Callers from boiler rooms pose asinvestment brokersand peddle stocks that dont exist.
The investigation unravels a scheme that defrauded hundreds of victims around the world out of millions of dollars.
They’ll change email addresses, they just kind of vanish.
And it can be very difficult to actually figure out and locate where these fraudsters are.
[00:00:27] Bob: Like a ghost, just gone.
[00:00:29] Justin Deutsch: Exactly.
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[00:00:34] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam.
Im your host, Bob Sullivan.
Imagine growing up the child of a man who runs a criminal boiler room operation.
Always around easy money, cruel thieves, and fast living.
The $10,000 dinners.
The $20,000 couches.
The luxury shoes and dresses.
World travel to Bulgaria, Cyprus, Ukraine.
But Mary Marrs story takes her to even more remarkable places.
She buys her way into a diplomatic title of … Dame of Malta.
She invests in a movie about the band The Clash.
[00:02:25] Bob: This isnt your average summer college job abroad.
In this case, Mary Marrs dad is selling…investments.
[00:02:46] Justin Deutsch: She didn’t know totally what was going on at the time.
But she turned out to be a very good sales agent.
She’s a very charismatic person, and she’s a very hard-working person.
She continued to work Spain and other areas in boiler rooms for several years.
[00:03:48] Justin Deutsch: Yeah.
But she got tired of doing the sales calls, ‘cause it can be long hours and stressful.
Cashing checks for the criminals.
Unfortunately, they give the money back.
They don’t seize the money.
But this technique…laundering…is critical to criminal enterprises.
And it requires some finesse.
‘Cause that doesn’t match the story and people will get suspicious.
Where does Mary find all the people she needs?
Her showy lifestyle is a big help.
And that attracts a lot of people.
They’re curious how she’s making so much money.
Maybe I can make a lot of money like her.
She recruited other people in the Tampa area.
One of them was her realtor that sold her her house.
She recruited at one point her hairdresser, who had no prior experience in banking or anything like that.
As her internet expanded, she recruited people in other countries.
She recruited somebody in England named Richard Faithful.
He kind of ran a London branch of bank accounts for her.
She had somebody else opening up bank accounts in Singapore.
Her internet just expanded from there.
[00:08:39] Bob: And she lives the part.
There are plenty of extravagant client dinners.
She buys a $20,000 Louis Vuitton couch.
[00:09:01] Justin Deutsch: Yeah, that’s true.
I’ve seen receipts for dinners of $10,000.
She always lived in expensive areas.
But the money….is just too alluring.
[00:09:43] Bob: Im trying to focus and stay good.
She writes in one Whatsapp message back in July 2016.
But still got spending issue.
Cash is my crack, an associate writes back.
Me too Mary responds … And I never have enough.
[00:09:59] Bob: And apparently, she get never gets enough excitement either.
Perhaps the boldest thing Mary Marr does is use some of her incredible proceeds to go … Hollywood.
She starts investing in movies, including one about a famous punk rock band.
[00:10:16] Justin Deutsch: And I think you might still watch that on Netflix.
It’s about the band, The Clash.
[00:10:19] Bob: So she, she actually invested in, in a movie about The Clash?
[00:10:24] Justin Deutsch Yep.
Of course, the first reports he sees have nothing to do with Mary Marr.
[00:11:21] Justin Deutsch: Okay, so that was around 2016.
And that’s how our investigation began was looking at those bank accounts.
How does he figure out something is really wrong?
[00:12:35] Justin Deutsch: Sure, so we start following the money.
We start looking at the bank accounts.
We start looking at who’s operating the bank accounts.
So for this case, there’s a subject by the name of Michel Chateau.
He at one time was a licensed broker.
He lost that license.
And they’re not personal accounts, they’re business accounts.
And the explanations don’t seem to match up with the activity.
Other bank accounts in the data pipe were using reasons like fish distribution, construction.
One of them was claiming to be a business as a personal shopper for celebrities.
[00:13:50] Bob: And, and you said he was a, a broker.
What kind of broker?
[00:13:52] Justin Deutsch: I believe he was a stockbroker.
I think he had a series 60 License.
[00:13:59] Bob: Of course there are many suspicious transactions which cross Justins desk.
Why does he decide to pull the thread on this case?
[00:15:04] Bob: But, why?
Why exactly are they doing with these bank accounts?
What’s the source of this money?
Why are, why are these people wire-transferring money to this account?
So the ones in the United States, that’s obviously easier for us.
[00:16:12] Bob: But now, he has to figure out what the fraud is.
In this case, as in many boiler room cases, the criminals are selling fake investments.
Justin spends a lot of time unraveling whats happening inside these particular boiler rooms.
They have fake names that they use.
So they’ll use the name of a real company but create their own website.
