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The Portuguese Bank Note Crisis: How One Lucky Forger Almost Destroyed A Nation's Economy · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: to Ridiculous History, and thank you so much for tuning in. Today.
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Speaker 1: We're talking a little bit about money, and money when
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Speaker 1: you think of it is a very strange, strange thing. Hi,
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Speaker 1: I'm ben, Hey, I'm remember that every time I got money,
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Speaker 1: I always bring up the r M song strange Currency's like,
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Speaker 1: I don't know why you mean to me when I
0:46
Speaker 1: called on the telephone, so I remember, um, but it's
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Speaker 1: called strange currency. And today it is definitely about some
0:53
Speaker 1: strange currency. Um. It's sort of about forgery, but not
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Speaker 1: really about forgery. It's about manipulating a monetary system to
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Speaker 1: one's own personal gain. It's about a very very slick huckster. Um.
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Speaker 1: I was pretty impressed by his work here. Uh. And
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Speaker 1: it's about the country of Portugal. Yeah, it's Uh. It
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Speaker 1: is indeed relating to all of those things I was.
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Speaker 1: I was quite excited as always to look up the
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Speaker 1: currency of foreign countries, and our super producer, Casey Pegram
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Speaker 1: can attest to this fact as well. Casey, wouldn't you say,
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Speaker 1: in general, US money is pretty boring compared to the
1:31
Speaker 1: currency of other countries. I think so but you know,
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Speaker 1: part of that could just be because we're used to it,
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Speaker 1: so if anything else seems kind of exotic. But yeah,
1:39
Speaker 1: I will agree that in general, foreign currencies didn't have
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Speaker 1: a little more going on. Yeah, they've got like some
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Speaker 1: some shiny hologrammatic parts, which may be a word I
1:50
Speaker 1: just made up. Uh, they've got a richer color palette,
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Speaker 1: you know, and sometimes they're different sizes depending on the amounts.
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Speaker 1: I believe hologrammatics is the language of telegrams. Oh okay,
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Speaker 1: that's what that is. Now I'm kidding. I think that
2:03
Speaker 1: that's you just coined a new a new term. Um.
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Speaker 1: But remember when um, the US mentor whatever you want
2:09
Speaker 1: to call it, the Federal Mint, the Federal Mint, the Reserve, whatever, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: re issued all of those kind of flashier, harder to
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Speaker 1: counterfeit notes, and everyone was like, these look just wrong.
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Speaker 1: But what they were doing was kind of trying to
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Speaker 1: make them a little bit more like European currency or
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Speaker 1: like currency from abroad. It was a little more colorful.
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Speaker 1: It had like the heads were bigger. There was things
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Speaker 1: about the design of them that were a little less drab.
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Speaker 1: The security stripped in there for everything over a five
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Speaker 1: dollar bill. Yeah, those those are pretty neat. Look, it
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Speaker 1: shouldn't surprise any of us to learn that there is
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Speaker 1: a huge industry dedicated to preventing counterfeit notes bank notes. However,
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Speaker 1: there is an equally huge industry dedicated to creating counterfeit
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Speaker 1: bank notes. And the war goes on and on tail
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Speaker 1: as old as time. Today's story is about something called
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Speaker 1: the Portuguese bank note crisis of nineteen five. Now, it's
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Speaker 1: no secret here on Ridiculous History we tend to I
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Speaker 1: don't know if I would say we we love a
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Speaker 1: good con but you have to respect a good hustle,
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Speaker 1: you know. Maybe maybe it's because we're far enough away
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Speaker 1: from this disaster that it hasn't directly affected us. But
3:22
Speaker 1: tell us what you think. Tell us if you think
3:25
Speaker 1: this is a clever plot, tell us if you think
3:28
Speaker 1: this guy got lucky. Who is this guy, you may ask,
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Speaker 1: We're so glad you asked. His name is Alvis dos
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Speaker 1: Race born Arto Virgilio Alvis Race in Lisbon in September.
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Speaker 1: Another thing we love on Ridiculous History is a just
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Speaker 1: the perfect sucker, and the story is full of them.
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Speaker 1: Um as a couple of players that we should have
3:51
Speaker 1: been aware of what Rays was doing, but they just
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Speaker 1: seemed to to not be for for just pure ignorance
3:58
Speaker 1: or laziness or whatever. We'll get to that. Uh. So
4:01
Speaker 1: Reyes was born, as you said, been eight in Portugal.
4:05
Speaker 1: He was born into a poor family, but he had moxie. Been.
4:09
Speaker 1: He had moxie. He had that entrepreneurial spirit because he
4:13
Speaker 1: was born on the lower financial side of things and
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Speaker 1: maybe didn't have as many opportunities. He had to make
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Speaker 1: his own opportunities in the form of things like passing
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Speaker 1: bad checks, um, little you know, money laundering schemes. And
4:27
Speaker 1: then he gradually worked his way up to the big show,
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Speaker 1: which we're going to get to uh in today's episode. UM.
