Speaker 1: Previously on Queen of the Cohn.
Speaker 2: It is what it is.
Speaker 3: It's not nothing you could take back.
Speaker 1: Peggy Fulford scams millions of dollars from pro athletes like
Speaker 1: Dennis Rodman and Travis Best.
Speaker 2: You know, Travis, you're sending the fucking pacers and US
Speaker 2: movies and stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, and when Travis found out, he didn't tell anyone
Speaker 1: either because it's embarrassing. NBA shooting guard Rashad mccantz is
Speaker 1: actually kind of lucky by comparison. He only loses two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars to Peggy.
Speaker 3: It was my first Riki check, my first Ricky check.
Speaker 3: I got a call from my agent and saying Peggy
Speaker 3: got us.
Speaker 4: All.
Speaker 1: This goes down in the early two thousands and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of overlap. Peggy is actually scamming multiple pro
Speaker 1: athletes at the same time, and it turns out the
Speaker 1: biggest victim of all is Miami Dolphins running back Ricky Williams.
Speaker 1: How much total did Peggy take from Ricky?
Speaker 3: I think they said about six million.
Speaker 1: Do you think it was really more?
Speaker 3: I think that it was definitely more.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Walton and this is Queen of the con
Speaker 1: The athlete Whisperer episode four, She's a perfect actor. Rickey
Speaker 1: the deep bat first and goal of the two yard line.
Speaker 1: In the early two thousands, NFL running back Ricky Williams
Speaker 1: is a bona fide superstar.
Speaker 5: Hey John dropping Hi popping kind of run by Ricky.
Speaker 1: Williams making touchdown after touchdown after touchdown for the Miami Dolphins.
Speaker 4: It is Williams slips away from one touchdown.
Speaker 1: Great spinball for Ricky william at the end song. But
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety nine, before he makes it to Miami,
Speaker 1: Ricky's playing for the New Orleans Saints.
Speaker 4: And I think everyone remembers Ricky Williams as a Heisman.
Speaker 1: Winner, Guardian journalist and author of the book Family, Gangsters
Speaker 1: and Champions Ramon Antonio Vargas.
Speaker 4: Ricky Williams was kind of the face of a very
Speaker 4: dark time in New Orleans sports history, just given how
Speaker 4: he came to kind of epitomize, like you know, the
Speaker 4: Saints gave up a lot to acquire him, and then
Speaker 4: under the Mike Didka era, which set all kinds of
Speaker 4: records of utility for the franchise. I also remember and
Speaker 4: recognize how important of a role he played on the
Speaker 4: Saints team that won the franchise's first ever playoff game,
Speaker 4: which did not happen until the two thousand season.
Speaker 1: And it's while Ricky is living in New Orleans from
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine to two thousand and one that he
Speaker 1: buys a flashy new condo with his multi million dollar
Speaker 1: paycheck from the NFL. When MTV Cribs suddenly wants to
Speaker 1: shoot a segment about his new.
Speaker 6: Digs and he needed to furnish the whole place and
Speaker 6: everything like that.
Speaker 1: Ricky's lifelong friend Chantel Cohen, and so.
Speaker 6: A cousin of Peggy's worked in. I don't know if
Speaker 6: she was an interior designer or worked at the actual
Speaker 6: furniture store, but she came over, she helped out, she
Speaker 6: furnished the place, and brought Peggy in to helper.
Speaker 1: So it turns out this interior designer, a woman named Pamela,
Speaker 1: isn't actually a cousin of Peggy's at all, despite whatever
Speaker 1: story might have been told at the time.
Speaker 7: My name is Pamela Carry and I am a longtime
Speaker 7: friend of Peggy barad King or Fulford. Not sure what
Speaker 7: name she's going by now, but her maiden name was Barrod.
Speaker 7: We are longtime friends. Our parents were friends, so I've
Speaker 7: known her for a long time.
Speaker 1: So Pamela is the woman Ricky Williams hires to decorate
Speaker 1: his condo for MTV Cribs, and Peggy is a childhood
Speaker 1: friend of Pamela's. But Pamela and Ricky already have a
Speaker 1: previous working relationship.
Speaker 7: I helped him with his house prior to the condo,
Speaker 7: I'd already did his entire house, and we were really close.
