This story contains adult content and language.

Listener discretion is advised.

Welcome to The Knife Off Record.

I'm patia Eton, I'm Hannah Smith, and today we have two crime stories, one from you, maybe one and a half from me.

Okay, interesting one and a half and then some res All right, well let's get right into it.

Yeah, So I'm really excited about what I have to talk about today.

This started when a listener named Nick emailed me.

He'd actually been a listener of The Opportunist years before and then a listener of The Knife, and he reached out and said that, you know, we had this question about this scam that his father was involved with, and he wanted to get more information about it and wanted to see if I could find anything.

Out about it, and you were the lady for the job.

I said, I don't know, I'll try.

So we ended up jumping on a video call together and I recorded a little bit of what he told me about what he knew about the situation, and so I'm just going to play a clip here for you.

Great.

What I remember is that my dad, he discovered this thing that he was involved with that was going to pay him off big time.

He explained that it was like this guy down in Amarillo named Tommy Buckley that had discovered some kind of like certificates, like treasury certificates worth like billions, maybe trillions of dollars, and that's somehow it was like illegal, and that Tommy Buckley had discovered this and he was going to sue the US Department of Treasury.

I know that he was sending me Buckley seventeen dollars US a month to receive a newsletter, and I remember my dad saying and also seeing in the newsletters the payoff is coming, payday is coming.

And my dad like fully bought into it, and then he got sick, like he passed away in two thousand and five.

But as he was getting sick, he was like, Nikki, remember if I die before this comes to fruition, you're the beneficiary.

You have to get in touch with Tommy and like you're going to get that, you're going to get to reap the rewards.

And I was like, okay, okay, Dad, Of course, nothing ever happened.

My dad died.

I then, like maybe a couple of years after he passed away, I looked up Tommy Buckley Amarillo, and I found his phone number and I called him and this like totally gruff.

Texan answered the phone, and then I was like, I told him who I was.

I told him who my dad was and that he had died, and he was like, oh, yeah, I remember Kenny was a good green Light member.

He was, oh, yeah, I was a good member.

And then I was like, well he told me that, like I was the beneficiary into treasury game or whatever.

And he's like, yeah, yeah, that's true.

By you'll need to send me the death certificate in the mail.

So ultimately Nick didn't send his dad's death certificate.

He was like, I was raising a kid.

My life was busy.

He also, in the back of his mind was like, I think this is a scam.

And then he looked it up a few years later, And this was after Tommy Lee Buckley had been indicted on fraud charges.

And so since that happened, it's been over like it's been fifteen years since Tommy Lee Buckley was indicted.

But his original call where he said this like gruff text and answers the phone that was prior to Tommy being indicted a few years past.

Then he looks back at it again and realizes he's been indicted.

Yeah, okay, got it.

So he's probably like glad that he never sent his dad's death certificate or any of his personal information to Tommy Lee Buckley.

But at this point in time, he is just curious what all was going on with this scam.

There's not a ton of information online about it.

There's like the Justice dot Gov indictment information that talks about the fraud, but it's pretty vague.

And he looked back to see if he had any of the old newsletters because I was really wanting to see those, obviously, but he couldn't find any.

So, you know, he was just like, I'd love to know more information about what he was doing if you can find anything.

So it's like, I don't know, I'll give it a try.

Did some googling, Like not a whole lot of information out there.

But then I was able to get court documents actually from the trial because he had a trial, multiple day trial, and I didn't get the whole trial, but I got three days.

And these were three days that Tommy Lee Buckley himself was on the stand.

Love, so when the defendant testifies, right, a gold mine.

Yeah, And so that was a lot of information and helpful to see, you know, his version of the story when he's talking with his own attorney and then when he's cross examined, how like, there's just so many holes in the story, right, right, But payday was coming, But payday was coming.

And interestingly, at the trial, some of his long standing subscribers to his newsletter were there as witnesses, and a lot of them still believed that payday was still coming, that these certificates were real, and that it was just a matter of time, like even then.

So it's a really, you know, it's interesting story about how this guy sort of runs this con and there's a lot of it that feels a little bit cult like to me, honestly.

So let's get into it.

So Tommy Lee Buckley is a West Texas guy.

I couldn't find where he grew up, but he went to three different universities, Arlington State College, Texas Tech, and Texas Christian University.

He didn't actually ended up graduating any of them, No, he like spent a little time at one, transferred and transferred, and then ended.

Up dropping out.

Okay.

Originally, in the trial he stated that that was because his mom was having financial difficulties, so we had to leave to help her.

In the cross examination, he denies that, and he says he dropped out because he was offered a job.

So I don't know, but what I'm gathering is that he didn't come from a lot of money.

He ends up in the Amarillo area.

He started his own business, a clothing store called Tom Buckley's Men's Shop around nineteen seventy, and he had that for about five years before it went out of business.

Then he works at another store, a clothing store, and eventually starts another chain of men's clothing stores with some business partners that last for a couple of years and then goes out of business.

By this time, it's nineteen eighty and he decides to change careers completely.

And in the eighties there's this huge oil.

Boom in West Texas.

Like all of a sudden, all of these huge companies, international companies are swarming West Texas and starting to drill.

And there's a lot of people who become like very wealthy suddenly because they own land or they own like oil rights, mineral rights to land that is like where there's a lot of oil discovered, Okay, And so he decides to get in on this, and he becomes a right of way agent, which is like someone who helps secure land rights for drilling.

Okay, and things are going well.

He is an independent contractor.

Then he goes he gets a full time job.

He's working in the oil industry.

He got married in nineteen seventy or seventy one to his first wife.

They had three kids, but they got divorced at some point, and then in nineteen ninety he remarries a woman named Phyllis who he'll be with until the end.

Okay, so you know he's working in oil and gas.

It's the mid eighties.

He meets this guy named Lou Driver also known as Lewis Driver, but they call them Alou.

So they've got Tommy Buckley and Lou Driver.

These are like names ripe for a con story, one hundred percent.

I'm like, this could be the best way.

No offense, no offense, great names.

So they partner up.

They start a company called International Gas Recovery.

I'm not going to get into what exactly they do.

It's in the oil and gas industry.

Yeah, copy that, moving on, moving on, not important.

But they end up traveling a lot.

They meet all different kinds of people working in this industry.

They meet people from all over the world.

