Speaker 1: What's poppin Congregation?
Speaker 2: Is your girl?
Speaker 1: Lacey Mosley aka Scam Goddess. Welcome to an episode of
Speaker 1: Fraud Fridays, where we release older episodes from the scam
Speaker 1: Goddess bault. That's right, Fraud Fridays is where we bring
Speaker 1: back your favorite episodes from behind the paywall. Enjoy this
Speaker 1: episode from behind the paywall, and as always, stay scheming, scam, come.
Speaker 3: Rab and from scam, come rub and froll.
Speaker 1: Scam Goddess. What's poppin Congregation? Ishagarl Lacey Mosley aka Scam Goddess,
Speaker 1: And I'm here with another installation of what Yes, Scam Goddess,
Speaker 1: and I'm so what Yes? Excited? Right? Say it with me?
Speaker 1: Say it into your headphones, Say it into the bathroom
Speaker 1: that you're hiding from your children. I'm during COVID. Hi, guys,
Speaker 1: I am really excited.
Speaker 2: For this guest. Guys.
Speaker 1: This is Angela Davis. She's a chef. I've been following
Speaker 1: her on Twitter for a while because she posted very
Speaker 1: beautiful like photos of her delicious ass food and videos
Speaker 1: and shows. She's a self taught home cook, food blog
Speaker 1: or recipe developer, food photographer. Because she'd betting angles on
Speaker 1: this food and my angles. I'm like, honestly, I've been
Speaker 1: getting hungry, Like, bro, who's you know in Detroit. The
Speaker 1: Kitchen Nista is the blog that she's had since twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: And if you're on Twitter, if you're on a social
Speaker 1: profiles of the Kitchenista, get into it. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: have her on the show. I know y'all been waiting
Speaker 1: for this episode. I know y'all be First of all,
Speaker 1: y'all too demanded. The show is free for y'all, Okay,
Speaker 1: so stop yelling at me about things. But also I
Speaker 1: will listen. We're here, Angela the Kitchen Listen.
Speaker 2: Hello, I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 1: My icon, Mike Queen. It's okay. This is gonna sound
Speaker 1: so freaky and weird, but like, I've watched so many
Speaker 1: videos of you cooking that, like I know what the
Speaker 1: tattoos are on your wrists.
Speaker 2: That's so funny. Well, I just got new ones, so
Speaker 2: now you're gonna have to learn the new ones.
Speaker 1: So this is like a bit of an untraditional episode
Speaker 1: because much like the Shawn King episode which y'all niggas
Speaker 1: got shot, you got me all blocked on all platforms
Speaker 1: for Sean King. I didn't do that. I never tagged him.
Speaker 1: I never wrote his full name in the episode. But
Speaker 1: every time he was doing some function, people would drop
Speaker 1: the episode link under his photos. To the point where
Speaker 1: he blocked me on every social media.
Speaker 2: That means you're doing something right. If he blocked you, I.
Speaker 1: Know, I was proud. I was like, good, Yes, he's
Speaker 1: a criminal. He's a criminal criminal, like and oh my god,
Speaker 1: a mess. So we're talking about criminal criminals today. But
Speaker 1: first before we do that, Angela, I have to ask you,
Speaker 1: outside of what we know, we're here to talk about,
Speaker 1: what's your relationship with scams. Have you ever been scammed?
Speaker 1: You hate scammers? Do you like that? Like what it
Speaker 1: could be anything?
Speaker 4: I'm definitely I've been scammed personal life and business. Like
Speaker 4: I've been scammed in the sense of dating people or
Speaker 4: involved with people that had like you know, girlfriends or
Speaker 4: wives or children that I didn't know about, like that
Speaker 4: kind of thing. Business, I've been scammed with people that
Speaker 4: just couldn't do what they the way that they presented themselves.
Speaker 4: Like my first encounter was was a woman that claimed
Speaker 4: that she could publish, like help me publish.
Speaker 2: My first cookbook.
Speaker 4: This is like when I first hearted, and she turned
Speaker 4: out to be a scammer like that, she had no experience.
Speaker 2: It just kind of fell apart quickly.
Speaker 4: So I've had a few situations like that in my
Speaker 4: in my business life where.
Speaker 1: People she said she could publish a Bookie was like
Speaker 1: ox KOs, that's my firm, that's my publishing company, FedEx Kikos.
Speaker 4: It's crazy when you go back and read stuff and
Speaker 4: you're like, how did I fall for that? But yeah,
Speaker 4: she I mean she was like a jack of all trade,
Speaker 4: so early in the day she was pretending to be
Speaker 4: a publisher.
Speaker 1: Charisma, that's how you feel for it. Like there's a
Speaker 1: confidence that a lot of scammers have that is very
Speaker 1: disarming that people fall in love with and then they
Speaker 1: think that you can do things that you can And
Speaker 1: because a lot of people who are successful in whatever
Speaker 1: they do are pretty confident in it because they've done
Speaker 1: it for a long time and they know it. So
Speaker 1: when you see a scammer adopt that same swag, you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what you do. Right.
Speaker 4: Meanwhile, they're just making all I know. I say, like,
Speaker 4: I want to move through life with the confidence of
Speaker 4: a scammer.
Speaker 1: Next time, Yes, I love that for you. Also, like
Speaker 1: what a word like that's I think that's the word
Speaker 1: of the episode. Move through life with the confidence of
Speaker 1: a scammer. Yes, wake up every day, look in the
Speaker 1: mirror and say, yes, I could scam, I could do robbery,
Speaker 1: I could do fraud.
Speaker 2: I don't even need the experience. I can do it.
Speaker 1: Yes. Okay. So on the show, we do something in
Speaker 1: the beginning that's called what's hot fraud? Well, we're warn
Speaker 1: our listeners and people about what is popping in the
Speaker 1: streets or more often than not, our listeners will snitch
Speaker 1: on their friends, families, and themselves scam gottispod gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: Just make sure that your scam is retired so that
Speaker 1: I don't want fuck up your bag exactly. Like, make
Speaker 1: sure you've done before you tell us. Okay, because I
Speaker 1: feel like my FBI agent, uh Stephen, he really be listening.
Speaker 2: Don't explose yourself.
Speaker 1: Okay, I got good FBI agents. Okay. So I this
Speaker 1: is a short one because this is probably gonna be
Speaker 1: a longer episode. So this is a short What's hot
Speaker 1: in fraud? Give me a fake name, Angela could be anything.
Speaker 1: We don't care about. Gender, Katrina, Katrina I like that, Katrina.
Speaker 1: So Katrina says, Hey, Lacy, I just listened to your
Speaker 1: Oh first of all, Katrina, why do you spell my
Speaker 1: name la c e y? My name is in everything
Speaker 1: that I do, It's on every handle. It's Laci. Why
Speaker 1: y'all be doing that? Y la zol? I just want
Speaker 1: to say that. So also, like, do spell it wrong?
Speaker 1: Because like I don't need the government on all my stuff,
Speaker 1: So let's, you know, keep it diverse. I think I
Speaker 1: like it. So says I just listened to your podcast
Speaker 1: when you talked about Bacon Bitch. Tracy Hudson basically made
Speaker 1: a bootleg restaurant that was supposed to be like Bacon Bitch,
Speaker 1: no way but yeah, and then turned it into Brunch Bitch.
Speaker 1: But I thought it was fantastic because it's like very
Speaker 1: similar logos, very similar menu. Dang, people just have no
Speaker 1: sh mac Arnold's. She did mc arnolds from Coming to America.
Speaker 1: When y'all got McDonald's, we got mac Arnold's.
Speaker 2: Okay, I can't even try.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love the laziness. It's I'm here for.
Speaker 1: So since I just listened to your podcast when you
Speaker 1: talked about Bacon Bitch, I went to Miami three three
Speaker 1: years ago and I was waiting to go onto a
Speaker 1: cruise and that place was by the location of the
Speaker 1: dop So I went there for lunch and let me
Speaker 1: tell you, oh my god, so goddamn good. I have
Speaker 1: exclamation points said. If you're ever in Miami, check them out.
Speaker 1: Good ass drinks too. Thank you for giving me something
Speaker 1: the bench every day and company. Oh this is very sweet.
Speaker 1: Well that's a very fun intro to what is going
Speaker 1: to happen on this podcast today, because I think it's
Speaker 1: gonna be the opposite of that. But wow, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: glad Katrina that you enjoyed bacon bitch. Now I do
Speaker 1: kind of want to go, but guys, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break for some non scam advertisements. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back. Scoff God, And we are back, and it's
Speaker 1: time for my favorite portion of this show, historic hoodwinks.
Speaker 1: This is where I will regale normally regale Angela with
Speaker 1: a scam story and get her opinions all throughout. I
Speaker 1: am gonna get her opinions all throughout. But she is
Speaker 1: very familiar with what we're going to be talking about today.
Speaker 2: It's too familiar.
