Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.
Elizabeth.
Aaron Burnett yells, so and so, I.
Love seeing the smile on your face when you walk in the door. Sometimes, thanks, I mean all the time. I like seeing it. But like sometimes you walk in with a smile. You don't always walk in with a smile, but I always like it when you do.
It's drugs.
Well keep doing it because I've been hitting this.
New street drug called Adville. Oh yeah, good stuff.
Do you like that?
Yeah?
The kid's pushing it on you nice.
I like to ride the vill.
I got a question for you. Yes, do you know it's ridiculous?
I do know it's ridiculous. Let me give you a little backstory. This isn't going to take a whole long. I officiated a friend's wedding a few years back, and another friend of mine Lisa, Lisa, if you're listening, I'm about to tell the story. We're talking the night before, and I told her that when I was doing the you know, officiating, I was gonna before I got up, rub chocolate pudding across my teeth and do the whole
ceremony like that. And then she was calling me old pudden tooth and we oh, we laughed, Saren, Saren, we laughed. We still talk about it occasionally this day, Old Pudden Tooth, So keeping that in mind, there's a toothcare brand called His Smile, And I think I've talked about them before doing stuff probably, And so you think, like, well, if I was old Pudden tooth, I need to use toothpaste to get the pudding off my teeth before I officiated a wedding.
Right, I'm so praying this is not a mashup.
Well, the Lord doesn't always answer her boy's prayers because His Smile has teamed up with Reeses to offer Reese's like peanut butter cup toothpaste, so.
To be like a cadberry egg Easter thing.
No, it's just peanut butter cup toothpaste, so you too can be old put in tooth? Do you put it? It tastes like recy cups, but with a cool finish, as they say, so it's it's sugar free, don't worry about it has floride in it. Sorry RFK parents, It says it delivers the signature Reese's flavor, although I prefer the Southern pronunciation of recy cups up front before finishing with his smiles cooling after feel it's only his.
Smile is just interesting branding.
There's a lot going on there, like yeah, but also it reminds me of those ads like during football season where it's like, oh, we got to be nice to each other and it's like an ad for Jesus. Well, his smile sounds like Jesus toothpaste, like because it's capital.
H okay, like the Lord's smile.
Yeah, but not in this case because it looks like it looks like lot when you put it on there. And so here's the thing. You can only get it in Australia and New Zealand via his smile website. So they're attacking the Southern hemisphere first before they.
Move north, doing some test marketing down there.
Yeah. So if you want to be put in tooth jones, this is a way to do it and clean your teeth at the same time. And for anyone listening in New Zealand and Australia, do not spend the money to send this to us. I love when you guys do stuff like that, but please don't give them any money. Don't encourage this, and that, my friends, is ridiculous.
It is ridiculous.
Put in tooth Jesus toothpaste.
Do you know then what hell is ridiculous?
Ridiculous?
The price of a new home in America, Oh God tell me right. And some people, Elizabeth will do anything, and I mean anything to own their dream home. I mean anything. Oh no, this is ridiculous.
Crime A podcast about absurd and outrages, capers, heists, and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Yes, Elizabeth Sara.
Today, I want to tell you a story about a dream home. Okay, not like a Barbie dream home, like a real.
Dream actual Like I have dreams about it.
Well, I guess you might call it a castle a dreams. Yeah, and what one man was willing to do to afford his dream castle. Now, I know you have frequent flyer mileage on that website Zillow. Like you love zillo right, do I love it?
It's so good If you're nosy.
I know, right, you show me you send me text messages about it, and I'm like, yeah, sometimes I look not always sometimes I do like if if you sell it well enough, yeah, Like I just don't find the same delight you do. But I respect your game, right, So I went to Zillo for this story. Nice, and I want to show you something.
You've never been walking down the street and looked at the house and then like, I wonder what the story is there?
What do you mean the story? Like the cost or like how many bedrooms they have inside?
The history? What are you paying in Texas? When was it last purchase?
What would be your mortgage payment?
Did you not have the realtor scrub it so that the listing descriptions are still in there in all forty pictures?
Oh? Yeah, good call. You know so, I know that this is not a visual medium per se, but here I am.
I'm gone.
I'm going to call up a page on because you need to see this dream house, I mean dreamcastle. I'm going to show you some picks and if you don't mind, if you could describe what you see. And now, if you want to play along, you can go to Zillo and check out the address. The dream Castle is located at fifty six fifty Canyon Woods. That's canyon woods like trees all one word canyon Woods drive in Billings, Montana. Yeah, zip code five nine one zero six. Okay, No, this
home was built in twenty fourteen, so keep that in mind. Okay, Now away we go.
M Dreamcastle sounds like it's nineteen eighty six and like you're a junior high kid who's all into like fantasy heavy metal, and that's the name of your band, Dreamcastle, dream Castle.
So there you go. There's the opening slide. Oh okay, now go to slide the second slide, and Elizabeth, can you describe what you're looking at this?
This looks like a ski resort that like Cosner invested in and then forgot about. It's like, wait a second, what is Is it all hand hewn from the rocks around it? It's kind of it's all it's stone work on the outside, all.
Stone work on the It's a castle. It has like a whole stone tower. It has a mode.
You could say that.
So check a few other slides and but stop whatever one catches your eye. But tell me when you get to the whole thing.
Looks like, you know, I've never been in a Great Wolf lodge, but if this is a Great Wolf, looks like a ski resort like outside of Tahoe.
Right to the laundry room.
Oh, there's a good laundry room. These people do their own laundry.
You'll notice it has three side by side washing machines and dryers.
There's so many kitchens.
Oh yeah, we'll come back to.
That, and like everything's beige.
Have you gotten to the three side by side.
Washing I'm looking at like the you know, the the office with all the empty shelving where books would be. But these probably don't own books, are.
There?
It is? Yeah? There you go.
Okay, So there's everything by the way, is like pre manufactured cabinetry, and then like marble floors, marble counters, and then three washer dryer systems like stacks sacked okay, and I love that they have to illustrate folded towels on the table. Man, you can't put books on the bookshelves.
Keep going and tell me when you get to the bowling alley.
No, okay, yeah, now this.
Double bowling alley.
Actually, this must be just riveting for people.
That doesn't it look like somewhere you'd bowl if you're in the home of like a Las Vegas casino owner.
Very much so, because it's part of it is like what I'm trying to describe to people here is that it's not so much like an organic decor of like you build a house. This looks like the inside of like you're saying, like a casino. So it has like plank wood walls that are artificially distressed, and so you're there. They run lengthwise on the wall, so it's like you're in an old barn, but you're also bowling. And then there's acoustic ceilings like I don't know what's happening here.
Slide a couple of more frames ahead and see, tell me when you get to the shooting ring.
Oh, I'm at the shooting ring.
That's a legit indoor shooting rang. Okay, can you go full John Wick in there?
It's terrifying, yes, But also on the walls, it looks like that there's nothing in those racks. But I swear to god, those look like wine wracks.
Yeah, they took all the shooting ring. They took all the guns out.
I'm just going to pretend that's a shooting range. Slash sell.
Thank you.
I like that.
Slide a couple ahead and tell me when you get to the screening room.
Well there's okay, yeah, because I see there's one that's like has Oh there's a golf room with like the screening because God forbid you go outside.
I wait till we get out.
