Yellowstone Isn't Just for Duttons: Tim Blixseth

Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Zaren Hello, Elizabeth, Hey, do you know it's ridiculous?

Oh my god. Yes, I didn't expect you to just.

Come like coming right out of the gate. You know what, No nonsense, cut to the chase.

You know. I'm always trying to like expand how long I can hold my breath underwater. It's just like one of my own hobbies. I've been trying to get it up to two and a half minutes. I'm still in the over two, but not near near two and a half. I need a lot of I need to work. My goal is three. Anyway, My point is I looked up to see how long like it is, like, what's the longest thing? Was overhold their breath? Twenty four and a half minutes? Twenty twenty four minutes. Yes, it's a deep No.

No.

Yeah, so I looked this up to quantify it for you so you could put.

This people in the briny deep wood. Yeah, they've been holding it forever.

Correctly Baby Jones's locker crowd with these in terms you would relate to, And that's the way I didn't want you to be like, why that can't be possible. I was like, no, I'll put these in terms of you can relate to. In the December is song Sunshine, there's a line, why hold your breath until your face turns blue?

That is ridiculous. And I also just don't buy it.

You don't buy it.

You've seen people, oh yeah, does he have brain damage?

They trained so that they're they're basically their whole body is oxygenated, so they're not requiring as much pull for oxygen as we would think. They train their body to just hold air really long.

Straw he just hasn't really like string and they give you say, guys who go down dive deep and they pull themselves down by by a rope, they can get further and further, and they're letting out air, but they're also compressing it, and they're moving air around inside their lungs inside of different like sections, if you will, and then releasing bits.

It's why I'm telling you I'm so far behind these guys.

Why I just keep saying, what Dave, That guy could hold his breath all the way through Joan in the garden and time. Yeah, we're talking in our December's terms.

My god, that ridiculous.

That is really ridiculous.

I can do like the human animals.

I can do like forty five seconds, can you No, I'll put you down for like thirty eight tops. I don't know. I don't want to try. You know what else? This is ridiculous.

No, I do not. I'm all out.

Lawsuits on lawsuits on lawsuits.

Oh flax, Yeah, this is ridiculous.

Crime a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous. Oh damn right, that's right. I am you and I have talked about that show Yellowstone. Yeah, total, you're a fan of it and it's spin offs.

Yes, I like eighteen sixty three and I liked the first.

And nineteen ty threes are eighteen eighty three?

What did I say? Eighteen sixty three? Eighteen matter?

Who cares?

I got thrown by the Gemstones. They did like a knockoff eighteen sixty three or eighteen sixty two, I don't know. They did it in one of other episodes recently. They did like a back story and it had to take place in Sam.

I'm cursed to share a name with a character from the show. Oh right, from both Yellowstone and nineteen twenty whatever, nineteen twenty three. Yeah, so's it's a lot for me.

Yeah, I bet, I bet you got a lot of fan mail.

Yeah, I do. Before there was Yellowstone, people sending you like steaks in the mail all the time. It was great. Before there was Yellowstone, the Kevin Costner vehicle that's part of a franchise with a Pynchon for depicting the brutalization of women. There was the Yellowstone Club, more on that later, And before there was the Yellowstone Club, there was Tim Blixeth.

So I know this named Tim Blicks.

Tim blick Seth, You say, Elizabeth, Yes, Elizabeth, that Tim blick Seth. You haven't heard of Tim blick Seth.

I mean I don't. I'm not supposed to tell. I mean lame I signed.

Well, neither had I until a few days ago. Oh really, yeah, So he is a kid in rural Oregon. His family was painfully poor. He hunted to put food on the table.

So they were eating like tree bark. Yeah, like critters, like old shoes.

Yea. His dad was a Lutheran minister who'd immigrated to the US from Norway. So this is sounding very like.

Oregon Trail and he's not a very good man, very.

Yellowstone spin off eighteen eighty three. Well, Tim was born in nineteen fifty.

Oh wow, Okay, a lot.

Of his early story is like super frontier man stuff. So according to his website, yes, he's got a website, so you know this is all going to be really good. Quote. I grew up on welfare in a tiny town called Roseberg, Oregon. We were so poor that I had to hunt deer and elk to put meat on my family's table and endured the taunts of my classmates when I lined up

Yeah.

To add to that, he was raised in an apocalyptic Christian cult. Oh well, he called it a mini cult quote, not nearly as big or sophisticated as.

Song oh scale.

It was called Jesus Name of Oneness. And that's different than Oneness theology that rejects its Pentecostals who like reject the Trinity. This was his parents, like homegrown blend.

His family cult.

Yeah, like his family did it. According to his CNN Money article, quote, the blick sets belong to what Tim describes as quote a local cult known as the Jesus Name of Oneness. It had sixty seven people in it, and it was just very strange, he explains during an interview one day last fall from the forty five hundred dollars a night Botaga Vanetta Suite at the Saint Regis Hotel on Fifth Avenue. What I know they like the whiplash David. You've come a long way, baby, I'm telling you. Yeah.