But eventually this business is also kind of going under in like nineteen eighty nine, and part of that is that the price of oil has dropped, and so this big oil boom is like kind of coming to a little bit of a halt, but not a problem for Tommy Lee Buckley and Lou Driver, because they're about to get into a whole different business, endeavor business.

So this is where things start to get strained.

Basically, what Buckley says on the stand is that his partner, Lou Driver, was in Los Angeles on business and he met this guy named mister Edison Daminick.

Okay, he's an Indonesian lawyer, and somehow they meet, and what I think happens is that mister Daminick, as he's referred to, starts to hear about all the wealth in West Texas, all the new wealth from from this oil boom.

So he is like, I'm going to let you in on a little secret to Lou Driver, and he goes on to tell him that, you know, he has come into possession of financial instruments they're referred to as different things CDs, Treasury notes.

Certificates is the most common way that Buckley ends up referring to them.

I've heard of CDs, Yeah, Certificate of deposit CDs, which is sort of like a.

Never knew what it stood for action saying.

Yeah, I was like, write this down CD fixed interest rate savings account.

So I still don't really understand exactly what it is.

But it's like money.

It's like a certificate that represents money in a bank account, right, And so he's like, I have all of these certificates and some of them are worth billions of dollars, billions, some trillions, Like the amount listed on these certificates is astronomical.

And he says they were created by the US government but owned by foreign entities as well as rich influential people across the world.

And somehow he's come into contact with them or he has them.

But it's complicated.

You can't just walk into a bank and redeem them.

May I have one trillion dollars please?

Yeah, I'll just go ahead.

And in twenties, and she had twenties, and he's also from Indonesia.

He wants to redeem them in the US, and he's looking for some locals to help him, and he thinks that Lou Davis and Tommy Lee Buckley are just the people for that.

So you might be wonder and like how he got these certificates.

I am yeah, and you know it's vague.

Buckley says in court that some of them are Swiss, and the one in question that they talk about a lot is worth supposedly five hundred million dollars Swiss certificate, and he said he believed mister Daminick, who is from Indonesia and betrayed himself as highly connected, had received them from either the Indonesian government or some very wealthy Indonesian people, but for some reason they'd chosen mister Daminic to be entrusted with these certificates, and it was his job to go figure out how to redeem them.

I feel bad for anyone who actually has a Swiss bank account because like the context that I here Swiss bank account being used in, I'm like guilty, guilty on all charges run yeah, yeah, okay, So he is convincing Tommy and Lou that he's the real deal.

He's the real deal, okay, and who knows, maybe at this point they really believe him, you know, Yeah, maybe they believe it the whole time.

I have no idea, but they come up with a plan.

So this is what they do.

They go back to Amrello and they put an advertisement in the local paper for low interest business loans, and they mentioned the ad in the court transcript and right up top it has like a big, you know print, five hundred million dollars and they're looking for applicants who want to start a business locally, and they're going to give them very low interest loans each applicant, it said, can be granted as much as two point five million, and encourage people to apply, and there was like a number that they could call to get more information, and it also said something like limited.

Spots, you know, of course.

Yeah.

And so when people called, they were told, okay, there's going to be a meeting.

They called it the Executive Summary Meeting, and it's going to take place at Amarello and this is the date.

If you want to be invited to the meeting, it costs two hundred dollars to go.

So eighty eight people show up to this meeting and they write proposals.

And what the meeting turned out to be was, you know, they had these certificates on display at the meeting, and so it really turns into Tommy Lee Buckley mainly convincing the room selling them on this idea that these certificate its are real.

The US government legally will have to redeem them.

We have figured out this sort of loophole, and once we redeem these, that's where this low interest loan money is going to come from.

But really the loan is like a ruse, and everyone gets really excited about this idea.

Oh my gosh, we're going to be able to get super rich from this, and he gets people on board.

This is the very beginning of what he ends up calling green Light, which is his group, and he'll end up having some loyal followers who will continue to follow him and believe in this for twenty years after, because this is nineteen ninety.

So the people that are interested, he encourages them to give a five hundred dollars pledge and they also give their mailing addresses, and he's like, I'm going to keep you updated about this.

With this five hundred dollars, you're in on this, and that is an investment so that when we redeem these, you'll get money back.

What kind of businesses, do you know or was it just like small businesses West Texas.

He had a list of them that I didn't write down, but it was like oil and gas, agriculture, stuff like that.

Okay, yeah, five hundred dollars then small price to pay.

Yeah, if you think you're going to get two point five million, yeah for your business.

Right.

So what begins is that he then starts sending out newsletters monthly to everyone who's given him money.

And we're talking newsletters.

We're talking, you know, physical newsletters pre Internet.

You can't email.

So he's you know, writing these out, printing them, copying them, putting in envelopes, and mailing them out to people.

This would be the newsletter that Nick' dad would eventually Okay, Nick's dad was living in Canada at the time, so he was not at this meeting.

I think he joined a few years later, but he would eventually have people from all over who were part of this screenlight.

The newsletters were cryptic, and you know, the first one he sent out thanked everyone for their pledge and said things like you're going to receive a special compensation soon.

He also talked about how this was highly confidential but very quickly, the newsletters start to change the tone of them.

You know, the next month he's like, you know, if you haven't sent in your pledge yet, make sure to get it in.

I have gotten really busy.

I'm dedicating all of my time to this.

And we start to see this narrative develop in his newsletters where he's really creating a world and like a story about what is happening here.

And one of the things that pops up quickly is that there are like enemies who are trying to stop him from achieving this goal.

In the second or third newsletter, he says, within the last four days, I have found out who complained to the FBI and began the tremendous problems we have.

And he's like writing about how they're threatening the project.

But don't worry, he's not going to stop it anything.

He's dedicated.

That's wild because if I'm someone who was at that meeting and decides to give this pledge and I want this money, if I hear that the FBI knowing about it is a problem, I'm out.

I'm done.

You can keep my five hundred dollars.

I want no part of this.

You know, I don't have the newsletters.

But I think a big part of the appeal and the laura around this is that it's like the secret that the US government is keeping from people.

That the US government legally has to redeem these CDs, but they're not going to want to just give it to any old regular citizen.

They lost these or I don't know what happened, but somehow these certificates got out of control, and the US government is going to try to cover this.

Whole thing up.

Peski US government.

Yeah, typical.

