Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Do How is a bit Dutton a favorite person?
Speaker 3: What are you doing here?
Speaker 2: I got a question for you. Do you know what's ridiculous? Yes,
Speaker 2: because you do?
Speaker 3: I do?
Speaker 2: All right, Well, you want to share with the bro,
Speaker 2: all right?
Speaker 3: So sometimes I like to list off things I like. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so candles. I've talked about how much I like candles.
Speaker 2: Do you like candles?
Speaker 3: I do like sunscreen. I try and wear it, yes,
Speaker 3: just burn easily.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you like sunscreen. You also like sunsets.
Speaker 3: I do like sunset Sunset magazine, Sunset magazine as my lifestyle.
Speaker 3: The other thing I like tennis. Oh yeah, I haven't
Speaker 3: played in some time, but I used to play a
Speaker 3: lot when I was younger. I could see that I
Speaker 3: was very competitive. Yes, played all the time. Prince is
Speaker 3: a tennis company. They make tennis probable.
Speaker 2: Oh not Prince the musician. No, that would have been
Speaker 2: really confusing. For the one second there I was thinking.
Speaker 2: I was picturing Prince like wrapping handles like welcome to
Speaker 2: my shot, baby, here you go, get you got like
Speaker 2: a purple tennis racketers a whole time.
Speaker 3: I actually had for a time, I had a Prince
Speaker 3: racket that was purple.
Speaker 2: There you go. You see my confusion, and so you know.
Speaker 3: But so Prince makes rackets, they make they make tennis balls.
Speaker 2: Tennis ball isn't familiar with them.
Speaker 3: And then there's this other company called Vacation.
Speaker 2: There's a company called Vacation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they make what they call is America's best
Speaker 3: smelling sunscreen.
Speaker 2: They seem like a scam. I'm just going to say,
Speaker 2: if you're one hundred business is called Vacation, Like, what
Speaker 2: are you hiding?
Speaker 3: One hundreds percent?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 3: Go on, So they make they make sunscreen, and they've
Speaker 3: teamed up with Prince to tennis company, yes, yeah, to
Speaker 3: sell something called ball Boy.
Speaker 2: I knew it.
Speaker 3: Go on, ball Boy. It's a scented candle. Oh wow,
Speaker 3: called ball Boy.
Speaker 2: A scented candle named ball called ball by.
Speaker 3: A luxury scented candle. Commemorating the historic moment when Prince
Speaker 3: and Vacation employees at the seventh Annual Interoffice Tennis Championships
Speaker 3: stumbled upon an insight that would change the trajectory of
Speaker 3: the Vacation Sunscreen Company forever.
Speaker 2: This is a crazy paragraph.
Speaker 3: Yeah, go on, it's premium. Soy blend wax. It's vegan
Speaker 3: and cruelty free percent cotton wick and generously tall glassware
Speaker 3: as they say fancy, but do you want to hear
Speaker 3: the fragrance notes.
Speaker 2: I'm waiting for it.
Speaker 3: Freshly uncanned tennis balls, which smell very distinct like.
Speaker 2: Car smell, that is specific.
Speaker 3: Crack, Oh my god, that's like one of my favorite things.
Speaker 3: Vacation sunscreen, which I don't know what that smells like,
Speaker 3: but who knows. Uh, Prince cotton sweat bands, Okay, I
Speaker 3: would hope doesn't really smell like anything.
Speaker 2: But yeah that once again, like not really as.
Speaker 3: This is the one that makes me want to punch
Speaker 3: my face, like punch at my eye sockets. Court side
Speaker 3: cucumber sandwiches what like what.
Speaker 2: In every syllable got weirder? How was it? Courtside cucumber what?
Speaker 3: I don't know why, I'm like irrationally.
Speaker 2: Then get backwards it up and I was like, wait
Speaker 2: a minute, there's such a thing as a cucumber sandwich.
Speaker 3: Cucumber sandwich inside cucumber sandwich. How you know this is
Speaker 3: some weird Yeah? Okay, so sandwiches, sweat bands, sunscreen, and
Speaker 3: tennis balls.
Speaker 2: That's what that's what a tennis that's what a ball
Speaker 2: boy smells like.
Speaker 3: Apparently that's that's basically what my summer is at the
Speaker 3: age of twelve, smelled ball boys.
Speaker 2: I called this, Elizabeth Dutton.
Speaker 3: That is ridiculous.
Speaker 2: That is ridiculous. I got one for you. If you
Speaker 2: got a second, please, here's it. Back down. This one
Speaker 2: is you're ready. It's just a I got a it's
Speaker 2: a six words okay, cobra venom as a business plan.
Speaker 2: This is Ridiculous Crime, A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers,
Speaker 2: heists and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free
Speaker 2: and one ridiculous. You damn right, Okay, ridiculous Elizabeth Saren
Speaker 2: got a question for you. Sure you know I'm definitely
Speaker 2: afraid of snakes.
Speaker 3: I do you've told me about that?
Speaker 2: Yes? If I ever tell you about the time I
Speaker 2: walked out into the sky to get away from a snake. Okay,
Speaker 2: So I have I have his buddy, Jeff. Let's just
Speaker 2: take me a second and trust me. This is connected
Speaker 2: Today's crime very intimately. But I have this buddy Jeff.
Speaker 2: He's a bass player and you know how they are, right,
Speaker 2: He's a he's a total bass player. By that I
Speaker 2: mean mostly chill, very solid guy, right, but also totally
Speaker 2: weird sense of humor. True, so base player.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Anyway, so one time I'm visiting him. This was
Speaker 2: in LA and it was like he lived about a
Speaker 2: block above Sunset Boulevard. So we're hanging out and he's like, hey,
Speaker 2: you want to go up to on the roof to
Speaker 2: uh enjoy the night air. And we go up there.
Speaker 2: We're enjoying the night air, and uh, you have to
Speaker 2: keep in mind to get to his roof, you take
Speaker 2: a stairway. You don't go like, what are the fires
Speaker 2: apes like on the East coast. It's just a stairway
Speaker 2: built into the building, right, So then you go up
Speaker 2: and on. Once you're on the roof, you can continue
Speaker 2: going up because there is a ramp that goes up
Speaker 2: on top of the stairway that got you there.
Speaker 4: So there is a.
Speaker 2: Roof on a roof.
Speaker 3: So you guys were like Willie Nelson and Jimmy Carter's son, Yes.
Speaker 2: Up on the roof having a moment, white house style
Speaker 2: and we're on a roof on a roof, Okay, So
Speaker 2: we go up there and to get this better view
Speaker 2: of the city and Willie Nelson our way around, right,
Speaker 2: And as soon as I'm up there, I see this
Speaker 2: big dark shadow and I'm like, what the hell? And
Speaker 2: it's nighttimes, I can't exactly see what it is, but
Speaker 2: what I'm looking at is a coiled up snake. So
Speaker 2: I it is a thick, long daddy of a snake. Elizabeth, Right,
Speaker 2: So I freak out, and me being me, what do
Speaker 2: I do? I take action? So I'm like, I gotta
Speaker 2: get out of here. I gotta held away from the snake.
Speaker 2: So I just step out into the sky. That was
Speaker 2: my idea. I'm like, well, I'm out of here. So
Speaker 2: there was no possible there was no more roof, right,
Speaker 2: So no, I didn't jump. I just stepped out. I
Speaker 2: just walked off the roof like I'm out of here.
Speaker 2: We're like three floors up at this point, right, So
Speaker 2: I'm like a cartoon coyote, right, I'm wily coyote standing
Speaker 2: in the sky for a moment like looking at my
Speaker 2: buddy like you're gonna do something about that snake. And
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden, gravity catches up and I
Speaker 2: start to fall all right, and boom, I hit real hard.
Speaker 2: My buddy He's like, my prank is backfired, and he's
Speaker 2: like totally upside He runs down. He thinks he may
Speaker 2: have killed me. Right, you know, I'm a stunt man.
Speaker 2: So I corrected him mid air, and I kind of
Speaker 2: like like I flying squirreled out of the fall. I hit,
Speaker 2: I rolled. It didn't kill me, right, but I was
Speaker 2: like still so afraid of the snake and adrenalized. I
Speaker 2: didn't care. And then I realized at no point, like
Speaker 2: between me seeing the shadow and me hitting the ground,
Speaker 2: did it ever occur to me that it may be
Speaker 2: a rubber snake, that it may be a prank. I
Speaker 2: was still going, like, why did you get a live snake?
Speaker 2: I'm still thinking it's a snake because that's how absolutely
Speaker 2: afraid of the snake. That's exactly the question. There's not
Speaker 2: gonna be a snake on a roof in Lahit a giant,
Speaker 2: long daddy snake. I mean, it just looks like a
Speaker 2: well fed boa instricter. Oh okay, turns as you said,
Speaker 2: this huge rubber and he thought I'm gonna play a
Speaker 2: prank on there, and he didn't know that I would
Speaker 2: walk out into the sky. Yeah, so this is what
Speaker 2: I want to talk to you about today. Snakes.
Speaker 3: That's amazing.
Speaker 2: I've done that.