So it might be, hey, Airbnb’s going public soon.
We’ve got an inside deal for a pre-IPO shares of Airbnb.
But they dont just say this…the SHOW potential targets.
They kind of copy, you know they go to legitimate investment brokerage firms.
They look at their websites and they copy them.
So it looks, it looks very authentic.
They hire operators to carefully match the accents of their victim targets.
They work of lists of 10,000 leads.
They use legitimate-sounding websites like AlliedSecuritiesCorporation.com.
So it makes it look like they’re always winning.
So this will be a limited time deal, it’s a minimum buy-in of $200,000.
This is going to change your life.
We’ve had victims that have lost you know up to $13 million.
[00:22:09] Bob: Oh my God!
[00:22:11] Justin Deutsch: Yeah.
So they, they take their money.
The victim might not be aware yet that it’s a scam.
They’re going to still continue to make it look like things are, are very profitable and successful.
Eventually the victim’s going to say, “Hey, I invested 200 grand on the website.
Now you have to pay consulting fees.”
All kinds of excuses.
They’ll keep coming up with stringing them along.
They’ll change email addresses, they just kind of vanish.
And it can be very difficult to actually figure out and locate where these fraudsters are.
[00:25:12] Bob: Like a ghost, just gone.
[00:25:15] Justin Deutsch: Exactly.
There’s no U.S. violation because nothing’s affected the United States.
But where we can come in is that they have recruited money launderers in the United States.
So they hire a separate organization to handle the money.
So where our investigation started was the banking or money laundering side of the criminal organization.
that happen to be located out of Tampa, Florida.
I mean, was it, was it that clear when she got to the right piece of paper?
[00:27:29] Justin Deutsch: Yeah, it was.
Eventually the money went back to Elite Premier Group, which is one of her shell company names.
She sometimes posed as being in the entertainment industry and sometimes actually was.
So that was kind of her shell company.
She used to give a shot to disguise receiving the proceeds.
[00:27:53] Bob: There she is, hiding in plain sight.
As is, the lead that will eventually give Justin’s investigation its name.
[00:28:01] Justin Deutsch: Our case name is Dollars From Hell.
And I got that name from another movie that she funded.
[00:28:28] Bob: Dollars from Hell.
Did you see this?
Did you see this?
Do you remember when you first heard that expression Dollars from Hell?
[00:28:47] Justin Deutsch: Yes, and I wish we had a team like that.
It was more just me and, you know, one other person.
So it’s not, it’s not just us, but… And it is just, you know, you’re at a computer reviewing hundreds or thousands of documents.
And you’re just going through that, you know by yourself.
And wow, this just jumps out at you.
That is a title that writes itself.
[00:29:46] Justin Deutsch: Definitely.
Just a matter of getting all the paperwork straight.
You know I mentioned we’re going to interview the victims.
We understand everything’s going on and gather more intelligence.
So we’re analyzing those bank records.
We’re utilizing search warrants, to obtain communications.
Who she’s laundering money, money for.
We might have different methods of obtaining people’s cell phones so we can review their text messages.
And those are all through search warrants and methods like that.
And we’re always trying to seize money along the way.
And once it goes overseas, it’s very difficult, if not impossible to get the money back.
So we’re using all those kinds of tactics to gather evidence.
We eventually gather enough evidence to start putting together indictments.
[00:32:08] Bob: Putting together indictments.
Targeting members of the organization for arrest.
Thats always a risk.
[00:32:17] Justin Deutsch: Our first indictments were in 2018.
Pretty interesting character, Douglas Casselmary, he’s the first person we charged.
He has a variety of different businesses.
[00:32:50] Bob: (chuckles) Why would you have trouble remembering that?
That was one of his many occupations.
So that’s what we did.
We started with a, a couple of them and we charged them with money laundering and wire fraud.
[00:33:57] Bob: That strategy works….to a point.
She’d sometimes lived in the States and sometimes lived overseas.
At that point in time she was living in Cypress, and Chateau, fled the country.
So Chateau is a US citizen, but he’s also a French citizen.
So Chateau fled overseas.
We had a Red Notice on Chateau.
But Mary Marr, well, she seems to keep slipping through their hands.
Months go by and the Red Notice put out on her doesnt seem to be working.
Why is it not getting triggered?
How is she getting in and out of these countries?
[00:36:14] Bob: How is she getting out of these countries?
And what does an ancient organization called the Knights of Malta have to do with that?
Is Justin ever able to bring Mary Marr to justice?
To return any of the money to victims?
Thats next week on…The Perfect Scam.
Call the AARP Fraud Watch connection Helpline at 877-908-3360.
Their trained fraud specialists can provide you with free support and guidance on what to do next.
That address again is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org.
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.
