Ridiculous crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
ZI what Elizabeth does?
See a ro Zeren nice to see.
I'm not spelling your name.
Don't do it this minute. You know it's ridiculous. Oh my god, I do yes, tell me.
Okay, there's this crazy relationship or ratio. So I can hold my air underwater. I can hold my breath underwater for about two minutes, okay, right, Like I can easily do two minutes. I try to get past that. It's really hard to get like up to like three minutes. But I can do two minutes guaranteed. Do you know that dolphins can hold their breath four times as long as I can about eight minutes underwater? Really, we're both mammals. We're both required to sam I need to take a breath.
They can do it eight eight minutes, eight to ten sometimes that's about the average. Do you know what other mammal can do four times as long as a dolphin.
Can four times as long as a dog?
Huh that's what I just said. Oh dang, do you know who sloths? What the tree mammal sloss? The one slow moving trying to cross it. You gotta cark and wait while they cry.
The correct then in half an hour.
Forty minutes they can hold their breath underwater. What yes, forty minutes four times longer than a dolphin, four times longer than a dolphin. Wow, that's nuts. Which is four times longer than me, So sixteen times longer than me. Elizabeth does work.
But you know what I'm saying, ten times twenty times the actual math.
But but my whole thing is, you know how, No, by being super slots, they're saying they can slow down, that they can go into water and slow down their metabolism, slow down their wreathings, slow down all their their heartbeat, all of it to a third of its normals.
Great, it's a slots of shoe money in a toilet, a collector waiting animal before it starts to slowly.
I hope you brought a book.
Yes, Wow, that's ridiculous, right, that's super ridiculous. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
That's what I came here for.
Deserving to be broke? What this is? Ridiculous? Crime a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, ice and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous heard that.
I know you did, ha ha.
You're familiar with the Vietnamese boat people.
Correct, Yes, I am familiar with the Vietnamese boat paper for me to.
Make that transision, ha ha, Vietnamese people familiar, So you are. I'm talking about refugees. They to leave Vietnam. It's so hard to come off.
Of the Oh yeah, no, I understand that. Yeah, how do you get out of the It's a casey case in moment.
Oh my, it were like those newscasters like, yes, you know anyway, US refugees leave Vietnam end of the war nineteen seventy five, terribly terrible wature humanitarian crisises. So when I say major, I'm talking hundreds of thousands of people. Between nineteen seventy five and nineteen ninety five, eight hundred thousand people who fled Vietnam by boat arrived safely in another country, and a lot of others left by other means. But we're talking about those who left on boat, specifically
barrowing journey. So they went up against these wild storms in the South China Sea and beyond oh Indian Ocean, Philippines seas. Those are intense disease was rampant. They encountered pirates.
Of course, yeah, because they never stopped, right.
Exactly, It's not like they're own cruise ships. And these small boats crammed with people running for their lives. Somewhere between two hundred thousand and four hundred thousand did not survive the journey. So what's your ridiculous takeaway? Now? So over order a million people made this trip, but like a quarter of them didn't make it, so trailer of
tiers over the ocean completely. First the people went to like Hong Kong or other areas in Southeast Asia, and then from there a lot of them were sent to resettle in other countries Canada, Italy, Australia, France, UK, West Germany, which was a thing at the time, and the United States. So, like I said, this was a humanitarian crisis, and you had people who'd until then had led really normal everyday.
Live taken away from them. And yeah, yeah, they had.
Good jobs, they owned businesses, homes, land, and then all of a sudden they got nothing. They're out on the ocean praying to at least reach dry land.
Hold in luggage.
Yeah. One of those people was a kid named twan On Vu and Twan was seventeen years old. He was the oldest of ten kids in this upper class family. Me too, Twan. His dad military man, but he also had a real estate business and he owned some land. And so they got all.
This pretty well. Oh yeah, they do it really well.
Yeah, total in the upper classes. Twan gets sent to Catholic school. He's this good kid, yeah, super super smart kid and he so he has this lovely life, one of privilege until April nineteen seventy five, and so that's when he and his family they had to flee Vietnam by boat. Two months later, they found themselves in the Florida Panhandle at the refugee camp at Eglin Air Force Base.
Other than the temperature and humidity, what a culture show.