Speaker 1: So before we really get into it, I wrote down
Speaker 1: some things that I'm yeah, here we go. So today
Speaker 1: we're talking about Gordon Scamsey, chef boy yard scheme, chef scamby,
Speaker 1: Anthony do robbery. No, don't don't to me like that.
Speaker 2: That's sacred. Don't you have like that?
Speaker 1: I love Anthony Burdane. That's why I couldn't. I really
Speaker 1: couldn't figure it out because I was like, no, I
Speaker 1: love this man. We can do, we can do.
Speaker 2: Marcus scam Wilson I think that was.
Speaker 1: One of them. No, Anthony Burnan is a king. Guys,
Speaker 1: we're talking about Darius Williams, who is more widely known
Speaker 1: as Darius Cooks and then even more widely known as
Speaker 1: Darius Crooks Crooks.
Speaker 4: Mister Crooks. Yes, I'm not gonna call him a chef anymore.
Speaker 4: This is mister Crooks, mister Crooks.
Speaker 1: And before we really get into it, like I always say, guys,
Speaker 1: y'all know, I'm not trying to get food, okay, and
Speaker 1: as on the ready to get my gofund me, ready
Speaker 1: for my abugado Okay, if I have to drive you out,
Speaker 1: so I said, boulevard and find a billboard. Fight people,
Speaker 1: swing met y'all gotta help me out. Okay, give me
Speaker 1: my money from my Abugatto fund. So the sources for
Speaker 1: this are coming from Forbes article why food blogger Angela
Speaker 1: Davis Blue, Darius Williams does not deserve a platform, Southern Girl,
Speaker 1: Darius Cooks, Darius Krook's question mark popular food prosonatity, personality,
Speaker 1: excuse me, under fire, black enterprise, from recipes to receipts,
Speaker 1: Darius Cooks Williams Tonight's claims that he is a crook,
Speaker 1: and then the State of Georgia Consumer Protection Division.
Speaker 4: Yes, and that is why we could legally call him
Speaker 4: a scammer, because Georgia determined that Georgia was.
Speaker 1: Like, no, but he do crime. No, they said they know.
Speaker 1: So Angela is known as the Kitchenese to an American chef,
Speaker 1: food blogger, recipe developer, cookbook author. She's here, We've talked
Speaker 1: about this. She also created her blog The Kitchenese and
Speaker 1: Diaries in twenty twelve. We also know that right She's
Speaker 1: appeared in news outlets like Huffington, Pose Hour, Detroit Food
Speaker 1: fifty two at the Washington Post. So like, Angela's here
Speaker 1: and she has the things she's a seasoned professional, and
Speaker 1: the girls know, they know I.
Speaker 2: Do my job.
Speaker 1: Yes, some of us actually quick So in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: and this is crazy because this is like a very
Speaker 1: interesting episode because I'm talking about you, but you're here,
Speaker 1: and so some of this sounds like it's not like
Speaker 1: you're here, but it says in twenty fourteen, Davis started
Speaker 1: seeing some of Darius Williams videos like circulating around the internet.
Speaker 1: She had a Twitter conversation with a friend, a pastry streff,
Speaker 1: critiquing some of what she had seen, but never actually
Speaker 1: tagging Williams nor involving him directly. So, do you remember
Speaker 1: what that is? Like what you saw that gave you pause?
Speaker 4: It was, well, we were looking at his blogs. I
Speaker 4: don't remember what specific, like what video was going around,
Speaker 4: but it prompted us to look at his blog. So
Speaker 4: we were kind of running through the recipes at that time.
Speaker 4: And I think my friend it was the cupcakes that
Speaker 4: caught her eye because she's a pastry chef.
Speaker 2: And it was like a greasy cupcake liner.
Speaker 4: And so at the beginning of the conversation started out
Speaker 4: like she was explaining to me like how he could
Speaker 4: have done it differently, And then we just kind of
Speaker 4: went back and forth in a general sense about how.
Speaker 2: Like sloppy the work was. I remember going to like.
Speaker 4: I just browsed through some of his recipes and the
Speaker 4: instructions were so vague that it came across to me
Speaker 4: as lazy, because I you know, I was like a
Speaker 4: couple of years out at my blog at that point,
Speaker 4: and I know how much work it was just to
Speaker 4: explain a recipe in a way that somebody could really
Speaker 4: learn from it, and everything that he was.
Speaker 2: Putting out just seemed like the exact opposite of that.
Speaker 1: And I will say that I think he got away
Speaker 1: with that for so long because there was like a
Speaker 1: kitchiness to him. There's like a comedic aspect. So some
Speaker 1: it's almost like those white women who make those videos
Speaker 1: where they make nachos on their counter and Speakara on
Speaker 1: their counter. It was like clickbait, and so I think
Speaker 1: that that he used that to his advantage. The issue
Speaker 1: is that he is really also trying to purport himself
Speaker 1: as a real chef and sell recipe books, So it's like,
Speaker 1: since which is right.
Speaker 2: I don't know that he realized that it was funny.
Speaker 1: Oh. I think.
Speaker 4: I think he thought he was really doing the thing,
Speaker 4: you know, like going back because I watched I went
Speaker 4: back to some of his oldest videos when he first
Speaker 4: started cooking. It was like two thousand and eight, and
Speaker 4: I found his Master Chef audition. He was taking himself seriously.
Speaker 4: He really should have just been a comedian from that
Speaker 4: point and it.
Speaker 2: Would have been great.
Speaker 1: I saw when you tweeted about that, because wasn't he
Speaker 1: talk about some sss all or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I was just falling out of the pantry,
Speaker 4: and like he looked. It was like he was looking
Speaker 4: at sets for the first time as he's doing this
Speaker 4: audition and talking about his secret ingredients. So yeah, he
Speaker 4: wasn't taking himself seriously. But but he It's just weird
Speaker 4: because all this time pretending to be a cook, he
Speaker 4: could have just learned how to cook right like you.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing about scamming is like a lot
Speaker 1: of times people have skills, but they're just kind of
Speaker 1: lazy and don't want to hone them when they realize
Speaker 1: they don't have to. So that makes sense. And so
Speaker 1: when you had this conversation about the cupcakes, I guess
Speaker 1: he screenshoted it and posted to his Instagram and alluded
Speaker 1: to you not supporting black chefs.
Speaker 4: That's his yeah, that's his recollection, is that he approached me.
Speaker 2: I think. I think in his.
Speaker 4: Interview with Larry Reid, he was he was saying I
Speaker 4: approached her and said, you know, we should work together
Speaker 4: because that's there's not too many black people out there.
Speaker 4: But that's not actually, that's not what he did. Like
Speaker 4: when he screenshot it, he presented it to his audience
Speaker 4: that I was hating on him, and this is why
Speaker 4: black you know, I don't know why black cooks can't
Speaker 4: get along or black food blog or something like that,
Speaker 4: which is manipulative of course, of course, I mean from
Speaker 4: the very beginning, this is what he does. Like he
Speaker 4: he you know, he hides his hand and likes to
Speaker 4: come off as if he was the one being nice
Speaker 4: and like, I can't imagine why anybody would would make
Speaker 4: fun of me or hate on me the whole while
Speaker 4: he's like he's harassing me.
Speaker 2: I had a much smaller audience.
Speaker 4: At the time, and my friend had an even smaller audience,
Speaker 4: so she was pretty taken aback by the harassment. It
Speaker 4: wasn't completely new to me at that point. I had
Speaker 4: experienced a little bit of online abuse, but it was unexcusable.
Speaker 2: You know, it was like a whole week.
Speaker 4: Of course, it was the way that he presented it
Speaker 4: instead of just.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, he really he should have
Speaker 2: taken the advice to be honest.
Speaker 1: He went full Karen. He went full Central part Karen.
Speaker 1: He was like, I'm big attacked, I'm big attacked.
Speaker 4: But was like doing the Yeah, it's so for me,
Speaker 4: Like these people are just making fun of me on
Speaker 4: the internet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, exactly. So let's get into his scams. We're
Speaker 1: starting with Soul Crab and greens Engraving. So Crab is
Speaker 1: one of several restaurants the Darius owned in Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 1: As more information started coming out regarding Darius, a former
Speaker 1: server from a now shuttered Soul Crap gave her account
Speaker 1: a physical assault by him, and there are tweets that
Speaker 1: will post to the page. In an exclusive interview with
Speaker 1: black Wood Enterprise, william says the reason that Kiara didn't
Speaker 1: receive her money was because she never completed onboarding despite
Speaker 1: being shorted on payroll, and this is an alleged common
Speaker 1: occurrence with a lot of his employees and it's very
Speaker 1: cute to call it shorted on payroll. Nigg you robbing me.
Speaker 1: I'm doing work and I'm not getting currency for it.
Speaker 1: What's going on?
Speaker 4: Don playing that? And it's been two years since the
Speaker 4: restaurant closed? Like why is a server still looking for money?
Speaker 1: Also? How does someone not complete onboarding paperwork but they
Speaker 1: working right?
Speaker 4: So you didn't do your job right? Blaming the worker.
Speaker 4: That's not that's even true, right.
