When Writing All Your Crimes in a Diary Goes Wrong!

Who are some of the most heartless criminals who dont care about anyone? Lets start with 5 - Lord Fraud Jonathan Allard scammed multiple people of millions of pounds and used the money from the fraud to live a lavish life. After getting four million from 50 investors to run a fictitious company, Allard used the cash to purchase a Lamborghini Aventador and a luxury 1.2 million apartment in

southwest London. He lived the life meant for a lord, so he decided to get the title and was officially known as Lord Jonathan Allard. Asides from being an actual Lord, Allard also had the arrogance of a monarch. In his found diary entries, he wrote that he deserved everything he was getting and that it was all a result of him being smarter and knowing how to cheat

better. Lord Ponzi For all his shortcomings, Allard was right: he did know how to cheat better. He had set up a company called Zurich Private Capital, or ZPC, and made it his piggy bank. He told potential investors that the company would help them invest their money in soya beans and oil. But all of that was false. Any money paid out was paid from new investors, and

Allard made it his mission to spend as much of the money as possible. This left many of his victims destitute. One 70 year old widow said that Allard's scam meant that she may have to work until she passes away, as she no longer had any money for retirement. A policeman said he had to work till he was 66 for the same reason. Another investor invested 125,000

and claimed that the financial calamity had set them back years. Unfortunately for Lord Allard, his scam wasn't going to last forever. He was eventually picked up by the police and sentenced to seven years in prison for one charge of fraud. Lord Allard believed he was so much smarter than everyone else that he wrote it down to brag to his diary? We like to pretend it was

a Lisa Frank diary for good measure. 4 - An Identity Crisis When Axton Betz-Hamilton was just 11 she and her family experienced a horrid episode of identity theft that followed her up until she got into college. This theft wasnt just a flash in the pan. It was a crime that messed with her childhood and caused her entire family trauma. The family first realized that something unusual

was afoot when Axton's father stopped receiving his monthly magazines. At the time he believed that someone was just stealing his mail to get his social security number. A few weeks after that the phone line was cut off. Axton's father, John, worked long hours so he didn't have the time to properly investigate. So John delegated the investigation to Axton's mother, Pam, who worked as a tax preparer.

Pam spent long hours at the police and Post Office asking for an investigation to be launched into their missing mails and cut off utilities but there was no progress. No one knew who was messing with the mail and financials of the family, and in time they all started getting paranoid. The police didn't have a suspect, and the crimes persisted. Soon this paranoia spread to Axton. She

was told to always close her curtains and never answer the door, even if she knew who was there. Her parents were scared and they wanted to protect their daughter as best they could. Rough Start At some point, John started telling Axton that she had the responsibility of protecting the house. It was almost like they were waiting for the other shoe to drop like they were waiting

for an attack. It was an unfair position to place a child in. Axtons parents were scared that the people stealing their identities might want to steal Axton too, so she was spending less time outside. The consequences of the theft also meant that money became quite tight at home and Axton had to live in extreme poverty. She soon finished high school and enrolled in the university. Before

going to the university she told her father that she would do all she could to find out who had caused their family so much pain. On getting to college another bombshell was waiting for Axton. When she wanted to rent an apartment she discovered that she had a horrible credit rating of 380. She also found out that someone had opened a credit card under her name when

she was just 11. At this point, she called her mom in tears and asked why anyone would steal her life from her. Her mother replied that it wasn't a personal attack and that the thief just got lucky with getting her social security number. Soon, Axton fixed her credit rating, graduated from college, and acquired a Master's degree in consumer sciences. She then went on to get a

PhD in human development and family studies. Her dissertation explored the impact that Identity theft had on children. At 30, Axton received devastating news: her mother, Pam, suffered from Leukaemia. Six months later she died from the illness. And that's when things blew up. Strange Statements Two weeks after her passing, Axton got a call from her father about a credit card statement in her name that he had

found while cleaning out Pam's things. The statement was from when Axton was 18 and showed that she had gone over her limit by a substantial amount. Axton was stunned by this call. The fact that the paperwork was in her name and had been found in her home meant something different entirely. It was like the missing piece of the puzzle she had spent her life trying to