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Speaker 1: He studied initially to be an engineer, UM, but decided
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Speaker 1: to give that up and instead he got married. And
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Speaker 1: then in nineteen sixteen, UM, he decided to go to
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Speaker 1: Angola rather than France, UM to serve in the army.
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Speaker 1: And this is my favorite part, this is where the
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Speaker 1: hustle really begins. We we already said he didn't graduate
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Speaker 1: from university, but he did have something with him that
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Speaker 1: he carried along to Angola that was a diploma, a
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Speaker 1: certified diploma that qualified him and like an ungodly absurd
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Speaker 1: amount of disciplines. Right, then that's right. Let's talk a
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Speaker 1: little bit about this degree that seems perhaps uh too
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Speaker 1: good to be true. And then well, and then I
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Speaker 1: want to jump back to his earliest known work in
5:20
Speaker 1: this regard. Okay, So he has this signed diploma from
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Speaker 1: the Polytechnic School of Engineering, Oxford University. He is, according
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Speaker 1: to this diploma, an expert in no less than twenty
5:31
Speaker 1: one subjects all the engineerings the cavalcade of engineerings, uh, geometry, physics, yeah, yeah,
5:39
Speaker 1: And this diploma was not just signed, but it was
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Speaker 1: notarized in CenTra. Now, who in Angola would dare to
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Speaker 1: question such an authentic document, especially when it was notarized
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Speaker 1: by someone in the Portuguese bureaucracy. This makes it a
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Speaker 1: confidence job, full disclosure. He made the diploma and this
6:03
Speaker 1: is actually not his first forgery. Earlier he had used
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Speaker 1: a bad check to buy part of a company somewhere
6:11
Speaker 1: in Portugal and make himself, if not independently wealthy, a
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Speaker 1: man of comfortable means. And in Angola he takes a
6:21
Speaker 1: job working on the railways. He has a desk clerk
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Speaker 1: basically because he did actually have some aptitude for engineering
6:32
Speaker 1: and he always wore overalls. He quickly became known as
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Speaker 1: the monkey engineer and people said, you know what, maybe
6:40
Speaker 1: he's a weird dude, but he makes the trains run
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Speaker 1: and using his duplicity is manipulative tactics. He soon became
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Speaker 1: the acting Chief Engineer of the Angola Railways again on
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Speaker 1: the basis of this entirely uh, this entirely fictitious diploma.
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Speaker 1: So fast forward to nineteen twenty two. At this point,
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Speaker 1: Reyes has been able to kind of parlay his political
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Speaker 1: standing within the Angola Railway Company into UM, a position
7:13
Speaker 1: of much more social prominence where he has a rented
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Speaker 1: home in Lisbon for his family, very stylish in a
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Speaker 1: good part of town. UM. He has a car dealership
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Speaker 1: that sells us cars, and he also has set up
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Speaker 1: a company that is in shipping and receiving goods to
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Speaker 1: and from Angola where he's made those important connections. But
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Speaker 1: he needs fresh capital for this company to keep it going,
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Speaker 1: doesn't he, And he finds another company that is ailing.
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Speaker 1: It's called the Royal trans African Railway Company of Angola
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Speaker 1: or Embaka, and RIAZ becomes incredibly interested in Embaka because
7:50
Speaker 1: he knows there's the equivalent of one thousand dollars in
7:53
Speaker 1: US currency laying around in the company accounts. And we
7:57
Speaker 1: have a quote from yas some help about this. He
8:01
Speaker 1: says in the Materialistic Will, there are neither honest men,
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Speaker 1: no rogues. There are only victims and the vanquished. So
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Speaker 1: I had no hesitation and gaining control of the company
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Speaker 1: and making use of this shareholders money. Spoken like a
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Speaker 1: true rogue ish um fiend. He's like a seinestro to me.
8:20
Speaker 1: If you're familiar with Green Lantern or one of the
8:24
Speaker 1: cartoon bad guy, the type who ties people to train tracks.
8:27
Speaker 1: He's got like a a picture. This is not true.
8:29
Speaker 1: You can find pictures of him. I picture him having
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Speaker 1: a really sharp, pointing mustache that he sort of curls
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Speaker 1: around with when he's doing evil. You know, totally exactly.
