Oh My Fraud

In the 1970s, two lifelong friends set out to disrupt the computer leasing industry.



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Creators and Guests

Host
Caleb Newquist
Writer l Content at @GustoHQ | Co-host @ohmyfraud | Founding editor @going_concern | Former @CCDedu prof | @JeffSymphony board member | Trying to pay attention.

What is Oh My Fraud?

"Oh My Fraud" is a podcast where the true crime is shocking, gruesome, heinous, but with way fewer dead bodies.

Hosted by Caleb Newquist, each episode explores fraud cases from petty swindles to corporate conspiracies, examining the people involved, their motives, methods, and how they spent the loot before it all came to a spectacular, inevitable end.

There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript.

Caleb Newquist: The lawyers wanted to verify the lease terms with the customer. They needed a signature, or at least something resembling a signature in the original had to be sent directly back to the lawyers. Morty Weissman and Myron Goodman, lifelong friends, brothers in law, business partners. They needed to get that letter. Myron learned that the confirmation letter had been sent via courier directly to the customer in Los Angeles. [00:00:30] That was going to be a problem. Morty and Myron were in Chicago. Without thinking too much about it, they dispatched two lieutenants to fly to Los Angeles and intercept the letter. How are we going to do that? One of them asked. I don't know, Goodman replied. But you better or we're finished. They flew out that night. No plan, no story. Early the next morning, the two men arrived at the customer's office and [00:01:00] hustled toward the door. They watched in horror as the courier walked in just ahead of them. At reception, they explained that the law firm had sent the large envelope to the customer's office because they didn't know which hotel they would be staying at. The secretary nodded and handed them the envelope, while his partner went to meet the customer to discuss lunch options. The other snuck into a nearby room, forged a signature, and faxed it back to the law firm. [00:01:30] Later that day, back at LAX, the two men stood at a mailbox, passing the envelope between them. I don't want to mail it. You mail it? I don't want to mail it. You mail it. In the midst of the frantic back and forth, the envelope slipped out of their hands and fell to the ground. They both looked at their watches and then back to each other. The flight was boarding without another word. They picked it up together and dropped it into the mailbox.

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Caleb Newquist: This is Oh my fraud! A true crime podcast about friends. Because with friends like these, who needs coconspirators? I'm Caleb Newquist. How's it going? I'm mostly good. [00:02:30] I'm. It's freezing. It's freezing right now. Uh, and I I'm not enjoying it, honestly. And it's only going to get worse. Anyway, here we are in a new year, and. Yeah, I don't have much. Uh. Let's see. Oh, yeah. Here's an email that I got In response to our last episode, the Ellie Weinstein episode, [00:03:00] and it comes from David. And David wrote to me, is this the guy that Donald pardoned for the second time? And let me just say, the short answer is no, it's not. Um, second thing I'll say is, normally we would not cover current events here, but less than a week ago, as of this recording, President Trump granted a pardon to a woman by the name of, uh, Adriana Camberos. And [00:03:30] she just received. That was her second pardon. She got 1 in 2021. Uh, she was serving time in prison. She got a pardon. And, um, then when, uh, she was out of prison, she committed another crime. And just last week, she got pardoned again. So. But I have to. I will confess, when I saw the headline for [00:04:00] this story, I immediately thought that our episode on Ellie Weinstein was was fucked and I freaked out and I and I, even Zach, my producer, said something.

