Let's Go To Court! - 34: The Brink’s Car Robbery & the Assistant Who Ended Her Boss’s Ponzi Scheme
Episode Date: September 19, 2018Paul Kruse had an irresistible sales pitch. He told his investment clients that their principal investment would be totally safe. They could expect annual returns between 10 and 15 percent. In other w...ords, watch your money grow, risk free. Sounds great, right? If only it’d been true. Paul’s scheme robbed people of their life’s savings, but his plan ground to a halt when his assistant, Amy Weatherford, got suspicious. The feds had plenty on Paul, but he didn’t go down easy. From the comfort of his prison cell, he hatched a violent plan that would make him a free man. Then Brandi tells us the story of Anthony Curcio. Anthony has always been smart. He’s always been a planner. But he hasn’t always used those skills for good. In 2008, Anthony had an expensive drug habit and a busted real estate business. He needed a lot of money, and he knew just where to get it. Over the course of several months, Anthony made a meticulously detailed plan to rob a Brink’s armored car. His plan was so thought-through, it’s hard to believe he got caught. And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases. In this episode, Kristin pulled from: American Greed, “A Mother’s Costly Revenge” “Greed Report: How to blow the whistle on your boss– and live to tell about it,” CNBC.com “Jacksonville con man who tried to hire hitman sentenced to 30 years in prison,” The Florida Times-Union In this episode, Brandi pulled from: “Out of Prison, Real-Life Thomas Crown Looks Back on Almost-Perfect Heist” by Brooke Stangeland, ABC News “How an Idaho football player became a bank robber” by Martin Rogers, USA Today “6-year sentence in robbery with getaway inner tube” by Ian Ith, The Seattle Times “Anthony Curcio” wikipedia.org
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One semester of law school.
One semester of criminal justice.
Two experts.
I'm Kristen Pitts.
I'm Brandi Egan.
Let's go to court.
On this episode, I'll talk about a white-collar crime that turned violent.
And I'll be talking about Anthony Curcio, a man who planned the almost perfect crime
so meticulously that he nearly got away with it.
Ooh, I've never heard away with it. Ooh.
I've never heard of that one.
Ooh.
Ah.
I hate when we make those weird noises after the person reveals their case.
We do it every time.
I know, but maybe our listeners don't know this.
We don't know what case the other person's going to do typically.
Like we'll text back and forth and be like, hey, just to make sure we're not doing the same case.
I'm doing a case that involves a mom.
Yeah, we never say I'm doing the Casey Anthony case.
I'm doing a recent one that involves this one thing.
Yes.
Because we like to be surprised too.
We do. And that surprised too we do and
that's why we do those dorky sounds that's right it's not because we're actual dorks certainly not
all right here we go oh my gosh i'm so excited white color crime you love i love white color
crime love it things that go violent i love it's the perfect it's like you
and me had a baby together how did it happen don't worry about it okay and i have to start
off by saying this almost exclusively comes from an episode of american grief excellent and i'm
not going to tell you the title of it now
because it kind of gives it away.
All right.
Got it.
I'll keep that in mind.
Keep it in mind.
So let's talk about Paul Cruz.
Paul grew up the son of a traveling pastor.
So he and his...
Suspect him already.
You're very smart.
He and his seven siblings moved around a ton obviously and his parents never had
much money they had this huge family and usually they had maybe a one or two bedroom house for all
these kids but that didn't bother paul's parents his parents thought that there was virtue in being poor paul disagreed did not share that sentiment
from pretty early on in his life he appreciated the finer things
he grew up got his start in the working world as a youth minister
but there's not a lot of money in that if he was going to say, if he's trying to make money, that's not the way to go.
So he started working as a real estate developer.
Paul was charming and convincing and got a lot of people to invest in his development.
But then the whole thing went bust.
And it went so badly that one of his investors literally wanted him dead.
Ooh.
So he moved out west.
He was like, I got to get away from this.
By the way, I'm sorry, folks.
If you can hear a buzzing, it's because my neighbor is mowing his lawn.
It's driving me crazy.
That's technically a weed eater.
No, it's not.
It's a lawnmower.
It is not.
Really?
It's out there.
Yeah, yeah.
What?
That's the worst lawnmower I've ever heard. It's a lawnmower. It is not. Really? I looked out there. Yeah, yeah. What? That's the worst lawnmower I've ever heard.
It's a terrible.
Here I am shitting on my neighbor's lawnmower.
It's not a nice lawnmower.
You put so literally shit on your neighbor's lawnmower.
That's a real mess.
No, it sounds like a weed eater, doesn't it?
It does sound like a weed eater.
No.
I thought 100% it was a weed eater.
I am sorry for attempting to correct you when I was the one who was incorrect.
Gosh, how many times do we have to have this conversation?
So anyway, he moves out west and in the early 80s got a job working with his brother, John.
They worked at a company where they sold
mutual funds and insurance to military families and both the brothers did really well paul in
particular was super successful he liked to show off his success he went on flashy vacations always
drove the best cars and but after working at this firm for like 20 years he got fired oh
shit for what okay that's what drives me crazy they didn't say no let's see what do we think
he got fired for well okay my assumption i tell you what, let's revisit later.
Because you don't want to give anything away?
Yeah, I don't want to give anything away.
Got it.
All right.
Right now, I'm just going to assume it's because he sexually harassed his boss.
That's most likely the scenario.
So it was horrible for him because he loved making tons of money,
was used to making tons of money, and all of a sudden he wasn't.
For a while, he struggled just to make ends meet.
Eventually, he moved to Jacksonville, Florida.
So he worked there for a few years as a financial advisor, and he built up a client list, which included a woman named Jarlene Mae Jones and her husband. They were friends of Paul's, and they first went to him in 2003. Okay. They wanted his help making an
investment, and damn, did he ever help. They started with $28,000, and in two years, they had 46 000 wow yeah they were amazed yeah paul had pulled through so of course in 2010
when paul started a new business they went with him invest with you
his new business was called yorkshire financial services mm-hmm suspect him already yep you got that trying to sound fancy with that british name
yep you don't like it one bit we see you jacksonville florida that's right
so he's ready to get back on top and this is his ticket he called himself a safe money specialist
he starts looking for clients.
And of course, Darlene was one of the first people to sign on.
She just retired as a general manager for Pizza Hut.
And she had about $100,000 saved.
And of course, she trusted him.
So she tells him what she's got.
And he's like, I can grow that.
Don't worry.
You put that in the stock market with me, with my new company, and we'll watch it grow.
And I can't totally remember, but I think this was like all the money she had.
Yeah, I'm sure it is.
Her life savings.
Yep.
Looking back, Darlene said, I had the utmost confidence that it was going to be okay.
I don't, Darlene.
I felt like, since I'd worked with Paul before,
that he was honest with me
and that he was going to do what was best for me
and that my money would grow
and that I would be well set for my future.
Poor Darlene.
Yeah.
This is not going to go well for her. so she signs up and he's like excellent choice
he sends her this letter welcoming her to the Yorkshire financial family which I hate when
people say something's a family that's not a family and he's like hey we are one of the oldest
financial services companies in the United States that That's bullshit. He just started it.
Brandy, details.
We've been operating for more than 30 years.
What?
We have investors from all over the globe.
He's just making stuff up at this point?
Oh, yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But the truth wouldn't be that reassuring right like no i
just started this company i'm a guy who's been fired yeah darlene's like wow this is great
paul makes this pitch to more people he told people that he'd assembled a team of traders
who could beat the stock market what he offered them was unbelievable. He said, your principal investment is totally safe.
Whatever you put in, you cannot possibly lose. And here's what you can expect from me in return.
An annual return of anywhere between 10 and 15 percent. Wow. Yeah. So what he's saying is he's saying if she puts a hundred thousand dollars
in that she can make in one year expect to make ten to fifteen thousand dollars on that investment
yeah and her one hundred thousand dollars is not at risk yeah it's completely safe because he's a
safe money specialist right i heard it i don't believe it but i did hear it okay so he's telling people
there's no risk which talk about too good to be true no shit let me invest your money and there's
zero risk to you you can only make money now this is surprise everybody. This was all bullshit.
What?
I know.
So what Paul did was brazen.
It's not like he took some of their money and took a crazy high percentage of it.
No, he literally took their money and just spent it.
Oh my gosh.
and just spent it.
Oh my gosh.
So the investors he ended up attracting were hardworking people
who pretty much gave him everything they had.
Yeah.
They transferred 401ks and IRAs over to his company
in the hopes that he'd make them more financially secure.
Yeah.
So things are going great for Paul He's back on top
He's making great money again
No, he's stealing money
Brandy
This is
You're talking about
One of the most respected
And oldest financial institutions
In the United States
The only problem was he was feeling
kind of lonely.
Needed a woman?
Yeah.
He found out about this woman
who had six kids and had fallen on hard
times. Her name was Amy
Weatherford, and Paul knew her
sister. So he makes a deal.
He says, Amy, look, you're having a
tough time financially. Let's make a deal. He says, Amy, look, you're having a tough time financially. Let's
make a deal. I'm in this big house. I'm lonely. Come live with me. Rent free. If you clean the
house every now and then and go on a few grocery runs and do some personal errands for me, we'll
be even. Amy's like, amazing paul is clearly a good christian man
he's helping me out and i'm helping him out i'm so lucky
so amy and two of her kids move into paul's house
where are the other four kids i assume they were grown okay i assume i don't know or maybe leave
them at the last house?