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Speaker 1: So we're a theme in the story that we keep
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Speaker 1: seeing is people not calling this guy on his bs
8:44
Speaker 1: or him presenting people side unseen with documents or checks
8:47
Speaker 1: or um anything like. You know, it goes all the
8:50
Speaker 1: way back to the college degree. It's him passing these
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Speaker 1: things off as being real and nobody bothering to do
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Speaker 1: their due diligence and checking behind it, and that continue
9:00
Speaker 1: is exactly he says. You know, I see Ambaca and
9:06
Speaker 1: he's twiddling his mustaches and so on, and he writes
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Speaker 1: some checks out of his New York bank. These checks
9:14
Speaker 1: take eight days to get across the pond, and he
9:18
Speaker 1: he kind of lies, does a little bit of showman
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Speaker 1: ship to wrangle a month's free credit, and he uses
9:24
Speaker 1: that free credit to buy control of Ambaca, making the
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Speaker 1: US checks good with Ambaca money, and then he also
9:32
Speaker 1: buys control of the South Angola Mining Company. At this
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Speaker 1: time he meets some future accomplices we Bandiera Uh, the
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Speaker 1: brother of the Portuguese ambassador to the Netherlands, and a
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Speaker 1: Dutch financier named Carol Morong, as well as a German
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Speaker 1: spy named Adolph Hinnies. I like this ocean is eleven vibe.
9:56
Speaker 1: It really does have have this vibe, and it's going
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Speaker 1: to get even even crazier. But he doesn't get away
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Speaker 1: with Ambaca, does he. No, he doesn't get away with Ambaca,
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Speaker 1: and he gets into prison um for embezzlement um. And
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Speaker 1: I believe that was thrown out and it was replaced
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Speaker 1: with just being fraud because of the check fraud, and
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Speaker 1: he's released on ten thou dollar us UH or the
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Speaker 1: equivalent US bail um. But then he is tried and
10:25
Speaker 1: he is sent to prison, where he hatches his master plan,
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Speaker 1: which is the subject of today's episode. Right. Oddly enough,
10:33
Speaker 1: he was a freeman pretty soon after Right. He only
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Speaker 1: served fifty four days. He maintained that there was a
10:39
Speaker 1: criminal conspiracy, that it was some equivalent of the deep
10:43
Speaker 1: state that put him down. And uh. While he was
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Speaker 1: in jail, he did not waste his time. He worked
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Speaker 1: on a scheme, a thing that today we call the
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Speaker 1: Portuguese bank note crisis. Here's how it happened. So Riez
10:59
Speaker 1: has a lot of time m in jail, you know
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Speaker 1: what I mean. He's picturing with like a little piece
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Speaker 1: of chalk or charcoal, putting a dash for every day
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Speaker 1: he's locked up. And while he's locked up, he says,
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Speaker 1: you know, I think there's something weird about the Bank
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Speaker 1: of Portugal, because the Bank of Portugal prints bank notes,
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Speaker 1: but they don't record their serial numbers very accurately, and
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Speaker 1: they don't tell the government about how many notes are
11:28
Speaker 1: or are not in circulation. And then he has another
11:31
Speaker 1: lightbulb moment. Just picture him turning on light bulbs just
11:35
Speaker 1: scattered around him in the air. So click, they don't
11:38
Speaker 1: you know, they're not that great with recording their serial numbers.
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Speaker 1: And then click they don't tell the government how much
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Speaker 1: money they make, and then click. Portugal hasn't been on
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Speaker 1: the gold standards since so the only real expense involved
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Speaker 1: in issuing these notes is the cost of printing them.
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Speaker 1: And then he starts to do a little math, right,
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Speaker 1: He does do a little math um and he comes
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Speaker 1: up with the following. He figures that, um, if you
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Speaker 1: issued about three dred million escudos, which is around three
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Speaker 1: million eighty nine pounds, that would not be enough to
12:19
Speaker 1: trigger any alarms, nor would it initially at least disrupt
12:23
Speaker 1: the flow of currency um in the state through the
12:27
Speaker 1: banking system. So that's how much he can get away with, right,
12:30
Speaker 1: and that is a huge amount of scratch cash or
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Speaker 1: pony bones. But my question is this, though, Ben, how
12:37
Speaker 1: is he directly benefit from this. He's getting the cash
12:39
Speaker 1: and he's splitting it with his UH co conspirators and
12:42
Speaker 1: then they're just spending it on goods and injecting it
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Speaker 1: back into the system like very quickly. Is not that
12:46
Speaker 1: the idea that seems to be the idea. We also
12:49
Speaker 1: have to remember that the only reason we're fortunate enough
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Speaker 1: to have this episode today is because the guy gets caught.