Speaker 3: I've been the one pulling the prank. You pulled the prank, yeah,
Speaker 3: and I felt really really bad.
Speaker 2: But did you almost kill your friend too? I did.
Speaker 3: It was my neighbor and he was deathly afraid of snakes,
Speaker 3: I mean like terrified, yes, yes, and I was, you know,
Speaker 3: every year I went crazy at Halloween and I had
Speaker 3: like all like over the top decorations, and in some
Speaker 3: of my like looking for stuff for the decorations, I
Speaker 3: found one of those little snake toys, like the toy
Speaker 3: you put in water and it expands.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, totally.
Speaker 3: So I got a big stock pot and I put
Speaker 3: the snake in there and I filled it with water
Speaker 3: and I let it expand over like two days. It
Speaker 3: was enormous. And then I, you know, he came over,
Speaker 3: because all the neighbors would come over and we'd sit
Speaker 3: out and like hand out candy and have you know,
Speaker 3: dinner and stuff whatever snacks. So I bring out this
Speaker 3: big pot and I was like, you know, I made
Speaker 3: you this like specialty, this chicken bog specialty. I'm like here, look,
Speaker 3: I said it, Dan, you gonna love this, he opens
Speaker 3: it up and sees it and screamed at such a
Speaker 3: high pitch he could, and then he just split. He
Speaker 3: just ran like, didn't look at traffic, just ran right
Speaker 3: out into the road, across the street to his house.
Speaker 2: Yes, is what we do. Abady ran through a door
Speaker 2: if he could.
Speaker 3: I felt so bad. It was so cruel, and I
Speaker 3: was mad at myself for doing something like that.
Speaker 2: But okay, well I accept your The thing about it
Speaker 2: is is like with snakes, is that those of us
Speaker 2: who are irrationally afraid, is that there's nothing like I
Speaker 2: cannot describe it. It's one of the few moments I
Speaker 2: just lose everything, like I'm not thinking I am. It's
Speaker 2: like I am reduced. I'm pulled all the way back
Speaker 2: through time and all of a sudden, I'm a caveman
Speaker 2: looking for a stick. That's all My thoughts are. Fine,
Speaker 2: stick hit snake. Yeah, it is really embarrassing anyway, Snake crimes,
Speaker 2: cobra venom. That's what I wanted to talk to you
Speaker 2: about today.
Speaker 3: This is brave of you.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Ever been to a reptile show?
Speaker 3: Yes? Do you know that I've been to like a
Speaker 3: reptile enclosure in a zoo typeing.
Speaker 2: Like a like a repticon reptile show like traveling rate. Okay,
Speaker 2: of course, do you know that I once to my
Speaker 2: irrational snake phobia and I went to the world's largest
Speaker 2: reptile show. What yeah, ye, with no therapy plan, no
Speaker 2: one there to hold my hand. I just went in,
Speaker 2: no gun, nothing for what.
Speaker 3: Like I swaze your anxiety. I'm still irrationally free to snakes.
Speaker 2: No, I was. It was for a story for journalism. Hey,
Speaker 2: you go down there, and I did it all right,
Speaker 2: So how do you think it went?
Speaker 3: Not good?
Speaker 2: Yeah, about as well as you can imagine. No, Personally,
Speaker 2: I considered it a wild success because one, I did
Speaker 2: not kill any children or any family members or any
Speaker 2: of the snake owners on my way fleeing the buildings.
Speaker 3: And he didn't jump off a root.
Speaker 2: No, I didn't jump off any buildings, and I didn't
Speaker 2: flip any tables. I didn't stomp any snakes. It was
Speaker 2: a total success. Right. So the reason that the really
Speaker 2: bring up reptile shows is is that that's a great
Speaker 2: place to do some crimes, right, and like, no, honestly, like, okay, here,
Speaker 2: I'll put it this way. When I went to the
Speaker 2: reptile Show. Right, I got to meet and interview a
Speaker 2: bunch of like snake and lizard people. Okay, I don't
Speaker 2: mean like like David, like steak and lizard people. Right.
Speaker 3: Do you need to talk about the.
Speaker 2: Shape changing alien people? They came up to be Elizabeth
Speaker 2: and they told me their plans were all domination?
Speaker 3: Is this going to get anti?
Speaker 2: Can we talk to about this? No? So not not
Speaker 2: those lizard people. I just mean like people who like
Speaker 2: lizards and stuff. So reptiles show people, right, So let
Speaker 2: me tell you they are a unique bunch, like a
Speaker 2: legit unique bunch. And I liked them. I liked these
Speaker 2: We have total opposite views on a lot of things
Speaker 2: like snakes, but I totally loved them. Yes, I was like,
Speaker 2: these people are cool. My point is that reptile shows
Speaker 2: they draw a certain type.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: I noticed there was like an identifiable crowd when I
Speaker 2: was there.
Speaker 3: They're all cold.
Speaker 2: Now, you know, like, I think this is true for
Speaker 2: most cons and conventioneers. You know, like if you go
Speaker 2: to a comic book con, you could see comic book people.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: You go to a y literature you see ye literacy people.
Speaker 2: These were the snake and lizard people. Now, I don't
Speaker 2: mean though they look alike or they act alike. There's
Speaker 2: nothing like physically immediate. It's more like they have the
Speaker 2: shared appreciation.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: They all love snakes or reptiles or whatever that they love, right,
Speaker 2: and you can detect this vibe. It's a vibe, it's
Speaker 2: a right, and that's what makes them snake people. You
Speaker 2: did what I'm saying, I'm right there, Okay, So now
Speaker 2: I can report when you're at a reptile show, you
Speaker 2: can also clearly spot amongst these snake people the ones
Speaker 2: who've gone over. Do you know what I mean by that?
Speaker 2: So gone over is like if you were at a
Speaker 2: gun show, you'd meet the people'd be like, hey, I
Speaker 2: can show you a three D printed ghost gun. Right,
Speaker 2: you want a bazooka that fell off a military to.
Speaker 3: Every every group of special interest has the ones who've
Speaker 3: gone over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly right. So at the reptile the shows, they
Speaker 2: have these folks, right, and they'll sell you an a legal, like,
Speaker 2: not just unegal and traceable ghost gun. They'll sell you
Speaker 2: an illegal African puff adder, right. So they're like, hey,
Speaker 2: you want to go with the world's most venomous snake,
Speaker 2: I get you one for a thousand bucks or whatever. Right,
Speaker 2: so they're willing to sell you basically nature sniper rifle, right,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, that's that's cool or whatever. And also
Speaker 2: I found that there were like these ball pythons with
Speaker 2: like a pattern on the snake skin that looks like
Speaker 2: a smiley face emoji.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so into this mix enter my boy David Snedden. Snedden, Sneddin,
Speaker 2: s n E D D net make right, Yeah, exactly netting.
Speaker 2: So it was Independence Day week and twenty twenty fourth
Speaker 2: of July, right, yeah, America and in the.
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty so we were still kind of locked down.
Speaker 2: Yes exactly, but Repticon rolled on, like mask up and
Speaker 2: get some snake action. Right. So he was in South
Speaker 2: Carolina for Repticon Eliza. But they told you Repticon is
Speaker 2: one of the biggest reptile trade shows in the world.
Speaker 2: Not as big as the one I went to in Soco,
Speaker 2: which is the biggest one in the world. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: this is a huge one. It's like it would take
Speaker 2: up a convention center. It's like Sunday Sunday Sunday Reptic
Speaker 2: on at the Jacksonville State fairgrounds, bigger kids, fun for
Speaker 2: the whole family, all the snakes. You can shake a
Speaker 2: stick at reptac on. It's that kind of vibe. Right.
Speaker 2: So you get there and Snedden. So where in South Carolina?
Speaker 2: I don't know what city, I you know, I assume
Speaker 2: one of the big ones like Charleston.
Speaker 3: I don't know, so I'm guessing probably somewhere around Colombia.
Speaker 2: It could be Columbia. Yeah, that probably makes sense anyway.
Speaker 2: So he's there pushing product, some of it legal, some
Speaker 2: of it illegal. And in this case the illegal stuff
Speaker 2: was Mohabbi Sidewinders, right, which is a rattlesnake.
Speaker 3: And it's a motorcycle gang.
Speaker 2: You guys are tough. I've seen you guys like beefing
Speaker 2: with the East Bay Dragons and yeah, let me tell
Speaker 2: you those are some cool. Like is that all chrome
Speaker 2: you have on your screen?
Speaker 3: It's completely made of that's amazing part of it.
Speaker 2: So this said, he gets to talk him with a
Speaker 2: few interested customers and they take his phone number, and
Speaker 2: they want to set up, like, you know, a shady
Speaker 2: deal later because they want to be outside the prying
Speaker 2: eyes of the snake traders and lizard dealers. At Repticon, right,
Speaker 2: just like something out of Star Wars.
Speaker 3: Wait, so the Mohabbi sidewinders? Are those illegal?
Speaker 2: They're poisonous. It's a rattlesnake.
Speaker 3: You can't buy a rattle you can, they won't just sell, you.
Speaker 2: Know, there's a couple of reasons. One there's the Lacy
Speaker 2: Act that says like, oh, this isn't endangered animal, you
Speaker 2: can't buy it. And then two it's it's venomous and poisonous.