So he rebranded some Docus.

Pack mules timber. I'm loving this is like Oregon in the early sixties. Yeah. So this little log cabin hustler, right, he's selling donkeys. Not enough, he goes he wants to go bigger. He was still in high school when he got into real estate.

One of those kids.

He bought a house and he flipped it. He sold it to one of his teachers, and that was just the beginning. Like so in a few years he's doing like big land deals. Like he's got that thing like where you start out with a paper clip and you try and trade it to get stuff. That's like bigger and bigger. I did not like those games no anyway, Like I would just be like I like paper clips.

And then the first thing exactly.

With this, So he was like he would have rocked it in that. So he's doing in real estate stuff, but that wasn't his day job. He worked in a timber yard. He was bundling cedar shingles.

What is that?

You know what a cedar shingle is for a roof? Yeah, he bundled them together.

But I mean, is that like a thing like were he is he inventing this sarin?

They're not going to bundle themselves that. Yeah, he was just like on the on the job, like wrap and twine.

So that you guys ever thought about selling these in bulk time?

Yeah, bundling them up? They're like put them in packs of twenty five.

He was selling exactly.

So a while away at the time, he hummed tunes to himself. Okay, because as a kid, he wasn't allowed to listen to music because that part of the doomsday. No music, no playtime, no holidays. Yeah, but he loves music like it's it's a part of him, and so he would sneak a radio into his room and listen quietly at night to like the hits of the day.

Okay.

He loved to listen to music, create it, perform it. It was his passion, a passion.

It's like, so he's like it's like foot loose, yes, but less dancing, more music. Yes.

And he looked he did not look like Bacon. That's okay, it's fine. Did he look like Timothy Salome Jesus won this? No, I don't think he did. So he was passionate about music, but he was also passionate about money. Oh and that took the front seat.

I bet it did.

Yeah. So by the time he's in his thirties, he was like a timber property baller.

Oh, thirty thirties, tons of.

Investments, lots of land, so much woodland. You have no idea this man got wood. Yeah, I mean it wasn't easy to get there. Like a decade earlier, it was wasn't going.

So how were you getting into the wood industry in this seventies eighties, eighties? I mean I figured that'd be kind of locked up in family, like Wirehouser and all these Like.

When you're when you can trade a paper cliph you know what you're doing. According to Willamette Week quote in the late nineteen seventies, he crashed hard in this way. He left dozens of enemies furious. Creditors claimed he used bankruptcy is a slick dodge. Others charged that he's a mercenary con man who talked them out of their money. Oh okay, so there it is.

That's how he got in Columbia.

That's how he got a little peak behind the curtain. I mean, I wouldn't be telling you about him otherwise I should have remembered that. Yeah. So while he had all these assets in his thirties, he wasn't necessarily sharing that truth. So there are some court documents from nineteen eighty two where he said his monthly income was zero dollars.

I've been there, brother, zero point zero zero.

And somehow he was still at the same time investing in restaurants in real estate.

Okay, have not been there.

Yeah, me neither. And for someone you know whose income was zero point zero zero, I.

Can speak to this.

He was living pretty.

Well, much better than I ever was. At zero point zeros.

He said he couldn't pay child support because at this point he had kids and was divorced.

Oh, he's dodging a lot.

But he could go on vacations to like Hawaii and Disneyland.

Crazy money manager, this guy.

He also could use a helicopter to pick up his kids when it was his turn for visitation.

So this is like a perfect balance. He's going off. Yeah, zero point, zero point. My costs and the main come are perfectly balanced.

Zero's out. So in eighty three he married his second wife, Edra.

Crocker Okay from the Crocker fan.

From the Yeah from the Country Crockers, Elizabeth, how do you do it? Edra was a partner in a local hotel and restaurant business called Chow Chow Willies. I don't know, I just really had to put that in there when I saw so at this point, Tim straight up lumber baron, and uh, I mean, obviously is one who was making zero dollars.

Of course it's a very well balanced lumber baron.

But I'm going to start telling people that my job is lumber baron when they ask work. It's a great title.

Yeah, and just remember to tell me that so I can confirm what's your lumber bearon on page?

Yeah, you're like Elizabeth, Oh, yeah, lumber bear, I forgot zero points zero in the woods. So Tim, by eighty six, his fortunes had shifted once again. He was fifteen million dollars in debt and he had only four grand in assets.

Did he get caught in the market downturn eighty six?

Yeah's eighty seven eighty seven?

Yeah, the Black Monday saving October. Yeah, but I'm saying that you still have a lot of those pressures coming. Yeah.

I think it's just I think he operates independent of those things. I mean, he counts on the woods. He's he's killing so dinner. So what's the guy to do?

It's still raining when.

You when you have fifteen million dollars?