Get is Kevin Costner going to pop out of one of these things? Okay?
What do you think about those shiny leather high back recliners. Huh Now, personally I would have couches. You know, that's something company to say, like leather recliners.
I mean it goes with the fake stars on the ceiling.
But what do I know? I don't have a screening room.
The gym. There you go the gym the comedy like twenty People.
It looks like something that you find in an upscale business hotel.
It does right at it, Yeah, exactly.
It's like it's the kind of it's the sort of gym equipment that you would use when you're about to be harassed by the sales manager for like some company.
Or I imagine it. Outside the door, there's like a plaque on the wall that's like, yes, you know, gym equipment by Equinox. Like it's like a spinoff.
Now, how about that cave dining area? Did you get to that yet?
The little grotto?
Yeah, it's like somewhere you'd eat a meal just before you get killed by Benicio del Toro.
I wish right, go to the.
Tennis courts and the private three hole golf range.
I'm looking at the outside. God, this place. It totally looks like a like a resort where you go for like a corporate retreat. You find out the rooms are supposed to be like eight hundred dollars a night, but your events person was like, don't worry, we got it for like one hundred and fifty. I kind of see why it's off season. It smells a little mill. Do you over in the sense of the building. Okay, I see like the ground do.
You see yeah? Do you get outside yet? You're outside?
I'm outside.
Do you see that the tennis the double tennis courts and the three hole ball?
You know that's pickleball. That's not These people don't play tennis, no offense, pickleball.
This is kind of set up you get if you sell missiles by the billions to the US government, you get this house.
Right.
You haven't defense contractor money.
I mean, this whole thing, it's just so it's so bland and yet like ostentatious but bland.
Yes, it somehow strikes you're a big balance.
Yeah, if you're going to be the eccentric multi millionaire and have this enormous place which I don't even know. You're gonna have to tell me how many square feet this?
Oh yeah, I got all that for you. I know you care about.
All I think is like, well, what's your electricity?
You have? You have a whole step You're not thinking about the electricity.
I know. But it's like, if you're going to do that, then like go for it. I like when people have the wacky houses where it's like it looks really crazy, like it looks nice and and we'll put together outside and you go in and then there's one room that's just like bright red and gold and terrifying.
I want people to like do what Elvis did at Graceland, which is just make it your own, like have a.
Jungle room exactly.
Now, now that you've seen the dream House, Dreamcastle, Elizabeth, how.
Many garages this place? And what cars are outside?
If you had to guess, how much would you say this house is worked?
And you said it's in Boise Billings Billings? Okay, so they have a higher market out there because of people like Kevin Costner. Yeah, here, how many acres is it?
I'll break it down for you, because here's a quick rundown of the specs. That place boasts ten bedrooms, nineteen bathrooms. There's fifteen full bathrooms, four houses, Like.
You could have nine friends over ten and b pooping everyone everybody.
Yeah, everyone poops to the same peak.
Have you could serve something that makes everyone sick from one of your fifteen kitchens? No, No, they'll run. You're like, don't worry, we've each got her up.
Everyone take a bathroom. Your names are outside of your bathroom, so we have This place has a personal and commercial elevators, like for your deliveries, I suppose, or maybe for your staff.
Yeah.
So some of the features you've looked at right, there's three pools, two outdoors, one indoor pool. Okay, there's the two lane bowling alley, the private theater, screening room, the golf simulator, the indoor shooting range. Of course, there's the wine cellar. There's a full gym with locker rooms. Mind you and Elizabeth, as you noted, since you love to cook, there are multiple kitchens, both indoor and outdoor kitchens laural.
There's the three horrile golf course and the tennis courts, along with some private hiking trails if you'd like to get around that way. All in all, this dreamcastle is thirty and forty three square feet seventy acre plot of.
Land, all right, seventy acres.
Somehow this place is listed as a single family residence, which I find hilarious. So, now with all that info, Elizabeth, what would you expect to pay for this bad boy? I was so hard to keep I had.
Keep thinking about, like, put it where it is? How many acres seventy seventy acre plutty thousand square thirty thousand square foot montana.
Yeah, multiple elevators, just own shooting range.
Twenty five million.
Wow, you're good. Twenty six point nine million dollars. And that's ten million more than it was listed for when it was originally built.
And purchased twelve years ago.
Now, if you wanted to do an estimated mortgage payment, I looked into this. I love that one hundred and fifty nine and eighty dollars a month. A month, yes, a month, an insane amount of money for like, oh, I have a salary, I would be happy with that as my salary.
It would take me multiple years to pay one month.
Yes, exactly. And I forgot to know.
Yeah, I'm a little short one.
You mentioned your man, Kevin Costner. Okay, my man in that place is located in Yellowstone County, Montana. Is it in the city of Billings, Yeah, so Yellowstone Elizabeth Dutton.
Dude, I told you. I told you what happened the other day. I was, actually I was. My mom was visiting and I was at the airport with her and someone was like, oh, Dutton is Yellowstone Totton And my Mom's just like I was like, oh, dude, no, I don't say that to her, got in front of her and she and she said no, but her name's Elizabeth. And the guy was like, oh, I'm screwed. I was like, I've never seen the show get stuffed.
Speaking of crime in Minnesota or Montana rather, well, we could talk about both. How much crime would you be willing to do to own this dream castle in Yellowstone County, Montana?
I would say approximately zero.
Yeah, I don't really expect you ever really answer.
It's not my joint, that's not my thing. But there are people I could see how people would covet such at.
Right, But that was the question for our Man of the hour. How much crime do you do.
There's going to be a lot of crime, because okay, so it's let's say you get what is it, twenty six nine, twenty twenty seven million dollars And then as I said, okay, so now you got the upkeep.
Yes, oh yeah, so it's.
One hundred and fifty something, just sixty grand.
But for your three whole golf course.
All the maintenance outside, the cleaning crews you'd have to inside just to constantly the windows circulating, Yeah.
Just to clean the windows would be then thousands of months. And then the water bill, no, forget about the water. But you don't even want to see that h VAC.
All those giant rooms and are like three story rooms and it's cold as bajeebers outside when it's snowing. Oh yeah, and you're trapped in there too, like.
The Overlook Hotel, like the shining like in there, Like I.
Have so much respect for people who can live in snowy places, and I am just not one of them.
No, you were not so. Our man of the hour, he decided the answer to the question of how much crime would he do? All of it, all.
Of the could It's like, give me more.
Now at present, Elizabeth this dreamcastle is still for sale. The listing is not moving.
That's a live listing with all those pictures.
He has been on the market for two hundred and sixty six days as of today.
All those high end properties, it's hard to move them.
You know, Like if especially a Curt's like me and.
You like to poke around, you see that, like the like crazy properties in like Wine Country or like San Francisco Pacific Nights. They stay on the market for really long.
Oh yeah, sometimes like and then like they don't even have like the decency to take it off after like a year, they're like, oh, we're still hopeful, so about it.
Probably wants to look at this listing again. She's bored.
So if you do change your mind and you decide to go full Beth Dutton and do crime in Montana, sure, if you're willing to embezzel, say twenty million dollars, you could make an offer on this rare, one of a kind dreamcastle. Okay, I'm just saying. So that's what our Man of the hour day who I keep referring to is our Man of the hour is.
Who is man?
