[00:00:00] In my entire career of being a con artist, I've never stolen anyone's pensions, took
[00:00:07] anyone's personal money.
[00:00:09] My victims have always been companies, corporations.
[00:00:11] I'm not justifying it but I'm saying in my mind there was some integrity to what I've
[00:00:18] done.
[00:00:30] Was it Bruce Wayne, the rich tycoon?
[00:00:33] Or Batman who was the impostor?
[00:00:38] Clark Kent, the reporter?
[00:00:40] Or Superman?
[00:00:44] Hedy Lamar, the actress?
[00:00:46] Or Hedy Lamar who patented a radio system that used frequency hopping to allow the American
[00:00:51] military to send coded messages that its enemies could not decipher.
[00:01:01] Today we're talking about impostors, those who prey upon others while pretending to
[00:01:07] be someone else.
[00:01:11] Every con artist, every scammer is an impostor.
[00:01:14] They must pretend to be someone else to get the sucker to willingly turn over their money.
[00:01:20] They may be the new love you've met online, the person who found a lot of money and will
[00:01:25] share it with you if you can keep the secret.
[00:01:28] They pretend to be a relative who's locked in a foreign jail and need you to send cash
[00:01:32] for bail.
[00:01:34] They might even be the neighbor you've known for years who encourages you to invest
[00:01:38] in a real estate plan that will make you rich.
[00:01:42] You saw a neighbor, but the impostor was always lurking inside.
[00:01:47] With time, patience and the right circumstances, the con artist could emerge, make a score then
[00:01:53] disappear, leaving behind confused friends and victims.
[00:01:58] CBS4 in Miami talked with Jimmy Sabatino, whose voice you heard at the beginning
[00:02:03] of this episode about how he ran his scams.
[00:02:07] He was sentenced to five years of hard time, but despite stealing hundreds of thousands
[00:02:11] of dollars, he believed he was on moral high ground.
[00:02:15] In September, Jimmy Sabatino was sentenced to five years in prison after he was caught
[00:02:20] scamming some of the biggest hotels in South Florida out of nearly $600,000.
[00:02:26] It was the latest chapter in a lifetime of cons that have gained Sabatino worldwide
[00:02:31] notoriety.
[00:02:32] You don't mind if I refer to you as a con man?
[00:02:34] No.
[00:02:35] How can I?
[00:02:36] How does my past is my past?
[00:02:38] I understand why someone would refer to me as that, but don't define me.
[00:02:42] When he was 18, he somehow convinced FedEx he was the president of the Miami Dolphins
[00:02:47] and tricked them into turning over packages containing $268,000 worth of Super Bowl tickets.
[00:02:54] He did two years in prison for that crime.
[00:02:56] In post control, I don't think it through.
[00:02:58] I don't think the ending through.
[00:02:59] He pulled other capers, conning Nextel out of a million dollars in cell phones.
[00:03:04] But his most reliable targets have always been hotels.
[00:03:07] It's not as complicated as one might think it was.
[00:03:10] The reservation manager will receive a phone call.
[00:03:12] The conversation will be something along the lines of this is so-and-so from Sony Music,
[00:03:16] I have a party coming into Miami.
[00:03:19] We're going to need to reserve X amount of rooms.
[00:03:21] He would then send a confirmation email to the hotel's finance department pretending
[00:03:26] to be Sony's VP of finance, James Harvey.
[00:03:30] In the case of all the hotels in Miami Beach, it was from a Gmail account.
[00:03:35] Here is one of those emails.
[00:03:37] We are requesting the direct billing of all charges that is room tax and all incidentals.
[00:03:43] The Hilton wrote back eagerly, thank you for the opportunity.
[00:03:47] I would literally scratch my head and amaze me that it worked, that it happened.
[00:03:51] It defied logic.
[00:03:53] At the Omni Hilton, he reserved seven standard rooms and three presidential suites for
[00:03:59] more than two weeks.
[00:04:00] Why so many rooms?
[00:04:02] To hide all the room service charges.
[00:04:05] Basically the greed that they have and I play off their greed.
[00:04:09] Sabatino had 144 bottles of high-priced champagne delivered one day to the presidential suite.
[00:04:15] The tip, almost $11,000.
[00:04:18] Hundreds of other bottles were delivered to other rooms.
[00:04:20] How are you converting that room service into cash?
[00:04:24] You don't think I was drinking 500 bottles of champagne there, yeah?
[00:04:27] I don't drink.
[00:04:28] So some of the best clubs in high-end liquor stores in Miami were buying them at this kind
[00:04:34] of prices.
[00:04:35] Let's now turn our attention to William Douglas Street of Detroit.
[00:04:39] For more than 40 years, Street assumed a number of identities, one of which got him a walk
[00:04:44] on tryout with the Detroit Tigers.
[00:04:51] Along the way he pretended to be an NFL player, a doctor, a lawyer and was admitted
[00:04:56] as a student to an Ivy League school.
[00:05:04] Eventually he was arrested for identity theft and mail fraud.
[00:05:11] But those weren't his only brushes with the law.