Yeah, what is a man that he's supposed to do?

K bankruptcy? Oh British knights man, you got a lock up like a British Knights cool ideal. They get into the king now, he and his wife they declared bankruptcy in like a real way, not in the Michael Scott way shout So. But then another three years go by and guess what, he's rich again? Whoa, And he's now a real estate developer.

So he declared emotional bankruptcy.

Yeah, he's I don't know any money, but now I do. Now he's developing real estate.

So he's in a real estate and stone lumber. I imagine he.

Also no, he also ran got out, He ran his own record label.

I should keep up. I'm going to fast forward here.

We're gonna jump from the late nineties to two thousand and five. Brace hold on tight. Here's a little snip snip from his website quote. In August two thousand and five, I sat glued to my TV as the Category five storm known as Hurricane Katrina touchdown in the Gulf of Mexico. As I watched the devastation and sheer desperation of the people of the Gulf, I knew I had to do my part. Sure Fortunately, guidance arrived in the form of

Why yeah, I remember he got back into music.

Watching Katrina on TV.

Oh yeah, totally.

I was actually living in Glasgow at the time.

I was living in San Francisco.

It was surreal to be that far away, Adam.

That was my birthday. I had a birthday party and we all watched it. I was planning New Orleans, no way, I watched my plans go away.

I was I flipped back and forth between BBC and Sky.

News.

Coverage was really slow to relay news, but everything was like confirmed truey was coming in fast and furious, but only like forty. They'd interview people waiting down the street and they'd make some wild claim and Sky was like, all right, here's the news.

So we just heard from Greg.

I watched the coverage and my heart ripped open for people.

It's terrible.

I waited for news of my great uncle. He was down there in Gulf Coort. He survived. But the thing is, I didn't write a song about it.

No, you did not. I don't remember.

I didn't even write a poem about it. But Tim he wrote a goldern song for the people, but he didn't perform it. You know who did who? Michael McDonald actually Michael McDonald.

Known a Judd Wait what?

And Eric Benney and you know what, Jay Z says, never go Eric Binney. I don't even know what else to say. So you don't need The Today Show on NBC they used the song for Katrina relief coverage and.

Then wait, wait what NBC NB Today Show, how did he get Michael mcdoni claims or that it raised more than one hundred and twenty million dollars for hurricane relief charities.

What So, Yeah, I watched the video You're welcome.

But it's like when Kanye said, George don't care about black people, Like there's going on? Is this a song in like that type of they have performed it?

Then?

Probably? So I watched the video. It's behind the scene footage of the recording mixed in with like media coverage of the hurricanes aftermath. So there's Michael McDonald rolling into the studio, thank you for having me, that's what he says. It is good on and then it cuts to someone like weeping on a damp sidewalk next to an empty shopping cart. And then it's like Michael McDonald to Michael McColl up in the microphone. He's like doing his thing while reading the lyrics off a sheet of paper in

My spirits are half listen.

Yeah, I mine weren't. So that's Tim's music. Let's get back to his land man stuff.

So I'm so confused. Okay, I'm going with you.

We're gonna go back. We're gonna go back now to the late eighties.

Wow, because I just know I mentioned he had.

A record label. I looked into it. I had to talk about this. Let's go back anyway, So late eighties, Tim did a big deal. He swapped one hundred thousand acres that he and these two partners had in Montana, and the swap was with the US government. Oh. It took two specialized acts of Congress to make it happen. What Yeah, So the partnership divided up this new government land. Other two dudes took the land with viable timber reserves, and Tim took some primo real estate with potential killer

I did? I always do it.

I was over on the ones and twos, remixing and curating those adverts. The thought of my work spend money, y'all. So when I left off Tim he picked up a huge parcels Montana lands to develop.

He finessed the government.

It took him almost a decade to see his dream become a reality, but he pulled it off.

Well. He held onto that lamp for oh yeah, and he was.

Working on it, working at the Yellowstone Club, Like what's thattle is it?

What is the yellow Stone Questions? That was related to the hell Fire Club.

It opened in nineteen ninety seven, and that's all you need to know. Yeah, Oh, Zarah and I kid Tim and his wife. They cooked up a massive playground for the walthy.

They love those. Yeah.

This thing was from what I hear, six hundred acres okay, Yeah. It was a private club. There were homes you could buy. There was a golf course, a gigantic ski resort, seventy five runs what just outside a big sky of Montana. It was like twenty miles north of Yellowstone National Park. The clubhouse was decorated in the very like luxe design. Over the top, there's a caviar bar.

Oh god, the ski run that's what I want, fishakes.

The ski runs had names like lear Jet Glades.

Are you kidding?

No, I'm not kidding you. In I was like, what does that mean? I don't know. I'm a good citizen, though, I'm going to look it up. I said that out loud to myself. It stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

I did know that. It's the acronym. I thought you were doing like ABITHA.

Oh that would be.