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Speaker 1: So spoiler alert, here's what he does. And to to
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Speaker 1: explain the admitted genius of this, we have to talk
13:07
Speaker 1: a little bit about how counterfeiting actually works. So, as
13:11
Speaker 1: we mentioned at the top of the show, there have
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Speaker 1: been tons and tons and tons of attempts to counterfeit
13:16
Speaker 1: various types of different currency. Sometimes it's been something as
13:21
Speaker 1: lazy as someone at home using photo shop and an
13:25
Speaker 1: inkjet printer also side note, don't do that. And then
13:29
Speaker 1: other times there have been state sponsored campaigns, like the
13:33
Speaker 1: North Korean supernotes, which were so good that when they
13:38
Speaker 1: were in circulation, US authorities said the best way to
13:41
Speaker 1: tell whether this was a fake North Korean one bill
13:46
Speaker 1: was that it was actually higher quality than the real
13:49
Speaker 1: US currency. Anyway, despite all these different attempts to counterfeit things,
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Speaker 1: they all have this one thing in common. We're taking
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Speaker 1: actual bank notes or currency and we're creating fake versions
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Speaker 1: of it. Here's where Rayas is brilliant. He says, you
14:09
Speaker 1: know what, why print fake bank notes when we could
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Speaker 1: print the real thing. He doesn't want to make counterfeit money, nol.
14:18
Speaker 1: He wants to illegally make real money. And that's the
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Speaker 1: mind blowing part about the story is like we think about,
14:24
Speaker 1: you know, when we're talking the top of the show
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Speaker 1: about the uh you know how our monetary system prints
14:31
Speaker 1: money under lock and key within a government facility. Right,
14:35
Speaker 1: This is not the case. They're essentially, you know, farming
14:38
Speaker 1: out the printing of their money to like a private
14:41
Speaker 1: company that you know, has the plates, the the engraved
14:45
Speaker 1: plates or whatever to make the currency, has the equipment,
14:48
Speaker 1: and just essentially operates on a not a freelance like
14:52
Speaker 1: on a contract basis. Right. So Rayas in typical Rayas
14:57
Speaker 1: form just goes to them with some forged document like saying, hey,
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Speaker 1: our government wants to invest in this company. Right, this
15:06
Speaker 1: is this Angola Railway company, right, and we need you
15:10
Speaker 1: to print this many scuto notes. Right. They go to
15:15
Speaker 1: the printer that already was working for the Bank of
15:18
Speaker 1: Portugal Waterlo and Sons and with exactly what you're describing,
15:24
Speaker 1: all these forged documents that have questionable notarization, he convinces
15:30
Speaker 1: them to print all these five hundred escudo notes. And
15:37
Speaker 1: here's what's crazy about it. It worked. By the time
15:41
Speaker 1: this operation was done, there were more bogus reprints of
15:47
Speaker 1: five escudo notes, then there were officially issued as scudo notes.
15:53
Speaker 1: And it's hard to imagine this working now, right because,
15:56
Speaker 1: as you said, I like that phrase you used, under
15:58
Speaker 1: lock and key. That's a most currencies printed these days.
16:02
Speaker 1: But yes, took it to the maximum, right to the
16:06
Speaker 1: limit and beyond. People started asking questions pretty soon. The
16:11
Speaker 1: printers first said, well, it's kind of weird that we're
16:15
Speaker 1: printing duplicate serial numbers. But Ray has dismissed these issues
16:21
Speaker 1: because he said the notes would receive an overprint once
16:26
Speaker 1: they arrived in Lisbon, but before they were sent to Angola.
16:30
Speaker 1: And I don't know what that means. That sounds made up, Ben,
16:33
Speaker 1: That sounds like something he just kind of came up
16:35
Speaker 1: with on the fly exactly. Um, because there's a really
16:39
Speaker 1: great article on p mg notes dot com about the
16:44
Speaker 1: Portuguese banknote crisis and it characterizes it as such. So yeah,
16:49
Speaker 1: the folks at Waterlow were like, hey, what gives We're
16:52
Speaker 1: gonna make a call to to the government and guess
16:54
Speaker 1: who their contact was in the government. It was rayas
16:58
Speaker 1: you know, like it's literally like the whole thing where
17:00
Speaker 1: you create an alibi by giving the detective a phone
17:05
Speaker 1: number to one of your associates and then does a
17:07
Speaker 1: voice and says, oh, yeah, totally he was he was there.
