I Beg Your Pardon part 2

Carolann: Dr. Gino Tutera was a well-known OB-GYN and a pioneer in the field of hormone replacement therapy. His wife CarolAnn wasn't just his partner in life — she helped him build and run their clinic, helping patients age gracefully. But in 2014, everything changed. Dr. Gino fell ill and was admitted to the hospital. Unfortunately, he was having a lot of stomach pains. Ended up, From there, it just tumbled into one thing after another, after another that he kept going in and outta the hospital. Passed away six weeks later and I was in shock. CarolAnn was left to run their clinic and manage their finances — all on her own. Everything was happening at once. She needed help with her money. a friend of mine here in the publishing industry in Scottsdale introduced me to my financial advisor here in Scottsdale that got me to invest in all the funds that were coming out of the company on the east coast, that they were connected with David Gentile. He happens to be from Topeka, Kansas. I'm from the Kansas City area. So you think, you know, you've got a nice Midwest bond there. The financial advisor assured her the money was safe. Steady returns. An investment that would carry her through retirement. This person was working with a company on the East coast who sold his products. things were humming along just fine for a while and he would, you know, oh, I'm gonna invest you in this, I'm gonna do this. Oh, and I've got my parents in it too. Um, don't you worry. Everything's great and wonderful. Everything's moving along well. That company was GPB Capital — a private equity firm run by a Long Island accountant named David Gentile. GPB Capital promised investors steady 8% annual returns — modest enough to seem credible, high enough to be attractive. For a while, it worked. Monthly distributions arrived like clockwork, reassuring investors that their money was safe and growing. Gentile and his associates raised nearly $1.8 billion from approximately 17,000 investors across the United States between 2013 and 2018. And it wasn’t just CarolAnn. The financial advisor worked his way into her entire family. not only myself but my younger sister got involved, he got my mother in her nineties involved in money. Javier Leiva: How, how exactly did they get involved? Well, my younger sister follows what I do, and the financial advisor just went ahead and reeled her in with this. And then when he heard about my mom and her money. Oh, well then I have to talk to her and I go home to Topeka so I can go visit her in person, you know, and put on a real schmooze show that she invested over a hundred thousand herself. Javier Leiva: Wait, he went to visit her in person, Yep, sure did. Javier Leiva: Wow. That's kind of weird, right? Uh, well, you know, I'm going home to Topeka, which is only an hour from Kansas City. So. I'm just, I'm gonna fly into Kansas City and I'll make sure I see your mom and I'm gonna talk to her about this and blah. So she did. She invested a hundred thousand because it was supposed to have been such a great deal. Javier Leiva: So it wasn't like you said, Hey mom, hey sister. You know, I'm, I'm working with this great guy. It was like he was actively trying to find people within your life to, Yes,

Javier: get.

Carolann: absolutely. But in the background, the walls were already closing in. By 2019, GPB had stopped filing audited financial statements with the SEC. Civil lawsuits were piling up. CarolAnn didn’t see the red flags until it was too late. The friend who introduced me to him said, you need to get away from him. There were quite a few lawsuits against him. we are getting these letters from, uh, lawyers. Nothing started, uh, showing red flags until, until we started receiving letter, after letter, after letter, going after this one company and him in particular. VO: She's talking about David Gentile. David Gentile made a simple promise. Eight percent. Every year. Like clockwork. Seventeen thousand people believed him. CarolAnn Tutera was one of them. And for a while — it worked exactly like he promised. But it turned out it was just another ponzi scheme. And David Gentile, the man behind the numbers, spent twelve days in federal prison. Twelve days — for a billion-dollar fraud that destroyed the retirement savings of seventeen thousand people. This is the story of how that happened. I'm Javier Leiva and this is PRETEND... Stories about real people pretending to be someone else. Javier Leiva: I mean, 'cause nobody says, Hey, would you like to invest in this Ponzi scheme? they paint this. like fantastic picture. what were they promising you? Oh, incredible returns. You know, I'm gonna see everything back and then some. Oh, don't worry about it. Oh, you're gonna get your money out of it. It's still gonna be fine. You know, this is just normal proceedings until I found my attorney, um, Adam,

