Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Yo, Elizabeth Dutton, Yo, Zaren Burnette.
Okay, I've been looking for you all over. I'm glad you're here because I'm tired. My back hurts. So I had a question for you. Can you sit down for a second? All right?
Fine?
Alright, you see it? You comfortable? Okay? Do you know what's ridiculous? I do? Okay, Well then you go.
Okay. So what's ridiculous is? I got a couple aspects of this. It's ridiculous. One, it's ridiculous how much I love to lurk on Reddit?
Yeah? Two?
This ai t a am I the a whole Oh okay, it's a subreddit. It's ridiculous. How much good content there is there? And this particular post is absolutely peak ridiculous. Okay, so I'm going to read it to you. Oh please, My twenty eight year old female So she's twenty eight year old female. Boyfriend who's twenty nine year old male?
Okay, Okay, So she's twenty eight, she's a woman, he's a.
Boy correct okay of two years, will not stop speaking in a fake Italian American act and keeps making up foreign words. The ambientation, so you're gonna find Oh okay, to preface this, I love my boyfriend and he is super sweet, nice, smart guy that I feel lucky to have, but his behavior lately is freaking me out and makes me worried for the future. Oh yeah, I need to also say this is old. This is not a new post about something that It's ridiculous. It keeps coming into my head all the time, so.
You just think about this. This is something that's like an earworm from read.
It pops into my head. So to continue, My boyfriend loves movies, especially mob movies.
I'm with them.
He has all of the Sopranos DVDs at his place and I'm pretty sure he still watches them that way. That's fine, obviously, you can watch and enjoy whatever you want.
Yeah, she's open like that.
But last week he saw the Irishman with some friends and since then he will not stop talking in like a fake stereotypical mobster accent. We were in an uber the other night after going out to dinner, and admittedly the driver was going a little fast, but my boyfriend kept muttering things like who's this guy?
Eh?
They learn not don over here and shouting ho as we took corners. He would not shut up, and even gave the driver a one star review, saying it was about respect. Everyone has their quirks. I get it, and they can be what makes someone special. At first, it was even kind of cute, funny, but I just can't really understand this shift all of a sudden. It's been a week and he continues to make asides in this voice, and when he gets drunk he speaks and made up
Italian like. We were having dessert at my sister's and he came up to me and said, hey, Ma, I got to get home and hit the draupini. I'm the designated driver. I don't drink. So I asked him why he wants to leave, and what a draupinie is. His response was, you know, like a shower. Draupini is not a word in any language. He also never called me Ma before ever, and now he does it almost all the time. I feel crazy, like is this going to be a permanent feature of his personality?
Now?
I know this sounds incredibly stupid compared to some of the other serious issues on here, but I am really just nervous about what this means. About his personality slash mental health. He really is a sweet, loving guy with a wonderful family and we have a lot in common. But just like, I don't even know how to begin to approach this. I want to tell him off and be like, why do you keep doing this voice? Can
you please stop? We don't live together, so thankfully it's not a constant thing, but like what if it did? What if we did, and what if it was? You just deal with when it's someone you love.
Edit.
I just want to add that he's not Italian at all either, So I'm also worried people will get offended when we're out or something. So that's ridiculous.
That is very ridiculous.
Am I the ahole.
Post rent free in your head?
As they say all the time, I always want to go to take a shower. I want to be like, oh, hitting the drapini, you know, so just say it into the empty hallway and go about my business.
So could I get away with this? Because this sounds like just do it.
Let's see what happens, to see where this goes, huh.
I want the update from their girlfriend of like, okay, he stopped doing it after he got beaten up. By a bunch of Italians in Philadelphia. We were there for a gaming.
P didn't happen.
Oh man, that is great. I know. Well if you got a second, I got something for you.
Sure.
Yeah. Okay. Imagine a frontman for a band. Okay, okay, now the same person though, the same front man. They've never performed live before. Okay.
Well you know everyone has to perform.
Everyone the first time, right, Yeah. And they've never recorded even a single song before, okay. And all they really have is a dream. They're a front man with a dream, and so they reach for that dream and they decide to build themselves a crime Ledder to the Stars.
Oh I love that.
This is ridiculous crime a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists and cons. It's Ahlways ninety, motor free and ridiculous. Elizabeth Ar. Okay, this dude's name was Rob and okay, wait, no, first we got to get through Rob. That is a capital R and a capital R followed by a lowercase O and then a B and another B. Rob middle name Tall, But wait, that's not just tall like you might imagine. That's a capital T and a lowercase A
followed by five capital l'say. Yeah, it's like he knew he'd need to keep a couple l's handy for the rest of his life. Oh god, I hadn't last name university.
Rob Tall University.
I think it's university for like you feel like a mashup where it's like, Okay, your first name is the street you lived on, the last name is a place you're least likely to be found. The reason I bring him up this Rob Tall University. He once launched a multi million dollar scam to become a rock star and it worked. Okay, yeah, well until it did not work. So yeah, that's why we're talking about him today. But God, bless God, bless job blessed is brought up now before
we dive into today's dish of criminal deliciousness. Have you ever heard of Sarah Howe?
I think so.
I Okay, this is not somebody I knew. Sarah Howe. It was a dame, was ahead of her time. She once had her own bank. It was called the Ladies Deposit Company.
Never heard.
Yeah, this is a big deal because it was a bank for unmarried women's huge and that was necessary.
I'm imagining this is in the olden times.
Eighteen seventy eight.
Yeah, eighteen seventy eight.
Yeah, this is when women didn't have any guaranteed property rights right right, or secured financial rights. It's just basically the Jane Austen days but America. So Sarah how she has his bank for ladies, and she told everyone it was a Quaker charity. You know, it's like something for these those who are less fortunate, you know, in this time, women's.
The lady Bank. It just makes me think of when they they gender products, like you know, there'll be like a toolkit that you can get. The pink one is like fourteen dollars in the blue one stuff.