And then of course he ends every newsletter with like the payouts coming soon.

We're so close.

I'm so excited, you know, thank you for being loyal to me.

He says, I won't forget those who stand by me.

I don't know that anyone actually reported to the FBI.

Probably not.

I think that he sort of was creating these scenarios where he was like under attack.

So then in December of nineteen ninety, which is like a few months after the meeting, he has a newsletter where he's saying, you know, my costs are more than expected.

I'm having to pay for phones, facts FedEx travel.

He says, I spent four two hundred dollars alone on plane tickets this month.

So now he's like, if you want to keep being part of this, you're gonna have to pay fifty dollars a month.

If you want to drop out, fine, I'll reimburse you all the money you've paid as soon as that first payment comes through with the CDs.

But if you want to keep in on this and this really important thing, now you've got to pay me every month.

And so people start paying him.

Dang.

Yeah.

So this continues to go on, and you know, he is doing things to try to supposedly redeem these certificates.

So we're thinking that this stage and whatever is happening, that he's a believer in the certificates.

He claims that he is, and he's calling people, he's trying to make meetings with people who he thinks might be able to help him with this, like bankers and stuff.

Okay, And then he's writing about all of his efforts in the newsletter to keep everyone updated with what he's doing to try to like get them their big payout.

He separates his green lighters, as they're called, into active and inactive.

You know, Nick remembered his dad saying that he would call a number to get updates sometimes, and that's true.

So Buckley used something called facts Mail that was faster than the mailed newsletter.

So if you wanted updates outside of the monthly newsletter, you called a number and then you would receive a fax automatically with updates on green Light.

So he was writing a lot of letters.

He was really, really he was busy writing letters.

Yeah, it was just like in publishing basically, and he like no longer is working at any other job.

This is his full time job.

He gives himself a salary, you know, like he's doing things like he travels to Las Vegas to meet with some people who are selling a hotel that's in bankruptcy, and I don't know what his plan was, but obviously that he doesn't buy it, but he you know, includes that in the newsletter.

And he flies to Mexico City to meet with someone who he thinks is going to help him redeem these certificates.

That doesn't pan out, Okay, of course he writes about it, and the question really becomes too are all of these meetings real that he's writing about?

Is he really flying in Mexico City?

I don't know, stories from far away places like maybe but maybe not maybeeah, a telltale sign of ACAN.

Well, I mean, this whole thing starts with the Indonesian government supposedly, which you know, our away places that you can't verify, especially in the nineties, but there is one meeting that's real.

Through his network, he ends up securing a meeting in Dallas at the Federal Reserve Bank for July of nineteen ninety one.

So he brings these certificates along with blu Driver.

He brings these certificates to the US Federal Reserve Bank and meets with people there and hands them over to them and is sort of like, we just want to, you know, confirm that these are legitimate.

Seems like a step that should have been taken a few steps ago, but okay, well yeah, and you know, we want you to use your resources to confirm these are legitimate.

And here's the thing.

One of the certificates that was supposedly created by the Federal Reserve Bank is listed to Saddam Hussein.

So he hands us over.

I mean, he has this meeting at the Federal Reserve and they're like, we'll take a look at them.

And so then you know, Tommy Lee Buckley and his people leave.

What he ends up writing about and how he tells the story is that this like gets them in trouble and that someone from the Federal Reserve calls him back and says these are real, but Saddam Hussein's assets are frozen in the US, so unfortunately we can't redeem this for you.

That's what he says.

Happens, okay, and.

Then he later says that you know, they're having lunch and they're being followed by the Secret Service and they get arrested.

What is true about this story is that they were arrested, and they were probably followed because they brought fake certificates, you know, fake US money into a bank and tried to cash them, and so they were followed and they were arrested and taken to Dallas County jail, and Buckley spent a week in jail.

He can't send any faxes.

What are the people going to think?

I know, Well, fortunately this is like you know, before the internet, so they're only getting monthly newsletters.

True, so mister Daminick is not in Dallas, he's not with them for this whole thing, but he is in Austin and he's apprehended and arrested.

And what authorities quickly realize is that this all traces back to mister Daminick, that he's like the one who started this, and so everyone else is able to get out of jail.

Mister Daminick is in prison for seventy days and he has charges against him for being like the mastermind of all of this.

But Tommy Lee Buckley is undeterred.

He goes to Austin and he visits mister Daminick in prison like five or six times, and according to him, mister Daminick is insistent, no, no, the certificates are real, like they just don't want us to have them, like they're real.

And does he believe this or not?

Man, I don't know, like you were just arrested.

Yeah, And somehow the Sadam Hussein of it all like that doesn't that doesn't get alarm go off.

Right, and it only adds to the narrative that the US government doesn't want you to know the truth, right, And so this only like fans the fire for him.

So he starts calling it Project Treasury Gate.

That's when this happens, and he decides he's going to sue the government for not redeeming these certificates, and he looks for a lawyer, takes some time to find a lawyer will take this case, as you can imagine.

Yeah, And the other thing he does is he writes a two hundred and fifty page book and makes a videotape of him talking about Treasury Gate and spinning his like story, and he starts selling that for one hundred dollars and people are buying it.

And one of the things he says in it is that he was he survived an assassination attempt.

Oh so at the lunch where he was arrested and followed, is that where the assassination attempt was supposed to be?

I think, so, yeah, wow, but pretty good marketing, you know, scheme.

You know.

You were like, does he believe that?

I don't know, you know.

As I was looking into this, I wondered like, is he just a victim of the scam?

Like did he meet mister Daminick and he was like totally convinced that this was real?

Yeah?

Or is he scamming people?

Hard to say, yeah, So I wondered like, maybe he just really believes this, yeah.

But then I kept reading and it just seems like impossible because when mister Daminick was arrested, they confiscated many of the certificates and they actually had an expert analyzed them to see if they were real.

A physical and microscopic examination was performed.

They were compared against United States Secret Service genuine specimen files like real certificates of deposit, as well as those of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and they were determined to be not genuine monetary certificates issued by the US government.

And it also said these documents were produced by a combination of poor quality offset printing, stamp pads and press or rub on letters and numbers.

Oh no, that's a bad day for Tommy.

Yeah, and he was there.

He was at the court hearing, so he heard this being said.

He heard this is not real.

Okay, So at this point it's like whether or not he believed it in the beginning.