Gana Adam Gana: I probably represented 250 investors over the course of the last, my gosh, 7, 8, 9 years now. Adam Gana has spent more than twenty years going after fraudsters on behalf of investors. GPB Capital is one of the biggest fights of his career. I do remember the first investor that came to me. It was a 65-year-old retiree who, uh, had lost about a hundred, 150,000 bucks, and we just knew that this was gonna be a big problem. this GPB capital investment spanned across a number of investors over 10, probably close to around 17,000 investors, maybe a little more than that. And so it's hit everyone from Silicon Valley to, uh, farmers in the middle of Nebraska. But we've represented retirees. Uh, farmers, you know, we represented a couple in their late sixties that had spent 35 years working blue collar jobs. they rolled most of their money into these investments. They were looking for income, they weren't chasing upside in any way. And, uh, just trying to avoid risk. It's literally everyone. Red states, blue states. rich people, poor people. There are people that lost seven figure sums of money or invested seven figure sums of money into GPB. For David Gentile, it didn’t matter who you were or where you came from. He just needed your life savings to keep the illusion going. So a classic Ponzi scheme is where you take new investors money to pay old investors to make your investment seem great, right? It's a classic Ponzi It’s like robbing Peter to pay Paul — except Peter doesn’t know he’s been robbed. He gets a statement every month showing his money is growing. That’s the whole con. To break down exactly how this scheme worked, I called the one person I know who is genuinely obsessed with Ponzi schemes — my co-host on the Ponzi Playbook podcast,

Neal Mctighe. Javier Leiva: You and I have covered a lot of Ponzi schemes on the Ponzi playbook. I mean, some really wild Ponzi schemes. And, and a lot of times the, the stories that we're telling are these in incredible returns, like 20%. Like things that, I mean,

Neal: Just don't make Javier Leiva: it Yeah. They don't make Javier Leiva: not gonna get that big of a return. But what makes this Ponzi scheme kind of interesting? Is how modest it is. Neal: Yeah. it's just that modest 8% annual return. Javier Leiva: I mean, yeah,

Javier: is that a wild number?

Neal: that is Javier Leiva: under the radar? it somewhat. Yeah. Because if you, if you think about it, that's what Bernie Madoff did. He was, he was an 8% return guy. That number kind of sits well within the investment community because 5%, 4%, 3%, there are so many other ways that you can access that sort of return without putting it in a more risky vehicle. So if you bring the eight, if you bring the percentage just a little above, but not too high, you're still within a comfort zone. For most investors, it doesn't seem as risky. Javier Leiva: so tell me like, what kind of business were they running? Like what kind of sales pitch did he tell his investors? Basically, David Gentile had partners. He was running an accounting firm, and he had this idea. For creating an investment fund called GPB, He just saw an opportunity to, you know, raise money and invest that money in businesses, whether that was ownership or equity. So it's nothing crazy. Javier Leiva: what kind of businesses were they investing in? Yeah, I mean this isn't like, you know, like AI and super fancy stuff Here we're, we're going back to 2013, we're talking about like Volkswagen dealerships. We're talking about, you know, your run of the mill, sort of like, like companies like waste management companies, but a lot of them were car dealerships. In fact. he raised a ton of money. I mean, it, I think it was, it was almost to, to the point where it was they were gonna get to the 2 billion number over the lifetime. Javier Leiva: and I mean, it sounds like, you know, a legit investment and, and, and it probably was intended to be a legitimate business, right? But, would think so. Javier Leiva: only a year into launching GPB capital, he hits a snack, right? Like, what? What happens in 2014? You promise these investors that you're going to put the money into cashflow. Positive growing businesses. But they weren't actually making money or enough money to pay those 8% returns. So reality hit really quickly one year in it's like, uh, where are we gonna get the money to pay these returns? And there's one obvious place, Javier, and that's, you go to the principal, the investor capital itself, and that's what they started doing. Javier Leiva: And, and that is critical, right? Because these investments, they promised that they were not going to dip into investor funds, right? So the right thing to do at this point would be for David Gentil and his company to admit that they lost money to their investors. Right? Like that would be the appropriate thing to do. but that's not what they did, right? They decided to cook the books. Neal: Yes. Yeah. Because you know, you can't fail if you're. If you see yourself as only success, and uh, that's that false narrative that a lot of these folks, you know, sort of live with. They take in all this money, they're now living this lifestyle that, you know, uh, extremely wealthy lifestyle. And they have to admit that, uh, they failed. But the honest thing to do is to disclose performance. Not to hide it. And uh, unfortunately this is a repeating pattern that we see with fraudsters, uh, particularly those who are, you know, conducting Ponzi schemes. Javier Leiva: so instead of telling investors that they had a, a real bad hit. how did they create the illusion that things were safe, that, that these investments were going well? well, one of his partners, Jeffrey Lash, came up with this sort of ingenious idea. He came up with what he called were performance guarantees. These were documents where he signed this piece of paper stating, uh, in a, you know, by backdating it and if it's basically a false disclosure document saying that he personally guaranteed the dealerships in this case would make. $600,000 profit. And so basically he's saying, I'm going to personally guarantee that this will be a success and I will put in the capital myself to ensure that we either, that it's going to make that 600,000 profit or it's gonna come from me. So no matter what, you're going to get this staggering return. And what this trick did was that it artificially inflated the fund's income, And while it looks like it's a booming success, it's only being paid by the investor capital. So he, he never paid a dime of, of that money himself. Javier Leiva: No, and he wasn't ever planning to either Now. nvestors like CarolAnn had no clue that her retirement money was gone. and did you know that this was a risky investment or did they CarolAnn: Not at all. Javier Leiva: as they, they'd said, Hey, you know what? You're getting closer to retirement. We need to be safe with your money and not take unnecessary risks. I mean, did they give you CarolAnn: Never, never, never. I, I wouldn't have known otherwise to ask for him because you put your faith and trust in someone who's playing with your money. Javier Leiva: Yeah.

