Latest / Surviving-ISH Podcast / When the FBI Raids Your Life: Inside a High-Stakes SEC Investigation with Dean Vagnozzi

Transcript

When the FBI Raids Your Life: Inside a High-Stakes SEC Investigation with Dean Vagnozzi · Surviving-ISH Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_03: All of my assets were frozen.
0:02
SPEAKER_03: I reach in my pocket, I get 420.
0:04
SPEAKER_03: So I had$80 in my pocket.
0:06
SPEAKER_03: The next day we wake up and I'm on the front page of the Philadelphia Inquir.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: Hey, what's up, guys?
0:25
SPEAKER_00: Our guest today, Dean.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being here.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: Do me a favor, Dean, give us a little introduction about yourself.
0:32
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Dean Vagnosi.
0:34
SPEAKER_03: I live about 20 miles west of Philadelphia, town called Collegeville, Pennsylvania.
0:39
SPEAKER_03: Lived there, grew up here my whole life.
0:42
SPEAKER_03: Spent almost 20 years in the financial services business.
0:46
SPEAKER_03: Married 33 years, four children in their 20s.
0:49
SPEAKER_03: I had a very I had a booming financial services business in the Philadelphia area.
0:55
SPEAKER_03: Right up until the SEC filed a lawsuit against me in 2020 that totally upended my life.
1:02
SPEAKER_03: And uh we'll get into that.
1:03
SPEAKER_03: But uh very, very uh traumatic circumstances in July 2020, which again I'll tell you obviously all about.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you know, I'll tell you, with some of the research I was doing, there was a lot that I just didn't understand because it I can't wrap my mind around a lot of the terminology of things or even that business side of things, just because I'm very I'm it's out of my element, right?
1:29
SPEAKER_00: And and what I really appreciated about when I was researching you and and listening to some of your book and some of the videos on on your YouTube, and I'll share all the links.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: But there were so many things that like I guess where I thought I'm trying to find the right way to put it.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: It's so easy for me to not realize the depths of things because there are so many other words that cloud it that I don't know the definitions to.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: And so, so it yeah.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: So when I but I just I can't wait to talk about it.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like I'm gonna learn so much.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, even just outside of just the traumatic experience.
2:16
SPEAKER_00: I want to learn maybe what other legal terms and shit.
2:22
SPEAKER_03: Is it is some of the financial lingo that you were learning about that that trip you up?
2:27
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
2:28
SPEAKER_03: Well, I I can break it down.
2:29
SPEAKER_03: I could break it down pretty, it's it's really not hard.
2:32
SPEAKER_03: Well, I don't think it's hard to understand.
2:34
SPEAKER_03: I can walk you through what happened when you just you know, you tell me you know when I can give you a detailed overview.
2:39
SPEAKER_03: But uh, you know, this is your show, I'm your guest.
2:42
SPEAKER_03: Tell me what you want to know and and when.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: No, absolutely, man.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: No, but this is our show, and we're and we're gonna we're gonna hit on all of that.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: But okay, so before we get started on that, can I tell you?
2:53
SPEAKER_00: And I'll start first, uh, if you don't mind, this what I'm surviving-ish.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: And I had a whole other one until about an hour before it was time to hit record, and I was like, G date, I have a whole new one now.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: So I am finally starting to learn that shortcuts just don't exist.
3:18
SPEAKER_03: Like, I they exist, they just might not be, they might be longer than short, right?
3:24
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: Like, I so when when I pull into my garage, my door's at my driver's side.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: So I don't want to walk all the way around to my passenger side to get my you know laptop bag to get my soda to grab my takeout, um, whatever it else is that I have to bring inside the house.
3:45
SPEAKER_00: I feel like I'm just going to get out of the car and then lean over the driver's seat to get it.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: And then my bag is going to catch the seatbelt or the gear shift or something.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm gonna grab that one pocket that has my business cards, my gum, my my tic-tacks, you know, my my Adderall, doctor prescribed, my whatever it is.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: And it's gonna be scattered all over the damn car.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: And so, what took me 25 minutes to get inside the house could have been just maybe 25 extra steps.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: When am I going to learn that shortcuts are not always the shortest cut?
4:25
SPEAKER_03: You want to go uh well, that could be the same thing with traffic.
4:28
SPEAKER_03: Sit in the traffic and you you go get off and exit, you're gonna take a different back route.
4:32
SPEAKER_03: You think you're gonna get there sooner, and you know, you either hit more traffic or it's longer than you thought.
4:36
SPEAKER_03: You might as well just sat in the traffic jam.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and nothing pisses me off more.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of traffic, and I've had this conversation before.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: I've even had a therapist on saying, Hey, I heard your story about road rage, it relates to your trauma.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: Can I come on and talk to you about it?
4:50
SPEAKER_00: But it never fails.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: It's like I finally get around that slow ass person, right?
4:55
SPEAKER_00: Two red lights away.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: I'm caught at the red light, and then they end up right beside me.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I could have gotten a speeding ticket from the mile I was in front of them that would have cost me a couple hundred dollars.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and they still end up beside me.
5:09
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, go figure.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: So, when am I going to accept my life?
5:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm close to midlife now.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: I'm 45.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: When am I going to accept that shortcuts and speeding is gonna get me nowhere but cost me more damn money and time?
5:27
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, I'm with you.
5:29
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, every time, yeah, every time you speed or go past somebody, you're always keeping an eye on like that.
5:34
SPEAKER_03: Wait, I passed that guy 10 minutes ago and he's slow and steady, and I'm uh I'm speeding up, slowing down.
5:40
SPEAKER_03: Anyway, it doesn't, you don't necessarily get there any faster.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: I know, and there has been a time or two, according to my insurance company, when I have been pulled over for a speeding ticket.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: And well, my insurance company didn't tell me this, but I remember a time or two when the person that I was speeding around and like flipping off for ruining my day and slowing me down, they fly past me smiling and waving, and it just cost me$200 and a point on my license.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm never gonna learn, am I?
6:10
SPEAKER_03: I haven't had a speedy ticket in 20, I think about 22 years.
6:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I don't hopefully not hope would.
6:16
SPEAKER_03: So who do you know?
6:18
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, I don't know.
6:19
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
6:19
SPEAKER_03: Lucky, I guess.
6:23
SPEAKER_03: So yeah, my uh my uh peeve this week is uh the weather up here in Philly, as we were talking about.
6:31
SPEAKER_03: We had this nor'easter offshore, and it's like we've had a we've had I don't know about how it's been down in Tennessee, but in the northeast, we've had a hot summer.
6:40
SPEAKER_03: Yeah it's hotter than normal.
6:42
SPEAKER_03: We've had a couple, we had four or five days that are 105.
6:45
SPEAKER_03: I don't ever remember that.
6:47
SPEAKER_03: But uh we've also had so much rain, so it's been hot as hell or raining.
6:51
SPEAKER_03: It's just thinking, like, you know, the summer's come to a close.
6:54
SPEAKER_03: This nor'easter's been parked off offshore off the uh in the Atlantic, and it's moved into the yes.
7:00
SPEAKER_03: We've had nothing but three days of rain right here.
7:03
SPEAKER_03: I'm like enough of the water.
7:04
SPEAKER_03: I'm just tired of it.
7:05
SPEAKER_03: Like, we need like three weeks of no rain up here, anyway.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: I know, but but it still comes with a whole like so it's kind of been the same here, and parts of my yard was turning brown, and that and so obviously we needed the rain, right?
7:21
SPEAKER_00: But I'm like, did we need this much rain?
7:23
SPEAKER_00: And does it have to rain while I'm driving?
7:25
SPEAKER_00: And can it not just rain at night when I'm in bed?
7:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, it's the first year I can remember.
7:30
SPEAKER_03: Uh our the you know, grass normally with that if you don't water it, normally you have to water the grass, or or if you don't, it gets it gets brown.
7:38
SPEAKER_03: We've had not we've had the greenest, I've had the greenest yard that I've ever had.
7:42
SPEAKER_03: I've never had to turn on any water.
7:44
SPEAKER_03: That's how much rain we have.
7:46
SPEAKER_03: We've had a lot of heat, but it's we've had so much rain and like enough already.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: We go in spurts, and I feel bad because of course, you know, I live in a neighborhood that has like HOA, and everyone always wants to come by and be like, oh my god, your yard, like your plants and your flower beds, they all look gorgeous.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: We can't keep anything alive.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: Everything is fake.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: All plants, all shrubbery, everything that I have alighting my house is fake.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's artificial.