17:09
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the classic con job material. And
17:13
Speaker 1: this guy keeps not getting called on it, not getting
17:16
Speaker 1: called on it, over and over and over again, and
17:18
Speaker 1: so he ends up getting two hundred thousand, five hundred
17:22
Speaker 1: a scudo notes printed, which is somewhere in the neighborhood
17:26
Speaker 1: of a hundred million escudos. Uh, and was about eighty
17:31
Speaker 1: point eight eight percent of the entire Portuguese g d P. Yeah,
17:36
Speaker 1: this is big money. Now, he wasn't a complete criminal
17:41
Speaker 1: mastermind because he did get lucky. We later learned that
17:45
Speaker 1: the printers sent a letter to the Bank of England
17:49
Speaker 1: raising concerns about this, and somehow it got lost in
17:52
Speaker 1: the mail between England and Portugal. So the first hints
17:57
Speaker 1: that not all is on the up and up actually
18:00
Speaker 1: occur not when Reez prints the money, but when he
18:04
Speaker 1: attempts to launder the cash. So he and his associates
18:09
Speaker 1: make a bunch of small real estate and commercial investments,
18:14
Speaker 1: you know, and then they open a bank, the Banco
18:17
Speaker 1: da Angola in Metropol, to help them launder this not
18:22
Speaker 1: quite counterfeit money, and the bank at first people love
18:26
Speaker 1: it because they can issue you low interest loans with
18:30
Speaker 1: little or no deposit or security. There. They'll just give
18:33
Speaker 1: you money, which is pretty strange when you think about that. Well,
18:37
Speaker 1: here's what he wanted to do. He wanted to use
18:40
Speaker 1: the currency to buy gold backed foreign currency and then
18:45
Speaker 1: trade in the five hundred of scudo bills for smaller
18:48
Speaker 1: denominations and then use that to buy tangible assets land, jewelry,
18:52
Speaker 1: clothing businesses throughout Portugal and Angola. But the problem is
18:58
Speaker 1: he was messing with so much money. This was equal
19:01
Speaker 1: to almost a full percent of Portugal's GDP at the
19:05
Speaker 1: time point eight eight percent, And if we want to
19:08
Speaker 1: put that in perspective in these our modern days in
19:13
Speaker 1: the US, that would mean that Yez received a hundred
19:17
Speaker 1: and fifty billion dollars. So he essentially became a billionaire
19:21
Speaker 1: over the span of a few months. And his plan
19:25
Speaker 1: seemed pretty great. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, essentially what
19:28
Speaker 1: he did was create kind of a micro economic boom
19:31
Speaker 1: for Portugal. But it wasn't based on anything real, and
19:35
Speaker 1: now he's like becoming a you know, a bank mogul,
19:38
Speaker 1: and he's giving out all these loans with very low
19:40
Speaker 1: interest rates that also aren't based on anything real. It's
19:43
Speaker 1: all at a subterfuge to cover up his his crime.
19:47
Speaker 1: And you know, like any boom manufacturer otherwise, oftentimes there
19:52
Speaker 1: is a bust or or a recession or a bubble bursting, right,
19:57
Speaker 1: And that absolutely happened, um and the um well, maybe
20:01
Speaker 1: not quite yet, but that absolutely was on the way
20:03
Speaker 1: to happening when the authorities began to investigate the Banco
20:09
Speaker 1: d'anola de metropolit because they were illegally buying foreign backed
20:14
Speaker 1: currency and that's no good. So while they were being investigated,
20:19
Speaker 1: they had these reserves of some of those illegal bank
20:23
Speaker 1: notes that we're not gonna call them counterfeit because they
20:25
Speaker 1: were in fact real bank notes. But they had those
20:29
Speaker 1: duplicate serial numbers. Ha ha. That's where this house of
20:32
Speaker 1: cars really begins to collapse. With those serial numbers. You
20:35
Speaker 1: think they would have read flagged that earlier, but I
20:38
Speaker 1: guess the bookkeeping system wasn't quite as sharp as it
20:42
Speaker 1: could have been, which is how the operations started exactly.
20:45
Speaker 1: It was only by chance that authorities managed to find
20:49
Speaker 1: duplicate serial numbers. And and it's so strange because they
20:54
Speaker 1: knew something was rotten in the state of Portuguese finance
21:00
Speaker 1: is uh. If we're gonna make an awkward turner phrase there,
21:03
Speaker 1: they knew something was rotten, but they could not pin
21:05
Speaker 1: it down on him because again, any notes they found
21:08
Speaker 1: were real. We should also point out this is let's
21:11
Speaker 1: get to December of when the bank is actually busted
21:15
Speaker 1: because they do somehow find these illegal duplicates. Rays is
21:19
Speaker 1: twenty eight years old. Can you imagine in perspective? Do? Yeah,
21:24
Speaker 1: he's done a lot with his life. Uh. And because
21:28
Speaker 1: his associates and he can get word of an arrest warrant,
21:31
Speaker 1: he and his associates know that the operation is burned.
21:35
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. It's like now, it's like
21:37
Speaker 1: the third act of the heist film. They've got to
21:39
Speaker 1: get out of dodge. Some of his pals managed to escape. Yez, however,
21:45
Speaker 1: chooses to stay and fight. He also and the Telegraph
21:50
Speaker 1: has an interesting bit about this. He attempts to forge
21:54
Speaker 1: documents suggesting that the Bank of Portugal was in on
21:58
Speaker 1: the scam that they had ordered him to do that,
22:02
Speaker 1: and his forged documents are so freaking good that some
22:06
Speaker 1: people believed him. They thought the whole plot was made
22:09
Speaker 1: up by Portugal Central Bank. And for five years this
22:14
Speaker 1: delaying tactic works. I want to find out more about
22:17
Speaker 1: this guy, like where did he learn to ford so well?