Speaker 1: But what Pamela doesn't know is that Peggy had moved
Speaker 1: back to New Orleans from Atlanta after divorcing doctor Forest
Speaker 1: King and taking full control of the sports management company
Speaker 1: he founded, King Management, and Travis Best, the point guard
Speaker 1: for the Indiana Pacers, is her only client. So Peggy
Speaker 1: is desperately looking for more professional athletes to get her
Speaker 1: hooks in. And the second she hears her childhood friend
Speaker 1: Pamela Carey got hired to decorate a new condo for
Speaker 1: NFL running back Ricky william She.
Speaker 7: Just showed up and she made herself available. She said, oh,
Speaker 7: you need sheets, you need this, and she initially purchased
Speaker 7: some things for him. She made her way into his
Speaker 7: life and at the time, I didn't think anything of it,
Speaker 7: but I now realized that she was scouting him.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, she was scouting him, all right. And Pamela Carey,
Speaker 1: who Ricky and Chantell called Pam, was Peggy's only way in.
Speaker 1: And do you blame Pam for bringing Peggy into both
Speaker 1: your lives?
Speaker 6: I never blame anybody for someone else's the way.
Speaker 3: That they act.
Speaker 1: Chantelle Cohen Again.
Speaker 6: I seriously don't think that Pam knew the depth of
Speaker 6: what Peggy was doing, so I wouldn't put any blame
Speaker 6: on Pam at all.
Speaker 1: Pam was going to help Ricky decorate, and then she drafted.
Speaker 3: Peggy took over.
Speaker 1: What was her taste? Like what kind of stuff did
Speaker 1: she get?
Speaker 6: I mean, like I want to say, like a modern
Speaker 6: fancy I don't even know the word to use for
Speaker 6: that mix, but like super modern rich paintings, like one
Speaker 6: of his Blue Dog paintings. That is a big painting
Speaker 6: in New Orleans two hundred and fifty kight, like come on, yes, exactly.
Speaker 6: And every time I would look at that, I'm like,
Speaker 6: that is a quarter of a million dollars sitting on
Speaker 6: this wall right now.
Speaker 1: So she got Ricky to buy a painting for two
Speaker 1: hundred and threty thousand dollars. Oh my god. Yes, my
Speaker 1: dream is to have that kind of money.
Speaker 3: I know me too. I don't know.
Speaker 6: I'm trying to buy like a plane or something.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 6: I need something that I could use over and over again.
Speaker 6: So she had expensive taste, very expensive taste. I wouldn't
Speaker 6: even know where to get a two hundred in the
Speaker 6: first quarter. So she decked out Ricky's plus jecked it out.
Speaker 6: And when MTV Cribs came and shot, they were impressed.
Speaker 3: Yes, very much so.
Speaker 1: So he must have felt grateful. She comes in, decorates,
Speaker 1: she's doing this for free. She's not asking for money.
Speaker 6: No, she didn't do it for money, because that was
Speaker 6: her thing, like you need to save your money for
Speaker 6: generational wealth, blah blah blah blah. So no, she didn't
Speaker 6: get paid for that, now that I think about it, Yeah.
Speaker 1: She seems like what the FBI calls a rescue merchant.
Speaker 1: Ricky was in a bind. Yeah, this place decorated. She
Speaker 1: comes on the scene. I'll do it. She's got the
Speaker 1: style and glamour, and she knows what a buy two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand dollars paintings and yeah, make the
Speaker 1: place look like a baller lives there.
Speaker 3: You know for sure.
Speaker 6: And that's what she wanted people to know, Like, you
Speaker 6: are Ricky Williams, you have to live like this high
Speaker 6: profile person.
Speaker 3: And Ricky is so opposite.
Speaker 6: He doesn't care about money, he doesn't care about what
Speaker 6: people think about him, like he's just living his own life.
Speaker 6: So it's like she was trying to make him bigger
Speaker 6: than what he wanted to be.
Speaker 3: Basically, because you're Ricky Williams.
Speaker 6: He traded a whole draft for you, you know, so she
Speaker 6: was just trying to make him live up to that.
Speaker 6: But if you look at all of the people that
Speaker 6: she actually took money from, they all were in some
Speaker 6: type of buying are just like really to theirselves, not
Speaker 6: like needed some type of nurturer basically, you know.
Speaker 1: And she needed a mother taking care and a mom and.
Speaker 3: She just came in and she was the perfect person
Speaker 3: to do something like that.
