[00:00:03] She was a charismatic.
We, we just had a lot in common and she was down to earth which I loved.
We clicked so much, you know we, vacations together and family gatherings, cookouts, holidays.
[00:00:17] I liked her.
I, I liked her a lot.
It never even entered into my mind at all that she was literally lying and scamming and stealing.
I thought I knew her that well, that there’s no way she would do that.
[00:00:45] Welcome back to The Perfect Scam.
I’m your host, Michelle Kosinski.
But I don’t want to give anything away.
It’s all best told by the people who lived it.
There are bright white sailboats shining in the harbor.
In town, quaint restaurants and gift shops, a calligraphy studio.
And Monique Brady definitely dreamed it.
[00:02:02] I met Monique and, and her children, gosh, that was 2000 maybe?
A long time ago.
[00:02:11] Michelle: Do you remember when you first met her?
And I, I want to set up a playdate with them."
She was a charismatic.
[00:02:50] Michelle: That’s Kim Savastano.
That’s how it became.
It was very, very nice.
[00:03:23] Michelle: What stood out about her personality?
[00:03:26] Kim Savastano: Very giving.
I, I, I mean, she really was generous with anything.
Honestly, I, I, you couldn’t ask for a better friend, really.
[00:03:49] Michelle: A new best friend that you meet as an adult.
That’s hard to find.
Monique Brady’s background was also different.
The petite, smiley, bubbly sociable force of a woman was born in Vietnam.
But her parents divorced, and Monique lived with her dad in Houston.
She was always missing her mother.
[00:04:38] Kim Savastano: Very tough, very tough.
It was a tough life for her.
[00:05:08] Michelle: By the time Kim met her, they were in Rhode Island.
Monique had stopped practicing law and had gotten into real estate.
It took off like, well, a house fire.
It was surrounded by land and trees.
Had a beautiful pool and outbuildings.
It would be just about anyone’s dream home in the nicest part of the nicest town.
[00:06:17] Kim Savastano: If anything that made her stronger, um, and determined to succeed.
So she was very driven.
[00:06:24] Michelle: So she presented herself as this self-made woman from very humble beginnings.
[00:06:31] Kim Savastano: Absolutely.
It was a beautiful house.
She fit right in with the, you know, the town of East Greenwich.
[00:06:39] Michelle: Monique made sure she did in her self-made Cinderella story.
The pretty real estate tycoon with long glossy brown hair was always put together.
She was charming, witty, liked to laugh and have fun and threw lots of parties.
She knew everyone and became a center of social life in her sweet, but exclusive Rhode Island community.
[00:07:15] Michelle: Like the kind of girl you want to be friends with.
[00:07:17] Kim Savastano: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
As much as she had that money, she still was down to earth.
[00:08:07] Michelle: And the Savastanos and Bradys were becoming closer, beyond just kids and playdates.
They would have dinners all the time, take trips together and have heart to heart conversations.
They were like one big family after a while.
They knew Monique’s relatives.
By now, Kim was even godmother to one of Monique’s children.
[00:08:27] Michelle: But her husband, he was a pretty nice guy.
You guys liked him a lot too, yeah?
[00:08:31] Kim Savastano: Yes, Tom, Tom was a great guy.
Um, great dad.
She had this busy career and four kids including twin daughters.
Two of her kids had health issues.
Her son has severe autism with all the challenges and heartbreaks that brings.
Her days were full.
[00:09:05] Michelle: She seems like she must have been just a dynamo.
[00:09:07] Kim Savastano: I don’t know how she did it either.
Her day would start very, very early.
Um, and I, I just went with her to the house.
[00:09:54] Michelle: So was that house in really bad shape?
Was it like falling apart?
I mean it was, I, I didn’t even want to walk in it.
Let’s bring him in.
[00:10:14] Sal Savastano: I liked her.
I, I like her a lot.
[00:10:35] Michelle: And he also understood the real estate situation that Monique seemed to have mastered.
[00:10:41] Sal Savastano: So, in my business, 2008 was a very monumental time.
[00:10:45] Michelle: Yeah.
Here are the keys, here are the keys, here are the keys.
[00:11:08] Michelle: Right.
[00:11:09] Sal Savastano: We don’t want them.
So she got in.
And I think it was the wild, wild West.
Nothing was being checked, there was no balance to anything.
[00:11:28] Michelle: Yeah, will you take this off our hands?
