I mean the things that they were buying were so frivolous, so materialistic.
[00:00:37] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam.
I’m your host, Bob Sullivan.
you’re able to hear the whole backstory in part 1.
If you haven’t listened to that, you could go do that now.
It takes Marcia 40 minutes to race home.
So when she started talking to me, I’m like, youre kidding me.
She asked if I’d heard of these different entities, and I said, “Yes.”
And I went, “You mean she has no money?”
She said, “Well, with the LLC, she probably doesn’t have any money.”
[00:02:08] Bob: She probably doesn’t have any money?
All her family’s savings, decades of work just gone?
It was hard to digest.
And Richard and Charlotte have similar stories.
Their money is seemingly gone too.
Daryl Bank was spending much of it.
[00:04:09] Bob: I, I don’t even know what to say about that.
Where do you get a $25,000, was it gold plated paws?
I mean that’s crazy.
[00:04:22] Bob: A $25,000 dog?
And they claimed to have no knowledge of that.
Going well, in fact.
What is that like?
[00:05:27] Charlotte Annas: Well, it was horrible.
And not only that, we had invested more money into other things along the line.
We put good money after bad.
There were two other things.
There were a total of 8 scams.
We were caught in three of them.
There’s confusion here."
I mean did you just want to leap through the phone and strangle the guy?
I had my own health issues, so I was dealing with that as well.
So does the relentlessness of Daryl Bank.
And that didn’t happen here.
Nothing stopped Mr. Bank.
We’ll just have to wait and see."
And he said, “You do it, girl.
You do it.”
[00:10:48] Bob: Roger Hudspeth eventually pleads guilty to investment advisor fraud.
Several other codefendants plead guilty for their role in the scam.
But Daryl, Daryl decides he wants to go to trial.
There are litigious delays and there are COVID delays, so the trial doesn’t begin until 2021.
And most of that time Daryl is out on bail still enjoying as much freedom as his victims.
The case seems so open and shut.
He thought he was going to get away with it right to the end, maybe?
[00:11:28] Melissa O’Boyle: He did.
I, I have no doubt that he did.
[00:11:53] Daryl Bank: Unfortunately, yes, ma’am.
[00:11:55] Melissa O’Boyle: Right.
And I believe you told the jury that you were devastated?
[00:11:59] Daryl Bank: Absolutely.
But did she probably know every single fee?
Was it held back?
[00:12:29] Bob: Yes, Daryl says essentially.
During his entire testimony, he shows no remorse.
[00:12:36] Melissa OBoyle: He testified for over, I believe, 212 days.
He couldn’t deny what he purchased.
Well, the show is presented as a star witness at the trial.
Here’s a revealing segment about the way Dominion makes money from clients through fees.
Radio Clip:
[00:16:39] Daryl: I’m a, I’m a transparent kind of guy.
We, we get fees from different arrangements.
If a client asks, I want to put everything on the table.
But I will tell you, sometimes there may be things that maybe we get marketing allowances from otherwise.
[00:17:05] Rob: That’s right.
[00:17:05] Daryl: There’s nothing wrong with that.
[00:17:06] Rob: And, and there isn’t.
I mean we’re not in this for the suntan, right?
[00:18:01] Bob: Finally, Daryl’s testimony is over, and the jury leaves to deliberate.
But while the courthouse awaits the jury’s verdict, a curious thing happens outside the courtroom.
And uh, I believe it was a God thing.
And um, then she steps back and says, “I’m Daryl’s mother.”
[00:18:35] Bob: It was Daryl’s mother hugging one of his biggest victims.
[00:18:46] Marcia Gray: She’s very genuine, very kind.
But she said she felt she needed to be responsible to hear what he had done.
They lived in the same community on the same street.
So he turned away from his own parent.
And I said, “He was just so believable.
It’s just unbel–,” you know, and I fight being guilty about it.
‘Cause, but I questioned, and he had an answer for everything.
[00:19:36] Bob: But Daryl doesn’t have enough answers for the jury.
After a quick deliberation, he’s convicted on 27 counts of fraud.
Prosecutor Melissa O’Boyle sums up the crime.
[00:21:24] Bob: In all, federal authorities managed to secure 11 convictions in the case.
[00:22:40] Charlotte Annas: I was there at the sentencing.
I spoke at the sentencing.
There were quite a few people there.
He had, just him personally had 75 victims throughout Hampton Roads.
And it was a small, a rather small courtroom but the courtroom was packed with victims.
And there were probably about… 6 or 8 of us that got up and spoke.
And he had scammed the parents.
And I put it off as long as I could.
I wrote it, I cried through the whole thing while I was writing it.
I called him every name in the book.
He never looked at anybody that day.
[00:24:27] Bob: When Richard Fairchild has his chance to speak, he doesn’t hold back.
He has a very specific request for the judge.
So pretty much, he was free up until 2021 at this point.
[00:25:29] Bob: Richard reads another statement when the Dominion office manager is sentenced.
