When Ripping Off the Wrong People Goes Completely Wrong!

customers had to pay around a thousand dollars to settle loans that werent more than $300. As one might expect, this business made Scott Tucker extraordinarily wealthy. He made over a billion dollars from just interest payments on these loans. He spent the money he got from these loans on a famously luxurious lifestyle. He had private jets, a vacation home in Aspen Colorado, and a fleet of Ferraris.

Caught When Tucker was finally dragged in front of a judge, he was sentenced to 17 years in prison. In a bid for leniency, Tucker claimed that the court should have mercy on him because he never sued any of his victims if they didn't repay his loan. Thats right: Scott Tucker was doing real hero type stuff to help people he was over charging. Yes, your honor, I

only ever ripped off the people who were paying me back. That softens our hearts too. The judge, however, was stone cold, and didn't look kindly on this. He rebutted that the reason Tucker didnt sue was that his entire illegal scheme would have unraveled if he had. The judge also mentioned that Tucker took advantage of the special status that Indigenous American tribes had to run his business.

Since his loans were illegal, Tucker claimed that his business was owned by Indigenous American tribes. This meant that his firm had special status and could get around state laws that prohibited certain state practices. Plea Deal Tucker would have gotten an even higher sentence if he hadn't entered into a plea deal with federal prosecutors. The plea deal required him to pay the IRS more than $40 million

in back taxes. Tucker had gotten into trouble with the IRS because despite operating a criminal venture, he refused to pay taxes on it. According to the IRS, he refused to pay taxes on the $118 million net income from his business. Legal business or not, Uncle Sam wants his cut. His brother is in quite a heap of trouble as well. Joel Tucker, Scott Tucker's brother, was also

sentenced for $7.3 million in loan fraud, along with $8 million in tax evasion. Scott's separate plea deal for tax evasion meant he would spend 36 months in prison, which would run concurrently with his 16 years sentence gotten from a separate judgment. 4 - Staged Crashes Five people have been accused of running an insurance scam where they collaborated to scam two insurance companies, always the most sympathetic

victims, of about $58,000 through fake treatments. The scam was simple- a car crash was staged, and cooperating witnesses were asked to seek treatment from Blue Lake Physician Group, a hospital where no treatment would ever be rendered. Yulisa Del Carmen Diaz and Malouly Rodriguez were among the 5 people facing charges related to this insurance fraud. The leader of the group was to pay the cooperating witness about

$1,500 with an additional $300 after the fake treatments had been completed. One particular witness, whose name has been withheld and must really care about insurance companies, wasn't ready to play along forever, so they refused to return to Blue Lake to complete their part of the scam. Obviously, the crew wasnt too pleased with this bold decision, and let the witness know it with a vaguely threatening message

on WhatsApp. They told the witness that theyd have to return the money paid out, the case would be closed, and that this whole thing wasnt a game- whatever that was supposed to mean. Undercover Operation Not really caring for threats, vague or otherwise, the witness got in touch with the local authorities, who were also not pleased with the revelation. So, they created a sting operation to catch

the hospital officials in the act. Through a hidden camera, the operation quickly discovered that the witness had been given blank treatment forms to sign without any sort of medical procedure being performed. It must have been a hospitals dream. The sting provided all the evidence the police needed to swoop in and make the necessary arrests of the fraudsters. The crew are all facing charges including organized scheme

to defraud, staged accident, insurance fraud, patient brokering and grand theft. Looks like Blue Lake Physician Group was stung. 3 - Schnepfing Dickie V Robert Schnepf was so well known amongst residents that there was a common name for getting scammed by him. And it was to get "Schnepf-ed". Robert Schnepf's scam as a struggling vet was just one of his many lies. He milked his sympathetic victims for

food, shelter and work with his sorry tale about being a poor veteran down on his luck. Unfortunately for Schnepf, he was soon arrested and many of his victims started coming forward with stories of how hed scammed them. Some claimed he presented himself as a rich business man in need of administrative assistance and made outrageous claims like saying that he had worked with both Rihanna and Heineken.