several new identities and told her friends from high school that she had never married and didn't have a child. She told other friends that she had gotten married but her husband was terrible to her so they had divorced. She was also having an affair with another man. Axton also found a receipt for a $400 cubic zirconia engagement ring that her mother had bought for herself but

insisted that her lover had bought for her. Worst of all, Axton found out that her father had been giving Pam about $11,000 each semester for school, but Pam had pocketed most of the money. Pam had defrauded her immediate and extended family of around half a million dollars. And she had spent it on well no one really knows. While Axton had found piles of cheap costume jewelry

and dozens of cheap high heels her mother stowed away, it still doesn't explain what she did with the money. Axton says that the only plausible explanation for this is that her mother was a psychopath. For this, she points to a picture of herself with her parents accepting an award for her work on identity theft, with her mother smiling broadly. According to Axton, Pam never showed an

ounce of guilt, despite watching her young daughter suffer. John, Pam's husband, at first didn't believe the evidence when his daughter showed him. However, he's come to accept it and considers his marriage to her a closed chapter. Today he has a long-term girlfriend and his daughter says he's happier than ever. 3 - The Preferred Buyer Eileen Allen was scammed out of 10,000 pounds by a fraudulent seller

on eBay. Eileen, a grandmother of five, wanted to purchase a motorhome online and found a great one on eBay. She wanted to treat her family to a vacation with the motorhome and believed that the best place to get a great deal was the internet. And at first, she thought she was right. She saw an ad for a motorhome that cost around 27,000 and thought it was

a steal. The seller claimed she was a 78-year-old woman and had already agreed to a deal with another buyer willing to pay a deposit. However, the seller said that she liked Eileen very much and would prefer to sell the motorhome to her. However, she would have to pay a deposit as well to match the deal of the first potential buyer. Sounds reasonable, right? Preferred Buyer Of

course, all of this was to create urgency so she could get Eileen to pay a deposit before seeing the motorhome. So Eileen decided to pay a deposit of 7,800. The woman immediately emailed her a receipt for the payment confirming that the entire operation was genuine. Before sending the money Eileen had asked to meet the woman in person, but they said that they were too old to

travel to a location to meet. She also said that she had a tracker on the motorhome and gave Eileen insurance advice. All of this painted the woman in such a good light that Eileen had no call to be suspicious. Well, unfortunately, she made it on this video. Bad News The day after Eileen sent the money the woman called her crying. She said the transferred money was

yet to reflect in her account and that she had been scammed before and didn't want to get scammed again. She then offered to return the money as she didn't want to partake in the deal anymore. Eileen was further swayed and decided to transfer a further 2,200 to the woman to keep the deal. Before she sent the second payment her bank told her to hold off on

further payments before seeing the motorhome in person. But Eileen had already bought in, so she refused to listen and sent the money anyway. Eileen finally knew shed been scammed when she got another call from the scammer saying that the second payment also hadnt shown up. So Eileen talked to her bank and she realized that the payments had been sent and that the seller had just been

telling her lies. Since then the scammer ceased all contact. Eileen later found out that the same scammer had scammed other people of roughly the same amount of money. After finally accepting that shed been scammed Eileen contacted her bank. Sadly, she was informed that all the money had left her account and she likely wont be getting any of it back. 2 - The Wrong Zip Codes Bhakti

Shah used her experience as a paralegal to pretend she lived in a different home to send her child to a better school in a nicer area. We can understand that, right? Shah perpetuated her crime by convincing the school that she lived at an address that wasn't hers. The home she claimed to live in belonged to an elderly couple, and that couple had to pay much higher

taxes over seven months because of Shah's claims. To make things even worse, Shah showed up at the elderly couple's home to retrieve her mail and claimed that the mail was sent to their home as a result of a mixup. Shah completed this fraud by forging several documents showing that she had moved from her previous residence to a new one. All of this was done to get

her child into a choice school in the area. Getting Schooled The school is a pretty prestigious one and has dedicated slots for 158 students that live within 1.1 miles of it. Unfortunately for Shah, she lived 3 miles away from the school and wasn't in the designated area. So her child's application to the school was rejected. Shah then claimed to have bought a property in the area.