Speaker 1: And the thing about Peggy is she's a lot like
Speaker 1: my con artist from season one, the Irish heiress who
Speaker 1: lied in wait for years to rob me. You've been
Speaker 1: scamming as out of money. This whole time you have.
Speaker 1: Peggy is incredibly patient and literally puts in years of
Speaker 1: work and tells years of lies before she ever scams
Speaker 1: a single dollar from Ricky Williams. It's obvious now she
Speaker 1: was grooming him. Walk me through how you and Ricky
Speaker 1: go from. Peggy comes on the scene, decorates his place.
Speaker 1: He's grateful, she takes you all out. You guys become friends.
Speaker 1: How do you go from that? Suddenly she's managing his money?
Speaker 1: How'd that happen?
Speaker 6: It was such a long period of time from the
Speaker 6: time that we met Peggy to when she actually started
Speaker 6: working for Ricky, because she didn't start working for Ricky
Speaker 6: till like five years in. We were more of growing
Speaker 6: as a family, getting close and things like that. I
Speaker 6: would babysit her kids. She was one of the kids
Speaker 6: got mothers like you know, So we were all like
Speaker 6: a tight knit group that hung out dinners and things
Speaker 6: like that. And then after he retired the first time,
Speaker 6: with the suspension and everything like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Ricky Williams got into some trouble with his
Speaker 1: use of marijuana when he played for the NFL again.
Speaker 2: Our top story, and Ricky Williams has lost his repeals
Speaker 2: of the NFL and has subsequently been suspended from football
Speaker 2: for one year for allegedly violating the league substance abuse policy.
Speaker 1: The decision came down and in two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: Ricky Williams, at just twenty seven years old, retires, actually
Speaker 1: walks away from the NFL. He's sick of the marijuana controversy.
Speaker 1: He's sick of the brutal spotlight that comes with playing
Speaker 1: professional football. Ricky Williams felt like he had no one
Speaker 1: protecting him from all that, and that is the opening
Speaker 1: Peggy needs to inject herself into his life and into
Speaker 1: his bank account after the break, Welcome back to Queen
Speaker 1: of the Cohn. In two thousand and four, NFL running
Speaker 1: back Ricky Williams retires from professional football, but a year later,
Speaker 1: in two thousand and five, he changes his mind and
Speaker 1: goes back to playing for the Miami Dolphins. At this point,
Speaker 1: four years have gone by since Ricky first meets Peggy,
Speaker 1: and they've become really close. He knows she manages the
Speaker 1: finances for other professional athletes like Indiana Pacers point guard
Speaker 1: Travis Best, and now Peggy starts earnestly making the case
Speaker 1: to Ricky Williams for why she's the one who should
Speaker 1: be managing him finances and all that.
Speaker 6: Is when she got in his ear of if you
Speaker 6: would have let me manage you back then we wouldn't
Speaker 6: be in this and blah blah blah. And then that's
Speaker 6: how she ended up working for Ricky. So it was
Speaker 6: like five years out there we originally met her.
Speaker 1: There's something so Shakespearean about it, like othello, like she's
Speaker 1: the Iago, like whispering in.
Speaker 3: His ear that play in London two weeks ago.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, how they do it. It's amazing, right, yes,
Speaker 1: such a great story, but it's so based on I
Speaker 1: see those situations again and again where you have this
Speaker 1: evil mffort who pretends to be nice and loved by everyone,
Speaker 1: whispering shit in Ricky Williams here like if you don't
Speaker 1: let me manage it, this is wouldn't happened you blah
Speaker 1: blah blah bla blah. So over the course of five years,
Speaker 1: at this point, Peggy convinces Ricky and Chantal she's a
Speaker 1: Harvard grad who made millions of dollars on wall streets
Speaker 1: and now she's just helping professional athletes manage their money
Speaker 1: and more importantly, protect their money from all the nair duels,
Speaker 1: all the circling vultures who are lining up to trick
Speaker 1: them out of it. So in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: Ricky Williams hires Peggy to run his finances and kind
Speaker 1: of run his life. So, how much was Peggy's salary
Speaker 1: for managing Ricky's money? No, she didn't want to sell.
Speaker 3: No, she didn't want a charger.
Speaker 6: You're my brother, you already are in money situations because
Speaker 6: of football. I want you to have generational wealth. That
Speaker 6: was her main thing that she used. Generational wealth. That
Speaker 6: was her thing, that was her slogan, that was everything.
Speaker 6: So she didn't want to charge. She didn't charge these athletes.
