Serial Scammer Targets Hockey League Parents, Part 1

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[00:00:01] Bob: This week on The Perfect Scam.

[00:00:05] Rebecca Kumar: He would just show up at the door and just, he never turned his car off.

[00:00:08] Ricky: He never turned it off, yeah.

[00:00:09] Rebecca: He'd leave it run in the driveway.

[00:00:11] Bob: Okay, but what's that about? Why?

[00:00:18] Ricky: He said that he could be uh you know summoned for something right away and, and he had to move on.

[00:00:17] Rebecca: He had to be ready to bolt if he got called to duty.

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[00:00:27] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam. I'm your host, Bob Sullivan.

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[00:00:33] Bob: Dinosaur head, Babe Ruth paraphernalia, children disappeared, murdered by a Mexican drug cartel. Friends set against friends; hockey moms set against hockey dad. A family so scared it flies across the country with the kids and the dog and hides in a 1-bedroom hotel for a year foregoing school and medical treatment, and all of this based on a decade-long lie. When I first heard today's story, I felt whiplashed from all the twists and turns and frankly, sickness. But it is such a powerful tale of deceit and abuse of trust that we are going to bring it to you during the next two episodes. We all know that one bad apple can spoil a whole barrel, and one toxic person can wreck a family, a group of friends, an entire community. In the end, this is a story about one man's ability to lie and cheat and set people against each other and how long one big lie can live. We begin in a small town named Manor, Texas, 15 minutes outside Austin in a clock repair shop, a simple hobby which becomes ground zero for one of the most twisted, longest running scams we've ever heard of.

[00:01:55] Sean: He was mentoring me on how to work on the clocks, basically repair and restoration.

[00:02:02] Bob: This was a new hobby for you?

[00:02:03] Sean: Yes, after retirement I pretty quickly went to his house twice a week to help him out on repairing antique clocks as well as him teaching me how to repair them.

[00:02:15] Bob: Okay, so I'm imagining an antique clock shop with 500 you know cuckoo clocks around and all sorts of cacophony at the bottom of the hour and, and you know, someone with crazy glasses on. Is that about what it looks like?

[00:02:27] Sean: In a form of a home, yes. Uh, lots of clocks and uh using one of the bedrooms upstairs for the uh shop.

[00:02:36] Bob: That's a man we'll call Sean to protect his identity. Down the block a long-time family friend has a quirky but fun business repairing clocks in his house. And after retirement, Sean begins spending time there, learning the craft. It becomes a little club, a fun excuse to get out of the house and make friends. Sean's wife, who we'll call Jamie, remembers the day Sean meets one of those new hobbyists, a mysterious younger man in his 40s named Kota. Kota Youngblood.

[00:03:07] Jamie: He came home and he mentioned this guy's name that he was in the service and he had these great stories.

[00:03:16] Bob: Great stories, not just in the service but in Delta Forces. He'd been all over the world. He helped hunt for bin Laden. His dangerous work in California had even made him the target of a Mexican drug cartel. Sean would see Kota at the clock occasionally where he would share these fantastic tales of strength and danger.

[00:03:39] Sean: He spoke and had various stories of celebrities and experiences that he had during his life including some of the military stories that he shared.

[00:03:50] Bob: Is there one story that sticks out that you remember about a battle or a celebrity or anything?

[00:03:55] Sean: One where he was, uh, I believe he was trying to rescue someone's daughter, it was a covert operation, and he was uh, injured and had two, two of his fingers taped up because of the injury, and he always wore these uh, the tape on these two fingers that every occasion we saw him.

[00:04:18] Bob: Jamie would dutifully listen to these stories whenever Sean came home from the clock shop. Some of these stories involved Kota's strange ability to collect rare items, coins, baseball memorabilia. But others were just war stories and well, after a while...

[00:04:37] Jamie: When he repeatedly came home and, and he had stories about how Kota's dog did this. And we're, we're dog people so it was cute stories that were you know fun and then military stories or something like this. After about the third or fourth time I said, you know, come on, this is starting to get a little unbelievable.

[00:05:02] Bob: (chuckles)

[00:05:03] Jamie: And, or, you know, it, it's something. I had not met him, so I did not have an impression on him, but um, he would take Sean out to lunch and always had to pay and you know, just larger than life. And you know at some point you just, nah, this, this can't be true. But you know the, the stories seemed to line up, so and he always told the same story the same way. So...

[00:05:34] Bob: Is there a story that you recall that, that's wild or crazy?

[00:05:38] Jamie: It, it's like a collective. Both Sean and I have been in the military. My father was in 20 years in the Navy. You know so you start to hear Navy or military stories and if you've been in the military, you know how they get exaggerated. And I think more so now, and, and it was, you know if you aren't in the military you take everything, oh my God, this is what they did. But if you've been in the military you, you kind of, you know oh, I don't know.