Here he is reading part of that statement for us.
[00:25:37] Richard Fairchild: I am a realistic and pragmatic man.
But I said that to emphasize the damage vs. the penalty of one of her cohorts.
At maximum sentence, her penalty is but two months per victim.
Your Honor, we the betrayed benefactors have already been to hell due to Raeann Gibson and her associates.
Thus we desperately plea for justice today."
No one’s names were ever given.
It was just by initials.
And so every initial, I was, I’m trying to write feverishly down the list.
And it was anywhere from $17,000 to $800,000 that people had lost.
I met the gentleman that had lost the $800,000.
And he asked me when I lost my, my husband.
And then somebody said, “I wonder who it was that lost the $800,000.”
And he kind of sheepishly held up his hand.
He said, “That would be me.”
[00:28:35] Melissa O’Boyle: Judge Raymond A. Jackson listened and he’s always incredibly prepared.
[00:29:06] Bob: Daryl Bank is 51 years old when sentenced.
So he is not likely to see freedom again.
So justice is served, but not completely.
I mean I would give anything to do.
Um, but a lot of that money is just gone, it’s just gone.
[00:30:43] Bob: The losses are truly incalculable in some ways.
And we’re like Mom and Dad.
I mean my mom would have had between 212 and 3 million dollars probably by the time she died.
And we didn’t have that.
So my parents were not able to leave the legacy behind that they wanted to leave.
[00:31:27] Bob: Richard feels the same way.
It was about a lot more than money.
All right, to play, to play by the rules.
My, my spiritual beliefs say the same thing, you know.
And at this point, understand that my, my marriage suffered a little bit.
See, everybody was out to get my money then.
There was a certain amount of paranoia, there’s no doubt about it.
Maybe you know, it, it started off perhaps as caution, but it was amplified by this.
[00:32:48] Richard Fairchild: Oh, I’d say zero to none.
Or is it zero to under, under…
I don’t know.
I, from my, you know, they said that they have confiscated some things.
I’ll be long dead to be honest… if the money comes.
I don’t think it ever will.
I think he buried most of it, and then everything else will be taken by the government.
Remember how this all got started for her.
A friend had invited her and her husband, Pat, to an investment dinner.
He said, “He didn’t make any money for me while I had my money with him.
So…
[00:34:28] Bob: Of course, yeah, yeah.
He just said, okay.
[00:34:37] Bob: Got it.
[00:34:38] Charlotte Annas: There was no real conversation.
I mean it wasnt like just somebody that we ran into every now and then.
[00:35:09] Bob: Yeah.
[00:35:10] Charlotte Annas: So there were plenty of opportunities.
[00:35:13] Bob: Yeah, that’s a, that’s a real shame.
[00:36:02] Bob: Remember her husband Pat gave blood every 56 days for decades.
Nearly 20 gallons through his life.
[00:36:16] Charlotte Annas: Yes.
So we went to the free hot dog day.
[00:37:17] Bob: That’s a beautiful story.
I’m sure he enjoyed it with you.
[00:37:21] Charlotte Annas: Yeah.
[00:37:28] Charlotte Annas: (laugh) I hope so.
My advice, just skip the free meal.
Melissa has other advice.
[00:37:52] Melissa O’Boyle: I mean I still believe that people are basically honest.
I think, I do.
[00:38:49] Melissa O’Boyle: The radio shows are common.
So the victim funds, you know, it just was a vicious cycle.
They used the money to put on the radio show.
They used the money to self-publish his book.
And, and it’s, it’s literally something that he paid for.
And, and it was all smoke and mirrors, all of it.
It was just all paid for by you know by, by investor funds.
[00:42:41] Bob: I’m really glad you said that.
[00:42:51] Melissa O’Boyle: That is, you’ve hit the nail on the head.
You’ve, you’ve hit the nail on the head.
That the, and phrasing it as guardrails is exactly right.
But when you move those funds into a self-directed IRA, a lot of those guardrails are gone.
I don’t like this.”
Uh, I got sucked in.
And uh here, here’s my first piece of advice, especially for men.
Get out of there.
Beat feet, whatever it is, get out of there.
Trust your wife’s instinct, and it, it goes the other way around too.
[00:44:55] Bob: You’re going to have to translate pop smoke and dust off for me.
So when you pop smoke, that means we need to be evacuated.
It’s okay to tell a lie, a white lie to get out of an uncomfortable situation.
Come up with some excuse, it doesn’t have to be true.
You still have your money.
Even your friends can steer you wrong.
[00:46:41] Charlotte Annas: Right.
You have to do your own homework.
[00:46:48] Bob: You have to do your own homework.
[00:47:06] Charlotte Annas: I’ll never go to another investment thing in my life.
Call the AARP Fraud Watch web connection Helpline at 877-908-3360.
Their trained fraud specialists can provide you with free support and guidance on what to do next.
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.
Bank, Roger Hudspeth and their associates have been skimming 20 percent to 70 percent off the top.
