I Beg Your Pardon part 1

PRETEND

Javier Leiva

Society & Culture, True Crime, Technology

4.7 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2026

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jerry Bush was a plumber from Virginia with fourteen employees, a wife battling cancer, and a business his father built from nothing. When a big construction job left him waiting on $350,000 he'd already earned, he did what you'd probably do. He looked for a loan. The man who picked up the phone was named Jonathan Braun. Before Braun found Jerry, he was running a half-billion dollar international drug smuggling operation. After he found Jerry, he froze his bank account, drained his father's retirement, took money from his 16-year-old son, and told Jerry his only way out was to win the lottery or die. And then things got worse. By the time it was over, Jerry Bush had lost his business, his savings, and nearly his life. Jonathan Braun had a Ferrari, a Lamborghini, a personal butler, and a very powerful friend. What happens next will make you question everything you think you know about who the justice system is actually designed to protect and who it leaves behind. I Beg Your Pardon is a new investigative series from PRETEND. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	True Story Media
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0:38.4	There has never been a better time to be a con artist.
0:42.9	Last year, the FBI reported that criminals stole $16 billion in scams.
0:49.2	That is a 33% jump from the year before.
0:52.8	The agency says that they get an average of 2,000 complaints a day.
0:57.6	Now, I'm not here to bore you with statistics.
1:01.5	I mean, most people can't even emotionally process these large numbers.
1:06.4	But let me tell you, many of the victims were retirees.
1:10.2	A Vietnam veteran electrician, a retired teacher who lost everything.
1:15.5	People in their 60s and 70s who didn't have time to earn it back.
1:20.5	People counting on these monthly checks to pay their bills.
1:23.9	These victims of white-collar crimes wait years, spending even more money that they
1:29.1	don't even have on lawyers, waiting months for the trial to start, just to find out that the
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