Speaker 2: They're like, oh, you can't buy this. But most likely right,
Speaker 2: they're just like you know South Carolina, they're like, well whatever,
Speaker 2: you know, like like.
Speaker 3: They will sell a five year old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I'll tell you all about South Carolina in
Speaker 2: a second. But one thing I got to tell you
Speaker 2: about the world of Big Snake. It's not big. It's
Speaker 2: a very small world. Like these people all knew each other.
Speaker 2: Like when I was at the trade show. These people
Speaker 2: they roll into town like a circus, they carnies, They
Speaker 2: put on a show, they sell some snakes and tarantulas,
Speaker 2: and they pack up their tents and they move on
Speaker 2: to the next town. Wash your rents, repeat. But they're
Speaker 2: always kind of together. So they get this Carnie Vibe, right,
Speaker 2: and these shows they drop big crowds, so they're always
Speaker 2: putting on performances, right, But these are people, They're not
Speaker 2: just like a lot of show folks. They're actually good,
Speaker 2: decent people when you get inside inside the show. Right.
Speaker 2: So because I was a journalist interviewing them, they kind
Speaker 2: of let me behind the curtain and I got to
Speaker 2: see that. Like I said, I really liked them. There
Speaker 2: were a lot of sweethearts. Right. So these sellers, they're
Speaker 2: gonna be aware of somebody like this Snedding guy. They're like, oh,
Speaker 2: we don't need that. So he's got to get away
Speaker 2: from them, because you know, you can't have that near
Speaker 2: all the like bright colorful banners and booths and stalls
Speaker 2: that say Snakes for the Memories and sliper Mania. You
Speaker 2: can't be talking like hey, you want to be little
Speaker 2: snake kids. So he goes right, he's he contacts these
Speaker 2: people and he's like, let me set it up for them,
Speaker 2: Like how do I, you know, contact them to set
Speaker 2: up these purchases that they want to know? How do
Speaker 2: we get our poisonous reptiles? Or you just show up
Speaker 2: to my house with a box box of snakes, and
Speaker 2: he's like, well, you're in Atlanta. I'm in Las Vegas.
Speaker 2: It's a whole deal. He's like, oh, you're gonna do
Speaker 2: a truck right, So yes, he realizes, like, you know,
Speaker 2: I'll lay out how I'm gonna do it for you.
Speaker 2: So he tells him, like, you know what I like
Speaker 2: to do is like I've got all these contacts in Egypt, China,
Speaker 2: all over the place, and I get I get my
Speaker 2: snakes together and then I'll send them over to a
Speaker 2: person and like a crate, and I like to go
Speaker 2: out to the in lax they got the delta terminal
Speaker 2: for cargo ships and I put it in there and
Speaker 2: I say like, oh, it's silverware, and then I go
Speaker 2: that's why it's rattling. And then I send it in
Speaker 2: to South Carolina. Right. So it turns out the person
Speaker 2: he was talking to want to do the shady deal
Speaker 2: that he met a repticon undercover Fish and Wildlife informant.
Speaker 3: That is amazing. That's an amazing gig.
Speaker 2: Right, I figured you'd love that. How do you go
Speaker 2: be a Fish and Wildlife undercrever agent?
Speaker 3: I've been under too long man, exactly.
Speaker 2: He's getting to me. Man, it's all snakes and lizards, man. Monster.
Speaker 3: He goes home and he's like a kiddie pool full
Speaker 3: of snakes and lizards. He just settles into it to
Speaker 3: watch TV. They slide it all over him. He's been
Speaker 3: under too long, man.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna vomit, all right, So snedd and he tells
Speaker 2: the undercover informant he can get his hands on a
Speaker 2: red diamond rattlesnake, all right. And the guy's like, oh canny.
Speaker 2: He's like, yeah, but that's illegal because to sell it
Speaker 2: because it's endangered. As I told you, the lazy act, right,
Speaker 2: And he's like, if we get caught, it'll be a problem.
Speaker 2: So he tells the guy on tape, we get caught
Speaker 2: ship in that his prison time for both of us.
Speaker 2: So guy clearly knows what he's doing. He's not like, oh,
Speaker 2: I bumbled into this. I didn't know you can't sell
Speaker 2: a rattlesnake anyway. So David Snedden, forty four years old,
Speaker 2: LA based truck driver operates out of Vegas. Told you
Speaker 2: he's flying everything out of Lax Airport. He's got a
Speaker 2: whole deal. So he tells a fish and wildlife guy,
Speaker 2: I can get you twenty five to thirty five reptiles
Speaker 2: in a shipment, right, So the guy's like, all right,
Speaker 2: let's do it. So it goes down to delta. He
Speaker 2: starts moving the boxes. He's like, don't mind the rattling.
Speaker 2: Just and they ship them, right. They send it to Atlanta.
Speaker 2: It lands at Jacksonville. Hearts jackson Hartville Airport in Atlanta. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and dude picks it up in form. It goes oh,
Speaker 2: let's do that again. He gets from to sell him
Speaker 2: like numerous whole bunch of legal snakes. It doesn't matter
Speaker 2: all of them. But do you know how much they
Speaker 2: cost for a box?
Speaker 3: For the first one, pretty, which is a box of snakes, two.
Speaker 2: Thousand, seven hundred and forty five dollars for a crate
Speaker 2: of illegal snakes? Get goes cret It's sixty in the
Speaker 2: first one.
Speaker 3: They do it by weight, it's.
Speaker 2: By yeah bye, by item. He's like, I would like
Speaker 2: one of these. I'd like two of those, right. So
Speaker 2: you guys like, oh, it was great. He's like, oh,
Speaker 2: David Snedden tells them, So the shipment arrived. That's awesome, man,
Speaker 2: I'm going out on a big snake cunt. So all
Speaker 2: the bunch of stuff soon. I'm going to California, Arizona,
Speaker 2: New Mexico.
Speaker 3: What would if you're a criminal, always act like when
Speaker 3: you're talking to someone, just imagine you're being taped.
Speaker 2: I always assume as the FBI.
Speaker 3: Always assume.
Speaker 2: One thing I've learned from an investigating crime. Always assume
Speaker 2: as him to if you don't know them and they're
Speaker 2: contacted you to do a crime.
Speaker 3: One thing I've learned from pretending to not watch television.
Speaker 3: Don't tell people what your crime is going to be explicitly.
Speaker 2: Dude. Well, the guy's like, okay, I'll take a Gila
Speaker 2: monster for fifteen hundred dollars. In Sten's like, all right, man,
Speaker 2: well got it. I'll get you all the super rare
Speaker 2: killer lizards you want. Right. He sends them five boxes
Speaker 2: of mad poisonous stuff. It takes some eighteen months that
Speaker 2: they're allowing Delta people to handle all these boxes of
Speaker 2: snakes and everything. Right, and this snake trader snedd and
Speaker 2: he knew they told you if if he can get
Speaker 2: to South Carolina, he can get whatever he wants. Like
Speaker 2: he was talking to at one point, he said, you
Speaker 2: could walk into a pet shop and buy a twelve
Speaker 2: foot king cobra. So there you go. That's where you
Speaker 2: want to buy a poisonous snake. You get stuffed down
Speaker 2: to South Carolina. They'll sell it to you anyway. Fish
Speaker 2: and wildlife. They come marching through his door one day
Speaker 2: and sneddon knew up my days is selling you ganden
Speaker 2: puff adders is done right. All my blue speckled rattlesnake
Speaker 2: profits are over right. So he gets busted. He pleads
Speaker 2: guilty to fellon wildlife trafficking, which, by the way, is
Speaker 2: a huge, multi billion dollar business. To talk about it
Speaker 2: at another time, but anyway, how much prison time do
Speaker 2: you think he gets when he gets busted for danger?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 2: Okay, well I'll tell you this much for a man
Speaker 2: who has been selling rattlesnakes illegally, you would think, okay, well,
Speaker 2: he's got to get some punishment, right. The US attorneys
Speaker 2: they want four months prison sentence. The judge is like,
Speaker 2: it ain't that serious. It said what some cobras and whatnot,
Speaker 2: So they give him five months of home detention. The
Speaker 2: judge is basically like, I want you to go home
Speaker 2: and said on your couch and think about what you've done.
Speaker 2: And then the guy's like, thanks Dad, he andreally said
Speaker 2: when he left the court, I'm happy with it. You
Speaker 2: should never have the person. I'm happy with it. So yeah,
Speaker 2: that's David Snedden. And we'll take a little break and
Speaker 2: then I will leave Repticon and David Snedden behind and
Speaker 2: I will tell you about the cobra venom guy and
Speaker 2: big reptile. All right, Elizabeth, we're back.
Speaker 3: Oh thank god.
Speaker 2: So we're not going back to Repticon. We've left that behind.
Speaker 2: But I did want to tell you that the U
Speaker 2: S attorneys when they when they busted my man, David
Speaker 2: Sneded and I haven't used my man loosely in this case.
