Billion Dollar Fraud Goes Viral

American Greed Podcast

CNBC

True Crime, Documentary, Tv & Film, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2019

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Promising enormous returns on a "work from home" opportunity selling their TelexFree phone service, Carlos Wanzeler and James Merrill entice close to one million people around the world to spend, and then lose an extraordinary $1.7 billion in the largest pyramid scheme ever prosecuted in the US. (Original television broadcast: 06-25-2018) Want to binge watch your Greed? The latest episodes at: https://www.cnbc.com/american-greed/

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the American Greed Podcast presented by CNBC. I'm Stacy Kich.
0:07.0	In this episode of American Greed, Carlos Juan Zeller and James Merrill become internet hot shots through videos like these as they
0:16.3	peddled a dream come true work from home opportunity to people who are desperate to succeed.
0:22.4	Every four people, people that have two or three job.
0:25.0	And as these kinds of videos go viral,
0:28.0	so does the scheme.
0:30.0	And it was like a religion.
0:32.0	People wanted to invest every single last penny they had.
0:35.0	Spreading their message to almost every country in the world,
0:41.0	they con 1.8 million believers to shell out 3 billion dollars on their bogus business.
0:47.0	We put another 4,500 and then a couple months later we said,
0:53.0	oh, chief, the money is coming back.
0:55.0	So we put another 15,000.
0:57.0	And back at fraud headquarters,
0:59.0	their victim's money is piling up.
1:02.0	We have stories of people showing up literally
1:03.8	with duffel bags of cash.
1:05.8	And where do investigators find the stolen millions?
1:09.5	Where else?
1:10.7	In a mattress. In January 2017 in downtown Boston at the office for Homeland Security
1:28.0	a 28-year-old man from Brazil named Clever Rocha is under arrest.
1:35.0	Earlier, Rocha handed $2 million in cash
	...

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