Billion-dollar fraud and Ponzi schemes | 60 Minutes Full Episodes

If it hadn't been for Bernie Maid, the most famous white criminal in America right now would probably be Mark Dryer. If that name doesn't ring a bell, it's because Dryer's $400 million Ponzi scheme disappeared from the front pages with an impromptu arrest. A few days later, but the case is no less fascinating, the highly respected lawyer who ran a large Park Avenue law firm was initially arrested in Toronto for impersonating a pension fund official in what has been described as perhaps the strangest arrest in the history of white collar crime, but unlike Bernie Midol, Mark Dryer agreed to speak to Vanity Fair magazine and 60 Minutes in his only television interview.

I thought that if anyone ever interviewed me on a show like yours it would be for something good that I haven't done. humiliating thing I've done, this is not the way you wanted to be on 60 Minutes, nor was this the way Mark Dryer wanted to make his final appearance in federal court as a defendant in his own

fraud

case when we interviewed him for first time. last spring he was a prisoner in his own attic with a GPS tracking device on his ankle detained by private jailers whose $70,000 monthly fee was paid by Dryer's 88-year-old mother, with her assets frozen or confiscated by the court, all of it. .

What was left of Dryer's $40 million art collection were the hooks on the wall, how did you end up becoming a criminal? I don't remember the moment when I decided to do something that I knew was wrong. He had an ambition that he needed to feed. I think I fell into the trap of wanting to be more successful than me but you were successful I was but I really wanted to distinguish myself I wanted to know I wanted to be as important as I thought I deserved to be with the degrees from Yale and Harvard Law in the ego of a successful trial lawyer Drer told his friends that he would become a multimillionaire, founded his own law firm that he said would revolutionize the business of law, he was going to hire the best lawyers, pay them top

dollar

, and keep all the profits for himself alone. partner of the firm.

The law firm idea was very viable, but it needed a lot more money to get it going than I anticipated, a lot more, so it wasn't very well thought out. a good idea but a very bad business plan and the plan was about to get much worse with his law firm a money pit and exhausted drer started approaching hedge funds with a crazy plan that he thought could save his dream drer told hedge funds that he represented a

billion

aire real estate developer looking to borrow hundreds of millions of

dollar

s to embark on some new projects that he said would issue short-term notes guaranteeing interest rates of between 7 and 12%, well above market rates, and it seemed like a very good deal, the only problem was that the real estate magnate who was supposed to borrow all this money, Sheldon Solo, didn't know anything about it nor did he know that His former lawyer was fabricating financial information about his company and keeping the loan proceeds for himself, so he convinced hedge funds to lend money ostensibly to Mr.

Solo, his former client, and in fact the money was going to stop you. Yeah, so he came up with fake financial statements. Fake audits. He falsified documents for Mr. Solo's company. Yes, how did he do it? you do all that, how did you get those things right? I made it up, you made it up, I mean, stationary, yeah, from the auditing firms, how did you get that? I was able to obtain their letterhead directly or from correspondents I had received for them or perhaps from the Internet. I don't remember what his biggest deal was, uh 100 million, someone just gave him $100 million and he never bothered to check with his supposed alleged client to make sure this was in order, but I don't know, I guess I also heard ago long time that the more money you go after, the fewer questions people ask, sometimes the obvious flaw in Dryer's plan was that he would eventually have to pay off all the notes plus interest if he wanted to. to stay out of jail and in the end the only way he could do that was by selling more notes to new investors so you were digging yourself into a hole yeah a lot so you know you start with something that you think is handy and small.

I know it's wrong, but you think you can fix it and you can't get out of it. It became quicksand. I had to continue fulfilling obligations that grew more and more clear along the way, if there was a way to have achieved it. If I had, he would have done it. Drer says he used most of the $400 million he stole to expand his law firm and finance a lifestyle designed to create the illusion that he was already a

billion

aire. There was the $1 million Oceanfront resort in the Hamptons. an art collection that included a three-tone Picasso and 12 Warhols and then there was the 120-ton yacht Seascape with a

full

-time crew of 10, all mortgaged to the bottom.

How much did you pay for the yacht? 18 million dollars and for this apartment 105 dollars. million you enjoyed the good life I had, it was clear to me that the more you showed people that you didn't need money, the easier it was to attract money, so having the attributes of success was a very important part of the plan to raise your profile . Drer co-hosted annual charity events with former New York Giants star Michael Stan, which attracted big-name artists such as Diana Ross, John Bonjovi and Alicia Key, and then there were the extravagant office parties at which Drer himself Drer sometimes performed in this city. one thing you know is that you may not succeed quietly in this city and I think I will succumb to that when 207 drer LLP occupied 10 floors of a Park Avenue building employed more than 250 attorneys across the country with high-profile clients like Bill Cosby Andy Petett Maria Sharova and Justin Timberlake What no one but Mark Drer knew was that rents, salaries and expenses were all subsidized through

fraud

.