8:16
SPEAKER_03: No, it's good, it's a good secret then.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: Nope, they don't know it, and they keep telling me they're like, How do you do this?
8:21
SPEAKER_00: Right, but now I feel bad, man, because they are talking about giving out a like a hundred dollar gift card for the like who's gonna vote on the prettiest chart, and everyone's like, Well, David's gonna win every time.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Because they're outside every day watering, and I'm like, mine's fake.
8:40
SPEAKER_03: It's all right, a little secret.
8:42
SPEAKER_03: They don't need to know.
8:42
SPEAKER_03: Let them think about it.
8:43
SPEAKER_03: But I'd feel bad taking the gift card.
8:45
SPEAKER_03: It's all right.
8:46
SPEAKER_03: What do they do you get uh subtracted points if it's fake?
8:50
SPEAKER_03: Is there any rules there?
8:51
SPEAKER_03: Right, fair enough.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: Fair enough.
8:54
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, but the the all those the that fake shrubbery costs a lot of more money, so you actually you know you paid a premium, so you know you should deserve some kind of gift card.
9:03
SPEAKER_03: You know what?
9:04
SPEAKER_00: You were 100% right, right?
9:06
SPEAKER_00: That stuff wasn't cheap, it's a lot more expensive.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: Because I felt bad for that 80-year-old lady that's next door in the 107-degree weather, wanting her plants.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: You know what?
9:15
SPEAKER_00: She should, and she probably has more money than I do.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: She can afford extra fake plants.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: She don't need the award, she don't need the award exactly.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: Oh gosh, okay, but yeah, yeah, weather's crazy, all that's crazy.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of crazy, your book.
9:33
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, let's get into the story.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: Let's get into the story and start wherever you would like.
9:40
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
9:41
SPEAKER_03: So, you know, you the fact that you've, you know, I might the so I was in the financial planning business.
9:46
SPEAKER_03: I was in the insurance business.
9:48
SPEAKER_03: I started in two, I made like a career change.
9:50
SPEAKER_03: I used to work for a big software company.
9:52
SPEAKER_03: So I'm 57 right now.
9:54
SPEAKER_03: So in the early 2000s, I was um I was in the insurance business.
10:00
SPEAKER_03: I got into the I got into the life insurance business.
10:03
SPEAKER_03: And one and but I was also, again, you know, for anybody's who may not remember my age, it was in the early 2000s, 2001, 2002, the stock market was getting beat up, wasn't at three years of of declines.
10:15
SPEAKER_03: But the real estate market around the country was doing very well.
10:19
SPEAKER_03: So I um I wanted to invest in real estate, and I started, I got some money that I had, I was uh I didn't have all my money in my 401k and stuff like that.
10:29
SPEAKER_03: I started moving money around.
10:30
SPEAKER_03: I started buying real estate and flipping houses, and I'm unhandy.
10:34
SPEAKER_03: I I don't know what a hammer looks like.
10:36
SPEAKER_03: I have to pay somebody to do everything.
10:38
SPEAKER_03: So I was buying, I was buying some some houses that needed the needed some TLC.
10:44
SPEAKER_03: I I found a local handyman called Builder that I was buying the houses inexpensive.
10:50
SPEAKER_03: He was we were refurbing the houses, we were flipping them, and I was making probably$20,000,$30,000 a house.
10:56
SPEAKER_03: I did that like uh I had 11 homes over about a two-year period.
11:01
SPEAKER_03: I just kept doing that and doing that.
11:02
SPEAKER_03: I started buying land and uh building homes again, just writing checks.
11:07
SPEAKER_03: I was hiring builders, I was taking the risk, but paying somebody to do everything.
11:11
SPEAKER_03: I was just doing very well in the real estate market.
11:14
SPEAKER_03: And I was um I was out on a golf course with a guy, and this is 2005, and he was a developer and he was looking for uh he needed a million dollars to go develop a piece of real estate, this shopping center I looked to develop.
11:27
SPEAKER_03: And I got a bunch of friends, I got like 30 friends together, friends and clients.
11:33
SPEAKER_03: We invested a million dollars into we formed a corporation, so we've all pulled our money.
11:38
SPEAKER_03: I hired this is very important.
11:39
SPEAKER_03: I hired a an attorney that used to work for the Securities and Exchange Commission.
11:44
SPEAKER_03: So anytime you raise money from people, you can't just now if so let's say you and me, or you, me, and one or two or three people, we're we're friends, we knew each other a long time, you can go pool money and go do multiple investments.
11:57
SPEAKER_03: But when you actively are raising money amongst different people, there's regulations you gotta follow state and federal uh regulations when it comes to raising money.
12:07
SPEAKER_03: Is that what you mean?
12:08
SPEAKER_00: Like, is it based on a dollar amount?
12:09
SPEAKER_00: Like if me, you and another person.
12:12
SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean, look, if you put in 10 bucks and if 10 people put in a hundred bucks, the SEC and the state, then no one's gonna give you a hard time.
12:19
SPEAKER_03: But when you're we were raised, I raised a million dollars amongst three people.
12:23
SPEAKER_03: There's guidelines you got to follow.
12:25
SPEAKER_03: And I hired this attorney, a friend of a friend, introduced me this guy in Philadelphia, big law firm, used to work for the SEC, and he put all the paperwork together.
12:33
SPEAKER_03: You've heard the term like prospectus when you make an investment in like a mutual fund, or there's a prospectus that gives it outlines all the risks, the risks, and the uh, you know, everything can go wrong is supposed to be listed in these investment funds.
12:46
SPEAKER_03: So we had to put something like that together.
12:48
SPEAKER_03: Uh, we raised this million dollars, we lent, we gave it to this builder.
12:52
SPEAKER_03: We could have lost all the money.
12:54
SPEAKER_03: Fast forward two years later, they sold, they developed the land, they had all the land, rented out, and they sold the property to another developer for 22 million.
13:06
SPEAKER_03: So our 1 million, we got 4 million back.
13:10
SPEAKER_03: So we were basically entitled to like 20% of the profits.
13:14
SPEAKER_03: So our million turned to 4 million, and the light bulb went off.
13:18
SPEAKER_03: Now, this is 2008 when this happens because we invested in 2005, took two and a half, almost three years.
13:22
SPEAKER_03: So, right in 2008, when the real estate there was another stock market crash in 2008, and this real estate deal we did blossomed to again, our million turned to four and a half million.
13:33
SPEAKER_03: The light bulb went off.
13:34
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, oh well, okay, there's there's it's one thing to make money individually, but you pool money together with other people, there's there's investments that we can make that individually we can't afford.
13:46
SPEAKER_03: Whereas, right?
13:47
SPEAKER_03: So you may have 50,000 to your name, there's only so much you could buy, whereas you're 50 and my 50, and maybe that guy's 50, and now all of a sudden we can get a smaller, you can get a smaller piece of something bigger that would ordinarily be out of your reach.
14:02
SPEAKER_03: So that's when that when we my business, when I when I we quadrupled our money on that one investment, the light bulb went off.
14:09
SPEAKER_03: So we started doing more investments with real estate.
14:12
SPEAKER_03: I started getting into this alternative investment focus.
14:17
SPEAKER_03: So I started doing real estate investments, working with this one securities attorney that I referenced.
14:23
SPEAKER_03: He put all the paperwork together, everybody signed off on it.
14:26
SPEAKER_03: The paperwork is supposed to outline all the risks and all the pros and cons of the investment.
14:31
SPEAKER_03: We started doing that.
14:32
SPEAKER_03: We started doing buying what was called life settlements.
14:35
SPEAKER_03: A life settlement is you may have heard of this.
14:37
SPEAKER_03: You ever see advertisements on TV?
14:39
SPEAKER_03: People, elderly people, they have life insurance policies that they bought 10, 20, 30 years earlier to protect their family.
14:46
SPEAKER_03: But now their kids are older, they don't need the insurance anymore.
14:50
SPEAKER_03: So it's they're allowed to sell it.
14:52
SPEAKER_03: So we were pooling money and we were buying life insurance policies from elderly people.
14:58
SPEAKER_03: Their win is they got a big chunk of money today, and their kids have to sign off on it.
15:04
SPEAKER_03: Our win is three, four, five, six, seven, eight years later, when they pass away, we get their death benefit.
15:11
SPEAKER_03: Now it seems a little creepy.
15:13
SPEAKER_03: You're making money when other people pass away, but you got to remember they're they initiated the transaction, they got top dollar today, and they could care less that we make money when they pass away, and their family has to sign up.