Yeah, yeah, little pink screwed, little pink camera, a little little pink.
Ratchet, pink ladybank.
So this this pink Lady Bank, right, she's running for the less fortunate women. There was something else about this bank. Her Bank for single ladies offered women something that you couldn't get at other banks. I returned she in the neighborhood eight percent. Oh that's eight percent per month. Well, a surprise, surprise, there was no Quaker charity. There were no eight percent returns on the investment. And the heck, there was no bank it was all a scam, and
twelve hundred people fell victimed. Old Sarah howse yep, and she camed people out of about five hundred thousand dollars now eighteen seventy eight that would be fifteen million dollars today.
Wow.
Yeah, yeah. Now it took two years for her scam to go pup, and eighteen eighty a local paper broke a story. Sarah how was promptly busted, tried, convicted. She did three years in the big house, and then she's like, oh, I got out, I'm free, I'm ready to start a new life. I think I'm gonna go immediately back to criming. So she went and became a fortune teller, and she managed to continue to fleece the sheep until she was
put in the dirt. Now she was a mere amateur compared to the man who would come to be the name associated with these types of crimes. Oh, Charles Ponds, Yeah, do you know anything about his deal? Why we call the Ponzi with it?
Right? Yeah, In the.
Nineteen twenties, dude was running. He's a Boston based con man. He's he had he'd been telling his investors, right, Oh, double your money right, just give me ninety days, give me your money, and I'm gonna come back to you with a bunch more. And they're like, I don't know about that, and he's like, yeah, just trust me, Like well, what am I investing in? He's like, okay. Turns out if you take international postal stamps, you can buy these and then redeem thement. He came up with this abstract
like financial come up based on international postage stamps. So people are like, oh, okay, He's like, just give me a little bit of time now. In seven months time, This dude, like, I'm just blown away how much he did in seven months time without the internet, without like the ability to get around quickly. He's on like horses and carriage and cars and stuff, right, like old old school cars. So this Ponzi scheme that he'd done, this is how it works. Basically, it's a simple one two three.
So one Ponzi would promise that he could double his investors' money, so we covered that, and then his claim would in tract the first round of investors. Right now, he's got some investors, he takes their money. He then uses this money from the second round of investors to pay back the first round of investors, right, and then word spreads it. The first people got their money back. Then this more people come in with that third round and fourth round,
he pays off the second round of investors. By this time, the fifth round is a huge group of people ready to give their money up, and there's more of them than there are original investors to pay off. So you have like a float time, right, so to quote my man Louis Anderson from coming to America, and that's when the big bucks start rolling in. So Charles Ponzi's pyramid scheme noted him eight million dollars in seven months, and then in those days, that's in those days that would
be worth one hundred and twenty million dollars today. In seven months he did it like boom, boom boom. People are like, oh, they were throwing their money at him, just like yeah, so now to vacuum up that kind of cash. He took in thirty thousand investors. That's how many people came to him ready to be Connedah yeah. So eventually he gets cosbusted and then Ponzi gets sentenced to a decade behind bars. And then we gave his name to the scheme so everyone to remember it, right brob
taw University. He's like, you know, I can make that old school scammer really have one of them ether sip and idiot grins, because I'm gonna do what your boy Willie Sutton does. He decides to go where the money is. Yes, he's like, I'm not gonna one and in a time in it with just all these individual people, he goes right to the banks because I'm going to go scam the banks. Oh okay, yeah, Well his dream was to be a rock star, so he thought to himself, why not get the banks to invest in my dream?
Yeah, it's exactly.
This is a new so he was dude was born Robert Malwinny. So you can see why he changed his name, right, MAWINNI. It's a little but tough to be a rock star, Rob Malwinnie.
You know what, if he would have been dedicated to it, it's all about the attitude.
I agree, but it's just saying. You can hear why he might have been teased as a kid, and he's like, you know what I'm going to do is change my name from Bob Malweeney. So Bob moy exactly. I'm just saying, so, dude, was this out of Anaheim, California? So cowboy, and we don't know much about his childhood, so I'm just going to skip ahead to his prefam days.
Say he was born in Disneyland. What year was he born born?
Yeah?
Here was he born?
Let's see nineteen eighty.
He was born in nineteen eighty.
Yes, people were born in ninteen.
It was in my mind I thought he was like born in the sixties. What's wrong? I thought this was an old story.
No, no, this is a new one.
Okay.
Oh yeah. So by the time Homie is thirty years old, he was on top of the world. Right, he'd become a real life rock star. He was the front man for the hard rock band Lights Over Paris.
If they heard of Lights Over Paris, yeah, I followed them on tour three years. Lights Over Paris.
Slop Lopp, Right, it's like I Hop but lops.
It's like a spin off of Bombs over Bag.
Then they were at LA based bands their fans called them. If they had fans, they would have called them. But so our dude, Rob Tall University. He really wants to be a rockstar, right, so he's like, oh, I'm going, I'm gonna become the American Liam Gallagher, but I'm going to do that with just way less talent.
I want to know what they sound like, Zarin.
Oh, okay, imagine like I had to listen to a bunch of the songs the research for this, and like, let's just say, imagine like the most vanilla, emptied out pop song you could imagine like if you took Justin Timberlake's producer and saying, Okay, take everything out of this, just leave the music, but take all the out of this. He's like, I got your son and then you hit that. That's what it is. It's like a track of like all the same beats, all the same sounds, but there's
nothing there interesting. It's really weird.
Light over Paris.
Yeah, I'm gonna play some later so you can just have your mind blown to I can't wait. Yeah, we'll get into the lyrics and the music, all of it, will you baby? Saying to yourself, Saren, how did this less talented Liam Gallagher want to be? Who? You know? We decided to cut a bunch of banks in, divesting in his dream of being America's next top superstar, become the guy that we're talking about today. If the music is this.
Bad, yeah, I am asking myself far.
