Therin could be an accessory to some serious crimes.
Terrified of going to prison, or worse, he and Kirsten come up with a plan.
(MUSIC SEGUE)
[00:00:24] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam.
I’m your host, Bob Sullivan.
But after obtaining a series of loans worth five hundred thousand dollars, Miller starts to become suspicious.
His only other choice?
Turn himself in to the FBI, risk his career and maybe more by turning in his mob friends.
What choice does Therin make?
I truly believe that.
I mean every day I would wake up throwing up.
Every day I would wake up throwing up.
I was scared out of my mind.
But now, he’s terrified.
Now that’s all bad enough, but his business partner, Brant, is still his roommate.
He has to live with Brant while trying to figure all this out.
I, I was going upstairs to my bedroom and watching TV in there with a loaded gun.
I was about to… [00:03:39] Kirsten Strickler: I told Therin, “You don’t need to go down there.
[00:03:47] Bob: What makes so sure that Therin’s business partners are that dangerous?
When she was doing research on Brant and Lyle that night, she found a lot of disturbing things.
But the most alarming was a news story published a few years earlier in the Miami New Times.
[00:04:12] The two men took turns wailing on Jeffery Worstell.
[00:04:14] Bob: That’s reporter Kyle Swenson, reading the story he wrote.
Attacked and traded again.
Worstell, bruised and bloody, crumpled in the grass on the side of the road in Boca Raton.
Worstell grappled with his attacker.
Then a pain exploded on the right side of his head.
A Miley Cyrus song leaked in from nearby traffic.
That’s the scene Therin is now mixed up with.
Have you signed something that’s making you criminally liable down the road?
And that’s really scary, that can ruin a person’s life.
[00:06:55] Bob: How dangerous were these people?
Threw this guy in the back of a car.
Um, from what I understand this man feared for his life.
Like he, he didn’t think he was getting out of the back of that car.
So I think that the violence is really real.
I mean it, it, it’s scary.
It’s not a good place to be.
Not a good group to be tangled up with.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
He’s now caught in a web of businesses that help fund a racy get rich quick lifestyle.
You walk down South Beach, you hear you know a dozen languages.
You’ve got beautiful men and women from, from everywhere.
And South Florida is just ripe with that, uh, people trying to kind of fulfill that fantasy.
[00:09:13] Bob: Why expensive cars?
It’s about more than racing from zero to 60 in just a few seconds.
It’s about cultivating an image.
Here’s how this culture helps aspiring musicians for example.
They take over their leases or their rental agreements or their contracts, and they rent them out.
And that’s where things get really messy for them.
[00:10:13] Bob: So there have seemed to be various different iterations of it.
[00:10:22] Kyle Swenson: Right, so sometimes the cars are in the middle of being repossessed.
Sometimes looks like they are stolen and that their VIN numbers have been scratched or swiped with other ones.
And at various times he’s worked for the US government as a cooperating witness.
Reading the story about the assault for us brought back a flood of memories for Kyle.
It’s with this guy who is like kind of famous in law enforcement circles in New York.”
And he was well-known because he had been arrested and turned states evidence.
And he was kind of one of these guys who was a serial state’s evidence guy.
And so I’m reading this.
Well what’s the connection for down here?"
[00:13:30] Bob: And things could get very messy.
The Chulpayev Crime Ring had been connected to the murder of a rapper in Atlanta.
It was actually the day after his son was born.
He was there visiting his newborn son.
And he uh was killed uh leaving the hospital.
[00:14:18] Bob: Chulpayev was arrested during an investigation of the murder.
He was accused of using GPS coordinates from the rental car to help the killers find Lil Phat.
Charges against him were ultimately dropped, but three other suspects were eventually convicted in that murder.
[00:15:38] Bob: A lot of names on the paperwork.
And Therin Miller, well, he was one of those names.
So the criminals start to look outside Florida, far outside Florida for buyers.
So Lyle Livesay sent Brant to look for a straw man in Oklahoma.
It’s called shot-gunning.
[00:19:06] Kirsten Strickler: Exactly.
[00:19:08] Bob: Therin had followed Lyle’s instructions when he signed the papers.
It worked like a charm.
Boom - $95,000 from USAA.
Boom - $90,000 from Navy Federal.
Boom - $50,000 from Oklahoma Employees' Credit union.
He wasn’t, and lied about his income claiming he earned $100,000 a year there.
Kirsten figured that made Therin an accessory to crime, potentially a big, dangerous crime.
[00:19:56] Bob: I’m guessing this, this must have shot your adrenaline to 11.
I mean what does that feel like?
Um, I become a fighter.
[00:21:03] Bob: Can I say that I’m glad that you’re on our side?