Big Business During one of Robert's many stints as a con artist, he wiggled himself into giving a speech at an event where he promised to build a $3.5 million facility for a domestic violence organization. He also promised other charities about $50,000, all while claiming to be in a movie with Jessica Alba. Another of Schnepfs greatest hits was claiming to be Lt. Hart from the NYFD when

the whole world shut down in 2020. As Lt. Hart, Schnepf was going around to various houses in the New York area citing code violations hed found on their property and either taking money to fix the problem or taking bribes to look the other way. Schnepf was eventually discovered hassling people in a park in Queens by actual fire marshals and was charged with petty larceny, possession of

a forged instrument, and criminal impersonation of a public servant. Robert Banagino However, Robert's real Waterloo wouldn't arrive until he attempted his most ridiculous scam yet. He renamed himself New York businessman Robert Banagino and made an appointment with a realtor in Florida to purchase some properties. The realtor decided to meet Robert, despite not finding anything about him online at all. The meeting was initially successful and Robert

even negotiated for some properties. He told the realtor that he was in Florida as part of the relief for Hurricane Ian that had devastated the area. Schnepf then told the realtor that he wanted to purchase a Rolls-Royce. The realtor explained that her father had a Mercedes dealership, so Robert decided to visit the dealership instead. At the dealership, he purchased a luxury vehicle and asked the owner

of the company where he could donate some extra money for tax purposes. This ultimately led Robert to the home of legendary college basketball commentator Dick Vitale. Vitale, a 41 year veteran at ESPN, happened to own a pediatric cancer research foundation named the V Foundation, and Robert said he would donate $3 million to the foundation. All of this random cashflow made the realtor uneasy, so she began

searching thoroughly for Robert's online footprints. That's when she discovered that Robert Banagino was none other than the disgraced fraud and felon Robert Schnepf! In the end, Schnepf was arrested by the police and charged with scheming to defraud to obtain property. For a deeper dive into the outrageous lies of Robert Schnepf, including what he did to his girlfriend and her best friend, or the renovation that allowed

him to just gut someones house and walk away, click the link here! 2 - Charlie Javice and the Fraud Factory Charlie Javice has been accused of conning JP Morgan into purchasing a startup she founded for $175 million. According to JP Morgan, Javice gave them false information about the startup and fabricated about 90% of the company's customer base. In other words, she created more than four million

customers out of the thinnest air. The name of the startup in question is Frank, and according to Javice, the motivation behind creating Frank was to help students get financial aid and save billions in tuition. The promise of Frank was that it would cut through the jargon and regulations surrounding the government aid process and allow students successfully apply for financial aid. According to Javice, she'd had problems

with filling these financial aid forms when she was still an undergraduate at The Wharton School of Business at The University of Pennsylvania. However, that claim was dodgy as her father had worked on Wall Street for thirty-five years. This included an 11-year stint at Goldman Sachs, so it's a bit puzzling how she would have required financial aid to get through college. FRANK When Frank first appeared, it

came as a website called FrankFAFSA.com. FAFSA, or Free Application for Federal Student Aid, is a registered trademark, and the website alluded to Frank owning FAFSA. The Department of Education didnt look kindly at this and ordered Frank to change its name and remove the term from the address. That's when Javice decided to switch the name of her company to just Frank. As buzz for the site increased,

she wrote an Op-ed for the New York Times about FAFSA applications that contained an embarrassing number of errors and required lengthy corrections. Despite all these red flags, and others we havent mentioned, Javice and Frank enjoyed generally positive media coverage. She made the Forbes 30 under 30 lists, and then she made the New York Business 40 under 40 list. A Business Insider article also said she had

a solution to an unnecessary roadblock on the way to college. During the Pandemic, the Frank website claimed that it had thousands of online courses from universities that could be used for real college credit. For example, the website claimed that it had 448 classes from Keiser University in Florida, and 317 classes from Lee University in Tennessee. However, Keiser University had no clue about the classes listed on

its behalf, and Lee University didn't even have that many online classes available. When JP Morgan decided to enter negotiations with Frank over an acquisition, financial aid experts and competitors everywhere were shocked. Too many things just didnt add up about Frank, but it seemed JP Morgan didn't care. Customer Base According to Mike Salisbury, a former director of institutional research and assessment at Augustana College in Illinois, Frank

always seemed dodgy. So he decided to crunch the numbers and see if Frank could have millions of students on board. Mike estimated that about two million students start college each year and that most parents wouldn't need help from companies like Frank if they had already gone through the process the first time. So, Frank's only real customer base would be families who were going through the college

admissions process for the first time. This meant that if Frank had served 5 million students in half a decade that means it had covered a sizable population of families with new students. According to Salisbury, reaching all those people in the year they need help isn't easy and certainly isn't cheap. So it's either Frank had broken the code or there was something fishy going on. Funny Math