Great question, Elizabeth, really is and thank you for asking the answer. A highly focused Ponzi scheme, Elizabeth. Yes, yes, that's why we're talking about my man, Rob Tall University. Five l's. He decided he'd do business with JP Morgan, Chase, Bank of America Zions it's a small socale bank, and Comerica all for La branches right now. He didn't just walk in, slap down his bands demo and say I'd
like eight million dollars please. No, that's but that's actually not far off from what he did do so, according to the US Attorney's Office, in August two thousand and nine, Rob Tall University strolled into a branch of Comerica in La. He slapped down paperwork from the investment firm Charles Schwab, and he asked for three million dollars. The bank, however, didn't laugh in his face like they would have laughed in my face. But they did not laugh and robbed
all they were laughed in most people's face. They didn't laugh in his face. Do you know why?
Because he was wearing eyeliner.
Well, the paperwork he slapped down stated that the frontman had seven million dollars in an investment account. Oh yeah. And the account statement also reported that the frontman had five million in net annual income, and it claimed that his personal assets totaled seven and a half million dollars. And those numbers made some sense because in his personal asset was listed a recording studio. He said that he was,
you know, worth twelve million dollars in annual income. So the bank was like, oh, of course, now, of course all this paperwork was faked. Yeah.
I was gonna say, why didn't they want a digital.
Yeah, well what happens? Yeah exactly, like like we're gonna do some more corroborating evidence. Yeah, well, the bank decided, you know, let's do our due diligence. They weren't just willing to take the Charles schwab faked piece of paper with like the white out.
I mean, if you told me they were, I was about to get heading over to my printer, like I got the ink a little bit of dabblin.
Well, as you know, banks prefer the people's start businesses. That make sense. If they were they're gonna dabble in the Business World. They're like, do restaurants do like a leather goods store? Just something that we know how this works.
You're gonna be Jimmy Dablin's about it exactly.
But like rock Star, how do we dabble in that? We don't even know that one? Where do we put the double in the dabble? Right? So Rob Tall University's like, I got you covered. Don't worry. My studio will be collateral for this money. Remember twelve million dollars that can be yours. You could own this studio. They're like, okay, suddenly he's e F. Hutton. They're like, we're listening. You got my ear. But it wasn't enough because, as you
pointed out, their bankers, they wanted corroboration. They needed more paperwork proof of his income. Mob Tall University is like, no problemo, I got this brother. So he goes back and he fakes up some more paperwork, comes back in. He's like, there you go with that due. They're like that's good. I mean this is good. More paperwork, but
we're gonna need like tax returns. He's like, ah, no problem, goes back, fakes those up, shows up with tax returns to bankers are like, okay, this is all looking good. You know you have all the right numbers here. He's got spreadsheets, he's got bank statements, whatever else. He overdid it exactly. So they're into the like the paper. They love it. They're like getting the giddy off it, right, but they're still undecided because they're bankers. Right. So he's like, oh,
come buy the studio. They're like, okay, we'll do that. It's like you need to see with your own I see what you would get in collateral. They're like, cool, due diligence, right right. One problem, Rob Tall University has no studio. So no, he doesn't even own one. He doesn't. He doesn't work at one. He's not making do like a sit compl Oh yeah this is my studio. No, no, no no. But his no problema was his attitude, because what did he have. He had friends, Elizabeth, he had
friends and a dream exactly, a two fisted fighter. This guy friends in one hand, dream in the other knocking out fate. So he goes and he borrows his friend's studio for this bank tour. He's like, hey, guys, you want to get in on my criminal conspiracy. They're like bet So. The studio was in Burbank, California. It was owned by a pair of brothers, now not brothers, like actual brothers. Yeah, the Salazar brothers actually okay, yeah, Jason and Matthew. Jason was the younger one to twenty eight.
Matthew was the older one twenty nine. Thus it was called matt Salazar Recording Productions. Yeah. They're also part owners in the La Sound Collective if you were an underground sound collector. Yeah. Well, anyway, the day for the studio tour comes Rob Tall University. He's like, come on down. He meets the bankers at his studio. He was not just a want to be rock star. He was also a generous host. Yeah. So he was like, oh exactly, it's like, let me show you around. So he goes
gives them the deluxe tour of the studio. He showed them the framed records, the soundboard, the mixing and mastering areas, the mic stands, whatever there was to show them. Look, here's our favorite couch. You know, you can give them the whole tour, right So Rob Tall University also casually bragging that he quoted a successful ghostwriter for various artists just you know, various artists, just name some probably them.
So he also confided that running this recording studio and ghost writing for rock stars, these are just my sidelines. My real passion, My true passion is writing my own songs. And they're like, oh, you're one of those gray so and I imagine the bankers are like, please don't play your demo, Please don't write you a demo. But he's like, okay. But their business types, so they're also equally business gracious. They're like, yes, what else do you have? Do you
have more paperwork to show us? Because studio looks great, this is really a studio. We see that. They're like okay, They go back to their office. He fills out the rest of the application. They give him three million dollars.
Weren't they concerned as it was called Mike Selazar Studios.
I guess they just overlooked that. They thought maybe that's a stage name. I don't know what they thought, but there they were cool with it, and they're like, yeah, this is his studio. He says, he walked us around, he showed me the board, the key, Yeah exactly. He knew where to park. So then he gets his three million dollars from the bank, and he's like, okay, that
that went really well. So what is he going to do? Right, I like to think after a moment rob Tall University, he gazed across the Burbank parking lot outside of his Strip Mall Music studio and he said in that like bygone tone of the old pioneers, like you know, staring at the middle distance of the horizon. Ye know, I was just like, I see a future here, because his dream had become true, Like he realized he'd found a place where one day I can raise up my own
crop of rock stars and roadies. And so he decided exactly but you know, obviously it's gonna be less you know, dramatic as I rendered it. But from court documents we do know that he said that he wanted the bank's money to expand his business, to make new purchases, and to finish construction on a new recording room in the studio. And that was what sounded perfectly reasonable to the bank examiners,
and thus they gave him the three million dollars. So they're like, boom, here these are three million dollars loan, sir. And now now he is about to start becoming a real rockstar because he got rockstock. Cat's right, Let's take a little break and then I'll tell you how he's going to blow through this money and get himself like a rock star into billboards, you know, top charts. What. Yeah, all right, So now my man, Rob Tall University is a real funded, almost want to be rockstar guy.