Wrong.

It's a total like fat cat shokes. Oh yeah, so Tim and his wife.

They ran a tak My accountant would love this.

Yeah yeah, So, according to the New York Times quote, he described himself in other media interviews as the club's benevolent dictator, and with Miss blick Seth at his side, he ruled with a velvet fist early on.

Miss Blixeth served as chief operating officer for a time, but her neck for hospitality was her real contribution. Members say, mostly with fondness, that Miss blick Seth's aesthetics were more madam than monarch. Indeed, decor in some parts of the clubhouse almost smacked of Montana bordello there, just as at Porcupine Creek quality met kitsch, with Persian carpets and antiques rubbing up against huge marble statues and a couch covered in real zebra skin.

So it's like eyes wide shut. The ski resort.

Pak, Yeah, it's pretty much the only members only ski resort in the world at that point. Really, yeah, there's something like or I'm not sure there was, but what I read said it was. And I'm not going to argue with the internet. Right, since it was in this like prime Virgin territory and out of the way the violently wealthy, our favorite people, they immediately flocked to become memorials.

Oh, of course there was going to be none of the poores.

Here no, no, keep them away. And they were paying not just for luxury, but for the privacy of.

Course, and to be around each other so they could know, I see you. You're here too, We're both here.

People like Bill Gates, he was an early investor alongside Mary Heart of entertainment tonight.

Shame he could finally and be Mary Heart.

I mean, if you had all the money in the world, wouldn't you want to rub shoulders with Mary Hart?

Would fight to get there.

Dan Quail of not knowing how to spell potato fame.

How do I get into this room?

Apparently Bill Gates loved the club because you didn't need to have security with you on the slopes or in the club. Exclusive they had their own security for it was all ex secret service.

Oh god.

Yeah. It was marketed with the phrase private powder. All right, I gotcha.

They have never changed, by the way, rich people the same, never since ancient Rome. Before then, the agent by.

The decor may have been over the top, but the whole vibe was very discreet. So like club members, they didn't talk about the place to the media. They didn't kind of divulge each other like oh they remember they were gifted this anonymity and in a rare move for a place like that, it was totally family friendly. The kids were super welcomes, like most of these like exclusives want to get Yeah, yeah, they want to. They want to you know. Yeah, so just t shirts, no pants.

And that's everyone's dress. I mean, and then and then little sun coverage up top.

People get to see that. Oh my god, you have a little curly tail. That's how that works. You're not familiar. According to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle quote, Surrounding the mountains are fourteen three hundred acres of club property, most of it under a conservation easement. Members can ride horses or hike or bicycle if they crave a little privacy. Alongside the ski slopes sky Crane's loom building more mansions. Business

Selling really so they're basically selling condos.

Yeah, essentially like mansions and then condos in the inside the complex. Yeah, The one hundred and twenty thousand square foot lodge contains ski shops and restaurants, lobbies and bars, and lots of big gas fired fireplaces.

So they don't have like one central fire. People gather around to drink hot chocolate. They got all these individuals. People can be sitting in their an little they go on.

Fine art adorns the walls, Bronze statuary stands guard everywhere, the wineless broadze statuary.

Yeah, they got like knights standing at the door like wooden Indians.

Yeah, okay, let's say they do all right. I just it's like every five feet is a knight's armor.

Totally, like let's go, Yeah, I got done. Pictures like a British cat, and.

Then like in between each one is a grandfather claw.

Exactly see them.

It's very Scooby Do, like Nancy Drew put together.

What was the article? Say, okay, quote the wine list will blow your hair back. A lot of night train that's why, or at least, the prices will almost everywhere you look, and employees cleaning something. The furniture is heavy, the spaces are expansive, ceilings rise and rise and rise. The heat bill must be incredible. Upstairs, you find condominiums, some serviced by private elevators.

I'm so glad I'm a millionaire. It sounds insufferable every time I've been around people like this, but.

It's the worst.

I like people.

I'll tell you it's really hard to be wealthy like that.

I bet have a hard time. Yeah, you must suffer.

I really do the houses there not these rustic cabins in line with the places where these people live. So there's like wine cellars, movie theaters, spas. The New York Times talked about this one spec house called the River runs through it home Wow. Quote featured an all glass passageway to the guest quarters with a heated river flowing beneath it.

Oh my goodness, it's like for a glass hallway.

Yeah, but is it like a lazy river in a water park? So your kids are floating in it? So good? This is just the smell of CHLORINEK.

You're able to work here. I have, Oh, bodily, function's gotten.

It should come as no surprise though it was not cheap to join.

Up what I thought this sounded reasonable, like.

A coupon book thirty eight thousand dollars to give you one of those you know, when people are buying or selling those charity coops.

Yeah, theyk o the kids go door to door? Yeah, did you want chocolate? How about magazine? How about a membership to the Jackson clubes a minimum sorry Yellowstone.