[00:06:17] Bob: And let's be honest, a bunch of men getting together and telling exaggerated stories is a pretty normal thing.

[00:06:21] Jamie: Yeah, pretty much, you know, if, if they played football or they played basketball, they were always the star, so you know yeah, you wouldn't be suspicious because there was no need for us to be suspicious. He wasn't asking us for anything. He was just talking.

[00:06:37] Bob: Just talking and why not? Sean and Jamie had been friends with this neighbor who runs the clock shop for 20 years at this point, they had dinner together a couple of times a week. Nothing wrong with some fun stories. Kota has plenty and that mysterious ex-Delta Force soldier, well he finds a willing audience in the clock repair club. And he also finds a willing audience among Austin's small, but growing, group of hockey moms and dads. Yes, they do play youth hockey in Texas. Kota's son is on a team, and well with all that sitting around at practices, hockey families get pretty close pretty fast. Among Kota's hockey friends are Rebecca and Ricky Kumar.

[00:07:19] Rebecca: Yeah, they, the hockey community is such a great way for families to come together when your kids have a true passion about a sport. And I know that's for every, just every sport, but here in the Central Texas area, hockey is not huge like it is in other parts of the US, or the world. And so for us, it definitely was a very tight-knit community, and when you have a child who kind of has explored every other sport imaginable, you know, all the traditional, football, soccer, so forth and so on, and then they put on ice skates and they join that environment and they blossom, that's where you as a parent become just 1,000 percent engaged just to watch your child just grow. And so for us that was our experience was our, our son just found something he just was so passionate about. And he felt confident and it just did so much for him that we embraced everything with it, with the people, the kids, the owners of the facilities, you know we just, we really threw ourselves into learning everything we could. I don't play hockey. I've never ice skated. I grew up in Louisiana and Texas. It's not, it's not part of my world. So it, it's, it was just wonderful to find that community that made my child feel amazing.

[00:08:34] Ricky: I, I love it, and I love the experience. I love the camaraderie even though it's pretty intense from traveling, taking you know my kid to uh practice and so on and so forth. But he thrived, as a matter of fact, uh when he was selecting colleges and stuff like that, I mean he wanted to pursue continue playing.

[00:08:54] Bob: A small group of families who all know and trust each other, Rebecca figures at the time perhaps fewer than 200 families total, and they take care of each other

[00:09:04] Rebecca: The older kids also help coach the younger kids. They're so great about getting out there. Our son was big into coaching the lit--, what the learn to skate classes which I'm talking those are the little tiny ones who you know three years old and then you see these same kids grow up in the system and then they're playing games and they're watching the big kids play because the littles are cheering the big kids on, and the big kids are cheering the little kids' games, and it, we're all together all the time with all the age groups.

[00:09:30] Bob: Honestly that sounds adorable.

[00:09:32] Rebecca: It's so sweet. It is just so sweet.

[00:09:35] Bob: And into the sweet, caring, tight-knit community well, Kota Youngblood and his son fit right in, sort of. Rebecca remembers the first time she met Kota.

[00:09:56] Rebecca: I am sitting in the warm room, and he kind of walks in and I can see him out of the corner and I'm kind of thinking, I think what threw me off, I remember the most is he had tattoos on his hands, like on his fingers too. And you just don’t see that all the time. So and not that I'm against tattoos at all. People can have them on their face, I don't care, but it's just one of those things that I just remember seeing, you know, and I mean he was dressed all in black. He, he wore the same outfit everyday which I also came to notice.

[00:10:12] Bob: The same outfit every day. What was it?

[00:10:13] Rebecca: A black shirt and jeans and some sort of black shoes.

[00:10:17] Bob: Was he a big guy? Like did he look tough?

[00:10:19] Rebecca: Yeah, he did, he did look tough. He, he looks like rough around the edges. Um, like I said, just the basic clothing, you know, kind of, and not that we're high end fashion at all, but it's just he, he just looked like he was just this kind of he needed to fly under the radar because that's what he had to do all the time anyway professionally, is how he made it feel. You know he was this...

[00:10:40] Bob: He looked like he could have been in the Delta Forces or something like that.

[00:10:42] Rebecca: Delta Forces or Army. I don't remember what he, yeah, Delta Forces. Kind of looked like somebody who just really didn't care about their appearance because they had a job to do. And their job is to protect everyone around them.

[00:10:54] Bob: And he loved talking about his job of protecting people whether in the military or on some kind of secret project he was working that, well, could even put his life in danger, especially from drug gangs. And all these stories are told in hushed tones.