In recent years I recognized that what I saw as a 20 million dollar mistake had become a few hundred million dollar mistake and then I did some increasingly irrational things because I wasn't thinking clearly about crazy things, yeah , desperate, yes, last fall, all while the looming financial crisis had hundreds of millions of dollars in loans about to come due. and they all wanted their money back when Drer was a month late on a $100 million loan, the hedge fund that was owed the money demanded a face-to-face meeting with executives from Drer's real estate operations. Sheldon Alone here in his office building in New York. with reality closing in on the dryer He enlisted the services of former client Costa Kovich to pose as the president of Solo operations, then commandeered a conference room in Solo's office for a meeting with a hedge fund with the hoping to get a loan extension and you carry out this whole charade.

Right there, in the middle of Solo's business, yeah, you think you were going to get away with it? Yes, you actually did, didn't you? Yes, you were nervous. I should have been nervous, but um, I don't know, um, I was. I'm very nervous I don't get the feeling that you're a very emotional person I think I am um, uh, I didn't plan anything I was going to say in this interview other than not to lose my emotions, but it's not going to It's no use literally crying for me so when I ask you about the emotion I'm referring to, here you are walking into a former client's office perpetuating this scheme right in his office called that's not emotion, you know, I mean, I have, yeah, I can. .

Can I be very tough under pressure? Yes, I was also able to go to Mr. Solo's office and carry out that charade without breaking down. Yeah, I thought I could do that. Yes, because I had done things before that required nerves of steel, but it doesn't mean I'm not excited about what I did. I clearly remember walking out of that office thinking I had done something really crazy and stupid. It was weird. I mean, he was immune to the thought of getting caught. Attorney Gerald Shel, who would do it. He represented Drer during his legal proceedings and plea negotiations with the U.S. government.

He said the facts of the case were beyond the scope of a short sentence. He was a solid lawyer and there are several judges who told me that Mark D was probably the best. lawyer who has ever appeared in front of him and suddenly, out of nowhere, it's like something went off the rails. Do you have any idea what it was? You know he was fighting his own demons in his own mind and he hadn't achieved what he was expected to achieve and he just wanted to catch it, but he did it in a deeply sick way in December of last year.

Investors and investigators alike had begun to suspect Drer and his luck would eventually run out. in Toronto, where he posed as a lawyer for a teachers' pension fund to defraud a hedge fund of $33 million; That was the first act I did where I knew they were going to catch me and I couldn't help it. He wasn't thinking clearly Drer had picked up a business card from the lawyer he claimed to be, but the man he was supposed to meet had a feeling something was wrong, which made him suspicious, do you think you know he had acted diligently and had made some phone calls that I think led him to become suspicious.

As soon as he walked in, I knew he was suspicious, but I still did it. Toronto police were called and Drer was arrested for impersonation when he returned to New York 5 days later. He was arrested by the FBI on charges of fraud and money laundering to the complete and utter astonishment of the New York legal community and the employees of his own law firm when we heard the news. We thought it was a joke at first. There were 10 floors of lawyers and boxes, but a lot of people started quitting immediately, they just walked out the door, okay, next is the ptron fra black leather bucket style applause 10 days after the arrest of Dryer, the law firm that named after him had declared bankruptcy and 600 of us were looking for work the day we met attorney Joanne Rapuano and the former office manager, Tory Lond.

The court was selling the company's furniture and office equipment to pay creditors, mostly hedge funds and their investors, who probably won't see much of the missing $400 million, okay, now we have the crusher of paper, if this paper shredder could talk, how much of the paper shredder, 25 billion dollars, put it now, it's like being here is really tragic, you know, you see how something is built, you think you're part of something in his upwards and suddenly you see that they take it with a card through the front door 1,000 they open it $1,000 B to open it it's just embarrassing we are victims I don't have a job I don't have a doctor after today I'm done, so now what do I do?

I started my career again. I don't want to compare you to someone who left, but one of the questions people constantly ask about cleaning is how could he do this, how could he walk around living this life spending all this money without showing it. a crack in the facade and there are some similarities, but how did you handle that? I was doing many things at the same time. He was involved in a fraud that required a lot of energy to sustain, but he also ran a law firm. legit law firm aside from the obvious fact that it was illegitimately funded I was a practicing attorney I was handling my own court cases which required a lot of energy I hardly had enough time to think about the elephant in the room which was the same , you know, the crime I was getting involved in to go along with all this.

