The Athlete Whisperer: Ep.4, She is a Perfect Actor

Previously on Queen of the Cohn.

It is what it is.

It's not nothing you could take back.

Peggy Fulford scams millions of dollars from pro athletes like Dennis Rodman and Travis Best.

You know, Travis, you're sending the fucking pacers and US movies and stuff. Yeah.

So, and when Travis found out, he didn't tell anyone either because it's embarrassing. NBA shooting guard Rashad mccantz is actually kind of lucky by comparison. He only loses two hundred thousand dollars to Peggy.

It was my first Riki check, my first Ricky check. I got a call from my agent and saying Peggy got us.

All.

This goes down in the early two thousands and there's a lot of overlap. Peggy is actually scamming multiple pro athletes at the same time, and it turns out the biggest victim of all is Miami Dolphins running back Ricky Williams. How much total did Peggy take from Ricky?

I think they said about six million.

Do you think it was really more?

I think that it was definitely more.

I'm Jonathan Walton and this is Queen of the con The athlete Whisperer episode four, She's a perfect actor. Rickey the deep bat first and goal of the two yard line. In the early two thousands, NFL running back Ricky Williams is a bona fide superstar.

Hey John dropping Hi popping kind of run by Ricky.

Williams making touchdown after touchdown after touchdown for the Miami Dolphins.

It is Williams slips away from one touchdown.

Great spinball for Ricky william at the end song. But in nineteen ninety nine, before he makes it to Miami, Ricky's playing for the New Orleans Saints.

And I think everyone remembers Ricky Williams as a Heisman.

Winner, Guardian journalist and author of the book Family, Gangsters and Champions Ramon Antonio Vargas.

Ricky Williams was kind of the face of a very dark time in New Orleans sports history, just given how he came to kind of epitomize, like you know, the Saints gave up a lot to acquire him, and then under the Mike Didka era, which set all kinds of records of utility for the franchise. I also remember and recognize how important of a role he played on the Saints team that won the franchise's first ever playoff game, which did not happen until the two thousand season.

And it's while Ricky is living in New Orleans from nineteen ninety nine to two thousand and one that he buys a flashy new condo with his multi million dollar paycheck from the NFL. When MTV Cribs suddenly wants to shoot a segment about his new.

Digs and he needed to furnish the whole place and everything like that.

Ricky's lifelong friend Chantel Cohen, and so.

A cousin of Peggy's worked in. I don't know if she was an interior designer or worked at the actual furniture store, but she came over, she helped out, she furnished the place, and brought Peggy in to helper.

So it turns out this interior designer, a woman named Pamela, isn't actually a cousin of Peggy's at all, despite whatever story might have been told at the time.

My name is Pamela Carry and I am a longtime friend of Peggy barad King or Fulford. Not sure what name she's going by now, but her maiden name was Barrod. We are longtime friends. Our parents were friends, so I've known her for a long time.

So Pamela is the woman Ricky Williams hires to decorate his condo for MTV Cribs, and Peggy is a childhood friend of Pamela's. But Pamela and Ricky already have a previous working relationship.

I helped him with his house prior to the condo, I'd already did his entire house, and we were really close.

But what Pamela doesn't know is that Peggy had moved back to New Orleans from Atlanta after divorcing doctor Forest King and taking full control of the sports management company he founded, King Management, and Travis Best, the point guard for the Indiana Pacers, is her only client. So Peggy is desperately looking for more professional athletes to get her hooks in. And the second she hears her childhood friend Pamela Carey got hired to decorate a new condo for NFL running back Ricky william She.

Just showed up and she made herself available. She said, oh, you need sheets, you need this, and she initially purchased some things for him. She made her way into his life and at the time, I didn't think anything of it, but I now realized that she was scouting him.

Oh yeah, she was scouting him, all right. And Pamela Carey, who Ricky and Chantell called Pam, was Peggy's only way in. And do you blame Pam for bringing Peggy into both your lives?

I never blame anybody for someone else's the way.

That they act.

Chantelle Cohen Again.

I seriously don't think that Pam knew the depth of what Peggy was doing, so I wouldn't put any blame on Pam at all.

Pam was going to help Ricky decorate, and then she drafted.

Peggy took over.