Carolann: don't think, you don't wake up one day and go, ah, I think I'm getting screwed over. I'm gonna look into him. Boy, lo and behold, I sure did. Javier Leiva: And this stuff is complicated, right? A lot of people, they have retirement funds, but they don't really know where their money's going, right? No, they don't. They don't. I do now. Javier Leiva: Yeah. Would you consider yourself pretty like savvy when it comes to investments and stuff like that? Or at the time you just kind of blindly trusted your CarolAnn: Oh, at the time I blindly trusted because I was still grieving my late husband, so I, and I had no reason not to trust him. There was never any time that he ever said, Hey, this is bad. I don't think we should do it. I'm telling you, By the fall of 2015, GPB’s own internal records showed the scheme was already unraveling. The CFO put it in writing — emails sent directly to Gentile confirming they’d crossed the line. Prosecutors called them the smoking gun. Evidence they knew exactly what they were doing, and kept doing it for years. When employees started asking questions, GPB shut them down. A senior executive who figured out what was happening was pushed out and forced to sign a hush agreement — one that Gentile personally signed. Then came Employee 3. A key executive running GPB’s car dealerships. He took his evidence to the board. Then, a week later, he went directly to the SEC. Neal: So when you have a threat in the house, you might be thinking, ah, I just gotta get rid of that threat. let's fire this guy. But the chief compliance officer that is the one who really is, you know, understands the dealings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, he tells David Gentile, do not fire this guy. This guy is, you know, a threat to us because the SEC could view your firing as illegal retaliation. You'd think that Gentile would say, ah, yeah. Okay. Uh, I gotcha. But he completely ignored the chief compliance officer's recommendation and fired the guy three days later. CarolAnn: What my advisor did is a heinous crime, if you ask me Javier Leiva: Oh yeah. I mean, it's, it's criminal obviously, right? it is,

Javier: how much money did you invest in this company?