Caleb Newquist: He he saw the headline and he read the article, but it didn't say it didn't name the person who got the pardon. So he had to scramble and find a second article to figure out if it was the guy in our episode or not. [00:04:30] Luckily it wasn't. Anyway, thanks for writing in David. And you know, maybe Ellie Weinstein will get a second. Pardon? I don't know, I don't even think he's reported to prison yet. It's that fresh. Uh, so anyway, um, let's see one more thing. Couple. Well, just a couple of housekeeping things. Uh, our survey about our Patreon is still available. The link is in the show notes. Do us a favor. Take the survey. Uh, if [00:05:00] you want more. Oh, my. Fraud content. Um, this is how you can let us know. And and, you know, let us know what you would like. Okay. Or you can just email us. Oh, my. Fraud at CPE. Com. And that's probably the last time I'll mention that. All right. Then the survey I won't we won't bother you anymore with the survey after that. Okay. Okay. And finally, as always, um, if you need someone to talk about fraud or ethics for your little event or a conference or training [00:05:30] or whatever, I would be happy to talk to you about that. So email oh my fraud at CPE. Com to get more information. Okay, that's enough business.

Caleb Newquist: Time for some fraud. Two childhood friends, Mordechai Weissman and Myron Goodman. These two guys, Morty and Myron, they went back. They went to the same yeshiva in Brooklyn. They [00:06:00] attended Brooklyn College together. In 1969, Myron married Lydia Ganz, whose sister was already married to Morty. So I guess it must have seemed perfectly natural for them to go into business together, which they did in 1970 above a candy store in Brooklyn. They founded OPM Leasing services. What were they [00:06:30] leasing? Computers. Morty was the marketing guy. Myron handled the back office. Now, in the early 1970s, if you were in the computer business, I have to imagine. Anyway, I wasn't around, but as much as I am aware. Uh, if you're in the computer business, especially kind of at the enterprise level, you know, big business, there was one company that [00:07:00] you wanted to be in business with, and that company was International Business Machines, aka IBM. Now, I might be overstating this, but IBM, they were like the game in town. They were the only game in town. And I mean, again, maybe I'm overstating, but at that time they were creating the future. They were this big, innovative [00:07:30] company these days. Uh, IBM is kind of like, I don't know, the Norma Desmond of tech companies. If you get that joke, you get that joke. Anyway, yeah, the Norma Desmond of tech companies. Iconic without question, but a little washed up, maybe a lot washed up.

Caleb Newquist: And who knows, maybe that's too harsh. Let's just agree past [00:08:00] its prime. Okay. But again, in the early 1970s, IBM was crushing it. And so if you started a computer leasing business, you were almost certainly buying those computers, mainframes to be precise, from IBM. Opm was no different. And like virtually every other computer leasing company, it was standard practice to [00:08:30] borrow money to buy the computers from IBM and then turn around and lease them to corporate customers. In an ideal scenario, those lease payments would be large enough. So you could service your loan and then just keep what was left. Easy, right? Oh, and since some of you might be wondering, OPM stood [00:09:00] for either other people's machines. There are a few accounts stating this, but the name makes sense, right? Or other people's money also makes sense. And this came up in virtually every piece we found on this case, and it's wonderfully cynical and accurate. And it seems to have stuck. So even if that's technically what OPM didn't stand for, uh, that's what lots of people said it stood for anyway. [00:09:30] Although computer leasing was a hotly competitive business around this time, our guys Morty and Myron. They had a clever way of getting a leg up on their rivals. So how did they do that? Lower prices? Nothing fancy. Okay, you're saying, but like, there's a catch, right? How did they beat everyone on price? They just can't have lower prices.

Caleb Newquist: And [00:10:00] this is where there is a catch. This is where Morty and Myron were taking a bit of a gamble. Opm leased its computers to customers for seven years. This allowed those customers to make lower lease payments. Okay, that was kind of the practical impact of these longer lease terms. And, you know, there's there's never a shortage of price conscious customers out there. [00:10:30] You know, so low prices are always going to be effective for certain type of customer. But the gamble was this With these longer leases and lower lease payments, OPM was more or less taking the bet that IBM wouldn't release a better product for quite a long time. Okay, seven years is a long time, and [00:11:00] they just figured that these computers were going to be that long, that their customers would want to lease them for that length of time, or that's that's kind of what was implied. They probably just wanted to lease them because they liked the low lease payment. But the other side of that was they were leasing it for much longer than Opm's competitors. Opm's competitors were typically writing 3 or 4 year leases. Okay. Now again stating the obvious here. I wasn't around in the early 70s, but these [00:11:30] days I think we all know that when we buy a new top of the line device, be it a smartphone or a laptop or whatever, It does not remain top of the line for very long.