What was her taste? Like what kind of stuff did she get?

I mean, like I want to say, like a modern fancy I don't even know the word to use for that mix, but like super modern rich paintings, like one of his Blue Dog paintings. That is a big painting in New Orleans two hundred and fifty kight, like come on, yes, exactly. And every time I would look at that, I'm like, that is a quarter of a million dollars sitting on this wall right now.

So she got Ricky to buy a painting for two hundred and threty thousand dollars. Oh my god. Yes, my dream is to have that kind of money.

I know me too. I don't know.

I'm trying to buy like a plane or something.

I don't know.

I need something that I could use over and over again. So she had expensive taste, very expensive taste. I wouldn't even know where to get a two hundred in the first quarter. So she decked out Ricky's plus jecked it out. And when MTV Cribs came and shot, they were impressed.

Yes, very much so.

So he must have felt grateful. She comes in, decorates, she's doing this for free. She's not asking for money.

No, she didn't do it for money, because that was her thing, like you need to save your money for generational wealth, blah blah blah blah. So no, she didn't get paid for that, now that I think about it, Yeah.

She seems like what the FBI calls a rescue merchant. Ricky was in a bind. Yeah, this place decorated. She comes on the scene. I'll do it. She's got the style and glamour, and she knows what a buy two hundred and fifty thousand dollars paintings and yeah, make the place look like a baller lives there.

You know for sure.

And that's what she wanted people to know, Like, you are Ricky Williams, you have to live like this high profile person.

And Ricky is so opposite.

He doesn't care about money, he doesn't care about what people think about him, like he's just living his own life. So it's like she was trying to make him bigger than what he wanted to be.

Basically, because you're Ricky Williams.

He traded a whole draft for you, you know, so she was just trying to make him live up to that. But if you look at all of the people that she actually took money from, they all were in some type of buying are just like really to theirselves, not like needed some type of nurturer basically, you know.

And she needed a mother taking care and a mom and.

She just came in and she was the perfect person to do something like that.

And the thing about Peggy is she's a lot like my con artist from season one, the Irish heiress who lied in wait for years to rob me. You've been scamming as out of money. This whole time you have. Peggy is incredibly patient and literally puts in years of work and tells years of lies before she ever scams a single dollar from Ricky Williams. It's obvious now she was grooming him. Walk me through how you and Ricky go from. Peggy comes on the scene, decorates his place.

It was such a long period of time from the time that we met Peggy to when she actually started working for Ricky, because she didn't start working for Ricky till like five years in. We were more of growing as a family, getting close and things like that. I would babysit her kids. She was one of the kids got mothers like you know, So we were all like a tight knit group that hung out dinners and things

Yeah, So Ricky Williams got into some trouble with his use of marijuana when he played for the NFL again.

Our top story, and Ricky Williams has lost his repeals of the NFL and has subsequently been suspended from football for one year for allegedly violating the league substance abuse policy.

The decision came down and in two thousand and four, Ricky Williams, at just twenty seven years old, retires, actually walks away from the NFL. He's sick of the marijuana controversy. He's sick of the brutal spotlight that comes with playing professional football. Ricky Williams felt like he had no one protecting him from all that, and that is the opening Peggy needs to inject herself into his life and into his bank account after the break, Welcome back to Queen

Is when she got in his ear of if you would have let me manage you back then we wouldn't be in this and blah blah blah. And then that's how she ended up working for Ricky. So it was like five years out there we originally met her.

There's something so Shakespearean about it, like othello, like she's the Iago, like whispering in.

His ear that play in London two weeks ago.

Oh my god, how they do it. It's amazing, right, yes, such a great story, but it's so based on I see those situations again and again where you have this evil mffort who pretends to be nice and loved by everyone, whispering shit in Ricky Williams here like if you don't let me manage it, this is wouldn't happened you blah

No, she didn't want a charger.

You're my brother, you already are in money situations because of football. I want you to have generational wealth. That was her main thing that she used. Generational wealth. That was her thing, that was her slogan, that was everything. So she didn't want to charge. She didn't charge these athletes.

So she came off as a woman with so much money on her own. Yeah, she's just almost like volunteering to help, like you would volunteer to feed the homeless.

You guys are my sons. I need to help you basically.