22:19
Speaker 1: Who is his like forgery mentor how do you just
22:22
Speaker 1: figure like I guess it all went back to that
22:23
Speaker 1: first bad check that he wrote, Who Yoda does he
22:26
Speaker 1: have a Yeah? Exactly. He just kind of decide, oh,
22:28
Speaker 1: this is a means to an end for me when
22:30
Speaker 1: I have no money, I can just you know, at
22:33
Speaker 1: a time where it was very people wanted this system
22:36
Speaker 1: to work. They wanted to believe in it, right, So
22:38
Speaker 1: he kind of capitalized on that and uh totally was
22:42
Speaker 1: able to you know, work that in his favor continuously
22:45
Speaker 1: with people not calling him on it. All he had
22:47
Speaker 1: to do was be pretty good at forging the document
22:50
Speaker 1: and then talk a good game. Right. Well, think about
22:52
Speaker 1: it this way too. We have to think about the
22:55
Speaker 1: time in which Riaz is operating. First off, most people
23:00
Speaker 1: have not seen official documents except maybe a marriage certificate,
23:04
Speaker 1: a death certificate, or birth certificate or maybe the deed
23:08
Speaker 1: to some important tangible asset. So a lot of people
23:11
Speaker 1: don't know what the real deal looks like. Secondly, a
23:15
Speaker 1: lot of people don't have access to printing technology, or
23:19
Speaker 1: their handwriting looks like chicken scratch. That's a problem that
23:22
Speaker 1: Bedevil's people like me in the modern day. So there
23:27
Speaker 1: was not a frame of reference for a lot of people,
23:29
Speaker 1: and even people who were experts, like let's say the
23:32
Speaker 1: government of Angola or something, they would not receive boiler
23:36
Speaker 1: plate forms. One bank might have a different kind of form,
23:40
Speaker 1: you know. So there's also not a single right way
23:44
Speaker 1: to do a lot of this stuff other than the
23:46
Speaker 1: bank notes. So it was easier for him to get away.
23:50
Speaker 1: But he's still I don't want to undermine the guy's talent.
23:53
Speaker 1: He still is like a dog with a ball. It's
23:56
Speaker 1: very telling. It shows us a lot about raises care
24:00
Speaker 1: to when we learned that instead of escaping and he
24:04
Speaker 1: could have escaped, he not only stayed, he tried to
24:07
Speaker 1: forge his way out of the problem that he had
24:09
Speaker 1: forged himself into. So what happens They take five years
24:18
Speaker 1: to actually get the trial going. What what happens to him?
24:21
Speaker 1: Does he get away. Does he forge himself a law
24:25
Speaker 1: degree and become the judge of his case? No, no,
24:28
Speaker 1: Alas you know, like uh many master criminals. Um, I
24:33
Speaker 1: don't know Alas is maybe the wrong word. Is the
24:35
Speaker 1: guy so plucky? You know? I mean, yeah, he kind
24:37
Speaker 1: of tanks the Portuguese economy single handedly. Okay, not cool,
24:41
Speaker 1: but you gotta you gotta appreciate how young he is
24:44
Speaker 1: and the stick to itiveness with which he kind of
24:46
Speaker 1: handled this whole affair. Um, yeah, it's true. He gets
24:49
Speaker 1: sentenced to twenty years in prison, Uh, that he serves
24:52
Speaker 1: out in its entirety. Um. And during this time he
24:57
Speaker 1: was known for, um, you know, making a case for
25:01
Speaker 1: himself like you know, and absolutely zero remorse fashion ben
25:06
Speaker 1: and saying, hey, why were my notes considered counterfeit when
25:11
Speaker 1: they're absolutely indistinguishable from the real ones? Uh? And in
25:16
Speaker 1: true poetic justice fashion, when he's finally released, he gets
25:20
Speaker 1: offered a job at an at a bank. Yeah, he
25:24
Speaker 1: doesn't take the job, which is interesting. He lives a
25:28
Speaker 1: pretty sedate life. Uh, and he doesn't make a lot
25:31
Speaker 1: of money. You will hear people say that he lived modestly,
25:35
Speaker 1: and then you will hear people say he was impoverished.
25:37
Speaker 1: He died of a heart attack on the ninth of
25:42
Speaker 1: June nineteen fifty five, and his associates died. Two of
25:47
Speaker 1: them died pretty soon after. I think Henny's died in
25:50
Speaker 1: fifty seven. Bendetta died in nineteen sixty one. Moron was
25:55
Speaker 1: tried in Holland ninety six and went to jail for
25:59
Speaker 1: eleven months. He actually became a naturalized French citizen and
26:05
Speaker 1: did pretty well for himself. He died wealthy in nineteen sixty.