Speaker 2: They always they pointed out something I thought was interesting
Speaker 2: and worth saying, which is that quote. It starts out
Speaker 2: with liking lizards, it turns into trafficking, and then by
Speaker 2: the hundreds or thousands, right, And I think that's really.
Speaker 3: Exactly a gateway animally exact, to becoming like a snake
Speaker 3: monitor something.
Speaker 2: Then also Eric at the end of I don't know,
Speaker 2: like scarface, and you got like a mound of lizards
Speaker 2: and you're burying your face and a mount of snakes. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, So let's let's talk about where the big
Speaker 2: money is.
Speaker 3: Okay, talk about that biotech.
Speaker 2: Baby, That's what my dude would say. So my other dude, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Well his name is Rick Deatsch or Ditsch something like that.
Speaker 2: D E I E S H. Deutsch, Ricks Ricky d Yes,
Speaker 2: so Rick d Rick D's he not the DJ Rick
Speaker 2: d u Rick. He was a well he made a
Speaker 2: play for big reptile meets Wall Street. That's the best
Speaker 2: way to put. Yeah, he was the chairman and CEO
Speaker 2: of Neutra Pharma. Now, according to his bio on LinkedIn
Speaker 2: and business website that I could find, he was a
Speaker 2: legit scientist, and he was an educator and kind of
Speaker 2: you know anyway. Well, according to his bio, Rick Deutsch
Speaker 2: quote holds a master's degree in biochemistry and a bachelor's
Speaker 2: degree in chemistry, and he has conducted clinical and laboratory
Speaker 2: research in collaboration with scientists at Duke University, Medical Senator
Speaker 2: and the Cleveland Clinic. Now, just for me, I think
Speaker 2: you could kind of tell someone's bsing when in the
Speaker 2: first line of their bio it says they worked in
Speaker 2: collaboration with scientists. Didn't sell you what they did, didn't say,
Speaker 2: just it worked in near them. Collaboration near me was
Speaker 2: really cool.
Speaker 3: I took some stuff that they published and then I
Speaker 3: worked on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he didn't even have enough in his bio. Where
Speaker 2: did he get is full sentence out in his bio?
Speaker 3: Where did he get his undergrad and his masters?
Speaker 2: I'm glad you asked so, According to the second sentence
Speaker 2: of his bio, mister quote, mister Deatsch is the author
Speaker 2: of two books and is an adjunct professor for Florida
Speaker 2: Atlantic University's College of Business and Continuing Education Department. And
Speaker 2: he got his degrees. I do not remember. I don't.
Speaker 2: I didn't take a note of where he got his
Speaker 2: degree because I'm not as much as you are.
Speaker 3: It's better that you don't say it, so I don't
Speaker 3: insult people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly so. But those books, by the way, because
Speaker 2: I know you know.
Speaker 3: He is self published.
Speaker 2: Yes, anyway, So the books are are You age Wise?
Speaker 2: A Guide to Healthy Aging? And Invisible Killers The Truth
Speaker 2: about Environmental Genocide. Yeah, both both books are exactly what
Speaker 2: they sound like. Yeah, they are books for the Florida crowd. No, No,
Speaker 2: I'm not I have family in Florida. I'm not here
Speaker 2: to diss Florida. But I've been there enough to say
Speaker 2: that these books would solve Florida. Right, So that's all
Speaker 2: I'm saying now. I'm also not here to dis self
Speaker 2: publishing authors. I'm not here to diss adjunct professors. I'm
Speaker 2: not even here to It is the Florida Atlantic University's
Speaker 2: College of Business and Continuing Education. True, I think they
Speaker 2: all do good stuff. But look, if I'm an angel
Speaker 2: investor and this dude comes to me and I got millions,
Speaker 2: I'm looking to invest with somebody else, not this guy.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying. Right Anyway, Rick Dach he seems to
Speaker 2: know this, so he goes like, how do I distinguish
Speaker 2: myself to investors if I want to make this big
Speaker 2: Wall Street money. He's like, I got the answer, Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: Two words this time. Cobra venom. Yes. So his first
Speaker 2: company was called NDA Right. It built itself as a
Speaker 2: biotech startup that quote specialized in the research of peptides
Speaker 2: derived from the cone snail, venom, cobra venom, and the
Speaker 2: Keyla monster venom. So he got really into like venom. Right.
Speaker 2: So then Deets moved on to his next company, Venom
Speaker 2: venom and that Neutra Pharma is his second company, so
Speaker 2: he's like, quote, you know, guys, hey, when can we
Speaker 2: talk cobra venom. I'm all about that sweet king cobra milk. Okay,
Speaker 2: that actually isn't a quote, but I just want to
Speaker 2: act like it was. Anyway, this company's implantation Florida, and yeah, right,
Speaker 2: and I'm assuming it's there for text purposes or something
Speaker 2: equally scammy like that. But anyway, Neutral Pharms.
Speaker 3: Is it like a po box?
Speaker 2: No, they actually have like a compasse from what I
Speaker 2: can tell. Anyway, Nutril Farmer, they present themselves as a reasonable,
Speaker 2: legit medical research firm, right, one that coincidentally in two
Speaker 2: thousand and nine, quote launch sales of and over the
Speaker 2: counter pain reliever that uses asian cobra venom as the
Speaker 2: active ingredient. Asian cobra. No, I see you your eyebrow raising.
Speaker 2: You have a little bit of like, I'll give it
Speaker 2: a shot, but I sense the doubt in your voice.
Speaker 3: Try anything, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Well, their press releases they make it sound kind of
Speaker 2: super science, so you'd be into this, like a quote
Speaker 2: Nutri Farmer Corporation a biotechnology company that is developing treatments
Speaker 2: for adreno milow neuropathy, amn A, human ammino deficiency virus HIV,
Speaker 2: multiple sclerosis, MS, and pain announce today that it has
Speaker 2: received approval from the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Speaker 2: Floren's pattent describing a method of treating and preventing infectious diseases,
Speaker 2: including colds, flu viruses, and bacterial parasitic infections using modified
Speaker 2: and detoxified cobra venom and neurotoxins. It cures everything, Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: it does. It all sounds kind of legit until you
Speaker 2: get too modified and detoxified cobra venom. But there's more,
Speaker 2: because there's always more, Elizabeth, is uh. The patent quote,
Speaker 2: titled modified and lapid Venoms are As Stimulators of the
Speaker 2: Immune Reaction describes a method for treating and inhibiting infections
Speaker 2: by influenza viruses through the use of subcutaneous, intramuscular, or
Speaker 2: intravenous injections of therapeutically effective amounts of detoxified and neurotropically
Speaker 2: active oxidized alpha cobratoxin or alpha cobratoxin protein. That's good job.
Speaker 2: Oh and I don't know about that, but this to
Speaker 2: me all sounds like what you'd hear from like some
Speaker 2: kind of like shade tree southern doctor. But David use
Speaker 2: a little different terms like I would imagine you'd hear
Speaker 2: it something like, uh, you see, you just take a
Speaker 2: jab of this year cobra venom. You stick it in
Speaker 2: your arm like someone you're just about damn near everything.
Speaker 2: Now for the actual science, DC's cobra venom was it
Speaker 2: was not fanged table right, this stuff had to go.
Speaker 2: It was a medical grade cobra venom, Elizabeth, had to
Speaker 2: be processed by scientists and white lab coats and whatnot.
Speaker 2: And I like you imagine, I imagine you, like me,
Speaker 2: would love that this is someone's job. They're out there.
Speaker 2: What do you do on milk code? Baby?
Speaker 3: Well, i've seen that. We're like, you know, they what
Speaker 3: they call what would they call herpetologists?
Speaker 2: You know a lot about this, Well, Elizabeth, I'd like
Speaker 2: you to close your eyes and pictures.
Speaker 3: I'm going to Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: You are in an air conditioned to room. Oh good,
Speaker 2: door opens. A woman in a white lab coat and
Speaker 2: high heels walks in. She sits down in a chair
Speaker 2: across a table from you. Today is the first a
Speaker 2: at your new job. You're fresh out of grad school,
Speaker 2: still working on your PhD in her patology, but you
Speaker 2: just got your first job at a real lab doing
Speaker 2: real science. Today. You've come in for orientation your new boss,
Speaker 2: doctor Sterngrove. She's a pert, all business, herodabund scientist. She
Speaker 2: flips through some paperwork. She looks over your resume and
Speaker 2: then asks you how you liked UCD. You tell her,
Speaker 2: and then with a very small smile, she welcomes you
Speaker 2: to the company and she thanks you for being early
Speaker 2: for orientation. Doctor Sterngrove asks you what you've been told
Speaker 2: about what you'll be doing at the lab. She says,
Speaker 2: have you ever worked with animals before? And you inform
Speaker 2: her of your time as a pet groomer to the stars.
Speaker 2: You tell her about being a chicken wrangler for the courts,
Speaker 2: your time as a gooseherder. You say, in short, yes,
Speaker 2: I love working with animals, Doctor Sterngrove. She seems pleased,
Speaker 2: so she flips through her paperwork again. She looks up
Speaker 2: and asks if you're comfortable working with snakes. Now. This
Speaker 2: is the moment when you find out to your new
Speaker 2: job will be milking cobras for their venom. You have questions.