He has plenty of time to think about it now after pleading guilty. Mark Dryer has begun serving his 20-year prison sentence in Illinois. He loved everyone. It hurts him to know that he is deeply sorry and for someone so obsessed with his own image and what people thought of him, his punishment is just beginning. I have lost everything I have. I have lost my business. Obviously I've lost my reputation. I have obviously caused my family enormous unhappiness and I have nothing. You have friends? No, mhm, it doesn't seem like it. Of all the problems facing America right now, none are more important than health care, President Obama says, rising costs or driving. huge federal budget deficits that endanger our future and that there is enough waste and fraud in the system to pay for healthcare reform if it were eliminated.

At the center of both issues is Medicare, the government insurance program that provides health care to 46 million elderly and disabled people. for Americans, but it also provides a rich and steady income stream for criminals who constantly find new ways to steal a sizable portion of the half-trillion dollars paid out each year in Medicare benefits; In fact, Medicare fraud is now estimatedtotaling around $60 billion. year has become one of, if not the most profitable crimes in America, be warned that this story may raise your blood pressure along with some troubling questions about our government's ability to run a medical bureaucracy if You want to find Medicare fraud first.

We should look in South Florida, where we were told it is shelved. Cocaine is the main criminal enterprise. Here it is a silent crime. There are no sirens or gunshots. The only victims are the American taxpayers and they don't even know they are being scammed. Agent Brian Waterman, with whom we traveled for several days, told us that the only visible evidence of the crimes are the thousands of small clinics and pharmacies that dot the low-rent shopping centers that you don't even know are there because no one is ever there. inside. doctors, nurses or patients, this office number should be attended and answered 24 hours a day.

This small medical supply company built Medicare for almost $2 million in July and half a million dollars while we were there in August, but we never found anyone in our place. phone calls were never returned they say they are currently on the other line oh well they want you to wait sometimes they don't even have offices we went to look for a pharmacy at 7511 Northwest 73rd Street they build Medicare $300,000 in charges turned out to be in the middle of a storage area public warehouse have already told us that there are no offices here, there are no businesses here, in fact, they are not even allowed to have a business here Waterman is the lead agent of the Miami office in charge of Kirk Orra's Medicare fraud.

A top Justice Department prosecutor oversees a half-dozen Medicare fraud strike forces that have been established across the country. This operates from a warehouse in a secret location in the south. Florida and includes investigators from the FBI, Health and Human Services, and the IRS. There is a healthcare fraud industry where people do nothing but recruit patients. Obtain patient lists. Find doctors. Search the Internet. Find different scams. There are entire groups in entire organizations of people that are dedicated to nothing more than committing fraud, finding a better way to steal from Medicare, the Medicare fraud business is bigger than the drug business in Miami now I think it's much bigger. big what changed the criminals changed the sophistication, they discovered that instead of stealing $100,000 or $200,000 they can steal $100 million we have seen cases in the last six months involving a couple of guys who if they weren't stealing from Medicare they could be stealing your car, you know we were the king of drugs in the 80s, we are the king. of healthcare fraud in the '90s and '00s, man, what did they tell you?

But it's not just Miami. In March, the FBI arrested 53 people in Detroit, including several doctors, and accused them of billing Medicare more than $50 million for unnecessary medical procedures and in Los Angeles, City of Angels Medical Center recruited homeless people from the street to fill their empty beds, offering them cash and medication, along with clean sheets and three beds a day, while billing Medicare tens of millions of dollars for their stay. We have to understand that this is a major area of ​​fraud. United States Attorney General Eric Holder has taken a crime that has been on the back burner of law enforcement and made it a top priority. in the justice department.

Why does he think he has been so attractive to criminals? Because I think it was pretty easy. um, I think they've found a way where they've been able to get fairly substantial amounts of money without a huge amount of effort and at least so far without the possibility of much detection with much less risk, much less risk, um, you, you. You'll see some of these people and they'll tell you that you know there's no chance of another drug dealer shooting you. The chances of being imprisoned were less than the amount of time you would spend. in prison it was smaller, all of which is different now you wake up every day winning 20 30 $40,000 every day almost literally and you're like wow, I mean, I just won the lottery, let's call this guy Tony, that's not his real name. and it's obviously not his real face, but before a friend ratted him out and he got busted by the FBI, he was making money on Wall Street running a series of fake medical supply companies out of this building;

In theory, they were providing wheelchairs and other expensive equipment to Medicare. patients how much money you stole from Medicare about $20 million 20 million yes it was easy, very easy and you're not exactly a criminal mastermind no no actually it's more like common sense that's all you need here any Have you ever sold any medicine? equipment, no no, just have someone in an office answering the phone, like we're open to the public and wake up in the morning, check your bank account and see how much money you made today, you didn't have any medical equipment. You really had a client, didn't you?

Everything was fake, everything was fake, yeah, and you would just fill out some bills and some forms and send them to Medicare and that's it, and 50 days after 30 days you'll have a direct deposit. in your bank account, I mean, it was ridiculous, it smells like taking candy from a baby, according to the FBI, all you have to do to get into this business is rent a cheap office, find or create a front man to get a bribe for an occupational license. a doctor or falsifying a prescription pad and obtaining the names and identification numbers of legitimate Medicare patients, can result in false charges.