A lot of culture sucks. And they had nothing. They had to start from scratch. They don't speak the language, like this is rough business. They made their way toward Orlando, and Twan got a job as a busboy in a town called a Popka. He had other jobs concurrently other than bus boy. He was a grocery bagger, did some dishwashing. This is a very common story from that era. So the Vietnamese and the Cambodians and the monk who had
to flee after the war. They came here and they like busted out serious hustle culture.
Total, especially down there the Delta, the whole, yeah, the Gulf, that region in the Mississippi, Alabama, Florida Panhandle exactly.
There's a really great documentary about a Cambodian refugee who kicked off a donut empire in the Yeah, it's called Donut King. I highly recommend it. There's another documentary called Nailed It about how Vietnamese immigrants took over the nail salon Dope and you can trace that to the actress Tippy Hedron. So she was heavily evolved, Yeah, heavily involved in humanitarian work with Vietnamese refugees in nineteen seventy five. Some of the women that she met complimented her manicure,
and so she came up with this brilliant idea. She brought her manicurist to one of the refugee camps in northern California to teach the women there how to do nails just like they did them in Beverly Hills. And so it didn't require a lot of startup money. You could work absolutely anywhere. You didn't have to speak a whole lot of English because like conversations and exchanges could
be done with pictures or holding stuff up. So the refugees they got licensed for nails and then for hair, and then they took over the nail businesses, and I love that so much. So back to Twine, Yes he's hustling. It's in nineteen eighty. He'd been in the US for five years. In those five years, he learned how to speak English. He worked a bunch of jobs, still managed to go to the University of Central Florida and get
a bachelor's in General Business administration. Business degrees they're great if you think you're going to have trouble getting hired by someone. So when I taught in the prison, that's the degree we offered associates in business because like there are other prison programs that offer all sorts of degrees. But you know, we did business because you could be your own boss. No one's going to ask if you've been convicted of a felony if you're your own boss,
which in California they can't ask that anymore. The Fair Chance Act called Ban the Box, so Anyway, if you're a refugee without a work history, it's really tough to get a job. And so for Twan, getting a business degree fit in perfectly with that hustle culture attitude that he had. So we talk a lot about hustle culture these.
Days, not you and I, the culture does general.
And I think you know, having lots of side gigs that you try and grow in order to survive and then thrive, that's what you know hustle culture. I think that for the most part, though, it's just a way to exploit labor completely.
It's like it used to be the immigrant culture when I was a boy, they called immigant culture, when you had to have multiple jobs to survive. In American capitalism, now it was just everybody has to do this because you're.
Not full time. You don't get benefits exactly. You have to put in your own capital for supplies or like a car or whatever, and you don't have any ownership stakes in it.
And also you're likely to compete against your fellow coworkers basically because now each of you is your own little boss, your own little running enterprise.
And so you look at like the Cambodian families who worked just like crazy at these donut shops. I'm talking like eighteen to twenty hour work days for the whole family. Kids. Oh yeah, kids, we're up in there. But they had an investment, you know, they had a franchise that they could.
Grow, and they're investing in their family.
Essentially, there's some ownership to it.
Yes, exactly.
So the work like that is worth it if you're going to work really hard, but you have ownership in it. Yeah, you getting are hustle.
Culture white equity for your own life.
Yeah, you're hustling for someone else. That's exploitation. Yes, so I get I get really frustrated watching old movies and TV shows where you see like a taxi driver or a garbage man or a teacher is the sole breadwinner in a family and they can afford a home and a car and food on the table.
True, basically true till Reagan.
Yeah it's not now, but not for decades has that been true. Anyway, We've entered the winter of darker. I'm sorry about that. I don't call the shots. I just worked there.
It's the hustle. The culture is bringing it out.
Yes, it is so, Yeah, twe I like that name t U A N T one. He's killing it.
Oh good on him.
Yeah, so he he has a degree, he has a desire to make it and what he's hustling towards is an ownership in something. Oh great, you know it's his own.
He realizes that's the secret to America owned some games.
Yeah. So within two years he was leading real estate seminars. He's teaching people how to build a real estate empire that he has not built. No, that he's at twenty four by this point, he's he's building it.
Okay, so he does have enough that would qualify as an empire. Okay, I did to know if he's like, I got two houses, here's out of building.
He's already like he's cracking this stuff up. And by this time he's calling himself Tom Tom Vu.
Oh my god, that name.
