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Speaker 1: In the summer of twenty seventeen, my best friend founded

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Speaker 1: one of the hottest startups in the world.

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Speaker 2: I went from working construction hating my life to just

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Speaker 2: making nine grand, ten grand, twelve granted this, living like

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Speaker 2: a maniac.

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Speaker 1: His company instantly became a massive success. He was the

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Speaker 1: poster child of an emerging market. Even the New York

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Speaker 1: Times profiled his company. But here's the thing about my

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Speaker 1: best friend Ray.

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Speaker 2: I always wanted to be a criminal. If someone was like, oh,

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Speaker 2: what's your best way of making money, I'm like, Oh,

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Speaker 2: we should start some sort of scheme.

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Speaker 1: Ray had this crazy ability to find a loophole and

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Speaker 1: turn it into millions.

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Speaker 2: He's like, this market's so on tap, we should definitely

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Speaker 2: jump on this. Anytime I see flaws and something like this,

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Speaker 2: I have to export. I cannot help myself.

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Speaker 1: My best friend found himself at the helm of a

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Speaker 1: cutting edge technology company. His business, Centritech, was going to

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Speaker 1: disrupt the banking industry. I was just getting hyped up

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Speaker 1: about what was going on and what this company could be.

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Speaker 3: They collected thirty million dollars. There were headlines about it.

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Speaker 1: Even some of the biggest celebrities jumped on board.

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Speaker 3: You really got Djkalt and floy Money Mayweather to endorse Centrete.

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Speaker 4: Wow.

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Speaker 1: When something sounds too good to be true, chances are

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Speaker 1: it is.

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Speaker 4: As just a regular person sitting on the outside, it's

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Speaker 4: hard to tell what's fact in fiction.

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Speaker 5: I was like, this has a saying legitimate, absolutely not.

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Speaker 1: The came into my office, opened my email and the

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Speaker 1: subject heading was FBI request.

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Speaker 5: I had gone into this thinking this is a pretty

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Speaker 5: wacky caper, but that took this to a whole different level.

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Speaker 1: It was only a matter of time before the truth

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Speaker 1: came out.

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Speaker 4: You can only fake it till you make it for

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Speaker 4: so long before they find out that your Harvard degree

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Speaker 4: is not so Crimson. Could you sit there and do

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Speaker 4: something that you know will objectively cause more harm in

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Speaker 4: the world.

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Speaker 5: You seem to develop quite a track record of not

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Speaker 5: paying people and not living up the contracts.

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Speaker 4: Fake pictures, vake degrees, stuff that's easy to prove is false.

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Speaker 2: It was just like every day on super high alert,

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Speaker 2: thinking they're coming for me.

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Speaker 5: This was not going to end well for them, and

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Speaker 5: they didn't seem to understand that.

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Speaker 1: To learn the truth behind rache Or Panny and his company,

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Speaker 1: Centritech subscribe and listen to Creating a Con The Story

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Speaker 1: of Bitcoon. I wanted to let you know that all

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Speaker 1: episodes of Creating a Con The Story of Bitcoon are

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Speaker 1: available exclusively on the iHeart True Crime Plus subscription on

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, and our one hundred percent are so you

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Speaker 1: can binge the entire season. So head to Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 1: search for iHeart True Crime Plus and subscribe today