There's a whole industry of people who do nothing but provide patience when you say provide patience, that's what you mean. I'm just talking about patient lists, people's names, Social Security numbers, addresses and dates of birth, with those four things you can create for a patient to get Medicare to pay, you need to have a Medicare patient, where do you get them? people who sell you a list for maybe $10 per patient and I'll buy a thousand 10,000 maybe at a time and then you just fill out that patient's name and submit it and then I'll use the same patience with the same company. with the next company I have the same patience and continue to use them and they pay for the same patient every time the corrupt companies get hold of the list of patients that they normally steal from doctors offices or hospitals, they start racking up all kinds of extravagant charges and send them to Medicare for payment knowing

full

well that the agency is required by law to pay claims within 15 to 30 days and that it only has enough auditors to verify a small fraction of the charges and see if they are legitimate if they're not.

Thus, it is usually people like Clara Mahoney, 76, who discover them; She started noticing all kinds of crazy things showing up on her quarterly Medicare statements in 2003, things that Medicare paid for on her behalf and that she never ordered, she never wanted. and I never got what kind of things, oh air mattresses, a wheelchair, a urine bag for my leg, so I didn't want to open the explanation of the benefits because, you know, it's like oh no, not again Mahoney , who says she hasn't been sick in 30 years, began calling Medicare to tell them that someone was scamming them, but the only responses she received were letters saying that someone was looking into the matter.

False charges are still appearing on her statements and I keep reporting and I kept saying can't you flag my account? You know I don't get any equipment or supplies, anything, so how many years have they been looking at it? Six years, once criminals like Tony get usable patient numbers, they try to bill Medicare. for the most expensive equipment possible that requires having access to a list of Medicare codes and what were some of the best codes artificial limbs electric arms electric wheelchairs um, I mean a normal patient, you can put them on two artificial legs and a artificial arm and they will pay for it and that's what happened to former federal judge Ed Davis, he was one of those patients who started getting charges on their Medicare return for artificial limbs.

I looked at him and he had prosthetic charges and I knew he had my arms. Do you have your left arm and your right arm on the same bill? Both arms, the same ticket. Yes, and you obviously have two good arms, the same ones I've had for over 70 years. Has no one at Medicare checked for any of these? the charges were valid, sometimes they do, but by the time they did it it was too late, yes we already made three 400,500,000 and then we will never give them anything back and then in 30 days they will send an inspector. to his office and at that moment everything was already closed, everything was closed, so they would pay first and audit later.

Yes, there is something I don't understand. I mean, you're saying that basically people just fill out false paperwork that they send an invoice to. Medicare and they pay for it, that's why there are companies that can operate for 60 and 90 days and bill for ridiculous things because there are very few checks and balances to even determine if these things were medically necessary, if they ever occurred or if they were physically possible. for a patient with the type of conditions he has, the FBI calls it payment and Chase and traveling with them we saw many examples of this small pharmacy in the mall aioa went from billing Medicare $113,000 in May to billing almost a million dollars a month later. this place built $800,000 in the month of June right, it's a pretty small place when we were there in August, the FBI says the owners had already burned it down, the company closed it and moved on to another operation, we were here last week, it was uh there were things on the shelves, the business still had a name, you can still see where the tape is, someone just removed this to understand how absurd this all is.

The FBI says this little store grossed six times as much. Medicare money in June than the largest Walgreen pharmacy in the state of Florida, quite an achievement since neither the FBI nor the owner of the bingo hall next door saw a customer coming or going. What's the problem with a pharmacy? I have never seen people. only twice there were no customers, there were no customers, it was always closed, obviously we had some questions to ask the Medicare people and we requested an interview with the person in charge of preventing fraud, who turned out to be the Medicare program director of Kim Brandt.

Integrity we went with an FBI agent and a woman from Health and Human Services took us to store after store billing three or $400,000 a month and they were completely empty, no one there, I mean how did they get away with this? We are so frustrated that as law enforcement officials that they came out with and in fact our main focus for the last two years has been to tighten our registration standards to make it much more difficult for people like that to be able to enter to the program and be able to commit that type of fraud look I I I I'm sure you're aware of these problems but it doesn't sound like you're doing a very good job.

I'm not talking about you personally, but the government. This is still a big problem that is going to get worse, well it really comes down to the size and scope of the Medicare program and the resources that are dedicated to oversight and anti-fraud work. One of our biggest challenges has been that we have a program that pays over a billion claims a year, over $430 billion, and our oversight budget has been extremely limited in that, there's no question that Medicare has only three inspectors. field throughout South Florida to clearly control thousands of questionable medical equipment companies. More audits need to be done and they need to be done in real time.