I hope not.
If she did, they left that out of the American Green episode.
No, I don't really know.
Okay.
And you're making faces about this arrangement.
I'm also making faces, but this is how it was presented in the episode.
And I didn't find anything online to, you know, go against that.
So, don't worry about it. All right, I right i'll change my face no you don't have
to because i'm i'm kind of the same way like this seems really strange it's a really weird
arrangement yeah okay so he just wants some companionship so he'll yeah i'm not buying it
no all right american greed anyway amy and two of her kids move into paul's house and at first Yeah. I'm not buying it. No. All right, American greed.
Anyway, Amy and two of her kids move into Paul's house.
And at first she didn't know much about his business.
All she knew was he was a financial guy.
But she did notice a few things.
He was totally disorganized.
Papers everywhere.
And he spent and spent and spent his money.
It was super weird.
Because one minute, he'd have a ton of money,
he'd blow it all,
and then he'd be like, hey Amy, can I borrow a little bit
of cash? What? Yeah.
Right? What?
Uh-huh.
Then one day,
she goes into his bedroom where he was doing
some work, and she sees where he was doing some work and she
sees that he's signing some paperwork,
but not signing his own name.
So she's like,
what you doing?
And he's like,
Oh,
I'm just signing some clients names.
And she goes,
so you have power of attorney to do that?
And he's like, well, yeah well yeah of course and she's like
all right all right all right things continue to go well for paul's business so well that his
brother john joins him and john had been in the business for a long time but at some point he'd
lost his financial licenses for forging documents and misrepresenting information to clients.
Oh, weird.
Yeah, I know.
Weird. Runs in the family, huh?
Hey, hey.
Paul totally had power of attorney for all that stuff.
Oh, okay.
You are so suspicious.
So despite all that, John still had relationships with a few clients and of course he brought all
those relationships to yorkshire financial is it yorkshire or yorkshire i mean it's made up
anyway it's not yorkshire um okay so i think the english like the american pronunciation is
yorkshire the english like the british pronunciation is yorkshire what about when
it's total bullshit i think that's when it's yorkshire um so he gave them the same pitch that
paul gave his clients this is a better financial opportunity than what you're currently getting
you're going to get higher returns here yorkshire financial services has a staff of highly trained
traders they're the best they're so good that they beat the market every time they're so good
they're invisible even better your principal investment is totally safe you can't lose money. You'll only make it. I mean, if it's too good to be true, like if it sounds too good to be true, then it is.
But I get like these people that are investing are not, you know.
They're not savvy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think also, I mean, what the hell do I know?
But my assumption is that if you don't have kind of parents who have taught you some of this stuff,
then maybe you do feel like, oh, no, no, no, the stock market is too big a risk.
Yeah.
You know, I can't invest in it because then all my money will be gone.
Right.
You know, like if you've looked at it more, you know, no, you give it enough time, it tends to trend upward.
Yeah.
This has been Dave Ramsey.
Financial segment with Kristen Pitts.
Expecting a UPF shipment?
That's a mail stripper I've hired to come to the door.
Somebody call about a package?
somebody call about a package no i uh i don't know what that's about maybe they're going to the neighbor nope they're coming
here whoa you've trained your whole life for this
okay where the hell was i uh oh okay so a few of the clients were a little skeptical one emailed john and was like look this is my life savings this is everything i have
is this really safe and john said yeah%. I would put my own money into this. I would never risk your money.
In exchange for John bringing in these clients, Paul paid him $100,000.
And he took the rest of the money for himself. Yeah. By this point, Amy had been living with Paul for a few months, and his spending was unreal.
He bought a Jaguar.
He bought a Mercedes.
He revamped his BMW in blue and orange.
That sounds hideous.
Go Gators.
Oh, yes.
I know.
I think it sounds absolutely awful.
It sounds ugly.
Amy said it was pretty cool, though.
It sounds awful.
Paul gets less lonely.
He starts dating an exotic dancer, and he buys her all the things.
Jewelry, clothes, trips, boobs.
Boobs?
Yeah, he bought her boobs.
Enhancements.
All with money he took from these clients.
Yeah.
Okay, so is he forging documents to show that they're getting returns on their investments?
I assume. During all of this?
I assume.
Yeah.
All right.
How would you feel if someone stole your money to buy their girlfriend a boob job?
I would be so pissed.
Would that be worse than just stealing money?
Yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
They made a big deal out of it in the episode.
I just think it sucks in general.
I don't know that I'd be...
Well, there's no way to recover the money from that.
That's a very good point.
You can't return the boobs you know in that way it's like investing in your education no one can ever take it away from you
you get implants people can't take that away they can't repo that that's right
they're not gonna tow those away
hook two hooks up to him and oh now this is getting gross
try to keep it classy sorry then he spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy part
of a stone company and then he spent more than a hundred,000 revamping his house with, like, a fountain in the backyard and, you know, redid everything.
So he's taking people's life savings, spending their hard-earned money on boobs and lawn fountains.
So Amy's like...
Boobs and lawn fountains!
So Amy's kind of like, this is weird, but I guess this guy is just really good at what he does
then her 17 year old daughter approaches her she says mom paul has been texting me
amy looks at the text inappropriately paul has texted her 17 year old daughter
i'll buy you a bm BMW if you show me your boobs.
You don't have to tell your mother.
Why would he do that in text, first of all?
Is he stupid?
Is that the part that makes you mad?
No, the whole thing makes me mad.
I'm just saying, if she's living in the house there,
just, like, whisper it to her in the kitchen.
It is really stupid.
Why would you send proof? the kitchen it is really stupid proof uh we're gonna get more into paul and how fucking stupid
he is but this guy super stupid dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb excellent amy is livid she confronts
him and she was blunt she said they won't find your body parts if you ever make a pass at my Wow.
Mm-hmm.
So, American Greed used the word allegedly a few times in this story.
They said they asked him about it, and he didn't deny it.
But, you know.
Yeah.
Allegedly.
Blah.
I assume he agreed to back off.
But Amy was still... She didn't move out? No. I assume she couldn to back off. But Amy was still...
She didn't move out?
No.
I assume she couldn't afford to.
Must be, yeah.
But she was like, you know what?
That wasn't very satisfying.
How dare he go after my child?
I'm going to get back at him.
And I think I know how to do it.
Because I don't think this Yorkshire financial services
business is legit. Wow. So Amy is crafty as fuck. She said, Paul, I really want to step it up around
here. You're disorganized and I want to help you. If you need to get these promissory notes out, you know, let me pitch in.
Let's make it my part-time job.
You win, I win.
And he's like, great, sure.
That sounds wonderful.
Yeah.
So she starts looking at his bank records because it's her job now.
And what she sees is crazy.
Over the course of one month, $400,000 goes in.
And $400,000 goes out.
How do you even spend $400,000 in a month?
That's, yeah, that's amazing to me.
Because they said the boob job was only five grand.
So that's.
Oh, that's kind of a low grade boob job i was gonna say if you're gonna
spend some money i would say skimp on the lawn fountain yeah go balls to the wall on the boob job
this is part two of our financial advice segment
so she's like what am i looking at here she sees all these purchases
but none of them had anything to do with stocks and bonds and investments they didn't
she didn't know exactly what she had but she knew she had something so she made copies
then she emailed the fbi
and agent byron thompson was on the case immediately. In March of 2011, Paul went to
China, and that's when Amy met up with agent Thompson. She's like, here are all my files.
Have at it. I don't know what I've got here, but you can figure it out. Agent Thompson starts
looking into everything. He does a deep dive into Paul's's background and he's like what the hell is with
this guy he was on the right track for a lot of his life he was actually a legit financial guy for
a long time he went from that to stealing people's money money from people he actually knew yeah
so agent thompson sought out paul's clients to let them
know that this whole thing was a scam but he said that a lot of people didn't believe him at first
wow they were like that's not possible first of all this is all the money i have in the world
and i know paul he would not do this to me. He would not do this. Yeah. That kills me.
Yeah.
Well, I think, I mean, initially I reacted like I was shocked at that, but it just be
denial.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's no way that this is happening to me.
Yeah.
I'm not stupid.
And I bet the Bernie Madoff people were the same way.
I feel like it doesn't matter what your background is.
Yeah. No.
Someone who knows me, who
has been to my house,
they're not going to do that to me.
In the fall of
2011, the Fed started seizing
Paul's assets.
And Agent Thompson tried to meet with
Paul, but Paul's like, nope, I'm not talking.
Meanwhile, Darlene Jones, who was one of Paul's early investors,
is, and I don't know if the FBI had talked to her at this point,
I assume not, but she's trying to get money from her investments.
So she calls Paul, she's like, Paul, I want to take some money out.
And he's like, yeah, you really can't do that right now.
It's super complicated.
You just don't understand.
You don't understand.
I'm sorry.
And what?
What?
I can't stop thinking about what you could put in your tiny pocket.
Okay, everyone.
I'm wearing a shirt that has a tiny pocket.
What would you like me to put in the tiny pocket? life saver that is all that would fit in there you know what it's actually a normal size pocket
it just looks small because my huge boob job that i got
i got a great deal five Five grand. Yep. Yep.
I had a Groupon.
Is that weird?
Should I not have done that?
Things you don't use a Groupon for.