Speaker 1: Well, you didn't sign here in initial here, so that's
Speaker 1: why we can't pay you, even though you've been working
Speaker 1: here for two years. Like what what?
Speaker 4: It just it doesn't make any sense for it to
Speaker 4: have gone to that point where she was that upset.
Speaker 4: She never should have been the math thing man for
Speaker 4: her check. Of course she was upset.
Speaker 1: So he also denies the assault, saying that she began
Speaker 1: being irate with him. He says he reviewed the video
Speaker 1: footage with responding officers and admits, so I did put
Speaker 1: my hands on her. This is a quote from Black Enterprise.
Speaker 1: But I put both hands on her shoulders to kind
Speaker 1: of turn her so we could go discuss this outside.
Speaker 1: So you put your hands on her, right, that's as all? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like that's I think that's the definition, right, And I would.
Speaker 4: Love to see the tape. I mean, I don't know
Speaker 4: why the tape hasn't surface yet. It was it's completely.
Speaker 2: Different than his.
Speaker 1: I didn't saw it.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna believe her.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: Also, that's like me being like I get to a
Speaker 1: fist fight. I didn't have saw her. I just massaged
Speaker 1: her eye, socking with my fists, which walked her out
Speaker 1: outside the door.
Speaker 4: Okay, right, So the two women that had to pry
Speaker 4: his hands off of her.
Speaker 2: Were just making that up too.
Speaker 1: I gave her a hug with my hands around a throat.
Speaker 2: What interaction?
Speaker 4: He's yeah, he just he lies, He lies with everything.
Speaker 4: But it was it was just so disturbing that that
Speaker 4: he brushed it off and then in another interview just
Speaker 4: claimed to not even know her name. It's just like,
Speaker 4: that's just so offensive to me that you now you
Speaker 4: have somebody that came out and said you didn't pay me,
Speaker 4: you assaulted me, and you can't even bother to learn
Speaker 4: your employee's name. Right.
Speaker 1: And also in the Black Enterprise article, he brought up
Speaker 1: his queerness, saying, you know, I'm a gay man, like,
Speaker 1: how could I harm women? And I was like, what
Speaker 1: what did that mean?
Speaker 2: Absolutely nothing to do with he's he's been doing that
Speaker 2: a lot lately.
Speaker 4: That's that's that's the new deflection, is that I'm a
Speaker 4: gay man.
Speaker 2: I couldn't possibly be harming woman. It just doesn't make
Speaker 2: any sense.
Speaker 1: Oh gay, How could I be a criminal? Like news
Speaker 1: to me?
Speaker 2: So I don't know. That's that's not gonna hold up
Speaker 2: very long court.
Speaker 1: I'm right, I didn't know that. That's I don't think
Speaker 1: you can be like, yeah, you're honored.
Speaker 2: I don't even like women could hurt them.
Speaker 1: You're honored. I engage the same sex dating. Hell, could
Speaker 1: I be a criminal gay to do crimes? What did
Speaker 1: he say in that?
Speaker 4: Because I was just watching it last night and I
Speaker 4: think it was the Larry Read interview and he says
Speaker 4: he said that I must not have known that he's
Speaker 4: a that he's at sissy like he said that word.
Speaker 2: It's just it's just crazy.
Speaker 1: What that mean? Your honor? I couldn't have hurt that woman.
Speaker 1: I'm gay. I like I just the mathe mathod And
Speaker 1: that's that's gonna be the through line for all of this,
Speaker 1: is that the math just will never math so soul
Speaker 1: cry so Darius's other restaurant, Greens and Gravy, shut down
Speaker 1: this past February without notice. He announced in an Instagram
Speaker 1: post that they were shuddering, but did not provide additional details. Later,
Speaker 1: he said it was due to his mental health. And
Speaker 1: I want to bring this up because it seems like
Speaker 1: anything that is a struggle or a situation where you're marginalized,
Speaker 1: Darius likes to capitalize on that. You know, he did
Speaker 1: it when he posted you on his Instagram and was like,
Speaker 1: black people, why can't we get along? Crab sent a barrel,
Speaker 1: also sold grab my restaurant, And then he did it
Speaker 1: with being homosexual, like I couldn't hit a woman I'm gay.
Speaker 1: And then he shut down his restaurants and said I
Speaker 1: had closed my businesses because I'm depressed. And it's like
Speaker 1: this brings out the pill bottles, right, And it's like, also,
Speaker 1: I realized on your social media that he sent a
Speaker 1: lot of his fans after you, attacking you for your
Speaker 1: mental health, trying to say that because you were exposing
Speaker 1: a criminal, that you were mentally First of all, those
Speaker 1: two things don't walk hand in hand. I suffer from
Speaker 1: professional anxiety. That doesn't make me a bad person. It
Speaker 1: doesn't make me do bad things to people like they're different.
Speaker 1: But he used an excuse of mental health and then
Speaker 1: tried to have people attack you saying that you were
Speaker 1: mentally ill.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's, I mean, he's it's more reflection. See, I've
Speaker 4: always been open about my mental health.
Speaker 2: I talk about it all the time.
Speaker 4: I was diagnosed as by polar when I'm twenty five,
Speaker 4: when I was twenty five, and I've always been open
Speaker 4: about it.
Speaker 2: It's just part of my life.
Speaker 4: And so the interesting thing is that he never ever,
Speaker 4: ever talked about mental health until the restaurants I went
Speaker 4: back and let through his feed. It's not even mentioned
Speaker 4: like nothing but the question, nothing about therapy, nothing about
Speaker 4: mental health, right, and now this is the reason. And
Speaker 4: you know, everybody goes through what they go through. I'm
Speaker 4: not discrediting it. I can't prove that he's lying. However,
Speaker 4: I do think it was a convenient time to now
Speaker 4: start talking about your mental health and put out pill
Speaker 4: bottles as crops. I just I think it's disgusting as
Speaker 4: somebody that actually goes through it, because I don't know
Speaker 4: if you saw the latest what I realized after I've
Speaker 4: been tracking this for a month and I started. I
Speaker 4: had never looked through his ebooks. He plagiarized his holiday
Speaker 4: e book based on mine. I put out all, Yeah,
Speaker 4: I put out a holiday My first holiday book was
Speaker 4: in twenty fifteen. It was a Thanksgiving book, and then
Speaker 4: I did I followed up twenty sixteen with a revised version.
Speaker 4: It was a full holiday menu, and the concept was
Speaker 4: a full holiday menu in one book, with grocery lists
Speaker 4: and like tips for holiday prep, all my own photography,
Speaker 4: like original recipes. I think it's about forty recipes. I
Speaker 4: start out with like an intro about family traditions and
Speaker 4: how much that means to me and how I'm trying
Speaker 4: to preserve those traditions and learn how to cook so
Speaker 4: that I can put food on the table for my family.
Speaker 4: And I talked about how important it was, like from
Speaker 4: a very personal place, and it happened to be the
Speaker 4: book that I put out when I quit my job,
Speaker 4: like that allowed me to continue my journey.
Speaker 2: Well. I had never seen his content because I blocked
Speaker 2: him at twenty fourteen.
Speaker 4: He put out a holiday book a year after or
Speaker 4: I did, and I started going through it. I did
Speaker 4: a thread on Twitter, and there's just too many coincidences.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna call it like for me to ignore, right,
Speaker 4: Like the whole concept rips off of my book down
Speaker 4: to like like I'll give you an example, like the
Speaker 4: type of recipes I did, the traditional you know, like
Speaker 4: turkey hymn, and then I have alternatives.
Speaker 2: I did a like pistachio crusted.
Speaker 4: Salmon, and there's a coffee rubbed beef roast, and there's
Speaker 4: cornish hens. Well guess what's in his book? Cornish hens,
Speaker 4: a beef roast and cong crusted salmon.
Speaker 1: It a little bit.
Speaker 4: He just switches up like one or two ingredients and
Speaker 4: then cuts out half of my instructions to make it
Speaker 4: like this sloppy, easy version of whatever I did. So
Speaker 4: I went through the whole book and it's just it's
Speaker 4: a lot of it's a lot of shit like that,
Speaker 4: even down to the intro, Like we're questioning if his
Speaker 4: grandmother even existed at this point because a lot of
Speaker 4: the stories are adding. Like every interview he does, he
Speaker 4: switches up the age that he was when he was
Speaker 4: cooking with her. He switches up his grandmother's been everywhere
Speaker 4: from like Chicago to Mississippi to Kentucky.
Speaker 2: Now, so what I realized in college.
Speaker 1: I kept killing my one dad aunt to get out
Speaker 1: of finals, to get out of doing everything. I'd be like,
Speaker 1: oh she doesnet die again, y'all. Here here's those bitua.
Speaker 1: I moved the sunrise to sunset. Oh my dad so
Speaker 1: many times. Her sunset was in twenty twelve. It was
Speaker 1: also in twenty fifteen. It was.
Speaker 2: That's terrible.