Why did it take so long for Medicare to realize they were being scammed? I think the lack of resources probably, um, and then I think people I don't think necessarily thought that. As well-intentioned as Medicare and Medicaid would necessarily attract scammers, but I think we have to understand that it certainly has: The Obama administration is providing Medicare with an additional $200 million to fight fraud as part of its stimulus package and thousands of millions of dollars to computerize medical services. Records and updating networks should help Medicare detect more false charges, but Tony, who just began serving his 12-year prison sentence, says there is no shortage of people in my Miami waiting to take his place .

How many people in Miami were doing this? I say at least 2,000 people. at least 2,000 3,000 companies well, presumably some of them are going to be legitimate, I say less less than 5% less than 5% yes, if I went to the phone books and looked for medical equipment suppliers, 95% of the companies would be fake, yes sir. There is no greater despair than being told that you or your child has a disease for which there is no hope. Many people with incurable illnesses look forward to the promise ofmother cells. Stem cells have the potential to become any type of cell and could, in theory, repair damaged cells, although scientists tell us we are years away from realizing that dream: there is no stem cell miracle today, so what scammers have come to offer hope that science can't just search online and you will find hundreds of credible looking websites offering stem cell cures in clinics abroad two years ago we started investigating cell quacks mother we worked with patients suffering from incurable diseases and discovered scammers posing as doctors who performed dangerous medical experiments, you know Mr.

Stow the problem is this man Aon, our report launched a federal investigation. After investigation, we have been investigating the rapidly growing trade in fake stem cell cures and found something even more alarming: illegal stem cell transplants that are dangerous and deliver to your doorstep scams that often take away the last dollar to the desperate. of savings and his last shred of hope I know you're tired of Adam and Brandon suser are 11 year old twins Adam has brain problems his brain was damaged by lack of oxygen before he and his brother were born he is confined to a wheelchair needs help with all his activities of daily living, from cleaning to feeding and clothing Gary and Judy Suser have looked for anything that could improve the ruling handed down by Adam's doctors the sentence of being quadriplegic the sentence of being totally blind the pronouncement The doctors said we should lock him up.

Those were the things his regular doctors told him. When Adam was three years old, he was taken to a doctor in Mexico who injected him with stem cells without having any idea if they would work. We both decided that given the severity of his condition we would have to try it apparently there was no harm or Miracle, the progress he made after that was minimal at best and therefore we didn't see any good results. Nowadays, people like users can find hundreds of sophisticated websites offering stem cell treatments for everyone.desperate illness I see how ERS prays for people in charlatans and people who have a special child do not need more expenses do not need more anguish and they don't need more false promises they need the truth and they need We hope that a child will help us learn the truth about the illicit stem cell industry.

Users agreed to work with us on stem cell laboratory research. We focus on Ecuador's mother technology laboratories because they offer cures for py cereal and a long list. of 70 incurable diseases the website claims to be a modern medical miracle and says we are FDA registered with apparent approval from the Food and Drug Administration the founder and director of Stemtech laboratories is a doctor from Alabama named Dan Eckland We have been following to Dr. Eckland for 4 months Hi, I'm Dan Eckland, please, in October we asked users to contact Dr. Eckland. Ecklund sent them a letter that offered the blind and paralyzed atom the possibility of improving his level of consciousness.

Improving his ability to see, speak, stand and walk. What can stem cells do? "I really do today," we asked a scientist who is conducting some of the world's most advanced studies on stem cells, Dr. Joan CTSB. I think stem cells are very promising, but we are in the infancy because real stem cells are very difficult to control as a therapy. Personally, I think we are 10 years away from seeing real cell therapies that work and are safe, but I do believe it will come. Dr. Kurtzberg is a physician and scientific director of a stem cell research program at Duke University and advises the federal government. she and she is the co-director of this multimillion-dollar laboratory that works with stem cells extracted from umbilical cord blood.

Dr. Csur told us that there is still no evidence that stem cells can treat some of the brain diseases and that we see stem cell cures being offered. because on the Internet they include multiple sclerosis, there are still no stem cell cures for multiple sclerosis, L Garrick's disease, I wish there were, but there aren't. I wonder how often it happens that you have to tell a patient. Sorry, there's nothing. we can do and then they come back to you two days later and say, "Well, I see all these cures on the Internet. I get a lot of those calls and emails and I see a lot of those patients, but it's very dishonest to deceive people when they don't There is nothing that can be done." do, but there is a lot that can be done for Adam Suser, at least according to Dr.

Eckland, who spoke to users from his lab in Ecuador. Say hello to Dr. Dan Adam, hello Adam, can you see him? The only exam Dr. Drean performed on Adam was via teleconference. eckan didn't know we were watching do you think it would help him you know make him better I think it's likely to help him yes, I'd say there's a 75% chance he'll have noticeable improvement eckan proposed four treatments with a total cost of $20,000 users told him They asked Eckan to treat Adam near his home in Florida again. My concern would be the legality of this. You're right to worry that it would be a felony to use stem cells in an unapproved therapy or sell them for export to the US, so that's why.