Boob job.
Eyebrow microblading.
Oh my God, no.
I saw Groupons for bikini waxes.
And even that.
No.
No.
No.
Some things I'll take a discount on.
No. Those are not the things. No. Some things I'll take a discount on. No.
Those are not the things.
Okay.
Sorry for being this straight about your tiny pocket.
Do you want to describe it for the folks at home?
It's so tiny.
Okay.
So think of, you know, like a man's pocket tee.
Okay.
Like that, you know, when i was a kid my grandpa used
to wear them all the time and i called them smoking shirts because he smoked and he would
put his pack of cigarettes oh yeah yeah and that's like the exact size people should be thinking yeah
normal yeah so then imagine it kristen's quite small so just like i'm tiny and beautiful just
shrinking it down to Kristen's size.
But with the shirt shrinking, the pocket also shrinks.
It's like, honey, I shrunk the pocket.
Because the pocket has shrunk too much.
I feel like we're talking about how I look.
Yes.
Can we talk about last week?
Yes.
Please, please, go ahead launch into it okay so my friend and former boss terry commented on our facebook page and she goes oh my gosh why did i click this
uh now i know what kristin looks like this is not what i've been picturing her as i'm sorry kristin
i'm going to have to continue picturing you as i have you in my mind i'm too far what I've been picturing her as. I'm sorry, Kristen. I'm going to have to continue picturing you
as I have you in my mind.
I'm too far in.
I've been listening.
She seemed alarmed and disappointed.
She was super disappointed in Kristen's appearance.
And so I commented back.
I was like, as long as you're picturing her
with normal-sized ears, I'm sure that she'll be good with it.
Yeah.
And so then Terry commented how she pictured Kristen.
It was like, there's a beautiful supermodel.
Yeah, it was this gorgeous supermodel with dark hair.
Yeah.
Very smooth and sleek.
Yeah.
All the angles in her face.
Oh, yeah.
Let me tell you, if I look like that, do you think I'd be doing a podcast?
Christian, you're very beautiful.
Go on.
But you look nothing like the picture that Terry had of you.
I do have to say, I get it, though, because, like, I get so mad when there's a book.
Yes.
And I know how the characters look in my head. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there's a book yes and i i know how the characters look
in my head yeah and then there's a movie they cast him nothing like that they never consult yeah
yes it's like i'm not important
all right sorry for that tangent back to the story it was totally relevant because i'm about
to talk about pockets tiny pockets So all their money was gone.
They had nothing to fill their tiny pockets.
So they shrunk their pockets down and then their bills felt bigger.
It's kind of like how, you know those idiots who are like,
the trick is you just get smaller plates and then you don't notice that you're eating less food.
It's like, well, I must be magical because I notice.
So he's telling her,
you know, you can't get the money out
because it's super complicated. You know,
this is high level stuff you couldn't understand.
And she's like,
okay, yeah, sure. I
admit, I don't understand.
But am I going to get
a check? Yeah.
For real, like,
yeah, I don't need to understand the ins and outs of what you're
doing but i need my money yeah but i need to know whether i'm gonna get my money yeah and he's like
hang on tight about a month after that conversation paul called agent thompson and he's like look
you know i'm guilty i know i'm guilty let's get this over with what uh-huh
yeah and that's the end no it's not a few days later he signs a confession and turns himself over
what i know this is this is insane to me his confession, he wrote that he was remorseful,
and he acknowledged that he hurt a lot of people by stealing from them.
He said, I'm guilty, and I was basically running a Ponzi scheme.
Yes.
After Paul confessed, his brother John was arrested, too, in Washington State.
After Paul confessed, his brother John was arrested, too, in Washington state.
He was arrested at a gas station picnic table where he expected to meet a 13-year-old girl for sex.
Oh, shit.
But there was no 13-year-old girl.
It was all part of the local police department's home-brewed version of To Catch a Predator.
Oh, my gosh!
Now, Brandi, do you have any thoughts on that?
In the cannibal cop episode,
you seem to have some issues with to catch a predator.
I would just wonder how it can be prosecuted if he's never actually talked to a 13-year-old girl.
Conspiracy.
It's conspiracy to do the thing.
All right.
Are we going to have this fight again?
No, I can't have the fight again, Kristen.
Because you come off looking too creepy?
So they talked about this a little in the episode.
They said John had a history of sexual deviance.
So he was sentenced to four years in prison.
You'll notice that fetishes come up for the fourth time in a row
on Kristen's episodes. Damn it, every
time I try to... You know what? This is
actually the fifth time. Oh, it is?
Fifth time in a row, I think.
Because last time, I tried to say that
Dr. Linda Hazard wasn't doing anything
sexual, but you were like, no, she for sure
was giving gratification. Oh, you're right! This is the fifth
time! I don't
seek these out. These things seek me.
The universe is sending them to me.
The fetish is called to me.
I didn't ask to have a fetish for lawsuit fetishes.
Turns out this podcast is your fetish.
Just talking about weird lawsuits.
Brandi, do not kink shame me.
I'm just talking about weird losses.
Brandi, do not kink shame me.
So he was sentenced to four years in prison,
which I think if you have a history of sexual deviance,
you should get more than that.
What if his sexual deviance is not illegal?
The vibe I got from American Greed.
I'm sorry, that's the vibe you got. I'm just saying, like, lots of things can be declared sexually deviant, but they're not illegal.
BDSM is sexually deviant.
I am looking this up right now.
I hope you get all kinds of porn.
Got something.
I got a hit.
I got a hit. Oh, shit. I can't read you this because then i'm gonna give stuff away
okay hang on hang on kristen is currently formulating a way to say that he did do
something illegal in his debiance and he wasn't just into feets and whips. Feets.
Okay.
I can't find anything more on his sexual deviance,
but it's not the point.
It may be all of our fetishes,
but it's not the point.
Okay.
So, in, 2012,
a grand jury indicts both of the brothers on one charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
And a few months later,
John hanged himself in prison.
Yeah.
Wow.
Paul was very upset about John's suicide and that grief turned to anger.
He was upset about John dying.
He was hating prison. So he starts thinking, why on earth did I confess to this crime? I need to get out of here. What? And damn it, I'm a smart guy.
If I think on this hard enough, I'll come up with a way to get myself out of here.
What?
That's when he took the poster off his prison wall.
Digging out a hole.
A lot of people don't know that Shawshank Redemption is based on this story.
So he does come up with a way to get himself out of prison. He thinks to himself,
Amy is the reason I'm in here. Amy is going to be the star witness in the case against me.
But if there's no Amy, there's no case. How's he going to kill Amy from inside prison?
prison. Just you wait.
Okay. So he's thinking, if Amy's gone, I'm in the clear. I walk. Except you confessed.
Yeah. Yeah, and
they had all the documents, and I mean, we could go on. Yeah.
Yeah, you might not have the woman who
started the investigation, but you still have all the paper trails.
You still have all the victims.
You still have.
Okay.
All right.
So what's his plan?
I'm not trying to say that Paul was a super smart guy.
This was his point.
Pretty soon, Paul gets moved to a new cell.
And his cellmate, Dre, seems like a pretty well-connected dude. See you, doctor.
On to the next episode.
So Paul's like, ask and you shall receive.
I needed a way to get rid of Amy. Here's Dre.
He's got connections to the outside world. So he says, hey, Dre,
do you know of anyone
who could do a couple jobs
for me?
It's like, what do you want, a handy?
Okay, where did we hear that story about
handy J's?
Norm told us.
Norm told us.
I wonder if this is an okay story to share.
If it's not, I'll cut it out.
So Norm was in L.A. recently with Gerard the Completionist,
and, like, they did the charity stream.
And I guess someone in that group, whose name I can't remember,
said that Handy J's meantays meant like helping out around
the house like handy like being a handyman around the house or doing like yeah chores around the
house and everyone was like no that's for sure not what a handy jay is for sure a hand job yes
yes you've been wrong your whole life. You've got to stop saying that.
But the guy was like, no, no.
And so they called the guy's mom for confirmation.
And of course, his mom was like, what are you talking about? That's disgusting.
That's disgusting.
How did we get on this?
Oh, my gosh.
Sorry, he's asking Dre to do some jobs for him.
Another quick story about people thinking that something is totally innocuous and fine, but really it's not.
I might have to cut this one out, too.
You know my dad loves Dr. Pepper.
Yeah.
Have I told you this story?
No.
Okay, for the longest time.
So my dad's name is Daryl Pitts.
Yeah.
It's been that way for the longest time so my dad's name is Daryl Pitts yeah it's been that way for the longest time no life so for the longest time he would say I need a DP for DP yeah DP DP to him I have a similar story to this where i did this yes yes okay i'll tell this you have to tell so
i wonder if you got it from my dad probably i'm sure that i did okay so for the longest time he
would say i need a dp for dp which of course to anyone with an even slightly dirty mind means
double penetration but to him meant i need a dr pepper for daryl pitts yeah
so around the time when i realized how this sounded he thank god decided he was going to
give up soda and he gave up soda for a long time but then like a year ago he started drinking soda
again and i remember we were in the car it was was my mom and dad, me and Norman.
And my dad said he wanted to stop at Quick Trip for a DP.
And Norman's just like dying.
Like dying.
He doesn't want to laugh at his father-in-law, but oh man.
And so I was like, dad, you have to stop saying DP.
And he's like, what, what, what?