His name is Larry Wayne Price Junior.
Is it Larry Wayne one word.
No, it's not like Mark Wayne Old Marquaine. That's how I say it.
It's Mark Wain.
That's your mama named Mark Wayne. He pronounced it Markwain, So Larry Wayne. He was a forty two year old father of six at the time of his criming. He was a businessman who worked in the extractive industries that run rampant in Montana. In particular, he ran surface operations for an underground coal mine near round Up, Montana.
Right, this is the mineral rights and that totally extraction, like clearing people's pores.
No, is that what they call that? I think so, I'd figure like tooth extraction. Its only distraction.
He's just a tooth guy.
Bigger, big, big in the dentistry. So, Larry Wayne Price Junior, it was more than any like simple description might convey. Like the man, he contained multitudes, Elizabeth. For instance, he was the owner operator of hog Pit Cycles. That's hog h a w G. Hog Pit Cycles. There's a motorcycle shop, Harley David's.
For weekend Warriors. It's like he sells the Harley Fat Boys to like total you know, insurance salesman exactly. I know the tight so.
That's our man of the day. Real estate appreciator, motorcycle salesman, hog rider, corrupt mining entrepreneur, and business partner to Vladimir Putin's inner circle.
Whoah, yeah, that came.
Out that right, and I forgot. He's also a man who decided maybe I should try to fake my own death or at least his own kidnapping. He's a fun one. This story is about again, all kinds of while, Elizabeth. But first it's like a little break now that I've broken the ice. And when we're back, we'll hear all about how Larry Wayne Price Junior like to get down.
I cannot wait.
We're back, Elizabeth, we are back. You're ready to get down and dirty with Larry Wayne.
Yeah, yeah, totally young again.
I guess we should start with the coal industry of Montana.
Right, are we going to go back to Memo sec You're not going to go back to go back to like prehistoric times?
No, no, no, no. I won't take you back to the fifteenth century or to the Neolithic period of the Paleolithic or any of that. No, right, we will stay in this age. Okay, Elizabeth, what do you know about coal mining in Montana? There is no wrong answer because personally, my answer is it happens.
That's why I didn't know that Montana was like a coal mining.
I didn't know. I think in West Virginia, I think, Yeah.
I wouldn't have Yeah, I mean there are plenty of other places, Montana not one of them. But you know, for a quick case I know they find dinosaur stuff there, dinosaur country.
Yeah, they're always did in the dirty.
S down the dinosaurs.
Yeah, very active place, you guysers.
And one fuel. That's no, it's not, it's science.
For a quick case study. Let's get to know Signal Peak Energy. Okay, according to coal Age Magazine.
Oh I love that magazine.
It's a trade publication that covers the coal industry. As you well know as a subscriber.
The centerfolds. Are you kidding me?
You've seen those rocks? Did you do that kind of hurt that way? Did you like the new tote bag for this year's subscriber?
Totally so?
From coal Age Magazine, we learned that quote Signal Peak Energy operates the Bowl Mountain's mine near round Up, Montana. Okay, what else coal Age Magazine, Well, back to their coverage last year twenty twenty three, Signal Peak Energy produced seven point six million tons and they were ranked the highest in the US as far as tons per man hour. Isn't this exciting?
Well, all of the names of stuff are so aggressively masculine. Two of like hog rack and the Signal Peak exactly target FeAs round up. Everyone's got cancer.
I have to I have no idea what most of this means.
It doesn't matter. It sounds great. So for some context, now you know what it's like to be me to go through the day.
I have no idea what I recognize.
They're reading it. It's allowed and it sounds fabulous.
So for some context, here's Parker Phipps, president and CEO of Signal Peak Energy. According to old Parker quote, what makes these stats remarkable is that we did it while mining in three different long wall panels. It was a busy year for us. Normally we have a long wall move every eighteen months. To know what that means, a strip of coal that's like, you know, a few feet and it's usually like you know, underground until they cut down till they find this like like vein and it's like.
A mother load very kind of so kind of like when you're eating ice cream and you get to like the fudge ribbon.
There you go.
So and then what is this guy's name?
Flipper Parker Phipps.
Parker Phipps. I feel like if I ever met him, was like introduced to him, I would want to just start pulling my hair and screaming, just like at the top of my lungs.
Yeah, since I know you want to know more about long walls, I do, and why they had to move Daddy moved the long walls. This was due to environmental impact studies that are required to access federally controlled coal, because they were not anymore they're drilling on federally controlled lands.
This is all important because the reason why this was disappointing for Signal Peak Energy back to coal Age magazine and I quote the restriction on mining federal coal within their mind plan was a setback for a company that was turning the page on legacy management issues several years ago. Management at the mine was clearly heading in the wrong direction. Now, this Elizabeth is what we call a sly reference to
Larry Wayne Price Junior. Oh yes, and how he nearly ruined the repute and business prospects of Signal Peak Energy with his legal shenanigans. Now, to be fair to Signal Peak Energy, it seems to be the sort of business that attracts some nefarious characters. And I'm talking coal mining and the extractive industries. For instance, he was doing business with a man who the Treasury Department claims is a
member of Vladimir Putin's inner circle. This requires a little context though, So back to old Parker Phipps, CEO.
Signal Peak Energy, He's just spilling it.
In a New York Times story, he was quick to point out to the quote tremendous amount of litigation that was filed against the energy company, which was tricky to pursue in court since the company was owned by two shell companies, not one, but two that acted as an umbrella for many out of state and by out of state, I mean foreign co owners. So you see Elizabeth. Back in two thousand and eight, there was this Ohio based billionaire,
Wayne Boych, owner of Boyitch Companies. He partnered with First Energy Corporation to buy a coal mine in the Bowl Mountains in Montana, which we're discussing. They named their joint venture your Signal Peak Energy. Now, two years into operation. They brought on another co owner, the Gunver Group. I always want to say governor gun For gun Vo r gun For Group. That company is a foreign oil commodities trading firm that's registered in Cyprus, so you know they're.
Now.
The Gunver Group was co owned by a man named Jenndy Timchenko. He's interesting because he's a Russian Ola gark a billionaire who's a close confident of Vladimir Putin. He was also instrumental partner for Signal Peak Energy.
Oh yeah, that is Aaron. I'm putting the red thread on the wall right now. It's all ties too.
So this was all going great right up until the US State Department placed sanctions on Putin linked Russian Ola garcs like tim Chenko. Yeah, and thus he had to distance himself from the Gunver Group, and the US Treasury Department reported the quote Putin has investments in Gunver and may have access to gun For funds. So this may literally be money that Putin was pulling out of Montana. I'm personally benefiting from. That's not me saying, that's US
Treasury Department right. Anyway, Soon enough, the Gunver Group claimed that tim Chenko absolutely zero involvement with gunviter in any way. That's their direct quote now at that. And they also had there was reported connections between Gunver Group, Timchenko and Putin, and they claimed that those are old and entirely baseless. So deal with that what you will.
Meanwhile, have you seen this window lease step forward?