Minimum initial fee five.

Dollars, thirty would have gotten.

Two and fifty thousand dollars.

I was so close. I know it.

You know, it's a margin of era.

In the grand scheme of things with much bigger numbers. It would have been you.

Pay that you buy in two hundred and fifty grand. But then you also have to buy a home or a condo, so you're looking at anywhere between five million and thirty five million there. And then there's annual dues that are like twenty grand, which I think is low.

Do they have a homeowners association?

If people coming down you can't.

Paint your door that he needs your Mary Hart complained.

And then to qualify for membership you had to have a minimum of three million dollars in liquid assets.

I missed it.

I'm so close. It says right on the website quote or it did at the time. Sometimes you have to pay to play.

Sometimes sometimes, honey, you guys always have to pay to play. No one wants to play.

Places doing really well though making money maintaining it's a lure. Around around two thousand and four, Tim wanted born.

Oh he wasn't happy.

No, he wanted to take the concept international, of course, and he told investors at the club would never take on debt. That was like the promise, that's the Tim Blick seth promise. Okay, that it would be self sustaining. And so he has all these investors right, but then he had to scratch that expansion itch. So he went out and he got a three hundred and seventy five million dollar bank loan from Credit.

Swiss personally, so that we didn't take on debt.

No, no, no, no for the club. He used the club assets as collateral.

That's what I was wondering. So basically, like his.

Wife Edward told the New York Times quote, I didn't recognize it as such, but that Credit Swees loan was the beginning of Tim's midlife crisis before we could contain him after it was ego gone wild.

She didn't realize it at the time. He's got a third of a billion dollars to do with whatever he wants.

Well, the original plan, he was going to ask the bank for two hundred and twenty million dollars. Okay, but the credit sweez. They had other ideas, so they like, what about something more? No, they said, we have Okay, we've got all these investors who are willing to dump more than a billion with a B dollars into the resort. Like they the bank wanted to syndicate the loan to big investors, and it's.

Like, we want to turn you a dirt into a deriva. Yeah.

They're like, Tim, don't you want more money? And he's like, yes money, sure, Yeah, so they up it up to three seventy five. The bank made a seven point five million dollar fee on the loan, just off the top.

That works.

The money comes in three hundred and seventy five million. He immediately transfers two hundred and nine million to this entity that he controlled, okay, separates it up.

Is it like in a foreign bank? Also, No, it's just like under American.

Yeah.

The rest of it went into buying posh resorts all over the world. So he bought a twenty eight million dollar fourteenth century chateau complete with a moat outside of Paris, a forty million dollar Mexican resort Wow, twenty eight million dollar private island in the Caribbean.

I'll take it.

Yeah, forty million dollar site in Scotland where he was going to build a golf retree. And we know how how much the locals love when that happen.

Oh my gosh, your favorite come in please our national sport.

Yeah. Membership sales were suspended though at the Yellowstone Club in two thousand and six because of lack of interest.

Really hard to slow down. And yeah, this is before two thousand and eight, so there was still a lot of easy.

Saying, like according to The New York Times. In December two thousand and six, mister blick Seth made headlines by announcing he was building a Yellowstone Club mantz that he boasted would be the most expensive home in the world, priced at one hundred and fifty five million dollars. The fifty three thousand square foot home, called the Pinnacle, would have a heliport, an ice skating rink, and underground parking for twenty SUVs. The home was never built but for

I would love to have a moment to talk to somebody like that. And just like you be like very real with them, be like you know that hole inside of you. This is not going to hap.

Yeah, you can build many.

If we all point and look and go. That's the most amazing man I've ever seen in all my Yeah, it's still not going to do it.

So he's like he's making bold claims. He's flitting all over the world looking at properties. Remember I was like, people aren't buying memberships just because back home at the Yellowstone Club, things are not going swimmingly. Like the places started to fall apart. There are potholes in the streets, and there was a big sewage backup at the lots. According to the New York Times quote, the power grid was meant for eighty homes, as it's strained to meet

Because they have so many like movie theaters in people's homes, they can't make their.

Heats all cranked. But they're like, yeah, exactly, And meanwhile, Bill Gates is like dangling over the lear jet rot Mary Heart. What if Bill Gates had an affair with Mary Heart? There allegedly what if allegedly I think we all know, but so like having it all Jaki like that, that's not the way to attract new members.

It's actually way to lose your current members.

Yeah exactly, and so like that, the investors aren't happy. Nobody's happy. You know who was unhappy? You know it's one of those three time Tour de France winter in Northern California zone. Greg Lamont what Gregg Greg Lamon? Greig Lamon. He was an early investor and homeowner at the Yellowstone. In two thousand, he entered into negotiations with Yellowstone Development. That's like you know, Tim was the representative and he bought a five acre parcel known as Lot eleven.

So cycling can get you there, huh. Apparently in the eighties, I mean talking like lance when he got like advertising money.