And my mom's getting kind of frustrated too.
Like why, you know, why can't he say DP?
Yeah, been calling it that for years.
And I was like, look, sometime, not now,
because there was no way in hell
I was saying double penetration to my parents.
I was like, sometime, not now,
you need to look it up on Urban Dictionary. dictionary well of course my mom immediately pulls out her phone and then
they got like mad at me about it like i invented double penetration
so now he doesn't say dp anymore so I was at work one day in the salon.
This has been several years ago.
Yeah.
And it had been like a busy day.
It was a long day.
And it had kind of like slowed down.
And the salon was like inside another store.
And so I was like, oh, girls, I am fading fast.
I'm going to have to go get a DP.
The girls in this love were like
what
is that how you
re-interjects
and I was like
a Dr. Pepper
and then I like
it like clicked
I am sure
that I called it a DP
because that's what
your dad has always
called it
yeah I mean
I'm pretty sure
that since we were
in elementary school he's called it a DP but we's what your dad has always called it. Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty sure that since we were in elementary school, he's called it a DP.
But we were kids.
We didn't know. And so you took that into
adulthood. I did.
And in a workplace environment,
you said you needed a DP.
Because you were fainting fast.
Anyway, another very
relevant tangent.
Let's see here.
So Dre's like dre's like sure i know a guy who can help you with these jobs on september 4th 2012 dre uses one of his of the prison phones to
call john o'leary he gets john on the line and hands the phone to Paul. And Paul says, I'm a friend of Dre's, and I asked him to, you know, get me a couple enforcers to do a couple jobs.
And so he gave me you.
And so I'm going to court tomorrow.
And Amy Weatherford is the star witness to the case.
And if there's no Amy Weatherford, there's no case.
He says this in a prison phone call?
Yeah, what's wrong with that?
What a fucking idiot.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
That's all the proof you need there for a conspiracy to commit murder.
Sure.
I was shocked.
How do...
Is he the one guy on earth who doesn't know that those calls are recorded?
Holy shit.
What a fucking idiot.
So they get off the phone and Paul's like, I'm brilliant.
I'm such a genius.
But he starts thinking some more and he starts making some notes and he's like, you know something?
I know of a couple people I'd like to kill.
Obviously I want to kill Amy, for sure.
Oh, duh.
But I also want to kill these other two guys who I did some business with,
because they stole money from me.
And stealing money is wrong.
Uh-huh.
Weird.
So he gets on the phone with John O'Leary again,
and here's a transcript of the call.
Paul.
I've got three jobs that's worth a hundred grand to you, man.
John, I'm on, man.
This game is on, buddy.
I mean, it's on like Donkey Kong.
Oh my God!
Paul, all right.
All right.
Seem like a fucking nerd.
Nerdiest hitman ever.
So Paul's like, I'd like to get this done as quickly as possible.
And oh, hey, hey, let's be smart about this.
Let's start talking in code.
Not a moment too soon.
No.
Are you ready for the code?
Yes.
Instead of saying murder, they're going to say digging a hole.
That's dumb as fuck.
Oh, it's so much more stupid than you think it is right now.
I promise you.
Oh my gosh.
So let me break this down for you.
Amy is hole number one.
Oh my gosh.
So let me break this down for you.
Amy is hole number one.
And the other two guys are holes two and three.
And in case you think they're being like really careful and trying to like do some dirt metaphors or something. No.
In one phone call, Paul says, the thing I gotta express.
We gotta concentrate 100%- 110% on the first hole.
This is so dumb!
Yep.
A few days later, John sends his co-worker, Richie, to visit Paul in prison.
And Richie is a rough-looking dude.
He's a thick white guy.
He's bald.
He's got pierced ears.
And he appeared to be wearing, like, a homemade black tank top.
What does that mean?
A t-shirt with the sleeves cut off?
Yeah, that's what I call it.
It's a homemade tank top.
It's homemade because I'm looking at pictures of this guy.
I'm like, you did not buy it that way.
And you don't know anyone who's good with a needle because they would have
sewed that up a little better.
So they meet and Paul's like, let's talk about hole number one.
Before she dies, you need to get a signed confession out of her.
This is literally how he's talking.
They use the code
word, call number one.
Before she dies is the next
sentence out of his mouth. Neat. Neat.
He's so smart.
What could go wrong? Such a genius.
I know.
He's like, before she dies.
Is he going to get caught?
I'm afraid so.
Imagine that.
I don't know why.
You know, the police are very smart, you know.
You mean they managed to crack this code?
They must have had some, like, Harvard guys on the case.
I think they got the...
Hole number one.
The Navajo wind talkers.
He goes, before she dies, you need to get a signed confession out of her.
And in that confession, she needs to say that there was no conspiracy between me and John.
Also, she needs to confess that she put this whole scheme together herself.
She's the one who stole all the money.
She's the one who ran the Ponzi scheme.
What?
How is this guy supposed to do that?
Maybe he's the best in the biz.
No, the other, I mean, like, just thinking logically.
Can we stop for a second?
So, yeah, let's pretend she is the one who starts the Ponzi scheme.
She starts a Ponzi scheme and she gives him all the money to buy his girlfriend
a boob job
and like a lawn fountain?
No.
Okay.
It's not,
it's never going to work.
But even,
You don't know,
you don't know the end
of this story.
The end is that Amy dies.
I can see the future,
Kristen.
So,
he's like,
let's do the confession
and suicide combo pack,
please.
In the suicide note, have her write that she's had like a come to Jesus meeting and she can't handle all the awful things she's done.
So she has to kill herself.
Okay.
And please don't make any of this easy on her.
I want her to suffer.
Wow.
So he makes a list of the ways he wants amy to be
tortured which again you're in prison why the hell would you write things down yeah uh but he does
first he wants them to knock her unconscious then strip her naked then tape her to a chair put a
hood over her head shove a curling iron up somewhere. They didn't say. I guess American Greed got a little too precious with it.
But, you know.
Use your imagination.
I'm assuming they didn't want to do her hair.
Then Paul's like, look, if this brilliant plan somehow doesn't work out,
I've got a backup plan that'll for sure get me out of prison.
Oh, yeah?
Are you ready for the backup plan?
Yeah.
Could I have you guess at what the backup plan would be?
If they can't kill the star witness, who do you kill?
The prosecutor?
Yeah.
Because, you know, he's the only prosecutor on earth.
He's the only prosecutor.
Absolutely.
You kill him.
Nobody else.
Done.
And everyone can get away with every crime. That's right. Damn. We should have had more than one prosecutor. He's the only prosecutor. Absolutely. You kill him. Nobody else. Done. And everyone can get away with every crime.
That's right.
Damn.
We should have had more than one prosecutor.
So, yeah, that's hole number four.
In case you're keeping track.
Wow.
Murder the prosecutor.
Great.
You might be wondering, how is Paul planning to pay the hitman?
Yeah.
Here was the plan.
He's like, look, I know what these people have in the bank.
Before you kill them, take them to the bank.
Get hole number one to take out this amount.
Get hole number two to take out this amount.
Hole number three, this amount.
This is just a terrible plan all around yeah i
mean even if that was i mean i hate to tell somebody how to kill somebody but i just imagine
it's a tough job and like getting them to a bank where there are cameras all around yeah but anyway
he's like look you can take a portion of each hole's money and i'll take the rest
this hitman is going for this no no okay because here's the thing that's not um within the common
business practices of hitman that's without the outside the lines of the hitman's oath
the american greed episode was like hitmen don't work on consignment
so uh they prefer the upfront sum like a down payment yeah yeah so paul calls his brother dave
and he tells him all about the plans.
And he's like, look, Dave, you owe me $10,000.
You know you owe me $10,000.
So I need you to pay me back what you owe me so I can go through with this plan.
But Dave is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
First of all, I don't have $10,000 lying around.
And if I did, I would not finance this ridiculous plan.
This is insane.
And you're a fucking idiot.
Yep.
He was like, you're not going to get away with this.
And Paul was so mad that he hung up.
By this point.
Dramatically.
Yes.
Slammed down the phone.
That's right.
Paul is pissed.
Because if he can't pay the hitman then his brilliant plan is gonna just fall to shit he calls the hitman he's like
my brother babe my brother dave is being kind of a pill but here's the thing i know he can afford
to do this he says he can't i know he can
but the only way you're gonna get the money is if you kill him too hole number five
so we got a new hole but we're gonna have to move him to the front so that you get the money
hey i cannot stress this enough we've got to concentrate on hole number one
here's a transcript of that conversation.
Because believe it or not,
this whole thing was recorded.
Oh, really?
Yeah, it's weird.
They don't give prisoners a ton of privacy.
Paul, you may have to get to that point.
John, really?
And you're good with that.
Paul, I'm good with it.
It's not up to me, you know?
John, I understand, but here's the thing.
After we hung up, we called your brother back, okay?
Paul, okay.
John, and your brother said, look, I don't have $10,000.
If you guys want to come and beat me up and kill me, you can kill me.
It ain't still going to change that you ain't going to get 10 grand out of me.
Paul, I guess we'll find out.
What the fuck?
My favorite part of that is when he's like, it ain't still going to change.
Well, yeah.
No, when Paul's like, it's not up to me.
It is up to you.
You're the one putting the hit on.
Dave is the one who's being a dick.
It's not up to Paul.
Dave knows he should pony up the 10 grand.