Do you know what defenis street means? No, you're about to learn. So, meanwhile, there's the American owners, the First Energy, in the Boych group. They were also considered hinky as hell. In twenty twenty one, First Energy admitted that the company had been paying millions in bribes to state legislators as well as regulators in order to get approval for a one billion dollar bailout intended for nuclear and coal fired
power plants that were aging and needed upgrades. So they're like, hey, we've been bribing the regulators and the legislators to get ourselves this. Now, with a company admitted to this culture of corruption, the the prior Department of Justice, not the one that's currently operating under that same name, fine First Energy two hundred and thirty million dollars for their bribery case. Yeah, that was the fine. Two hundred and thirty million dollars. That's kind of high.
Yeah.
Now, I bring all this up to provide context for why are crimer of the day thought he could maybe wet his beacon, embezzle some millions upon millions in order to buy himself a dreamcastle.
Yeah, they're all doing it right, I mean, so let's get back.
To Larry Wayne Price Junior. Yes, Now, he'd gotten his start in the extractive industries when he worked in the coal fields of southwest Virginia. Not West Virginia, but Southwest.
Virginia region, southern western Yeah.
Now, then in two thousand and nine, when Signal Peak Energy was formed, he took a job with the company and he moved out to Montana. He's like, oh, that's where the action is, right, So he distinguishes himself as his real go getter. He eventually ascends to the executive suite and he's like, hey, I got my own key to the washroom.
Yeah.
So he's promoted to be a vice president of surface operations. So they don't trust him, like where the money is happening underground He's like moving trucks around and put that.
Yeah.
So his career, it gets him close in with the Then CEO of Signal Peak Energy, a man named Bradley Hanson. Bradley Hansen who this gave him, Larry Wayne Price Junior lucrative opportunities to cut side deals with Signal Peak Energy because he's in good with the CEO.
He's like, oh yeah, So Larry Wayne like goes like for business traveling like flies spirit and like sits down.
Like tosses his his cole age magazine, his.
Cole fancy magazine down and is like, yeah, you know, like trying to like flex.
Out on everybody. Everyone knows he's got one.
Of those giant bluetooth things there.
But one second, guys, I'm telling you it's gonna be great. You want to come out to my john Wick gun range. So Larry Wayne, here's wine. He starts the side business called three and then the number three three Solutions, and that company struck deals with you guessed it, Signal Peak Energy. He promised to sell the mining company industrial grade chemicals
that were used in the mining process. So basically the CEO is like, you know, we got this company, but if you started a company and offered us you know wherever they're getting better, Yeah, you'd be a vendor for the company, we could kick you down right, so price
he does this starts three solutions. Meanwhile, Larry Wayne grew increasingly integral to Signal Peak Energy as an executive because he also becomes privy to industry secrets, like how a fellow Signal Peak vice president in charge of underground operations the VP. So he's this is the guys like, actually, you know hitting the call with him? You pick this is a guy named Dale Lee Musgrave. I was saying
all their full names, like they're like presidential assassins. Yeah, exactly, so Dale Lee musk Grave.
Because you don't want like Dale John Muskgrave to hear this and be like, that's not me true dude, I'm just innocently listening while I go to rob a bank, so they'll leave.
Musgrave. He was forcing employees to falsify reports about MIND safety because he was in charge of the underground operations, right were all the danger was and the raves. So he relied on a time tested mix of threats and bribes to ensure the Mind's operations had quote the veneer of an outstanding safety.
Recordar and it takes money to make money.
Now that's not me saying that that's the Department of Justice.
The veneer.
Yes.
Nice.
So back in twenty eighteen, while Larry Wayne Price Junior was still with the company, the DOJ discovered that Musgrave had gone so far as to bribe an employee not to report that the employee's finger had been crushed while he was loading mining materials.
I shouldn't laugh at that, but I'm laughing.
Well, yeah, you won't laugh now because the finger had to be amputated. To keep things hush hush, Musgrave gave the man two thousand dollars.
In cash, only two thousand dollars price for a time they were talking about a million dollars prebes million dollar. Which finger was let me.
Break you off. I don't know which finger. It was one of the ten who was his middle finger.
And you can't flip peak off anymore.
You can no longer cuss with his fingers.
Remember his kids say flick people.
Yeah. I don't know why, but it just bothered me.
If you lose your index finger, that's big, that's big, bet thumb.
That's the real bad one to lose, because.
Well, what if he loses his pink and then when he goes to drink tea get can't let people know he's come and then he looks like a brute.
Anyway, So anyway, what this wasn't the only trouble musk Grave got into while a VP at Signal Peak Energy.
I'm going to get you a Signal Peak you see.
Well, the federal investigators are doing their due diligence to investigate the mine and its hinky operations. They spotted FedEx delivery drivers dropping off a suspiciously large number of packages at Musgrave's house. And I'm talking like, according to the DOJ, twenty seven deliveries over a few months. And I know, Elizabeth, you may be hearing that number thinking that's not a lot of packages Amazons drop for me in one month period.
Just because you saw my front stoop was box number of.
Boxes and then it came back a week later.
It's it's stuff for my house, it's for my dogs, it's dog treats.
I'm gonna say nothing.
It's maybe a paint by Numbers kit that I ordered.
You know, girls, you're a woman of mystery. The feds they thought twenty seven packages over a few months was a lot. Back off.
Worry about yourself.
The Feds never see your stoop, you're getting an investigation right away. So the twenty seven package from FedEx, they seem sussed. So one day the Feds they grabbed one of the packages, you know, just to see what sort of stuff musk Grave was having delivered to his house. Turns out, in the package they nabbed, the federal investigators found baggies of cocaine. Baggy cocaine.
No, I don't have that.
Yeah, it turns out the executive was engaging in some light cocaine trafficking.
When having it like ups, drop it off in the door.
If you live out in the middle of nowhere, the rural places, you can't like pop into the city. They're like, just send it to my house, just me the coke exactly.
And I'm like, also, to defend myself a little bit further, I need a lot of that cardboard for my garden. This is true, So okay, back off, buddy, I don't know.
I take it all back.
Turned to eat a lot of chicken jerkey human grade, as it says, And I also have a bag of chicken hearts and anyway, you know.
What, You're only doing good.
But there's no cocaine in any of your packages.
There's that. Now I bring all this up as evidence that.
For minute, we delivered cocaine.
I don't think so, maybe dug cocaine just like numbing teeth. That's like, yeah, so I bring all this up, Elizabeth, there's evidence that many folks involved with signal peak energy were on the hanky side, do you think? And uh, you know, but appearances can be deceiving, right, and then they were good at keeping their crimes swept under the
rug right up until found the baggies of cocaine. So you know, obviously this also included big ticket items that they were covering up, you know, like overseas the money laundering. There was medium sized crimes that they were covering up, like a little light cocaine trafficking, and then there are smaller crimes like mining safety infractions and lost fingers.
Oh yeah, I still two thousand dollars for a finger I would have pulled aside.
And then like, look, how much would you want for a finger? A finger, not your thumb?
Like if if I lost my let's say I lost my index index index. Yeah, doing this show, I go to Admiral iHeart.
Yes, what would you demand?
And I would hold a knife to his throat.
With your good hand, I could still do it.
And then I think I would want, like, at a minimum a million dollars.
Wow, you really value your digits.
I have a magic fingers. You know what if I want a No, not in the slightest my hands are pretty beat up. But what if I learned to play the piano. What is Malcolm Gladwell's like at ten thousand hours in your genius myth No? Anyway, so I could And then what if I could have gone on to like write the greatest piece of piano work and perform it and then bring peace to the planet because everyone hears it and they're like, that's the most beautiful thing.