However, the authorities told her that merely owning land in the area wasn't enough. They said she had to live there. So she decided to change the address of the property to the house in front of the plot she claimed she bought. This house was the home of Angela and Christopher Cole, two octogenarians. To complete her fraud, Shah registered a water council and council tax account with

the property. She then used her skills as a conveyancer to create a false contract of sale and land registry form. This was what provided the documentation she used to enroll her child in the school. Charges Unfortunately for her, this scam was destined to fail. Angela Cole soon became suspicious about her increased taxes and asked for investigators to get to the bottom of the matter. She and

her husband had been getting charged higher council fees and they couldn't understand why. After an investigation was conducted, Shah was arrested and charged with eight counts of fraud. In court, Shah admitted her crimes but claimed she did it for a good reason. Unfortunately, the judge disagreed and said that Shah carried out the scam for long periods and that he would keep all options open when sentencing

her. And for continued fallout, Shah lost both careers she worked hard for, and her kid is now in a fee-paying school, as hed failed the entrance exam for another school he tried to attend. If youre enjoying this video, be sure to check out our past release about these scamming psychopaths! 1 - Scare Tactics Michael Ruiz has made a career out of conning immigrants into paying him

money to avoid deportation. According to the police, Ruiz started this scam as far back as 2006. His modus operandi was simple- he would approach suspected illegal immigrants, pretend to be an immigration officer, and would blackmail them until they handed over thousands of dollars. Ruiz would claim that he had the power to deport them and that payment was their only way out. Sometimes he would tell them

that he could help their family members with immigration, and would charge thousands of dollars for that too. Other times he would even invent fictitious deportation orders for legal immigrants and suggest they pay him to make it all go away. In 2010, Ruiz was arrested and jailed for six years for his schemes. While the shakedowns stopped, it was only for a while, as Ruiz was released into

the wild six years later. And he almost immediately went back to his shakedowns. ICE Cold Ruiz posed as a law enforcement officer and found six local immigrants to scam. He told them that he could give them driver's licenses and make them citizens for just a few thousand dollars. If they didn't pay him he said they would all be deported. He also sold them fake social security

numbers for thousands of dollars. Asides from using his false identity to defraud immigrants he also used it in his daily life. When local police confronted him about his lies he said he was an officer with the New York City Police Department who worked in Times Square. He even gave his phony NYPD badge number to seal the deal. Ruiz was able to scam his victims so well

because they couldn't report him. Many of them were scared of getting deported so they couldn't even approach the police with reports if they suspected they were being taken advantage of. In the end, Ruiz was caught again by the actual police. This time he was charged with four counts of blackmail and four counts of fraudulently impersonating an officer to secure property. Who are some of the worst

convicted pastors? Lets get right into it! 3 - Preaching Real Estate Larry Holley, a pastor at Abundant Life Ministries in Flint, Michigan, ran a scam that involved convincing longtime members to invest in real estate with him, then lying about where the money was going. The prominent community figure hustled no small number of churchgoers, and unlike most Ponzi schemes, many of those he swindled never saw a

penny back on their investment. Travel Pitch Larry Holley has never been in it alone. From the scams supposed 2014 beginning, Patricia Gray has been there. Sources dont go too deep into how the pair met, calling Gray a paid associate. It can be assumed that they met through Holleys position in the church. With Gray by his side, Holley would hold Blessed Life Conferences to find suckers. The

duo would go from church to church across America to convince retirees and other vulnerable folk to hand over their cash, which went into an account tied to Holleys business. He would pray with the churchgoers and tell them that God wants them to invest. The two came to these conferences prepared, with tons of fraudulent materials showing things like real estate that they managed, checks showing payouts to

investors, and statements showing cash flowing into the business. With all of this evidence, Holley finished strong with an appeal to faith. Sowing your seed for your need is an extremely common idea in Evangelical Christianity, so nobody batted an eye. The idea was sound, at least on paper; a pastor is a much more trustworthy investment manager than a banker, and there was evidence that business was booming.