15:23
SPEAKER_03: So things like that, we're they were told life settlement.
15:26
SPEAKER_03: I took in 75 million to do that with about 300 people.
15:32
SPEAKER_03: So we're doing all these different uh investments, uh alternative investments, nothing to do with the stock market.
15:40
SPEAKER_03: And then in 2016, I met an individual who was running what was called a merchant cash advanced business, MCA.
15:49
SPEAKER_03: And merchant cash is a it's a legal business.
15:52
SPEAKER_03: They basically lend money to small businesses, they charge high interest rates for like a 90-day use of the money.
16:00
SPEAKER_03: So it's a 30%, 30, 35 percent rates.
16:04
SPEAKER_03: You people are like, well, why would you do that?
16:06
SPEAKER_03: Because the benefit for a let's say you're a let's just say the uh you're a um a roofer and um you have uh you know business in Florida and a hurricane comes in and blows off the roofs on all these people's homes, and you're the roofer, you got an opportunity to make a lot of money fixing roofs, but you need fifty thousand dollars of material to go fix all these roofs.
16:29
SPEAKER_03: Well, you don't have 30 days to wait on a bank to approve you.
16:33
SPEAKER_02: Right.
16:33
SPEAKER_03: This merchant cash business, they'll lend you that roofer the bit the money.
16:37
SPEAKER_03: Well, lend the here's your 50 grand, but we're gonna charge you 30 for 90 days.
16:41
SPEAKER_03: We're gonna give you 50, but you're gonna give us back 65 grand in the next 30 in the next 90 days.
16:48
SPEAKER_03: Well, you got the money, now you can go your money, now you can go make uh you know 100,000.
16:54
SPEAKER_03: So that's the idea behind it.
16:55
SPEAKER_03: So I met an individual, got to know him.
16:57
SPEAKER_03: He had a merchant cash business, was in business eight years.
17:01
SPEAKER_03: Long story short, I paid this attorney uh money to almost$20,000 to vet the business, make sure they're a legitimate company.
17:09
SPEAKER_03: They had like 75 employees, uh, been in business 2012.
17:14
SPEAKER_03: Uh, long story short, over the next four years, I raised 125 million.
17:24
SPEAKER_03: Like I was advertising all over Philadelphia Radio.
17:27
SPEAKER_03: Everybody, everybody, a lot of people in Philadelphia knew who I was because I was spending because my business had been so successful.
17:34
SPEAKER_03: I had 15 employees.
17:35
SPEAKER_03: We're bringing in, we had like 150, 200 million dollars from people here.
17:39
SPEAKER_03: That's a big, that's a nice size chunk of money coming in for all these alternatives.
17:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and um I was advertising, I was spending 10 grand a week on radio advertisement.
17:50
SPEAKER_03: People were coming in.
17:51
SPEAKER_03: I was getting, we were getting two, three new clients a day.
17:54
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it was just doing extremely well.
17:56
SPEAKER_03: So, this merchant cash business, they were paying our investors like 10 to 14 percent, getting interest checks every month.
18:03
SPEAKER_03: All their money came back after one year, everything was good, everybody was thrilled.
18:08
SPEAKER_03: In July 2020, in the midst of COVID, the uh a court-appointed receiver uh walked into my office with a court order and shut me down.
18:20
SPEAKER_03: And I was being sued by the SEC.
18:23
SPEAKER_03: And I had no idea, like what?
18:25
SPEAKER_03: What are you talking?
18:26
SPEAKER_03: They literally shut my business down that had been open for 17 years.
18:30
SPEAKER_03: Well, unbeknownst to me, as this is happening, as one individual sitting in front of me in my office, all my employees are looking like 15 employees like what do you mean?
18:38
SPEAKER_03: What do you mean, exit the building?
18:40
SPEAKER_03: Unbeknownst to me, they were told a hundred armed uh FBI agents were raiding the office of this company that I raised all this money for.
18:50
SPEAKER_03: Here they basically shut them down, and this company ultimately would be deemed a Ponzi scheme.
18:58
SPEAKER_03: So here I was raising money for this company in Philly that turned out I was the first investor.
19:04
SPEAKER_03: My dad was the second investor.
19:06
SPEAKER_03: Uh my aunts and uncles invested, my my my staff invested, but the SEC mistakenly assumed that I was part of this scam.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: Is it because you were one of like the the top companies under there?
19:23
SPEAKER_00: Well, they they this this company was legit found out to be a Ponzi scheme, right?
19:30
SPEAKER_00: But you had no clue.
19:31
SPEAKER_03: But where you were one of the top financial that they had there was about 40 people around the country raising money for these guys, but I was raising like I took in 125 million.
19:44
SPEAKER_03: The next closest person took in like 10 million, so I was 10, I brought in 10 times the money, but it's only because I was I was advertising so much.
19:55
SPEAKER_03: Um, and I had an inst I had a client base of 15 years that would be for so I had so many clients that I was able to introduce them to immediately.
20:04
SPEAKER_03: You know, all that's uh but point is is that a reason why the SEC jumped the gun when they sued me?
20:10
SPEAKER_03: Probably.
20:11
SPEAKER_03: They just assumed that I was working with these guys to to rip people off.
20:17
SPEAKER_03: I wasn't.
20:18
SPEAKER_03: What ended up happening?
20:20
SPEAKER_03: So they literally shut my office down.
20:21
SPEAKER_03: I had no idea it was going.
20:23
SPEAKER_03: That was July the 28th, it was a Tuesday.
20:26
SPEAKER_03: The very next day, so they literally kicked us out of the office, take your personal belongings, the locks will be changed.
20:33
SPEAKER_03: And I'm thinking, I'm thinking I'm gonna be able to resolve this in like a day or two.
20:36
SPEAKER_03: No idea like what about what was about to happen.
20:39
SPEAKER_03: We go home, we all left the office, and I'm I'm calling my attorneys, like, what is going on?
20:44
SPEAKER_03: Trying to get to the bottom of everything.
20:46
SPEAKER_03: The next morning, I woke up the realization that all of my assets were frozen.
20:52
SPEAKER_03: Everything I had$5.5 million in the bank and brokerage firms, all money in me and my wife's had a thriving business for 10-15 years prior, and all of our assets were frozen.
21:06
SPEAKER_03: I had$80.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: $80.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and I think that's what is so important to hit on is because when I hear people say all my assets were frozen, I immediately want to go to of course that sucks, but then you have you know this bank account over here that has nothing to do with.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: When we say when we say when you say all assets, every and who has you were probably lucky to have eight dollars cash.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: I can't say the last time I had eight dollars of cash on me.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: I have eight dollars in the bank.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that I'm broke, I'm saying I don't keep cash.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: If my shit got frozen right now, I'd be screwed.
21:48
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so my wife called me.
21:50
SPEAKER_03: She was the next morning, and we're still reeling for like you know, my business got shut down.
21:54
SPEAKER_03: I'm like trying to figure out what the hell like what's going on.
21:56
SPEAKER_03: And my wife had run, she had run out, she was at the grocery shop.
22:00
SPEAKER_03: Store or whatever, and she was trying to use her ATM at the grocery store and it wasn't working.
22:04
SPEAKER_03: And she called, she went to the bank and she tried to get money and they wouldn't give it to her.
22:08
SPEAKER_03: She calls me on the phone.
22:09
SPEAKER_03: She's like, Dean, they're not giving me money.
22:12
SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, and I instantly thought like the worst.
22:15
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, what do you mean?
22:16
SPEAKER_03: So I called the bank and they told me they had a they had a basically a court order not to freeze my assets.
22:23
SPEAKER_03: And I had money, frankly, and like my wife and I had money.
22:27
SPEAKER_03: We had like two bank accounts.
22:29
SPEAKER_03: We had a brokerage account, right?
22:31
SPEAKER_03: Where we had some investments, right?
22:32
SPEAKER_03: We had like three or four places to put our money.
22:35
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
22:35
SPEAKER_03: And I went right down the list.
22:37
SPEAKER_03: As soon as the bank said we they said they received a court order to freeze my assets.
22:42
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, I reached into my pocket, like instinct.
22:45
SPEAKER_03: I I know exactly where it was actually right in my kitchen.
22:48
SPEAKER_03: I reached in my pocket and I pull out my money clip and I'm like, I get like 420.
22:53
SPEAKER_03: So I had$80 in my pocket.
22:55
SPEAKER_03: And next thing I know, I called my brokerage account.
22:58
SPEAKER_03: Same thing.
22:58
SPEAKER_03: I took was on hold for like 10 minutes.