Caleb Newquist: A new iPhone has come out every single year since it was introduced in 2007. I remember when it came out and they have released a new one every single year. Yes, sometimes you're like, it isn't [00:12:00] different. You know, whatever. But they they always have something. They always have some kind of improvement to, to, uh, you know, mention there's always a new generation. Okay, so maybe I'm wrong, but these days, no business would ever commit to a technology for seven years, no matter how low the price was. Okay, back then, I don't know. Still seemed risky. Opm, they also had another [00:12:30] trick up their sleeve. They required customers to commit to irrevocable leases, and this was known in the business as hell or high water clauses. And this meant that the lease payments had to be made no matter what. But opium, in probably an attempt to kind of hedge their bet on IBM, they offered customers who had completed three years of [00:13:00] their lease to sublease the computers back to OPM, who would then turn around and sublease them again to yet another customer. And if those subleased payments didn't cover the original lessee payments, then OPM agreed to cover the difference. Now, as you can probably imagine, Opium's competitors were very skeptical of [00:13:30] this model. But it also was working.

Caleb Newquist: So skeptical. Yes. But also envious. One obviously jealous CEO of a competitor said that OPM was, quote, going 180 degrees against what the industry was doing. For every business that goes on to great success, there are haters, [00:14:00] right? Okay, maybe again, harsh word. I'm just harsh words today. I don't know. That's what I got in the business world. I think people probably prefer like skeptic. I'm a skeptic. That's what people like to say. That's a badge of honor. I don't know, some people like the hater badge, but it's still it can be the connotation. Not great, but skeptic. Oh, in the business world especially, I'm a skeptic. That's that's that's a badge [00:14:30] people wear with honor. Right. Like people are skeptical of Amazon in the 90s Because they were losing money quarter after quarter, year after year. They did that for like a decade. And now, you know, 20 plus years later, we're all stuck seeing Jeff Bezos smug face everywhere. If you go back even further, like early 20th century, people were incredibly skeptical of the automobile. It was a fad. It [00:15:00] wasn't going to replace. It wasn't going to replace horses, you know. And now Henry Ford is a legend. Over 120 years later, his descendants still control Ford Motor Company. And then there's modern day Henry Ford, Elon Musk, who has no shortage of skeptics. But he's the richest guy on earth by quite a lot.

Caleb Newquist: As of this recording, I had to check this. He is richer [00:15:30] than the two Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. He has more wealth than those guys put together. And there's two and three on the list. That's stupid. Really stupid. Like, I'll let you, you know, infer what I mean by stupid. Anyway, the point is, haters or skeptics, I mean, these people often have valid points. They almost always come with receipts. The numbers don't work. [00:16:00] This doesn't work. That doesn't work. It's a Ponzi scheme, you know, that's that's something you. They always say not always, but that gets thrown around a lot, maybe a little recklessly, but in some cases they're right. Yeah. Some cases the haters and skeptics are right. Either one of two things happen, they're wrong or they turn out to be right. My perfect or one one that I'm reminded of I, I [00:16:30] was always from the day I heard about WeWork, I thought, this is the stupidest idea for a business I've ever heard. Like this doesn't like. And, I mean, I'm in no position to take advantage of that. I'm not a short seller, and, you know, but it just like we work was one of those things that never made sense to me. I'm like, this isn't a business. This is this is something that is this is going to implode spectacularly. And it took a while. It took a while, but it did.