Speaker 4: I guess maybe that's what he's doing, is like Pam's
Speaker 4: just been all of it, like the whole book that
Speaker 4: he put out, stories from my grandmother's kitchen, Like all
Speaker 4: those clots are made up about panms, like Pam didn't
Speaker 4: make avocado toast, His grandmother didn't make avocado toast, Like
Speaker 4: she didn't make a Strengthen Chariza Burger like why is
Speaker 4: he lying on his grandmother?
Speaker 1: Why are you lying on his girl? But like that,
Speaker 1: why else to do that?
Speaker 4: He has a great his grandmother pat he pretended to
Speaker 4: be me. So I think that's where like the mental
Speaker 4: health park comes up. I went through his old interviews,
Speaker 4: and he had like different stories about when he went
Speaker 4: to college, Like first he said he had a biblical
Speaker 4: he had a degree in biblical studies.
Speaker 2: Well, somebody went in contact to that college. I never
Speaker 2: heard of him.
Speaker 4: It's like Moody Bible Institute, Like we got a letter
Speaker 4: back and they're saying, Nope, never heard of him.
Speaker 1: And I also want you to know that you might
Speaker 1: be Darius's grandma, like when he.
Speaker 2: Like, that's probably the next iteration of the story.
Speaker 4: So he and then he and then as as it evolved,
Speaker 4: as his journey involved by the time you get to
Speaker 4: like twenty fourteen, which is when I started doing interviews,
Speaker 4: now he's claiming to have a fourteen year HR career
Speaker 4: and he left a commercial real estate company to pursue
Speaker 4: cookbooks and catering.
Speaker 2: Well, guess what I was doing.
Speaker 4: I was working at a commercial construction company and I
Speaker 4: had a ten year account. Like I like, this is
Speaker 4: it's like single white female. Like his whole story shifted
Speaker 4: to look like mine.
Speaker 1: So he did.
Speaker 4: I had him blocked, and I'm not realizing that he's
Speaker 4: copying my books and he's copying my actual story right,
Speaker 4: like my life story. And I think the mental health
Speaker 4: was just like an extension of that because a year
Speaker 4: prior I have talked openly about having like a mental
Speaker 4: health crisis, and now conveniently here's various list with It's like,
Speaker 4: what's next, you know, being.
Speaker 1: Being alive and being yourself as hard. You know, if
Speaker 1: you find somebody who's just got everything you want, maybe
Speaker 1: just be them.
Speaker 4: I was sous, like the only thing he couldn't plagiarize
Speaker 4: was my children. And then I went back in the
Speaker 4: book and the book he put hes he copied tips
Speaker 4: that like don't actually fit in his book. He copied
Speaker 4: tips for recipes he didn't even have, so he so
Speaker 4: he copied a tip about letting your kids set the table,
Speaker 4: like he actually put that in his book. Just find
Speaker 4: a kid at the table, sign a kid.
Speaker 1: You don't have to, you know, Darius is probably sitting there, like, damn, okay,
Speaker 1: this has been working thus far. She's my fake grandma.
Speaker 1: I'm stealing all these quotes. I'm stealing these recipes. Oh damn,
Speaker 1: she got kids. I don't got kids. How can I
Speaker 1: work this out? Find it? Child may here. Find a
Speaker 1: child's cential table, whether you have them or not, Like.
Speaker 2: Just just find a random kids asking us a kid.
Speaker 1: Go outside on the street and find a child to
Speaker 1: sential table. Amen. You know that's hilarious. I'm sorry, Like
Speaker 1: what it's insane? So there are more issues at his
Speaker 1: restaurants than just disgruntled employees, according to a former kitchen
Speaker 1: manager who spoke with Black Enterprise. And so this is
Speaker 1: a quote. And so when the people Health inspectors came in,
Speaker 1: they failed it. His license wasn't up to par. He
Speaker 1: owed almost twenty five thousand dollars to the light department.
Speaker 1: So when they handed me the letter saying that lights
Speaker 1: were getting ready to be cut off, twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars or we're cutting off the light, basically, I told
Speaker 1: my crew go home, cut them off. A whole millionaire
Speaker 1: with his lights getting turned off, right, a whole millionaire.
Speaker 1: But you can't. We can't have a fluorescence.
Speaker 4: We can't have not even a flashlight, not even a candle, right,
Speaker 4: like the lights.
Speaker 1: What's going on? But listen, Darius, just like you don't
Speaker 1: need to see the food, probably for a good reason.
Speaker 1: And so you couldn't see the rats and the roach, right.
Speaker 1: He was like, look, I'm giving vibes. Okay, y'all come
Speaker 1: here and get vibes. Y'all need to see stuff. What
Speaker 1: do you need to see? Set out? You're setting the
Speaker 1: scene right. Additionally, when the restaurants shut down, there were
Speaker 1: problems regarding final checks. This is another quote from Black Enterprise,
Speaker 1: from someone who's employed. You left them people with no
Speaker 1: paychecks for months. It took them threatening to sue you
Speaker 1: before you even gave them an allowance because it wasn't
Speaker 1: their full paycheck. So you just gave them whatever the
Speaker 1: hell you wanted to give them to hell with my payroll,
Speaker 1: hell with everything. Right before Darry's that's shameful. It's shameful.
Speaker 1: You have to pay people what you owe them, like.
Speaker 2: And this is this is into the pandemic. This is
Speaker 2: twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow, oh then that's even it's way worse. So
Speaker 1: right before Darius shut down Greens and Gravy and Soul Crab,
Speaker 1: he had just settled with the Georgia Department of Law
Speaker 1: Consumer Protection Division as his company Above seven oh one
Speaker 1: allegedly conducted a legal credit repair.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean not right there. He started this in
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen. It was a different company name when he
Speaker 4: started it before it switched above someone on one. I
Speaker 4: just want to know why nobody thought that there was
Speaker 4: something wrong with a food blogger just popping up with
Speaker 4: a credit repair business out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: Right, The math ain't math in there. If he was
Speaker 1: like an account in or worked in finance, perhaps that
Speaker 1: could be the next jump. But that's like me going
Speaker 1: from being a comedian to be like, hey, y'all, I'm
Speaker 1: selling door heart monitors. You're trying to get your heart
Speaker 1: monitor all. Like it's like where did that come from?
Speaker 4: Especially considering like his whole past, it's all it's like bankruptcies, evictions, lawsuits,
Speaker 4: Like how do you have all that in your past?
Speaker 2: And then you pop up and decide I'm gonna.
Speaker 4: Fix everybody's credit right, No, no finance background whatsoever.
Speaker 1: So above seven oh one's byline was because you can't
Speaker 1: be flat with bad credit? Okay?
Speaker 2: Wow? So is he praying a black people? Like it's
Speaker 2: just it's funny, Like the ads are funny in the
Speaker 2: sense that it's just they're so terrible.
Speaker 4: But what he's doing is scamming the same people that
Speaker 4: he claims to that support him, you.
Speaker 1: Know, right, Southern black people seem saepy, all black women,
Speaker 1: black women, and people with religious backgrounds. He's like, do
Speaker 1: you want to get your credit face? Do you try
Speaker 1: to get a new credit card? Skirts skirt? Okay? Like
Speaker 1: he's like all those ads that whenever I go to Atlanta.
Speaker 1: Atlanta has the most beautiful black radio ads that are
Speaker 1: so deeply black and hilarious that I know a white
Speaker 1: person wrote them.
Speaker 2: That's how write, you know what, that's how he writes.
Speaker 4: He writes like he's just like playing an African American
Speaker 4: soul food cook.
Speaker 1: Right. One of my favorite commercials when I went to
Speaker 1: Atlanta was one eight hundred injured, and it was like
Speaker 1: one eight hundred injured.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 1: I was just driving my business. It was like I
Speaker 1: was just driving minded my business. Somebody got behind me
Speaker 1: skirt skirt my neck, hurt my back doo, and I
Speaker 1: had to call the throone. I still remember it.
Speaker 2: You got a call the thone.
Speaker 4: That's his credit commercials, and it's all it's just all
Speaker 4: about like fixing your credit so that you can buy something.
Speaker 4: So even the ads are it's just like, you see
Speaker 4: what the motivation is. It's not about getting your life together.
Speaker 4: It's about like, let me like illegally fix your credit
Speaker 4: so that you can get approved of this car or.
Speaker 1: This house so that you can be fly and stunt
Speaker 1: people with the same bad credit. And so he did
Speaker 1: this as long as you paid him a monthly fee.
Speaker 1: He said that he would fix your credit. This is
Speaker 1: an illegal practice in Georgia. In December twenty nineteen, the
Speaker 1: State of Georgia announced that one hundred and forty seven
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars settlement with Above seven oh one
Speaker 1: and Williams was happening. So they were like, you're doing
Speaker 1: crime and we see it and you need to pay
Speaker 1: us and then get out the game. So, in addition
Speaker 1: to violating the Georgia Fair Business Practices Acts, the set,
Speaker 1: the state states that the company accepted payment before services
Speaker 1: were provided and were misleading about the services that it
Speaker 1: could provide. There's also numerous unaddressed complaints in the company's
Speaker 1: Better Business Bureau page. Williams says that he refuses to
Speaker 1: address these complaints. He also refuses to provide Better Business
Speaker 1: Bureau with physical addresses for his businesses and set up
Speaker 1: accounts so that the Better Business Bureau is unable to
Speaker 1: address concerns. So not only he say like I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna respond to nothing on the Better Business Bureau, also
Speaker 1: like they were like, Darius, where's your business address? And
Speaker 1: he was like, my address is a vibe, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a feeling.