Yeah, he's a three millionaire exactly the big time.
I told you the real big money's gonna come rolling in. Now he's got the big bucks. So that first loan application that went well, right, Sure he walked him through the fake studio or actually the real studio. But I'm pretending to be his So Rob Tall University, what's he gonna do now, He's like, I should do that again. So he goes and does it again, and then again and then again. He went to work scamming banks like he ironically was far better at scamming banks than being
a rockstard. He should have been a bank scammer. That's what he should have turned pro at.
It sounds like he was.
I don't know if you can if you get like groupies for being a bank scammer, but anyway, if he could, you know, I think what it does to jail.
He'll have all those gals who like write in the oh good point.
Yeah, we tend to get some journalists to interview him. He's good.
He's got the rock Star cell Block Rockstar.
So Raptail University. He gets the initial three million from Comerica, right then he went and scams in additional seven hundred and fifty thousand from Bank of America, then a cool half million from Zion's Bank, and lastly there was a sizeable sum he peeled two point four million from JP Morgan Chase. Wow. Yeah, so that's about seven million in total. Okay, so then he apparently re upped on a couple of those loans. He pulled in a couple more and brings it up to eleven million in total.
Wow.
His eventual lawyer Al Jaron would later argue, quote, all of a sudden, he was trapped in a situation that got out of his control. Yeah, oh yeah, I bet it did.
I just like, eleven million dollars with nothing behind it is just nuts.
Oh dude, I like the It's like this just got out of control. What's the internet name? Well, well, well it's isn't my old friend the consequences of my actions. It's like it's him and out.
Of control, like at any point he could have Yeah.
Whatever, he's a victim of himself, Elizabeth.
Look what I did hard for him. It's hard to be Rob Tall.
Why are these banks doing this to me? So before the legal reality set ind of what he had done, robbed all University went to work being a rock star. And that's what we want to talk about, right, So how did he start blowing this money? Well, you know, well, first I need to just show you what he looks like. I haven't really done a good job. This is him with the world's most interesting man. Now that's not the actual world's most interesting man. That's a cardboard cutout of
the world's most interesting man heavens. So yeah, and he's not a very tall guy. And you know, nothing wrong with you know, him not being tall. I was a short kid. I grew late I have you know, But my man, if you're gonna name yourself Rob Tall and then and call attention to that, and then put in five capital l's to make sure you don't miss it anyway. Whatever, So old Rob not exactly Tall University, his suddenly stacked bank account right, He's just things get ridiculous for him.
So he rents an apartment in a downtown LA he guess he finds his luxury condo building. He gets a place on the thirty fifth story. He's like, you know, why would he do this? Because that's a rock star. So later on he would then move places because that wasn't I guess rockstar enough. So he went up to the Hollywood Hills, right, because that's a rock star. And his rent was ten five hundred dollars a month. What does he care?
It's not his money, that's true.
So Rob would also he loved to take trips. He was a guy I like to bounce around the world, because why, that's what rock stars do.
He's a citizen of the world exactly.
You go down the Caribbean, you go to South America to be able.
To put all them flags in his Instagram.
He had the big map, yeah, and he wanted all the pens so well, I would imagine that he would tell himself, I'm going to go out there and like find my fans, like the ones in South America Europe that are waiting for me. But I can't even get myself through that sentence So anyway, Rob, he was like the kind of guy who liked, you know, all the beautiful and expensive things in life. Right. I don't know
if he did that because he liked rocks. They thought that was what rock stars did and he just needed to be in the glamorous places or he him stuff liked it, but he spent his money that way, or rather the bank's money that right. So after spending a decade or so dreaming of becoming the next Blink one eighty two, because that was his inspiration.
Oh you're kidding.
Yeah, the dude was like, honey, he'd been down there in so Kyle dreaming of being like, you know whatever, Travis and uh, Tom and Mark right one of the guy that's all yeah, exactly, yeah, I think that's the Tom one. Anyway, Tom DeLong. Here we go. Okay, So this dude's a He's like, okay, I want to be a rock star. He spending ten years trying to do it. He can't do it, so he turns to crime. Right now, now he's got the money, he's blowing stuff like as fast as he can. So he's like, oh, what else
do I need? Like I got my rock star house. I needed tour bus.
Did he have other people in his band?
Oh, we'll get to that, okay, So it's like, okay, oh yeah, that's why I haven't mentioned them his band, So his tour he gets the tour bus right, seven hundred fifty thousand dollars. This is not a normal tour bus. You not for all roped a university. Oh yeah, like a full this dumb bunny's tour bus. It was so tricked out that Limo Digest wrote about it. Okay, Limo Digest, it sounds like a magazine someone to write for, like in a rom com in the nineties. I feel right
for Limo Digest. That's why I'm here on that.
It's like a Hallmark movie.
Yes exactly. It makes no sense, but writing.
For Limo Digest and I have to go back home, you know, my parents. If he wanted to be like Blinkoin eighty two, he should have gotten an old.
Van, oh totally and played the music and all the stuff. If he should have done the other part of the rock star. So anyway, Limo Digest as a feature story on dudes Bus, the new bus for rock band lights.
Over Paris, and it's also fake.
The dude had taste, not good taste, but he had taste, right, So I went and I looked. The bus was designed to look like an airplane, right, And on the side of the bus he had he had these exterior awnings which when you expanded them to like airplane wings. Inside the bus he had all these little airplane like like fake wings like for the knobs of the faucet or whatever. Right, yeah, everything exactly so luxurious. Master suite, custom built master bedroom.