Speaker 3: I have tiny fingers.
Speaker 2: Tiny fingers and a couple questions. So doctor Sterngrove says,
Speaker 2: I like to imagine the cobras are like cows, and
Speaker 2: you look at her and you ask, oh, so, like
Speaker 2: in the afternoon, they all come back from slithering around
Speaker 2: in the pasture, and just like cows, your cobras all
Speaker 2: get in the line and they wait to enter the
Speaker 2: barn to get milked. That's so sweet. And doctor Sterker goes, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: there's no pasture. What are you talking about. No, we
Speaker 2: definitely don't let her cobras out. You're like, oh, okay, well,
Speaker 2: well I need to bring my own milking stool or
Speaker 2: like will one be supplied for a stupid because I'm
Speaker 2: telling it? Okay, yes, now, doctor sterncros like milking stool.
Speaker 2: What are you talking about? Doctor? She seems clearly confused,
Speaker 2: because she's like, you're not a stupid girl. What's up
Speaker 2: with the act? Is some guy writing this? What's help
Speaker 2: with this? So at some point you say, like how
Speaker 2: far off the ground will these cobras be am? I
Speaker 2: got to get underneath the cobra, Like I imagine it
Speaker 2: hard to milk the snake if it's bellies on the ground,
Speaker 2: is it like a cow's under Are their teets or nipples?
Speaker 2: Do cobras have nipples? Now, I don't even know you
Speaker 2: tie your shoes, So doctor Sternrove, she's just staring at
Speaker 2: you because, like you, she's just disappointed. So you continue, like,
Speaker 2: can I ask you a question? Doctor stern GroE said, yes, please,
Speaker 2: When you're milking these snakes, do the crob is like,
Speaker 2: do they like it if you sing to them? Because
Speaker 2: the cows like it when you sing to them. She's like, Okay,
Speaker 2: She's lost her patience at this point. She just says,
Speaker 2: it's not like milking cows. Forget I said anything about cows.
Speaker 2: Now you're like, well, but it's not like milking cows.
Speaker 2: I don't I'm not sure if I want this job.
Speaker 2: And then you get up and you walk out and
Speaker 2: you leave. Obviously you know this as well as I
Speaker 2: probably better. Apparently, milking cobras and milking cows are not
Speaker 2: good analogs, because do you know how you milk a cobra?
Speaker 3: I've seen I've seen footage of it. I don't really
Speaker 3: I don't have a problem with snakes at all, but
Speaker 3: I don't like them.
Speaker 2: You watch videos about them, dude.
Speaker 3: I'll watch any video. Yeah, but like there's it looks
Speaker 3: like there's am I stepping on. There's like a like
Speaker 3: a beaker, and then there's some sort of like membrane
Speaker 3: over the top. Remember they bite into it.
Speaker 2: I could use like a hammer, like you just put that.
Speaker 2: You swing the hand and the head onto it. They
Speaker 2: trick it into biting the rubber membrane and.
Speaker 3: Then you know, like they're like barf it up and it.
Speaker 2: Drips it right off the end of the fang a little.
Speaker 3: Dress to squeeze at the bottom and then run his
Speaker 3: tight hand up until.
Speaker 2: Like he's pulling water out of a tower. Yep, just
Speaker 2: like that. They actually have these two bars you can
Speaker 2: use to squeeze the snake.
Speaker 3: And then there's the like snake venom Somalia who like
Speaker 3: takes it and smells it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. They swirl and they go, perfect, this is good.
Speaker 2: You can smell the rustines.
Speaker 3: And he like dabs some and then rubs on of
Speaker 3: his gums.
Speaker 2: Yes, you see, this is why you should.
Speaker 3: Have kept I watched a lot of videos, so.
Speaker 2: That's exactly how. And then apparently somebody in white lab coats.
Speaker 2: They throw it in like an autoclave, they spin it
Speaker 2: around or something. They do a TWI yeah, and then
Speaker 2: all of a sudden the constituent parts pop out and
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, look, detoxified cobra proteins. So, as Rick
Speaker 2: Ditsch explains, if you'd like some more science, and I
Speaker 2: know you love the science, so here you go.
Speaker 3: You're someone who failed CAM one in college, I love it.
Speaker 2: Well, here it's a bunch of polysyllamic nonsense for you.
Speaker 2: Rick Disch explains his technique as it's a single modified
Speaker 2: peptide called alpha cobra toxin, which is a major component
Speaker 2: of the venom. In most cobras venom, it binds to
Speaker 2: the nicotinic acetocholine receptor, a primary receptor found throughout the
Speaker 2: center nervous system and on the surface of white blood cells.
Speaker 2: We modify the cobra toxins that it binds to only
Speaker 2: the alpha SEB seven subtype of the nicotinic acidacholine receptors,
Speaker 2: where it blocks inflammation by modulating white blood cells reactions
Speaker 2: to immune response.
Speaker 3: Now I have to ask you something, Yes, did we
Speaker 3: need that?
Speaker 2: Yes? Because that all boils down to the active ingredients
Speaker 2: and cover venom stimulated an immune response in your body. Okay,
Speaker 2: so basically it's like saying like I hate you, you swell.
Speaker 2: If I seeing you with a cover, your body goes
Speaker 2: what the hell and ain't react. Yeah, that's a lot
Speaker 2: of science. You did not need to say all that.
Speaker 2: That's my point. But he gets to it eventually, says,
Speaker 2: you get into more science and stuff. He says, this
Speaker 2: triggers the release of gamma interferon right now. Gamma interferon,
Speaker 2: it regulates immune response. And that's the whole point of
Speaker 2: this is when the vcs go, oh, that sounds like
Speaker 2: some money. Science sounds that sounds like biotech, that sounds
Speaker 2: like next big thing, and they get all excited. Right,
Speaker 2: And if you're a dude like Rick Datch, you know this.
Speaker 2: You start humping that PR machine and working it like
Speaker 2: a money maker. And to a man like Greek diets
Speaker 2: that that's exactly what the PR machine was. It's his
Speaker 2: money maker. He has nothing really other than hype. So
Speaker 2: he starts working press releases, and I'm talking working press releases.
Speaker 2: He goes out there and he's like recently Neutral Pharma
Speaker 2: through its drug discovery subsidiary Recepto Farm introduced his novel
Speaker 2: anti viral therapy Peptone, at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria.
Speaker 2: Peptone is based on the company's leading drug candidate, used
Speaker 2: modifying cobra tsin. Now he acts like he's there and
Speaker 2: like the AIDS conferences, like please come here and present it.
Speaker 2: All he could have done is just stood outside, yod,
Speaker 2: We've got peptone.
Speaker 3: So he just went there.
Speaker 2: He didn't think he uses the language. But it's always
Speaker 2: like I worked in a lab with these guys. I
Speaker 2: you know, we recently were unveiling.
Speaker 3: Anyway, these kind of charlatans and people who are in
Speaker 3: love with half truths and such have made it like
Speaker 3: there's so much more work we have to do parsing
Speaker 3: language to figure out what the real thing. Yes, it
Speaker 3: makes it so difficult, like resumes, people go like, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, it's like just say the thing that's me. But whatever,
Speaker 2: I understand, you've got a sweet talk some stuff. I'm
Speaker 2: not saying, like don't massage your stuff, but they at
Speaker 2: least keep some truth in there. They should be standing
Speaker 2: on something otherwise you're gonna be like me standing in
Speaker 2: the air. So my favorite line from his press release
Speaker 2: was the quote, the company markets several drug products for
Speaker 2: sale for the treatment of pain under the brands of
Speaker 2: Cobroxin and Nyloxi. Right, Cobroxin sounds like a drug that
Speaker 2: Cobra commander came up here, right, It's like, honestly, it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: we got g I Joe has to stop this. This
Speaker 2: is an eighties cartoon drug.
Speaker 3: They got all the kids hooked on Cora.
Speaker 2: I'm telling you it's good mind control, man. I just
Speaker 2: got to listen to the rock music can.
Speaker 3: Take exactly whether you're joining him soon the band of
Speaker 3: Vipers playing their tombs knew and where's the takeover your dreams?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, this is amazing.
Speaker 3: I can't stop.
Speaker 2: No, please keep going. How much have slither? Do you
Speaker 2: really know it? Oh? That was very IMPROSSI So, setting
Speaker 2: aside that amazing feet, so Teach's company, Neutral Pharma, he
Speaker 2: starts looking for and by marks I made investors. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he gets of this local outlet to run a story
Speaker 2: on his cobrox and cobra venom miracle. So NBC Miami,
Speaker 2: who runs a story with the title South Florida company
Speaker 2: turns cobra Venom into healing treatment. Now, you know in
Speaker 2: South Florida they care a lot about healing. All of
Speaker 2: Florida they care about healing treatments. Like I said, it's
Speaker 2: an old or I didn't say earlier, but I inferred
Speaker 2: it's an aging population and they care about things. This
Speaker 2: is clickbait for a state with the aging population. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what I'm saying, right, And oh boy, Liza, but
Speaker 2: this NBC Miami story, it is so good. I mean
Speaker 2: from the jump from first line, you ready for this? Yes,
Speaker 2: when you think about cobra venom, eventual death comes to month.