It's missing some of the notes because Homegirl doesn't have one of her fingers fingers, but it was his middle finger.
Hey, I'm not telling you, I'm not there all one finger.
It was like the only part of it. Anyway, Listen to me like I would be. I would be yelling at Admiral iHeart and like putting my thumb to gouge out his eyeball, run my check and be like I want a million dollars from my miss or you do what? Poke your eyes? Out to you and then stick this knife where the sun don't shine energy hypifically, Admiral. I say this with with love and respect, and you know, I'm just joshing.
But God, I don't know about you. But whenever I hear about like oil and gas or coal or you seem really any mining, I tend to think of corruption and crime. It's kind of historically associated with chemical Yeah, I mean, like it's just like we're talking about like President Grant's problems with like or like the Rockefeller family. It's make you name one. You're like, oh, that's something, yeah, exactly.
But setting aside the historical examples, all right, I can say that the extractive industries are not a business where I expect to find the best folks with good morals. I'll believe that, right, No, no, And you know, once again because of the industry's long history of flagrant criminality. But keeping true of tradition at signal peak, energy crime was the standard of the day. That is, if an executive was creative enough and willing enough to see it through.
And that was the lesson that this ambitious striver and corporate climber Larry Wayne Price Junior took to heart, this time as an executive at Signal Pig Energy. Wayne. He was like, if they can do it, why can't they Just a boy from Virginia do with the dreams. I also want to get rich, and I'm willing to do crime to get there.
Dance spelt in the tube of chapstick.
Price he starts at the company in two thousand and nine, as we covered, by twenty fourteen, he was already building his dream castle.
Oh he built that, Yes, built it?
No wonder right, Yes, Now we don't know exactly getting Yeah, he was covering that. I don't know. I gotta stick to the facts. I do know in this case, we can speculate.
I just like to make We don't know.
Exactly what all crimes he was involved when before, say twenty sixteen, But because of the Department of Justice, I can tell you after twenty sixteen, the crimes that he wasn't definitely size. Yeah. Between October twenty sixteen and April of twenty eighteen, we do know that Price managed to embezzle twenty million dollars from three coal related companies.
Twenty million dollars and the house.
Costs a lot, so I think it got more than that, but they could just nail him on the twenty million.
That's every finger for two people exact.
So one of the companies had this fun wink wink name of three Blind Mice LLC.
Oh, get out of it.
Yeah, there was another company called ninety m LLC. And of course there was Signal Peak Energy. So the story goes based on his role as a KEYVP in charge of surface operations and owner of Three Solutions. Don't forget that. Yeah, his company was able to supply industrial chemicals to his employer, so he could embezzle from that end, which means he
was robbing Signal Peak Energy and Trice Paul. He developed his reputation around billings that he was a coal mining expert, an insider's insider because.
He's close with the CEO and a coal miner's daughter.
True enough, right, No, he leveraged his reputation to convince three Blind Mice to lend him seven point five million dollars. Now, if you asked him, Price would say that his company, Three Solutions had won a contract with a Pennsylvania coal company to install coal mining equipment, and in order to finish that project, he just needed seven point five million dollars,
which three Blind Mice was only too happy to loan him. Sure, and they were going to be paid back with interest in you know, extra amounts, so he would have to pay them back eleven million dollars.
Eleven million.
Yeah, Amus planned to make money on this deal, and he's like, I'll cut you in sure. Now. If you ask three Blind Mice what happened, they would say Price stole the money outright. Now, we know that three Blind Mice signed an unsecured promissory note and wired seven point five million dollars to Three Solutions.
Okay, Larry Wayne's company, that's an idiot moved yes, with a payback date.
Of January thirty first, twenty eighteen. And when that date came and went, I did not and had not paid the promise eleven million dollars. When the FEDS looked into this, they found that there was no deal with the Pennsylvania Coal Operation for Three Solutions to install coal mining operations. What had happened was Price spent the seven point five million dollars probably on a bowling lane, maybe a three.
Hole goal course exactly.
Now, as for ninety m LLC, the investors in that company appointed Price is a representative of ninety M. They're like, yeah, tell them you work with us, you work for us, So that he could go out and help them purchase a coal mine in Virginia where Larry Wayne is from, and help them develop into a cash making operation. They're like, yeah, get us rich on what you know. You're an insided inside man.
You're connected.
So as well, they also had some other business ventures that they had cooking. So all in all, Price helped them with five business deals worth roughly thirteen point five million dollars for Price. Now how they exist? Yeah, Now these were good kind of because when investigators looked into it, they found that ten point four to seventy five million of that thirteen point five was quote fraudulently obtained. Oh so it wasn't all hanky Elizabeth whole linked ten point
four million of it. Oops. And then there was his day to day employer, Signal Peak Energy, where Price worked as a VP of Service Operations. Now he stole from his main job too, because that house ain't going to build itself. He did this by initiating fraudulent deals to purchase coal mining equipment from a vendor that he knew could not provide said coal mining equipment. So the firm he selected for the deal, they kicked him back two
point four million dollars to Prices company three Solutions. Real simple paper trail, but there it was. Yeah, all of his shady dealings came to a head in April twenty eighteen. When the investors from ninety MLLC checked the deals. They began to question the transactions with Price in his company three Solutions. So what do they do. They call a Price and they're like, hey, man, where's money. You're like months behind on your remember January thirty first second, so
they're like, it's April man. So by this point, Price was no longer in Montana. He was living in Virginia. He'd return to his home state, but it wasn't impossible to find where he was living. The folks from ninety M did. They were able to find him, and they sent representatives to get their money back from Price. Right, if this was street crime, the amount of money he would have been talking we're talking about is enough to get a man killed. Oh yeah, when we're sending our representatives.
The fact they even told him meant that they kind of expected to get someone as opposed to just like, yeah, yeah, So I don't know how it goes in the coal industry. I won't speculate, but I imagine they also start getting murderous notions in their minds when they get robbed for millions of dollars. However, as I said, a dead man can't pay you back. So these coal investors, they still had plans to get their money back before they did
need grievous harm to Larry Wayne. Now, the Larry Wayne Price junior may have had different read of things because he has a woman he knew in Virginia. If he could hide out at her place, can she agreed? Now, that's when Price came up with this big, beautiful plan to skate out on the investors that he had robbed and to keep all the money he'd embezzled from the various coal mining operations back in Montana.
Was he just hoping they were crooked enough to not like go to the Feds.
I don't think he thought this through, but you'll figure that out.
Real question, Okay, So I mean.
Like my question was, you know, was cocaine involved in this decision making? Because it But anyway, his next plan, Elizabeth, I tell you is a certified hum danger. So let's take a little break, listen to some ads, and after these messages from Signal Peak Energy, we will get into Larry Wayne Price Junior's plan to get free. Nice we're back, Elizabeth, Yes we are. So we've got coal mining insider Larry Wayne Junior who tried to pull off some big boy
in bezzling. But he was sloppy about it. Investors or marks, how if you want to looked at it, they get robbed. They started asking questions. Not liking the answers that they weren't getting, they sent representatives out to either confront Price in Virginia or get their money back wherever, or find out where he'd fled to in order to get back their stolen millions. Sure, but Larry Wayne had a plan. What was his plan? Great question for it. I haven't
mentioned her yet, but Price was married. Okay, this matters because he was also making moves to avoid his spurned investors with another That's what I wondered when you.