Speaker 2: So and so are his business licenses. It's just it's
Speaker 2: just vibes and credit card charges.
Speaker 1: Right, Like, we're looking at the Better Business Bureau right now,
Speaker 1: and they've got some complaints up here. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: read one of these complaints here from the Better Business
Speaker 1: Bureau that are on this page currently.
Speaker 2: He also deflects by kind of focusing on Georgia.
Speaker 4: But that law about not accepting payment upfront for credit repair,
Speaker 4: that's a federal law.
Speaker 2: It's actually illegal everywhere.
Speaker 1: He was just trying to act like Georgia was doing
Speaker 1: too much, but it's like this on him too. And
Speaker 1: also that kind of feeds into the sympathy and the
Speaker 1: manipulation too, because there are some laws in Georgia that
Speaker 1: are deeply unfair, especially when it comes to marijuana and
Speaker 1: black folks. So there are some laws in Georgia that
Speaker 1: actually are bad.
Speaker 4: So he's like, by the way, right now, we start
Speaker 4: selling like infused products or something like he doesn't even
Speaker 4: understand what a strain is.
Speaker 1: So, oh, Lord Jesus, this is not what we need.
Speaker 4: This.
Speaker 1: No one needs this, nobody.
Speaker 2: Needs nobody needs those kind of edibles.
Speaker 1: So one of his complaints on the Better Business bureau
Speaker 1: website is I ordered a pound cake in early April
Speaker 1: and I have not received it yet. This complaint comes
Speaker 1: from May twentieth, twenty twenty one. They said they ordered
Speaker 1: the pound cake in early April, weeks they're taking weeks
Speaker 1: in the mail. I've tried contacting Carolina pound Cake twice
Speaker 1: May ninth and May sixteenth by email and they have
Speaker 1: not responded. I would like a full refund of fifty
Speaker 1: dollars the price of the cake, like the next one.
Speaker 1: I placed an ordered to pound Cake Carolina websites April
Speaker 1: twenty fifth, twenty twenty one. The website says that it
Speaker 1: should take five day business days and the cake will
Speaker 1: be baked and shipped, and I haven't gotten it. Like
Speaker 1: the same thing, There's a lot of the same complain
Speaker 1: on there which brings us to Carolina pound Cakes. In
Speaker 1: the comments of a post from You're from You, Angela
Speaker 1: Davis with Kiara's Statement, who was one of the alleged
Speaker 1: former bakers with Carolina pound Cakes, details her experience working
Speaker 1: in poor conditions and being paid pities to bake for
Speaker 1: Carolina pound Cakes. There are also numerous complaints on the
Speaker 1: websites Better Business Places that we just read about not
Speaker 1: getting cakes or refunds. Customers were told they were backed up,
Speaker 1: hence the website being taken down. However, on July nineteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, the company was dissolved and.
Speaker 2: No business life sense.
Speaker 4: Here's the thing, though, even before it was dissolved, that
Speaker 4: address that was on the website was just a PO box,
Speaker 4: so nobody knew where the actual bakery was, and there
Speaker 4: were no health inspections for wherever this place was that
Speaker 4: he was baking, and so the state caught up with him,
Speaker 4: so they definitely know, you know, they shut it down,
Speaker 4: but he's so claiming to be catching up on orders,
Speaker 4: so who knows where these cakes are actually being made
Speaker 4: and why they're taking two weeks to you know.
Speaker 1: Right, that's an excellent scam tactic. Though I can't lie
Speaker 1: to never have a real physical address. I kind of
Speaker 1: want to do that. It's actually genius.
Speaker 2: It seems to be working for him. It's not the
Speaker 2: first time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which because he had no physical address and they
Speaker 1: couldn't do health inspections. Like you said, Angela, it was
Speaker 1: against the law because that's a requirement for shipping food
Speaker 1: across state lines, is that you have to have a
Speaker 1: health inspection.
Speaker 2: Because it's a food safety issue.
Speaker 4: Like, I think that's serious that he's just he's sending
Speaker 4: out cakes that are not being wrapped properly. They're taking
Speaker 4: a couple of weeks in the mail, and apparently his
Speaker 4: followers are still eating them when they get them.
Speaker 1: Yikes. And I saw pictures on Twitter of someone who
Speaker 1: had cakes allegedly that were from his company and they
Speaker 1: were moldy when they got this.
Speaker 2: One off.
Speaker 4: I saw one that had bugs and all because yeah,
Speaker 4: like they look like little black ants or something.
Speaker 1: Oh and food, you know, I think sometimes we don't
Speaker 1: put enough respect on food and people who make food
Speaker 1: and people who are chefs, because food is one something
Speaker 1: essential that we all need in our lives. But food
Speaker 1: brings people together, It reminds people of things. It nourishes
Speaker 1: their souls, their minds, their bodies. You should be respectful.
Speaker 1: There should be the amount of grace and respect that you
Speaker 1: have when you're making food for people. And absolutely, and
Speaker 1: you should care. You should care if it's safe for
Speaker 1: them to eat, Like that's just fair. Minimum is that
Speaker 1: you know that it's safe. You know that you're not
Speaker 1: going to kill somebody by sending them a cake. The
Speaker 1: bar is on the floor, especially because our food half
Speaker 1: of it ain't food.
Speaker 4: We can we talk about like the fact that it's
Speaker 4: a fifty dollars pound cake.
Speaker 1: First of all, I mean fifty dollars.
Speaker 4: Fifty dollars, Like what kind of poundcake is this?
Speaker 2: Also, when should you take the utmost care shipping a
Speaker 2: fifty dollars time?
Speaker 1: Right? I was about to say, if it's fifty dollars,
Speaker 1: it should be FedEx next day, beautifully decorated, plated, like
Speaker 1: you should have to sign for it, like fifty dollars
Speaker 1: and you're just throwing the shit in a fucking next
Speaker 1: day airbox and.
Speaker 4: Not like he's still like a flat rate shipping box
Speaker 4: and like just like a prayer, and like it'll get.
Speaker 2: There when it gets there five to eight days.
Speaker 1: What did it mean? How long is it traveling during
Speaker 1: the five to eight because I really needed to just
Speaker 1: travel one day.
Speaker 4: That's He's just I don't know, I just I don't
Speaker 4: understand it. I don't understand how this has been going
Speaker 4: on for a year and a half and people are
Speaker 4: just not asking, like that's going over the cakes.
Speaker 1: I don't want o caake that's been percolating for five
Speaker 1: day days. I don't want it marinated. I don't want
Speaker 1: a fermented cake like and that man loves to put
Speaker 1: Hannessy in things, so oh right right.
Speaker 4: Maybe maybe that's the disinffect. Maybe that's what stops the
Speaker 4: h Maybe he soaks him at Hennessy's. They don't grow now.
Speaker 1: Listen, Hennessy is very strong. I've drink during COVID. There
Speaker 1: was some place in some country that was given Hennessy
Speaker 1: and masks to people, and I said, that might be
Speaker 1: the cure, because I ain't never if you want a
Speaker 1: new throat, if you want to just refresh the.
Speaker 4: Drinks in his restaurants. He had issues with food safety too,
Speaker 4: like those health inspections were terrible.
Speaker 2: The one in Chicago.
Speaker 4: It was like the food wasn't even being stored at
Speaker 4: the right temperature. So maybe that's the Maybe that's the plan,
Speaker 4: is like you just have enough alcohol and nobody gets sick.
Speaker 1: Right, He said, Look, we ain't got no lights, we
Speaker 1: ain't got no health inspections, but we do have as
Speaker 1: a lot of Hennessy. Y'all gonna be good. Y'alln't need
Speaker 1: to see shit. It's fine if you have to eat bugs.
Speaker 1: We have Hannessy. So Sonny Anderson and Fresh Go, like, guys,
Speaker 1: do you see what's happening? Like are you listening to
Speaker 1: how we are just moving from It's a lot. It's
Speaker 1: a lot, like, so come going back to Chicago. Chicago's
Speaker 1: one of the baby scammer was in Chicago. This is
Speaker 1: these are the baby scams. He had a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of scams in Chicago. That's cute. I literally just flew
Speaker 1: back from Chicago. I think it's a very cute. Skinddy,
Speaker 1: very right, very right for scams. I would love to
Speaker 1: go back and rob people.
Speaker 3: Bob bab.
Speaker 1: And right. So, celebrity chef and Food Network stars Sonny
Speaker 1: Anderson invited Darius onto her show Cooking for Real for
Speaker 1: two episodes. According to Anderson, while working together, Darius asked
Speaker 1: her to invest in his grocery delivery business in Chicago,
Speaker 1: Fresh to Go or Fresh Go. She declined, but after
Speaker 1: the show aired, she started receiving complaints about the business.