Speaker 1: So she came off as a woman with so much
Speaker 1: money on her own. Yeah, she's just almost like volunteering
Speaker 1: to help, like you would volunteer to feed the homeless.
Speaker 3: You guys are my sons. I need to help you basically.
Speaker 1: Because to your knowledge, at that point, she had no children. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because everyone was her ex husband everyone.
Speaker 6: The first time she hold Ricky's first son, this is
Speaker 6: my first time ever holding a.
Speaker 3: Baby, she said that, Yes, wow.
Speaker 6: Literally, this is my first time holding a baby.
Speaker 1: So Peggy just comes across as this uber, wealthy woman
Speaker 1: with no kids of her own and so much love
Speaker 1: to give.
Speaker 8: I just want to help the rich athletes.
Speaker 1: My buddy again, Evan Goldstein. Early on, she makes the
Speaker 1: case that athletes are always getting scammed. Let me help
Speaker 1: you grow.
Speaker 8: Oh my god, how ironic.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 1: On the face, it seems, oh, well, that's dumb. She's
Speaker 1: not charging you. Who doesn't charge you? But by then
Speaker 1: she's got their heartstrings. She's this loving, benevolent mother figure
Speaker 1: with all this money. She's just doing this to help
Speaker 1: you because you know, she wants to help athletes.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's like you know those rich women that just
Speaker 8: like you know, the the voluntarities, Yes, that like I
Speaker 8: just do it because I don't need the money. I
Speaker 8: just this is what keeps me busy, This is what
Speaker 8: gives me. I like to help people gives her purpose.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And we all yearn for a sense of purpose,
Speaker 1: and they misread it thinking this is her sense of purpose. Well, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: she's robbing them all blind. Yeah, and like so many
Speaker 1: other con artists, Peggy really looks the part, and she
Speaker 1: appeared to be rich.
Speaker 3: Yeah. When Peggy walks into a room, she takes over the.
Speaker 1: Whole energy Chantella Cohen again, like.
Speaker 6: Everybody turns to her. She knows how to work the room,
Speaker 6: she knows how to speak, she knows what you want
Speaker 6: to hear at the end of the day. So it
Speaker 6: was easy for her. Perfect example, we did a hurricane
Speaker 6: foundation thing, a fundraiser. I think it was like Honduras
Speaker 6: or somebody had a big hurricane back then, and we
Speaker 6: raised all this money through athletes and things, and she
Speaker 6: literally worked the whole room. Like she walked out of
Speaker 6: there with more clients, even though she had people raising money,
Speaker 6: but she walked out with more people because she work
Speaker 6: the room. It's like Ricky was the quiet one. You
Speaker 6: just go in there and talk. I'll go in there
Speaker 6: and be Ricky. You go in there and be Peggy.
Speaker 6: And so they had a dynamic duel. Everything was legit.
Speaker 1: Looking back, it's apparent to me now she's using Ricky
Speaker 1: yeah to attract other people. Yeah, No, for sure, because
Speaker 1: she's like, well, people think she's managing Ricky Williams many
Speaker 1: she must be good. I want in on that, yep.
Speaker 6: And I had a moment where I actually worked for
Speaker 6: her as a personal assistant. But It only lasted for
Speaker 6: a month because I didn't get paid, so she didn't
Speaker 6: pay you, she didn't pay me. I was really mad
Speaker 6: about that. Me and another friend of ours, we both
Speaker 6: worked at the same time, and we were just like, okay,
Speaker 6: I'm so confused, like we're in your big mansion and
Speaker 6: we're not.
Speaker 3: Getting a paycheck.
Speaker 6: And I was like, this is not gonna work for me,
Speaker 6: you know, And she's like, no, no, I'll give you
Speaker 6: a check. And I'm like, it's not gonna work for me.
Speaker 6: Like I rather us be friends than business partners. So
Speaker 6: I just left it at that, and we were still
Speaker 6: very cool after that.
Speaker 1: And that just speaks to how charmed and charismatic she
Speaker 1: is that you can still be cool after that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and how does she not pay? Like when paycheck time came.
Speaker 6: There was no paycheck, it was no paycheck, and you
Speaker 6: asked her, hey, where's our money? At to the point too,
Speaker 6: where my friend wrote her a letter like what's going on?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: And how does she come on?
