltz was like clearly Christoph Waltz, Like if you've seen him in a movie, you couldn't pick him, Like, that's not Zerich based financial charts. Also, like there are lesser known people than bar Refaeli, daily Our DiCaprio, like or like like are you serious, Like that's the people that you someone who has gone away with a lot of stuff. Yeah. Another thing that other people noted is that like the investigator that Jacob pretend it to be to communicate with a number of journalists was Donald Treehorn, which is of course a reference to The Big Lebowski's Jackie Treehorn. Because I think wol thinks he's so smart that he's the only person who's watching one of the most popular films ever made. Yeah, he's just a dumb kid. He just a dumb kid. I'm really glad he was dumb enough to get caught though, very very glad. He kept saying surefire and stuff. I just imagine the site is like on angel Fire and GeoCities like my, my, my knowledge of his site is just like pure. Yeah. So, as all of this broke, another woman, professor Jennifer tub came forward and said that Berkman and Wool had also reached out to her to try and solicit stories of sexual harassment by Robert Mueller. She immediately sent the email they sent her to the Department of Justice, which again part of the investor FBI investigation that's now looking into Jacob Wol and hopefully on lead to some serious consequences for him. I'm not generally a big fan of prisons, but something bad should happen to Jacob Wowl. He should go somewhere. He should go somewhere not good. Yeah, yeah, something bad should happen to him. Kick out the rest of the non criminal marijuana people and bring him in. It could just be him and Paul Manafort in prison lying in the two fucking yeah. It throw the crass and stains in there to find that way. It's bipartisan. Yeah. Uh So, Jacob Bowl and Jack Berkman were not about to give up just because they've been caught committing crimes and trying to fraudulently came that an FBI special prosecutor was a sex criminal. They continued to double down on their scheme. In the immediate aftermath of everybody busting into the fact that Sheer Fire Intelligence was the fraud, Jacob Bowl updated his Twitter bio to brag head of the most well known opposition research firm in the world. That's not even technically true, because being mocked on Twitter for two days is not count as being well known. And then, because sometimes sometimes God is good, bol and Berkman held a press conference where they claimed good Yeah. And during this press conference, which they hyped up to the extent of their very tiny abilities, they claimed that they would present a credible accuser and her allegations against Bob Mueller. During the press conference, Wolan Berkman appeared with no accuser, claiming that she had backed out at the last minute, but wol insisted this was all totally real, and he also insisted and stated openly that he didn't normally believe women when they came forward with allegations of sexual assault, in order to claim that this one was extra credible, Like he just did everything the grossest way uh possible. I was waiting for you to be like and then came up Bara Fielli and Galcado. No, he did present a picture of his credible accuser with her face blurred out of him standing next to her that he in order to proof to people that she was real. Mom was like, why did you listen to this photo? Honey? It's worse than that. So Internet Sluce did find the original, unblurred version of the photo and realized it was a picture of Wool with his former girlfriend. Oh oh my god. Berkman and Wol handed out summaries of their evidence to the assembled press, presumably to help people write stories about what they were just sure was going to bust Robert Mueller down to size. But in the summaries they handed out, it turns out they misspelled the first name of the fake woman that they brought forward on multiple occasions. Also, Berkman's fly was down the entire press conference, Sherry right on top. After the disastrous press conference, a writer with Above the Law dot Com received an email from Surefire intelligence partner Donald Treehorn, who claimed that they had always wanted Professor Tobb to leak their email to the FBI quote, I want to clear something up. Miss tab was chosen with great care. We chose her precisely because we thought she might act the way she did by running to the special counsel. We knew she would not miss this opportunity to get her fifteen minutes of fame. Please note that we did not send emails to any other people requesting information on Mueller, only miss tb. We performed extensive research on her mindset, academic position, and political activism. It was a bit of a long shot and she was the only person we sent this email request to, but it worked. She did our bidding and more so than we could ever have expected her to. As of the acording to this episode, Jacob Wohl is still under investigation by the FBI. It's also banned from working in the finance industry. Well, okay, I do have something to contest. You said that the Crafts and Ship Brothers are the second worst. They've been doing this for their whole lifetime. They're the worst. Well, but they're the only a baby. But he's worse at it. He's already gotten caught to Yeah, Well that's why I'm saying he's worse than they are. He's like worse like as far as like like he got like an F, they got a I've got away with it. Well I don't. I wouldn't say they got an A because they got caught to Ashole, I would say he got an F minus and they got an F. He's the worst con man in America and they're the second worst conman collectively. Yeah, they're so awful. Eye when they come for each other, you know, you know what's about when they're like, he's a con man? When when when the second worst conman report the worst con man to the FBI. That's special. It's a special time so much that I just want to erase from my memory. Well I can't. It's gonna be on record forever. It will be grifters, grifters, So grifters. It's okay if you're a fraud, you know. I think Robert was right in the Beginnings episode, like a lot of people that have creative field you feel like a fraud a lot of the time, But just don't be a fucking grifter. Yeah, don't. Or if you're gonna be a grifter, be a good grifter. Be like or like, yeah, be like Robert Hood like, no, scientology is not a good form of I didn't say it was. It's an impressive grift, though it's not like it's not. It's a disturbing it's a disturbing, destructive and dangerous script. But at least it's not dumb. That is impressive, to say the least. But if you're going to grift, be a Robin Hood character and don't take advantage of the poor and the rich day rich and the poor day poor. No steal from rich people, is what you said. Yeah, if you're gonna steal, steal from the like how we're saying he didn't knock as many cars over as you want. As long as you're Tesla's exactly, as long as they're Tesla's or infinities, I would say Ben's, then this is the one I would go after. That's like old money, you know, that's old money. Tesla can be like new money, you know. Yeah, but Bens is the old money. Bends his old money and it rolls roy cattle acts. Yeah, cattle acts. I feel my grandma drove a really old one. Why don't you drove a Lincoln town car? I always get those outies. Maybe I don't know. I don't know. Maybe maybe I don't care what car you drive. Just don't hit them unless they're driven by someone that's a dick. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, hit people's cars if there are dicks. That is the official. Also, don't cheat, don't commit crimes. Don't cheat, don't commit crimes. Don't commit crimes unless they're's for English class that the teacher you hate. Alright, Sharine, you want to plug some plugable? Yeah, I'm Sharine and I'm the co host of Ethnically Ambiguous. It's a podcast on how stuff works or stuff. The network of this is also on um You can find a tune, Stitcher, Spotify where every Lonch podcast. We're everywhere. We're on Twitter Ethnically am A m B. We're on Instagram ethnically and big a m B I G. I am on Instagram at shiro hero s h e E r O h E r o and then on Twitter of sharene y s h e r e n w h y because why not. And this has been behind the Bastards. You can find us on the internet at behind the Bastards dot com with the sources and such will be for this episode. You can find uh on Twitter and Instagram at at Bastard Spot. You can find me on Twitter at I right, okay, and that's all of the things that I have to plug. So get on with your life, go do soh Nope, that's not all the things Sophie is making frantic gestures at me. You can buy merch at the r T Public store behind the Bastards T Public. We've got great shirts you can also get. You can get okay, I'm gonna help you out. You can get any design, any design as a shirt, amok, a poster, a toe, a tank top, a sweater, a hoodie, a baseball t uh, a phone case, a laptop case. The fucking options are endless. And even if you want to stone a little bit or support a little bit a sticker, couldn't you just fine? Yeah a sticker? Yeah, thank you, thank you. I love about h