23:00
SPEAKER_03: I said, look, I want to make a withdrawal.
23:01
SPEAKER_03: They're like, No, you're at you're they basically, you know, it took them 10 minutes to tell me, but nope, my my account was frozen.
23:07
SPEAKER_03: I called, I called the three uh two other places I had money.
23:10
SPEAKER_03: All my assets were frozen.
23:12
SPEAKER_03: I had$80.
23:13
SPEAKER_03: So for anybody listening, what would you do if you literally had a dad a family of there's six of us, four kids, my wife and I, and all of a sudden I had no money, like nothing.
23:23
SPEAKER_03: The next day we wake up and I'm on the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
23:28
SPEAKER_03: The whole story was all over the newspapers.
23:31
SPEAKER_03: Uh basically the SEC shutting my business down, shutting, you know, this cut this merchant cash company, shut them down.
23:40
SPEAKER_03: And you know, I was um my life went from uh I was the hardest, I'm the hardest working, most honest person you can ever meet.
23:48
SPEAKER_03: There could be somebody just as honest, but nobody's more honest.
23:52
SPEAKER_03: I know you know, we we had 200 million, 250 million dollars came into my office through a thousand investors.
24:00
SPEAKER_03: There was never a penny misplaced.
24:01
SPEAKER_03: So so kind of fast forward, not a penny misplaced.
24:04
SPEAKER_03: What's that tell you?
24:05
SPEAKER_03: What kind of like if I was looking to rip people off?
24:07
SPEAKER_03: I I had all this money, I could have had access.
24:09
SPEAKER_03: So no money was misplaced.
24:11
SPEAKER_03: They they checked, but the the you know, I'll take a breath here for a second.
24:15
SPEAKER_03: But that's so so in 72 hours, I lost my business, I lost access to money, and I lost my reputation, the trifecta in in 72 hours.
24:25
SPEAKER_03: That's that was July 2020, and the hardships that followed over the next few years.
24:32
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I again I wrote a book on it.
24:34
SPEAKER_03: It's it's horrible.
24:35
SPEAKER_03: So it's tough to you know, you know, you want to compare to everybody else's hardships, but there's um yeah, it was it was a very dark few years.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's oh one 100%.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: Because so here's some of the thoughts that went through my mind as now and granted on a completely different spectrums, right?
24:56
SPEAKER_00: But I'm building a a small business.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: I have people that do things for me and involved with it.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: Um and and I've even been high in management of places where you have that pressure of if someone comes in and locks the doors, yeah, you you don't have one mortgage.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: You if you have 15 employees, you had 15 mortgages on top of yours, right?
25:23
SPEAKER_00: Like that's a lot of pressure.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: And so and then when you have the reputation of of being you know, a good person that does right within the community, and how easy it is for people, for some people's mind to be changed just from one news article.
25:44
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
25:44
SPEAKER_03: Oh, listen, I got I was abandoned by, you know, I have one of my best friends.
25:49
SPEAKER_03: I write about him in my book, uh, you know, by name.
25:51
SPEAKER_03: Uh, here's a guy that I had known, he was uh about 10 years older than me.
25:55
SPEAKER_03: And I had met him, you know, in the in the late 90s.
25:58
SPEAKER_03: I used to work with him, and and we talked two, three times a day.
26:01
SPEAKER_03: Two, three times a day for 10 years, for 10 years, for 22 years.
26:05
SPEAKER_03: We were, you know, he came to my kids' graduation parties, he came to my kids' sporting events, I would go to his family functions.
26:13
SPEAKER_03: We were tight.
26:14
SPEAKER_03: And when all this happened, two days later, he sends me a text, Dean, I wish you and your family the best, but I have to sit this one out.
26:23
SPEAKER_03: I was like, what?
26:25
SPEAKER_03: Don't you want to hear my side of it?
26:26
SPEAKER_03: Don't like give me a and I had I had people, I remember what you know, COVID was going on, right?
26:32
SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, you were everybody's wearing their masks, and and I didn't leave the house.
26:36
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it was it was a really dark time.
26:38
SPEAKER_03: I had some, I was struggling to get out of bed, but uh a handful of times that I would leave, I would I would put I would I wanted to wrap the mask around my head so no and just cut out my eye so people could, you know, I was so like humiliated.
26:51
SPEAKER_03: I remember being in the grocery store and another good friend of mine that that saw me coming, and I remember seeing him turn around and go the other way.
26:59
SPEAKER_03: And he saw me, we made eye contact, and he went another direction.
27:03
SPEAKER_03: And turns out I I kind of bumped into him five minutes later.
27:06
SPEAKER_03: And I don't mention his name, but I was like, yeah, yeah, he's like, Dean, it, you know, you're not painted too well in the newspaper.
27:13
SPEAKER_03: I said, Well, guess what?
27:14
SPEAKER_03: They're wrong, right?
27:15
SPEAKER_03: I said, you know, do you that's one thing I've learned.
27:17
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, there's always two sides of the story.
27:19
SPEAKER_03: Uh actually, there's three sides the your side, the other side, and and the right side, somewhere in between.
27:24
SPEAKER_03: My point is, it's I will never believe anything I read in the papers or or online.
27:31
SPEAKER_03: Because uh, you know, when this is all going through, uh, when I eventually retain an attorney, the first thing I tell you is shut up.
27:37
SPEAKER_03: Don't say a word.
27:38
SPEAKER_03: I know you want to go proclaim your innocence, but we're fighting the government here.
27:42
SPEAKER_03: Shut your mouth, don't say a word.
27:44
SPEAKER_03: And so my silence led to a lot of people close to me assuming that what they were reading was true.
27:51
SPEAKER_03: So that didn't help.
27:53
SPEAKER_03: It was uh yeah, it was it was dark.
27:55
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I gotta we were abandoned by a lot of people, but we also a lot of people stick by us, yeah.
28:03
SPEAKER_03: And you see that you see the good in people too.
28:06
SPEAKER_03: And um, my my appreciation for friends and family and people who, you know, just you know, you just uh my I'm a better friend than I ever was, yeah.
28:18
SPEAKER_03: Um because I know what it's like to appreciate people who stick by you through thick and thin.
28:24
SPEAKER_03: And um, you know, I'm determined to be that kind of person for somebody else, any kind of hardship.
28:29
SPEAKER_03: I reach out to people more than ever.
28:31
SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm a 10 times a better friend than I used to be.
28:33
SPEAKER_03: I hear that I know somebody's going through something, I pick up the phone, I call them, I send a text, I go visit a pop like because I I love that when people did it for me.
28:43
SPEAKER_03: You know, it's just I just want to return the favor now.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: You know, let me let me ask you this, Dean, if you don't mind.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, and just so you know, if I ever ask a question that you don't want to answer, it'll be fine.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: I'm good.
28:55
SPEAKER_00: Um so I want I want to I have two, but I want to start with this one.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: The people that turn their backs on you could were any of them ever able to say, you know, Dean, there was a time that you did this to me, and I thought maybe it was a little suspicious.
29:13
SPEAKER_00: I thought it was a little wrong, but I wasn't sure.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: And but now this kind of proves it.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: Was there ever anyone that was able to say, I believe it because of this situation that I experienced with you?
29:25
SPEAKER_03: No, no, mostly, you know, the the government was the government sued me.
29:29
SPEAKER_03: So you would think when the government sues you, they must be right.
29:32
SPEAKER_03: Well, in fairness, in fairness to the government, I have a whole podcast about that.
29:37
SPEAKER_03: So in fairness, eight people would go to jail in this case.
29:42
SPEAKER_03: Eight people went to prison.
29:44
SPEAKER_03: I didn't, right?
29:46
SPEAKER_03: Because eventually I was interviewed by everybody didn't need, you know, it wasn't just the SEC.
29:50
SPEAKER_03: Uh I met with the FBI.
29:52
SPEAKER_03: Uh I was a victim.
29:54
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: Well, the audits speak for themselves, right?
29:57
SPEAKER_03: The audits oh, yeah.
29:59
SPEAKER_00: They they speak for themselves.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
30:01
SPEAKER_03: When the government sues you, I guess the the the knee-jerk for people is uh, well, they must be right.
30:05
SPEAKER_03: No, they're not right.
30:06
SPEAKER_03: They but they they got it, they were right with most of the people involved, but they were wrong with me.
30:10
SPEAKER_03: I actually have a lawsuit filed right now against the the United States for how they handle my case.
30:15
SPEAKER_03: So I have a pending lawsuit against the government right now.