Caleb Newquist: And I mean, that's [00:17:00] the one I got, right? I'm sure I've definitely gotten others wrong. But like, we work was the one I got right and I felt, you know, felt okay about that. Anyway, throughout the 1970s, opium leasing grew to be one of the largest computer leasing companies in the country. It had 250 employees and 11 offices, including a very plush Manhattan headquarters. Its customers included AT&T, Revlon, Polaroid, Merrill Lynch, Xerox, American [00:17:30] Express, General Motors, you know, a who's who of American business and its largest. Rockwell international and aerospace and defense conglomerate lenders. They loved OPM for their roster of prominent customers and gladly extended the company credit secured by the lessee payments and the thousands upon thousands of physical computers. And as I mentioned earlier, OPM customers loved lower lease [00:18:00] payments. It all added up to a booming business. And as you might expect, Morty and Myron, they lived well, eventually settling into estates in Lawrence, Long Island. That's one of the five towns, uh, in Hempstead, New York. If you know if you're familiar. On Long Island, Myron reportedly decorated his baronial. I'm not kidding. That's what they called it. Baronial. Uh, baronial estate. He decorated it lavishly, according [00:18:30] to the New York Times quote, adding a disco and a small movie theater for the 1970s. That must have been, you know, pretty cool. Now I feel like, you know, every McMansions got a theater these days.

Caleb Newquist: I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but he also reportedly pledged $10 million to Yeshiva University and became its youngest trustee in the school's history. Opium thrived through most of [00:19:00] the 1970s, and so it was 1978 when Morty and Myron acquired First National Bank of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. Sure. Why not? These guys are crushing it. Why not buy a bank in Louisiana, of all places? But also, you know, they're in the leasing business, and so owning a bank might come in handy for one reason or another, Her like for a check kiting [00:19:30] scheme. Now, if you're not familiar with or have forgotten what check kiting is, let's quickly review. Let's say you have two checking accounts. One of those accounts has $1.25 in it. The other has a little more than that. Let's say 100 bucks. And let's also say that you need to cut [00:20:00] a check for the electric bill three days before you get paid again. Okay. The electric bill is 75 bucks. Not a good situation, but you've got this checking account with 100 bucks in it. So you cut yourself a check for 75 bucks to be deposited in the first checking account the day before you cut a check for your electric bill. Now, if [00:20:30] you're too young to know how checks work, there's this neat little thing about checks. And that's that. They take a few days to process.

Caleb Newquist: In a practical sense, this is a very, very short term interest free loan, commonly known as the float. So you get this very temporary credit and you cut a $75 check for the electric bill. That float allows [00:21:00] the $75 to appear to be there when it's actually not there at all. This is check kiting aka presenting bad checks. Now, it's real easy to imagine how this can all spiral out of control. You can have any number of bank accounts, all of them with very little money in them. And as long as you have money in an account somewhere, you can string along [00:21:30] the float for as long as you can stay one step ahead of the clearing process. It's, you know, the financial equivalent of the spinning plate routine. And at some point, Myron Goodman, the back office brains of the OPM duo, he decided that this was a routine that he wanted to attempt. It lasted six months. Bank officials detected the scheme, and in March 1980, OPM pleaded guilty [00:22:00] to 22 felonies and paid a fine of $110,000. And virtually no one outside of Morty and Myron heard anything about it. Now, you might be wondering why, oh, why would two successful businessmen use a bank to kite checks? Unclear, but something else was happening in 1978 that could maybe help explain it. It [00:22:30] was 1978 when IBM launched its new series 3000 computers. This new line was faster, smaller and cheaper than anything then on the market.