[00:21:06] Kirsten Strickler: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:21:13] Kirsten Strickler: Absolutely.
Just what’s the next steps?
Even looking at long-term down the road as how are we going to repair this credit?
[00:21:37] Bob: But first things first.
Therin has to decide what to do about his roommate.
It becomes clear that he has two choices, both bad.
He tests the waters by going to a lawyer and that doesn’t go very well.
So I went, we went to a, a very prominent attorney here in Oklahoma City.
[00:22:30] Bob: Therin feels even worse now.
Maybe he can undo all the damage quietly.
You see, so I caught onto this before payments were ever even due at the banks.
Don’t allow these checks to be cashed.
The checks have already been issued.
And I was like, “What do you mean it’s possible for you to’t stop the checks?
you might’t, you might stop the money from leaving your guys’s institution to go to theirs.”
And he’s like, “No, we’re not doing that.
The checks have already been issued.”
[00:23:28] Bob: The checks have already been issued.
To Therin, that’s the bleak no’s he’s afraid of.
And he said, “We need to, you know, this is a big deal.
We need to, I mean we need to give a shot to get ahead of this.”
And I said, “Well no payments are due yet.
I was able to put a stop payment on two of the checks.”
He’s like, “We need to go the FBI.”
[00:24:10] Bob: This is it.
Therin’s got to decide, turn himself in or fight the mob.
Risk a jail time, or risk ending up in the trunk of a car.
Kirsten convinces Therin to drop the Florida idea.
So he’s left with one bad option.
But how does one just go to the FBI?
Therin’s lawyer tries to kick off the door and that really doesn’t get him anywhere.
And he’s like, “It looks like we might be fighting this.
You’re going to default.
Charges will be filed against you.”
He said, “It looks like we’re probably fighting this.”
And I said, “Well what does that look like?”
So I was like, “You’re out of your mind, this is crazy to me.”
I, I tried to go into business with this guy.
Like, what is, I, I didn’t ask to be involved with these individuals.
I’m like, “This is crazy to me.”
He’s like, “Well, let’s just hope the FBI calls us.”
[00:25:53] Bob: The more time that passes, the more nervous Kirsten gets.
Slow down a second.
So at a certain point you decide you’re going to walk into an FBI office.
It’s not like walking into a local police station and file a report.
I’m scared out of my mind.
Honestly, at that point, I thought my only saving grace at that point was the FBI.
I was like if there’s, I have to go, I have to face this.
I have to, I have to go to the FBI.
Maybe I can figure out a way, maybe I can make this right somehow.
So yeah, I just, I made the decision.
I was like, I, I can’t wait any longer.
I have to go get answers.
I have to go get help.
[00:27:08] Bob: So do you, do you like ring a doorbell?
How does that work?
[00:27:11] Therin Miller: Yeah, it’s, I wish it was that easy.
I mean I, that’s, that’s kind of what I thought.
[00:27:37] Therin Miller: Oh, right then and there.
They’re not a normal security guard looking kind of, they’re in suits.
I say, “Hey, I, I have to talk to an FBI agent.
I have to talk to somebody.”
And he’s like, “Well what’s going on?”
And he goes, “Yeah, go down there to that gate and hit the buzzer.
Or until I talk to an agent.”
And so she’s like, “Okay.
I’ll go get an FBI agent.”
[00:29:12] Bob: So Therin sits in a waiting room for maybe half an hour.
Instead of handcuffs, he gets a cordial hello.
The roommate, the loans, the Mani Chulpayev connection.
And when he finally finishes, he gets a glint of hope and a spike of fear.
[00:29:59] Therin Miller: I’ll never forget.
If not, you’re probably going to have a warrant issued for your arrest."
And so he’s like, “I need some time to go look this over.”
Did you not know what to think?
[00:30:32] Therin Miller: You know, honestly, I didn’t know what to think.
Um, he had a very good poker face.
I left that day not knowing what was going to happen.
I was absolutely scared out of my mind.
I know that um, at least at this point, they know my side of the story.
[00:31:29] Bob: It’ll somehow be okay?
That sounds nice, but Therin has been warned that’s not necessary how this story will end.
[00:32:22] Bob: So he walks out of the FBI office and the waiting begins.
Two days, three days, a week goes by.
I mean especially um, especially when you, you have no criminal past.
[00:33:28] Bob: But after what seems like forever, the agent calls Therin.
And then, Therin has another big decision to make.
What does the agent say?
And what will Therin do?
That’s next on The Perfect Scam.
Call the AARP Fraud Watch online grid Helpline at 877-908-3360.
Their trained fraud specialists can provide you with free support and guidance on what to do next.
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Be sure to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
For AARP’s The Perfect Scam, I’m Bob Sullivan.