Yes, so he started picking people's brains. He met a woman who worked at a title company, and he asked her all about the real estate business, and she shared everything she knew, gave him like little pointers that she developed. He's working at a restaurant and he brought a glass of water to this man, like this rich guy. He goes up to him He's like, tell me all your secrets, like how do I become rich? And the guy just loved him because he was so magnetic. Yeah, so he's like,
I'll tell you the secret to my fortune. And Tom he condensed the secret into three words, three words, three words. Now, I'm sorry, it's a secret. I can't share it with you right now, Zarin, But are you for real? I'm dead serious. So Tom he used that secret and he ran with it.
Why do you do this to me?
You know? He later said, quote, one day a thought go through my head. It almost like a command, go teach people how to do this. So he's like, I have the secret, is there in voices? Now now now the voices are telling me to share it. So, just like his dad before him, he got into real estate naturally. He worked and worked and he saved money and then he bought his first house in Orlando for twenty thousand dollars.
Two years later, that's eighty one. Two years later, he's leading seminars teaching people how to get rich by investing in real estate. How do people like? How did he get people through the door? Like to hear his.
I'd be curious to commercials, oh like late night commercials.
Yeah, so do you remember those commercials of his? Like, I have vague memories. I think they ran late at night. Oh yes, yeah, I watched a bunch of them recently on the YouTube.
You want me to tell you what I remember?
Were incredible? Hit me?
Okay, telling me this is accurate because I had not
seen one since they were like way back then. He's on a boat, like a like a white like bayliner, like some kind of like you know, small yacht, and then'll be like two girls on either side of him while he's sitting on the back of the boat, and they're both in bikinis, and he's wearing like a like a Don Johnson Miamivice style like color combination, and he's always like, look at these babes, and he's like all excited, like he's like gonna sell you the secret, but the
secret is how to get close to these babes exactly.
Here's here's how the Orlando Sentinel described the commercials, super in line with what you're saying. Quote, here's Tom on a yacht surrounded by bikini clad women of geographically proportioned cleavage. Here's Tom and his mansion. Here's Tom with a scarf around his neck, bouncing a tennis ball on his private court. Oh yeah, he is by his swimming pool. And here's Tom riding in his Rolls Royce convertible at a party.
And again with the bikini clad women. When the camera zooms in for a close up of Tom's face, we get some cleavage just north of his ear lobe. Do you like my toy, he says, grinning smugly, referring not to the women but to the roles. It's one of the many toys I have. I'm talking about toy cars to the Mercedes, BMW's, all sorts of things in my garage. You want to be wealthy like this like I am. Well, you need to come to my seminar.
Oh man, Yes, when you started describing that, I was getting the mental images like the car, the definitely the tennis.
Oh my god, Dennis, he's got all the signifiers.
He's like the Robin Leech style of that early eighties.
Well, oh, completely yes. And so the commercials they're pretty much Tom giving like a pep talk and pumping up the viewer, all with bodacious babes landing around. Yeah, and so like there are some that start with photos of his family in the refugee camp.
How does that work with the question he talks about.
No, it's funny because it just certainly cuts over. He's talking about how Hardy works and how much they needed, and then all.
Of a sudden, him on the boat. Yeah, with the boobs.
And the seminars, they're there, you know. He says, like, I'll teach you the secret in three little words, but you have to attend the seminar to learn those three words. And then the seminars are copyrighted. So he said, no one else can teach this stuff. Okay, So he shows off a waterfall outside his mansion. He rolls up in a Rolls Royce. He barks, if you're not willing to come to my free ninety minute seminar, you deserve to be broke.
The seminar's free.
Yeah, wow, free ninety minute seminars.
He was charging to get into the room.
No, you'll see. So there are testimonials in some of these, and many of the folks they speak with distinct accents, which kind of adds to like anyone can do this, and no one who kept out.
That was very much part of the cell. It was he would have people who's like this plantation and look at what he's done, you.
Know, Yes, And then the testimonials, people hold up checks showing like how many hundreds of thousands of dollars they've made from selling distressed property.
Totally I bought three homes.
Yeah, and then it goes back to Tom. He's giving his like wealth affirmations, you only live once, don't let your life slip away. One that I loved there's an old American saying, get off your button, do it like that's on the back of the declary one to say that he's like there are doers in there, talkers, So you know, he's just he's so confident and positive that you can see how people get roped in. And he talks about how he's not smarter than anyone else. He's
just got motivation drive. Anyone can have it if they want. And so these they're ninety second commercials. They're also like thirty and sixty minute infomercials. Yes again, Yeah it's Babes Mansions, Rolls Royce, just.