Speaker 1: Because of his appearance on the show, people assume they
Speaker 1: work together and that she'd be able to contact Williams.
Speaker 1: That's how you know that she really is some crime.
Speaker 1: When people see you with somebody else and they're like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe this is how I can get my money back.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget rush cards. So Russell Simmons had this
Speaker 1: card number played debit card that you can have your
Speaker 1: checks put on from work called rush cards, and then
Speaker 1: his ex wife also had like the baby fat Rush
Speaker 1: car Like they had these little you know cards for
Speaker 1: people who don't have bank accounts, and one day, I guess,
Speaker 1: all the money got froze and nobody could get their
Speaker 1: checks from work. No one could get their money off
Speaker 1: of the card. And it got so bad that Angela
Speaker 1: Simmons had like angel would post a photo like out
Speaker 1: at the beach, cheeks out, sons out, buns out, and
Speaker 1: people were in the comments like, cis, can you tell
Speaker 1: your dad to run us our money?
Speaker 4: Where is our fucking money? Blame them though, that's crazy.
Speaker 4: My last really bad date.
Speaker 1: I mean, it tells you how long I know this was.
Speaker 2: It's the guy pulled out a Rush card. He couldn't
Speaker 2: he couldn't pay for the whole.
Speaker 1: My god, now not the rush card on the dead.
Speaker 2: Pay for the whole. Like we sit down and he's starts.
Speaker 4: I could tell from the beginning because he's just ordering water,
Speaker 4: and he's like, I'm not that hungry, He's just picking
Speaker 4: something off an appetizer. And I already keep gaming from
Speaker 4: the beginning, so I'm ordering everything because I knew I
Speaker 4: was gonna end upaying for my shit anyways, so I,
Speaker 4: you know, I ate everything I wanted to.
Speaker 2: This was like it was like a Mediterranean restaurant.
Speaker 1: He was like, they got free bread here, they got
Speaker 1: free bread. That's all we need.
Speaker 4: I think he has some hummus and some water, and
Speaker 4: the check comes and he goes, well, I only got
Speaker 4: thirty dollars left on my card and he puts the
Speaker 4: card down.
Speaker 2: It was a rush card. So that's when I just
Speaker 2: decided that dating might not be for me anywhore.
Speaker 1: No, no, not the fresh card, the rush card.
Speaker 4: So I told the server, I said, put thirty on it,
Speaker 4: and then I paid for the rest of my mony off.
Speaker 4: But I took everything off of that card.
Speaker 1: Angela, you Patty, not put thirty on it. He was like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm taking dolls. Like, I'm gonna take it and then
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pay for the rest and I'm never gonna
Speaker 1: see you again. I love to ask for you Edbar's,
Speaker 1: but yeah, so rush Card wasn't rushing nobody day coins.
Speaker 1: They were very actually slow and not fast and did
Speaker 1: not rush to pay people money. So it's just funny
Speaker 1: to me because like the fact that Angela or Sunny
Speaker 1: Anderson rather, you know, had a mild association with this man,
Speaker 1: and then people were like, this is how we get
Speaker 1: our money back? They were desperate.
Speaker 4: If you go back and look like you can still
Speaker 4: if you search for freshco on Twitter under the old handle,
Speaker 4: you could see some of the people are still like
Speaker 4: back then, this was like twenty twelve. They're just tweeting
Speaker 4: into the void like Farius ran after, you know, left
Speaker 4: with their money and they were trying to figure out
Speaker 4: how to find him, and they were just asking like
Speaker 4: it was the beginnings of so is this guy a
Speaker 4: scammer because he appears to have run off with their money?
Speaker 1: Right and Anderson. Anderson said, I got messages on Twitter
Speaker 1: about fresh Goo or fresh to Go, and there were
Speaker 1: complaints that people had given their credit card information but
Speaker 1: no delivery. They reached out to me because he was
Speaker 1: on my show. I called him to ask what was
Speaker 1: going on and he hung up. I called back and
Speaker 1: he never picked up again.
Speaker 2: That's his ms. That's when everything was in Chicago.
Speaker 4: It was kind of coming ahead, so Freshco was was
Speaker 4: people realized that there was no actual grocery delivery service.
Speaker 4: They were just getting charged for nothing. And then he
Speaker 4: had another scam going. He had started fake es like groceries.
Speaker 2: Right, just vibes.
Speaker 4: He started a cup he was going to make a
Speaker 4: cupcake mix, like he had a bakery, so he had
Speaker 4: a cupcake gallery.
Speaker 2: That was his business, and then he started this company.
Speaker 4: He was going to sell dry cupcake mix, like a
Speaker 4: box mix where you could call this is this is
Speaker 4: his plan, A one eight hundred number to order this
Speaker 4: cupcake mix because that's how we order cupcake mixer. Sure, well,
Speaker 4: it never actually existed, but he had people invest in it.
Speaker 4: He sent out like this whole investment proposal and people invested,
Speaker 4: and then he just left town and like the company
Speaker 4: never actually existed, like they bought shares, like he sold
Speaker 4: one percent shares for two thousand dollars for shares like
Speaker 4: this is like an actual investment, like like he has
Speaker 4: like the numbers laid out, like I'm going to have
Speaker 4: one point two million in revenue, and you're if you
Speaker 4: buy a one percent share for two thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: You'll be set for life. He's telling people they can
Speaker 2: retire off of this.
Speaker 1: It's not it's changed New York and it's Darius ringing
Speaker 1: the bell. Come event. Yeah, And this is like a
Speaker 1: high level scammer. You do something and then you act like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know what went wrong or I'm not really
Speaker 1: like good at that oops, and then you leave town
Speaker 1: or you leave whatever that venture is, and you just
Speaker 1: never That's how you pivot.
Speaker 4: It's just change your number, change your Twitter handle, delete
Speaker 4: your blog, and move on.
Speaker 2: That's what he used to do. But I guess he
Speaker 2: just forgot that people could still pull up the archives. Right.
Speaker 1: The internet is forever. So Darius denies he not only
Speaker 1: ever like so, he denies that he ever owned Fresh
Speaker 1: to Go or fresh Go, and he says he knows
Speaker 1: nothing about it. When Black Enterprise asked directly, do you
Speaker 1: know anything about this fresh Go being associated with you?
Speaker 1: He says nothing, Really, That's what I'm saying. That's why
Speaker 1: I would love to know from Sonny what I ever
Speaker 1: did to her? He said, I ain't never even had
Speaker 1: knew nothing about no fresh Go. I ain't never even
Speaker 1: fresh whatd and look very He don't cook with fresh vegetables,
Speaker 1: so he you know, you know, he loves a powdered.
Speaker 4: Veget lane from the beginning, like he kicked the wrong lane.
Speaker 4: So he tweet had a tweeter a whole mother fate
Speaker 4: company called local Hala. So he has a website, not
Speaker 4: a website, a Twitter page for that. And the only
Speaker 4: company that that page advertised was fresh Go.
Speaker 1: And we have a tweet from January twenty twelve of
Speaker 1: Darius Williams saying it's a in all caps, great day
Speaker 1: to shop fresh Go click today, grocery delivery tomorrow. Then
Speaker 1: he puts the website fresh Go now dot com. Now, look,
Speaker 1: if he had just denied owning fresh Go, maybe this
Speaker 1: tweet is fine and he's just advertising for something. But
Speaker 1: he said fresh Go. Who is that? I don't know her.
Speaker 1: He never heard of a girl. He's he never met her.
Speaker 4: West your tweets like, by now, wouldn't you have deleted
Speaker 4: your tweets because he brown like.
Speaker 1: His tweets are still there. He's trolling us. He's trolling us.
Speaker 1: Gotta be this is so slappy. So you know Darius
Speaker 1: his Twitter, he's promoting fresh Go. There's a one star
Speaker 1: review from Yelp that says do not support This guy
Speaker 1: owns fresh Go and he initiated hundreds of fraudulent charges
Speaker 1: on people's credit cards. He is a thief. He charged
Speaker 1: mine ninety eight dollars and thirty four cents twice. Damn
Speaker 1: they got the real like, not the thirty four cents, Okay,
Speaker 1: I had to get the bank to reverse it twice.
Speaker 1: No one can find him. He doesn't answer his phone
Speaker 1: or emails.
Speaker 4: He even set up a fake group on a deal
Speaker 4: for a fake company. Like that's how far the scan went.
Speaker 4: The whole the website is what kills me though.