30:19
SPEAKER_03: Um, but it it's you know, it was no, no, I had a great relationship with my clients.
30:25
SPEAKER_03: Uh the ironic thing was, in fact, um I actually have it right over here on the wall, the corner.
30:31
SPEAKER_03: I have a um, I took out a two-page ad in the Philadelphia in choir uh about two weeks before this happened.
30:40
SPEAKER_03: Um, because what it was happening, you know, this is in this the COVID, you know, COVID was hitting and the stock market was very volatile.
30:49
SPEAKER_03: But everything that I had with my not just the one investment that you know went sideways, but everything else that I had, my clients didn't lose a penny because my investments weren't tied to Wall Street.
30:59
SPEAKER_03: And I had so many people sending me all these wonderful notes and emails.
31:03
SPEAKER_03: I took a two-page ad out and had an all and the two pages of the inquiry were all nothing but letters signed by clients.
31:12
SPEAKER_03: And uh sure enough, yes.
31:14
SPEAKER_03: So to answer your question, no, I had a great relationship with everybody, and that's what made it so difficult because uh it went from fantastic to I was accused, wrongfully accused, and a lot of people just believed what they heard, and in all fairness, a lot of people didn't.
31:32
SPEAKER_03: A lot of people you know stood by me.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: It was probably 50-50, so you know, but it just yeah, but when you are a victim of something and someone turns their back on you as a victim, that the their that it stings.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, I know I know our stories are different, but we were still victims of something, we're still traumatized of something.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: We when my story went very public, yeah, I thought, you know, I'm gonna have so many people rallying with me because who would whether you believe think gain is wrong or right, like who would think, oh yeah, that guy should be raped and killed?
32:16
SPEAKER_00: I received more death threats and more people looking to finish the job than I could ever imagine.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: So even though if I got 2,000, you know, nice, you know, we're praying for you, loving you through it, and only 50 death threats, those 50 death threats are gonna stand out, right?
32:39
SPEAKER_00: And but I was naive enough to think that how could anyone look at me and think, you know what, he deserved what he got, and we need to find him and finish the job.
32:51
SPEAKER_00: So how I'm relating that to you is uh or I guess maybe the question I'm asking that I think you've kind of already answered is were you just dumbfounded when you were finding people uh were not believing you when you No, actually, no, actually it wasn't.
33:07
SPEAKER_03: Uh I wasn't.
33:08
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you know, again, I never forget, you know, about um there's a preliminary hearing, and it's all done on Zoom.
33:16
SPEAKER_03: Again, COVID's going on.
33:17
SPEAKER_03: There was nothing so we had a we had a hearing.
33:19
SPEAKER_03: This is about two weeks after the government shut me down, and there was a chat room.
33:23
SPEAKER_03: So we're having a Zoom, just like you and I are right now, and you can see there's a chat room going on the side, and we had 500 investors, they were all logged in and listening in, and you could just see the chat room all just like all everybody, my name, every every fifth, because there's a bunch of people associated with this case.
33:44
SPEAKER_03: My name was being, I was just being hammered with comments.
33:49
SPEAKER_03: Oh, he was just a they were all everybody just bel everybody, a very large percentage of people just believed what they read, uh, or believed the uh the uh what was written in the lawsuits.
34:05
SPEAKER_03: And again, like I said to you, the longer time went by, the more I think it's cemented in with a lot of people because I wasn't able to respond.
34:16
SPEAKER_03: I wasn't able to send an email.
34:17
SPEAKER_03: They not just they didn't just shut me out of my office, they I had no access to people's emails.
34:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so they shut down our they shut down my servers.
34:26
SPEAKER_03: So I wouldn't I wasn't even able to send an email out to the investors.
34:30
SPEAKER_03: I wanted to send an email saying, hey, it's Dean, email me.
34:32
SPEAKER_03: You got any questions?
34:34
SPEAKER_03: You know, call my email.
34:35
SPEAKER_03: I couldn't even do that because I had no access to the to the people's information.
34:38
SPEAKER_00: Well, and I read it, I read on your website, I think it was your website.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: Either way, I read somewhere that it you had all the evidence.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, but it was all kept from you.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: You had no access to all the evidence.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: And one thing that I want to say before we move too far past this is the biggest demise in relationships, regardless of status, is gonna be money.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: And the fact that I've I've read about, I've interviewed people about, I've watched TV about um people that it a marriage that maybe isn't the healthiest, but they're not gonna divorce because of the children, they're not gonna divorce because she or he, one is making a lot of money and the other one is reaping the benefits of the of the money, whatever the case is.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: Um take the outsiders out of the equation because we we love when they're here for us, we'll be fine eventually if they're not.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: It's that immediate family.
35:41
SPEAKER_00: And from what I can tell, your wife and family never abandon you.
35:46
SPEAKER_01: Oh no.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: And if there was any kind of, for example, since I'm talking with you, right?
35:54
SPEAKER_00: If there was any kind of, you know, your wife saying, you know what, I never liked him anyways, now he has no money to provide.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: This is the best time to fucking go.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: Excuse my lady.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: This is the best time to go.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: And she did it.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: You've been married for 33 years, you have four children, and and you woke up with$80 in your pocket.
36:17
SPEAKER_00: That$80 would not touch the breakfast that your family is used to having with the lifestyle that you all have accumulated and and and lived for however long, right?
36:29
SPEAKER_00: And so for you to, and this might be fast-forwarding a little bit, but you went to delivering uh Uber Eats or DoorDash or whatever it was and FedEx.
36:38
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
36:38
SPEAKER_00: And then the the crazy part is no matter how many deliveries you make, it's never going to fully, it's never going to make the kind of salary that you and your family are accustomed to making uh to living off of, right?
36:53
SPEAKER_03: Well, I I you know I wanted to, I wanted to, uh, when they seized everything, you know, it was I didn't there was no game plan.
37:03
SPEAKER_03: There was no I didn't sit down and put a strategy to survive.
37:07
SPEAKER_03: Uh and I look back on it, you know, I talk about I'll talk about my book in a minute, but it was like an impulse.
37:13
SPEAKER_03: Uh the only thing that they could didn't take is my home.
37:17
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
37:17
SPEAKER_03: Right.
37:17
SPEAKER_03: So now I didn't know how I was gonna afford it because, you know, obviously uh your home, it costs money to stay and and utility bills, the the taxes, and and uh, you know, so so when they took everything.
37:28
SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna live within your means, right?
37:30
SPEAKER_00: And and that's the point that I'm trying to make, is it doesn't matter if you had 240 million dollars in the bank, a 400 million dollar house, what whatever, it would have been within your means.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: And uh, Doordash and FedEx is not gonna fit those means.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: That's not that that's not saying you're better than those jobs, it's just it just was not within your family's means, right?
37:50
SPEAKER_00: It's not a it's not a knock one.
37:52
SPEAKER_03: In fact, exactly.
37:53
SPEAKER_03: I have an appreciation.
37:54
SPEAKER_03: Oh, I bet you're a damn good tipper.
37:57
SPEAKER_03: I have an appreciation for those jobs now.
37:59
SPEAKER_03: But my point is, I was gonna do, I immediately we cut out everything.
38:03
SPEAKER_03: We, you know, our cable bill went from$400 a month to$80 a month.
38:07
SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, we got rid of subscriptions, uh, you know, with the the lawn service, no, the the maid service, no.
38:13
SPEAKER_03: Every we stripped our life down to, you know, I used to have a guy cut my grass.
38:18
SPEAKER_03: I was out there pushing the things that a lot of people do every day.
38:22
SPEAKER_03: So somebody listening to this may say, oh big dealer, cut us grass.
38:26
SPEAKER_03: I get that.
38:27
SPEAKER_03: My point is we were we just jettisoned every expense because I was determined not to lose this house because it wasn't it wasn't the house.
38:36
SPEAKER_03: It wasn't the house.
38:38
SPEAKER_03: The house is sticks, it's wood.
38:40
SPEAKER_03: What losing the house would have been like the the emotional finale to what you know, it would have been the white flag.
38:49
SPEAKER_03: I wasn't gonna let them destroy the last thing that that my family was holding on to.
38:54
SPEAKER_03: So I immediately went into emergency mode and and I did, I was we cut out expenses.
38:59
SPEAKER_03: I started four or five hours a day drive doing DoorDash, making twenty dollars an hour, delivering you know, chicken wings and making four dollar tips.
39:09
SPEAKER_03: I was making you know 75 to 100 a day just to pay the utility bills, and and I didn't think about it.
39:17
SPEAKER_03: I didn't care who how humiliated I was.