Speaker 3: That's sentence one node.
Speaker 2: Then they get past that pearl of a lead and
Speaker 2: they go for the intellectual complication. A South Florida company
Speaker 2: is changing the perception of the deadly venom. Like wait,
Speaker 2: what Like this is one hell of a company that
Speaker 2: can make me rethink cobra venom my company. Maybe cobra
Speaker 2: Venom's good, maybe death is good. Like what's going going
Speaker 2: on here?
Speaker 3: I've been doing a lot of editing of other people's
Speaker 3: work this week, and I'm like hit my limit and
Speaker 3: this is yeah, who wrote this?
Speaker 2: I've we all been sleeping on cobra venom. I think
Speaker 2: that's so enter my dude, Tom Crutchfeld, star of this story,
Speaker 2: he is a professional snake milker. So he'd probably before
Speaker 2: I refer to what you called him earlier, called people
Speaker 2: like this a herpetologist. But look, I got the show.
Speaker 2: On this show, you're a snake milker, all right. So
Speaker 2: Tom Crutchfield professional snake milker. He's in the NBC Miami
Speaker 2: story and he tells him why he loves milking snakes
Speaker 2: for a living. He says, quote, I always knew they
Speaker 2: were special, even as a kid, because when I was
Speaker 2: a kid, everybody hated snakes. And this, Elizabeth is it's
Speaker 2: the same reason that I became a professional chef who
Speaker 2: specializes in cooking worms.
Speaker 3: Because because everybody.
Speaker 2: Hey kid, everybody hated him. So I'm like, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: prove them wrong, and welcome to shay worm.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: According to this story, twice a month, this dude he
Speaker 2: goes out and uh to the cobra dairy and he
Speaker 2: milks his snakes and then he takes the cover venom
Speaker 2: over to Deach, a Neutra pharma, and they handle the
Speaker 2: processing of rock cobra venom and they turn it into
Speaker 2: a usable powder. According to NBC Miami. Quote. Every time
Speaker 2: the lab milks a cobra, more than one hundred bottles
Speaker 2: of product are.
Speaker 3: Made and an angel gets its wing ding. So I
Speaker 3: just imagine then like sometimes he's he crawls over and
Speaker 3: claws at the door of the office next door and
Speaker 3: they open it and he's like, suck out the boys,
Speaker 3: cause he got be it.
Speaker 2: Dude, you ain't far from the truth on that. Now,
Speaker 2: once he's done milking his cobras and boom out pops
Speaker 2: the magic pills, the cure alls, the nyloxin and cobroxin.
Speaker 2: That'll be twenty four to ninety five, Elizabeth. Now, what
Speaker 2: do you get for your twenty four ninety five because
Speaker 2: we haven't really discussed that other than a magic cure.
Speaker 3: All I don't know violi coroxin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you get a pain relieves. This pain really
Speaker 2: reminds you is stronger and longer lasting than morphine.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and not just you, but your little dog too,
Speaker 2: because it also neutra Pharmer. They also sell pet.
Speaker 3: Pain away, Okay, pet pain away.
Speaker 2: Pet pain away? Yeah, that title, oh yes explains quote.
Speaker 2: The problem with pain medication for and cats is there
Speaker 2: aren't a lot of choices.
Speaker 3: That's not true.
Speaker 2: But not so with Nutra Pharma, you know, because they
Speaker 2: have cobra spray and cobra venom topical Joe, I would
Speaker 2: imagine they're developing a line of cobra venom gummies right
Speaker 2: about now.
Speaker 3: I want an aerosol myst for like when you're on
Speaker 3: the plane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just spray everybody cobra venom. So, according to
Speaker 2: the NBC Miami story, niloxin and pet pain away are
Speaker 2: all natural and can also be used for autoimmune diseases, viruses,
Speaker 2: and pain. Okay, yeah, it's such amazing. This is also
Speaker 2: apparently according to Deets, He's stressed that nyloxen quote is amazing.
Speaker 2: It's not addictive, no hope, yet non narcotic. In the
Speaker 2: last and model, it outperformed morphine. It lasted six hours
Speaker 2: longer than morphine without any of the side effects. So
Speaker 2: wonder drug, Elizabeth, And you're like, where would we be
Speaker 2: without cobra toxin? And also are pooches Now you would
Speaker 2: ask yourself, could this cobra venom magic pill be right
Speaker 2: for me? Ask your doctor, Elizabeth. Yes, but please actually
Speaker 2: don't ask your doctor because you want to know why
Speaker 2: the sec alleges that quote. Neutra Pharma has no I
Speaker 2: returned to profit in the December twenty sixteen reported Annuel
Speaker 2: losses of three point five million dollars. Come to find out,
Speaker 2: all this milking cobras, it may have been a smoke screen.
Speaker 2: I know, shocking, right. Rick Deetch was apparently more focused
Speaker 2: on his dream of big reptile on the Wall Street
Speaker 2: than he ever was about milking cobras. He wanted to
Speaker 2: milk Wall Street. And after this break, I'll tell you
Speaker 2: how Rick Deach failed to turn king cobras into a
Speaker 2: golden goose.
Speaker 3: Elizabeth oh Zaren you know what I love snakes.
Speaker 2: No, you want to guess again? No? Wall Street? Yeah,
Speaker 2: not the Oliverstone movie, not the Oliverstone movie, and not
Speaker 2: the actual street. I love the idea of Wall Street.
Speaker 2: I love how it's a playground for people like Rich Geech. Okay,
Speaker 2: and by love, of course, I mean I hate it.
Speaker 2: I absolutely hate that. How are people giving this guy bunny?
Speaker 2: But eventually, you know, he went out there knowing he
Speaker 2: could convince people to give him money because apparently it's
Speaker 2: just a maven for anyway.
Speaker 3: I won't go astrology for suits, yes.
Speaker 2: Dude, completely, but whatever I'm not going to get into
Speaker 2: my judgments of Wall Street, but this land of suckers. Right,
Speaker 2: dee starts building his co judgment, his Cobra Venom based empire,
Speaker 2: and he becomes president and chairman of Nutra Pharma. He
Speaker 2: enters into a consulting agreement with a company called Wall
Speaker 2: Street By. Now the man who runs Wall Street By
Speaker 2: was his cat named Christopher Costaldo. Now this dude was
Speaker 2: He was about as shady as eminem in the year
Speaker 2: two thousand. Ye slimshit. According to the federal paperwork, Diech
Speaker 2: and I quote Deech looked into Costaldo and learned Castaldo
Speaker 2: had been found liable for violating security law as a
Speaker 2: broker in two thousand and eight SEC Civil enforcement action. Now,
Speaker 2: most folks, if they're looking into guy, they'd find that
Speaker 2: if they have a startup, that would be a tailbreaker, right,
Speaker 2: Not old Diach, This is my man, back to the
Speaker 2: court documents. Aware of Costaldo's background, Dach and Neutra Pharma
Speaker 2: hired him to promote Nutra Pharma stock to potential investors.
Speaker 2: He's exactly like that. He's like, dude, my dude, hook
Speaker 2: it up right here, coming for a hug. So he
Speaker 2: brings him in tidy as he can, so Deechen Castaldo.
Speaker 2: They get to work together and they start trying to
Speaker 2: spread the word on Wall Street and getting all those
Speaker 2: Wall Street suckers investors getting excited right now. In twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: Deech reaches out to Sea Through Equity, which is a
Speaker 2: quote equity research firm, and the CEO of C Through
Speaker 2: Equity and Dietsch. They quote exchanged emails about a potential
Speaker 2: analyst report of Neutra Pharma stock. The CEO email ditch
Speaker 2: about two pricing options offering complimentary reports. Neutral Pharmas paid
Speaker 2: See Through Equity eight thousand dollars for one of the packages.
Speaker 2: So they get this like, you know, custom written report
Speaker 2: saying great stuff. All the numbers look feasible today, right,
Speaker 2: so shocking. I know that something called see through Equity
Speaker 2: was a scam, but See Through Equity was a scam anyway,
Speaker 2: Dieci gets his fake market research report and they threw
Speaker 2: whatever he Through Equity and this he also included a
Speaker 2: press release for the low low price of eight thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: This package includes no anyway, so the press release mentions
Speaker 2: how this expected stock price for Nutra Pharma will be
Speaker 2: a target price of fifty three cents a share. Keep
Speaker 2: that number in month. Yeah, now this is remarkable because
Speaker 2: the price was approximately double the highest priced Nutra Pharma
Speaker 2: had ever traded up to that point. Yeah, exactly, So
Speaker 2: they doubled their value on paper with this faulty report.
Speaker 2: From this point on, he's doing Oh I got the
Speaker 2: ball rolling. So he starts working on international distribution deals.
Speaker 3: So wait, does this product actually exist?
Speaker 2: Great question, keep that in mind. Keep fifty three cents
Speaker 2: and does this product really exist in mind?
Speaker 3: Got it?
Speaker 2: So he goes public and he claims to assign this
Speaker 2: distribution agreement with the corporation in Canada. Like, you don't
Speaker 2: know them. I met him during stimber of spring break.