He's continuing to collect money from people, and now he knows it's not real.

Yeah, this doesn't make it into the newsletter update.

No, I imagine it wouldn't.

And he continues to spend this story and collect money for like sixteen more years from people, and the certificates are wild.

They talk about them, you know, Saddam Hussein.

And there's also one in Fidel Castro's name, the former president of Uganda is one.

But the prosecuting attorney points out that there are spelling errors, like people's names are spelled wrong.

Oh no, there's one for seventy six trillion dollars payable to Gandhi dated nineteen fifty eight, even though Gandhi died in nineteen forty eight.

Oh my gosh.

Okay, So damn Nick who's at the center of all of this.

He's at this trial.

I don't know if he was at Tommy Lee Buckley's star.

I don't think so.

I think he like fled the US.

He was pretty much out of this whole scheme once he got arrested in Austin and they were like these aren't real we've caught you.

He's like gone, he's no longer.

Part of it.

He's yeah, okay, got it.

He was the emphasis of this.

But then once he leaves, Tommy Lee Buckley just like runs with this narrative and he's already created this whole following.

He has a brand, okay, and he's got a newsletter to keep up with he's got a newsletter, he's got monthly money coming in.

Does Phillis think of this?

Phyllis is a nurse, but eventually she quits her job because they're making so much money and she's helping him package the news and sent them out.

I don't know, does she know it's a scam?

I would have a lot of questions.

Yeah, so they're doing really well off this.

It's not just like they got some five hundred dollars pledges back in the nineteen eighties and they're riding the wave like this is really continuing to grow on a global scale.

I don't know where all his subscribers come from, probably mostly the US, maybe some Canada, maybe elsewhere.

Yeah, how did Nick stad hear about it?

Do you know he heard about it on the radio?

I'm pretty sure.

So at a certain point it stops becoming highly confidential and Tommy Lee Buckley starts sort of advertising this is what he's doing.

You know, he had made that videotape and written that sort of manifesto and is selling it for one hundred dollars, so he's making money off that.

He is interviewed on local radio shows and he's talking about this scheme and the government is lying to us, so he's getting people reaching out to him because of that.

And then every time that there is like getting arrested and then plan to now sue the US government.

That brings in money too, because it's like it's expensive to bring a lawsuit, but I think it is important.

And at the end of it, you all get paid.

You're going to get millions and millions of dollars.

Yeah, So what ends up happening is that he charges people seventeen dollars a month to be active green Light members, and if you stop paying the seventeen then you're inactive.

This means you'll still get some money because you've already paid him, but you're not going to get as much money.

He doesn't really specify what that means.

And you also don't get as many newsletters.

And what's seventeen dollars a month for that kind of hope?

You know, I mean it is kind of a lot for like the nineties and early two thousands.

True, Yeah, maybe, like what's thirty dollars a month?

Maybe?

Now I'm not really sure, right, Like I've canceled subscriptions over less.

Yeah, but yeah, you're right, it's like this dream.

Then you're in on something.

Okay, So if you are paying regularly, you're getting all of the newsletters an update, and some of them are like he's like, I have a big update coming.

I've just gotten contact with an important person and I'm about to send out a newsletter.

But some of it will be it will be sanitized as the words, and so he's like blocking out some of it, like you would like redacted, redacted.

But he's writing it, so he could have just left everything out to begin, or it'll be like I got this letter from so and so I'm going to redact it.

So he's creating this intrigue.

So if you're not an active member, you don't you don't get the newsletters.

But every once in a while he'll send out a newsletter to everyone and sort of tease what they're missing.

Okay, it's like they don't have the reality shows that we do right now, like this is exciting.

Yeah, this is like a monthly sort of mystery.

Totally.

That's like updating you on some secret conspiracy in the US government and you're getting updates and it's I mean, they are paying for like entertainment in some ways.

Right, but except that it's he's telling them that this is an investment.

Yikes.

So he does sue the US government.

He files a lawsuit in nineteen ninety three, includes one of the CDs that's worth two hundred and seventy eight billion dollars, and of course the lawsuits just completely dismissed.

In nineteen ninety four, a judge noted the note was fraudulent and that quote any reasonable person who investigated would have known that.

And it seems like the judge is like pretty upset that this lawsuit was ever brought, because the judge orders Buckley's attorney to pay for the other side attorney fees, which is ten thousand additional dollars.

Oops.

So this whole thing cost him forty thousand dollars and all that money is coming out of the money that the green Lighters are giving him their investment that he's supposedly taking care of.

Okay, So around two thousand and one, it's estimated that he has two thousand, seven hundred and thirty three members in one of his groups, and like another thousand in his sort of inactive group that are sometimes giving money.

It's a pretty big operation to send out to these newsletters.

He also has started to tell communications business called comm M Group, and it has capacity for eight hundred voicemail system.

It's like a voicemail system.

People pay twenty twenty five dollars a month to have a voicemail box.

Oh my gosh, imagine what you'd pay now not to.

Yeah, I know, to never have to listen to a voicemail ever again.

Yeah, oh my god, that's a million dollar idea.

It's a subscription that we need to start seriously.

And so his wife is working for him.

He has like a full time employee.

He's giving himself a salary, and he's sort of still trying to sell these certificates ish, even after a judge has said these are absolutely not real and any reasonable person would know that.

Yeah, in the beginning, he was like meeting with bankers, he was going to the Federal Reserve.

At this point, the people that he's meeting are not reputable people, Like he meets these brothers in Canada, who's where they can redeem these certificates and he ends up paying them seventy five thousand dollars but they can't.

He also says that he goes to Germany to meet someone and he ends up feeling like his life is threatened, so he pays that guy fifty thousand dollars and flees the country.

And it's sort of like, Okay, is he being scammed by other scammers at this point?

He seems like he's in this in between of scammer and victim.

Yeah, because just the fact that he is paying other people that kind of money makes me question like does he get it or is he just similarly to those people who are at the trial still believing, like is he just that sort of unwilling to let go of the dream that all this money is coming.

Yeah.

But in the meantime, I mean, I don't know how many subscriptions did you see that he had or how many members.

I would estimate he had like three thousand.

Because if he had three thousand members and they're paying seventeen dollars a month, that's fifty one thousand dollars a month, I mean at the time, and also probably and where they live, Like that's a lot of I mean, that's a lot of money period even right now, but like wow, in two thousand and one in West Texas, that's a ton of money.