Suite also has a recording studio in it with Privacy Glass. I watched a YouTube video from the makers of this tour bus because they were so proud of the work that they did, and it's still love. You can't find a lot of stuff from this guy, but you can find the tour bus. So he actually had like a there's a wine cooler in there. There was a custom red iron granite countertops. The forward lounge for his bandmates. It boasted a three D Sony TV, which was a
big deal for the time. There were also bunks for his quote bandmates which had their own TVs and game systems. On the side of the bus, it was painted the words lights over Paris. You know that way people would know who the hell was inside the finish bus. It looks like, you know, I don't know, like if hot topic in Miami. Right was handing out the company's like first romance novel and it was like complete with Neon cover fonts. And someone was like, you know what, this
would make a great tour bus. That's what it looks like. Well, I'll just show you.
Oh you're show and tell what. Oh and if if that is not what I was picturing?
Oh yeah, and this is what you would see if you happen to be stuck behind this bust in traffic. Yeah, oh yeah, they got He's got a picture of himself and a bunch of the band mates. My fingers are in the air cone like it's a giant cone that it's supposed to look like a ship like a plane, like like the concord or something. It's super extended blast out front and on the back. It looks like it should
be like we are the band cruise ship magicians. It's amazing, right, So I don't know who owns this now, I actually do not know. I could not find that, but uh, but you may be wondering, right, Okay, so he's got this tour bust for like being Abbert Adam Lambert's opening act right, and he's like, everything's set, but he does he have a band, like who are the cruise ship? Right? Well, Elizabeth as you find it out when I think it's right. If you have a bus looks like an airplane, that's
not what you need to become led Zeppelin. You need other things. So Rob Tall University is like, well, I'm just gonna get me a so he gets a bunch of session musicians.
The he got the tour bus first, yeah, and then got the band.
So it gets like the session musicians and then he like has them like, oh, man write the album with him. Man, he writes all these songs right, and then he goes out and he's like, oh, I'm gonna I need to do videos, right, So he's making videos before the album's come out. So he's making videos. And so there was one of these Lights of her Paris music videos. Well, there was a guy who his name is Brian Knight.
He went on twenty twenty to talk about this, like when he was trying to describe his experience on a Lights of Her Paris video set, and I quote it was crazy. There was a lot happening. There was a lot of booze and a lot of champagne, and the hotel sweet ended up getting trash at the end of the trip. So that's all just rock star stuff, right mostly, But then he goes into remember this is the video of Vixen era in hip hop. This is early two thousand oh right, So back to Brian King, I have
no idea where all the women came from. He'd get a woman to sit in the middle of the buffet table and hand people sushi off of her body. Oh god, now why would he have a naked woman with a buffet on her belly? That's what rock stars of course, or maybe they don't because they actually.
Have class off of someone's gross skin.
Yeah, you maybe don't. My god, completely raw fish off of warm skin. It's just like, this is not what glitter on it. You got the cool side cool and that warm side warm. Anyway, you can't have a music video without a song, and you've asked what they sound like, right, Well, some of the bank's money went into the studio time right. He paid for session musicians to record his Lights Over Paris album. He hired a lush string section. It was like he was doing his best impression of Charlie Parker
with strings. He's like, I need strings, Like, bro, you're not Charlie Parker. He's like, no, my cheesy, forgettable pop songs needs stringing. So his whole bands they said session musicians. So there's no band yet, but his store bought band. They do record albums and uh.
No albums.
Sorry, songs for the album. Should say yeah, songs for the album, right, but I like, is that one of the songs? Like the first single, I guess it was called turn on Off the Lights. Now, the band's name is Lights Over.
Parents, Lights Over Pairs? Are you okay? Do you need to talk to someone?
I'm not the fake rock star here.
Everyone check on Lights Over.
They're sending mixed signals turn off the Lights. So for their EP, turn Off the Lights, the first that they named.
The lights or just something totally different.
Not just a song, they're they're single. They also named the EP turn Off the Light Lights a genius yes, So that the band decides to make the visually stunning music video. They're like, we need to get, you know, the best stuffs. They hire actors, actresses and the main bikini clad actress Olivia Hart was suspicious of where this talentless band and this talentless singer got the money to hire someone like her. So she went up and just asked the dude. She's like, how do you have the
mighty to do? Yeah, what's going on here? Robb Tall University. He thought for a moment, ran his fingers through his air, and he's like, yeah, well my grandpa died. He's like, I took his money and I dropped six Yeah. Whatever.
Wait, and so she's walking around at a bikini. It seems so outlandish to me when I think about how videos used to be, Like, I just can't imagine a band doing like a bikini babe video.
Oh yeah, no, except this one. I did my dude intelligence, Elizabeth. I watched the video. I listened to the songs. Here's a sample lyric. I have a sample lyric for you already. This is Ah. I met a girl. She's super cool. I love the city lights, she loves the pool. I'm signing autographs she writes at school. She's taking photographs that make me want to drool. I'm like, yeah, yeah, you know, I'm into you. I did no music for that. It doesn't need the music, the poetry, it's right there.
I momentarily lost the ability to speak. Wait, she's writing at school exactly.
There's so many red flags. So I watched the videos that school. So the video features him walking around a rental La mansion as his girl is checking her makeup on a floaty in the pool. She also reads a book because you know that was in the lyrics, so she's there's a shot, take a book. And the whole thing is about as the brainless the music video as you've ever seen. It's as bad and as dumb as the song. It's like pop punky, No, it's more like
justin Timberlake punk. You keep going, that's what it sounds like to me, Like, but if you just take everything out of that, you know, if you just dial down, all the things that are talent or music are good and just do you leave the stuff that is beat and his string in his voice the holy ground exactly. So when the dude in this music video, I was like sitting there watching it, I'm like, I'd be willing to bet shoot if I just like randomly thought of
an idea, it'd be better than this. So I was like, okay, if you took like a camera, turned it on, put it in like a red wagon, and just drug it down the street. That would be a better music video than this. If you took the camera, turned it on and just kicked it down a flight of stairs, that would be a better music video than this. But whatever, the guy didn't do any of that because he's got
millions of dollars. He just threw millions of dollars at the screen, right, So, now, chasing good money with bad, the front man decided to guide his pretend band of session musicians onto the pages of Billboard Magazine. His plan works on the band's website. They're the band's website. Their sound is described as quite a mix of melodic rock hooks with pulsating dance rhythms and a taste of hip hop.