Speaker 1: And so we have a screenshot of the Fresh to
Speaker 1: Go website right here, and we'll post all of this Dan.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be a long, swipey post for you
Speaker 1: guys on Instagram. But so the now deleted fresh Go website,
Speaker 1: we're looking at it right now with a single blog
Speaker 1: post a recipe, just one blog post for green beans
Speaker 1: with tomato walnut jam. The image is gone, but a
Speaker 1: link to now deleted posts on Darry's site Everyday Cooking
Speaker 1: dot Com. Around the same time, there's an image of
Speaker 1: green beans with tomato walnut jam that was posted to
Speaker 1: Darius's Facebook, and now we're looking at the green beans
Speaker 1: and the tomato walnut jam. He also knows how to
Speaker 1: like say words that are very titillating for people who
Speaker 1: like to cook or want to cook well, or want
Speaker 1: to learn, like jam, walnut jam.
Speaker 2: Aren't those becaus?
Speaker 1: Yes, they are pecaans, they're not walnuts. Since we'd walnuts,
Speaker 1: don't even lie? Right, how do you go a lot
Speaker 1: of my face like this? I have a Darius, No,
Speaker 1: not a nary a walnut.
Speaker 2: He definitely called the walnuts.
Speaker 1: Wow. Wow, this is and I don't even he never
Speaker 1: even know if it's his photo. This feels like something
Speaker 1: he actually made. I mean, this looks pretty bad. It's
Speaker 1: probably Yeah, there's levels to this though, It's like you
Speaker 1: lie about the food, and the food is also a
Speaker 1: cover for the scam, right. The scam is that he's
Speaker 1: not a chef and never probably wanted to be.
Speaker 4: This is just a scam so you can get scam
Speaker 4: so he can still be running people's credit cards.
Speaker 2: So he was also like he even created like a
Speaker 2: fake payroll company.
Speaker 4: Around this time, child, and then when you open it up,
Speaker 4: it goes to his address, like he like there's a
Speaker 4: YELP page for this fake payroll company that is on
Speaker 4: his resume, and then you go look it up it
Speaker 4: was his apartment brou Darius is the hardest working man
Speaker 4: in crime. Okay, he's doing his two thousand times so
Speaker 4: stolen recipes.
Speaker 1: Because Darius cooks can't actually cook cook. Many of Darius's
Speaker 1: recipes are more of an assembly of pre made, store
Speaker 1: bought ingredients rather than recipes for ingredients from scratch. This
Speaker 1: includes sauces for his jerk chicken and barbecue wings, as
Speaker 1: well as pizza do Most of his recipes just also
Speaker 1: don't work. We linked to one of your threads about
Speaker 1: Darius's keto book, and then there's an Instagram reel of
Speaker 1: endless sodium laden seasonings. Oh yeah, his his catfish seasoning.
Speaker 1: When I saw that, I wanted to pass out. He
Speaker 1: put so much salt. Well, somebody would actually pass out
Speaker 1: if they ate that.
Speaker 4: I said it to my dad. My dad had a
Speaker 4: heart attack a few years ago, and I remember just
Speaker 4: how hard it was the first couple of years to
Speaker 4: get to understand like what he could tolerate with sodium,
Speaker 4: and we had to be super careful about everything, and
Speaker 4: it's it's serious, Like if he would have one day
Speaker 4: where he ate out, you know, like you know, there's
Speaker 4: so much sodium when you eat out.
Speaker 1: Like so if we had a holiday or he was eating.
Speaker 4: Outside of the home and he overdid it, he would
Speaker 4: be in bed for a couple of days, Like it
Speaker 4: would trigger like his he had congestive her failure, and
Speaker 4: he would get fluid. He's dealt with gout, like and
Speaker 4: this is not uncommon in our community, you know, like
Speaker 4: there's so many of our of our families that are
Speaker 4: like have heart issues or high blood pressure. So for
Speaker 4: him to be using more than a week's worth of
Speaker 4: sodium like just so casually and act like it's not
Speaker 4: a big Like this was a big.
Speaker 1: Deal to me, And it's so deeply dangerous. You hit
Speaker 1: the nail on the head. Because his audience is us
Speaker 1: is black folks, We're already predisposed to having high blood pressure,
Speaker 1: most of us do, like you know, we already are
Speaker 1: predisposed to having way more stress just for simply being alive. Like,
Speaker 1: so it's a dangerous combination. And when I saw that video,
Speaker 1: I was like, this made must be joking. There's no
Speaker 1: way he's gonna eat This is.
Speaker 4: What so I and I calculated it, like it had
Speaker 4: to be an over a week's worth of sodium in
Speaker 4: that one bowl, and it was three portions of cathas.
Speaker 2: According to him, it was. It was just it's insane.
Speaker 1: So of what's left, many of his recipes are stolen.
Speaker 1: He copied and pasted Tasty French's omelet recipe. We have
Speaker 1: a picture of that, Mandy Lee Charizo and shrimp burger.
Speaker 1: This one you can google image the chariza and shrimp burger.
Speaker 4: That what bothered me because I'm such I was such
Speaker 4: a fan of that blogger back back in the day,
Speaker 4: Like that was her first recipe that I remember circulating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like it was such a cool photo.
Speaker 4: Like I just left the photo and it always caught
Speaker 4: my eye and people started to copy it, and he
Speaker 4: was one of them.
Speaker 1: So it was one of the first things that stood
Speaker 1: out to me, like you didn't come up with this.
Speaker 4: But what he does is like he'll take something if
Speaker 4: you go to her blog, she her whole process. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's it's like homemade bun, homemade Cherisa Patti. And he
Speaker 4: just does like the easiest thing that he could do
Speaker 4: to put a recipe on the page It's like it's
Speaker 4: like you're erasing and devaluing an actual recipe developers work,
Speaker 4: which is so disrespectful.
Speaker 1: And so we're gonna end Darius. The saga here with
Speaker 1: Darius Williams. Harassment of black women, why we're here. When
Speaker 1: conflict rose online again between Angela, Davis, You, and Williams,
Speaker 1: Williams launched his own campaign of harassment against Angela. He
Speaker 1: is Dave's trademark name Kitchenista as a promo code to
Speaker 1: sell his books, and I saw that tweet use the
Speaker 1: code Kitchenista. He also posted a ten minute long video
Speaker 1: detailing how he was making money with the conflict, from
Speaker 1: which he earned ad and sponsor revenue.
Speaker 4: So he says, so, he says allegedly, which those numbers
Speaker 4: don't line up either.
Speaker 1: I mean, has we that's the whole titled episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's never gonna math. He also so. He also on
Speaker 1: his Twitter and Instagra and feeds are there's like aun
Speaker 1: ending snide remarks directed against you.
Speaker 2: Angela.
Speaker 1: This is one quote from you. He went on live
Speaker 1: and made fun of me, saying that I was broke.
Speaker 1: I'm not a millionaire like him. He said that my
Speaker 1: countertops are formica for Mica. Rather, they're not not that
Speaker 1: it matters. He said something about how the only thing
Speaker 1: I cook with is duck fat. It was just really petty, Darius,
Speaker 1: You ain't ever cooked with a fresh vegetable? Can we
Speaker 1: speak on that, right?
Speaker 4: Like I've never seen actual garlic, only drowns his food
Speaker 4: and like olive oil and soggy bacon, and has the
Speaker 4: nerve to talk about ducks fat, like, try some duck fat,
Speaker 4: maybe it'll be an improvement.
Speaker 1: He probably just mean he don't know where to get it.
Speaker 4: You never trying to get it because he stops my
Speaker 4: face And the funny thing is now like everything in hindsight,
Speaker 4: realizing that he's acting like he doesn't know who I
Speaker 4: am making fun of the way I cook.
Speaker 2: But he's been stuck my fees and copying my recipes
Speaker 2: for seven years.
Speaker 1: Right, he knows, just like he don't know about fresh
Speaker 1: go He said, no, no, you just can't get away
Speaker 1: with using it.
Speaker 4: He can't get away with using that fat because everybody
Speaker 4: would know who he took it from.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. And Darius justify as much as his behavior
Speaker 1: and denies that he's a bully because he is gay
Speaker 1: again again in quotes. He says, I think what's happening
Speaker 1: is is that people may not be familiar with my
Speaker 1: brand because of some of the hate mail I'm getting.
Speaker 1: You know, stop up using black women, keep your hands
Speaker 1: off black women. And I'm openly gay, but I don't
Speaker 1: come across as gay. And what a rollercoaster of a sentence, right,
Speaker 1: keep your hands off black women? He's it, But I'm
Speaker 1: gay though, Like, what do you mean how could I
Speaker 1: harm black women?
Speaker 2: I'm gay? Like, as he's actively harassing me and then
Speaker 2: denying that he's a.
Speaker 1: Bully and trigger warning. We're gonna look at some tweets
Speaker 1: that are you know, murder assault, Like if you wanted
Speaker 1: to skip ahead a couple of minutes, I'll put a
Speaker 1: note in the episode here. But so this is a
Speaker 1: tweet from Darius Williams. Just saw a woman jogging at
Speaker 1: this hour alone and they wonder how they come up
Speaker 1: missing and did one thing. The Bible always said you
Speaker 1: can't rape the willing. What he's discussing, that's it. I
Speaker 1: must tell the truth. Bill Cosby raped me too exclamation
Speaker 1: point And he really thinks he's a comedian. Wow, and
Speaker 1: he has no remorse, Like I was just I was
Speaker 1: watching an interview last night, and he's laughing about all
Speaker 1: of this and twisting it into like I can't believe
Speaker 1: that they would accuse me of rape. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: nobody accused him of rape, but those tweets did come up.