26:09
Speaker 1: The guy is Sir William Waterlow died before all of
26:12
Speaker 1: these folks. He was the guy in charge of the
26:14
Speaker 1: printing company in England. He became the Lord Mayor of
26:17
Speaker 1: London for a time, but the scandal of the Portuguese
26:20
Speaker 1: bank note crisis is largely thought to have contributed to
26:24
Speaker 1: his early death in ninety one. And I want to
26:26
Speaker 1: say I respect the hustle, I respect what Riez did.
26:30
Speaker 1: But if you look at a picture of this guy,
26:33
Speaker 1: he just looks you know, I want to keep this
26:36
Speaker 1: a family show. He looks like a real pill. Have
26:39
Speaker 1: you seen a picture of him? He looks like a pill.
26:42
Speaker 1: I don't know if I want to hang out with him.
26:43
Speaker 1: Hang on, Ben, you might be saying you seem a
26:45
Speaker 1: little conflicted. You say you respect the hustle, but you
26:48
Speaker 1: say the guy's a real pill. Which is it? Well,
26:51
Speaker 1: we have to examine the consequences of this, and then
26:55
Speaker 1: we also have to admit that Angola at the time
26:57
Speaker 1: was being treated very, very poorly by Portugal. But you
27:01
Speaker 1: here's the deal. You can't just print bank notes and
27:05
Speaker 1: expect everything to be okay. This has enormous and catastrophic
27:10
Speaker 1: financial consequence, right yeah, really really far reaching. Because of
27:14
Speaker 1: that excess circulation UM. Again that wasn't based on anything
27:20
Speaker 1: but the whim of a totally narcissistic, self serving con man. Uh.
27:25
Speaker 1: The currency, the escudo lost UH an awful lot of
27:29
Speaker 1: its value. All five hundred scudo notes were pulled from circulation,
27:35
Speaker 1: and the Central Bank of Portugal UM was able to
27:39
Speaker 1: figure out which ones were the fraudulent ones. By the way,
27:43
Speaker 1: if you yourself want to identify one of these ray
27:46
Speaker 1: as reprints from a from a genuine note, UM, you
27:49
Speaker 1: need only look for serial number prefixes with double vowels
27:53
Speaker 1: or prefixes above a N. And not only did this
28:00
Speaker 1: make everyone lose all confidence in the Portuguese monetary system.
28:04
Speaker 1: It may have even brought on a change in government.
28:08
Speaker 1: There's a great article on this at intro to Global
28:10
Speaker 1: Studies dot com by Sean Smallman and Kimberly Brown where
28:15
Speaker 1: they put this way, the implication of Rayez's crimes have
28:18
Speaker 1: been staggering. The first republic, that's the Portuguese Republic, ended
28:22
Speaker 1: in a military coup in nineteen twenty six. While it
28:26
Speaker 1: would be too much to say that the loss of
28:28
Speaker 1: confidence in Portugal's monetary system caused the democracy to collapse,
28:33
Speaker 1: this fraud contributed to the sense of crisis that made
28:36
Speaker 1: the coup possible. He came for the bank notes, and
28:39
Speaker 1: he accidentally started a revolution or contributed to it, and
28:44
Speaker 1: the bank eventually sued the printers, the Bank of Portugal.
28:47
Speaker 1: They won a settlement of six hundred thousand pounds. Waterloo
28:51
Speaker 1: never really recovered, they got bought out, they got dissolved
28:55
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine. And because of these consequent
29:00
Speaker 1: is you will often hear that the counterfeiting operation, god
29:05
Speaker 1: is it even counterfeiting such a mind buggling thing. You'll
29:08
Speaker 1: hear that Yez ran the most successful countering fitting operation
29:13
Speaker 1: in history. It's the biggest one that i've heard of,
29:17
Speaker 1: unless you're one of those fiat currency people who thinks
29:20
Speaker 1: paper money in general is counterfeiting, right, yeah, sort of
29:23
Speaker 1: like taxation is theft. Uh No, it's true. Um, it's again.
29:27
Speaker 1: I'm completely taken aback by how easily he was able
29:32
Speaker 1: to pull this off. It was just like the perfect crime.
29:35
Speaker 1: But not necessarily because he was some kind of genius.
29:40
Speaker 1: He just was a very very um he's very very
29:44
Speaker 1: good at taking advantage of people's stupidity. And I would
29:47
Speaker 1: argue that the overthrow of that government was pretty earned
29:51
Speaker 1: because they clearly were quite an apt that they couldn't
29:53
Speaker 1: see this coming or have any safeguards in place to
29:55
Speaker 1: prevent it. And then we also would be remiss if
29:59
Speaker 1: we don't talk a little bit about the state of
30:02
Speaker 1: the Portuguese Empire. Why some people may ask would a
30:08
Speaker 1: guy born in Lisbon go to Angola in this time?