[00:11:11] Rebecca: And he would get like close to you, like you'd, he would kind of go to give you like a hug or something like that, um, and it wasn't ever anything where it was like touchy feely, it's just that he would kind of stand close to you to almost get in your personal space a little bit. And just kind of talk and he had a, a low voice and kind of gravely sometimes. And you know just seemed kind of like a little bit of speaking of authority and he is, is wicked smart. So he knows all kind of current events or you know all of his, his claims of his military, or 'cause he would just start kind of, I don't know how to explain it. It's not like he would sit there and be boastful about ooh, I know all this stuff. He would just kind of go like drop info bombs, I don't know how else to say it. Yeah.

[00:11:55] Bob: I like that word. Info bombs, yeah.

[00:11:57] Rebecca: Info bombs. Um, he would just kind of drop info bombs, and then it could segue into like a story about his life whether it was um, you know years past or something kind of current. And...

[00:12:07] Bob: Do you remember any info bomb just as a, you know, an example?

[00:12:10] Rebecca: Um, really like if there was a current political something. I mean honestly, I can't pinpoint actual conversations. But it would be something so like, maybe there was a Blackhawk training operation going on and, and like it somehow, it's hit the news, you know, I don't want to say it was an accident or something, but some, something like that. And then he would say, ooh, yeah, well I'm a Blackhawk operator trainer. And you're just like, oh, really? Like the, the military? He's like, yeah, I'm a contractor for the military. I, I train the uh helicopter pilots and I do hand-to-hand combat. And we're like, wait, what? Like who are you? What do you do? You know and so it just always led to kind of questions, but then he would just kind of not give true specifics, or he would say, you know I was in the Army Rangers, and this is how I have this training and so I'm a contractor and I did this kind of work. And it's always top secret, so when I travel, you know, no one knows where I am.

[00:13:06] Bob: However mysterious Kota is, Rebecca and Kota's wife get along great and so do their kids.

[00:13:13] Rebecca: Our boys were best friends and we say that they were best friends during hockey, but they, the Youngbloods lived 45 minutes from us, so it's, we really just didn't and it's through a lot of traffic, um, so honestly, we didn't hang out a lot outside of hockey. Um, except for...

[00:13:25] Bob: You were best hockey friends kind of.

[00:13:27] Rebecca: We were best hockey... they were best hockey friends, and in Snapchat and all that kind of... they went to totally different schools, like they just were um, just best hockey buddies.

[00:13:36] Bob: And Kota just has that ability to make young athletes feel good about themselves.

[00:13:42] Rebecca: One thing about Kota is he's very, very generous with making people feel empowered. Like he would kind of build you up. He would make, talk to my kid and he'd be like, man, you, you've just improved so much and God, you're just really doing great out there, and he knew hockey much better than I knew the sport. And Kota would just kind of just talk to my son and just say, you, you know, you've improved so much or you're just, you're a great hockey player, and you're really going places and give him advice on things he could change. And you know so our kid looked up to him as a, a source of information, and um, someone who made him feel good. And um...

[00:14:20] Bob: As, as a young boy, especially in sports, to have an adult treat you that way, boy, it means everything.

[00:14:24] Rebecca: It means everything. He just built everybody up to and wanted to, I don't know, make you feel a little like not protected, well maybe protected, but he kind of was a protector um, with that imposing kind of personality.

[00:14:42] Bob: There is that word again, Kota really made a point that he was a protector. in fact, he was given to outsized acts of generosity, like during COVID he rented out an entire movie theater for the hockey team.

[00:14:58] Ricky: That it true, uh he, it was uh he, he'd rent the entire theater to invite all the kids to uh watch, I think it was somewhat of a Star War movies, uh, uh one of the Star War movies. He was actually very generous, you know uh, treat the kids to uh, when we have traveling, he would pay for the meal and stuff like that, you know.

[00:15:19] Bob: Umm, sort of in a I'm throwing my money around kind of way, Ricky?

[00:15:23] Ricky: I wouldn't say that he's flaunting, it, it's more from a generosity perspective. He's not like stand up and shout out like, hey, I'm paying for dinner. No, I mean he like stealthy paying for dinner and you know, and move on. I mean would you agree with that, Bec? I, I don't think he's ever like, you know...

[00:15:40] Rebecca: No, he never flaunted that he was wealthy. It's, it wasn't that, I mean you know they didn't drive fancy cars. If we did go to dinner, he would pay for the team dinner, which could have been, you know, several hundred dollars. If the kids, if anybody had a birthday, he carried a lot of cash around. If anybody had a birthday, he'd peel off 100 bucks and he was like, I give everybody a hundred, $100 on their birthday. I received $100 from him.