Carolann: it was over 400,000. Mm-hmm. You'd give your money and I think it was nothing but one big Ponzi scheme. you keep putting it in, you don't start seeing a little bit come out, and then all of a sudden it all drains and goes away. Javier Leiva: Yeah. And I mean, you know, we all, if we're lucky, right, we get a chance to put something away, right? So that we could enjoy it later on in life. Uh, what were you planning on doing with all that money? Well, Uh, everything costs more. I'm downsized a lot into a smaller home. Um, I'm still working at my own company, But even so, you know, I think about retiring and go, who? I'm gonna have to make that up somewhere. It's a big chunk of change. In February 2021, the Justice Department finally moved. Armed with years of whistleblower evidence, the FBI and SEC officially charged Gentile and his inner circle with running a $1.7 billion fraud. The case went to trial — an eight-week federal jury trial. Jeffrey Lash, one of Gentile’s co-conspirators, had already pleaded guilty to wire fraud. Gentile hired a high-powered Miami defense attorney named Matthew Menchel. Here's an interesting side attorney, Matthew Menchel. Before Menchel was defending accused fraudsters, he was prosecuting them — as a U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. And it was in that role that he helped negotiate one of the most infamous sweetheart deals in American legal history: the 2007 agreement that let Jeffrey Epstein walk away from what could have been a 60-count federal sex-trafficking indictment. Instead, Epstein pleaded guilty to two state-level prostitution charges and served 13 months in a county jail. Now here's where it gets interesting. When investigators later dug into Epstein's records, Menchel's name kept showing up — appointments, phone calls, dinners. Lawmakers even referenced a photograph of the two of them on a ski trip together, though the photo was never produced. Menchel denies having a business relationship with Epstein. How many criminal defendants do you know who were that friendly with the prosecutor who tried them? Anyway. Back to David Gentile. The indictment described more than ten thousand victims. The judge who sentenced Gentile said she received hundreds of letters from people whose lives had been upended — retirees, veterans, teachers. People who had spent decades saving, and lost it in a matter of years. The jury heard from victims — more than 17,000 of them. Everyday people. A retired Vietnam veteran. Teachers and nurses. The jury deliberated for less than five hours. Guilty on all counts. In May 2025, David Gentile was sentenced to seven years in federal prison. His partner Jeffrey Schneider got six. The U.S. Attorney who secured the conviction Javier Leiva: But when you heard that the jury took five hours and found them guilty, at that moment when he was found guilty, what were you thinking? I, you know, justice was served. There's no doubt about it. And the fact that they did it in such a short. Out of time proves that he did the wrong thing, and there's no doubt about that, that he manipulated this whole scheme of getting money out of people. Neal: Just 12 days after that, president Trump issued an executive grant of clemency. Commuting gen's sentence. I mean, it completely wiped away his legal requirement to pay restitution to the people that he defrauded. And while it doesn't, uh, erase like a pardon the, the convictions on his, his record, uh, but what the heck does he care? He's out 12 days later. CarolAnn: when he was exonerated, you gotta be kidding me, I, I just. Look, even Martha Stewart spent time in prison. He could at least do the same amount of time. When reporters asked the White House to explain the commutation, here’s what the press secretary had to say. Speaker 2: Why did the president commute the sentence of David Gentile recently? He was a private exec, private equity executive. He served 12 days out of a seven year sentence. Prosecutor said he defrauded $1.6 billion with thousands of victims, including. Veterans farmers, teachers, why was he important Speaker: with respect to that. Pardon. He issued a commutation for Mr. Gentile, who's the former CEO and Co-founder of GBP Capital Holdings. Unlike similar companies, GBP paid regular annualized distributions to its investors in 2015. GBP disclosed to investors the possibility of using investor capital to pay some of these distributions rather than funding them from current operations. Even though this was disclosed to investors, the Biden, department of Justice. Claimed it was a Ponzi scheme. This claim was profoundly undercut by the fact that GBP had explicitly told investors what would happen at trial. The government was unable to tie any supposedly fraudulent representations to Mr. Gentile. In short, again, this is another example that has been brought to the president's attention of a weaponization of justice from the previous administration, and therefore he signed this commutation Speaker 2: statements, though say that they were, that these people were defrauded. I just. Speaker: I just read you a very detailed summary of why the commutation was made. CarolAnn: The sad thing is Javier Leiva: Mm-hmm. this guy got outta jail, got a free card after two weeks with a over a billion dollars. I understand. To go home to his wife and his two kids. 'cause that was important to somebody in the White House. Uh, I'm sorry,

Javier: Yeah.