Speaker 2: It was so totally we hooked up and Wilson ended
Speaker 2: a totally binding distribution agreement. So but you don't know them.
Speaker 2: They're up there, they live in the Niagara Falls area. Anyway,
Speaker 2: the truth was the company did exist. There was a
Speaker 2: Canadian corporation. It was real, but they were not in
Speaker 2: business with Neutral Farmer. They had talked about being in
Speaker 2: business Neutral. Yeah, we're in business together, but we're totally
Speaker 2: in business together. So yeah, it's exactly it's very a's
Speaker 2: going to Vegas. So the Cobra Venom miracle drug. Right,
Speaker 2: they say, hey, you guys talk to Canadian regulators, see
Speaker 2: if you can get approval for us, and we'll keep
Speaker 2: being getting into getting into business together, like why do
Speaker 2: you get us approval? You guys get a Canadian approval,
Speaker 2: so like time, Yeah, we'll work together on this, right.
Speaker 2: So meanwhile, the business partners were told also to identified
Speaker 2: a Chinese company that could you know, obtain government approval
Speaker 2: maybe from the Chinese end through Canada if that could work,
Speaker 2: Like can we get a Chinese company who can just
Speaker 2: ship it here? And Canada says, it's cool. Can that
Speaker 2: be a thing we can do. At this point, the
Speaker 2: Canadian partners are like, are you a business? Like what's
Speaker 2: going on here? Right? So they say like okay, well yeah,
Speaker 2: no guys, it's it's gonna be huge. We got we
Speaker 2: just signed an Indian distribution deal. Keep the faith Canada
Speaker 2: And I was like, you are a business, all right,
Speaker 2: well just send us the paperwork. So on June twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: Neutra Pharma announces to the world of investors that the
Speaker 2: company had recently quoted completed upgrades in an expansion to
Speaker 2: the reptile farm that houses the Asian cobras, utilizing the
Speaker 2: production of nyloxin by adding one hundred snakes to the
Speaker 2: existing milking line to increase venom production for the upcoming
Speaker 2: international orders from India and China. Business is a boom
Speaker 2: in Elizabeth, right, they got new cobra lines coming in.
Speaker 2: So now, because of court documents we know quote. However,
Speaker 2: at the time of this press release, Deetch was aware
Speaker 2: that Neutra Pharma had never produced nyloxin or other reference products,
Speaker 2: and no one else had produced them. So no, there
Speaker 2: was no product to answer your question. Additionally, there's not
Speaker 2: only no actual drug and none to speak of. And
Speaker 2: this is my favorite part, and it's one of my
Speaker 2: favorite sentences I've ever read a court document. He also
Speaker 2: knew that Neutra Pharma had never owned cobras, cobra farms,
Speaker 2: or cobra facilities. Stop there were no cobras.
Speaker 3: Stop.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, man had no cobras.
Speaker 3: The Emperor.
Speaker 2: His whole business and there's no cover he got. Covers
Speaker 2: are in India, India, they're in China, China are in Canada, Canada,
Speaker 2: the're in India.
Speaker 3: Everyone cobra farms he keeps referencing.
Speaker 2: I want to know about my man crush felled the
Speaker 2: NBC in Miami story because he was the one saying
Speaker 2: he's milking cobras for them and they're like, no, cobras
Speaker 2: are going to the US. Yes, anyway, So Elizabeth, do
Speaker 2: you know why we call things snake oil?
Speaker 3: No? I actually don't, So I had to look.
Speaker 2: This one what it is. Yeah, I don't think it's
Speaker 2: patent medicine, right. I know that snake oil was the deal,
Speaker 2: but I was like, well, actually, and I was thinking that.
Speaker 2: I kept thinking this is a total snake oil con.
Speaker 2: This is a grift, and I was like, like, what
Speaker 2: is the true snake oil graft? So I looked it
Speaker 2: up because hey, we're here for the like you know
Speaker 2: the history.
Speaker 3: Of one who does the research. So I operate under
Speaker 3: who knows who cares?
Speaker 2: So this guy for you who will soon care? Because
Speaker 2: I'm going to insist you care.
Speaker 3: I am actually really curious.
Speaker 2: Clark Stanley, that to his name, Clark Stanley. He's the
Speaker 2: one who gives us snake oil. Somehow he got his
Speaker 2: name removed. He's not like Charles Ponzi, where he's like
Speaker 2: you named it after me. They could call it Stanley oil,
Speaker 2: but it's not as catchy, right, So snake oil it is. Anyway,
Speaker 2: Snake oil is this rare thing you could only get
Speaker 2: from Chinese railroad workers, right. So this is because they
Speaker 2: were the ones laboring, as you know, to build a
Speaker 2: trans continent a railroad, so around the gold Rush era
Speaker 2: and afterwards primarily like around the eighteen sixties, eighteen seventy
Speaker 2: to eighteen eighties, really eighteen eighties for the trans continent
Speaker 2: the railroad. Yeah, they were the laborers, and they were
Speaker 2: cheap labor. Right. So you have a lot of black
Speaker 2: laborer on the on the eastern side, and the western
Speaker 2: side you have a lot of Scots, Irish and Chinese laborers. Right.
Speaker 2: So snake oil was this thing that they were using
Speaker 2: as medicine, legit medicine. Right. So for centuries Chinese people
Speaker 2: had been using this anti inflammatory and it was Chinese
Speaker 2: water snakes, specifically the Chinese water steak. And much later,
Speaker 2: you know, like recent times we've examined why is the
Speaker 2: Chinese water sneak so good? Apparently has it's super rich
Speaker 2: and omega three at mega three's as well as anti
Speaker 2: inflammatory agents that we all recognize now is like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is the good stuff, and this is just like
Speaker 2: the wonder snake. So the ancient Chinese had discovered that
Speaker 2: the oil of this water snake worked super well on
Speaker 2: tired muscles and aching backs. Is an anti inflammatory. So
Speaker 2: these laborers they would take it with them to work on.
Speaker 2: So they have it all over the West. So the
Speaker 2: other guys working with them, they know the discuss the Irish.
Speaker 2: They're sitting there like, man, what do you got to do?
Speaker 2: I got the snake oil and I'm rubbing on my muscles.
Speaker 2: So after a twelve hour day there, let me see
Speaker 2: some of that snake oil, right, and it works works
Speaker 2: so well, all the railroad guys start telling the cowboys
Speaker 2: about snake oil because they are overlapping. So now the
Speaker 2: cowboys starts spreading the word. Everyone wants the snake oil, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: so enter our snake oil salesman. We got our first snailsman.
Speaker 2: Now that everyone's been like doing all these rubdowns and
Speaker 2: liniments all across the West. Clark Stanley, aka the Rattlesnake King,
Speaker 2: so in a pamphlet that I went and actually read,
Speaker 2: with the title The Life and Adventures of the American
Speaker 2: Cowboy by Clark Stanley, better known as the Rattlesnake King
Speaker 2: full title Okay, so the pamphlet it was less of
Speaker 2: a biography of the American King Boy more of a
Speaker 2: nineteenth century infomercial about Clark Stanley and his snake oil lineament.
Speaker 2: So Clark Stanley, he didn't use any Chinese water snakes
Speaker 2: for his snake oil. That was problem number one. He
Speaker 2: just borrowed the name. He's like, that's what everybody wants.
Speaker 2: I got the snake oil, right. He didn't know that
Speaker 2: you actually have to have Chinese water snakes, so he
Speaker 2: substituted a good old fashioned American rattlesnake venal makes a snake. Yeah,
Speaker 2: ratsnake venom will do you right too.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: So he claimed he learned about this not from the Chinese,
Speaker 2: but from the medicinal power of the Hopi tribe. He said,
Speaker 2: he told me all about the rattlesnakes that and he
Speaker 2: had been bitten hundreds of times. This was in the literature. No,
Speaker 2: he claimed it was all because of the miracle snake
Speaker 2: oil save me, so it too can save you. So
Speaker 2: he went all around the West, and you know, parts
Speaker 2: of the Midwest sound snake oil liniment just everywhere he could,
Speaker 2: and also you know, popularizing it across the country because
Speaker 2: it would be like in newspaper journals and it would
Speaker 2: be syndicated magazines and so forth. So people in Baltimore
Speaker 2: know what snake oil is, right, And Stanley, he promised
Speaker 2: that this would cure whatever ails you. You got kidney trouble,
Speaker 2: you got heart problems, you got a weak liver, you
Speaker 2: got a you know, ghosts in your blood, you got
Speaker 2: the female troubles. Whatever you got, you need to get
Speaker 2: you some snake oil liniment. So this dude, he would
Speaker 2: get people to believe it by performing feats for the crowd.
Speaker 2: And this is where we get the medical tent shows
Speaker 2: and all this. Yeah, he was a wonder for the
Speaker 2: tent show because he had this one particular crowd pleaser.
Speaker 2: He would go. He would he would take a snake
Speaker 2: and he would make active actual snake oil live in
Speaker 2: front of the crowd. He would take snake, turned into.
Speaker 3: A snake, oiling the snake out.