Caleb Newquist: And soon every big business wanted one, including many of Opm's customers. Here's a quote from the New York Times. At their first opportunity, OPM customers began turning in their old computers for remarketing, and OPM forced to accept knock down rentals [00:23:00] for the obsolete equipment it placed with new users, had to make up shortfalls that reached as much as $40,000 a month on a single deal. That's not good. Not good at all. By at least one customer's account, though, Morty and Myron, they never stopped hustling. Even if it wasn't clear how they were making things work. I'm quoting from the times again. Quote OPM made a legitimate attempt with substantial sums of money to make good, said Kenneth [00:23:30] L Schmidt, vice president and general counsel of Far West Federal Savings and Loan in Portland, Oregon, which had turned in an outdated machine for remarketing. They gave us a whole lot of money and tried to cure it. I have no idea where that money came from. I mean, it's not that hard to figure out where the money was coming from. It was coming from banks. That's where the money is, right? But how? [00:24:00] Morty and Myron were going about getting these banks and lenders to loan them money. That's where, you know, there had always been questions. Remember that jealous CEO who said that OPM was, quote, going 180 degrees against what the industry was doing? Remember that that guy was Edward Czerny, and he was he was a president, not a CEO of CMI Corporation.

Caleb Newquist: And that was the nation's second largest leasing company at that time. It was also in [00:24:30] 1978 that Czerny came across an article in Business Week that questioned Opm's practices, and he told The New York Times that he, quote, showed it to customers for six months and most of them didn't care. It made no difference to them, he said. Even with a big flag, the customers still wanted to believe. But it's not like no one paid attention. A month after the article came out, one of Opm's investment banks, Goldman [00:25:00] Sachs, quietly resigned. By 1981, a lot of smoke around OPM had accumulated. As we've established, money was Flying out the door thanks to Opm's unorthodox business practices. But then, in February 1981, a routine inquiry led to the discovery of two leases with, quote, rather poor forgeries [00:25:30] of a Rockwell International executive signature. Remember, Rockwell was Opm's largest customer. And things started to quickly unravel. About a month later, more than half a dozen of Opm's lenders filed a lawsuit alleging the company, quote, knowingly and with intent to deceive, altered documents and submitted false bills of sale to borrow large sums. They allege that some of Rockwell's leases [00:26:00] that had been submitted for securing loans were fraudulent, and the lenders, as lenders often do, they brought receipts from The New York Times again, quote, the Avco Corporation Retirement Income Trust and the Paul Revere Protective Life Insurance Company charge, for instance, that last February 11th, OPM submitted documents showing Rockwell's monthly lease payments were $54,500.

Caleb Newquist: But when lenders belatedly checked with Rockwell, they found the [00:26:30] true monthly payments were a mere $463 $463. That is not $54,000. No, I mean, the difference between 54,500 and 463 is basically $54,000. But yeah, they weren't they weren't receiving $54,000 a month for this one lease. Those same documents submitted to [00:27:00] lenders said the lease covered four IBM computers worth $3.1 million and were located in Richardson, Texas. Rockwell's version of the lease showed three items of Tektronix equipment valued at $20,000, located in Los Angeles. None. Neither of those things. They're not even even close to being the same thing, right? The suit claimed that the fraud was greater than $100 [00:27:30] million. As I said, things unraveled fast. Opm filed for bankruptcy in March 1981, and Morty and Myron resigned from the company. While a court appointed bankruptcy trustee examined what was left of OPM, criminal charges came swiftly. Just a few months later, in December 1981, five OPM executives pleaded guilty [00:28:00] to charges relating to defrauding 19 lenders of more than $190 million. Prosecutors said that the five had acted under the direction and supervision of Myron S Goodman, and with the complicity of Mordechai Weissman.

Caleb Newquist: Four of the five were later sentenced to prison terms ranging from 18 months to four years. The fifth was sentenced to probation. A year later, in December 1982, Morty and Myron both pleaded guilty [00:28:30] to running the scheme and were sentenced to ten and 12 years, respectively. The judge in the case, Charles Haight Jr, told how OPM was almost from the start basically insolvent and survived by means of just fraud and bribery. Uh, for example, a single computer would be used as collateral for 2 or 3 loans with different banks. And also, my favorite detail quote Mr. Goodman would crouch under a glass table with a flashlight, and Mr. Weissman would trace the forged [00:29:00] signatures. Sounds fun. Real, real business stuff right there. In justifying the sentences, Judge Haight called the frauds quote in length of time and the amounts stolen from victims are without parallel in the history of this court. As regular listeners and fraud aficionados know, when these big corporate bankruptcies happen, the court puts someone almost always a [00:29:30] very bookish looking lawyer in charge of finding out what happened, figuring out where the money went and, you know, getting as much of it back as they can in order to repay the victims. This is the trustee or the examiner or receiver, whatever. They go by various names. Anyway, they do all this work and then they write a report and deliver it to the bankruptcy court.