Speaker 6: Remember how she responded, because obviously it wasn't too mean
Speaker 6: because I still was her friend after that, so I
Speaker 6: don't remember how she responded, but I just remember we
Speaker 6: still talk about it that we never got paid by her.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, that's so strange though, but it really speaks
Speaker 1: to her power. Yeah, she's a manipulator.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: So it's like she can wrong you and then still
Speaker 1: be your friend. You'd still feel you don't hate her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the ultimate power of any professional con
Speaker 1: artist working today. They can get you to love them
Speaker 1: no matter what. And I've said up before, love is
Speaker 1: the most powerful force there is in the universe. People
Speaker 1: will kill for love, people will die for love, and
Speaker 1: if a con artists can get you to love them,
Speaker 1: you'll overlook a lot. At no point did Ricky Williams
Speaker 1: say the Travis Hey, is she doing a good job
Speaker 1: for you?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: So how much control did Ricky Williams give Peggy of
Speaker 1: his finances?
Speaker 3: All the control?
Speaker 6: She basically said that she wanted to put him on
Speaker 6: a monthly allowance because Ricky would like to spend money
Speaker 6: on random things computer stuff.
Speaker 3: Camera stuff.
Speaker 6: At that time, he was in photography, so he would
Speaker 6: just spend thousands of dollars and gadgets and things like that.
Speaker 6: So she kept saying, I need to put you on
Speaker 6: a monthly allowance, and so he basically signed over everything
Speaker 6: to her to where she was able to get his
Speaker 6: play in check, put it in the bank account, and
Speaker 6: then disperse his allowance and then pay for all the bills,
Speaker 6: child support, blah blah blah, all things like that. So
Speaker 6: he gave her a lot of control, basically all the control.
Speaker 1: Again, coming back to the mother thing, she put him
Speaker 1: on an allowance like something your parents do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 1: And do you know, I mean you grew up with Ricky.
Speaker 1: Is he close to his mother? Was he needing a
Speaker 1: mother type of relationship?
Speaker 3: They were back and forth?
Speaker 6: They're awesome today, but yes, back then they were back
Speaker 6: and forth. So I could see why he fell into
Speaker 6: something like that as a mother person.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, because there's like a hole at that point, yes,
Speaker 1: where he needed some kind of mother figure. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: he didn't have a mother figure. Yeah, so when one appears,
Speaker 1: it's like slips right in.
Speaker 3: Yeah it fits. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And Ricky Williams's wife Kristen is also taken in by
Speaker 1: Peggy's kind and loving scammy smoke screen.
Speaker 5: Peggy had endeared herself to Ricky in a motherly sort
Speaker 5: of way. Peggy was just so part of our family
Speaker 5: and ingrained in our lives. When I had our first child,
Speaker 5: she even brought me home from the hospital. She just
Speaker 5: makes you feel like you're the only thing in the
Speaker 5: world that matters. She infiltrated my life. She became my
Speaker 5: best friend. In her exact words, I was the sister
Speaker 5: that she never had.
Speaker 1: Ricky's wife, Kristen, is also good friends with Ricky's childhood
Speaker 1: friend Shan tel Cohen at first, but then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, a palpable animosity develops.
Speaker 6: So when Ricky got dropped it to New Orleans, he
Speaker 6: happened to get heard, and so I came to visit
Speaker 6: him and ended up living with him throughout his whole career.
Speaker 6: So when Ricky got traded, we were all like, Okay,
Speaker 6: you're gonna go to Miami. We'll stay here in New Orleans. Well,
Speaker 6: Peggy originally said, Kristy didn't even want me to stay
Speaker 6: in the house anymore. It was a house, and then
Speaker 6: there was a guest house in the back that I
Speaker 6: slept in. So I had like my mini apartment back there.
Speaker 6: You know, kitchen, everything was in there. Leg I was
Speaker 6: set in the back, didn't need to come in the
Speaker 6: house like it was whatever. And she kept saying to me,
Speaker 6: Kristen doesn't even want you to still here. I'm like, what, like,
Speaker 6: how does that even work? She doesn't even pay the
Speaker 6: rent here, like this is not her house, you know.
Speaker 1: So it was that and then that was.