Speaker 1: He was being accused of being a rape apologist. Maybe
Speaker 1: he doesn't know the difference as somebody as a survivor.
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't think this is funny. Like, I
Speaker 2: just I can't believe that one he would leave those
Speaker 2: tweets up his career, and then when they get.
Speaker 4: To not address it and just come out and say
Speaker 4: even if it was ignorant, just to even just to say,
Speaker 4: this is not these this doesn't represent how I really feel,
Speaker 4: you know, apologized, and this is how I'm trying to
Speaker 4: do right going forward. None of that happened, right, He
Speaker 4: just he twisted it into into a story, a sideshow
Speaker 4: about I can't believe they would accuse me of rape,
Speaker 4: like and then laughing about it. But that's not what
Speaker 4: anybody said. So when he does that, then he's not
Speaker 4: actually addressing what we are talking about.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like Trump, It's like just deflect.
Speaker 4: And deny and fake news and then everybody else will
Speaker 4: forget what we were actually talking about.
Speaker 1: That's literally what I was gonna say, is he's deflecting,
Speaker 1: just like Trump in this way of like, oh that
Speaker 1: was a joke. Oh that's so weird, I'm laughing at it,
Speaker 1: Get over it, move on like And it's actually a
Speaker 1: tactic that works, Like abusers use that tactic all the time,
Speaker 1: like to diminish how you feel about something. The gaslight,
Speaker 1: you make you think that it never happened, or it
Speaker 1: wasn't real, or they were joking, you know. And he's
Speaker 1: very good at that, sadly, and people are believing it.
Speaker 1: When Southern Grit published an article about Darius by journalist
Speaker 1: Deborah Freeman, his fans went after her with aggression. The
Speaker 1: harassment rose to death threads, and Southern Grit's editor in
Speaker 1: chief had to submit a video statement announcing his support
Speaker 1: of her. Darius purposely never denounced the threads, stating that
Speaker 1: he never threatened anyone, so he was just trying to
Speaker 1: act like, Look, it's just like what Trump did with
Speaker 1: all the racist people who voted for him. He was
Speaker 1: like the only thing that ever made Trump met about
Speaker 1: his supporters was is that they were poor. He did
Speaker 1: not like the insurrection.
Speaker 2: He like.
Speaker 1: Y'all couldn't come through the Capitol in suits, bitch, y'all
Speaker 1: couldn't go to men's warehouse, and like the way you look,
Speaker 1: how you're gonna come up here wearing all this crazy
Speaker 1: warpaint of shit you get to get out?
Speaker 4: So yeah, like he's if you could take Trump and
Speaker 4: turn him into a black smooth blogger and Sean King.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's all of those things, because this
Speaker 1: did remind me so much of Seaun King during this
Speaker 1: episode of just going from griff to grift and acting
Speaker 1: like ooops, did not like Sean King.
Speaker 4: Is Seaun King's grifts with like Trump's lies and Tyler
Speaker 4: Perry's you know, all in one house operation. Like it's
Speaker 4: just like it's like the three of those people combined,
Speaker 4: and that's that's Darius Trump, Sean King, and Tyler Perry.
Speaker 1: It's pretty iconic. I think that he hears this, so
Speaker 1: he might be deeply flattered by that. And that's not
Speaker 1: what we mean. It's not a compliment.
Speaker 2: It's not a compliment at all.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just it's just crazy, like when you're like
Speaker 4: if you're looking at something on paper, and like nobody
Speaker 4: asked him direct questions.
Speaker 1: So he's getting away with this because he's.
Speaker 4: Not he's not really being interviewed by anybody that's gonna
Speaker 4: hold him accountable. Like he can go on live and
Speaker 4: just create his alternative version of reality and his little bubble.
Speaker 2: But everybody else is looking through receipts.
Speaker 1: Like there's just too many of them adding up.
Speaker 2: They're everywhere, and he's everywhere.
Speaker 1: There's care it's unhinged in a way that I look
Speaker 1: and it's like a train It's like a you know,
Speaker 1: like a car crash or a train wreck where I
Speaker 1: just can't look away from this man in his grips
Speaker 1: and he's still going, y'all, he and and nobody's jail
Speaker 1: hand and nobody's custody, and you know, but he's gonna
Speaker 1: keep going, uh forever, hopefully not forever. Hopefully, Angelia, you've
Speaker 1: done some great work really exposing this and stopping the
Speaker 1: heart and hopefully making people aware of something so that
Speaker 1: he can stop harming folks when they're aware that he
Speaker 1: is a criminal. So thank you for your time and
Speaker 1: your energy doing the right thing. And I know that
Speaker 1: that's been hard because people are also retaliating against you,
Speaker 1: and you're dealing with a lot, and you don't deserve that.
Speaker 1: You're a queen, you're an icon. I was so excited
Speaker 1: to talk to you. This has been so fantastic. But
Speaker 1: we're about to get to the status part the show,
Speaker 1: which is where I have to let Angela go and
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. Scam cod and we're back after
Speaker 1: some non scam advertisements, and this is just Scammer of
Speaker 1: the Week where we highlight honorary Charlotton. Or maybe they're
Speaker 1: just like a piece of shirit like Darius. Who knows.
Speaker 1: So today we're talking about Fisher Industries owner Tommy Fisher
Speaker 1: is out of thirty million dollars after building a three
Speaker 1: mile section of a border wall and ending up with
Speaker 1: no buyers. In twenty nineteen, We Build the Wall, a
Speaker 1: nonprofit co founded by Steve Bannon, gave Fisher eight point
Speaker 1: four million dollars to build two sections of a wall
Speaker 1: along the New Mexico and Texas borders, but the cost
Speaker 1: ballooned to thirty million dollars and they only gave him
Speaker 1: eight point four This she said, this would be really fun.
Speaker 1: It would be a project that would be remembered like
Speaker 1: the Hoover Dam. That's what he thought he was getting
Speaker 1: involved in. He was making a racism wall and thought
Speaker 1: it was the Hoover Dam, the Hoover Dam. That same year,
Speaker 1: the founders of this Build the Wall, We Build the
Speaker 1: Wall organization were indicted under suspicion of defrauding donors of
Speaker 1: twenty five million dollars in connection to the organization. So
Speaker 1: they were just stealing money based on racism. They were like, hey,
Speaker 1: why you Darius scam?
Speaker 2: Like that right, scam somebody else?
Speaker 1: This is ethical scamming. It was like they were like, hey, girls,
Speaker 1: you hate the Browns. We're gonna make a wall to
Speaker 1: keep them out.
Speaker 2: He's construction of scams.
Speaker 1: Just send us some coins and we're gonna keep the
Speaker 1: Browns away from you. We promise, Like do that scam.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if I'm mad at this at all.
Speaker 1: I think that I'm into this scam. Because Fisher built
Speaker 1: two small private walls no one asked for that weren't
Speaker 1: built well, he is having difficulty finding a buyer of
Speaker 1: the wall who wants to buy a wall that one
Speaker 1: don't work good. So now he's got to wait.
Speaker 2: He's got to be built the wall, and now he's
Speaker 2: gotta sell it.
Speaker 1: Yes, he's trying to sell a wall that don't work.
Speaker 1: Good lord, he says, this wall is vibes. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can pass through it, just like Darius.
Speaker 2: You need to take that.
Speaker 1: Part through right. I honestly, I don't hate this. I'm
Speaker 1: actually happy that you were scammed. We need more scammers
Speaker 1: like this. But guys, we're at the end of the show,
Speaker 1: and we always ask it the show, Angela, where do
Speaker 1: you want to be found? Where do you want people
Speaker 1: to find you online?
Speaker 2: Wherever?
Speaker 1: You can find me?
Speaker 2: On Instagram and Twitter, the kitchen Esta.
Speaker 1: The Kitchenista, Yes, and follow her. And it's always guys.
Speaker 1: Put us to churn your friends of family scamgutyspot at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com if you want to follow me. D
Speaker 1: iv A l A c I Dva Lacy on all platforms.
Speaker 1: Episodes by Carly airing now on Paramount plus the full
Speaker 1: season of a Black Lady Schedule five am nominations. Can
Speaker 1: y'all believe fully streaming on HBO Max. Support me? Also, Okay,
Speaker 1: y'all like, write and like and subscribe to the podcast
Speaker 1: and give me five stars. That's how you can do
Speaker 1: something nice for black Women Today. Thank you and Congregation,
Speaker 1: Stay Scheming, Bam Goddess. This has been an Earwolf production
Speaker 1: and association with Team Coco Scam Got His Stars and
Speaker 1: It's hosted by me Lacey Mosley aka Scam Got It.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Juth, Card, vote engineered by Marina Payis
Speaker 1: and research by Kaylin Brandt Stay Scheming