30:13
Speaker 1: At this time, Angola was a Portuguese colony, and it
30:17
Speaker 1: had been since fifteen seventy five. Riez was taking advantage
30:23
Speaker 1: of systemic issues in the colonial system from the start,
30:28
Speaker 1: when he got into the import export and all the
30:29
Speaker 1: railway and all that stuff. And he was not he
30:32
Speaker 1: was not helping the people of Angola. Angola has had terrible,
30:38
Speaker 1: terrible consequences of from its time being colonized, and those
30:43
Speaker 1: consequences still carry on to the modern day. So the
30:49
Speaker 1: all to say, it's not like the Portuguese Empire, the
30:52
Speaker 1: government of Portugal was uh, you know, a bunch of
30:56
Speaker 1: goody two shoes, good people or heroes, know what I mean.
31:00
Speaker 1: It's not like there's a clear hero in this story now.
31:04
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until nineteen seventy five that uh Angola
31:09
Speaker 1: actually got its independence after a very brutal and bloody
31:13
Speaker 1: guerrilla war um that also resulted in another coup in
31:17
Speaker 1: lisbon Um, but ultimately the Alvar Agreement was signed that
31:22
Speaker 1: did separate Angola from Portugal. And this whole Angolan War
31:26
Speaker 1: of Independence which raised from the nineteen sixty one to
31:28
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, was initially a result of uprising because
31:34
Speaker 1: of forced labor practices by the colonizers in Portugal against
31:39
Speaker 1: the the native folks in Angola, and that include forcing
31:42
Speaker 1: them to cultivate cotton right slavery, Yeah, slavery, and in
31:48
Speaker 1: this sort of incredibly unstable, in humane environment, criminals like
31:55
Speaker 1: Riez can thrive. You know. In fact, if you think
31:59
Speaker 1: about it, I guess we could. We could end on
32:02
Speaker 1: somewhat of if not uplifting an interesting note here we
32:07
Speaker 1: here's an interesting bank note to end on, very proud
32:11
Speaker 1: of that one. Ray As may have arguably been successful,
32:17
Speaker 1: just not in the way he intended. Because remember, know
32:21
Speaker 1: how you earlier mentioned there's an easy way to find
32:24
Speaker 1: a ray As five hundred scudo note right, the double
32:28
Speaker 1: vowels and prefixes above. What Yeah, the thing is those
32:34
Speaker 1: rays reprints are not worth five dred scudo anymore. If
32:42
Speaker 1: you are lucky enough to find one. They're actually worth
32:46
Speaker 1: over seven thousand, five hundred dollars. So the notes that
32:50
Speaker 1: he printed have actually been quite successful nowadays, at least
32:55
Speaker 1: as a curio item you know of of some note? Right? Well,
32:58
Speaker 1: you can't, you know, you can't buy a ticket to
33:01
Speaker 1: a Cheryl Crow concert with one. If only it could, Man,
33:04
Speaker 1: if only you could. What a world? What a world?
33:07
Speaker 1: Oh man? By the way, uh, friend of the show,
33:09
Speaker 1: there's a band I told you about called Kyle Kraft
33:12
Speaker 1: and Showboat Honey who are on tour right now. You
33:13
Speaker 1: should check them out if they come to your city. Um,
33:16
Speaker 1: they were playing at the Newport Folk Festival and their
33:19
Speaker 1: keyboard player, Kevin Clark, actually posted a picture of himself
33:24
Speaker 1: with a friend of the show and then nemesis of
33:26
Speaker 1: the show, Cheryl crow. Um, So I'm gonna have to
33:29
Speaker 1: ask him about, you know what what she was like
33:31
Speaker 1: in person? Do tell Yeah, we'd like to I I
33:33
Speaker 1: personally would like to get past all the all the
33:36
Speaker 1: strange late night rambling, vaguely accusatory text messages that she
33:42
Speaker 1: sends me. You know, I just Cheryl let me know
33:45
Speaker 1: if I did something, because I'm a huge fan of
33:48
Speaker 1: your music. Uh. So that is the story of Alvis
33:52
Speaker 1: dos Reyes. We hope you enjoyed it. I hope that
33:55
Speaker 1: you do take the time to check out a picture
33:58
Speaker 1: of this guy, because he does look like he's a
34:00
Speaker 1: he's a slick talker, as folks would say in ages past.
34:04
Speaker 1: Uh And as always, thank you for tuning in. Big
34:08
Speaker 1: thanks to Cheryl Crowe always every day, indeed is a
34:11
Speaker 1: winding road, a road that hopefully winds its way back
34:14
Speaker 1: around to our super producer Casey Pegram, who also gets
34:17
Speaker 1: massive thanks. Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Research associates
34:21
Speaker 1: Gabe Lozier and Ryan Barrish Big thanks to Jonathan Strickland
34:26
Speaker 1: a k a. The Quister and you know what, Noel,
34:29
Speaker 1: Thanks to you, Man, Hey Man, thanks to you too.
34:32
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts for
34:42
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
34:45
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.