But 10 grand is only 10% of what he.
Yeah, 10 grand is nothing.
Yeah, it's 10% of the first hole.
You know what?
You know what?
I'm thinking now.
So people, people who fell for his tricks fell for stuff that sounded too good to be true.
Yeah.
He's falling for something that seems too good to be true.
Hitmen who are like, yeah, we'll kill all these people for 10 grand.
No.
No.
Then, on September 27th, 2012, Paul's plan becomes a reality.
He gets a phone call from John. Here's how it goes.
Paul. What's happening, man? Tell me the good news.
John. Well, you're sure you wanted some stuff done, right?
Well, you're sure you wanted some stuff done, right?
Paul.
Yep.
John.
Here's the news.
You sitting down?
Paul.
Yeah, I am.
John.
All right.
Lisa.
He means to say Amy.
He says Lisa.
Lisa's in the trunk of my car right now as I'm driving down the fucking interstate, okay?
Paul.
Okay. John. What do you think of that buddy paul i think that's awesome is he a cop is john a cop of course yeah of course
john is very reassuring he's like look richie's pulling her teeth out right now we'll get the
confession very soon then we'll kill her thank you for choosing john's hitman services
by the way you wanted her cremated right and paul's like yeah he's like okay we'll do that
too don't you worry we got this whole thing under control the conversation is very happy
very light they're having a great time everyone's pumped we're all getting money
paul will be out of prison in no time and we'll all party together yeah mm-hmm paul is like oh
this is just fabulous yeah if it's not too much trouble could you let her know that she's dying
because i'm avenging my brother's suicide oh my god God. And Sean's like, sure.
Yeah, no problem.
Absolutely.
They hang up the phone.
Paul goes back to his cell
to write a quick note
to his brother Dave.
And he's like, hey, good news.
Amy admitted the whole thing.
It's crazy.
She did the whole thing.
Yeah.
It was all, you know,
it was the guilt.
It made her commit suicide.
Oh, gosh.
See you soon.
Paul is totally thrilled.
He thinks he's getting away with everything.
But Paul was a total fucking numbnuts.
Yeah.
Because his cellmate, Dre, never really set him up with a hitman.
Of course he didn't.
And John O'Leary, the hitman, didn't exist.
But John Leahy, the FBI agent, did.
So they move Paul into solitary confinement.
And that's when he slowly realizes,
oh shit, I was talking to an FBI agent.
Duh, fucking idiot.
So he tries to slip a note to Dre.
The note says,
like, hey man,
just warning you,
we're both in a lot of trouble.
Uh, no, we're not.
Nope.
Let me read you verbatim
from one of his notes.
John O'Leary is an ATFf agent he duped you and me he needs to go
before he needs to go before he can testify against us or we will be in prison for the
rest of our lives oh my god this guy's a fucking idiot and of course the notes were discovered
so what if you're counting now that's six holes because now this this guy's gotta go too And of course, the notes were discovered. What?
If you're counting now, that's six holes.
Because now this guy's got to go too. This guy's got holes everywhere.
A month after his hitman plan went to shit, Paul was indicted on new charges.
His trial took place in February of 2013.
Yeah.
Here's the thing that sucks about this.
And I am very sorry, because I hate this.
So the American Greed episode did not go into the trial much.
Yeah.
And I was like, that's cool.
This story is amazing.
I'll just look up the trial stuff.
You can't find it.
I had a hell of a time.
Yeah, you can't find it.
So I got some details, and I'm sorry.
It's okay.
Okay.
This story's been amazing. It's okay. Okay. This story's been amazing.
It's fine.
Okay.
So his trial took place in February of 2013.
Paul claimed he was innocent.
His attorneys asked for leniency.
They said that Paul suffered from depression and that his divorce in the 90s really affected him.
Which I think is a great argument because we all know people who've been divorced
and all of them want to kill six people
and they want to create a business
that like steals money from their friends.
Yep, very common issue.
Caused by divorce.
That's why it's important to stay married.
You don't want to become a murderer.
They pointed out that in 2012, he was found in public wandering naked and covered in poop.
So, again, this is like a snippet I got from a random article.
They were bringing this up as like, clearly this guy has mental health issues, blah, blah, blah.
To me, that sounds like drugs
I don't know
Or weird sex stuff
No
Not everything is a sex thing
What are you getting
What are you getting
I figured it was your kids
No it definitely sounds like drugs
Or
Yeah
Yeah
Or like someone super turned on
Cover themselves in poop
And goes to the park
you know right i mean you got that park across the street from your house
constantly naked they're just poop all over
oh and in your idea zach's hosting people has to come out. Oh, Brandi's out again.
Oh,
and your idea, Zach's hosing people.
You can go over there
and get the dudes to pay
attention to me. Yeah, and my
fantasy of this, you're out there and
Zach's having to corral you back in.
In your fantasy
your husband is going to the park with a hose.
No, he's like turning the hose
on him like, get out of here! Oh, I thought he was
cleansing them. No!
No, in reality, what would
really happen is Zach
would lift one slat of the blinds
just peep out and then
call the police.
He's like the neighborhood watch guy.
Is he 80?
I mean, what's he do?
Yeah, he's like, get off my lawn!
Those Eagle Scouts.
They can go one of two ways.
Serial killer or neighborhood watch.
I'm glad you picked the neighborhood watch guy.
The defense attorneys are hoping to get some leniency.
But the prosecutors were like, how about you don't be lenient?
Because this guy committed egregious white collar crimes and violent crimes.
They wanted him to get 40 years in prison.
Yeah.
Fun fact.
The lead prosecutor was Mark Devereaux.
One of the holes.
Oh!
Yeah, which I was surprised.
That's not a conflict of interest?
It really shocked me.
Yeah.
But you know, it's not like he was hole number one.
Weirdly, there were two on this case.
I think that is a conflict of interest.
Yeah, well well it happened victims of his financial scheme testified as well as amy paul's i just feel like it's setting it up
to where an appeal could yeah that doesn't come through and again i didn't get enough info on how
this all went down so i don't know me, as someone who has researched for podcasts,
it's really hard to find those details.
And I hate that because I thought for sure,
this was such a crazy case.
I thought there'd be a ton of info on it.
Yeah.
And I, if there was, I didn't see it.
Yeah.
And you know, maybe it was one of those things
where Mark kind of sat out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But he was just listed as a prosecutor.
Yeah.
I don't know.
He was a bench warmer.
A bench warmer.
So victims of...
Sit on the judge's lap.
They called me a hole.
So victims of his financial scheme testified,
as well as Amy, Paul's brother Dave,
and the agent John Leahy.
Yeah.
The jury deliberated for less than two hours. I bet.
They found him guilty. At sentencing, Paul spoke. He said, Judge, I propose that you let me just go
back to the working world. What? Yeah. Let me go back to paying back all the people i've wronged i'm not gonna be any use to society
in prison you aren't any use to society outside of prison yeah the judge was like no how about
you go to prison for 30 years yeah at the end of that you're gonna get five years of supervised
probation they didn't of supervised probation.
They didn't say supervised probation, but that's what it seemed like.
And you need to pay back $897,960.
Wow.
Which, that's not going to happen.
Not going to happen.
But, okay.
Yeah.
Here's a fun fact.
If he hadn't tried to murder all those people in that stupid scheme he probably would
have done a few years in a minimum security prison like five years probably yeah probably yeah
in total paul stole almost a million dollars from 21 victims yeah investigators say it's pretty amazing that he
was caught so early in the scheme because it was only gonna get bigger and i don't mean for that to
try to minimize like the people it happened to because obviously this was yeah it's out yeah
they basically said if amy weatherford hadn't stopped it, who knows? Yeah, did she get a reward?
Did she get like a gold star?
I hope so.
She was a badass.
Free ice cream cones for life.
You would think.
Yeah.
She seriously was such a badass.
She's like, and she was tough.
Well, she had a lot to risk by doing this.
Because like, she's living there.
Yeah.
Yeah, she really put a lot at risk by coming forward because like she's living there like that yeah she really put a lot at
risk by coming forward yeah yeah and in some other interview i saw with her she's talked about like
you know i don't come from an area where snitching is okay but i had to do it yeah i had to do the
right thing here yeah Yeah. Yeah.
Crazy.
That is crazy.
That's amazing.
So that's the story of the white collar crime turned violent.
That was so crazy.
All right.
I'm going to start off by telling you that I found out about this case from that same Instagram that I told you about before.
Oh my God.
This day in crime.
Excellent.
Love it.
Okay.
I'd never heard of this case and i am
obsessed with it all right okay anthony cursio seemed to have it all born september 1st 1980
in monroe washington a small city of about 18 000 people 30 miles northeast of seattle anthony
lived a fairly privileged life he his parents owned and operated a successful landscaping
company and Anthony seemed to excel at everything he did. By high school he was captain of both his
basketball and football team and he was dating the hottest cheerleader in school.
The couple seemed like the perfect match and were the envy of all their peers. The teachers at the school even took to calling Emily, Anthony's girlfriend, Mrs. Curcio.
Wow.
When he wasn't setting school records on the basketball court and the football field,
he was the guy everyone wanted to be around.
He was the life of all of the high school parties.
He was just out there living his best life.
After high school, Anthony followed in his father's footsteps and earned a scholarship to play football at the University of Idaho.