You know, no one was wearing Greg Lamont bracelets, and we really should have been.

He did sell bikes, actual bikes, they did, but not many exactly Elizabeth er.

So an email from Tim outlined this deal where like Greg Laman is going to get the lot for a million dollars Love eleven, but the price would be offset by one hundred thousand dollars for each new member that he would bring into the clubs, which would allow him to basically get the property without paying for it if he could bring it exactly. Yeah, the dorm, He's like, who has five on? It? Gets everyone in? Lamon held up, I understand, I know, right to translate. Lamon held up

There's how many four of them?

Yeah? So fast forward to that credit sweet loan. So there was that two hundred and nine million dollars that Tim put into his own account.

Yes, the outstanding personal ones.

Greg Lamon and other shareholders were like, that should be distributed to us because like these the shares are what was used as collateral.

Oh wow, getting kind of lippy. Greg coming in quick and hey, listen, how do I get some of that money over there?

In two thousand and six, then so he and other.

Guys to see how Greg got money.

He didn't play. He and other minority shareholders filed a lawsuit against Tim and all of his associated entities. They alleged eighteen counts of malfeasance, including breach of contract and fiduciary duty. They said that Tim tried to buy out their shares at undervalued prices without providing necessary financial disclosures, despite appraisals that valued the club way higher.

Than he was saying the deal.

Yeah yeah, so Lamon's lawsuit included a claim for the conveyance of that lot eleven. It had been reconfigured and incorporated into a larger part known as the Overlook.

Lots, so the hotel shining. Yeah exactly, sounds.

Like why seriously. Two thousand and seven, Lamon he filed notice of list pendants on the Overlook Lots to like assert his claim on them. So that basically means that he flagged the property in County Land records as being part of a pending lawsuit. Okay, this is what The title pretty much stalls any sale, but him didn't care. The next year, he and a partner formed Overlooked Partners, LLC and purchased the lot for fifteen millions, even though

Dollars settled for that.

Yeah, wow, get it, Greg geez Yeah.

Correct, Way better than on a bike courtroom run.

I know things were more than a mess on the Yellowstone side of things. So we'll come back to that later. Now, though, I want to tell you about trying to con the Pentagon. Yeah, this is happening all at the same time.

He's like, I got one over in the bla.

It starts with this dude, Dennis Montgomery. He was a software programmer and co founder of Etrepid Technologies based in Reno, Nevada.

Not a good name, no.

He said that he developed software that could intercept and decode hidden Al Qaeda messages embedded in Al Jazeera broadcast.

Of course, why not.

And he said that he could also detect secret codes in video streams using advanced signal process.

So he's got a secret decoder ring, yes, essentially.

And he marketed this technology US government agencies after nine eleven.

I'm sure they bought five.

And he's like, let's prevent future attack. I won't ever want never again.

There's a billion dollars.

So in two thousand and six, this banner year for Tim Right. He became a key financial backer of Montgomery's ventures, particularly through a company called Opspring llc Opspring, which is a technology firm that Montgomery co founded with Blick Sas. So Opspring wanted to market montgomery software to these US intelligence and defense agencies, like we can identify hidden terrorist messages, Tim and Edra. They get like super into promoting the software.

Okay, and they were like, this is a revolutionary counter terrorism tool.

We should know. We own a resort in montang hang out. So he leveraged all of his connections and like all these Yellowstone Club members like X government officials to like pitch the technology the high ranking federal officials. So for like a really brief moment, maybe forty five seconds, US government agencies took his claim seriously, like, well, let's.

Lipkk to this.

So the CIA, Department of Homeland Security they tested the software and then CIA and Air Force Intelligence Unit were like, this is total garbage. This is a fraud. There's no scientific or technical basis for your claims. Get out. There's a two thousand and nine Playboy Artday, Sir that described how yeah, the software had like caused false alerts, including canceling a transatlantic flight based on bogus quote intelligence.

So put somebody on like a no fly list by mistake.

Yeah, According to a two thousand and nine deposition, Montgomery later admitted that the software never actually worked and he knew it. Yeah, and the former CIA officials referred to it as quote, the biggest con ever perpetrated on the US government.

Could you imagine thinking that you can go and con the CIA's tech people with something you know doesn't work. No, this guy, Wait, that's like I can't imagine like driving over and just making that full drive there. They're like way past that.

But while Greg Leman's suing him, yes, exactly, it's business with Montgomery. They get in all these other lawsuits and counter lawsuits with all these fraud accusations, his intellectual property, theft, defamation and so, like you know, the Yellowstone clubs falling apart. He's doing this.

They're like a monetary distribution system for lawyers, Like we take money here, but give it to lawyers there.

That's what this guy is. Whatever happened to Dennis Montmy Montgomery? Glad you ask, I'll give you a quick rundown of his greatest hits following this scam two thousand and six, again Banner year, he accused Nevada gubernatorial I'm.