We were surprised to see this on many websites, a shopping cart. We clicked on the Eckland Stem Tech Lab cart and, with no medical or scientific credentials, purchased 20 million umbilical cord stem cells for $5,000 and shipped them to the United States. We ship the cells with the highest medical standard. Duke University suggested we use something called a liquid nitrogen-cooled dry conveyor. We sent the dry conveyor to Stemtech. Stemtech sent us the frozen cells and we sent them to Joanne Csur. A computer chip inside our package verified that the cells were properly frozen throughout the process. way Dr.

Kurtzberg analyzed the cells for comparison look under the microscope the healthy stem cells from the umbilical cord look like this the cells we got from the stem tech had disintegrated so these are the cells you bought and they are dying or dead, we see all these dead and disintegrating cells and essentially cellular debris mhm, is there a danger in injecting that into someone? There are enormous dangers if you inject that into someone's blood or cerebrospinal fluid because all of these little fragments and debris would get trapped somewhere in the bloodstream and could cause a stroke or in the brain could cause an inflammatory reaction.

This could actually cause damage. Yes, this could cause a lot of damage. Remember Dr. ECKAN was asked by patients to treat Adam in the US and last month he got out of a van to meet Gary Suser at a Florida hotel where Eckan planned to do the transplant we investigated Dr.'s background ean and we found things he had not told patients this is the document in which the state of Alabama revoked his medical license in 2005 the state medical commission said that Dr. Eckland admitted that he prescribed Controlled Substances to a patient with the who was having sexual relations prescribed Controlled Substances to a patient who he knew was a drug addict and had had sexual experiences with little girls.

We also tracked his laboratory in Ecuador, it is not exactly the state of the situation. The art facility claimed on its website that the hotel room Gary Suser and Dan Eckland headed to was equipped with several cameras hidden out of sight. Suser apologized. Ecklund was hoping to meet Judy and Adam the Blind and paralyzed an 11-year-old boy. into whom he intended to transplant stem cells cells from his lab that sold us dangerous biomedical garbage instead we came Dr. Eckan I'm Scott P with 60 Minutes oh great, how are you today? I am surprised that we have been working with the users on a story and I want you to know that we are being recorded and I wanted to ask you about the treatment that you proposed to Adam what would be the treatment that he asked about for stem cells human stem cells and you think that are they applicable for cereals uh yes, I have seen them be effective in cases of cerebral py how exactly does that work well?

Stem cells contain uh, excuse me, no one knows exactly, but some stem cells contain and emit chemicals that cause other cells to repair themselves. In the letter he sent to users he described possible effects for adom that could include better ability to see better ability to speak better ability to move arms and legs believe that those things are possible I do what is your stem cell training my stem cell training was that I studied for about six years going through the literature and then I started to produce stem cells in my laboratory. You are self-taught, self-taught.

Mhm, have you published any research? No, frankly, Dr. Eklund. you have nothing to base your results on there is no clinical trial there is no blind study there are no published medical articles that make no difference you know you say it makes no difference that you haven't done these studies. I imagine that studies have been carried out in other countries. I imagine it would make a big difference to users if the studies were done in other countries. These are not published in the United States because they cannot be published in the United States. Where is this seen? in medical literature anywhere in the world, if you did the things you describe in this article, you would win the Nobel Prize.

No, if I did the things described in that article, it would not be published, it would be deleted, and you wouldn't know that you didn't know about it. Eckan told us that advances with stem cells are not published in scientific journals because of a conspiracy of pharmaceutical companies and governments that he had trouble defining and that was when we told him that we buy cells from his laboratory when his cells are delivered, they are working , live stem cells, yes, we purchased some stem cells from stem tech labs about 6 months ago and sent them to Duke University who did tests on the stem cells and determined that the stem cells were well dead. they must not have handled them properly, so you're thinking you handled them properly, but the stem cell labs at Duke University didn't, that would be my assumption, yeah, I don't think there's any chance they were damaged during shipping, we asked.

Dr. Kurtzberg, to hear Ean's theories. Yes, I have seen them effective in cases of cerebral polio. This is quite scary. Actually, he would say these things and lead you down this path because what he is talking about is very dangerous. Is this a scam? Dr. ugan No, it is not a scam. I took the stem cells myself. Would you take stem cells if you thought they were communication? No, putting them on an 11 year old is a completely different matter. Why did I take it upon myself to explain the remotest possible difficulties that have never been reported without any medical studies that have been published in major journals that have suggested that stem cells have any effectiveness?