A shorter, truncated version of the same thing.
Yeah.
And there were there were in Living Color and Saturday Night Live sketches that parodied the ads okay, because they're ridiculous and they're.
So memorable too. It's late night and you know who's upstated late at night shows exactly.
But the ads are genius because they tapped in the people's desire for riches, or at least like better circumstances.
And accessibility to the riches, and they just gassed people off like you can do, this, can be you.
It was so such motivational speech, but then like really plain talk.
And this is still new that kind of yeah, because we're coming out of the seventies idea of like personality st and all this, like you can be and maximize who you are. They like Dale Carnegie, how to win friends and influence people all that, but it's also also very focused on you being charming, and this was like you getting rich, and that's what the eighties switched. It was like, forget all that soul stuff. You want money now here in this world.
Believe in yourself because like Tom already believes exactly. So let's take a break and we come back. We're going to look into some of these seminars.
Oh yeah, all right, sarenes So Tom.
Vu say that without knowing at all what's about to occur.
He's kind of yeah, we'll find out. He makes a ton of money on real estate. Most of his fortune, though, came from the seminars. He'd advertise these free seminars, like you said, generally in like Florida or California, and they took place in hotel ballrooms. You know the drill. There's like rows of chairs ac making the room freeze, and they'd be like up to like a thousand people in these rooms, and you know what, like, let's go to
a freeze saren, close your eyes a picture. You are a young man standing in the ballroom of the Marriott Hotel on a Friday evening. There's a seminar going on, and you are there because you work for events services at the hotel. You run the sound system and sit at a table at the back of the room, making sure the MIC's work and the sound stays clear. You're also in charge of the gentle background music that plays
between presentations. For this one, you've been told to play some cool synth music like you'd hear in an episode of night Rider favorite show. You keep it nice and low, and the beat seems to be getting some people kind of excited and maybe a little fired up for this thing you saw on the signs. That's for that guy, Tom Vu. He has those infomercials about making a ton of money on real estate, but you really remember the
hot ladies and bikinis, hubba and the hubba. Tom Voo's sister has been coordinating the whole event with the hotel staff. She's really nice. She runs a tight ship and has high standards. That works for you. You're really proud of what you do and you take it very seriously. She loves you. She's standing off to the side of the room as people file in, chat over paper cups of coffee and sit in the upholstered straight back event chair. You keep an eye on her so you'll be ready when she
gives the signal, which she does. She nods your way and you dim the lights, quiet the music. You raise the volume on the wireless mic you supplied mister Voo earlier. Hi Tom Voo comes bounding into the room and takes his place up at the front of sympodium. The crowd goes nuts. You ready to bake big money. Everyone cheers. Motivating folks is in my blood. You want to be rich don't you. Well, if you make no money with me, you're a loser. Keep wo holler, clap and whistle. You
have to admit this is kind of exciting. Tom vo continues his platitudes and basically says the same stuff that's in his ads. You're getting into this and kind of hoping that maybe he'll pick up some tips, but no. Tom Voo now moves on to the next level. He tells the crowd that if they want to lock in and get rich, they need to sign up for the full class that weekend. As people walk through the room, circular a pamphlet for the course. You take one and
read it just like you. The brochure says, I want it now, all caps, fifteen hundred dollars for the class. Some of the people in the room just get up and leave. They don't want to spend that money, but others start pulling out check books and scribbling away, hoping for a chance to be the one to sit on a yacht. Soon the ones surrounded by hot babes. Tom Voo's sister gives you the signal and you bring the
music and lights back up. People line up at tables along the side of the room, waiting to hand over fifteen hundred dollars in exchange for the dream. You fold up the pamphlet and set it next to the audio mixer on the table in front of you. No such thing as easy money, you think, wow, So sarin yea. For those who put in fifteen hundred dollars for the class,
they were met with another offer. First thing in the morning, Tom would ask if anyone had sixteen thousand dollars cash available, And I feel like if you did, you wouldn't be in the class. But whatever, So if people did have sixteen grand, they'd be taken into another room, and that money could pay for a five day class. A class.
You don't even get a property. I thought you were getting like like a foreclosed property for that.