Yeah, a ton of Money's a ton of money, now, don't get me wrong, But like then that's like unbelievable.

That's enough money to pay his salary, to pay a full time employee, and to live like a very nice life and save money, right, And so.

Yeah, I don't know.

Like when I hear about, okay, he paid these brothers seventy five thousand dollars to try to redeem these certificates, It's like, is that true?

Is that not true?

I don't know if there's paperwork to support that.

Did he just write that in his newsletter?

Am I getting scammed?

Because I was like thinking, yeah, he probably did pay them, but I don't know, did he Well, I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know.

I think he might have.

And the only reason I think that is because they do have on record that at one point he takes money out of one of his businesses, the telecommunication business, as well as money that has been given by the Green Lighters.

He takes two hundred thousand dollars and he invests it with this person named mister and Weia.

It's a real person.

I looked him up.

He was the president of the Worldwide Equity Corporation and apparently this guy is like promising him insane returns on his investment, Like this is going to turn into multiple millions of dollars red flag like a matter of like a year, right, And so he gives him this money and his money disappears and this guy disappears and he loses it.

He loses two hundred thousand dollars on this investment thing.

And when I look this up, this guy was running a scam and he was caught by the SEC and lost his job.

He was running like a huge scam.

It's like, hasn't Tommy been down this road before?

So Tommy is like, yeah, is he believing he was taking money out and investing it and trying to make more money off of this?

So this was like he was conned by this investor.

But it also seems like he was paying people to try to redeem these certificates.

And so is this a situation where he just had convinced himself it was real to not feel guilty about how he was just like conning all these people.

M M.

Yeah, I don't know.

Wow, that is nuts.

And I mean I don't know how old Nick's father was when he became a member, but I wonder if a lot of the people who started sending him money after he started advertising and it was no longer confidential, if they were elderly, if he was taking advantage of more vulnerable populations, obviously things were a lot different.

Then you couldn't get on in Google and find a whole Reddit thread about someone if they were up to no good.

But I mean, month after month of the same thing in different scenarios would be troublesome, for sure.

Nick did say that his dad lived alone for a long time, was very like lonely and sort of struggled with depression, and also was living in Canada but was born in the US, and that being part of this green Light group sort of gave him this feeling of connection and community and probably excitement every month when that newsletter came to read, like what other intrigue is happening?

Yeah, and so in some ways, like, well, maybe it was worth it for him to pay seventeen dollars a month.

That's so true.

It's like Facebook of the moment.

Yeah, yeah, totally.

So as far as like how much money he is making in trial, they look at his financials and in two thousand and three he bought a BMW for forty six thousand dollars.

He and his wife bought a house in Aberdeen, Texas, for four hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

In two thousand and four, he listed his assets as one point three million, and then by two thousand and seven it's listed as three point one million.

He's like a member of multiple country clubs, living a pretty fancy life in West Texas.

And another part that he always talks about is when he gets this big payout, he's going to give most of it to charity.

Not to the people who have been hanging on every word he has said for years and years and years.

That's what I wonder too.

My gosh, Yeah, he's going to give at least a trillion dollars to charity.

Well that's so kind of him.

Yeah, But when they looked at his financials, interestingly enough, he had hardly ever given any money to charity.

That's shocking.

Yeah.

By two thousand and seven, he still has the same story.

You know, he updates.

This is amazing and I have so much information to share with you.

I know who the good guys are, I know who the bad guys are.

And he's just like it's just around the corner, like maybe this is the last update, because maybe you're going to get paid next month.

You know, the story has evolved now.

At some point, he says, he sends the certificates to Europe with someone who's trusted to carry them, and they're with the UN and there's this big international plan at some point to cash them out and like totally get rid of all us debt.

It doesn't make any sense, but his lore has become bigger and grander.

And part of this, I think is that by two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, he's now on the internet okay, and he's now connecting with other people who are also sort of interested in similar topics.

He starts reading a lot about the Illuminati, and his newsletters sort of reflect this.

He has all this code and stuff that he starts putting in them.

He refers to this one person who's an insider kind of person, who he calls White Rosetta Stone WRS for short.

He writes in one letter, WRS has introduced me to two very very important but secretive individuals who are critical to our success.

But in court, when they ask him about this, he admits that WRS is just this woman named Carol that he met online and they like to chat about their theories.

That's actually Carol is fascinating to me.

Now does she know that she's WRS newsletters like this?

Was this like a citing for Carol?

Caroly, if you're listening, reach out, Yeah, Carol, I want to talk to you.

Wow.

At some point this catches the attention of the FBI and they start an investigation, and in twenty ten, he is indicted by a grand jury on thirty nine counts.

He's charged with mail fraud, frauds, and swindles related to his operation of a fraudulent investment scheme.

And he's sixty three years old at this point.

From Justice Dutgov, between two thousand and four and two thousand and eight, he deposited approximately two point eight million consisting of monthly checks and money orders into his account.

So that's only four of the twenty years, right.

You know, he was paying his wife's salary.

He had about eighteen hundred members at that time, they estimated, and that he misappropriated funds from this investment and was living in a lavish lifestyle.

So in twenty eleven, he goes to trial, and the first day he shows up and when he has to testisfy and he's like really sick.

He talks about how he has had this accident the year before and he had brain damage and so his memory is an good so we might not remember details.

And it's like maybe he did, but it's hard to believe someone who's been lying and scamming for so long.

I would actually say I don't believe him at all.

Yeah, he has a walker, he's doing the whole I'm like this weak old man thing.

But it doesn't end up mattering.

He is found guilty on twenty four counts of mail fraud.

The government is like seizing his assets and I don't honestly know what happened, like how this happened, but okay, so he was found guilty and then the next day it just says he was supposed to show up for a seizure of his assets, that there was a meeting and he did not show up.

Why wasn't he arrested when he found guilt?

I don't know.

But he had died by suicide.

Oh that's awful.

Yeah, so he never ended up, you know, going to jail.

He wasn't even sentenced yet, although the sentencing that he likely would have gotten would have been at least twenty years for all of this and a hefty fine like.

The rest of his life.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not one hundred percent sure, but it seemed like his wife was going to leave him as well, So it just sounded like he didn't have anything left.

And some money was recovered for the victims, but I don't think it was very significant.