Yeah that taste of hip hop? I don't even know that anyway, though, this mix works and Billboard names them on their heat Seekers Albums chart stop it. Yeah, they make it to number six and they were officially an up and coming band.
So this just tells me that you can never trust anything. Billboard Magazine ever says.
Yeah, ever, they pretty much stepped in it on that. Yeah they did, so, Now, well, is it. But they are at officially an up and coming band, and Billboard has basically proved and as you point out that they have no validity, zero credibility now and uh, well, you know, what are you going to do with Rob Tall University now that he is an actual rock star and he can point to himself in the pages of Billboard magazine.
Oh no, is he going to take the magazine to the banks.
He's going to go bigger. It's the year twenty ten, and so things are changing, the cultures shifting. He's like, I got to get ahead of things. So to keep momentum going for his entirely pretend band, the frontman went for the biggest gambit yet yet. He said, I need to go bigger. I need to get stars involved. Yes, yes, So for his next video he ups the star power and he hires out the rapper the Game. He asked the Game to come over and star in his video
for his new latest Lights Over Paris Banger. I'm not a gangster.
Wait no, like hearing the first lyrics set like that and now I'm.
Not a Just imagine a Seth Green personating an impression of Tom Cruise walking up to some girls in a bar. That's how the video starts. Well, no, sorry I left out apart. First video starts with like a girl's finger fingering the buttons of an old school jukebox. Right, she seductively presses as a button and the song starts, the song that.
We don't want to hear, I'm not a.
Gangst It comes out right, and then this, you know, the pop backbeat drops And when I say drops, imagine like a Kleenex landing on a bed of cotton balls. It just dropped. So now you mentioned the lyrics from the last song.
Yes, I got more lyrics for your girl, Thank you.
I need these, alady. Yeah, the lyrics go down in CALLI. The girls drink until they go crazy and smoke until they all get dizzy. She told me I could call her my baby. None of them rhyme Callie crazy dizzy baby rhymes, but whatever slant rhym so he keeps going, Oh good, Yeah she could. She told me I could call her my baby, but just for the night. We were coasting all the way down to the ocean. And then she slipped something inside my hand. Can you guess what she slipped inside his hand?
Elizabeth so scared of what baby slipped, the baby's kid put in her hands.
I've got good news for you. I don't know what it is. He never says. He's like, who knows, who cares?
He was like he was afraid, there's no good way to go with No, he's just let me a permission slip for her to go on.
I mean, who knows. And I do not have a bloody knife.
I mean, there's so many, so many ways I can go with this.
Instead he keeps it ring.
I mean I can keep going, I can keep going.
So instead he just sings. And this is what I said. I'm not a gangster, but I would ride for you, and if it came down to it, I would die for you. I'm not a gangster, but I get high with you. I would throw away my whole life for you. Okay. One, I don't think he understands what a gangster his just right off the bat. I'm just gonna take that. Two, did he write this is a love song to his own ego? Because man, that last line really turn out to be prophetic. Yeah, I would ruin my whole life
or whatever. So and also three, this is where the song really gets starts to get good. And why by good I mean just not as bad. Right. So this is when the rapper of the game shows up. Now I'm guessing the game was like, well, if the check clears.
I'm thinking it's like, I will soak this fella.
Apparently the check clear because Elizabeth, he was there. Yeah, after the break, I will be back to tell you all about what the game does on this video shoot. I'm sure that it's gonna bend your brains. Okay, Elizabeth, I promised you the game on the set whites Over Paris with my man Rob Tall University. Yes, now this is gonna be so good. I'm just gonna need you to just pretty much just close.
Your eyes they are closed, and picture it.
Yes, Downtown La, nighttime, the industrial section the arts district. You are standing by a generator, drinking coffee with a pair of Teamster truck drivers. You're in charge of a Rolls Royce, part of the luxury vehicle rental package for the music video shoot. You've never heard of the band. You could care less about the band. You don't even care about this shoot. But when you heard that the game would be on the set, that's when you decided
you would be the one to take this gig. Normally you'd send over one of your coworkers for these late night independent shoots. But you are a huge fan of the game, and ever since he first dropped his EP back in the day on the label of JT the Biga Figure, you have been down with the game. Now, when he dropped his major label album, The Documentary, you thought that album was a masterpiece. You still haven't forgiven fifty cent for pushing the game out of docre Is
Aftermath Records. No, that is wrong.
I will never forgive him for that.
But now this video shoot is your chance to finally see the game up close personal. Oh yeah, Now at the moment, one of the pair of Teamster truck drivers is having a big chest rumble and chuckle. It's the spring of twenty eleven and you were all laughing about the late night talk show host take on Obama ordering the strike that took out Osama bin Laden.
Uh, that's funny.
Yeah, And kim Old did a weekend at Bernie spoof that had been lauden enjoy quote one last day in the Sun. It's a weird time in the culture. Anyway. You see the game as he steps out of his trailer. It's one of those rental star wagons trailers, the kind that they're always on the streets of the valley for real movie shoots. Whoever is paying for this music video shoot is going all out. I say, hey, babe, this young production assistant tells you it's time to bring around
the Rolls Royce for this part of the shoot. But you were already headed over to speak with the game. Yeah, plan to tell him all about how much fifty cent was a bum. But yes, you're like, I guess that can wait, you think to yourself as you go wandering over to the car. You are at work. You can always speak with him later. Since you're the one who hearing the car around, he's supposed to be in the car, so you will have a moment with him no matter what.