No, the class, they're like the class. We'll give it to you for fifteen hundred dollars. You sign up now, we'll give you a one thousand dollars discount for signing up immediately. So from the Orlando Sentinel quote, Hello, darling, he says, extending a limp hand and demure smile. Would you like some tea? Tom Voo stands in a hallway of a downtown Orlando Ratison, looking slight and mildly stooped shouldered, far from the cocky, champagne swilling playboy he seems on
his late night TV infomercials. He wears a black pinstriped suit, a red silk tie, burgundy wing tip loafers, and a thin air of distraction. Dude, the Orlando Sentinel is like hitting it out of the park with this writing. So why would anyone pay that much for a class?
I have no, they're a sucker.
Well, part of the pitch is that the fifteen thousand's going to get you a financial backer. Tom, So you're buying in and if students, if they found a good property, one that was basically ready to flip, Tom would buy the property and then when he sold it for a profit, he'd split that profit with student. Basically kind of like a find a San Diego real estate agent named Kathleen Smith. She fell for it quote. That's the primary reason I signed up. I was told in no uncertain terms that
VU was looking for regional partners. Among students who took his five day class, they could be set up with a five hundred thousand dollars line of credit. What do you feel like you're buying into that and this isn't it.
In the eighties eighties, that's a lot of money.
So these weren't like chilbro classes. They were hellish boiler rooms. He'd make people sit through hours and hours of lectures on both real estate and self help motivation. The rooms were freezing, you know that. They always do that in those ballrooms. No meals were served. Yeah, and then if you had to go to the bathroom, where's the bagsy? Bathroom breaks were like super rushed, highly regulated, like I'm sorry.
Oh really, yeah, I'd like to see him trash.
I know, right, I just go to the corner.
Man, man, that is not a.
Man, stand up? Okay. So then Tom he makes them hit the phones as part of it, so he'd have yeah, well, he'd have students like scanning real estate listings and then making offers. They had to call local real estate agents about bargain properties. And so these are houses where like there's been a divorce or someone dull, bankrupt or something, or they just couldn't meet the mortgage payments and.
Turned into a boiler room's island.
Yes, Tony Martin, ABC, Baby Tony Martin.
His widows are motivated cellar.
This is like a Florida real estate agent and a marketing director. He told the Orlando Sentinel quote, we always knew when there was a seminar in town, there'd be a lobby full of students and they'd tie up the whole office making absolutely the most unbelievable, ridiculous low ball offers. Here's the thing, So Tony has him offering twenty five to fifty percent below market value, and they're supposed to offer a ten dollars deposit. Yes, ten dollars.
That's his standard business. That's a signature.
The law was that agents had to present any and all offers received to sellers, no matter how ridiculous. So Tony Martin told the Sentinel quote, the agents would scattered to the corners of the earth to get away from these students. I don't know if a single deal that resulted.
It was an absolute joke. And so there were times when Tom would actually do a deal with students, and he did, like maybe one per seminar, and he saw it as like doing him a favor and likely like making it sort of truthful when he would talk about these things being possible. So it wasn't the deal that the students thought they were going to get that. No. No, So let's say, okay, let's say a student gets a deal to buy a seventy five thousand dollars house for only fifty thousand.
Okay, a student gets a deal to buy a seventy five thousand dollars house, Right, you're going to do it together.
Job. So then the student turns around, sells the contract to Tom and they get paid two grand for this. So Tom flips the house either like rents it out or sells it, sells it for seventy five k what it's actually worth. Tom has made twenty three thousand dollars on this, and the student comes away with just two grand. How he's coming up with the two grand instead of let's split the profits. It's not split evenly, it's split partially. And Tom didn't lead all the courses.
I didn't imagine he was there at all.
Well, he would show up late and then he would like yam or until super late, like dawn, and the people are paying to hear him, so they stick around. They're like, he's going to drop the delicious knowledge. He's going to say the three words.
Yeah, the real gold comes at the end, right.
And they're living on like six hours of.
Sleep in a week and they're famished.
Maybe according to the Sentinel quote, they also said instruction typically ran toward midnight, when Vu himself would come in and lead quote mind training sessions at midnight at midnight. To Vu, they were aimed at relaxation so students would feel better, learn better, and be driven to succeed. To his critics, it was mind control, a way to break them down.
It's cult stuff. That's here. I was about to say, that's pure calls out of midnight. Our leader is going to come in and he's going to chill all you out and give you the magic words.