Gray, meanwhile, took to a local radio station to advertise. Billing herself as a personal wealth coach, she would tell potential investors that she had helped people to multiply their money before. Her entire pitch platform was built on past successes that didnt exist. Blessed Life Holley and Gray ran the scam through a business meant to manage the investments.Known as Treasure Enterprise, LLC, the business was supposed to

be a front for managing real estate investments, but in reality, a good chunk of the money was funneled back to Holley and Gray. Much of it was also used for the benefit of the church. In typical Ponzi scheme fashion, of course, some of the cash made its way back to older investors. Holley and Gray would have people fill out cards showing their current financial holdings to

get a better feel for who was ripe for scamming. They would pray with their flock over these cards, and pull aside certain potential suckers to talk in more detail about what Treasure could do for them. In many cases, people were encouraged to yank money out of more legitimate investments, or even take out personal loans that Holley promised to pay back for them. Alongside all of this,

Grays catches through her financial coaching hustle began to find a type. When all this was going on, the local auto factory scene was going through major changes. A significant number of people were getting laid off, making their severance packages ripe for the picking. These folks, much like the scams main targets, had lumps of cash sitting around. Treasures real estate portfolio was vast, made up mostly of

commercial properties that could be rented out or otherwise milked for a stream of income. On paper, these investments and their returns were supposed to power the promised 7 to 10 percent returns that Holley and Gray were presenting to investors in the beginning. That number would jump well into the 20 percent range before it was all said and done. The high promised returns were appealing, but a

lot of the people scammed were vulnerable and in need of something secure. Holley and Gray were happy to oblige. The pair promised that each investment would go through a period of use where investors would be getting interest payments, then when that was over, the principal would be returned. They also told investors that Treasure had plenty of cash on hand in case anybody wanted to bow out

early, which was a blatant lie. As an added layer of false security, Holley and Gray promised that investments would be placed into retirement accounts, which held some tax exemptions and potential for extra returns in the form of interest. That didnt happen; instead, when Holley put the money directly into Treasures business accounts, he passed tax liability on to the investors, financially straining many of them. One investor,

who took out about $500,000 in personal loans to put into the scam, ended up having to file bankruptcy in 2016. Actual Life The way that Holley and Gray were painting everything, investors were in for some easy cash flow. Treasure had some legitimate investments, so maybe that was, to some extent, the original plan. Naturally, that didnt end up being the case. Holley and Gray pulled massive amounts

of money straight out of Treasure for their own gain. The two reportedly put about $600 thousand right into their own pockets throughout the course of the scam. A big chunk of the money also went into keeping Abundant Life afloat. The real estate investments themselves were real, but they werent panning out nearly as well as the scammers had hoped. Its possible that the original plan was to

sit back and collect rent checks and interest, but what actually happened was that the investments failed spectacularly. Treasure and other companies with ties to Holley had dozens of properties, and they all ended up in the hands of authorities. When investments started floundering, investors stopped getting their promised payouts. At first, the scammy duo kept things smooth by making excuses and further promises, along with the occasional payment

using new investors money. In 2017, people began complaining loudly and publicly, and this got the attention of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The fact that the scammers had never registered with the SEC and had no business hawking securities was more than enough to spur the Commission into decisive action. In March of that year, the Commission made a civil filing against the pair. The investigation turned

up 142 victims who had collectively lost out on an eye-watering $9 million. This, of course, was just what they had lost; it didnt even touch the amounts that were promised by Holley and Gray. As if the ship wasnt already sinking fast enough, the commercial properties held by Treasure fell behind on their taxes. This meant that they ended up on the county rolls for foreclosure and sale

to recover back taxes. An asset freeze, along with various orders keeping Gray and Holley from continuing business and plotting together, put the whole thing underwater. In 2018, the case was brought into Federal court. Proceedings dragged on as they had every step of the way. After all, there was a lot to unpack here; just how much of the business was legitimate, how much damage did the two

cause, what information could they give to help recover assets, and what could be done for the victims? Aftermath Holley and Gray pleaded guilty in 2019, and both received prison sentences. Holley was doomed to serve about 8 years in prison, while Gray got a 4 year sentence for her part. With both of them barred from conducting further business of the sort that got them in trouble, theyll

be virtually unable to reoffend upon getting out. Holleys attorney, however, has laid out a challenge to the sentence. According to him, Holleys health is failing and he requires care that he can only get on the outside. This means that his sentence is essentially a death sentence, and is thus a violation of due process. Additionally, he claimed that Holley had no malicious intent and didnt see any