Speaker 6: That was so far from the truth, Christen said. And
Speaker 6: then when Kristin ended up moving to Miami, Peggy said,
Speaker 6: Kristen doesn't even want you to move to Miami. She
Speaker 6: doesn't even want you in their lives anymore. I'm like,
Speaker 6: what the hell did I do? And she just mad
Speaker 6: at my friendship with Ricky and so she played off
Speaker 6: of that like you're way too close to Ricky and
Speaker 6: she's trying to be his wife, and you know, just
Speaker 6: all this, Yes, it was all these things she would say,
Speaker 6: and then vice versas to Kristin, Oh, Chantau doesn't even
Speaker 6: like you. She doesn't even think Ricky should be with you, Like, oh, yes.
Speaker 6: It was just so much drama.
Speaker 1: But there's no way Peggy can predict what's about to happen.
Speaker 1: After the break Welcome Back to Queen of the Cohn
Speaker 1: Peggy successfully separates Chantel Cohen from Ricky Williams's wife, Kristen.
Speaker 6: Peggy said, Oh, Chantal doesn't even like you. She doesn't
Speaker 6: even think Ricky should be with you, Like, oh yes,
Speaker 6: it was just so much drama that she always created.
Speaker 6: And with us having that conversation of just going back,
Speaker 6: it's like we should have knew from our energy that
Speaker 6: that was not it. Like actions speak louder than words,
Speaker 6: like I never was rude to you in person, maybe
Speaker 6: towards the end of me like really believing now that
Speaker 6: you don't like me, But in the beginning, I was
Speaker 6: always trying to be your friend, you know, like, if
Speaker 6: this is someone Ricky's trying to be with, of course
Speaker 6: I want to be cool with you, you know. But
Speaker 6: it was more or less like, Nope, she's having these
Speaker 6: babies for money. She met Ricky on a charter flight
Speaker 6: for one of the games.
Speaker 3: She knew who Ricky was. She's in it for the money,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: Just that's what she's telling Kristin.
Speaker 6: You're saying, yes, well we moved from New Orleans to Miami.
Speaker 3: She's like, Kristin doesn't want you to move.
Speaker 6: And I don't think you should, and blah blah blah.
Speaker 6: And then she would come back and say, well, Ricky
Speaker 6: loves you so much and he wants you to move there,
Speaker 6: so you should. So it was like she played us
Speaker 6: so much to where we disliked each other. She was
Speaker 6: playing us so bad to not talk to each other,
Speaker 6: you know, like maybe not to compare her stories or
Speaker 6: whatever her angle was.
Speaker 3: She succeeded in doing.
Speaker 1: You hit it on the nose. It was not to
Speaker 1: compare stories. Yes, and this is what con artists do.
Speaker 1: Ye minded this too, They separate you. She was telling
Speaker 1: you Christian was saying shit about you, and then she's
Speaker 1: telling Kristin you were saying shit about her. So you
Speaker 1: don't like Kristen, she doesn't like you, and you guys
Speaker 1: aren't talking yep, and she wins.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she definitely went.
Speaker 1: And as is often the way in these tales, it's
Speaker 1: an official letter from Uncle Sam that shows up in
Speaker 1: Ricky Williams's mailbox that changes everything. It was the Irs
Speaker 1: that blew the whistle. Essentially, they sent this, you're being audited.
Speaker 1: Notice you os money, And that's when Ricky Williams thought,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, he's handling my money. This doesn't making
Speaker 1: any sense.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: And what happened after that?
Speaker 6: Once that happened, then they called around and they found
Speaker 6: out that it actually was not paid and so they
Speaker 6: called her and she goes, what that's a mistake. I
Speaker 6: pay all your taxes, blah blah blah, and they were
Speaker 6: like okay.
Speaker 1: But also around that same time, Ricky Williams and his
Speaker 1: wife Kristen start having financial trouble, which just doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense to them.
Speaker 6: So Kristen was already on the fence of Peggy anyways,
Speaker 6: towards the end of their relationship, like, Okay, something's going on,
Speaker 6: but I don't know, Like how come our car got rebuilt,
Speaker 6: But how come I went to the grocery store my
Speaker 6: car got declined, And how come one of the babies
Speaker 6: moms is saying.
Speaker 3: That we don't have child support this month.
Speaker 6: So Kristin was already kind of just going through her head.
Speaker 6: But every time I would tell Kristin to talk to Peggy,
Speaker 6: it was like Peggy said, let's go to dinner, let
Speaker 6: me take a shop, and so you know, it just
Speaker 6: took Chris did off of that. So Kristen was like, Okay,
Speaker 6: we need to go down the rabbit hole and figure
Speaker 6: it out what it was. Ricky, on the other hand,
Speaker 6: was guy.