Well, and at the end of that absolute terrible week, Tom would make another offer. He would tell the students that if they invested fifty thousand or like sixty five thousand somewhere in there, they could join the quote elite inner circle.
The gold Star Club or what everyone.
Wants to be in an elite inner circ course, and that would let them work directly with Tom like you got handshake. But working with Tom directly didn't bring money directly or otherwise, of course, so and Tom's advice is guidance It sounded really great in the ballroom, but it's falling flat in real life.
It's not working.
No.
I mean, as you said, the low ball offers like way below market value or.
Rejected, but he doesn't have any good stuff.
No, no, So he's not like the.
Whole would you have dinner with jay Z? Or would you take a million dollars or whatever?
This is just like would you cleaned jay Z's dishes st the restaurant where he was? When the students, when they did get someone to bite on the offers, Tom would usually pass on the deal. They're like, okay, look they said they do this, and so no sale, no finder's fee. They finally get one of Tom's old employees said quote, he would run from them. He'd avoid the five day students at all costs.
Wow, this guy John, he is your life. You're Tom Vu. You're just going around like hustling, and then when people actually get your stuff to work, you're like, what do we get out of here?
Yeah? This guy John Reid, he's a real estate investment advisor in Danville, California.
I know where that is.
He told the La Times. Quote. The main problem with the nothing down gurus like Vu is that when you buy property with nothing down, the existing debt on the property is a tremendous burden. The other problem is that it's very hard to do a legitimate nothing down deal in a legal and ethical way. You either end up taking advantage of an unsophisticated seller or misleading an institutional lender by not disclosing that you have no equity in the property. Ah, so the whole thing very shady.
Either you're a huckster or a slumlord.
Well, it's like all of this training that Tom's giving about these press properties, that's not what he's actually doing when it comes to real estate. Like he was investing in twenty million dollars high rise office buildings, shopping malls, that kind of.
Stuff, of the classic eighty stuff, right, He not.
None of this fifty grand single family home. He went the big stuff where the big money is, and so he got his sports cars from those deals, not from suburban fixtion.
He's buying the buildings in downtown Orlando, right.
And he's making ten million on a deal, not ten thousand. So obviously his whole thing, these seminars not sustainable. Let's pause for ads and get that bread. Buy some bikinis for some smoke shows. When we get back, we'll see how things start to crumble, Zaren Elizabeth Tom Vu. He's doing big deals. He's making a ton of cash, making people believe that their little deals are going to make them rich, lying to everybody, and that can only go on for so long.
Yes, he is no longer my man.
No.
So people sink money into this. When it doesn't deliver, there's a problem. They get mad.
I'm kind of wondering if so.
Paul Divine, an LA public school teacher, he took out a fifteen thousand dollars second mortgage to pay for one of those five day seminars. Oh god, yeah. According to the La Times, quote, Divine said he was unable to interest Voo in assisting him in buying any real estate during a year long search of potential investments from Los Angeles to Nevada. Quote. I made dozens of calls to Voo's office, and they would just put me on hold or say the property I found wasn't worth acquiring, Divine said.
Out of forty people in my class, everyone that I know that took the core came up with zero properties.
Forty people fifteen k you get enough time, those things are going to suss out.
Like how do they Well, they start the dupe students, they start contacting the law.
Good.
So, one student who paid for that fifteen thousand dollars seminar wrote to the Florida Attorney General, quote, the Tom vous system does not work. I made over two hundred offers on properties, some verbal, some on contracts. They clearly would not entertain offers as low as I was instructed to make. And so like someone with like a bricked and faulty cyber truck in their driveway, but still espousing their love of Elon Musk. Some students weren't successful, but
they didn't stop believing in Tom. This guy named Glenn Singers, an engineer. He spent eighty eight hundred dollars to attend one of Tom's weekend seminars.
An engineer, an.
Engineer, and he thought Tom's advice was great. Did he make money? No, not really. He did two deals and then he had to move into the cheaper apartment and go back to like full time work because there just wasn't money in what he was doing. Quote. I have not made a million dollars, but there are deals out there you just have to go out and hustle, said singer. Hustle culture the seeds. Yeah, nineteen ninety fourteen students who'd paid all that money to become members of the TOMVUU
elite inner circle. They hired an attorney, Randy Wells. And remember Tom said he'd become their financial backer at that level.
Yeah, exactly if they why they all wanted.