personal gain. Instead, the attorney said that Holley was moving the money around in unorthodox and risky ways because of his confidence in its return and increase. As of this writing, both scammers are still in prison despite the challenge. 2 - Scamming Again Kent Whitney, a former Options Trader out of California, bilked at least $33 million from unsuspecting investors by starting a fake church. He did this

hand in hand with one David Lee Parrish, who had helped with a previous scam. That previous investment scam raked in about $600 grand, but also got Whitney 44 months in jail. He had also suffered temporary brokering bans in the past, due to margin call fraud, wherein he took steps to avoid telling people whose accounts he managed that they were getting low on funds. Whitney used his

previous position in the investment space to lure investors under false pretenses. This time, however, he took a slightly different approach; he became a pastor. Even so, in typical investment scam fashion, the money went almost nowhere but his own pockets. When authorities busted the whole thing open, they have only managed to track down about $4.3 million of the missing funds thus far. Prison Church Whitney began laying

the groundwork for his fake church while he was in prison. It all came to fruition in August of 2014, when he went through an online program to become an ordained minister. From there, he established an online church with sermons, prayer requests, and more, all managed from a rented space in a strip mall. The Church for the Healthy Self, or CHS, spent 2014 to 2018 swelling its

ranks and hawking a phony investment program. In 2018, Parrish joined up as a pastor, and things kicked into high gear. The local Vietnamese community was targeted in particular, with the church even putting out a TV commercial about their church and investment program in Vietnamese. The two running the show claimed the investments had an income tax incentive, and were even insured by the FDIC. Obviously, this didnt

end up being the case. Before the SEC swooped in and shut it down, Whitney and Parrish had promised investors 12% returns on YouTube, continued seeking funding after the FBI froze their assets, and even convinced one unfortunate investor to transfer their long-running IRA to the church. Aftermath The SEC put in an official complaint against CHS in 2019, and by 2020, the matter was in front of a

federal judge. The case ended up being pretty cut and dried; both fake pastors plead guilty in the end, to multiple charges. Whitney, being the ringleader and main perpetrator in this newest scam and a previous one, got the harsher sentence; 14 years in federal prison. Parrish, meanwhile, was sentenced to one year and three days, along with three years of supervised release. 1 - Churches Only Coming around

to our last story, were flipping the script; instead of a pastor running scams, weve got a guy that ran scams on churches. Florida man Philip Conley defrauded a number of churches throughout West Virginia, among other entities, with fake investment accounts. It wasnt that hard for somebody with his background; up until 2014, he was a broker with finance giant Merrill Lynch. A previous crime saw his license

get taken away in 2015, but authorities couldnt take away his industry know-how. Alpax, LLC West Virginia state attorney William J. Ihlenfeld II dug in deep to get the details on Conleys exploits. He managed to drum up millions of dollars from victims in a number of areas, but he did it all using fairly ordinary tactics. The main thing that set him apart from other scammers of his

kind was his knack for falsifying documents, leading would-be investors to believe that they were putting their cash into something of real value. He did it all under the front of Alpax, LLC, a company that he put together after leaving Merrill Lynch. Just about anybody can register for an LLC these days, so he didnt need accomplices to make his newest scam look legit. All he had to

do was print up convincing documents on company letterhead that pointed to lucrative, high-value investments. The fake investments included things like timber leases and student housing construction. He would show these to victims to get them on board, but when it came time to pay out, he would always come up dry. In most Ponzi schemes, you have to throw a little bit back at older investors to keep

them from suspecting anything. Somehow, Conley managed to skip that step and keep the scam running until 2020. Aftermath When the hammer dropped on Conley, it dropped hard. There was initially talk of much larger judgments and longer sentences, but the scammer ultimately got about 7 years for his troubles. Alongside the prison time, he was ordered to forfeit anything he bought with his ill-gotten gains. Since he got

away with about $5 million and only some $200,000 made its way back to investors, his high-on-the-hog life came crashing down in just as grand a fashion as he lived it. Naturally, a monetary judgment was thrown in for good measure; Conleys been ordered to fork over roughly $4.8 million, which would just about square up the amount he took versus the amount he already gave back. Click to

watch one of these next videos! Let us know in the comment section what youd rather do, manage and invest all of your own money or let a licensed professional invest your money?