Carolann: I'm here by myself and I'm still dealing with the aftermath of this guy who, who's playing golf, probably at his country club and private jetting around the world with his family. So something is wrong with that picture. Javier Leiva: Something is wrong with that picture. CarolAnn: Now, the only way he can get out of jail card free is that you pay somebody off. You know somebody who knows somebody who I understand. He knew somebody from Mar-a-Lago, which got to our person in the White House. And it kind of worked its way up and he was able to write a nice hefty check and he was outta jail. I, you know, come on. There is no official, publicly available visitor log for Mar-a-Lago. The Secret Service and the Department of Justice have stated they don’t maintain a formal tracking system for the president’s private club the way they do for the White House. In 2020, a federal appeals court ruled those records are presidential records — exempt from FOIA. While presidents must disclose political donations, they’re generally not required to disclose who pays for private club memberships or dinners at their own properties. Shouldn't the public deserve to know who holds influence over the president and his staff?

Adam Gana: that pardon was surreal. And the reason it was surreal is because, uh, it also wiped out all the restitution he was ordered to pay the defrauded investors, which was over $15 million. His partner, however, continues to remain in prison and be subject of restitution order. so the real question that everyone should be asking is why the. Javier Leiva: Yeah. Why? Why? Why is the difference? What's your opinion? tell. I, I really couldn't tell you why. I don't know. And I had been interviewed about this by the New York Times and The Guardian and a host of other people. And I tell them, I put it back on them. I, you tell me why. Neal: that's a big question. Why Gentile and not the others?

Javier: Yeah. And, and actually let me, let me say this part real quick. So his, his two other partners, one of 'em, Jeffrey Lash, who we talked about earlier, he pled guilty to wire fraud. Okay. And, but Jeffrey Schneider, who was another partner, um, he was sentenced to six years in federal prison, but. His sentence didn't get commuted. What kind of message is this sending white collar criminals and Ponzi schemers? Like you said, the God knows how many Ponzi schemes are happening right now, but like, what, what does this say to those criminals?

Neal: I mean, it seems like he's praising them. Uh, he's giving them a pathway. He is saying that the justice system, uh, is not going after you. So. Let's make a prediction that in six years from now, we will see a massive number of failed Ponzi schemes because they will have begun at this period. Because why not Javier Leiva: Yeah, they were giving the green light. Neal: you are given the green light. white collar crime. Is difficult to convict on, but its impact is often completely devastating and sometimes at tune of, of wrecking thousands of people's lives. But it's just business for, for, you know, Trump and these folks. The civil case is still alive. A federal judge approved releasing $400 million to some defrauded investors through a receivership process — but for CarolAnn and thousands of others, the road to recovery is long and uncertain. The criminal restitution order — $15 million — was wiped out the moment Trump signed that clemency grant. CarolAnn: I'm like a dog with the bone. Javier Leiva: Yeah,

Carolann: I will see this to the bitter end. Javier Leiva: Well, I mean, it's a lot of money and, Mm-hmm.

Javier: of that $400,000, did you ever see any of that money back?

Carolann: 40 or 60,000. I don't remember the exact number Javier Leiva: And when did you want to retire? Like what, what was CarolAnn: Now, I'd love to retire now, believe it or not. I'm seven. Javier Leiva: I know, I know you're not supposed to ask a a, a No, I'll tell you. I,

Javier: I

Carolann: I,

Javier: put it on the podcast, but just Yeah. How CarolAnn: no, I'll tell you can, Hey, you can put this on the podcast because nobody believes I'm 70 years old. Javier Leiva: Wow.

Yeah. Carolann: Yeah,

Javier: And, and at this point you should have been retired, right?

Carolann: right. I mean, all my friends from major, I would say 98% of my friends from high school, they're all retired. Javier Leiva: Mm-hmm. still working The U.S. Attorney who secured the conviction — a Trump appointee named Joseph Nocella — put out a press release calling it an incredible fraud. Crime doesn’t pay, he said. He was proud of the conviction. That was May 2025. Adam Gana: And he said that this was an incredible fraud. That, uh, this goes to show crime doesn't pay. Uh, he was excited about the conviction and this is a Trump appointed us interim attorney. Here's the worst part for you, Javier. You've got a situation now. It's one thing to commute the the criminal sentence, right? But here's the rub of it. He had a $15 million restitution order. That's money that investors aren't getting back. He had spent tens of millions of dollars defending himself against both this criminal action and civil actions. If this was going to be a commutable sentence, why not do it? Before the investors were responsible for fighting the bill for both his defense criminally, and now not getting the restitution money back. There are tens of millions of dollars. Javier Leiva: So it's like a double whammy, right? Yeah, that, that, that is tough. In August 2025, an executive order opened the door to put “alternative assets” — complex private investments like GPB Capital — into Americans’ 401(k) retirement accounts. The order was called “Democratizing Access to Alternative Assets.”