Caleb Newquist: And bankruptcy court, by the way, is a special court [00:30:00] because it's so goddamn complicated. And the judges involved have to be experts in this area, and they work on bankruptcies exclusively. Anyway, it's these bankruptcy examiner reports where many, many fun, gory details are learned. And in the case of OPM, it was no different. I think one of the main takeaways from this particular bankruptcy report is that OPM had [00:30:30] plenty of help pulling off their fraud from their investment bank, Lehman Brothers, Kuhn, Loeb, their audit firm Fox and Company, and especially their law firm singer, Huttner, Levine and Seaman. Now, in the case of Lehman Brothers, yes, that Lehman Brothers, uh, a generous reading of the situation would be that they were just doing their jobs, right. They were trying to find lenders for OPM, and [00:31:00] they did that. How they sold OPM as a Uh, credible, uh, uh, lending risk to those lenders. However, uh, that's maybe where, you know, things kind of went off the rails. Lehman was representing OPM in the best possible light, of course, uh, when there were clear signs that maybe the business wasn't. It was all that it was cracked up to be. Um, still, it's not [00:31:30] surprising that they would downplay concerns or even look the other way when they needed to, like the check kiting scheme. Lehman knew about that. But did they report it to anyone? No, they did not.

Caleb Newquist: Similar with Fox and company, accusations were that the audit firm, quote, yielded to pressure to certify materially false and misleading financial statements. The trustees said that in 1976, Fox [00:32:00] had miraculously changed losses and deficits into profits and a positive net worth at OPM. Okay, again, regular listeners of the show will know that we love to shit on auditors here. Uh, and it's not an original move on our part. Auditors always get shit on whenever there's a massive business failure, especially a massive business failure due to a massive fraud. Here, I'm quoting from a 1983 [00:32:30] New York Times article that did a deep dive into the report. Quote, Fox drafted 1976 financial statements showing large losses and negative net worth. Then the report states. An enraged Mr. Goodman told Steven S Cutts, then the Fox audit partner for OPM, to, quote, get back to the grindstone and try to figure out a way to show a profit. And because this audit firm was being paid by the guy yelling at them, that's what they did. Using [00:33:00] a, quote, series of questionable accounting techniques that resulted in materially false and misleading and indefensible financial statements. The report also says Fox applied, quote, sloppy audit procedures that resulted in the firm failing to disclose fraudulent financings and scolded the firm for, quote, failing to allow for the disastrous implications that befell OPM due to IBM's new computers. But the firm that [00:33:30] really took the brunt of the blame was Opium's law firm, singer, Hutner, Levine and seaman.

Caleb Newquist: As early as 1978, one of the partners at the firm, Andrew Reinhard, who was a close friend of Myron Goodman, allegedly knew about the fraud. At 8 p.m., the bankruptcy report stated that he, quote, may have been a reluctant but knowing accomplice. But he denied being involved and ultimately was never charged. Later on, in the spring of 1982. [00:34:00] Accountants. One internal, one external, separately informed the law firm Singer Huttner that OPM was engaged in a multi-million dollar fraud. The case of the internal accountant guy by the name of John Clifton is really something. And here's what happened there. Clifton had found evidence of bogus and doctored Rockwell International leases. He consulted a lawyer and ultimately turned over the information to [00:34:30] singer Huttner. And then he quit, hoping that the law firm would handle things. Okay. His letter arrived at the Huttner offices, while Myron Goodman just happened to be there meeting with Andrew Reinhard and a senior partner. A guy by the name of Joseph Huttner. Yeah, one of the guys with his name on the sign. Anyway, Goodman was there making a, quote, partial confession of unspecified [00:35:00] past wrongdoing to Hutner. The letter from Clifton, the accountant, would have given all the specifics. Well, at least more of the specifics. Probably not all the specifics. But somehow Goodman intercepted the letter, and those details were not disclosed at that time.