They don't have the cash for deals. Fine, well Wells wrote Tom a letter saying that he was going to sue to get the student's money back. Sue me, sue you, Tom. Yeah. Eight days after the letter, Tom had his lawyers file a suit asking the US District Court in Orlando to declare that he did nothing wrong and he also know and he wanted the disgruntled students to cover his attorney's fees and court costs. I was like one hundred dollars.
He's leveraging a lawyer at him exactly, Okay.
And so it gets settled out of court a couple of years later. The reasoning on Tom's part was that he needed to put his focus on fighting a civil suit that had been filed in California by one of his students.
He knew he didn't get caught there.
He had his lawyer release this prepared statement where Vu said, quote, a smart general does not choose to fight a war on two fronts.
Oh yeah, wow, he's quoting smart generals of myth and proverb.
Well, you know, get off your button to it. That California lawsuit Darlene Harra, who a strawberry farmer who lived in Castroville, California. Hell yeah, yeah, big up to Castroville. So Darlene, she sued Tom, his sister, and three of their corporations in financial in federal court. Yes, smile, the whole family.
Was smart to big you know, spread the risk.
Well, there were allegations of violations of securities laws, fraud, falsead tizing, unfair business practices. So Darlene apparently put up forty four thousand dollars to learn Tom's secrets. Forty four Yeah, this is She's in the elite circle. It's pretty much all the money that she and her husband Melvin.
Had put her hands on.
She worked the phones in the technique for two months nothing, and after a while she started to thinking, maybe I've been duped, maybe this plan isn't fool proof, and maybe I want to be rich, but it's just not possible. So Tom's lawyer responded that maybe you should have worked a little harder. Oh yeah, So, according to the lawsuit, students were quote subjected to subliminal messages, hypnotists, chanting, and various other psychological control methods. Yeah, and other coercive tactics
associated with brainwashing. Yeah yeah, I'm going to brainwash you dummies basically, so pay me to do it to you. So Darlene put in forty four k, but she and other students were asking for one hundred million dollars in compensation on behalf of several thousand investors throughout the country. And so Tom's lawyer quotes said that VU never makes a no strings promise to back anyone. He partners only
on the deals he likes. In the three years that he's been running five day classes, it turns out that he has liked only one, a fact that prospective students aren't told. His lawyer said, quote. Students signed a document before they paid their money they might do a deal with Tom VU, the document stated, but that does not constitute a partnership or affiliation. The VU organization reserves the right to accept or reject any proposal from you or
anyone else. So here's the thing. The students did get a written guarantee that said that one year after graduation, their gross profit for real estate deals would at least equal their tuition. And if that didn't happen, Tom VU Wealth and Success Institute was going to pay the difference. Oh, they have that on paper, and that sounds good. But in order to collect, you had to prove that you
spent ten hours a week on four specific tasks. You also had to have at least three written offers accepted or rejected by sellers each week.
Each week, these.
Offers had to be documented and submitted, and that documentation mailed to Tom and it certified registered mail. And after the third month, students had to send Tom weekly progress reports with all that documentation. They had to do this for an entire year. So this is death by paperwork.
One hun and fifty six.
There's just noble.
I've got offers I've got to do.
Yeah, that's insane, not going to happen. January nineteen ninety two, the Florida Attorney General investigated claims from twenty students. They said that he engaged in deceptive trade practices by going back on promises to help students invest in real estate by becoming their financial partner. The Attorney General also looked into whether Tom violated Florida law by failing to register his businesses with the state, and then in October of that year, Tom was like, I gotta file a lawsuit.
Let's do this again, Yeah, but this time against Inside Edition. Like he wanted seventy million dollars because he said the show aired a false story about his real estate seminars that messed with his business. He said their piece caused him shame and humiliation and.
So stepped on money.
Looks like all of these lawsuits, including the investigation by the AG and Florida, seemed to have been like settled or gone away, and when all was said and done,
he was never charged with a crime anything. Nope. By ninety two, when all the suits went down, Tom and his family had forty seven corporations, including tom VU Wealth and Success Institute Profits Seminar Incorporated, Tom VO Wealth Creation, University Incorporated, Intergalactic Productions, VU International Holdings, Sweetwater Travel, and tom VU Worldwide Education. He had a video production house, he had a publishing group, and like any good slickster.