And that's that.

You know, what shocks me about that story is that back when he takes these certificates into the bank and they're like, these aren't real, and then he's arrested.

I'm surprised that so much time passed between that point in his story and when the FBI catches on all these years later and then he's, you know, charged with fraud.

Yeah, it seems like it wouldn't have taken very much to stop him earlier.

But I knew no disrestract of that.

But I'm sure they're very busy, but like, right, but guy brings fraudulent certificates for a trillion dollars into the bank.

I know, maybe it's one of those things where it's like this is so outrageous we don't even need to concern ourselves or something.

I don't know, but yeah, it's weird.

And maybe they thought, well, you got to slap on the hand.

You will spend a night or a week in jail, I think, and so now you'll learn your lesson.

But then he's like advertising it on the radio.

He learned nothing.

Yeah, so a week in jail, Yeah, no problem.

Yeah, so I hope that answers next questions.

Mm hmm.

About Tommy Lee Buckley, yeah, I imagine Nick never received a payout never.

Yeah, that's disappointing, but I would have done the same thing if I was him, I would have been like, I wonder what that was because also at the time, you know, even when our parents are aging, it's like you don't want to make them feel silly for believing something totally and what can you say.

It's like if his dad was lonely and this was entertaining for him, not like it was okay, but maybe he got something out of it.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

So my story is in a different world, but similar in that money makes people go absolutely haywire.

It really does.

And I would love the opportunity to show everyone that they're different, but you're different.

Yeah, give me money.

Yeah, see how responsible I am.

Yeah.

This story begins in nineteen ninety nine and the small town of Grand Bay, Alabama, which has a population of less than four thousand people, and you know the surrounding land is Okay.

I feel like I looked up how to say this word because I know that there's different ways of pronouncing it.

Pecan orchards, pecan, pecan.

I say pecan, but I think probably in Alabama do they say peacan?

Well I don't.

I feel like it will come off as I'm not trying to say it wrong.

Pecan orchards and fields of watermelon.

So in March of ninety nine, a woman named Tanda Dickerson is waiting tables at the local waffle house and for her it's an ordinary day.

A regular diner comes in by the name of Edward Seaward, and he stopped by pretty frequently to get coffee in the morning.

And in one report I saw he was a long haul trucker and another one he owned a seafood restaurant.

Interesting couldn't pin it down, but apparently a thing that Edward did sometimes is instead of a cash tip, he would leave a lottery ticket, and so this lottery ticket was one that he had purchased in Florida.

That's pretty cute.

It's cute.

Yeah, I mean probably better to give cash.

Better to give cash, I think a lottery ticket in addition, great yeah, yeah.

And Tonta's a single mother at this point, so she has recently left an abusive relationship that was in nineteen ninety seven, so she's been on her own for two years.

She's working all the time to make ends meet.

She probably would have rather had the cash, and in a way, I'm actually going to tie back to that, but basically, there was a ten million dollar jackpot.

There were two winning tickets, and Tonda's tip was one of them.

Wow.

Yes, so that's wild.

It's wild.

Can you imagine?

And I would be so excited, Oh my gosh, I know, I don't know what i'd do first.

But so she goes home from the shift and wakes up, you know, a multi multi millionaire and this amount of money life changing for just about anybody.

For Tanda, it's no exception and she knows that, and she wants to take instead of the lump sum, her plan is the annual payments, so that she doesn't end up one of those people who wins the lottery and goes broke or has something terrible happen in her life.

She wants to be responsible about it.

She wants to help her family.

But when she arrives at the lottery office in Tallahassee, Florida to collect her winnings, she is denied.

And that is because four other weight staff at the waffle house filed a claim that said through the courts in Alabama that said, we had an agreement.

Now if any one of us won the lottery, we split it, and Tanda says, no, we didn't, and so that did they know she won.

I don't know if she told them or if it was just obvious, but she quit immediately.

And I would think in a little town, you gotta pretend like nothing has changed, nothing has changed.

Yeah, And I would just imagine word traveled really fast, like if you tell one person, they tell one person.

I mean, whoa, It's over.

So already by the time she tries to go collect this lawsuit or aplaint has been filed, and so before she even has a moment to breathe and like enjoy this new life, she's in a legal battle, and so Florida has to withhold this money until this is resolved.

Another person also files lawsuit which is Edward Seaward the person who wants it, and he says that he was owed a portion of it and she promised him a new truck if she won, and that lawsuit was later dismissed.

But like, that's unbelievable.

Yeah, immediately, these vultures are descending on this woman.

If you give someone a lottery ticket as a you gotta just be okay that if they win, it's theirs.

Yeah, I know.

I mean, you have a single mother here working to support her household alone, left an abusive relationship, and you're not giving her cash, you're giving her a lottery ticket.

So like you got to stand by that, yeah.

Wild.

So there was actually a jury trial in April, so things moved really quickly in this case, and the jury decided that Tanda did have this verbal agreement with her colleagues and she was ordered to pay them.

So this is upsetting, but the fight's not over yet.

They appeal the decision, and the Alabama Supreme Court actually ends up reversing the judgment against her in two thousand and one, because I'll read the and we'll probably have to cut this down.

But the agreement between the parties was nothing more than an attempt by each of the five lottery ticket holders to increase his or her odds of winning some portion of the Florida Lottery.

Stated differently, the agreement, according to the plaintiff's own evidence, was that Dickerson would pay the plaintiffs a sum of money upon the happening of an uncertain event over which the party had no control.

So basically, this whole supposed agreement was founded on a gambling consideration, which, in Alabama, the Supreme Court rules, is therefore void because you're all gambling.

So we're not going to honor this as a real agreement.

You can't make a legit agreement when you're gambling, Yeah, you can't.

And Tanda has remarried by this point, and she has her new husband, James, And so.

How long has passed since she won the Yeah, she.

Got the ticket March of nineteen ninety nine, winning ticket April of that year.

She's already in court.

And then I believe she remarried pretty quickly, but I couldn't find an exact date, But maybe she had already been dated the first simon no idea, But anyway, Tanda is then sued by the IRS, who says that she owned over a million in taxes for not reporting the money as a gift.

So she has to hire a lawyer again to fight the IRS.

And she's saying her lawyer is saying, well, look, she was tipped a lottery ticket that could have been worthless and statistically would have been worthless, and she was literally working for this money because waiters are paid in tips.