So you go walking off on the soaked down streets, the ones that are wedded to look the best for a music video, and you splash through the puddles of neon light, and then you hop in the whip and you do your best impression of driving Miss Daisy, and you wheel that luxury auto around the late night downtown video shoot. And when you get back to the set with the car. You hear the video playback booming the song.
It bounces off the downtown canyon walls. The lyrics you hear are thankfully from the game's portion of the song, but they are not good. Oh no, peace to my old girl. Got me a new one. She's so hood, she's so me. I love is like a drug and we od cuz got me a winner. Charlie Sheen invited us for dinner. Oh y, and we both went in her and we both went our separate ways, and Charlie had this to say, I'm not a gangsta.
Okay, someone needs to.
Go get you. You're all out the window and park the car. Sit there for a moment. You wonder if this is really how you want to spend your one wild life. You contemplate turning the Rolls Royce back on and just driving away, but you have bills to pay, and so you're a boss is expecting his car back at the rental place. So instead you tell yourself I'm not a gangstuf. And then you open the door to
the Rolls Royce, step out and shut the door. You ask a production assistant, where can I find mister lights over Paris? Okay?
Now, I'm just gonna go take a silk wood shower.
Get that off. You imagine the Charlie sheen of it all.
No, I can't. I don't want to.
At the start of twenty eleven, Rob Tay University is on top of the world. You'd have to look up to see him. Yeah. So he's the frontman of a fake band. He has a very real custom to her bus. He's got a spot on the Billboards chart for up and coming new bands. He's got an album that's out there. It's an EP. He's a couple of songs, but he's got videos and the games in it, and you know things are about to go boom for him. But then the banks show up and they're like, hey, man, remember
when we gave that dude that money? Yeah? Yeah, has he paid us back yet? No, I haven't heard from him. Right, Well, they had expected their money back. It wasn't a donation, right. So the trouble starts with a series of friendly calls. Right now, these are not actually calls from Bank of America. These are not quotes, but this is how I imagine the calls I would have gone.
This is probably way better.
Yeah, so sir, it's Bank of America calling. We keep missing you. This is the fourth message we've left. We'd like to discuss your repayment schedule for your loans. Please call your earliest convenience. You know a couple of days, sir, Bank of America calling, so I haven't heard from you. Please call back at the earliest convenience. Another week passes Bank of America again. Look, man, you have millions of dollars of our money and we expect you to pay
it back. You better call us back. Another week goes by, still no hearing nothing from him. Bank of America gets back on the phone. Hey man, Bank of America trying to dodge us. You think that's gonna work out for you? Bank of America is gonna get its money, pal, But you know what you go, You run and hide. You try to hide from us, because Bank of America is gonna find you. Your ass is grass and we are the lawnmower. Good day, sir. Now that's just how I imagine.
That is not what Bank of America said.
That's their call center script.
That's the vibe though, right. I've never worked in a call center, but it seems like that's what they would say. Anyway, August twenty eleven rolls around. He's still managing to dodge the banks as they're circling on him, going where's our millions of dollars? So the front man eventually does have to call the banks back. So what does he say? What's he going to tell them about the money and
his rise to stardom? The investment's going great, guys were on the billboards hot seekers album, well, he explained to He calls him up and look, I know I missed your guys calls, but I was on the road, man, rockstar, I was on tour, you know what it is. And they're like, oh yeah, okay, Well, when are we gonna get our money? He's like about that, man, I got updates. Look okay, So I'm gonna put everything on the table
with you, guys. I was in a car wreck. I'm on pills now, so things aren't going so well for me. I'm dealing with an incredible amount of pain here, guys. That sounds like a pick exactly where's our money? Rob? So he's like, look, and by the way, Lizabeth, just to keep facts on the table. There was no car accident, and I don't know where it was on pills. But anyway, so the banks are Yeah. So at this point, the
banks are fully after up. So what does our amateur ponzi scammer do next, Well, he keeps reaching for those stars and he's running out of time. But in October twenty eleven, Lights Over Paris's booked to play a big gig in.
La Right, Oh, yeah, is this their first gig?
No, he's playing like small gigs at this point. But he's gonna play a gig at the Roxy. This would be like their first bank gig. Right. It's a club up on the Sunset Strip and it's like, you know, rock star Legends, so it's a space you want to be in. Right. For some reason, I'm thinking he knew the banks might know that he was going to be there because he's lights Over Paris and he's worried that if I go somewhere Ritzman advertised, there's gonna be people
waiting for me. So what does he do? He sends a DJ. He's like, just go hit play on like the laptop. Yes, he sends a DJ to his biggest gig yet. And yeah, then.
Were they playing like were they opening for somebody or no?
It was his gig, He just you be lights Over Paris.
To anyone buy ticket.
I don't know the deal on that part.
I have so many questions.
I'm going to call the Rocks. So he gets to the gig, the DJ and a process server is there to love it with court papers and he's like, are you mister a lights Over Parison guys? I know, yeah, it says so, but I mean I just said that on stage, but I'm not him. It's complicated, Like, well, here and they hits him with the papers, right, the papers are not from the bank, they're from his landlord. He's now being sued because he's months behind darn rent
as well. He's pretty much blown the cash at this point, the millions are gone, right, So what does our man do now? Well, he finally does something smart, finally something I'm proud of. He leaves the country. He gets the hell of die.
Thinking about like if I suddenly had all this money in my head, I'm like, okay, I could pay the electric, Oh my gosh, I could pay water, no problem.
This cat yeah no, he's he's in MAJORCA, so he's not I'm out of here. But then he does the like another rob Tall University thing. He comes back, He comes, He comes back to America for god knows what reason. And in February twenty thirteen, he has a flight coming in from Buenos Aires and he touches down in Miami International Airport. It was an auspicious day for him. It was his thirtieth birthday and his life was about to change. He was a man. Now, No, that's not what it was.