Say a woman in Virginia building this thirty thousand square foot home, and I don't think it's a bachelor pass. No, No, he is a group of kids too.
Yeah, I didn't look too far into that. He did have some but I think I mentioned up top now someone whom he rented a house from in Virginia. While he was like, on the lamb, if you will, that's who he decided. The woman, He's like, oh, I'm working with her. I remember. It's like, hey, can I hide now. Meanwhile, he called his wife and was like, yeah, I really need you to help me. I'm in trouble. I'm in a bad way, and he asked her to help him out and she was like okay, baby or whatever she said.
So on April fourteenth, twenty eighteen, Price's wife called the Bluefield, Virginia Police Department at one fifty eight in the morning and she reported her husband missing. The local PD sprang into action along with the Tazewell County Sheriff's Office and thesewell. It so the two law enforcement agencies. They initiate a missing person's investigation as one does, and this soon expands to include the Virginia State Police because we're like, we got time, so le me bringing in a health after
search and rescue teams. They also bring in canine search units like you know, like they make this a real priority. We're gonna find Larry Wayne.
I wish they would have done it like they would treat most people like, well, did he have a history running away?
Yeah? Exactly.
Well let's just see if he shows up.
Yeah. Have you called all the hospitals so they bring in the bloodhounds, Elizabeth, And it shouldn't have been too hard to find this missing man since Bluefield, Virginia is located. Uh, it's like right there in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Yeah, it's a town of less than ten thousand people. Okay, but somehow all these you know, state police, local sheriffs, and local police, they couldn't find Larry Wayne.
He got gone.
Yeah, he'd done run off?
Are you n n oft through.
Using modern methods of pinging cell phone towers and as opposed to just relying on the bloodhounds like yelping into the forest? Then the multi industry, Yeah exactly, these are fresh.
You could tell, and then licking in and then hold their finger to the air. That's how you find people, Zarren.
You look for snap branches and stuff. Yes, so the multi age.
Yes, you've obviously been doing this a long time, as have I. Did he leave hair on the branches as he walked by. Is he a yetti, Yes, give me the bloodhound.
So this multi agency task force they find Prices white Mercedes with Montana plates. It had been abandoned in a parking lot.
Oh, telling Pablo SENTI is white.
Yeah, naturally this was concerning for the law enforcement task with finding this missing coal mining executive. But then they received some good news. A driver noticed a man standing on the side of the road in the dark of night, and he was near this town of Gratton or Grato, Virginia. I think it's Gratton.
Yeah, I think I think I've heard of that there.
Yeah, law enforcement they rush out to the reported sighting and they find Larry Wayne Price Junior. He's alone and he looks like he's been through it. In his pockets though he has three thousand, seven and forty four dollars, so he hadn't been like robbed or mugged or something. But you know, they take Price to the local hospital because he looks a little roughed up, and that's where officers from the Bluefield PD interview him. They were not
alone because the FBI also wanted to interview you. Oh boy, yes, and then the irs. But we'll get to that first first, the FBI. But rather than me just tell you about this FBI investigation, Elizabeth, I'd like you to close your eyes as I'd like you to picture it. Elizabeth. It's a quiet day in an FBI interrogation room, and at the moment you are busy because you are Larry Wayne
Price Junior's concept of shame. Now, as the overhead fluorescent lights buzz with the insistent home, you flit about the room, hoping to find a place to land and do what you do, which is inspire a person to feel shame. However, in this instant, as in many moments in the past, you cannot find and a welcome home in the consciousness
of the man being interrogated by the FBI. The purp seated across from the field agents is unwilling to allow you to find purchase, and so you continue to beat your tiny wings as you flit about, guided by the hope that perhaps at some point in his interrogation, Larry Wayne Price Junior will allow you to whisper your message such that he might listen to your urgings and experience what any other human being would recognize as shame. You
hear Price as he answers the field agent's questions. You hope that he'd know better than to lie to the FBI, but clearly he does not. Despite the circular nature of the FBI's questions making him repeat himself over and over again, Price sticks to his ludicrous story. He repeats that he was abducted by two members of an outlaw biker gang. He describes how they held a rag to his face and as he inhaled, he began to feel kind of funny. You cast an eye towards the FBI agents. They don't
seem to be this story. You flip closer to see if perhaps you can now convince him to experience a moment of shame and finally come clean. But he waves you away and you flit about frustrated. A field agent takes a sip of coffee that's growing colder by the minute. They've been at it a while. The FBI guy asks Price to go back to the moment when he first saw the outlaw bikers. Price sighs, annoyed, and then he launches into his cover story. He says that he was
looking to sew a motorcycle. He was contacted by a man who was previously unknown to him. The prospective buyer asked to meet Price so that he could see the bike and maybe take it for a test drive. Price says that he agreed to the meet up. He says they planned to meet at a local park and then the buyer could take the motorcycle for a ride. When he arrived at the park, he rode up on the motorcycle. Then he saw the prospective buyer pull into the parking lot.
The buyer arrived in a windowless cargo van, and he wasn't alone. Another man was with him. Both men were white and looked like outlaw bikers. You roll your eyes at all the details Price adds to his story. Even if he won't or cannot, you experience shame for him, a sort of secondhand embarrassment. Price goes on with his story. He tells the FBI investigators that the passenger in the windowless cargo van had a gun and he aimed it
at Price. In response, he froze in place that allowed the two men to hop out of the van and approach it where he was seated on the hog aka his motorcycle for sale. You draw closer again, hoping that now perhaps you can whisper something in his ear and inspire him to feel the sweet release of shame that might free him from his obvious lives. But again he waves his hand as if to wave away a mosquito. You retreat. Price goes on with his story. He says that the second man, the one with the gun, held
a rag to his face. It was clearly soaked with some sort of chemical one that made him feel disoriented and drowsy, and then he sort of blacked him. When he comes to, he's in some unknown location. It's a darkened room and he was seated on the floor. Apparently the two outlaw bikers didn't want him conscious yet, so they put the rag to his face again, and again he felt disoriented and dizzy, and then he blacked out again. When he awoke a second time, he was in a
familiar place. He was in the bike shop he owned in West Virginia. He proudly says the name of his bike shop, hog Pit Cycles, as if that'll impress the FBI agents. It does not. When you check their faces, it does not seem to impress them in the least. Instead, they asked Price what happened next? Price says he wasn't sure, but apparently the two outlaw bikers had taken his keys to the shop, because they opened up the place and they dragged him inside. Once inside, they opened the store safe.
You roll your eyes so hard that you risk bruising them or perhaps having them fall out of your fairy head. You wonder to yourself if this man is capable of feeling shame at all? You think that as you hear Price describe for the FBI agent with great detail, how the two outlaw bikers searched his pockets and they took his pocket knife. They also stole his nine millimeter sig firearm. The FBI agents play along, and you hear one say okay,
what happened. Next, Price acts like the FBI agents might finally be believing him, So he goes on and describes how the two outlaw bikers threatened him. Then they dragged him out of his bike shop and threw him back into the widowless cargo van. Then the two outlaw bikers drove him out into the country, back across the border between West Virginia and Virginia. When they were in the middle of nowhere, they pulled over and they made him get out you've given up on introducing any sense of
shame to Price. Clearly he has no ability to experience such emotions. You hear the FBI agents ask him what the outlaw bikers did next. Price is quick to answer. He says, they left him there on the side of the road alone, and they drove off. The FBI agents nod, and then they say, okay, let's start again. At the beginning,
you decide you can't listen to any lies anymore. You flipped right out of the room, hoping to find someone else who might actually benefit from you and the gift of experiencing a moment of shame.