He would quickly find himself in trouble, though, as he got caught up in the party lifestyle on campus.
He spent his freshman year suspended from the football team.
Yeah.
He partied too hard to be on a football team?
Mm-hmm.
What did he do?
I'm sure that he was caught drinking.
You're not supposed to do any of that if you're...
Well...
I mean, I know you're not supposed to.
Okay.
He got a bit of a break his sophomore year, though,
when a new coach took over the team. He had a bit of a break his sophomore year, though, when a new coach took over the team.
He had a clean slate.
He was training hard and living right.
This was going to be his year.
Then tragedy struck.
While returning a punt in practice, Anthony tore his ACL.
Oh.
He would never play football again.
He would never play football again.
But it was what happened after the injury that would cause Anthony's life to begin to spiral out of control.
Anthony was prescribed Vicodin for the pain.
And he quickly became addicted to the drug.
Of his spiral into addiction, Anthony said, I was depressed that my whole identity wrapped around sports was gone.
Now I was just a student.
I latched onto the painkillers and within a few prescriptions,
my dream of football was gone.
The pills had me.
But the prescription for his torn ACL only lasted so long.
Soon he was showing up at doctor's offices under different names with different ailments to get new prescriptions.
This is so sad.
It is. It's super sad.
Yeah.
When that didn't work, he turned to drug dealers on campus to get his supply.
But that was expensive.
So he took to selling stuff on eBay to support his habit.
The problem was that it wasn't always his stuff he was selling on eBay.
We only have so much nice stuff in a college dorm.
Sometimes it was stuff he took from other dorm rooms.
Sometimes it was university property.
Sometimes it was stuff he stole from people when he dressed up as a mover and took off with their property.
Wow, that's pretty smart.
So he would dress up as a mover, pretend to be, you know, moving their stuff, and then he'd just take off with it.
And I'm sorry, but I feel like in a college dorm, you can get away with anything if you're dressed the right way.
Yeah.
But all of that was a lot of work.
You're dressed the right way and you just... Yeah.
But all of that was a lot of work.
And so when that just got to be too much work,
he began counterfeiting highly collectible baseball cards
and selling them for thousands of dollars on eBay.
I love this.
Anthony was like the real life Zach Morris.
He always had a new money-making scheme.
And when it stopped working or someone caught on
to him, he was on to the next. It appears that he never got into any serious trouble for these
schemes. And all the while, Emily was still by his side. They were still together. They married
after college and started a family with the addition of two daughters. As an addict, though, Anthony's perception was that he was balancing it all.
The family and the addiction, he had it all taken care of, no problem.
Everything was good.
But on the outside, that obviously wasn't the case.
His family begged him to get help,
and over the next few years he would do four stints in rehab.
But the addiction was there under the surface and a relapse seemed inevitable every time.
Lurking under the surface of this outwardly successful businessman.
By 2008, Anthony's family was living in a beautiful new home in Seattle. He owned a successful real estate investment company where he was flipping houses.
And he'd gotten really good at hiding his addiction.
This was 08?
Yeah.
Before the bust?
Mm-hmm.
Oh.
By now, it had snowballed to a $15,000 a month habit that included not only Vicodin, but cocaine and Xanax.
Oh, my.
Oh, sorry.
I sounded like a gremlin.
Oh, my.
Not good.
And then, just as you predicted, the housing bubble burst.
The real estate market crashed.
Yeah, I predicted that.
And Anthony was fucked yeah he'd been making a shit ton of money flipping houses but he'd been blowing it all on drugs he hadn't saved anything
to speak of and now there was no money coming in no money to support his family no money to support his family. No money to support his addiction. Should have gone to Yorkshire Financial.
Anthony was pissed.
Was he pissed at himself for making bad decisions and not saving for the future?
Of course not.
He was pissed at the big banks for letting this happen and then getting a government bailout.
Where was his bailout?
He wondered as he sat outside the Bank of America branch in Monroe,
watching the Brinks armored truck deliver more money to the bank.
Okay, I'm intrigued.
And that's when he started planning the almost perfect crime.
Okay, I have to just insert a little something here that says there are parts of this
crime and the planning that i am just in absolute awe of but i am in no way condoning robbery
or in any way am i pro armored truck
i'm so glad you made that clear over the next eight months anthony spent countless hours
planning the ins and outs of what would be his greatest money-making scheme yet
he knew a bank robbery would be too risky yeah i mean bank robbers they get i'm the majority of the time they're caught there's too
many cameras too many people involved but what if and i always feel like they don't get as much
money as you think they would exactly so what if he could get his hands on the money before it went
into the bank what and that's how anthony cursio decided he would pull off the most amazing armored car heist I've ever heard of. First, Anthony learned everything he could about Brink's armored cars.
Layout of the truck.
Did it have any blind spots?
He gathered this information by doing extensive surveillance.
At times, he would sit in his car and draw elaborately detailed sketches of the truck.
These sketches are nuts.
They look like fucking blueprints.
Oh, my God.
Other times, he'd hide in plain sight and dress like a landscaper so he could be out in the open and get a closer view
of the truck including the procedure that was followed when the bags of money were taken off
the truck put on a dolly and taken into the bank it was during this transfer that he saw the biggest
opportunity he needed to get those bags after they were off the truck, but before they made it into the bank, he had a very small window if he was going to pull this off.
Next, Anthony focused on the getaway.
How could he make the quickest, cleanest escape?
The bank was located in town.
And what appears to me, I looked it up, and it's a fairly busy area with lots of shops and restaurants around, but no direct interstate access.
Okay.
Which is what I would guess led him to the idea of a water escape.
What?
About 100 yards from the bank was Woods Creek, which feeds into the Skykomish River. Yeah, the second one.
This is how he'd make his escape. Initially, Anthony had the idea to use a jet ski in his
trip down the creek to the river, but he pretty quickly discovered that several areas of the creek were too shallow
for this. So he spent weeks digging out the bottom of the creek bed in those areas. Oh my gosh.
Is that not nuts? He's in this creek digging it out by hand. Finally, he decided he couldn't do
enough. He just was not going to be able to get this creek deep enough
to be able to take a jet ski through it.
And then there was also the trouble of how do I sneak a jet ski into this creek?
You know, I get now why you gave the disclaimer, because I am impressed.
I am. This is nuts.
Like, my mind is blown by this, and I haven't even gotten to the best part.
But you know what I'm thinking?
What?
If he was this smart and this strategic, if he had, like, applied that to a legit business, he could have made it.
And so he talks about this a little bit, and I didn't include this, so I'll insert now.
Is that, like, when he was high, when he was in his addiction, he was like super OCD.
So he could think about like every detail of something.
Like two, like the minutest details so that he could completely see it start to finish.
So, I mean, if his mind was capable of that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Think about if it was directed in yeah that's a positive manner yeah
so he decides that a jet ski is just not going to work he can't he's not going to be able to
sneak it down there he's gonna have to back it in there on a trailer somebody's gonna see him
whatever and so he's like okay that's not gonna work what's the next what's my next choice to try and get do a water escape yeah so he comes up with
the idea of an inner tube and i'm not talking your dollar store pool float inner tube think
more of like one of those big ones like heavy duty ones that you like pull behind a boat
like a giant inner tube okay okay like this the one he uses is red and, or no, it's yellow and black, and it's big.
Like, like water park thing, where you, like, take it up the ladder?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But more heavy duty than that.
Like, have you ever been on a boat and you've gone tubing?
Like, where they pull you by?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, like that.
Gotcha.
Gotcha.
Okay.
The inner tube idea was not without its own issues, though.
Okay.
The inner tube idea was not without its own issues, though.
Anthony knew he needed to make a quick getaway, and with the weight of him and the money,
he knew that there would be portions of the creek where the water just didn't move fast enough to keep propelling him down the creek to the river.
So he strung up a cable system along the creek where he could pull himself along in those slower moving areas
oh my god is that not fucking crazy yeah that's nuts i hope okay can you tell us
right now how much he anticipated he would make from this scheme no
because i'm i'm worried about it's not enough like if you were to like figure
out the dollar rate per hour how much time he spent yeah so with his escape plan worked out
now anthony focused on a disguise he knew he needed a disguise that would help him blend in prior to the heist so that he could be in position.
During his surveillance, he'd managed to blend in really well posing as a landscaper.
So he continued with that.
Anthony sewed himself a tearaway landscaping disguise complete with hat, wig, vest and mask so he could quickly shed the disguise as he ran to
the creek wow so it's like he shows like a shirt and pants like with velcro so he can just like
rip them off and then the description that a witness might give he no longer matches mask
and wig included yeah so he has like a painter's mask on his face.
Yeah.
A hat, a wig, safety glasses.
Yeah.
Painter's mask, tearaway clothes.
Yeah.
Yeah, this is incredible.
Okay.
So he's got the heist planned.
Check.
The getaway planned.
Check.
And he's got his disguise planned.
Check.
But there was one more thing Anthony wanted to put in place to make sure he could pull this off and get away without being caught.
That's where the decoys came in.
On September 27th, 2008, Anthony placed an ad on Craigslist seeking day laborers with landscaping experience.
on Craigslist seeking day laborers with landscaping experience.
The Post promised an hourly rate of $28.50 for a week-long job as part of the fictitious
Beautification of Monroe project.
Respondents to the ad were given instructions
to arrive wearing a blue shirt, blue hat,
a neon safety vest, safety glasses, and a painter's mask.