Because to your knowledge, at that point, she had no children. Yeah, because everyone was her ex husband everyone.

The first time she hold Ricky's first son, this is my first time ever holding a.

Baby, she said that, Yes, wow.

Literally, this is my first time holding a baby.

So Peggy just comes across as this uber, wealthy woman with no kids of her own and so much love to give.

I just want to help the rich athletes.

My buddy again, Evan Goldstein. Early on, she makes the case that athletes are always getting scammed. Let me help you grow.

Oh my god, how ironic.

Huh.

On the face, it seems, oh, well, that's dumb. She's not charging you. Who doesn't charge you? But by then she's got their heartstrings. She's this loving, benevolent mother figure with all this money. She's just doing this to help you because you know, she wants to help athletes.

Yeah, it's like you know those rich women that just like you know, the the voluntarities, Yes, that like I just do it because I don't need the money. I just this is what keeps me busy, This is what gives me. I like to help people gives her purpose.

Yeah. Yeah, And we all yearn for a sense of purpose, and they misread it thinking this is her sense of purpose. Well, meanwhile, she's robbing them all blind. Yeah, and like so many other con artists, Peggy really looks the part, and she appeared to be rich.

Yeah. When Peggy walks into a room, she takes over the.

Whole energy Chantella Cohen again, like.

Everybody turns to her. She knows how to work the room, she knows how to speak, she knows what you want to hear at the end of the day. So it was easy for her. Perfect example, we did a hurricane foundation thing, a fundraiser. I think it was like Honduras or somebody had a big hurricane back then, and we raised all this money through athletes and things, and she

Looking back, it's apparent to me now she's using Ricky yeah to attract other people. Yeah, No, for sure, because she's like, well, people think she's managing Ricky Williams many she must be good. I want in on that, yep.

And I had a moment where I actually worked for her as a personal assistant. But It only lasted for a month because I didn't get paid, so she didn't pay you, she didn't pay me. I was really mad about that. Me and another friend of ours, we both worked at the same time, and we were just like, okay, I'm so confused, like we're in your big mansion and we're not.

Getting a paycheck.

And I was like, this is not gonna work for me, you know, And she's like, no, no, I'll give you a check. And I'm like, it's not gonna work for me. Like I rather us be friends than business partners. So I just left it at that, and we were still very cool after that.

And that just speaks to how charmed and charismatic she is that you can still be cool after that. Yeah, and how does she not pay? Like when paycheck time came.

There was no paycheck, it was no paycheck, and you asked her, hey, where's our money? At to the point too, where my friend wrote her a letter like what's going on?

You know?

And how does she come on?

Remember how she responded, because obviously it wasn't too mean because I still was her friend after that, so I don't remember how she responded, but I just remember we still talk about it that we never got paid by her.

Wow. Yeah, that's so strange though, but it really speaks to her power. Yeah, she's a manipulator.

Yeah, definitely.

So it's like she can wrong you and then still be your friend. You'd still feel you don't hate her. Yeah, I mean that's the ultimate power of any professional con artist working today. They can get you to love them no matter what. And I've said up before, love is the most powerful force there is in the universe. People will kill for love, people will die for love, and if a con artists can get you to love them,

No?

So how much control did Ricky Williams give Peggy of his finances?

All the control?

She basically said that she wanted to put him on a monthly allowance because Ricky would like to spend money on random things computer stuff.

Camera stuff.

At that time, he was in photography, so he would just spend thousands of dollars and gadgets and things like that. So she kept saying, I need to put you on a monthly allowance, and so he basically signed over everything to her to where she was able to get his play in check, put it in the bank account, and then disperse his allowance and then pay for all the bills, child support, blah blah blah, all things like that. So he gave her a lot of control, basically all the control.

Again, coming back to the mother thing, she put him on an allowance like something your parents do.

Yeah, right, yeah.

And do you know, I mean you grew up with Ricky. Is he close to his mother? Was he needing a mother type of relationship?

They were back and forth?

They're awesome today, but yes, back then they were back and forth. So I could see why he fell into something like that as a mother person.

But yeah, yeah, because there's like a hole at that point, yes, where he needed some kind of mother figure. Yeah, or he didn't have a mother figure. Yeah, so when one appears, it's like slips right in.