Sorry, Elizabeth, I just realized you said two thousand and six. We're a year past him doing the song in New Orleans. So at the same time, he's also doing charity songs. He's really in peace.

He's all over the place.

Okay, go on to but this is now Dennis montud Yes, his business partner. Yes.

He accused Nevada gubernatorial candidate Jim Gibbons of accepting a bribe that Montgomery had offered him. He said, he gave Gibbons I offered you. Yeah, he gave Gibbons ten grand and some casino chips in order to lock in military contracts for the bogus software.

Wow.

The FBI investigated, Gibbons was clear because like Montgomery had faked this email trail that he used his evidence. Twenty fourteen, Montgomery was hired by Garbage human being Sheriff Joe R. Pio a Marizona County, Arizona as a confidential informant.

Hired as a confidential they do tell this to the press.

Montgomery told him that using information that he picked up when he worked for the CIA, there he could expose a conspiracy against our PIO between the US Department of Justice and G. Murray snow, a federal judge presiding over a racial profiling lawsuit that had been filed against the county.

I got your back, bro.

Yeah. So then these NSA am NSA looks at it and they're like, Nope, this is not CIA stuff, according to Reuter's quote. In twenty nineteen, Montgomery sued our Pio alleging libel. The computer programmer claimed the sheriff's office had hired him to quote hack into databases and websites to help improve their beliefs about President Obama's ancestry and birth information.

Oh wow yeah.

Twenty seventeen, he said that he had intel about the Trump Tower wire tapping allegations, and he sued former FBI director James Comey, saying there was a cover up case dismissed. Twenty twenty one, Montgomery said there was a supercomputer called the Hammer that was used to steal votes from Trump in the twenty twenty election, and then that my pillow dufis Mike Lindell. He loved the story, repeated it all the time.

Oh, is that why he's in trouble now?

Yeah, vote machine, the vote machine. The director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, called the claims quote nonsense and quote a hoax. So remember, kids, you are the company you keep. Let's take a break for some ads and up next drama. Wo zaren, Yes, welcome.

Hi.

So we had that credit sweee thing.

Right, I was just a cock. She's sending them an email asking for a loan of about two hundred million dollars.

The show is collateral.

Yeah, I would like to, you know, prioritize some mountain land. I'm looking at like that.

That sounds good.

I'll let you come. I'll have a private club.

Okay, I'd like to be in the club. Dave, do you want to be in the club.

I'm in. Yeah, he's already the vice president.

Oh oh, so you've been talking about it without me?

No cute whatever he started.

So we have credit Sweee birth. All these lawsuits countersuits. In an eight year span, federal court dockets listed tim on one hundred and fifty nine cases involving bankruptcy's civil actions or appeals and fifty A lot of those are ones that he finds. It was just a big mess, Like you're saying, he's just generating billable hours for lawyers. But this was something that Tim and Edra could not weather.

Oh the couple, Yeah, I can't believe she stayed this long in two thousand and six kids banner year.

Yeah, they filed for divorce.

I imagine she so they well know this.

How it works. They told the Wall Street Journal that it was like super chill and they did the goop and the guy who's the beanie thing like conscious uncoupling, Oh yeah, yeah, respectful positive.

What's his band? Uncle cracker, no cake?

Cool guy? Yeah, Tim and Edra they sat down one afternoon at the Beverly Hills Hotel with a bottle of wine and a yellow notepad.

I mean, who among us hasn't That's.

Exactly they carefully split up the assets.

I knew it.

Not a lawyer in sight.

I knew it.

Just a bad moves.

Oh okay, so they're not actually working together. Protection.

You can't always associate lawyers with ranker like it's it's just why to navigate the law with someone training that's why they're.

Called counselor advocate counsel.

This is someone my family's crawling with lawyers, I've been trained to say. But in the end they really should have had lawyers because it fell apart. It fell apart. As part of the divorce settlement, Edre became the majority owner and CEO of the Yellowstone Club. Yeah, he's like, you know what, you can have the club. It isn't really good financial it is, so it is just make it printing money. I want you to have it, please nod,

Yeah, does she not have like an accountant or a lawyer, anybody look at their paperwork. She's just like, oh, I'm taking it, and like the.

Assets for the place were like one hundred million to five hundred million in that category, but they owed way more than so, like, thanks Tim.

He got the balance wrong.

With the bankruptcy in motion and her divorce finalized, Edge made a move. She threw a party. What zaren closed out?

Oh?

I was wondering. Oh my goodness, Yeah.

Clo, I want you to picture it. Yes, it's two thousand and nine. You are a seventy five year old Palm Springs bachelor, a former film industry executive. You are stupid rich. All through your younger years, you put your career first. You didn't really date and never married. A lot of people thought maybe you were gay. You weren't, but you thought working to dispel rumors was silly. Who cares. When you were in your fifties, you were at a beach bonfire trying to close a deal with an agent

Match on a dark desert high.