Half of the people were directed to meet at Eagle Park, which is just across the street
from the bank, and half were directed to meet in a parking lot of a grocery store next to
the bank.
Oh my gosh.
All were given the instruction not to leave until the project manager arrived and gave
them instructions.
until the project manager arrived and gave them instructions.
So he's got like a dozen people dressed in the exact same outfit he's going to be dressed in.
Yes.
At the parking lot right next to the bank.
And he's got a dozen people dressed exactly the same at the park across the street,
which is where he has to run to get into the creek.
Yeah. Then on September 30th, 2008, with his decoys in place, Anthony Curcio, dressed in his matching disguise, positioned himself outside the Bank of America branch, again posing as a landscaper.
At just after 11 o'clock a.m.
I think it was 11.04.
Okay.
After 11 o'clock a.m., I think it was 11.04.
Okay.
He set down his weed sprayer, pulled out a can of pepper spray, and sprayed the armed Brinks guard directly in the face.
Whoa.
When the guard let go of the dolly holding the canvas bags full of money to grab his face, just as Anthony knew he would,
Anthony grabbed the two bags and sprinted off in the direction of the creek,
shedding his disguise along the way.
Oh my gosh.
One thing didn't go according to plan though.
When Anthony ran into the street,
he was nearly hit by a truck,
which caused him to drop one of the bags of money.
Anthony knew he couldn't waste even a second picking it up and continued the hundred yard dash to the creek with only half of his haul just moments later though he was safely in his inner
tube floating to freedom with a bag containing four hundred thousand dollars
okay I had in my head that this seemed like a decent plan for like a million dollars.
So he's not...
Yeah, so had he gotten both bags, it would have been about $800,000.
Yeah.
Yep.
When police arrived on the scene, they got the description of the suspect.
But obviously, there was a problem.
Oh my gosh.
There were over a dozen people in the area matching that description.
The decoys had done their job.
Instead of following Anthony downstream, they were interviewing more than 15 decoys as Anthony got further and further away.
This is so smart.
It is!
This is so genius!
The only real evidence detectives had in the case were the discarded pieces of Anthony's disguise and the description of a tall man with an athletic build running toward the creek.
Wow.
Lock them up.
Yeah.
The media quickly dubbed Anthony DB Tuber, a nod to the famed plane hijacker DB Cooper.
Yeah.
And people couldn't stop talking about this hijacker D.B. Cooper. And people couldn't
stop talking about this seemingly
perfect crime.
The mystery man seemed to have
pulled it off.
And he might have gotten away with it.
Was it the Craigslist email?
If it hadn't been for that meddling homeless
man. What?
No, so the Craigslist
said they weren't able to track it back.
They tried to track it back, but they didn't. They couldn't?
They couldn't. Okay, I thought
that would be his undoing. Nope. Alright.
Okay. As Monroe
detectives were taking stock of what
they had in the case, the wig, the vest,
the hat, the mask, which
they'd send off to the lab to see if they could
extract DNA from,
one of the detectives' memories flashed back to a patrol report he had stumbled across three or so weeks prior.
A homeless man had called police because he'd been rummaging through a dumpster at one of his regular hangouts when he noticed something stashed next to the dumpster.
next to the dumpster. It was a wig, mask, hat, safety glasses, and the largest can of pepper spray he'd ever seen, he told the dispatcher. He told them he just wanted to call it in because
it seemed suspicious and because he was known to hang around that dumpster quite a bit.
And he didn't want to be a suspect.
He didn't want to be a suspect if that stuff was later used in some kind of crime.
Okay, yeah.
The dispatcher got the homeless man's name and told him that she'd send someone out to check it out.
But nothing really came of that call.
Detectives believe now that that stuff had been stashed there during a dry run of the heist.
And they knew they needed to track down that homeless man to see if he knew anything else.
But how do you track someone down without an address all they had was this guy's name so the detectives went to mcdonald's and
they got a bag of 10 cheeseburgers and they went to a known homeless tent village in the area
and started trading cheeseburgers for information. What? Started
talking to the homeless guys. Answer my question. I'll give you a cheeseburger.
When they were down to just four cheeseburgers left, they found their guy.
And boy, were they glad they found him. He told detectives that shortly after he called in about
the stashed disguise, a man had come out
of the woods in the area and grabbed the stuff again just wanting to make sure he couldn't later
be blamed for something the homeless man had watched the man get into his car and he'd written
down his license plate number and he just kept it he didn't call it in he just kept it. He didn't call it in. He just kept it just in case it ever came up.
Oh, my gosh.
When detectives ran the plate, it came back to Emily Curcio.
They knew her husband, Anthony, was tall and athletic.
Oh, my gosh.
So they put him under surveillance.
Under surveillance, they watched him go on expensive shopping sprees.
He was buying stuff at the mall he was going to burberry he was going to coach he was buying all kinds of crazy stuff
2008 he bought a range rover the preferred vehicle of all criminals criminals he went to vegas with his buddies and his teenage mistress ew no yeah he's like 28
at this point oh yeah and he has a wife and two kids
in the meantime remember they've sent his lab. Does Emily know about the?
No.
At this point, no.
Okay.
So they've sent this mask that they recovered off to the lab, right,
to see if they could pull DNA out of it.
And they were able to.
Yeah.
They got saliva off of it.
Hell yeah.
So they've got a DNA profile.
They don't have anything to match to it.
And so they're following him around.
He goes to a gas station, puts gas in his Range Rover, throws away some trash.
In that trash is a Gatorade bottle that he'd been using as his chew spit bottle.
Oh, let this be a lesson to everyone.
Don't chew tobacco.
So gross.
So gross.
So they pull that Gatorade bottle out of the trash.
They grab that spit juice out of there.
Send it off to the lab.
Wouldn't you know?
It's a perfect DNA match.
They have their guy.
Ugh.
Why does your face look like that?
I just think that's disgusting.
It is gross.
And I think, I mean, I don't even like chewing gum, because I think that's gross.
But chewing something and then actively spitting it.
And I, I'm sorry, if you're going to do it, don't do it in a clear bottle where everybody has to look at.
They don't actually chew the tobacco.
I know, but then they spit it out and then you've got like this nasty spit juice in a clear Gatorade bottle that everyone has to observe.
It's pretty gross.
Yeah.
So get a dark bottle so people don't have to see.
So on November 4th.
Do you have more advice for me? I don't. Not on that. I don't chew tobacco from me i don't know that i don't chew tobacco so i don't
need your advice well just in case you're thinking about picking it up i'm not
one of the articles even said that it was specifically like coal winter grain
tobacco listen i'm all for, but I think that is irrelevant. So on November 4th, 2008, Anthony was arrested while sitting in his Range Rover in a Target parking lot.
He had $17,000 on him at the time of his arrest.
Wow.
So they arrest him.
They go to his house.
Wait, how long has it been since the robbery?
So the robbery happened
it's been just over a month it happened september 30th they arrested november 4th okay so they
arrest him and they go to his house because they need to search his house try and recover the rest
of this money emily answers the door and she's like what are you guys doing here who are you
what is this and they're like we've arrested your husband he's the he's the
tuber guy oh my god and she's shocked had no clue none of the money is in their house they do end
up recovering all the money but he had it stashed at a friend's house wow yeah so it seems that she
probably really did not know but where'd she think the fucking Range Rover came from?
Yeah.
Unless he had some brilliant scheme to lie to her.
I mean, surely if he planned out everything else,
surely he could figure out a plan to lie to his wife.
I just thought of this, too,
is that he has been making all of this money flipping houses,
and she doesn't know that he's been blowing $15,000 a month on his addiction.
So maybe she thinks they're fine.
They've got tons of savings.
Yeah.
He's super manipulative.
Yeah.
So, of course.
So, yeah.
I bet she really had.
Yeah.
No clue.
Yeah.
Which would just be devastating.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which would just be devastating.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So initially he was charged in like just like in like regular county court.
Okay.
But then because of the Hobbs Act, which is this law that was passed like in the 1950s.
Basically, because it wasn't a bank robbery, it didn't automatically qualify as a federal crime okay because he didn't enter the bank but because yes but because of this hobbs act
basically if there's any kind of like the gist that i got out of this is there any kind of like
extenuating circumstance in a robbery that escalates it to a federal crime yeah so they're
like oh good okay great now we can charge you with a federal crime yeah so they're like oh good okay great now we
can charge you with a federal crime yeah so they charge him in federal court and again there's not
much available about the trial there wasn't even a trial because he pled guilty he pled for a deal
and this is really interesting to me because even the prosecutor and the judge both seemed impressed by the level
of planning that went into this crime yeah yes well you talk about my guy dumb dumb
numb nuts over here talking on the jail phone um so assistant u.s attorney bruce miyake said but for his two mistakes he almost succeeded in
planning the perfect crime and the prosecutor seemed sympathetic to anthony in his recommendation
to the judge of a five-year sentence which is far less than the 20 years that he could have asked for yeah so he was facing
up to 20 years the prosecution asked for five years and in his in his recommendation to the
judge for this uh the prosecutor says lurking underneath the all-american boy image was a dark
individual wracked by his addiction to painkillers. If he is able to control the demons in his life,
he has great potential.
Okay.
I think that's such a crazy argument
from the prosecutor.
Yeah.