[00:05:13] He had 17 other convictions.
[00:05:20] Greats attorney told the Detroit Free Press that his client created personas as a way
[00:05:25] to get a job.
[00:05:26] His criminal past made it nearly impossible to be hired.
[00:05:32] He needed money to live on, so he became someone who could get hired and receive a paycheck.
[00:05:40] One of his employers told the Free Press that he was so good at the job that if
[00:05:43] he straightened out they'd consider hiring him back.
[00:05:56] Now the crimes we usually talk about on scams and cons are about money.
[00:06:00] But when it comes to impersonators, swiping cash isn't always the goal.
[00:06:06] Their actions are still criminal but motives can be much more sinister.
[00:06:11] It's time for me to introduce Javier Leyva.
[00:06:14] Javier hosts and produces a podcast called Pretend.
[00:06:18] It's about people who pretend to be someone else.
[00:06:21] To great podcasts that I highly recommend it, you'll find a link to it in the show
[00:06:25] notes.
[00:06:26] I invited Javier on the podcast to talk about imposters who aren't in it for the money.
[00:06:32] His thinking on that came after a conversation with his cousin.
[00:06:36] I knew that my cousin was a bad guy.
[00:06:39] Like everybody has a black sheep in the family and I knew that he was about to go to federal
[00:06:44] prison but I didn't know why or I didn't know the details.
[00:06:48] So one day I said, hey Eric can we sit down?
[00:06:51] Can you tell me your story?
[00:06:52] I'm doing this podcast and we sat down and he spoke to me for two or three hours.
[00:06:58] I can't remember but he told me everything, everything from the time he was a small time
[00:07:03] crook breaking into cars to how that progressed to breaking into houses to insurance fraud
[00:07:10] where he was staging car accidents to the time where he really matured as a criminal
[00:07:16] and opened up his own health clinic, his own medical clinic and hired a real doctor to
[00:07:22] write real prescriptions for opioids.
[00:07:25] And that ultimately led to his arrest or one of the many arrests but my jaw dropped when
[00:07:31] I heard that because I didn't know the details and after that interview with my cousin
[00:07:35] that's when I realized that pretend is a show about deception it's a show about
[00:07:40] con artists and trying to understand their motivation and their psyche.
[00:07:45] One of his earlier stories was about a man who was an imposter for the money but also for
[00:07:49] the thrill.
[00:07:50] This guy, his name is Michael Torres, Dr. Michael Torres and he claims he is a treasure hunter
[00:07:59] that he finds all these exotic artifacts from like a Peruvian burial mask that he
[00:08:05] found off of the Florida shore and all these treasures that he finds and this is
[00:08:11] a guy that wears a fedora like Indiana Jones and actually has worked for a treasure hunting
[00:08:18] company but this is a guy that is just doing it for the thrill of it and he will tell you
[00:08:24] he is such a convincing liar because I think he's convinced himself that he is this Indiana
[00:08:31] Jones like bigger and here's another case that that's just another case of doing
[00:08:36] it for the thrill of it.
[00:08:38] All of us are imposters from time to time, sometimes it's just for thrills and often it's
[00:08:43] just a way to get what we want however it's one thing to want a better seat at the bar
[00:08:48] and quite another to take over people's lives.
[00:08:51] Javier's most recent series started as a stalker story but it evolved into a much
[00:08:57] more complicated and destructive tale that had nothing to do with money.
[00:09:02] Javier connected with a couple who claimed they were victims of a stalker and they
[00:09:05] believed the stalker was a doctor and her husband.
[00:09:08] The woman said the doctor who had treated the woman's children was out to get her.
[00:09:13] Javier didn't buy it, the police didn't buy it and the doctor and her husband denied it
[00:09:19] but there was no clear path that led to the stalker.
[00:09:22] Javier and the police believe the woman whom he called Claudia was stalking herself.
[00:09:28] I can never imagine putting my child through so many medical procedures or taking my child's
[00:09:38] rights away just because to satisfy that need, that craving for attention.
[00:09:44] So that's the first barrier that people experience when they encounter a month's
[00:09:48] housing by proxy case is that they can't even conceptualize how this could be possible
[00:09:53] therefore they dismiss it.
[00:09:55] And that scenario actually allows the month's housing and the medical child abuse to continue.
[00:10:01] Months housing by proxy perpetrators, they lack empathy.
[00:10:06] It is almost like a form of I don't know if it a sociopath or a psychopath however you
[00:10:12] want to describe it but they in my mind are very akin to let's say serial killers
[00:10:19] where there's this emotional detachment from their victims.
[00:10:24] This is their kid and yet they're able to drain blood out of their port or inject stuff
[00:10:30] into them so that they could appear sick and make them vomit, induce so many symptoms that
[00:10:37] would lead them to have brain surgery, spine surgery, stomach surgery.
[00:10:41] I mean there's no end and they're treating their kids as objects rather than this person
[00:10:47] that came out of them.
[00:10:51] It seems unfathomable right?
[00:10:53] The complete story of what the woman did and why her family accepted her fantasies as
[00:10:58] true is frightening.