I'm so beautiful.
So there you know, Elizabeth, that was the ordeal as Price reported it. Now, remember the investors he robbed did send representatives to confront Price and to get back the money they ripped off? Did they send two outlaw bikers to get their money back?
Did they send the cast of Sons of van?
Exactly?
Like rolling up in a van Like he's just basically detailing an episode totally.
It's like the last thing he watched. So, Elizabeth, this could have been true? Who knows? I mean, I highly doubt it.
You're very, very generous man, mostly.
Because over time Price's story tended to change that intend it did, it just flat out change like a child who's lying. He kept adding more and more wild new details and colorful embellishments.
Yeah.
At first he told the detectives from Bluefield that he'd been kidnapped by the two unknown assailants and they drugged him and taken him. It was motorcycle shop and presumably his abduction may have been related, to quote a debtiode. Later he added the details with the FBI about the two men were outlaw bikers, but not just any old outlaw bikers. Oh, soon enough, they were members of the Pagans, the outlaw biker gang that's in a turf war with the Hell's Angel Yeah.
And then like all of those guys are under constant surveillance like this, So it was.
A sort of detail that someone who likes to read about outlaw biker news stories like me, Yeah, was like what at this point? By also, by including the Pagans, as you point out, they would have been under surveillance most likely, but he thought it might help explain why he was taken to his motorcycle shop after he had the rag held to his face and all that he was drug with whatever they applied to the rag. Yeah, but there was one problem with his new wrinkle in
his story. While his storefront Hog Pit Cycles did not have security cameras, it was not the only business in that block, and so the other this is did not show members of the Pagans forcing him to do anything because obviously they couldn't. He couldn't have the footage of him unlocking a safe and giving them whatever was inside because he doesn't have surveillance cameras inside his business going
but showing up to the business. Yeah, right, So the other businesses did have security cameras, and the footage they recorded did not corroborate his story. Oops. Oops oops. Now guess old Larry Wayne Price Junior didn't think this far into his story. Yeah, so when he was confronted with the security footage from other businesses, Price changed his story again.
Meanwhile, did I say Pagan?
Yes?
No, I meant that I am a Pagan, that's my religion. He did, hear me correctly.
He claimed that he really wanted to help the FBI with their investigation. He wanted to help find the real criminals who'd.
Done this killers.
So to do that, he provided a motive for the outlaw bikers. So, according to Price, he had connections with a railroad line. Wait, and the outlaw of bikers, the alleged Pagans. They wanted to use his railroad connections so they could transport meth by rail.
Well, that's you know, that's the next frontier ect people who have highly portable means of transportation.
Can we put this on it?
No, I'd like to put it on a fixed track that is in a highly regulated industry.
I'm moving a lot of meth. I needed something like a box car.
I mean, are you kidding me?
So they demanded, according to him, that he give them schedules for the coal trains so that they could use those to traffic their meth. Like, can we just put it underneath the coal? No, one looks past the top of the coal, right, he wants.
Okay, I see what they're saying.
Wow, you see now it all makes sense, totally legit. Yeah, Sam, very overly complicated plan for drug smugglers or whatever. Maybe something the FBI would bite on. He was so pleased with this new story he repeated it to the I R. S.
Well, you know there's something like in the back of his mind, he's like, how can I cut down on the CPS bill? But it got you know what, what if I had people send me coke on the trains underneath.
The because we mind coal, of course we'd have.
You know, yeah, but the coal wouldn't be coming to you. Oh yeah, all right, the equipment put it in the excavator.
And Elizabeth, what do we always say about lying to the FBI?
Do not do it, don't do it. Don't lie to it, buddy, don't.
All by itself in there too. So it turns out there were no outlaw biker gangs, no pagans who are involved in the making of this lie. Mean while we know this because, according to news outlet k r t V, FBI investigators did find someone to help corroborate his story, a local Virginia woman who worked at a restaurant, and she told him that she and Larry Wayne Price Junior had been intimate and they were all like all booed up,
loved it. Yeah, And so while they would be like kissing and canoodle and sometimes talk would turn to how Larry Wayne could disappear And I don't mean like I mean disappear like fake is death and run off with her and all the money he'd stolen from the coal industry.
Like I just I feel like if someone says like I think I can fake my death and run off.
With you, Yeah, with millions of dollars I stole.
I'm gonna tell you right now, is as enticing as that may be anyone within earshot.
Before he started picking out your shoes, swear to god.
It's just not it's not gonna happen. It's not gonna work, and then we're gonna be yucking it up about you. Always keep that in the back of my mind. Am I going to do something that these two goose balls are going to make fun of me for?
You don't want to do?
Don't do it?
So, according to this local waitress, around the same time the price was reported missing, the waitress popped over to Walmart, where she bought some red Bulls some cokes, along with some chips, as well as underwear, socks, and towels.
That sounds about right. That is good everything, a road tripp value.
Perhaps a prolonged stay, and cheap motels that don't have good towels.
She wants. She wants some fresh honey, pants.
Once they gathered up their bug out supplies from Walmart. She also went purchased and the bag of Fritos, some.
Clean underwear ven I.
Don't want to have any Hershey Highway home when I'm on the run, only clean boxers from He's gonna be CROs So she went out. Also purchased a new burner cell phone so you know, they could contact people to start their new.
Life together on the lamb excellent, and probably bought it with a credit card orbit cards.
Well, she definitely bought it with a surveillance.
Because we know about it. Hello, we're talking about it.
So then she went and she waited for Price at her father's house in Tazewell County, which was unoccupied at the time, not the county her father's house that interestingly prices emptied for it. Price was spotted on the side of the road that night that she went to her father's house to wait for him, and he was discovered just two miles away from that same home. He might have been walking there and just happened to be spotted
by somebody who was driving the old country road. Wow, Elizabeth, he was so close, so close, just two miles between him and freedom and a bunch of Fredo's.
Red Bulls and wearing her underpants.
And then some pain in the neck in his bystander gets in the wings. So once the law had the evidence of his plans to cut and run with the local waitress, Price was no longer seen as the victim of a crime and rather he was the purpy. So he was arrested on May tenth, twenty eighteen, charged with federal crimes, and he was bonded out at a half million dollars on a secured bond. He was given a
GPS ankle monitor because he was a flight risk. And in the meantime, the federal investigators looked into what all was going down at Signal Peak Energy that resulted in more federal charges exactly because if you included Larry Wayne, there were nine executives at Signal Peak Energy who and along with their associates, who were charged with federal crimes thanks to this guy getting us.
This is why when you get your your PG and EVE your electrical bill, and do you see it like, oh, okay, this is what I'm paying for As you're hanging out, various criminals in the energy sector.
Totally totally their hankiness is why your bill goes up. Yeah, that and the AI data center. So this group is den of bad, greedy men.
Right, they unbelievable nine executive How big was this company and their associates?