Another analyst discovered that the Frank website only had about 67,000 unique visits per month. Even if that was multiplied by the total number of months Frank had been in existence, it got nowhere near 5 million visits. Additionally, Frank claimed it had helped students get financial aid at over 6,000 schools. That was unlikely as only 5,916 Institutions qualify for financial aid. Interestingly, JP Morgan had planned to

pay Javice a 20 million dollar bonus if she continued to run Frank after the acquisition. But that payment would never go through. After the acquisition, JP Morgan sent outbound emails to 400,000 of Javice's mythical 5 million customer base. Instead of a 99% delivery rate, JP Morgan had to deal with a 28% rate. Further investigation by JP Morgan revealed that Frank never had more than 250,000 clients

and that Javice had hired a data scientist to create fake profiles to inflate the company's customer base. Armed with this information, JP Morgan decided to take Javice to court. However, our plucky little start up scammer wasnt about to just roll over. According to her, JP Morgan knew all about privacy laws that protected students and stopped firms from harvesting data from them. So their allegations were false

since it was based on their inability to harvest this information from Frank. In the end, JP Morgan had to cut its losses and called the purchase a disaster. The company also had to take a really good look at its due diligence process, because, frankly, they failed. Before we get to #1, if youre enjoying these stories, be sure to stay right on this video to find about

some of the greediest scammers! 1 - A Really Bad Bunny Pamela Cabanillas has been arrested by the police after scamming over ten thousand concertgoers with fake tickets. Pamelas the leader of the infamous QR gang in Peru that sells fake tickets to popular shows in the area. The scam was quite simple. The gang simply set up cloned websites of popular ticketing sites, promoted these cloned websites on

social media, and then proceeded to sell fake tickets from the site. Cabanillas sold three thousand fake tickets for a Bad Bunny concert and then sold seven thousand fake tickets for a Daddy Yankee concert. In the end, the gang sold over ten thousand fake tickets to ten thousand customers. Duplications The gang also took original tickets and then duplicated them online for some of the shows. This meant

that even concertgoers who had bought original tickets online may not get a chance to see the show as their tickets had been duplicated. In total, Cabanillas made over $132,000 from selling these tickets because she sold some of them at very high prices. At one point Cabanillas sold a ticket for as high as $390. Once Pamela completed her scam, she fled the country as she knew that

her victims wouldn't let up on pursuing her. After scampering off, she spoke on Panamericana TV and offered an insincere apology to her victims. Sorry Not Sorry Cabanillas told them that she was sorry for scamming them and that she accepted her mistake. However, she reminded them that they would never be able to get their money back because she had unfortunately spent all of it. Its always easier

to accept mistakes when you have no consequences. And just how did Cabanillas spend all the money? Well, here's the thing. Our dear Pamela loves buying expensive sneakers, eating out in expensive places, having good drinks and generally living the life. She also loved doing all of this without measuring the consequences of her actions. Unfortunately for Pamela, the Spanish police didn't care about all of that and they

tracked her down and arrested her. She's presently waiting to be extradited to Peru if she hasn't been already. Oddly, Ticketmaster has apparently reached out to her for a resume and some new ideas! Do we need to say that this is just a joke? Here are a few of the greediest scammers out there! Carbon Scamming Sami Raja Meet Sami Raja. From 2012 to 2013, this shameless scammer

tricked 130 victims into giving him 2.4 million pounds for worthless investments. That's nearly 3 million in US dollars! To pull this off, Raja primarily targeted the elderly and vulnerable. He cold-called them at their homes, posing as an honest investment broker and using aggressive sales tactics to pressure them into buying his products. He sold them what are known as "carbon credits." Carbon credits can be real investments,

but Raja sold them for 25 times their actual value. That'd be like buying a new TV for $20,000! With all the life savings money he siphoned from his victims, Raja lived like a king. He frequently posted pictures of his expensive purchases on social media, including designer clothes, a Aston Martin, and a Rolex. He also traveled extensively, visiting luxury resorts from the deserts of Dubai to the