It's almost like he duped you too well yeah that's exactly what seems like
yeah and i agree someone that intelligent yes if they would put that energy into positive things
who knows what could happen but i think it's just as likely that he wouldn't put it into positive
things and he's going to become a even bigger menace to society. Yeah, absolutely.
Along with the prosecutor's recommendation, Anthony's friends and family submitted more than 100 pages of letters attesting to his fundamentally good character, highlighting his struggles, asking for leniency,
and expressing their hopes that he would emerge from prison a changed man.
In her letter, his wife Emily wrote,
the path of destruction Anthony was on had only two destinations, prison or death.
I am so grateful, especially for the sake of his daughters,
that his new home is a cell and not a coffin.
Yeah, that's pretty, hits hits hard yeah ultimately the u.s district court judge james robart sentenced anthony to do you have a guess how many years
you got i had somewhere between 5 and 20 I think it should be 10.
So the judge sentenced him to six years in federal prison.
So you went more than what the prosecution asked for,
but nowhere near the max.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hmm.
Um,
he said that though this heist was well planned,
it was not charming,
but tragic as Anthony had betrayed his family and endangered everyone from the armored car guards to the hopeful day laborers who had shown up looking for work.
Oh, you know, that's a good point.
I hadn't really thought about that.
Absolutely. One of the reasons that he posted the decoys at multiple locations is in case the pepper spray was not super effective on the guard.
The guard is armed.
Yeah.
So the thought was that if he had these decoys, the guard would look up and there'd be too many people.
He wouldn't be able to shoot at him.
Wow.
Yeah.
I hadn't thought about it from that perspective i only thought about oh now
the police are here they're gonna try to interview yeah so like if the guard had looked up and tried
to shoot he wouldn't have done it because there were too many people that looked too much alike Yeah. Man. In prison, Anthony completed a drug treatment program.
Mm-hmm.
And it seemed to stick this time.
He wrote several children's books while he was in prison.
He wrote them.
He illustrated them.
They've been published.
Yeah.
One's called...
Self-published or like...
No, like with a real publishing company
um one of them's called like my daddy's in prison like or my daddy's in jail yeah like
that's kind of cool it's really cool actually yeah um he wrote books about um like well-known
sports figures children's books so like steph curry and lebron james kind of detailing like
what their how they you know grew up to like how they have this successful life now by making the right choices.
Wow.
Yeah.
After his release from prison in April of 2013.
So he didn't serve.
I mean, I don't think he served all of the 72 months.
I think he got out early.
He reunited with his wife and daughters.
While he was in prison, he wrote countless letters to Emily and confessed all of the sins of his life to her.
Told her everything he'd ever done, the affair that he'd had, cheating on her, you know know being the addiction for years and years and years
he came clean about it all and when they when he got out of prison they started over they're still
married wow he stayed by his side wow and when asked in an interview how she could stay with
him after all of that she said well he's a different person he's a different person that the that was
the addiction that wasn't Anthony that was his illness that's a good lady he wrote a book about
his experience and his time in prison it's called Heist and High and since being released from
prison he's become an inspirational speaker.
He speaks to college athletes, to high school athletes.
He's done a TED Talk.
What?
Yeah.
Did you watch it?
I didn't.
Oh my gosh, I have to watch it.
Yeah, so he's really made the decision
to focus on trying to lead a positive life.
That's amazing.
And really put what he does.
He does have an amazing mind and really put it towards something good
rather than something bad.
And as far as I know,
as far as I found,
he's still clean.
That story is incredible.
I've never heard of it.
Is that nuts?
Yeah, I don't think I've ever heard that story.
I have never heard of it. Is that nuts? Yeah, I don't think I've ever heard that story. I have never heard of it either.
Completely nuts.
Yeah.
So thank you to that Instagram, thisdayincrime, for posting about that so I could find out all of that craziness.
And you guys, if you have any episode suggestions for us, just keep posting on your Instagram.
That's right.
So that's the story of Anthony Curcio.
Oh, that's crazy.
Is that not, like I, my mind was blown
about all of the stuff.
And it was, it was two, he made two mistakes.
He left the mask behind, left his DNA behind.
And he got, he was seen by that homeless guy
doing that dry run what was
his name did you get his name i either his first or last name was alan that's all that i he's in
none of the articles as he mentioned i watched one little news clip where he was mentioned okay
he was mentioned in some of the articles but not by name just as a homeless guy um when anthony
came out of the woods and went to pick the stuff up the homeless guy was there
because like this is where he like yeah that's where he lives yeah he said hey he saw him grab
the stuff and he said to anthony he's like hey i called the police about that stuff and anthony
said later he's like i remember thinking like did i just fuck this whole thing up
is this all gonna come undone and he, he was still going to go forward with it.
Do you think he just underestimated the guy?
Yeah, he thought there was no way that that guy would write his license plate number down.
Nothing.
Wow.
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
But, okay, now you said they recovered all of the money.
That can't be right, right?
I mean, if he bought a Range Rover and all of a sudden.
Yeah, so once, like, when you bring in, like, the all of the money. That can't be right, right? I mean, if you bought a Range Rover. Yeah, so when you bring in the cost of those items.
So they recovered either the merchandise or all the money.
There's a small amount of the money that was never recovered.
And I guess he paid it to a friend to pick him up from the river or something like that.
Wow.
But he never gave up the friend's name, I guess.
Wow.
Yeah.
Whoever the accomplice was where the money was found like they consider
him an accomplice because he stashed this money his house they never charged that guy with anything
either really yeah but he knew the money was in his house obviously yeah but he probably said oh
i didn't know it was i didn't know it was. I didn't know what.
Yeah, I don't know.
So another thing is that Anthony said later is that he had no idea like how much money $400,000 was.
Because he just had it like in this, you know, canvas bag.
He takes it to the house and he's like counting it out.
He's like, it was enough to fill a bathtub.
Yeah.
And then I had all this money and I was like,
what the fuck do I do with it?
I can't take it to a bank.
Nope.
Yeah.
And so it was like, he just like had not,
like he thought so meticulously through the crime.
Yeah.
But then hadn't thought at all about what to do after it.
You know the thing I was wondering too.
So it's these two bags.
Yeah.
$400,000 a piece. Yeah. How heavy is that? Super heavy. Yeah. See, that's the other thing I was wondering too so it's these two bags yeah four hundred thousand dollars a piece
yeah how heavy is that super heavy yeah see that's the other thing well that's why the armed guards
dolly them into the bank yeah yeah and he's one guy yeah who's gonna yeah maybe he was relieved
when the car was like now i have an excuse to drop this bag he's like well this is way heavier
than i thought it was going to be.
Because he wouldn't have any idea how to know how heavy the bags were.
It's not like he'd go up and lift one up and be like,
I think I can carry two of those.
But considering how much he thought about everything else,
it does kind of surprise me that he didn't at least try to figure out.
Calculate that out somehow.
And maybe he did.
Maybe he did, yeah.
Maybe he was hitting the gym really hard. Maybe he skipping leg days focusing all on arms um yeah i just i thought
this was nuts yeah you thought right both of our cases this week were like the people got brought down by these kind of random yes crazy yeah it is it's
crazy i really loved this case yeah it was uh it was really exciting for me to research
i should have mentioned my guy is also doing ted talks oh really no
his ted talk is just him saying did you know they record those phone calls No. It's like, what the fuck?
His TED Talk is just him saying, did you know they record those phone calls in prison?
You're ever in prison.
Just heads up.
All those phone calls you make, it's totally recorded.
You think you're alone because you don't see anybody directly around you.
You're not.
You're not.
Not at all.
I also love thinking about his cellmate, Dre.
Yeah.
And how Paul just, like, assumed Dre would have these connections.
He's like, yeah, yeah, let me hook you up with my guy.
Hey, FBI. Yeah.
But it made me think, like, he was probably in a minimum security place.
Yeah.
So he just gets into this new cell and he assumes his cellmate has these horrible connections.
Yeah.
Love it.
Yeah.
He's a fucking idiot.
We should probably not.
You had, like, the dumbest guy ever.
Yeah.
And I had, like, the smartest guy.
Part of me worries that he's going to come kill us now.
I know.
We're holes, I don't know, seven and eight.
Shit.
Okay.
I would like to say for the government,
who I'm sure is listening in,
is that my internet search history
for the, because of research in this case,
is going to look like i'm planning an
armored truck heist so it was just research for this case i promise could you flex your biceps
for me i want to see i've been doing some canvas bag curls that's the new crossfit right there
oh my gosh that was good stuff. I loved it.
This is a good week.
Not shitty like our usual episodes.
Hey, if you thought that this episode was good and not as shitty as our usual episodes,
then you should head on over to iTunes and leave us a rating and a review.
Find us on social media.
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And then join us next week
when we'll be experts
on two whole new topics.
Podcast adjourned.
And now for a note
about our process.
I read a bunch of stuff,
then regurgitate it all back up
in my very limited vocabulary.
And I copy and paste
from the best sources on the web
and sometimes Wikipedia.
So we owe a huge thank you to the real experts.
For this episode, I got my info from the American Greed episode, A Mother's Costly Revenge, CNBC and the Florida Times Union.
And I got my info from ABC News, USA Today, The Seattle Times, and good old Wikipedia.
For a full list of our sources, visit lgtcpodcast.com.
Any errors are, of course, ours.
But please don't take our word for it.
Go read their stuff.