Speaker 2: No I wish that was what he did, but uh, okay,
Speaker 2: here I'll tell you a little story. Eighteen ninety three
Speaker 2: at the World's Exposition in Chicago, Stanley boiled a snake
Speaker 2: live on stage before he remembtedly, dazzled and enraptured crowd.
Speaker 2: Stanley quote reached into a sack, plucked out a snake,
Speaker 2: slit it open, plunge it into boiling water. When the
Speaker 2: fat rose to the top, he skimmed it off. He
Speaker 2: used it on the spot to create Stanley's snake Oil,
Speaker 2: a liniment that was immediately snapped up by the throng
Speaker 2: that gathered to watch the spectacle. But snake oil floats
Speaker 2: got get me some of that wow notic. He didn't
Speaker 2: even do anything where they was just like I'll watch
Speaker 2: this and they're like, that's the real stuff. So the
Speaker 2: trouble for Stanley was the American snake oil contained no
Speaker 2: actual snake oil. Right, So eventually because the Chinese water
Speaker 2: snake that was the thing, right so, I told you,
Speaker 2: and the American rattle snake poor replacement because it doesn't
Speaker 2: have the ingredients.
Speaker 3: I would imagine he wasn't even using any snake parts.
Speaker 3: Was it just like mineral or good?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, you're good. So, not only did it
Speaker 2: lack the necessary acids of the og that gave it
Speaker 2: a tit around the turn of the century, the FDA
Speaker 2: is created, right, and they jump into the fray. The
Speaker 2: agency begins to regulate all these patent medicines and they're
Speaker 2: told like, oh, you gotta go look into this one.
Speaker 2: You gotta go look into that one, right, And somehow
Speaker 2: doctor Bronders made it through. Not kidding doctor Bronders is
Speaker 2: after all this anyway, so they comfort to like all
Speaker 2: this stuff, by the way, is known as snake oil, right,
Speaker 2: And eventually they get around to going after the original
Speaker 2: snake oil liniment. In nineteen seventeen, a shipment of Stanley
Speaker 2: snake oil is seized by federal investigators. They open it
Speaker 2: and test the contents. What do they find. Stanley snake
Speaker 2: oil is just as you guessed, quote mineral oil, a
Speaker 2: fatty oil believed to be beef fat, red pepper, and turpentine.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so you get like a little bit of a.
Speaker 2: Sting and a little heat and then like when you
Speaker 2: go blind, I don't you drink too much. So his
Speaker 2: customers find out they've been drinking beef fat and turpentine,
Speaker 2: and they go crazy, right, they demand action from the feds.
Speaker 2: Clark Stanley's hauled into court. He's tried he's found guilty,
Speaker 2: he's convicted, he's given a punishment of fine of twenty dollars.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, that's it. Twenty bucks. So the nickname
Speaker 2: for bunk medicine stuck though, snake oil that stuck around,
Speaker 2: which brings us back to Rick Teach, our modern snake
Speaker 2: oil salesman with his cobra king cobra venom cureles right.
Speaker 2: He made nearly all the same promises as Stanley's snake
Speaker 2: oil liniment, just in modern terms autoimmune disease instead of
Speaker 2: kidney troubles and women problems. Right now, nothing new under
Speaker 2: the sun, essentially. But you know, Elizabeth, as I asked
Speaker 2: you before, if you think cobra venom is right for you,
Speaker 2: just ask your doctor, okay, And if you ask your doctor,
Speaker 2: they'll tell you hell no, we haven't gotten there yet.
Speaker 2: I mean, yes, in research, we could possibly do some
Speaker 2: of these things, but we are not there yet.
Speaker 3: I feel like if I asked my doctor for myloxin,
Speaker 3: I'd be about as about as good a result as
Speaker 3: when I asked for a Xanax strip.
Speaker 2: They didn't give you that money of the guy got
Speaker 2: the Xanx cotton balls put between my cheek and gum
Speaker 2: just kind of suck on it. So I read a
Speaker 2: long form interview with this guy in a business generally
Speaker 2: get a sense of who he was, and so I
Speaker 2: saw that he was talking about snake oil. We actually didn't,
Speaker 2: but he connected himself to snake oil by mistake. Okay,
Speaker 2: he said, Well, the reporter asked him, like, how did
Speaker 2: you come up with this?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: It was this total like pr repress. It was not
Speaker 2: a real reporter anyway, Deetsch replies, honestly, we didn't. So
Speaker 2: he's like, well, this technology has been around since the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties. The Chinese has been working with snake venom
Speaker 2: and cobra venom for a host of different disorders. In fact,
Speaker 2: our ms drug originally was used to treat post polio
Speaker 2: syndrome in southern China. So some of that is true
Speaker 2: stuff about the Chinese. They've been working with the venom
Speaker 2: for a long time, and most of the other stuff
Speaker 2: I don't know. But anyway, the part of China that
Speaker 2: had developed the Chinese snake oil was the Southwest, and
Speaker 2: so he's went to southern China once again, pretty kind
Speaker 2: of correct, right, And then he decides to come in
Speaker 2: with his his business genius. You see it shining through
Speaker 2: this interview. He says, when I tell people in America
Speaker 2: about our drugs, their benefits and that they are made
Speaker 2: from cobra venom, education is always needed. They may want
Speaker 2: to try the topical version, but they're reluctant to try
Speaker 2: the oral spray because it's cobra venom. That's not a
Speaker 2: problem in India.
Speaker 3: Oh god, do you.
Speaker 2: Tell people cover venom in India? They don't get me.
Speaker 2: Some take that bottle cap off, give meluck. No, what
Speaker 2: are you talking about? Yeah, anyway, the dude's like, I
Speaker 2: quote because Indians don't like opioids. Now, this is wild
Speaker 2: statement for a non Indian to make. Yeah, it's even
Speaker 2: wilder for someone who wants to sell drugs to Indians
Speaker 2: to make the statements. And then he gets into the
Speaker 2: whole history of opioids and like the exploitation of the
Speaker 2: British and Gandhi and he starts talking about like how
Speaker 2: that they don't like opioids because of British had mandated
Speaker 2: opium in the ways and and Gandhi insisted they quit it.
Speaker 2: And this is all true, I mean, but you know,
Speaker 2: but spoiler alert. When he got to his later point
Speaker 2: about saying, our biggest competitor is topical aspirin. By the
Speaker 2: end of twenty sixteen, we could be earning conservatively two
Speaker 2: to five million per month just in India because you know, I,
Speaker 2: hey just need our pain pills. Because all that opioid
Speaker 2: exploitation history. No, it turns out none of this happened
Speaker 2: because not a single dollar was sold in India, not
Speaker 2: a single dollar products sold India because starting a few
Speaker 2: years back, the Feds began to come around and warren
Speaker 2: customers that this whole Florida biochemist cobra venom cure all
Speaker 2: was bunk. They're like twenty seventeen, the FDA's commissioner, Scott
Speaker 2: Gottlieb warned health fraud scams like these are inexcusable. So
Speaker 2: he's been like pounding the drum. Neutral farmer, by the way,
Speaker 2: still at it. They have announced a new round of products.
Speaker 2: They there's the original Nylosin, there's pet pain Away, there's
Speaker 2: equine pain Away, and now they have luxury feet.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that foot peel thing.
Speaker 2: Yes, I who know you can do so much with
Speaker 2: cobra venom. They are currently being investigated and we'll see
Speaker 2: where this goes. No word on whether Neutral Farmer has
Speaker 2: ever purchased any actual cobras or cobra farms, but I'm
Speaker 2: betting the answer is no. And all the bad press,
Speaker 2: by the way, lately is not helped Tach and his
Speaker 2: dreams of creating Big Reptile and Connie wall Street because
Speaker 2: at the moment, you can currently purchase Neutral pharmas stock
Speaker 2: at a greatly reduced price of well how greatly reduced, Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: try five hundred shares will run you five cents. WHOA,
Speaker 2: so they kind of missed their their fifty three cent market?
Speaker 3: Say so, what's our ridiculous takeaway? Co broxin Pet paint
Speaker 3: Away is like, I don't know why this is.
Speaker 2: I love giving my pet cobra venom to help with
Speaker 2: their autoimmune disease.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's amazing. I don't know. I'm just I can't
Speaker 3: get my head around it. But I kind of want
Speaker 3: to try some.
Speaker 2: I'll get chim Bottle Dragon find some online. It will
Speaker 2: probably just be turpentine and like whatever they put in
Speaker 2: with sabi, that's not with sabby anyway. There you go.
Speaker 2: That's it. That's all I have for you.
Speaker 3: Excellent.
Speaker 2: You can find us online anytime or Ridiculous Crime on
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Speaker 2: for some merch, old school web fund just want to
Speaker 2: vibe out. Also, you can email us Ridiculous Crime at
Speaker 2: gmail dot com. Thanks for listening and see you next trime.
Speaker 2: Ridiculous Crime hus Somebody Lizabeth Dutton and Saren Burnette, produced
Speaker 2: and edited by Daddy Andaconda Dave Cusi. Research is by
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Speaker 2: Travis the Scorpion Dutton Exactly. The producers are Ben you
Speaker 2: Know I Once bit A Rattlesnake for research, Bolin and
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