Speaker 3: She said that she.
Speaker 6: Paid for it, let's let it play out and let's
Speaker 6: see how it goes. And then once it started getting
Speaker 6: real serious, I was like, Ricky, you have to wake up, Like, no,
Speaker 6: she's playing us like.
Speaker 1: And Ricky didn't want to believe it.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to believe it.
Speaker 6: He did not want to believe it because that's someone
Speaker 6: that he literally took in and like he loved love,
Speaker 6: loved her, you know, and like I said, that was
Speaker 6: one of his kids, God's mom, you know. So it's
Speaker 6: like she's found she's family. Why would family do that?
Speaker 1: So at this point, Peggy does what Peggy always does
Speaker 1: when the jig's up. She ghosts Ricky Williams and his
Speaker 1: wife Kristen, and she ghosts Chantelle Cohen too. She just
Speaker 1: stops responding to phone calls and emails and text messages.
Speaker 6: Because Christy kept trying to call her, text her. She
Speaker 6: even told me to call and text her. And I
Speaker 6: feel like at one point Peggy hit me back and said,
Speaker 6: I'm getting you guys in money back in wait ghosts.
Speaker 1: Never heard from her again, never heard from her again.
Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy? Yes, she can be such a fixture
Speaker 1: in all your lives for literally years, years, and then
Speaker 1: the money's missing. You never hear from her again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's twenty thirteen. Now. Ricky Williams and his wife Kristen
Speaker 1: are living in Texas. At this point, Ricky's retired from
Speaker 1: the NFL and he's coaching football at the University of
Speaker 1: the Incarnate Word in San Antonio. The couple has a
Speaker 1: beautiful home in Austin, and in their minds, they're living
Speaker 1: off the interest from the millions and millions and millions
Speaker 1: of dollars that Peggy's supposedly been investing for them for
Speaker 1: the past six years. But no matter how many times
Speaker 1: Ricky and Kristen call and text Peggy trying to get
Speaker 1: answers about their finances, she just doesn't respond.
Speaker 6: So December of twenty thirteen, I am moving from Vegas
Speaker 6: to Miami. So we do a road trip, me and
Speaker 6: my now husband and another friend of ours. We drive
Speaker 6: through Austin, and once we stop in Austin, Ricky says
Speaker 6: to me, are you driving through New Orleans on the
Speaker 6: way to Miami? And I was like, of course, you know,
Speaker 6: I am, and he goes take me to New Orleans.
Speaker 6: I want to talk to Peggy. I'm like absolutely not.
Speaker 6: Like at this point I'm still in rage and I
Speaker 6: don't know what I would do to her if she
Speaker 6: was in front of me. And I kept saying, no,
Speaker 6: I'm not doing that, Like you got to do that
Speaker 6: on your own time. And he's like, Kelly, that's what
Speaker 6: they called me too. So he's like, Telly, I just.
Speaker 1: Telly Shantelly Kelly. Yeah, I got it.
Speaker 6: And so he's like, I just need to talk to
Speaker 6: her face to face because I just want to hear
Speaker 6: what she has to say. And I'm like, I'm not
Speaker 6: taking you, cut to you. I ended up taking him,
Speaker 6: and so I take him to New Orleans. Once we
Speaker 6: pull up to her place, he's like, don't get out
Speaker 6: the car. So he does not let me get out
Speaker 6: the car. He makes he send in a car for
Speaker 6: like forty five minutes while he goes in.
Speaker 3: Whatever they talk about. He comes back out.
Speaker 6: She comes walking behind them, and I'm like telling my husband, Matt,
Speaker 6: I know she's not walking up to the car.
Speaker 3: I know she's not walking up cut to you.
Speaker 6: She's like at my window and I'm like, I'm not
Speaker 6: rolling it down, and Matt's like just rolling down. I'm like,
Speaker 6: I'm not rolling it down, and she's like banging on
Speaker 6: the window and so I finally roll it down.
Speaker 3: She's like bawling, crying. She's like, I.
Speaker 6: Hope you don't believe this, Like I would never do
Speaker 6: this to Ricky. And she's like saying all this stuff
Speaker 6: and I'm just like, I don't believe you.
Speaker 1: And what did Ricky get from her?
Speaker 6: Like what he got from her? That she put his
Speaker 6: money in stocks and bonds? Like his money is spread
Speaker 6: out and I'm like, go get it, then go get something.