So Tanda is, by all accounts like a very responsible lottery winner.

She goes and gets another job.

She decides to take the annual payments instead of the lump sum.

She sets up a business account that she's able to pay family from in certain percentages.

And her ex husband or ex partner, I'm not sure if they're married, the abusive relationship that she left.

This guy's name is Stacy Martin.

He finds out that she's one, and he is angry.

Of course he wants in on it, of course, yeah, and so he knows he has no legal standing here.

We also know that he's abusive, and so what he do In February of two thousand and two, he kidnaps Tonda, and he waits outside her house and when she leaves, he forces her into his car and begins driving her to a rural area.

And his plan is, and he tells her this, to kill her and take the money.

How he planned to do that after killing her, I have no idea.

So Tanda, she already knows what this person is capable of because she was in a relationship with them.

Yeah, horrible situation.

Horrible.

So she was ready and she was carrying a gun.

Oh wow.

Yeah.

And so twenty minutes into this drive, I think it's Tanda's phone that's going off.

Somebody's phone is going off.

And she's able to convince him that she needs to answer it because I think it's her phone, because if she doesn't, people will start wondering where she is and that could be a problem for him.

So he's like, okay, fine, answer it.

Well, when she reaches for the phone, or when he reaches for the phone, she grabs a gun and he lunges at her and she fires and she hits him in the chest.

She then drives him to the hospital.

I mean this is someone that.

He's driving the car.

Yeah, she shoots him.

Yeah, and then she somehow drives him to the hospital to get emergency care for this gunshot wound.

Wild and she is not charged in relation to any of this because it was self defense.

But here's something that's really strange.

He wasn't charged either for kidnapping.

I couldn't a single charge on him that had been reported on or in the court system.

So if if I'm wrong, I would love to correct that record.

But like, I couldn't find anything on that.

That's so strange to me because it's like, if you can rule that someone shot someone in self defense, then surely you can rule that that person that the shot was doing something that warranted that.

Yeah.

I wonder if it was like she would have to press charges and she didn't, but no idea.

Yeah, that's wild wild.

And so at one point I had reached out to Tonda, and she she never got back.

I imagine she's just you know, she's probably told this story a lot, but you know, she's still working, she's living a quiet life.

I mean, I think by any stretch, she probably handled it as gracefully as the one could have considering what happened to her.

Yeah, And I think it was for people that came after the money that worked at the same diner.

Maybe it was five, but still to have all of those people saying one thing and you going up there and saying another must have been really scary.

Yeah, and you think these people are your maybe friends, your coworkers.

Yeah.

So did they ever get any of that money before it was reversed?

No, they didn't, so Tanda got to keep it.

She ended up having to pay the IRS I think around seven hundred thousand because of the way she opened her business account or something.

But I feel like they probaly would found some way to tacky.

Oh yeah, I'm going to say that's not on her.

So Tanda's story is obviously one of a kind because that is insane and she came out alive.

But it's actually not that uncommon of a story for a lottery winner to be like doomed.

It's common enough that there's several examples which I found, and one of them I'm going to talk about little more in detail.

But we have a guy named Jack Whitaker in West Virginia who won over three hundred million dollars and that so much money, so much money, And this was in two thousand and two.

A powerball jackpot.

He immediately hit with a series of lawsuits.

Close family members around him died, and four years later he's broke and says that he wished he had just torn up the ticket, Like that's how bad his life got.

I mean, that's just like a nightmare, nightmare.

Three hundred and fifteen million dollars.

How you even go broke from that so quickly is hard to even imagine.

It's spectacular.

Yeah, I have to imagine.

It's just like, if you have that kind of wealth, it probably feels very never ending.

Then people come out of the woodwork, and maybe you get in over your head with taxes.

I have no idea, but there was a woman named Evelyn Adams who won the lottery in New Jersey actually two years back to back, and I think she wented total back to back in two separate years.

And this is in the nineteen eighties.

It was around five and a half or six million dollars and she gambled it away.

Tricky, Yeah, I mean, gambling can be such a serious problem.

A guy named Jeffrey danp Pierre I think is how you say his last name in Illinois.

He was kidnapped and murdered by his sister in law and her boyfriend less than ten years after winning twenty million dollars, which happened in nineteen ninety six.

Terrible and Okay.

So there's another story I want to talk about a little bit, which is a man by the name of Abraham Shakespeare.

This is also a lot of story.

There's also a lot of story with just I mean, it's tragic actually.

So in two thousand and six he wins the lottery.

There's, similar to Tanda, an immediate dispute with the person who bought the tickets with him.

I guess, if I'm understanding it correctly, his coworker buys two tickets, but like, at his request, can you go in and buy two tickets?

Okay, here's a ticket.

And so one of the tickets ends up winning.

Ah.

Yeah, And then the coworker's like, wait, I want some of that money exactly, and so again has to go to court.

The jury rules in Shakespeare's favor that he did not steal from his coworker Michel, and so he wins in two thousand and six, the court rules in his favor two thousand and seven, and in two thousand and eight he hears from a woman named Dedie Moore, and she's like, I want to write a book about your story.

And Abraham was known to be generous and trusting, and here comes and she gets her claws into him, and she slowly sort of takes ownership of properties.

Their relationship is a bit murky as to how close they were getting, and she starts buying a lot of things in his name, putting things in her name the whole nine yards.

Is she writing a book?

No, she's not writing a book.

No, I don't know if she ever actually wrote anything.

But no, that wasn't It was all just a fraud.

Yeah.

So in two thousand and nine, Abraham Shakespeare goes missing and it comes out that Dedi Moore she murdered him, and she tried to get his friend in on it and pay them a certain amount of money to say they had recently seen him so that the missing person's case would go away.

And that person, I think, started cooperating with the police when they realized how much trouble they would be in for doing that, that they weren't accessory to a murder yeah, of their own friend.

And she was found guilty of murder in twenty twelve, sentenced to life in prison without parole, still wants to be paroled, and I think tries to appeal.

It's so sad.

What was this gentleman's name, Abraham Shakespeare and lakenns Florida.

Yeah, very cool name.

So sad.

It's so sad.

So if you win the lottery, don't tell anybody.

You hear so many stories about it causing so much pain and people losing money, and it just it doesn't seem like a good luck thing.

It seems like you really have to dodge that.