39:19
SPEAKER_03: I didn't tell anybody by the way, but I didn't tell this is stuff I kept to myself now.
39:23
SPEAKER_03: Now I'm proud of it.
39:25
SPEAKER_03: You know, I end up I end up uh yeah, we I was driving for FedEx.
39:29
SPEAKER_03: Uh there's a bunch of things we just did.
39:31
SPEAKER_03: My wife got a job at a bakery.
39:32
SPEAKER_03: Again, all things that some of your listeners might say, well, big deal.
39:36
SPEAKER_03: Uh, but I'm just saying I did everything I could to uh I I swallowed my pride, and uh failure was not an option.
39:46
SPEAKER_03: I had an urgency, uh, I had a burn the boat's mentality, meaning there was no plan B.
39:51
SPEAKER_03: Well, this doesn't work out.
39:52
SPEAKER_03: No, no, no.
39:53
SPEAKER_03: It's had to work out.
39:54
SPEAKER_03: Uh, I asked for some help for some friends.
39:57
SPEAKER_03: You know, I have a checklist that I outlined, like you the first, you know, what do you got to do to survive a crisis?
40:04
SPEAKER_03: And I, you know, it starts with me.
40:06
SPEAKER_03: It's first of all, it starts with believing that you can.
40:09
SPEAKER_03: I was not.
40:10
SPEAKER_03: My wife and I were unified.
40:12
SPEAKER_03: We weren't losing this house, and we were gonna do everything we can.
40:15
SPEAKER_03: The second thing we did, we had to, we had urgency.
40:17
SPEAKER_03: We're like, all right, what do we have to do?
40:19
SPEAKER_03: And we had didn't we didn't think about it.
40:21
SPEAKER_03: We cut costs immediately.
40:22
SPEAKER_03: We tried to make everything we can.
40:24
SPEAKER_03: You know, we just had the again, I referred to it as the burn the boats mentality.
40:28
SPEAKER_03: We had a uh you had the sacrifice.
40:31
SPEAKER_03: You can't achieve anything in life without sacrifice.
40:34
SPEAKER_03: You want to lose weight, you got to sacrifice chocolate.
40:37
SPEAKER_03: You want to, you know, what my point is no matter what you want to do, there's something you got to give up.
40:41
SPEAKER_03: And I gave up, you know, I watched my cars get repossessed.
40:45
SPEAKER_03: You know, you you name the the humiliation, and we paid that price because all that stuff was expenses, and we needed to take our expenses down to zero and and make what we could.
40:57
SPEAKER_03: And again, it's we just did what we had to do.
40:59
SPEAKER_03: And looking back on it now, I'm a better person because of it.
41:03
SPEAKER_03: And we can all, you know, we can all I think we can all achieve what we want to achieve.
41:08
SPEAKER_03: It's just we are we willing to pay the price to get it, and you know, that's that's huge.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: There's a question that gets asked me often, and I would love to ask you that question.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: So people ask me, would I change what happened to me?
41:25
SPEAKER_00: And when I first started getting that question, it would it took me a minute to process it and think about it.
41:32
SPEAKER_00: I would never ask for what happened to me.
41:35
SPEAKER_00: Um but I'm in a place now where I've learned so much and it's put me on a whole different life path that I really freaking enjoy.
41:46
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like I was able to take this horrific thing that happened to me and turn it into something beautiful and powerful.
41:56
SPEAKER_00: And and um so I want to ask you, I know you would never ask for what happened to you, but do you feel that it's put you on a whole different path that you would not have been on in a good way?
42:09
SPEAKER_00: That you maybe would not.
42:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean, did you think you had ever been an author of a book before?
42:14
SPEAKER_00: Like, what are your thoughts?
42:16
SPEAKER_03: Well, I I think the the question you're asking it, like there's positive that came of it.
42:20
SPEAKER_03: Don't get me wrong.
42:20
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I am what I definitely am.
42:23
SPEAKER_03: I am definitely a better friend, I am definitely a better husband, I am a better father, right?
42:30
SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm gonna say I'm better, meaning I'm just more attentive, I'm a better listener.
42:34
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, that kind of stuff.
42:35
SPEAKER_03: I because I like I referenced briefly, like there was nothing more comforting.
42:40
SPEAKER_03: We didn't leave my house.
42:41
SPEAKER_03: I it was COVID, COVID was going on, but even fast forward a year when COVID, you know, things covet started subsiding, and I just didn't I didn't go to church.
42:50
SPEAKER_03: I went to church.
42:51
SPEAKER_03: I'm one of those guys that goes to church every week.
42:54
SPEAKER_03: I'm a proud Catholic and I would read at my church.
42:57
SPEAKER_03: I would read every other Sunday, I would read in mass, and I had to give that up because I just thought that people like how can I stand it on an altar and and uh read uh scriptures thinking that everybody's looking at me like, oh, here's that guy running a Ponzi scheme.
43:14
SPEAKER_03: I didn't go to church for three years, and I look back on it and like horrible.
43:18
SPEAKER_03: Uh I still I didn't give up my faith, but I just couldn't show my face out in public like that, thinking what people were thinking of me.
43:25
SPEAKER_03: So answer your question, uh I'm a better father, I'm a better family person, I care more about others.
43:30
SPEAKER_03: When I was going through this this crisis, when people would come visit me, close people, I loved it.
43:36
SPEAKER_03: And I didn't need their advice.
43:38
SPEAKER_03: And the best, the best is when when someone's going through hardship, maybe you you know you can second this.
43:43
SPEAKER_03: Or I didn't need people coming over and and giving me suggestions.
43:48
SPEAKER_03: I just needed people to come over and listen to me and just listen.
43:51
SPEAKER_03: Just listen, not just listen, but listen attentively.
43:56
SPEAKER_03: You can tell when somebody's uh half listening and the People who were just I just wanted to talk and vent, and they were the friends that I value the most.
44:05
SPEAKER_03: So that's who I want to be to other people.
44:08
SPEAKER_03: But don't get me wrong, if I could turn back the clock and not go through some of that hardship, of course I would exactly 100%.
44:16
SPEAKER_00: But there's some benefit.
44:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, exactly.
44:19
SPEAKER_00: Because we we have our only choice is to not our only choice, but what I find the choice that I wanted to make was to take what happened to me and turn it into something beautiful and powerful, right?
44:35
SPEAKER_00: Which kind of actually this will be a little bit of a two-part.
44:38
SPEAKER_00: You said something that just really stuck to me.
44:41
SPEAKER_00: You said better husband, better father.
44:44
SPEAKER_00: And then at one point you said, well, not better, but then you proceeded without giving it a different prescription description descriptive word.
44:54
SPEAKER_00: And I really like that.
44:55
SPEAKER_00: And I appreciate that because one of the what I learned and what I did is like when I went through a horrific, um just a heartbreaking breakup.
45:05
SPEAKER_00: Um, it wasn't that they were gonna find someone better than that I was gonna find someone better than I was gonna find different, right?
45:13
SPEAKER_00: And so I started using the word different instead of better.
45:17
SPEAKER_00: And it just really helped me to think of things.
45:19
SPEAKER_00: Like I was the best I was at that point.
45:22
SPEAKER_00: Now I know how to be better.
45:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, you were the best you were at that point.
45:27
SPEAKER_00: Now you know how to be or not better, but now you know how to be different because I I just struggle with the word better.
45:33
SPEAKER_03: I well, listen, I I I'm okay with saying I I you know I I could see it's only it's only after going through this trauma that I could see that I wasn't as an attentive and as a friend that I am today.
45:50
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it doesn't know what at the time I thought I was, uh, but I am a bet my wife said it, I'm a better listener than I was because I appreciate it so much.
46:01
SPEAKER_03: Uh, I can't think I ever reached out to some.
46:03
SPEAKER_03: I now I almost like look, I go to funerals, I say this all the time.
46:08
SPEAKER_03: I'm embarrassed to say that as a this happened to me when I was 52.
46:13
SPEAKER_03: So the first 52 years of my life, when I would have somebody who pass away, somebody I knew, I hated going to funerals.
46:21
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I just who likes going home, right?
46:23
SPEAKER_03: I would like look for excuses not to go, but now because I didn't know what to say to people, and now like I just went to uh my neighbor around the corner.
46:32
SPEAKER_03: Uh mother passed away.
46:34
SPEAKER_03: We went to that funeral.
46:35
SPEAKER_03: You don't have to say anything, yeah, you don't have to say anything, you just gotta be like, I'm here, I'm here, and they know that, and that's it.