It keeps coming back to this point that they are not published in important ethics in important medical journalist, I tell you it is the standard of the world. I keep going back to that point. I tell them they won't go public in this country because when someone tries to do it Then they have 60 Minutes, come visit them and I think that's enough for me. Thank you. We don't know where Dan Eckland went, but we do know the whereabouts of the two scammers who were the subjects of our first stem cell story two years ago. Some time ago, in this research we worked with patients Steven Waters and Michael Martin, who suffered from ALS, also known as Lou Garrick's disease.

They were promised miracles by Lawrence Stow and Frank Morales, who offered a $125,000 stem cell therapy that would get me out of the wheelchair, yes, absolutely. our story launched a federal investigation and last week Morales and Stow were charged. The indictment alleges they made $1.5 million from stem cell fraud. If convicted, they could face 20 years in prison. The patients who helped us. Steven Waters and Michael Martin lost their lives to ALS. In the spring we will continue reporting on stem cell fraud tomorrow on our new CBS This Morning broadcast. The ancient wisdom that a sucker is born every minute has been especially pertinent given the financial disasters of recent years, so it's time for a brief, painless Do You Sometimes Trust Too Much?

Do you invest in things you don't really understand? Are you a little greedy too? Then you too might be suffering from pigeon fever, just so you know, that's what scammers call their victims after a year of The revelations about Bernard Mof, who swindled investors out of billions, you might thinkthat Americans have woken up to the great possibilities of prosecutors and regulators, we are told that even in this era of skepticism, Ponzi

schemes

, like those of counterfeits, are thriving, one regulator even calls it ponymonium, why why are there so many pigeons? So we asked some people who should know as students of scams and hoaxes if they were surprised by the Bernie ma off scam.

Would you be surprised if I told you I predicted it to begin with? We approached Ricky J. America for most of the cards. sharp actor light artist a man with an encyclopedic knowledge of the past of scammers and president told us about a talk he gave seven years earlier made the fall beware with someone well established in the industry a lecture on financial fraud to a meeting of police officers In 2001, I would also meet someone who will depend largely on an affiliation with an investment group, whether ethnic religious or geographical, as I was describing, went to have tea.

I believe these elements will make the market suitable for any type of pyramid or Ponzi. Ricky Jet scam and that's pure Bernard moff, that's pure Bernie done, but can I tell you another element of the scam? In fact, I made this page in Photoshop last night and I put it in this panel and I made it to prove a point and the The point is the head, you got me right, you set it up by saying that I was a student of cons and I have knowledge in that area, so you allowed my so-called experience to make you believe that this is true, this magazine is true, I really have I gave a sermon to this group of trusted crime cops.

It's all true, except this page I scrolled last night. So what is moral trust? Nobody. We wouldn't want to live in a world where we couldn't be fooled because, in effect, then we would live in a world where M Trust trusted or refused to trust someone, so this is the price we paid and paid in the wake of the scandal Ponzi for walks that have become a marathon of Texas' financial year, Alan Stanford charged. of a 7 Billion Doll Ponzi Scheme Minnesota Businessman Tom Pet Recently Convicted of a $3 Billion Scam and Park Avenue Attorney Mark Dryer Mastermind a Simple 400 $100 Million Dollar Ponzi Scheme That Got Him First to 60 Minutes and then to federal prison I thought if anyone would ever interview me on a show like yours it would be for something good I've done, not something humiliating I've done despite falling dryers and profits .

Ponzi operators, large and small, are busier than ever knowing that we are all capable. of greed, misplaced confidence and something else. I think it's anxiety, it's anxiety that you're losing, that other people are doing better than you. Steven Greenspan is a professor at the University of Colorado who writes and lectures on gullibility, warning the public not to read the fine print. or buying something with a tip from his brother-in-law are bad ideas, and older people are particularly vulnerable to a friendly pitch from a scammer. In most of history's great moments of credulity, the perpetrator seems to correctly target a particular group.

Yes, there have been Mormon pzi

schemes

targeting Mormons or fundamentalist Christians. It was made, it was primarily aimed at Jews because he was a prominent Jewish philanthropist, so yes, there is this aspect of affiliation because we tend to trust our own kind here in 1919, it's Charles. Pony, the self-proclaimed financial wizard lounging around his Boston mansion with his lovely wife and his proud, adoring mother. Ponzi himself promised his fellow Italian immigrants that he could make them rich by exchanging postal reply coupons, something like prepaid phone cards of the day Ponzi went to prison and died a popper I went out looking for trouble I found him but his name lives on because of the fraud he made famous the basic concept is to rob Peter to pay Paul you have a pool of new money you go in and use the new money to pay off the old investors but at a certain point that has to stop gullibility is the very core of this right, I mean, absolutely, I mean, history is full of examples, Mr.