[00:11:01] We can imagine how one person could be delusional but how did she turn the rest of her family
[00:11:05] into imposters as well?
[00:11:07] Because I could understand how the mother could have month's housing by proxy but
[00:11:12] how could the father also share this same view and they were so in sync in everything
[00:11:19] they were saying.
[00:11:20] They were lockstep at every turn and so because of that I'm thinking there's no way that
[00:11:24] this father would allow this stuff to happen but the father wholeheartedly believed everything
[00:11:31] that was going on.
[00:11:32] He went along with everything the mother said.
[00:11:34] It was like jump how high you know that kind of situation and you know there's
[00:11:38] not a lot of research that has been done in this space in terms of month's housing
[00:11:43] by proxy but the research that has been done shows that a lot of times the father
[00:11:48] 's reacted this way.
[00:11:51] Claudia was a skilled scammer.
[00:11:54] In addition to convincing doctors to perform medical procedures on her children she convinced
[00:11:58] child protection officials to give her custodial care of their finances and prevent them
[00:12:03] from making important decisions about their lives.
[00:12:06] As of this recording we don't know how the story ends.
[00:12:10] New evidence has surfaced and law enforcement has renewed its interest in the case.
[00:12:14] When it does end Javier knows there will still be more stories to tell and there's no end
[00:12:19] to the number of imposters around us.
[00:12:22] Almost like a drug addict they have to one up it each time you know like their fix
[00:12:28] needs to be a little bigger next time and they get savvier as they refine their techniques
[00:12:36] but yeah I believe that the con artist is always there.
[00:12:41] It's just the difference is that we all probably have these inclinations but we don't cross
[00:12:48] that line.
[00:12:49] The con artist cross the line they get some sort of kick out of it and they do it again.
[00:12:56] You've likely heard of month's housing by proxy it's a trope among cop shows.
[00:13:01] You've also seen stories about men married to two different women at the same time.
[00:13:06] It happens and David J. Earnhardt almost pulled it off in North Buffalo New York.
[00:13:25] Arrangements were all set for the wedding but Earnhardt told his bride to be that he wanted
[00:13:29] to postpone it.
[00:13:31] She knew he worked undercover for the Department of Homeland Security and he believed the
[00:13:35] wedding could impact a dangerous case he was working on.
[00:13:42] What was dangerous was that the 51 year old construction foreman came to the attention
[00:13:46] of the FBI.
[00:13:50] He was charged with 24 counts of wire fraud, two counts of impersonating a government agent
[00:13:56] and one count of making a false statement to a government agent.
[00:14:01] Earnhardt also failed to tell his fiance that he was already married.
[00:14:06] Married for 25 years to another woman and that woman continued to live with him even
[00:14:11] after his crimes were exposed.
[00:14:15] All criminal charges were dropped when prosecutors allowed Earnhardt to plead guilty to a single
[00:14:20] misdemeanor that carried a maximum sentence of six months in prison.
[00:14:25] Prosecutors declined to say why those charges were dropped.
[00:14:31] Is Earnhardt the only imposter in this story?
[00:14:34] I don't think so.
[00:14:36] Prosecutors dropped 24 charges for a reason.
[00:14:40] Perhaps they didn't have the evidence but they declined to say.
[00:14:44] The Earnhardt was an informant after all.
[00:14:47] Construction has always been rife with corruption.
[00:14:50] Prosecutors may have become imposters themselves to protect him.
[00:14:54] Earnhardt's legal wife may have been an imposter too.
[00:14:59] She told the free press that this was totally out of character for him.
[00:15:03] Did she know all along?
[00:15:05] Or couldn't admit she'd been duped for so many years?
[00:15:10] Prosecutor's attorney said his client took $72,000 over a period of months from his fiancee
[00:15:16] but not for the purpose of defrauding her.
[00:15:18] His love for her was genuine.
[00:15:23] We'll be back in two weeks.
[00:15:25] Thanks for listening.
[00:15:27] Let me introduce you to Barry Clue, an authorised financial adviser from New Zealand and a very
[00:15:40] special kind of stain on humanity.
[00:15:43] He was a very knowledgeable young guy.
[00:15:46] He was a registered financial adviser.
[00:15:48] Type of guy that was bending over backwards to help you.
[00:15:51] You could be forgiven for thinking that Barry sounds like a great guy.
[00:15:55] And you'd be right.
[00:15:56] Well, right up until the point.
[00:15:58] When you're wrong.
[00:15:59] It was all bititious.
[00:16:00] You stole from my son who has a disability.
[00:16:03] Chris never knew.
[00:16:05] He died believing that we're all taken care of.
[00:16:08] A psychopath is somebody who lacks empathy, acts impulsively.
[00:16:12] I think there's a strong case that Barry might be all of those things actually.
[00:16:15] To find out how Barry Clue stole over $15 million from 81 victims, subscribe to Clueless
[00:16:21] The Long Con.
[00:16:22] That's Clueless spelt K-L-O-O-G-H-L-E-S-S.