Exactly look what I did for you. So Edra obviously thrilled to be done with Tim. I bet right, But like, how gross is that with all the like toilet paper anyway.

Don't get me started. Yeah, So she never understood the whole toilet paper like I want to wipe myself with somebody's I've never gotten even as like an fgy type things. It's not how I think of my boy my bum my bum bum so Edra.

She told a New York Times reporter in two thousand and nine, quote, I would rather feel the cold steel of a revolver in the roof of my mouth and pull the trigger than to ever think about living a day with that man again. Wow yeah boom, like for real, yeah, like I'm still like the ground's rocking. In twenty times, a federal judge held Tim responsible for the Yellowstone Club's financial collapse, good ordered him to pay forty million to editors.

Oh that didn't work out now.

In twenty eleven, Oracle founder Larry Ellison bought Porcupine Creek.

Really.

He used it as a private residence for a decade before converting it to a five star wellness retreat, which it is today. Twenty thirteen, Tim was found in contempt for selling assets, including that Tamarindo, Mexican resort, in violation of court orders. So he's just going around like selling stuff off.

I got a different country. You can't stop, it's right.

He was jailed in December twenty fourteen for failing to disclose the details of that sale. He got released after seven days, but then he was re arrested April twenty fifteen and locked up for continued non compliance. He did fourteen months in jail for all these like contempt charges and stuff.

Contempt.

Yeah, charge his third wife, Jessica, because he got married after the Yeah, she served from divorce papers when he was in jail.

It's third way, third wife that didn't last long. No, okay, now, want to hop on that grenade, that financial grenade. I don't understand.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a two hundred and eighty six million dollar judgment against him for fraudulent transfers relating to the club. In twenty eighteen, he finally reached a settlement with creditors and agreed to pay three million. That's it. He sued the state of Montana over the bankruptcy, but an appeals court cleared them last year. And it looks like there are various pending lawsuits over other random stuff.

But like whatever, he's still out there in court.

He's out there. Yeah. The Yellowstone Club still exists. In June of two thousand and nine, it was sold for one hundred and fifteen million to a private equity firm. Cross Harbor Capital Partners. One of the club members is like the guy who owns it. Coming out of bankruptcy, they were able to clear the debts positive cash flow. Membership doubled to more more than five hundred households.

Yeah, and then there.

Since twenty thirteen, Cross Harbor has been like working with all these other entities, expanding the heck out of the property, gobbling up neighboring tracks and resorts. Yeah. Current high profile members include Bill Gates, still Mark Zuckerberg, j Lo Justin Timberlake, and Jessica Biel, Tom Brady, Nick Woodman's CEO of GoPro, Stuart Butterfield, a founder of Flicker and Slack, and then Phil Mickelson. He's up in there too, So Zarin, what's your ridiculous takeaway?

Rich people they're just not like us, No, no.

I just like I can't imagine constantly making money, losing money, losing other people's money, you know, Like, and then the people who use bankruptcy is just like a wipe the slate. It doesn't make a difference because like if you're a financial divorce, yeah, if you're not, it'll ruin you, you know what I mean? And like and even then not all your debt gets wiped. So it's like anyway hard to do. Yeah, you know what I need?

What do you need, Elizabeth? Talk back? I thought you're gonna say it's some comfortable shoes and slip into.

Well always, but can we even talk back?

I went hi? Everyone.

So when I was twelve, I was very religious, and when doing a school project, we couldn't get the computer to turn on. And thus I decided to start prayer for the computer, trying to scare the devil away, and me and all my classmates, the six of us were like praying for about an hour to scare the demon away from the computer. I then realized that the computer wasn't plugged in, so I did that very quickly and pretend that it was the prayer that was that got

It's amazing. Do you know what the Lord showed you? That it wasn't plugged in?

There you go, yes, unplugged it. Yeah.

I love just the vision of all.

These staring at their computer.

That's it for today. You can find us online at ridiculous crime dot com. That is actually the winner of America's Next Top Model.

Whoa, we went again.

Congratulations. We're also on Blue Sky Instagram. We're on YouTube Ridiculous Crime pod. Oh. We also we had this whole thing going on Instagram about rud dude interns. Yes, where rude dudes were submitting pictures of their pets and we were sharing those and so we're going to try and get those going at some point up on the website Collection Gallery Gallery Gallery of interns. So look for that emaila.

Submit like, go to the Gmail account.

Yes, send them the Gmail. You give us a little account of what their name is and something funny or not. Just the picture of the names.

Fine.

Email us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. Leave a talkback on the iHeart app. Whatever you do, reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Mayor of Jellystone Park, Dave Cousten, starring Annalys Rutger as Judith. Research is by Artistan Voodoo Doll Craft's person Marissa Brown. The theme song is by toilet paper printer Thomas Lee and Yellowstone Club chief sledding

Riudiquious Crime Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.

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