Javier: For people who lost everything in GPB, it's a terrifying idea. It encourages putting risky alternative investments into, into people's retirement accounts. Adam Gana: So I'll say this. Alternative investments are not always improper. I would never buy one myself. I would never have my grandmother buy one. But they're not always improper they can serve a small purpose of a small portion of a portfolio, right? To me, that's the biggest problem. And here, when you try to move those types of complex. Opaque products into things like 401k plans where people or your average retiree knows very little about the underlying investment. You wanna try to keep it simple. This is not keeping it simple, and this is a real problem for investors. It's something that I've gone at the hill myself, uh, to try to lobby against, uh, because I think it's going to be horrific for retail investors and amazing for my business. Javier Leiva: Right, which your business is to protect, you know, to defend the, the victims of these potential crimes, right? And so, yeah. Adam Gana: see how bad it's going to be for investors. Javier Leiva: What, what message is the administration trying to send here?

Carolann: Well, if you have enough money, you can buy your way outta jail. I, it, it's really clear to me there, it, it's. It's obscene that that happens in today's world that you are paid off. But you know, look, that's how Washington runs. Everybody's paid off in Washington. CarolAnn's suspicion that money bought Gentile's freedom isn't just speculation. There's a case that makes the pattern hard to ignore. In early 2025, a wealthy Florida nursing home developer named Elizabeth Fago attended an exclusive fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago. The entry fee was reported to be one million dollars a plate — promising donors intimate, direct access to the president. Less than three weeks later, President Trump granted a full and unconditional pardon to her son, Paul Walczak. Walczak was a former nursing home executive who had been convicted of withholding over $7 million in payroll taxes from his own employees — money he used to fund a lavish lifestyle, including a $2 million yacht. He'd just been sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay $4.4 million in restitution. All of it wiped out. Ethics watchdogs noted that Walczak's pardon application had explicitly highlighted his mother's political loyalty and financial support. The timeline — million-dollar dinner, pardon three weeks later — drew intense scrutiny. Nobody called it a coincidence. Javier Leiva: And, and then what's even more confusing about this case, because of all the cases that I've been looking at there have been very clear connections to the Trump administration. Either personal connections, uh,

Neal: Mm-hmm.

Javier: through the Kushner family or whatever, or they have no connections at all and hire an attorney that has worked with the Trump admin, uh. With Trump and they get access that way. Another way you get access is buying a fancy dinner in Mar-a-Lago. You know what I mean? Like there's different ways, but I cannot find any connection to David Gentil and Trump. Neal: That, that is really strange. Um, I, I was thinking about, you know, when you kind of proposed that you were looking at this. Whole, this whole general trend that we're seeing in these commutations, and you're kind of looking at the, these, these, the effects that they're having. I was wondering about like, well, why the heck would President Trump want to commute the sentences or pardon so many white collar, you know, convicted white collar criminals, I mean, this looks like it was just a terrible business. Javier Leiva: It's only a Ponzi scheme. Neil, if you get caught. Neal: Yeah, exactly. And it makes you wonder how many of these are going on right now all over the place. I mean, it, it's, it's all of these sort of private deals where you hand over cash into some private entity and becomes this black box and then, then you're sort of faced with these people who are dealing with money all day who are living. In, you know, these lavish worlds where they have access to high net worth people. They wanna play the part, play the game. So what do you do? You just say, I'm gonna take a little bit from there and I'll be able to fill that back in later. And that's what they were effectively doing. And just hoping that at some point that this would all fix itself. It's Javier Leiva: Ponzi schemers are eternal optimists. Neal: Terrible to this. I've never thought of them that way, but I do believe you're right. they believe that they're going to come out, uh, in the end, right? On March 7, 2025, the administration fired Liz Oyer — a career DOJ attorney and the head of the Office of the Pardon Attorney. In her place, the president installed a political loyalist named Ed Martin, who reportedly described his new mandate as “No MAGA left behind.” I know you said that you have no idea why he got pardoned and the other guy didn't, but like, why did he get pardoned?