Caleb Newquist: What happened next, you ask? Singer Hutner engaged a couple of experts to help counsel them on the situation, [00:35:30] and ultimately decided to keep doing legal work for OPM. And they closed more than $70 million in loans, fraudulent loans through September 1980. And only then did the firm finally resign. The bankruptcy report said that singer Hutner had gotten, quote, the worst possible advice about its ethical obligations. Okay. [00:36:00] Did we learn anything? I don't know. This is a deep cut. I'd never heard of this case before. Um, perhaps you have. Um, this this fraud is older than me. Roughly the same age, a little older. Anyway, there's a few things going on here. Um, an unorthodox business model. Uh, people are naturally skeptical [00:36:30] of those things. And there's a good reason to be skeptical of those things. Um, it doesn't mean an unorthodox business model is a signs of a fraud. But, uh, you might, you know, take a close look at a business who's doing something quite different. Also, desperation fraud is often a temporary solution to a problem. And, [00:37:00] uh, lots of times people are desperate to fix it. And, uh, desperate people do questionable things, and, uh, they believe that. Oh, it's just this one time. How many stories have we done where it's just like, oh, it's just this one time that I have to do this thing, and then I'll pay it back and it'll be fine.

Caleb Newquist: It's almost never fine. Okay. Opm also, another thing worth mentioning. Uh, they [00:37:30] were they were giving their customers a great deal. They were they were they were giving them things they needed at a price they liked. And they just couldn't believe it. And, you know. People don't want to stop believing that they're getting a great deal, that this this is, you know, it's a it's a slight variation on it's too good to be true. And, um. Yeah. That's because it was too good to be true. Another [00:38:00] thing, uh, opium was surrounded by enablers. Banks, an audit firm, a law firm. Uh, they didn't say no to their client. They were conflicted in many different ways. Um, and they allowed things to go on for too long that they knew were, at best, questionable. Also, check kiting is the dumbest [00:38:30] fraud on Earth. I have no idea why. If you started kiting checks, why you wouldn't just bite the bullet and stop it? Because, uh, there's only one way that check kiting ends, and that's with, uh, you either, um, stopping and, you know, being overdrawn on an account or Money falling out of the sky that you can then deposit in the account and then you're, you know, everything's better. Don't [00:39:00] I mean, I don't know, check kiting is so dumb. I remember hearing about check kiting when I was a student, I think, in my auditing class, and it just seemed like the stupidest thing.

Caleb Newquist: Why is this common? Why is this something that people would do more than once, or something that person would hear about and say, oh yeah, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to try that anyway. Final thing. And we do not have time to get into it here, but this whole situation with the law firm singer Hutner [00:39:30] and OPM, uh, there were some very big thorny attorney client privilege issues here. So if that's something you're super interested in, uh, there's a there's a, there's a very lengthy, um, article in the New York Times Magazine about it. And, you know, again, if that's of interest to you, I read these things so you don't have to. But if you want to, it's there for you. Okay. All [00:40:00] right. That's it for this episode. And remember, if your plan B is kiting checks, then plan A might need some work. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for stories, drop me a line at O at CPE. Com o my fraud is created, written, produced and hosted by me Caleb Newquist. Zach Frank is my co producer, audio engineer and music supervisor. Roger Hobbs designed our logo. Rate review and subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. [00:40:30] If you're listening on the earmark, you can earn the CPE. Join us next time for more average swindlers and scams from stories that will make you say oh my fraud!