Jay's library is full of documents about scams. scams and deceptions of all kinds amazing animals and the cilis often appeared on circus lots and eventually people realized that the cilis was a baboon who dressed in a famous con man that included Count Victor lusy uh this is a poster original search for the count one of the things he did in France was he was able to sell the Eiffel Tower for scrap and he was able to do it twice, which is a wonderful thing. Mr. Jay reports that over the years people have actually tried to sell the Brooklyn Bridge as well as Nelson's Column in Troler Square in London and in another warning that is still developing, the pigeons were both the investor like investment, and Galra, who called himself the King of Pigeons, convinced hundreds of American and Canadian farmers that there was a lot of money to be made raising birds for food and everyone we spoke to said this guy was on the rise and No one had a bad word to say about it anywhere we could find, so Aaron and Jolene Humber Ohio Farmers signed up, they've had tremendous demand for the live one.

Birds, the king of pigeons, assured investors that pigeons would replace chickens throughout the United States and the world. He would sell breeding stock to her and buy them back. The Offspring Soon, barns across Midwest Canada were filled to the brim with birds and high hopes. Building his flock Building the flock he had He had so many hundreds of thousands of birds a week to supply his production, but to some, including the Iowa Attorney General, it sounded like a Ponzi scheme. Iowa and three other states banned the king pigeon. of doing business and shortly after the Humberts bought into Pigeon King International they declared bankruptcy, the Humberts lost $300,000, most of it borrowed money, we have contacted everyone in the states we could think of and you know, from elected officials to the FBI, our local prosecutor and everyone.

He says yes, there is obviously something wrong here, it was a scam, but proving it will be very difficult. GTH declined our request for an interview. Canadian police now say he was running a Ponzi ski. Do they blame themselves at all to the point that we just did it? We didn't find any red flags coming up, so we tried and then we lost, went to Vegas and turned everything red. We would have had a lot more fun, at least in Las Vegas. You know, the odds always favor the house somewhere else, even more so. A sophisticated Among Us can be found, for example, by our gullibility expert, Steven Greenspan, who after writing a book on the subject discovered that he lost $400,000 of his retirement money to, who else?

Bernie maof. Was it embarrassing for you two days after I had the first copy of the book in my On the other hand, I discovered that it was painful, obviously, and the fact is that Greenspan had never heard of the hedge fund that managed his retirement money, I had simply reinvested the 400,000 with madeof. I don't even think I read the perspective. I trusted the people. I was giving my money to and always have and it usually works well, except in this case, what did your wife say to you when you confessed that you had lost some of your savings?

I told you because I tried to get her into this and she said: I don't believe it. What made her suspicious perhaps was the word hedge fund that takes us to Wall Street in the 2008 financial crisis, sifting through the rubble. Many experts believe the root cause was a perfect storm, a monsoon of gullibility colliding with a wave of greed. This was a massive Ponzi scheme and is the biggest crime against the American economy in our lifetime. In fact, Jenet Tavakoli is an analyst specializing in derivatives. , the exotic financial instruments at the heart of the crisis, she argues that the bad mortgage loans that fueled the crisis were repackaged by investment banks split into increasingly complex derivatives and resold to other investors, even though the mortgages underlying them They were often practically worthless.

There were many different merchants buying products from others to preserve them artificially. Prices rose so that the bubble would not collapse. Not only that, but the mortgage derivatives that were marketed were so incredibly complicated that no one fully understood them, not even the pigeons, the buyers of the banks' mutual funds, the investment funds. pensions and insurance companies that ended up having a bag full of worthless paper these guys are smart guys they are all graduates of the best business schools in the country right, if they were gullible they are sophisticated investors so they really can't go back to the banks investment firm that sold them this product and we said that they had misled us because they presented themselves as experts in these types of securities, all of which shows that, whether you are on Wall Street or Main Street, intellectual power is not a defense against the scammers;

In fact, smart guys may be the biggest fools. Of all things, as someone who makes a small living, the ideal audience for me would be scientists or Nobel Prize winners who are incredibly smart in their field and who often don't always have an ego that says I'm really smart, so You can't be fooled, no one is easier to fool, so Morley, I'm going to play you a hand of blackjack with certain propositions that make it too good to be true and, therefore, determined not to receive ConEd from again him, I sat down to a friendly card game with Mr.

J. you win all the ties, the rules were all in my favor. I got a 20, he showed a nine, which means I thought there was no way he could win and God, the only thing that could beat you would be like if I had a 12 or something, oh, see? I have the 12 of clubs, so I have 21 and you have 20, but there is no such thing as a 12 of clubs, good bad, not only did Mr. Jay tamper with the cars in some way to get the ones he wanted, he was also driving with a deck used in certain Ry games including 11, 12 and 13.

This pigeon had been acquired again and the other real element of a scam is that I told them this was too good to be true, anyone should do it. stay away from something that's too good to be true because it never is, it never is