[00:11:28] Sal Savastano: Right, so, so I’ll give you an example.
So let’s say you and I are, we’ll use an example of Wells Fargo.
We’re Wells Fargo.
We, we have now acquired a home.
We, we, we’ve got it from foreclosure because the person didn’t pay.
[00:11:47] Michelle: Yeah.
[00:12:06] Michelle: Exactly.
It needs roughly 28, 30 thousand dollars worth of work.
I put the bid in.
That’s our profit.
And we should be able to have that turned around within 2 to 3 months.
[00:12:29] Michelle: Got it.
She’s like, I have probably 20 or 30 houses going on at a time.
I have to come up with the money first to do all the work and do all this.
[00:12:51] Michelle: Interesting.
[00:12:51] Sal Savastano: And then I get paid.
[00:13:03] Michelle: Yeah.
[00:13:15] Michelle: Good question.
Now I’m looking at it saying, well it’s already approved, and it’s rehab work.
So I’m very familiar with that.
[00:13:54] Michelle: Right.
[00:14:01] Michelle: It was obviously working for Monique.
The money just came pouring in, and of course, what did most people do?
They spent it as fast as they could get it.
[00:14:26] Michelle: And when they would spend time together, Monique loved to live it up.
She enjoyed to the fullest.
[00:14:33] Sal Savastano: I mean vacations all the time.
Kids go to private schools.
Live in a big house.
Always out to eat.
She loved her Patriots.
She would follow them wherever they went.
And it’s, and it’s Monday at 8.
She could care less.
That was, that was not her.
[00:15:38] Michelle: I love it.
[00:15:38] Sal Savastano: Yeah, no, she didn’t care.
She, yeah, she really didn’t.
[00:15:51] Michelle: Oh, that’s interesting.
She always wanted to eat at nice restaurants.
[00:16:12] Sal Savastano: Absolutely.
Completely, completely knew her stuff.
She was a high roller in Las Vegas.
[00:16:26] Michelle: What kind of gambling would she do?
[00:16:28] Kim Savastano: She would just the slots.
[00:16:31] Michelle: Oh my gosh.
Which I am not a gambler.
[00:17:46] Kim Savastano: She would never tell me a dollar amount.
She was just like, “Yeah, I didn’t win, I didn’t win.”
And you know, I wasn’t the bang out of person to ask.
[00:17:55] Michelle: Right.
[00:17:55] Kim Savastano: I was just like, oh my god.
I go, I said, “I don’t know how you do it.”
I said, I would lose $20 and I would be devastated.
[00:18:03] Michelle: Yeah.
You would feel like robbed or something.
It, it had to be a substantial amount.
[00:18:16] Michelle: Yeah, like she was paying for it.
[00:18:19] Kim Savastano: Yeah.
Still, the Savastanos knew her well.
Kim would speak to her at least on the phone daily.
[00:18:30] Kim Savastano: She was definitely like my best friend.
[00:18:53] Sal Savastano: My wife said, “Can we give it to her?
She said she’d give it right back.”
[00:19:10] Sal Savastano: I probably didn’t look at it the way maybe I should have.
[00:19:25] Michelle: Got it.
I don’t care, right?
And she never asked again.
But she didn’t ask for money then.
It wasn’t until around 6 months later that she told him she might have something.
That’s right, what’s the address?"
I drove by the address; I went to see the house.
It was a bank-owned property.
I know, right, it, it had all the makings.
I’m like, okay, the budget sounds right, whatever, and then we negotiated.
It wasn’t a ton of money; it wasn’t a lot.
She was handling it.
[00:20:46] Michelle: It goes well.
He had the money to invest and was now ready to do more.
[00:20:53] Sal Savastano: But the money that I was investing was so minor.
Worst case scenario, if it goes wrong, who cares?
That’s not lifechanging.
[00:21:07] Michelle: Right.
[00:21:22] Michelle: Sal starts to invest in more and more projects with Monique.
No problem, no questions asked.
[00:21:39] Michelle: How many investments would you say you made with her?
[00:21:41] Sal Savastano: Oh, my god, so many.
[00:21:43] Michelle: Like dozens?
[00:21:44] Sal Savastano: So many.
Oh jeez, over the years it was probably well over a few hundred, a couple hundred.
Maybe the most at one time she owed me on paper was probably like $750,000.
Always earning on paper around a few thousand per project.