He wasn't attached as a corporate officer for any of them go. But he was a philanthropist. He made donations to police groups most of the time. He paid for bulletproof vests of course, and like paid for a funeral, paid an officer's widow the mafia. Yeah, I'm just saying, just putting that out there. He donated buildings to the Human Crisis Council and like homes for low income housing
talk Ride. He was big on sponsoring children's charities like Save the Children, and I think that was probably close to his heart. He could see he.
Had personal experience.
Yeah, and but today and some people.
Really do care even though they don't care in business like they can be a very charitable and it'd still be an absolute.
Today continues to live large.
He's still around, still Tom.
He retired from real estate and retired from.
The seven forced out the industry.
Moved to Las Vegas, naturally, and I thought he was there. It was there that he entered a new career. He is now a tournament poker player.
It is either that or crypto.
To date, who knows.
He's one way or another. This man is in crypto.
He wasn't dumb enough to fall for NFTs.
But he's so in crypto, yeah, and also telling people how to own crypto. He's selling. He's not buying crypto, he's selling. Yeah, you know what I mean.
To date, he's won more than two million dollars in poker tournaments.
Wow, it is he has like two babes next to him when he plays poker, where.
He's just like sitting at the table with like a big gulp and just like.
In his most gentleman playing poker one.
He won twelve hundred dollars, his most recent one at the six hundred dollars No Limit Hold Him Poker News Deep Stack Championship during the fifty fifth World Series of Poker in twenty twenty four in Las Vegas.
I know what those words mean, but I have no idea what that.
Neither do I. But twelve hundred dollars. So that's the level he's working at right now. I mean. But in April of two thousand and six, he finished ninth in the Season five World Poker Tour Championship event and he won more than two hundred thousand dollars in that one. So Tom Voo's still out there. Playing poker, live in his best life. He's the embodiment of hustle culture and he's a true survivor.
Oh yeah, and so he the culture totally.
He may have been like slick about his seminars and taken advantage of people, but you know they were all at choice.
You really going to do that?
No?
I mean they could have walked away at any time, just like Tom does now at the tables, knows when to hold him, knows when to fold them. But yeah, he did take advantage of a lot of people. So Zaren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
I can never root for these guys because they it's the bottom feeding part that I don't respect. I'm like, why can't you go and hustle the real wealth. I go up there, get you some money from people richer than you. Now I'm going to shout your name to the stars. Yeah, but if you're going down and taking advantage of like widows and single mothers and guys who are like hoping this is their one chance leveraging their people.
In the seminar or the homeowners street.
Exactly, everybody's getting taken advantage of in this dynamic, and I just do not like that. I know, but I don't mind a good criminal who's like working like this if he would working.
You know, upstairs, punch up, don't always always punch up.
What's your ridiculous takeaway, Elizabeth?
My ridiculous takeaway is that I cannot imagine sitting in one of those seminars in the first place, because I am so lazy. Second place, I just when he says, oh, okay, you've heard me ramble for ninety minutes now fifteen, like I'd be one of the ones getting up and walking out. But that's just me.
I gotta know the three words I never found that no one ever told you you couldn't find. No one ever said. By the way, the three words were this, screw him.
Drink your ovaltine, listen to jazz. That's right, I'll tell you what I do. Need a talkback, Dave.
Oh my god, I like you, Sarah and Elizabeth.
This is Alison, Lily's mom. You just played our talk back about the Cuyahoga River.
Thank you.
It brought such joy just to hear us, and even more joy when Lily was slightly embarrassed when it was played. But hey, I told her, no one knows who you are. Side note, just went to a Guardians Indians game and it was two dollars beer night.
Thought of you guys.
No brawls though, I love it.
Lily, don't be Barrisley.
We're here for you, Lily, Lily.
Your part, your net, You're an honorary intern.
You're good people.
I love that. That was a good one. That's it for today. You can find us online at Ridiculouscrime dot com. We're also on Twitter, Instagram, blue Sky. Just look up Ridiculous Crime. Email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. Leave us a talk back on the iheartapp Lily reach Out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Fizbo King Dave Kusten, starring Aniles rutger Is Judah. Research is by Orlando's premier real estate broker,
Marissa Brown. The theme song is by Tom Vu. Bikini models Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. Host wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are ten Dollars Down, Ben Bowlin and twenty thousand dollars under Noel.
Brown Ridicous Crime, Say It one more Time Ridiquious Crime.
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.