beaches of the Maldives. Carbon Credits We know Raja funded all this by selling over-priced carbon credits, but what exactly are carbon credits? A carbon credit is a certificate representing 1 ton of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere. Most of the time, big corporations buy these carbon credits to either voluntarily reduce their environmental impact or meet government regulations. But it's not just companies regular people, like the

ones Raja was scamming, can also buy and sell carbon credits. Some buy them because they care about the environment, but most people buy them as an investment opportunity, hoping their value will increase in the future. Some experts predict the price of carbon credits will jump 88% by 2030. That sounds great for carbon credit investors, but remember that Raja was selling them to his victims for 25

times their actual value. With a price like that, they would have had to wait over a century just to break even! Aftermath Authorities eventually caught on to the scam and arrested Raja in September 2013. They then released him while they continued their investigation. Over five years later, in January 2019, his trial was finally set to begin. But, right when it seemed the scammer was going to

be brought to justice, Raja fled the UK and headed for Dubai. While there, he continued his life of luxury, posting more photos of designer clothes, sports cars, and resort destinations. Back in the UK, Raja's trial went on without him. The court found him guilty of six counts of conspiracy to defraud and money laundering and sentenced him to eight years in jail. Three days later, Raja posted

a picture of himself in a Maldives resort hot tub with the caption: "Ain't no one bursting my bubble." Unfortunately for him, that wasn't exactly true. In July 2020, more than a year later, authorities finally popped Raja's bubble, arresting the scammer when he traveled to Athens. A month later, they brought him back to the UK so he could begin his eight-year jail sentence. Friends and Family Freddy

David Hannah David thought she knew Freddy, her faithful husband of more than 24 years. That quickly changed when, on a seemingly ordinary day in 2017, armed police officers showed up at their doorstep and arrested her husband. As Ms. David soon learned, the hard-working family man she thought she knew had lied to her for over a decade. From 2005 to 2017, Freddy David ran a high-level Ponzi

scheme that scammed 55 victims out of nearly 15 million pounds or 18.5 million US dollars. A Ponzi scheme is a scam in which early investors are paid with the money put in by newer investors a scam, in other words, that makes no real money and can only survive by scamming more and more people. David was the managing director of HBFS Wealth Management's investment firm and pulled

off his con by running it alongside his legitimate company. After his arrest, the court found him guilty of theft and fraud and sentenced him to six years in jail. But if David already had a good-paying job as an investment director, why did he need all this scam money? Addiction As it turned out, David had a serious gambling addiction. During his 12-year scam, he spent 15.6 million

pounds on various gambling sites, funding almost all of this betting through his Ponzi scheme. Online gambling is legal in the UK, and David took full advantage of that unrestricted access. At his worst, he spent more than 100,000 pounds a day on online gambling. One time he even lost 240,000 pounds in 24 hours. He targeted fellow Jewish community members to keep the gambling money coming in. David

used his reputation as an honest financial advisor to lure in his victims. One of these victims, Leon Winsky, was an elderly man who lost 300,000 pounds he'd saved after 50 years of hard work. Winsky planned on using that investment money for an apartment for his special needs son. Aftermath In June 2021, David was released from jail, after serving half of his six-year sentence. Even though the

total loss his victims suffered was nearly 7 million pounds, the court ordered that he only had to pay back 1.3 million. While he got off lightly with his legal punishment, David's family life wasn't so lucky. After learning of his deception, his wife Hannah filed for divorce and sold their family home. Since her husband's release from jail, Ms. David has called on the UK government to crack

down on online gambling and prevent situations like her husband's. She hopes the government will create new laws that raise red flags when someone repeatedly loses large amounts of money. The Wannabe Wolf Jeffrey Revell-Reade For four years, Jeffrey Revell-Reade ran one of the largest investment frauds ever uncovered in the UK. By pushing worthless stocks to amateur investors, this high-level con artist raked in around 70 million pounds

almost 90 million US dollars! All this eventually earned him the title the "Wolf of Wimbledon." Just like the Wolf of Wall Street, who inspired the nickname, Revell-Reade used his criminal proceeds to bankroll some expensive tastes. He bought numerous overseas properties, including a luxury flat in Melbourne, Australia, and three apartments in Marbella, Spain. He also owned four mansions in Wimbledon, just south of London, including one worth