Adam Gana: I, I don't know. I wish that I did. I've been asked about it a million times all over the United States by all sorts of news outlets. Uh, but I will tell you, I don't know the answer. right now, uh, the SEC has been gutted, FINRA has lost 20 plus percent of its staff, I believe in the last year or two. and so there's this huge push to reduce, uh, the number of people responsible for the enforcement actions associated, uh, with bringing these types of people to justice. Uh, and we need more enforcement, more regulatory action, and more changes in the law that protect investors from these types of investments, not the other way around. Putting them more, more of these investments into 401k plan. Javier Leiva: So, so you just painted a really, really scary picture, right? SEC has been gutted, right? So like there's less people. Potentially prosecuting these crimes. There's riskier investments going into people's retirements, and then some of the, the worst offenders end up getting pardoned, right? It's like this, like perfect storm of, of fraud. Adam Gana: It is frustrating. Javier Leiva: Oh man. Adam Gana: Unfortunate.

Carolann: At first I thought he was great, but now I look at him as a big joke. So yeah, I'm not happy what's going on up there. Javier Leiva: There's never been a better time to be a con artist, right. CarolAnn: Oh God,

Javier: it.

Carolann: you're not kidding. Javier Leiva: This is, this is not a political thing. Right. CarolAnn: No, no, this is not political at all. Javier Leiva: Yeah. I don't care. You know who he voted for. Uh, it's the fact that you stole money. You knew you were stealing money, you come out with all your money and you leave everybody behind with no money. So. Uh, you know, doesn't make sense to me. Javier Leiva: you were to look David Gentil in the eye right now, or if he were listening to this, like what would you tell him? It's not so much what I would tell 'em, but I would ask them why? Why? What kind of conscience do you have to be able to put out this product to have financial advisors sell on your behalf? How do you sleep at night? How do you look, your wife and your kids in the face knowing that you manipulated and took so much money from so many people? How do you live day to day? I, I, I honestly dunno. I hope you're enjoying this series. There's more to come. VO: Next time on PRETEND.... We're going to the Baja Pennisula... where one white collar offender is making huge margins producing counterfit products It's an epic investigation/caper. Our next pardon is double the action.... double the pardons. Javier Leiva: So Neil, you predict that in a few years we're gonna have an explosion of Ponzi schemes, which is really good news for us, right? Because we, we have a podcast about Ponzi schemes. So, so Neil, we taken a break from Ponzis Playbook and we've said that we were gonna come back and then life got busy again. When are we gonna start recording new episodes?

Neal: Well, I would love to start rec. I just, being here with you today is like sexy, you know? I'm like, oh, oh my gosh. Like this guy, Javier, you all know his voice,

Javier: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. No, we need to do this because my mom really likes your voice. She tells me all the time, oh, Neil, that's such Neal: well. Hello, Javier's mom. Javier Leiva: So we gotta do this, man. We gotta bring, get the band Neal: Yeah, We gotta bring it back. Javier Leiva: So for those of you who have not listened to the Ponzi Playbook, it's a a podcast where Neil and I just talk about Ponzi schemes just like this one. If you haven't listened, go check it out. We will start recording new episodes 'cause things are settling down and,

Neal: we've already recorded a number of them because we just like talking with each other Javier Leiva: yeah. We've recorded a Neal: in the archives. Javier Leiva: They're just waiting to be released. It is just, Oh, maybe we can release them when their sentences are commuted,

Javier: That's right. Neal: you know? We could have a, a little Yeah. To celebrate their Neal: Yes. We can just, you know, throw a wrap up. A quick wrap up. And what do all these folks have in common? Uh, their sentences were commuted. Javier Leiva: Oh man, that's terrible. I mean, we're making fun of it, but it, it, it is, it's, you know. Neal: We're, yeah, we're making fun, but I know everybody understands that we're pointing it out Javier Leiva: Yeah. All right, Neil. Well, hey man. Thanks for coming on the show. It's, it's good to to record with you again. Neal: Absolutely. Neil, whatever you do. Neal: Commit a Ponzi scheme 'cause you'll be commuted