46:43
SPEAKER_03: You know, it's not necessarily saying anything, it's just being present, being present, and that's what when people are in need and have a hardship, that's the kind of a better person I am.
46:53
SPEAKER_03: And I I that doesn't mean I was bad before, I'm just better.
46:56
SPEAKER_03: That's all, you know.
46:58
SPEAKER_00: No, I I think you're 100% correct, and and I think that even when you were talking about how when people are just halfway listening, half-ass listening, right?
47:10
SPEAKER_00: I think it's because I know that I've been guilty of this.
47:12
SPEAKER_00: We all we we all have been.
47:14
SPEAKER_00: We all have been.
47:14
SPEAKER_00: Oh, sure.
47:15
SPEAKER_00: But but uh but when I think about those times that I haven't, it's because I'm thinking in my head, like, what am I supposed to say?
47:20
SPEAKER_00: How do I respond?
47:21
SPEAKER_00: What do they need to hear?
47:22
SPEAKER_00: And so, like when you go to a funeral, is like what when you think of when you're going to the the widow, what do you say?
47:29
SPEAKER_00: What do they need to hear?
47:30
SPEAKER_00: How do you touch them?
47:31
SPEAKER_00: Do you smile?
47:32
SPEAKER_00: And so, like, I just I mean, I can't speak for everyone, but I know that I personally get into my head to where I'm like, Well, I'm not gonna go because it's gonna be a disaster, and I'm gonna be the reason she cries or he cries when I don't have to say anything.
47:45
SPEAKER_00: I just have to go up and just touch their hand and and let them see that I'm there.
47:50
SPEAKER_00: That's all I need.
47:51
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna hear you want to talk and say it sincerely.
47:54
SPEAKER_03: That that's that's the that's what I've learned, you know.
47:56
SPEAKER_03: That's what I've learned.
47:58
SPEAKER_03: You know, I appreciated that with people, so I just want to be that that person.
48:01
SPEAKER_03: So I'm I'm better, I'm a better person that way.
48:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:05
SPEAKER_03: But there's you know, there's a lot of things that hopefully uh I wouldn't uh so I don't I wish I wish I could undo a lot of a lot of uh what happened, but what are you gonna do at that point, you know?
48:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
48:16
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so then that leads me to be the lion.
48:20
SPEAKER_00: So I want to ask you the book title.
48:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
48:27
SPEAKER_00: Very powerful.
48:28
SPEAKER_00: So what is a lion to you?
48:31
SPEAKER_00: Be a lion.
48:32
SPEAKER_00: It's my sister.
48:33
SPEAKER_03: My sister, in the I would be at my uh, you know, so there's a lot of so this was uh, you know, let's just say the first the first nine months, this was about this was an 18-month battle with the government.
48:47
SPEAKER_03: And uh again, they they had all my assets.
48:49
SPEAKER_03: I couldn't be I could barely defend myself.
48:51
SPEAKER_03: I had an attorney basically working for nothing.
48:53
SPEAKER_03: I had no access to all the proof.
48:55
SPEAKER_03: They literally held had access to my office.
48:57
SPEAKER_03: I had no access to the emails and documentation to to prove them wrong.
49:01
SPEAKER_03: Horrible.
49:02
SPEAKER_03: So be a lion is my sister would like lecture me.
49:06
SPEAKER_03: And uh, you know, she I'd be listening I'm a very emotional person.
49:10
SPEAKER_03: And um, and I I uh I'm the guy that cries, I'm the guy who watches a movie, and I'm I cry the slightest thing.
49:18
SPEAKER_03: I'm strong inside, but emotionally I share, I my yeah, like I said, I I cry over a little of those things.
49:24
SPEAKER_03: And uh and I would be fighting this.
49:27
SPEAKER_03: My sister would come over my house and she'd be like, Damn, let's go.
49:31
SPEAKER_03: You gotta be a lion, be a lion.
49:32
SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, you like you you are you gotta be strong for not just you, but for your family, your your kids, they need to see you, you know, strong.
49:42
SPEAKER_03: And I knew I was strong on the inside, but outside it was I was it was tough to keep it together.
49:48
SPEAKER_03: I just couldn't get out of bed.
49:49
SPEAKER_03: Uh, I had some really dark thoughts.
49:51
SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, how did this happen to me?
49:52
SPEAKER_03: So be a lion was my sister's basically uh rally cry to me that uh every time she was not far from me and she would visit me a lot.
50:02
SPEAKER_03: My sister and brother would visit me like two, three times a week because they're they're worried about me.
50:07
SPEAKER_03: And so be a lion, and and and as things went by, you know, it it became um, you know, a lion's job is not just to hunt, it's to protect the pride.
50:17
SPEAKER_03: And the pride is not his ego, the pride is a lion's family.
50:21
SPEAKER_03: Um, and that was my job.
50:23
SPEAKER_03: My job is to to lead my family through this crisis, and that's what um greeny grit.
50:30
SPEAKER_03: It was grit, it's a story of grit and perseverance and and uh not giving up.
50:35
SPEAKER_03: Uh so the book is about um the book is about the legal fight, what or de uh took place, but it's also about the hardships that we endured and how we got by it.
50:47
SPEAKER_03: And um, I think if anybody's battling something, uh not to say that I had the worst situation, or you know, to hate to compare what I went through with other hardships that people go through, but I want I wanted I want my story to be an inspiration to somebody.
51:02
SPEAKER_03: Like if I could survive what I got through and maybe can help somebody deal with what they're dealing with.
51:07
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, and it is and it should be and and will be.
51:11
SPEAKER_00: And I I've really enjoyed this conversation, and I and I love that you don't mind to also share your vulnerability because I think what is so important to also point out to people, and again, I can't speak for you, so I'm just assuming this, but when other people have access to all these files, all these assets, all these that this empire that you built, and now these strangers are able to have access to it, the viol, especially coming when you're an innocent per person, the violation that that has to feel, right?
51:46
SPEAKER_00: Like you hear people when they talk about their home being broken into and and certain drawers and their dressers go being gone through, and and how that just feels so violating.
51:56
SPEAKER_00: I can't imagine, especially when when you were a victim, right?
52:00
SPEAKER_00: Like you were you were not they didn't uncover anything, they didn't find where you were taking my 85-year-old grandmother's hard-earned money.
52:11
SPEAKER_00: They didn't find that you were a victim.
52:13
SPEAKER_00: This was the empire that you built for your family, this was your legacy, and someone else was able to come in and have their fingerprints all over it without your permission and your authority, and that is so violating.
52:25
SPEAKER_00: I can't imagine how it feels like that, you know.
52:30
SPEAKER_03: I couldn't go to trial, I had no money to go to trial, so I ended up I am signing what's called a no admit, no deny.
52:36
SPEAKER_03: I didn't deny wrongdoing, but I didn't admit to it because the alternative was go to trial with I could afford an attorney to go there.
52:43
SPEAKER_03: That's how they get you.
52:44
SPEAKER_03: It's a money well.
52:45
SPEAKER_03: The government they have deep they have unlimited resources, and and I didn't.
52:50
SPEAKER_03: So, you know, I I actually filed a lawsuit against the uh the law firm that handled my stuff.
52:56
SPEAKER_03: I paid my law firm to to handle and keep me compliant.
53:01
SPEAKER_03: And the SE the SEC did two things.
53:03
SPEAKER_03: They accused me of fraud.
53:04
SPEAKER_03: They're basically on one hand, they were saying that I was in essence working with this company that was end up being a Ponzi scheme, but they also accused me of handling all the paperwork wrong.
53:14
SPEAKER_03: I'm just cliff noting this.
53:16
SPEAKER_03: Sure.
53:16
SPEAKER_03: And I paid so obviously the fraud stuff, those they're they were wrong, 2000% wrong.
53:21
SPEAKER_03: The paperwork and how it was handled, and they're saying it didn't disclose things the right thing.
53:26
SPEAKER_03: Well, I paid this law firm to do all that.
53:27
SPEAKER_03: That's I paid in and they, in fact, they actually the SEC actually sued the attorney that I hired.
53:33
SPEAKER_03: After they sued me and they got all the facts, they then sued my attorney for basically giving me negligent uh advice, which was that that's all you need to hear.
53:43
SPEAKER_03: They they sued him.
53:44
SPEAKER_03: I then sued the law firm that he worked for.
53:47
SPEAKER_03: I got a large recovery, so I got a few bucks.
53:49
SPEAKER_03: And guess what?
53:50
SPEAKER_03: I did with that money.