I just said nine executives from Signal Peak Energy from other.
Companies to the impression Signal Peak wasn't enormous. It's basically and they're like, you know, the executive assistant, your executive will put you in that list too.
So when Larry Wayne gets grilled by the Feds, he insists that he was just one bad apple and a bunch of rotten apples. So he claimed that his boss, the former president and CEO of Signal Peak Energy, old Brad Hanson, Yeah, who I mentioned earlier, was the real mastermind behind all of them do it, the embezzlement and the million dollar thefts from business partners. He taught me didn't want to do it, No, no, he was, and he told me you start, you start three solutions, and
then you can just milk this place for them. Larry Wayne claimed that there was a culture of crime at Signal Peak Energy and that he was but one cog and a truly corrupt machine. Right, Unfortunately for him and for Justice, Hanson, the former CEO, died at his Florida home in twenty twenty before he could be questioned in
stand trial to corroborate if any of this was true. Now, as for Signal Peak Energy, the company was fined for, according to the New York Times quote, failing to report worker injuries and for illegally dumping toxic slurry, chemicals and unprocessed soil containing heavy metals arsenic and lead into an abandoned section of the mine.
But it stack fingers.
There was also a bunch of lawsuits filed by locals and environmentalist because they had been basically breaking all of the regulations. So like the water was bad for the local the cows that the ranchers were like dealing with their dying.
Oh yeah, but they drained the reservoir three feet of singers. That's where they're throwing.
The fingers and a couple toes. Now. I don't know about you, may Elizabeth, but I don't think a million dollar fine is going to correct this sort of culture corruption, if anything, to kind of be priced in is just another cost of doing business.
Exactly. It takes money to make money, I.
Say, this because, as The New York Times noted, and I quote, industry experts say, the criminal activity points to a bigger mystery. Despite the embezzlement, and despite the coal industry's protracted decline, the company has been able to survive. Many of Signal Peak's better positioned industry peers lost money on call exports and went bankrupt. So what's Signal Peak Energy?
Yeah?
Big secret? Yeah, might it be international money laundering because remember the whole Putent inner circle thing. Yeah, keep that in mind. Now to point out one energy financial analyst from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a gentleman named Clark Williams Dairy. He told The Times quote never quite made sense to me. How did Signal Peak Energy even stay afloat? Now, like I said, I'm no energy sector insider, a normal I am some coal mining expert,
but I do no crime. And may I suggest that the Putin crony as I just did the member of his inner circle. That's the big red flag for me that, Like you want to know how they stayed in business, I'll tell you. I got it for you. Check the Panama papers. Yeah, well, so basically transnational corruption. I mean, I saw it out in New York Times. But these folks, they have plenty of money to burn, right, all kinds
of illegal flows of capital. What do they care about the economic health of the mining industry or even environmental laws? Oh at all. Once he was in court, Larry Wayne Price Junior confess that thanks to a scheme of over billing and fake equipment sales and whatnot, he was able to steal roughly forty million dollars in total. He was eventually convicted for his crimes, and in October twenty twenty, he was sentenced to five years in prison plus three
years of probation after his prison sentence was complete. The question for me is will that prison sentence be enough to dissuade any future Larry Wayne's absolutely and you know from attempting similar schemes.
Absolutely not. He won't do the full five No, he'll get a job coming out, because it's not like part of the sentence is that you're forbidden from working in the industry energy industry, So he'll just get another gig.
Now, it seems like fines in prisons time, as I said earlier, just another cost to factor in as a price of doing business. Yeah, like oh, you got a five year sentence tool all right, because it's gonna be like, you know, low security prison and whatnot. So it's all he's gonna have to worry about getting stabbed up by anybody inside anyway. So also, if a person is able to successfully offshore, they're ill gotten gains. This is just like a five year vacation and they go off to
get to be rich and wherever they want around the world. Now, if it weren't for his local waitress slash accomplice coming clean about her involvement, justice might never have happened because it was difficult to make this case until she came forward for her so you know. And also not all these guys are as dumb as old Larry Wayne, so like some of them don't have the wags getting them
the clean shonies. Yeah, he's like, what our dream baby. Meanwhile, there was that dream home, I'm sorry, dream castle, including the moat and the stone tower and whatnot, the indoor shooting range, the golf simulator, the bowling alley, the screening room, indoor outdoor kitchens. By the way, once again they pointed out still for sale. So if you're willing to get out there, to concoct some illicit international business and see,
if you want to swing it, this could be yours. Perfect, Elizabeth, I got to ask a question to you, Now, what's a ridiculous takeaway here?
These people are crooked? And I say, and it's like I gesture wildly. People are cooked. What's yours?
The the current administration might look favorably on someone who tries to pull off some crimes of this nation, as long as they're willing to kick a bribe up the ladder. So you know, like, if you're going to read the wind, now's the time to make these moves. There you go, so you moved for a talkback.
To watch all. I always am, oh my god, I jet.
Dark Becca here. I tell kids' stories almost weekly, and I always have them close their eyes to help them from being distracted. And no one day I was like, you know what Saren and Elizabeth would do. They'd say, close your eyes and the kids would say back, my eyes are closed, and then they'd say picture it. And so that's what I do now with the kids.
Okay, so those are now the coolest kids because they're quoting us, quoting Dree. Oh my god, I love that. It's effective though, right, like to center yourself into Becca. I am so proud of you, hope.
I hope you're enjoying a great summer of dark or I guess it's still spring Rebecca, though.
I think you know, I don't want us to be Dark Rebecca and Dark Elizabeth forever.
So you guys can like, you know, position in and out of it.
You're doing good work though, Honestly, like telling stories to kids, oh yeah, doesn't like if you're not familiar, it might be like, okay, well what's that now? That is like some of the most serious, essential future building work anyone can do. And so Dark Becca hats off to you, thank you for that.
Totally big salute. Well, as always, you can find us online Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky and Instagram, and we also have Ridiculous Crime Pod pod on YouTube if you like to listen to your podcast while you also watch something. It's animation, it's not us, but you can watch them and uh, there's that, So go there, go to YouTube, go to Ridiculous Crime pod and check it out. And we have our website, Ridiculous Crime dot com, which you know they have. There's merch and there's gifts and there's
all sorts of like. You can take a survey if you'd like. You can tell us about yourself if we'd love to hear about you. Oh, you can also email us if you want at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. If you do that, please start it, dear producer d oh in the talkbacks, obviously the talkbacks. We love the talkbacks. So go to the iHeart app downloaded, leave a talkback and maybe you get to hear your voice here. We'd
love to hear it here. So there you go. As always, thank you for listening and we will catch you next crime. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Brunette, produced and edited by our resident Vice President in charge of subterranean Operations, Dave Houston, and starring Analys Rutger as Judith. Research is by the Shady Accountants in charge of cooking our books for Regulators and the Law, Marissa Brown and
Jabari Davis. Our theme song is by our house band Drill Baby Drill and the Billion Dollar Scoundrels aka Thomas Lee and Travis Duty. The host wardrobe provided by Buddy five hundred Guess Harry, makeup by Sparkleshot and Mister Andre. Executive producers are the inventors of the world's best golf simulator for up and coming corrupt executives, Ben Bolin and Noel Brown.
Pudicus Crime, Say It One More Time.
Piquious, cry Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.