The bad luck is just coming at you.

Used up all your good luck to win the lottery, and then all you have left is bad luck.

Truly, It's like the only way to get out of that happy and alive is to just like lay low, tell no one unless you absolutely have to, and make sure you trust that person, and get a lawyer.

Yeah, you have to get a lawyer immediately.

Okay, So I understand.

I think if I were in tanda situation and I had four coworkers who were like, we agreed, I would sort of be like, no, we didn't.

If I were in the situation where I was buying a lottery ticket, with my coworker or friend every day, and we were like one or the other would go in and buy them.

I don't know, maybe part of me be like I should give them some money.

Yeah, And you know, I couldn't find exact examples, but I know that Abraham was known to be pretty generous, So I don't know that he didn't buy this person any gifts, or if maybe it got so contentious right away that he had to totally put the brakes on.

But one thing that his coworker said was that Shakespeare stole the lottery tickets out of his wallet.

I guess I left that out, but it wasn't just like a, well, I wouldn't have bought these, and then you know we should be splitting it.

I think it was like Abraham says, let's go buy these, here's the money, he buys them, he wins, yeah, and then Michael changes his story.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

Abraham Shakespeare is famously quoted as having told his brother, I'd have been better off broke.

I thought these people were my friends.

I realized, oh they want is money.

That's a sad part too.

You hear about people winning and then you have money, but then your friends or your family kind of betray you and then you're lonely and yeah, then you're a target for someone like Dedie to come into your life and scam you.

Yeah, murder.

I mean it would be so strange, like because it's not like if you get super rich, Okay, now all my friends are super rich and we can go do everything together.

It's like, no, you're like gonna have to figure that one out, yeah, or pay for everything or pay for everything, which for some people maybe they can handle it, other people I don't know.

Yeah, that's interesting.

Yeah, So what do you think the right amount of money to win in a lottery is to where I'd.

Be fine to win this one billion dollar power one billion?

Oh yeah, no, I'd be fine.

I'd I'd trust me, I'd give some of it away, swear I swear okay to me, Yeah to you.

Hand on I'm salary.

Well, whether right amount be, I feel like I could handle any amount, okay, universe, I could handle any.

Whin like five hundred thousand dollars.

It's not enough to put you on the map for any kind of fraud or scammers.

It's just sort of like, could it be a nice, great chunk of change.

Yeah, or even a million.

Even a million, I take a million.

I take it.

I don't need a billion any Yeah.

Well, those those are interesting stories.

Yeah.

Good luck to everyone out there who wins the lottery.

Seriously.

Okay, so recommendations.

Do you have a recommendation today?

I do have a recommendation.

I just on the way driving into the studio.

This morning finished an eight part series called The Lodge, which I'll just read the log line.

In a world obsessed with well being, would you put your health in the hands of a cult?

A cautionary tale about the consequences of going alternative when wellness becomes a matter of life and death.

And it's fascinating.

The host and writer, his name is Phil Vine, does a really great job.

There's a cult leader.

I guess she wouldn't call herself a cult leader, probably not.

Her name is Iping Wang, and she is really into energy healing and basically like, if you're sick, no matter what, you can heal yourself by being more in tune with energy.

And we're all made of energy.

It is fascinating how much trust people put in her.

Actually, there are multiple deaths that take place some believe because of this alternative healing that doesn't heal.

I think the podcast is a place to think about what is someone's own power over their decision making when it comes to their health, because we can say this person is incredibly influential and giving really dangerous medical advice.

Yeah, but if you are in adul you don't have to take that advice.

You can go seek conventional treatment that could save your life and is proven by science to have a better chance of that.

Or you could choose not to.

You could choose not to and that's you know, and it's her fault, you know, right.

So that's really an area that dives into.

But I thought it was a great series and there's lots of really incredible interviews, and I would say check it out.

Cool, the Lodge great, my recommendation.

I've been listening to Blink.

It's been on the charts.

It's really good.

It's from the Binge.

It's the story of this guy Jcandle, and he's interviewed a lot in the podcast.

The host meets him because he lives in her building and they end up becoming friends and he tells her the story of what's happened to him and she's like, how is this not a true grand podcast?

And so I actually haven't quite finished it yet, but it's so inter stain.

What they kind of tell you right up the top is that j Candle he contracted this super rare disease that is very very fatal and you lose your sort of muscle abilities.

It happens super quickly, so like als, it's not it's so much it's like more rare than that that I can't remember the name of it.

It comes from inhaling really toxic things.

That's one of the oh gosh, one of the causes.

And he was an addict.

He's very open and vulnerable about like what happened in his life and how he started getting into drugs and his like journey with addiction and it got really really bad and he ended up contracting this disease that they were basically like, you have six months to live maybe, oh, and what's going to happen because he started like not being able to use his hands and like things, and they were like, you're going to eventually not be able to do anything.

You're gonna slip into a coma and probably die.

And so this does how old is he at this?

He's I think twenty nine.

So this happens, and he eventually loses all ability to move his bodies, like completely paralyzed.

It's not even like he can communicate with his eyes.

And they think and believe that he's essentially brain dead.

He's not.

He's aware the entire time.

He can hear everything.

He is completely aware of what's going on around him.

It's like locked in syndrome ooh, nightmare.

Oh.

And eventually like he's the only person I guess what they say that has had this disease gotten to the stage four and has actually like lived and recovered.

But he hears a lot of things whenever he's locked in, and this is where the true crime comes in.

So he's sort of like this silent witness to some things.

And I don't know exactly, I haven't listened to the end, but it's just really interesting.

I think it's really well done.

Jay Candle the person who it's his story, and he's interviewed in it, and he's just like he's such a sweet person and he's so honest and vulnerable and very endearing, and it's just I can't stop listening to it.

Oh my gosh, I'm gonna listen on my drive home today.

Yeah that's great.

Yeah, love the bench.

Well that's our show today.

Thanks for listening to you next time.

If you have a story for us, we would love to hear it.

Our email is The Knife at exactlyrightmedia dot com, or you can follow us on Instagram at the Knife Podcast or a Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast.

This has been an Exactly Right production hosted and produced by me Hannah Smith.

And me payshia E.

Our producers are Tom Bryfogel and Alexis Samarosi.

This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfogel.

Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.

Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport Artwork five a andsa Lilac executive produced by Karen Kilgareff, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.