Yeah it fits. Yeah.

And Ricky Williams's wife Kristen is also taken in by Peggy's kind and loving scammy smoke screen.

Peggy had endeared herself to Ricky in a motherly sort of way. Peggy was just so part of our family and ingrained in our lives. When I had our first child, she even brought me home from the hospital. She just makes you feel like you're the only thing in the world that matters. She infiltrated my life. She became my best friend. In her exact words, I was the sister that she never had.

Ricky's wife, Kristen, is also good friends with Ricky's childhood friend Shan tel Cohen at first, but then all of a sudden, a palpable animosity develops.

So when Ricky got dropped it to New Orleans, he happened to get heard, and so I came to visit him and ended up living with him throughout his whole career. So when Ricky got traded, we were all like, Okay, you're gonna go to Miami. We'll stay here in New Orleans. Well, Peggy originally said, Kristy didn't even want me to stay in the house anymore. It was a house, and then there was a guest house in the back that I slept in. So I had like my mini apartment back there.

So it was that and then that was.

That was so far from the truth, Christen said. And then when Kristin ended up moving to Miami, Peggy said, Kristen doesn't even want you to move to Miami. She doesn't even want you in their lives anymore. I'm like,

But there's no way Peggy can predict what's about to happen. After the break Welcome Back to Queen of the Cohn Peggy successfully separates Chantel Cohen from Ricky Williams's wife, Kristen.

Peggy said, Oh, Chantal doesn't even like you. She doesn't even think Ricky should be with you, Like, oh yes, it was just so much drama that she always created. And with us having that conversation of just going back, it's like we should have knew from our energy that

She knew who Ricky was. She's in it for the money, you know.

Just that's what she's telling Kristin.

You're saying, yes, well we moved from New Orleans to Miami.

She's like, Kristin doesn't want you to move.

And I don't think you should, and blah blah blah. And then she would come back and say, well, Ricky loves you so much and he wants you to move there, so you should. So it was like she played us so much to where we disliked each other. She was playing us so bad to not talk to each other, you know, like maybe not to compare her stories or whatever her angle was.

She succeeded in doing.

You hit it on the nose. It was not to compare stories. Yes, and this is what con artists do. Ye minded this too, They separate you. She was telling you Christian was saying shit about you, and then she's telling Kristin you were saying shit about her. So you don't like Kristen, she doesn't like you, and you guys aren't talking yep, and she wins.

Yeah, she definitely went.

And as is often the way in these tales, it's an official letter from Uncle Sam that shows up in Ricky Williams's mailbox that changes everything. It was the Irs that blew the whistle. Essentially, they sent this, you're being audited. Notice you os money, And that's when Ricky Williams thought, wait a minute, he's handling my money. This doesn't making any sense.

Yep.

And what happened after that?

Once that happened, then they called around and they found out that it actually was not paid and so they called her and she goes, what that's a mistake. I pay all your taxes, blah blah blah, and they were like okay.

But also around that same time, Ricky Williams and his wife Kristen start having financial trouble, which just doesn't make any sense to them.

So Kristen was already on the fence of Peggy anyways, towards the end of their relationship, like, Okay, something's going on, but I don't know, Like how come our car got rebuilt, But how come I went to the grocery store my car got declined, And how come one of the babies moms is saying.

That we don't have child support this month.

So Kristin was already kind of just going through her head. But every time I would tell Kristin to talk to Peggy, it was like Peggy said, let's go to dinner, let me take a shop, and so you know, it just took Chris did off of that. So Kristen was like, Okay, we need to go down the rabbit hole and figure it out what it was. Ricky, on the other hand, was guy.

She said that she.

Paid for it, let's let it play out and let's see how it goes. And then once it started getting real serious, I was like, Ricky, you have to wake up, Like, no, she's playing us like.

And Ricky didn't want to believe it.

I didn't want to believe it.

He did not want to believe it because that's someone that he literally took in and like he loved love, loved her, you know, and like I said, that was one of his kids, God's mom, you know. So it's like she's found she's family. Why would family do that?

So at this point, Peggy does what Peggy always does when the jig's up. She ghosts Ricky Williams and his wife Kristen, and she ghosts Chantelle Cohen too. She just stops responding to phone calls and emails and text messages.