When he walks into Miami International, there's a crowd of folks there to meet him. They it's like a real rock star returning home. It's all these people cameras. But no, it was a flock of Feds. The Feds are there to meet him at the airport. They arrest the front man, and his rock star dreams were now officially done. Yeah, he was in court the very next day to be arraigned. And then what does he do. The day after that he's bailed out. He goes into a bank and he asks,
I can do not stop it. He has tried to defraud the bank from millions of dollars to pay off the banks that he's now in trouble for.
Oh my god.
According to the.
The day after he gets the day after.
He's arraigned the US Attorney's office, like they like when you read the reports, they're just like shocked. At one point, they're at quote the day after he pleads guilty, he goes into a credit you do Norrange County, California, and it does exactly the same crime one more time. That's in the credit credit Like, do you guys have the same reporting as banks? So I don't know why he thinks he can get away with this. He's not good, but anyway, whatever, you know, he decides to go for it.
And uh, he said he wanted to just you know, they said give all the money to the banks. He's like, oh, I'm trying to defraud them to pay you guys. It's not screw them, right guys. But his lawyer, the guy we already met, al Jaron, he claimed that his client was not the one who was at fault, right I already told yeah, he said he quote, he knowingly submitted false numbers on fraudulent documents, but the banks took them
at face value. They kept upselling him. So he's claiming that the banks didn't do their job like his client. He's like, they would have done their job. Client couldn't have gotten away with this. And then he said, then, because they did give him, as they told you, additional loans. His lawyer says, quote, the banks were really eager to loan him a lot of money, and they did go
with him. They showed him around the recording student. They looked at face value what he was telling them and the documentation he was showing them, and they loan Rob the money. Damn it, Banks, Why did you do that? Rob?
Is why the rest of us can't They can never get anything taken at face value.
Oh my god. Completely Well the judge, of course threw this out. He just laughed at the face of it. He's like law. And then so his girlfriend comes into court. She's trying to, like, you know, help him out. I don't know how he has a girlfriend, but he has a girlfriend someone like really loves and cares and believes in his dream. And she says, and I quote, I know that Rob knows what he did was wrong. But I also know is that a lot of what Rob did came from the passion of wanting to live out
his dream, the dream of being a rock star. Starting lights over Paris was not a selfish attempt at fame, but rather a way to involve so many people in a shared dream. I would love to imagine that. Now, remember the brothers they were dragged in, the Salazar brothers, Yeah, they were part of that shared dream. Well they got their time in court as part of that share dream. Yeah.
So yeah, so he broke some off for.
Them to one point seven millions for them. Yeah, and so they had to plead guilty to loan fraud and they also went to prison. Yeah, so thanks for that shared dream. Then there's lights over Paris. The band.
You can be wondering, what about the band?
How do we get that band back together? Well, the keep in mind session musicians, right, we've got we've gone over that. But the band is not calling it quits. I don't know what that means because there is no band. But apparently a Japanese record label signed Rob and the band to a recording contract. And this happened just before he pleaded guilty. Right, so this was like he finally got his dream, right he made he signed the record contract. So anyway, in the meantime, he can now write new
songs while he's behind bars. It worked out for Merle Haggard. I mean, like maybe this could do it. But at the moment he's in a federal prison in El Paso, Texas, a place called Latuna. If you were in a place called Latuna, Texas, you are Yeah.
I'm just thinking like any he would ever make money off of what he's doing, but like if he were to make royal like royalties, it would go to restitution.
Yeah yeah, yep. So like he's gonna make royalty, Well, start right, you get all those pennies from YouTube, send them that way. So dude spends his days now learning Spanish, taking yoga classes, and fiddling around on the guitar. On the guitar. SO twenty twenty caught up to him. They did an interview from jail from prison rather Rob Tall University said of his brief time as a rock star, and I quote the thing I regret is kind of
losing control. My lifestyle was crazy, and I was open deep down that I could rectify the situation and pay these things back. It was crazy, man, crazy. You can hear the music with the lyrics and how he talks. He's just he's just right.
There, guyse it was so crazy what everyone made me do.
Could you believe that that was wild? Guse so It must have been like so far down in him that that desire to rectify the situation that was just buried by all of his burning desire.
Yeah, everything that was like a log jam.
Yeah, he couldn't pay. Yeah, yeah, exactly all fluxed up there.
And who did that? Who did that to him?
Oh? The banks? Elizabeth, Do we have a ridiculous takeaway?
My ridiculous takeaway would be number one. I still don't understand how these banks went ahead and made those loans.
I mean, I didn't think that a studio, even if it was making twelve million dollars, would be something that they would want to put a collateral and we're going to give you three million.
Against Yeah, it makes no sense. And more than one bank.
Yeah, do you want to get into the recording industry as Bank of America?
Anyway?
Can you sell that to somebody? I don't think it's worth that enough on paper that it's like it carries value.
So my takeaway is that this whole thing makes no sense.
No, there you go. Money is not real.
No, it's not.
Well, thanks for that one, Zarin. You're welcome, Zarin. So I'm just gonna do it for you, Elizabeth, you're not going to do it. I'm doing it for you, all right. You can find us online if you'd like a ridiculous I'm about Twitter and Instagram. We also have a pitching new website, ridiculous Crime dot com. Emails if you like a ridiculous crime at gmail dot com. Also, we do talkbacks on the iHeart apps, so download that and talk back at us well. Once again, thanks for listening. Thank you.
Ridiculous Crimes mostly by Elizabeth Dutton and Zarah Rinett, produced and edited by lead singer and driver of the Winnebago Dave Houston. Research is by Marissa Lights over Paris, Texas Brown and Andrea Lights over Paris, Indiana. Song Sharpen Tear, our theme song is by Thomas String, Daddy Lee and Travis the Strings. She's Incident cover band director Dutton. Executive producers are Ben We need a tour of Us Bowlin and No No, we need a tour Train Brown Ridics Why Say It One More Time?
Ulus Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts from iHeartRadio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.