53:50
SPEAKER_03: I took some of the money, and now I'm suing the SEC for what they did to me.
53:54
SPEAKER_03: Good for you.
53:55
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, keep your fingers crossed for me, will you please?
53:57
SPEAKER_03: Oh, I will.
53:58
SPEAKER_03: I can't wait to have you back.
53:59
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
54:00
SPEAKER_00: Listen, I have a hearing.
54:02
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, it's I'm taking on the government.
54:04
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it it's um it the government has a lot of immunity, they're allowed to get things wrong, but what they're not allowed to do is lie.
54:14
SPEAKER_03: And we feel they misled the judge.
54:16
SPEAKER_03: They didn't give all the judge all the because the judge, the when the judge uh the judge approved what's called a temporary restraining order.
54:24
SPEAKER_03: That is what is what froze my assets.
54:26
SPEAKER_03: So that's like the most extreme terrorists have that happen to them.
54:31
SPEAKER_03: They took the most extreme actions against me, and I feel and my my lawsuit outlines how badly they got it.
54:40
SPEAKER_03: And there was so much evidence at their disposal.
54:43
SPEAKER_03: Had they given me 10 minutes, I could have proven them wrong that I was not a a part of of any kind of uh activity to harm anybody.
54:51
SPEAKER_03: So anyway, that's that's a whole nother hour-long conversation.
54:54
SPEAKER_03: But uh, you know, I appreciate you having me on today.
54:57
SPEAKER_00: It's it's uh I've so appreciated this conversation.
55:01
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I know that in the beginning we talked about, you know, you checked out my story and and wondered if yours will be fitting, and absolutely it's fitting.
55:10
SPEAKER_00: And I I I I admire your strength, I admire your courage, I admire you standing up, you know, to the government.
55:20
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
55:21
SPEAKER_00: Like that that that forgive me, that takes some balls, right?
55:24
SPEAKER_00: Like it's so it can be so intimidating.
55:28
SPEAKER_03: Um, when you have the truth on your side, exactly what I find is the person who's telling the truth wants to keep talking, right?
55:35
SPEAKER_03: And I and I want to I want to scream my story from the rooftops.
55:38
SPEAKER_03: You can look it up.
55:39
SPEAKER_03: Uh you can look up the lawsuit I filed.
55:41
SPEAKER_03: It's uh it's um, you know, it'll play itself out the next few months, uh, see where it goes.
55:46
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, no, listen, it's a uh there's for anybody listening that's going through a battle.
55:52
SPEAKER_03: I know you went through something obviously extremely difficult.
55:55
SPEAKER_03: There were some dark days.
55:57
SPEAKER_03: I understood, I write about this in my book.
55:59
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I I couldn't get out of bed for a few months.
56:02
SPEAKER_03: I mean, literally, I would go to I'd go to bed at eight o'clock in the morning at night, and I would get wouldn't get out of bed until nine the next day.
56:08
SPEAKER_03: And and uh that's and then that's coming from a guy that uh doesn't know what it's like to sleep five hours.
56:15
SPEAKER_03: I was in bed 13, 14 hours with dark thoughts, and and uh point is I never thought I'd be able to get through it.
56:23
SPEAKER_03: And you know, whoever's listening has got to fight.
56:26
SPEAKER_03: Everybody's got some kind of battle, every single person has a battle, big or small, public or private.
56:32
SPEAKER_03: Everybody's got a fight, and uh, whatever fight people are dealing with, you know, the sun's gonna come up tomorrow, you'll get through it.
56:40
SPEAKER_03: You know, you just gotta have the failure is not an option mentality.
56:43
SPEAKER_03: You're gonna you're gonna get through it, and uh you got to do what you need to do to get through it because um I don't know, there's there's a lot of happy days ahead, and and um I'm proof of that.
56:54
SPEAKER_03: Um but you know, that's all I just want.
56:56
SPEAKER_03: I just want the my story.
56:57
SPEAKER_03: Anybody wants to get a hold of my book?
56:58
SPEAKER_03: It's deanvagnosi.com.
57:00
SPEAKER_03: And um I think it's uh you get an audio version of it also.
57:04
SPEAKER_03: It's I'm getting a lot of positive feedback on it.
57:07
SPEAKER_00: So uh oh yeah, yeah.
57:09
SPEAKER_00: And make sure that let's make sure that we because this episode will so my episodes come out on Thursdays, and I think yours is three weeks away.
57:22
SPEAKER_00: So that'll give us time to edit and stuff.
57:23
SPEAKER_00: So make sure I have all the links and everything, and of course I'll send you all the things.
57:27
SPEAKER_00: Um and we don't we don't have to go into to crazy detail with this because I think you just kind of just hit on it.
57:34
SPEAKER_00: But one of the things I had in my notes that so many people that I talk to um in these kind of conversations, they say that they now understand or they started to understand um suicide.
57:49
SPEAKER_00: And um I'm so glad that you didn't choose that route.
57:54
SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah, no, no, I wouldn't I wouldn't have done it.
57:57
SPEAKER_03: I would not have done that.
57:58
SPEAKER_03: I love my my my wife, my kids too much.
58:00
SPEAKER_03: However, I got a glimpse of why people do.
58:05
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
58:05
SPEAKER_03: When you you know, I and I I never would people like oh when people would say it hurts so much inside.
58:11
SPEAKER_03: What does that mean?
58:12
SPEAKER_03: Well, when you're going through something, I literally felt like an like a I don't know, like somebody was sitting on my chest, like a I just felt a weight that I could was tough to breathe.
58:23
SPEAKER_03: And uh again, I would never do that, but I I have an empathy for people that are going through something hard and they think they just think that I just couldn't like I I just you know, just didn't know how we were I was gonna get through this.
58:39
SPEAKER_03: Uh but you will, yeah.
58:41
SPEAKER_03: And uh if you know anybody that's going through something tough like that, you gotta intervene, you gotta talk to them and encourage them to again the support them, do whatever you gotta do.
58:50
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, I got a glimpse of what it white people do.
58:53
SPEAKER_03: Uh it's it's not a good feeling, anyway.
58:56
SPEAKER_00: So I always like to end on a fun little rapid fire question.
59:01
SPEAKER_00: So my question, I say fun.
59:04
SPEAKER_00: I think they're fun, even if they might be a little deep, who knows?
59:07
SPEAKER_00: But uh, my question to you before we end is are you thinking of uh book number two?
59:14
SPEAKER_00: And would it be something playing with the with the title that you already have as far as the lion, or would it be something completely different?
59:22
SPEAKER_03: Actually, to tell you the truth, I'm gonna uh this is when somebody reads if you read my book, uh you know how many people have read my book in in the past month and have texted me an email and said this is a documentary.
59:35
SPEAKER_03: So I'm actually we're gonna make a full court press to get this.
59:39
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna see if I could turn a negative into a positive.
59:42
SPEAKER_03: And this is a documentary, a 90-minute movie, I don't know what it is, but I'm gonna make every effort to get it to the the hands of some producer.
59:51
SPEAKER_03: So I'm not worried about I don't want that, and there's no there's no book two on this, but I would love to get it, you know, on film.
59:58
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to answer this because I know how this would hold up in court, so you don't have to say anything you can just keep in the back of your mind.
1:00:04
SPEAKER_00: But if in your documentary, if you ever want a moment where you're being interviewed by a podcaster and you want me to be that podcaster, I'm available.
1:00:11
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you got it.
1:00:15
SPEAKER_00: And you can't agree to it because I will take you to court.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_00: All right, you I've got I promise.
1:00:20
SPEAKER_03: We'll make sure there's a we'll make sure there's a scene in the documentary where I'm interviewed by somebody, it'll be you.
1:00:25
SPEAKER_00: Yes, okay, perfect.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_00: Dean, thank you so much.
1:00:28
SPEAKER_00: I want to share all the links.
1:00:30
SPEAKER_00: I will email you and let you know dates and all that.
1:00:32
SPEAKER_00: This has been a great conversation.
1:00:34
SPEAKER_00: Um, and seriously, it as things progress and change, if you think, you know what, this is something that we need to get on David's show and talk about, bring it on.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about it.
1:00:44
SPEAKER_03: When I defeat the SEC, we'll come back.
1:00:47
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we'll have another, yes.
1:00:49
SPEAKER_03: We'll I'll reach back out to you.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
1:00:52
SPEAKER_00: I'll be tracking you and watching you in the minute it happens.
1:00:54
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna email you and say, when are you coming on?
1:00:57
unknown: Excellent.
1:00:59
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.