Because Christy kept trying to call her, text her. She even told me to call and text her. And I feel like at one point Peggy hit me back and said, I'm getting you guys in money back in wait ghosts.

Never heard from her again, never heard from her again. Isn't that crazy? Yes, she can be such a fixture in all your lives for literally years, years, and then the money's missing. You never hear from her again. Yeah, it's twenty thirteen. Now. Ricky Williams and his wife Kristen are living in Texas. At this point, Ricky's retired from the NFL and he's coaching football at the University of

So December of twenty thirteen, I am moving from Vegas to Miami. So we do a road trip, me and my now husband and another friend of ours. We drive through Austin, and once we stop in Austin, Ricky says to me, are you driving through New Orleans on the way to Miami? And I was like, of course, you know, I am, and he goes take me to New Orleans. I want to talk to Peggy. I'm like absolutely not. Like at this point I'm still in rage and I don't know what I would do to her if she

Telly Shantelly Kelly. Yeah, I got it.

And so he's like, I just need to talk to her face to face because I just want to hear what she has to say. And I'm like, I'm not taking you, cut to you. I ended up taking him, and so I take him to New Orleans. Once we pull up to her place, he's like, don't get out the car. So he does not let me get out the car. He makes he send in a car for like forty five minutes while he goes in.

Whatever they talk about. He comes back out.

She comes walking behind them, and I'm like telling my husband, Matt, I know she's not walking up to the car.

I know she's not walking up cut to you.

She's like at my window and I'm like, I'm not rolling it down, and Matt's like just rolling down. I'm like, I'm not rolling it down, and she's like banging on the window and so I finally roll it down.

She's like bawling, crying. She's like, I.

Hope you don't believe this, Like I would never do this to Ricky. And she's like saying all this stuff and I'm just like, I don't believe you.

And what did Ricky get from her?

Like what he got from her? That she put his money in stocks and bonds? Like his money is spread out and I'm like, go get it, then go get something.

Show it, show me the money.

Yeah, So in his mind and he's thinking, okay, let's give her time. Oh come, I'm like, yo, we're done. Like you're not seeing any of this money. Like I don't even know what you're thinking in your head to think that this money's coming back.

It's not.

But that's how good of a person he is, Like, I'm still looking at you like I know you care about me, so you're gonna give me my money bag? No she's not, you know, like no, she is a perfect actor, period, and she played us so bad. She's not playing me anymore. She's still playing you. This is ridiculous.

And he believes her explanation that the money's in stocks and bonds somewhere, but Ricky's wife, Kristen, doesn't believe Peggy anymore, and she starts digging.

Peggy claimed to be a Harvard educated attorney. I called the Florida Bar Association, the Georgia Bar Association, the Louisiana Bar, anybody that I could think of, any place that she had lived. I just started going down a checklist, and no one knew her. We started looking at every place that all of our money and all of our investments are. We have accounts there, but don't really have the money in them anymore.

I am sorry, missus Williams, I'm showing a zero balance in that account.

There are really no words to describe waking up to find out that you don't have one dollar in your checking account, much less than millions of dollars Ricky had earned in the past few years. We realized that we're paying for Peggy's lavish lifestyle, the Bentley, Rolls, Royce, the Range Rovers, all of her homes. I was actually with her when she spent eight hundred dollars on her hair extensions.

And what Kristen gets Ricky to do to pay, and how everything goes down after that will blow your freaking mind. I shouted out loud when I saw that. I literally said, I said, no fucking way, is what I said next time on Queen of the Con.

Plaintiffs Ricky and Kristin Williams collectively plaintiffs filed this verified complaint and application for temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction.

It's time to pay the piper, but Peggy appears to be getting away.

The crazy thing about the FBI is they did not want to arrest her with all the information me and Kristin gave them.

If you're enjoying Queen of the Cohn, leave us a five star review reviews, help other listeners find us, and by all means, click that share button and send Queen of the Con to anyone you think might be into it. Queen of the Khan The Athlete Whisperer is a production of AYR Media and iHeartMedia, hosted by Me Jonathan Walton Executive producers Jonathan Walton for Jonathan Walton Productions and Elisa