5 million pounds. But the spending didn't end there. In addition to the property, this real-life Wolf bought a luxury yacht, frequent private jet rides, and multiple wine collections. He also spent 54,000 pounds on sports cars and motorbikes and 13,000 pounds on Rolex watches. Boiler Room To make this kind of luxury possible, Revell-Reade operated what's known as a "boiler room scam." This scam works by hiring salespeople

to cold call amateur investors and pressure them into buying worthless stocks. The salespeople often make outrageous claims about huge returns on the investments and then push their victims to make an immediate payment. In this case, Revell-Reade and his associates called investors in the UK many of whom were elderly people to sell shares of US companies. These companies were either low in value, no longer operating, or

even fake companies, but he and his salespeople would market them as sure-fire investments. To deflect attention from law enforcement, Revell-Reade organized his scam as a complex web of offshore companies. He based his operations in Madrid, Spain, but directed the payments from victims to a separate company he controlled one based in Hong Kong but registered to a law firm in the British Virgin Islands. If all that

seems confusing well, that's kind of the point. Aftermath Despite his best efforts, the Wolf of Wimbledon couldn't hold off law enforcement's wandering eye forever. When an elderly UK investor contacted the company's law firm about shares he had purchased but never received, the firm tried to deflect suspicion and prove their client was a legitimate company. But the damage had already been done. Eventually, the UK's Serious Fraud

Office, or the SFO, got involved. After a seven-year investigation codenamed Operation Steamroller, the SFO finally had enough evidence to arrest Revell-Reade and his associates in 2014. After a three-month trial, the Wolf was convicted of conspiracy to defraud and sentenced to nine years and six months in jail. This sentence was later increased by four more years after Revell-Reade failed to pay back 7.5 million pounds to his

victims. Later, in April 2022, a 1 million pound luxury apartment owned by the scammer was sold to help raise more money to pay back victims of the fraud. Fake Plates Zahid Khan For scammer Zahid Khan, the trouble began with a crushed Ferrari Spider. In May 2017, police pulled over Khan while driving the 200,000-pound sports car in Birmingham. They seized the car, believing it was a stolen

vehicle, and then had it destroyed. When Khan showed up at court later that month to prove he'd bought the car legally, he was in for quite the surprise: police had already crushed the car, he was told. There was nothing he could do. Khan was furious at the police, but that was just the beginning. Unbeknownst to him, while the car drama was going down, detectives were investigating

a scam he was running with two of his brothers. The Khan brothers' scam revolved around stolen license plates. Zahid and his brothers tracked down information about valuable personalized plates, then contacted the UK agency in charge of those plates. They claimed they were the rightful owners and had recently changed addresses, thus needed to re-register the plates. Using this method, Khan stole the rights to five license plates

which were worth 500,000 pounds in total. Gillian Bayford One of these victims was a woman named Gillian Bayford. In 2012, Bayford and her husband had won a lottery prize worth 148 million pounds the second biggest ever paid in the UK. Using a portion of this money, Bayford bought a personalized license plate that simply read "8G." Years later, seeing money-making potential in the plate, Khan stole the

rights to it. He assumed the 8G plate would bring him a massive payday, but in reality, it was the beginning of his downfall. When he tried to sell the personalized plate, his potential buyer contacted Bayford directly who told the buyer that she was the owner, not Khan. This buyer then contacted the police, who began investigating Khan and his scam. Aftermath Once they had enough evidence, law

enforcement arrested Khan and charged him with conspiracy to commit fraud and concealing and converting criminal property. It looked like the plate scammer was about to be brought to justice, but then, right before his conviction, he fled the UK for Dubai. While in Dubai, Khan used his scammed savings to live a high life. He stayed in a luxury apartment and took full advantage of Dubai's bustling nightlife,

even partying with boxer Floyd Mayweather and rapper Busta Rhymes. The plate scammer also had some words for police back in the UK, claiming they didn't have to destroy his Ferrari and could have just sold it. As if that wasn't enough, Khan also posted videos of himself smashing a 30,000 gold Rolex and flying over Dubai. Still, the law got the last laugh. In 2020, two years after

his flight from the country, UK police requested to extradite Khan from the UAE and place him in jail. Click to watch one of these next videos! Let us know in the comment section what you would rather do, have dinner with anyone in history, OR take $25,000 dollars cash?