Speaker 1: Show it, show me the money.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So in his mind and he's thinking, okay, let's
Speaker 6: give her time. Oh come, I'm like, yo, we're done.
Speaker 6: Like you're not seeing any of this money. Like I
Speaker 6: don't even know what you're thinking in your head to
Speaker 6: think that this money's coming back.
Speaker 3: It's not.
Speaker 6: But that's how good of a person he is, Like,
Speaker 6: I'm still looking at you like I know you care
Speaker 6: about me, so you're gonna give me my money bag?
Speaker 6: No she's not, you know, like no, she is a
Speaker 6: perfect actor, period, and she played us so bad. She's
Speaker 6: not playing me anymore. She's still playing you. This is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: And he believes her explanation that the money's in stocks
Speaker 1: and bonds somewhere, but Ricky's wife, Kristen, doesn't believe Peggy anymore,
Speaker 1: and she starts digging.
Speaker 5: Peggy claimed to be a Harvard educated attorney. I called
Speaker 5: the Florida Bar Association, the Georgia Bar Association, the Louisiana Bar,
Speaker 5: anybody that I could think of, any place that she
Speaker 5: had lived. I just started going down a checklist, and
Speaker 5: no one knew her. We started looking at every place
Speaker 5: that all of our money and all of our investments are.
Speaker 5: We have accounts there, but don't really have the money
Speaker 5: in them anymore.
Speaker 8: I am sorry, missus Williams, I'm showing a zero balance
Speaker 8: in that account.
Speaker 5: There are really no words to describe waking up to
Speaker 5: find out that you don't have one dollar in your
Speaker 5: checking account, much less than millions of dollars Ricky had
Speaker 5: earned in the past few years. We realized that we're
Speaker 5: paying for Peggy's lavish lifestyle, the Bentley, Rolls, Royce, the
Speaker 5: Range Rovers, all of her homes. I was actually with
Speaker 5: her when she spent eight hundred dollars on her hair extensions.
Speaker 5: I'm standing beside her as she's paying for it with
Speaker 5: a credit card that is actually linked to our accounts.
Speaker 1: And what Kristen gets Ricky to do to pay, and
Speaker 1: how everything goes down after that will blow your freaking mind.
Speaker 1: I shouted out loud when I saw that. I literally said,
Speaker 1: I said, no fucking way, is what I said next
Speaker 1: time on Queen of the Con.
Speaker 8: Plaintiffs Ricky and Kristin Williams collectively plaintiffs filed this verified
Speaker 8: complaint and application for temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction.
Speaker 1: It's time to pay the piper, but Peggy appears to
Speaker 1: be getting away.
Speaker 6: The crazy thing about the FBI is they did not
Speaker 6: want to arrest her with all the information me and
Speaker 6: Kristin gave them.
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Speaker 1: Queen of the Khan The Athlete Whisperer is a production
Speaker 1: of AYR Media and iHeartMedia, hosted by Me Jonathan Walton
Speaker 1: Executive producers Jonathan Walton for Jonathan Walton Productions and Elisa
Speaker 1: Rosen for AYR Media. Consulting producer Evan Goldstein, consulting producer,
Speaker 1: Trace Shehan, Written by Jonathan Walton, sound designed by Zach Hirsch,
Speaker 1: Edited and mixed by Zach Hirsch, Audio engineer Justin Longerbean
Speaker 1: audio engineer Chris Desmond, studio engineer Graham Gibson. Mastered by
Speaker 1: Justin Longerbean Legal counsel for AYR Media, Johnny Douglas, executive
Speaker 1: producer for iHeartMedia. Maya Howard. Voice acting by Darnell Baldwin,
Speaker 1: Tyree Saxton, Junior, Courtney, Hettrick Milan Faxis, Jorge Farragut, David Teitelbaum,
Speaker 1: Terina Pouncey, Kim Ganier, Stuart Chate, Teresa Prindle. Statements from
Speaker 1: press reports, public interviews, and from court records were dramatized
Speaker 1: verbatim on this season of Queen of the Khan. B E.
Speaker 1: T's American Gangster Trap, Queens T and T's Rich and Shameless,
Speaker 1: c n b c's American Greed. The Guardian, Sports Illustrated,
Speaker 1: The Times, Picky Une, The Opportunist Podcast, victim interviews, and
Speaker 1: countless court records were the sources used on this season
Speaker 1: of Queen of the Khan