Although Sal has a brother named John, also a mortgage banker.
They’re very close, and he’s kind of like Sal’s conscience on these things.
He starts asking questions.
[00:22:37] Michelle: What sort of set him off?
Why does she need you?
[00:22:55] Michelle: Very good question.
I’m like, and he’s like, “Yeah no, that’s true.”
[00:23:28] Michelle: She had an answer for everything?
[00:23:36] Michelle: Interesting.
Why does she still have a mortgage?
Why hasn’t she paid her mortgage off?"
[00:23:46] Michelle: There you go.
[00:23:46] Sal Savastano: That was another one.
[00:23:47] Michelle: Your brother’s, he’s good.
Like he thinks through these kinds of details.
That’s the guy you want to be in business with.
[00:23:55] Sal Savastano: I am in business with him.
[00:24:03] Michelle: Exactly.
[00:24:25] Michelle: Then one day in 2018 the world turns upside-down.
[00:24:41] Sal Savastano: Yeah, that was a terrible day.
Did I do something wrong?
And they said, “Okay, well we’d like to ask you some questions.”
And now, right away my brain says, well wait a minute.
Again, thinking maybe she’s cooking the books.
You know, maybe billing the banks for more than the work that she did.
Like this is the thing that kind of comes through my brain.
And you know, so I spent like 212 hours and I was like, wow.
I’m like this is, this is crazy.
I said, “This is crazy, you know.”
[00:26:21] Michelle: Interesting.
[00:26:22] Sal Savastano: So, ding-ding-ding-ding.
We have a winner.
His name’s Sal.
Let’s go talk to him first.
But realization hits hard.
And it’s tough to fathom.
She had a few real projects apparently, but they weren’t rehabbing homes.
All of Monique’s other transactions were fake.
[00:27:35] Sal Savastano: They said, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
You know, and I was only kidding a little bit, because I really didn’t know.
[00:28:00] Michelle: There were no million dollar fixer-uppers.
There were no big repainting and repair jobs that Sal had looked over from afar.
He could feel Monique’s pretty house of cards already starting to burn down.
I thought I knew her that well, that there’s no way in hell she would do that.
Like I definitely could accept while I was investigating her that maybe she’s a bad businesswoman.
Thought maybe she would make a bad business decision.
I mean this woman spent all her time just crafting her scam.
No, her entire life was a scam.
I mean, it was played perfectly.
I go, “Nope, I’m going to say it.
You told me so!”
This was a huge Ponzi scheme right there in their perfect little town.
And he learns that the whole investigation started because the banks became suspicious.
Sal sat there, the Feds now gone from his office, sat there in disbelief and disgust.
Something had really been bothering her.
She was just so stressed about this audit.
I’m like, “I’m sorry you’re going through that.”
And, you know, “I wish there was something I could do.”
And she never asked me for anything.
[00:31:36] Kim Savastano: No.
And I said, “How come?”
And she said, “Oh, this audit, it’s killing me.”
[00:32:02] Michelle: Okay.
And I said, “Sure.”
All she kept saying to me was, “Kimmy, I didn’t do anything wrong.”
And I didn’t know what she meant by that.
I had no idea that this was going on.
[00:32:55] Michelle: Right.
[00:33:06] Kim Savastano: Exactly.
And that’s why she was so stressed, and I had no idea.
[00:33:10] Michelle: Until Sal had that cataclysmic meeting with the IRS.
And he was completely shocked and like couldn’t believe that this was going on.
Everything just started to, to boil up and explode.
[00:33:31] Michelle: What goes through your mind?
I still can’t believe some of the time.
I really, really can’t believe it, that this, that she did this.
[00:33:47] Michelle: They’re both stunned, hurt.
Sal has one thing to do next and that is confront their dearest friend, Monique.
He picks up the phone, and next week, we’ll tell you what happened.
Just how intricately this was all built and how it all came tumbling down.
Be sure to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
For AARP’s The Perfect Scam, I’m Michelle Kosinski.
END OF TRANSCRIPT
Kim and Sal considered Monique Brady family.
Their children were close friends, and the families even vacationed together.
Despite her booming house-flipping business, everyone who knew Monique described her as generous and down-to-earth.
Moniques success and go-getting personality convinced Sal, who worked in mortgages, to invest in her projects.
AARPs Fraud Watch web connection can help you spot and avoid scams.