[00:16:02] Bob: (laughs)

[00:16:02] Rebecca: You know I'm like it's, I was around him on my birthday, and he's giving me $100 and I'm like, I'm going to take 100 bucks.

[00:16:09] Bob: (chuckles)

[00:16:10] Rebecca: You know and uh the kids loved it and he would buy just random gifts. I have a Zamboni, or we have a Zamboni ice cooler that you can drive with a remote control, Bob.

[00:16:21] Bob: No, really? That's pretty cool.

[00:16:23] Rebecca Kumar: Yeah. It was cool, and they were selling them for like $350 and he shows up at our door, and he's like, "Well I bought both of them. You have one, I have the other." We're like, why? Why? He would just show up at the door and just, you know, hey, I've got this gift for you, or something. And like the Zamboni thing, he just dropped off at our front door and left his car running and said, "Here's a Zamboni cooler." You're welcome. And then left.

[00:16:48] Bob: But there are several things that are peculiar about Kota. For one during those kinds of visit to drop off gifts or even to stay and chat for a while...

[00:16:58] Rebecca: Oh, he never turned his car off.

[00:17:00] Ricky: He never turned it off, yeah.

[00:17:01] Rebecca: He'd leave it run in the driveway.

[00:17:02] Bob: Okay, but what's that about? Why?

[00:17:04] Rebecca: I don't know. I mean I've asked him, I'm like, dude, you need to go turn your car off because I'm like emissions. Um, and your why?

[00:17:14] Ricky: He, He said that he could be uh you know summoned for something right away and, and he had to move on.

[00:17:18] Rebecca: He had to be ready to bolt if he got called to duty.

[00:17:23] Bob: So by now, you can hear Kota is a man who leaves both his car and his mouth running all the time whether at the clock shop, the hockey rink, wherever, and he's pretty loose with the $100 bills. But one day about three years after Kota arrives on the scene and in the clock repair shop, the tables are quickly turned by this mysterious man who is always giving grand gifts. This time Kota wants more than an audience for his story. Sean is summoned to the clock shop by Kota.

[00:17:54] Jamie: And um, he needed to talk to him about something. So he just went down there. I mean you can walk to the house. And he went down there and he was gone for maybe about a half an hour, 45 minutes.

[00:18:10] Bob: Sean doesn't come home. Instead he calls Jamie and summons her over to the clock shop. Remember I mentioned Kota was a collector of odd memorabilia. Well, Kota has a proposition for the two of them, an investment opportunity. A big one.

[00:18:27] Sean: I was presented with a coin that was said to be worth possibly $10 million.

[00:18:34] Bob: Kota says he can buy this rare coin, but he needs financial backing. In a few months he says the return will be substantial. Jamie looks at her friend for guidance.

[00:18:45] Jamie: And I said, "Is this for real?" And she just, you know, she's a very quiet woman. She said yes. And so then you know because it was urgent because somebody had dropped out. That's why they needed to come to us. And Sean would never make these decisions without me being involved. He wouldn't have taken that money from our account. And when Sean and I discussed it, we said we could afford to lose that and still be secure in our retirement. So we said, worst come... and it was supposed to be for such a short time, by October/November it was supposed to go on auction and we would get our return on the investment. So we figure, okay, it's only a few months. We were going on a, a trip within the next few days after them asking for this money, so everything was in a rush.

[00:19:52] Sean: And with the validation of our, our friends that we treated as family, we believed at that moment we had the funds to invest in this coin, to help invest in it. And uh, so we were on board immediately with it because the money was needed to secure the coin immediately. So we made, uh, we wrote checks and made uh investment transfers to be able to come up with the funds of approximately 190,000 to help with the investment on this uh coin expecting that within several months we would be able to see a return of about two to three million dollars. We felt fairly secure uh because meeting Kota for the first time it was in 2018. The first approach on this coin for us financially was in April of 2021. So there was quite a time span of getting to know Kota. We didn't know Kota that well, but we trusted our friends.

[00:21:04] Bob: At about the same time Kota interrupts his steady stream of war stories and tales about drug cartels to approach his hockey friends, Ricky and Rebecca, with a slightly different kind of story, a different proposition.

[00:21:18] Rebecca: When he came over and his friend's dad had died, and the...

[00:21:23] Ricky: Oh, that's right.

[00:21:23] Rebecca: And the antiquities that the dad had. The son, or someone was trying to steal it or somebody stole some stuff and the son was trying to get it all back and he needed the, the money.

[00:21:36] Bob: Kota needs to borrow $90,000 to make sure this friend's family fortune isn't lost.

[00:21:42] Rebecca: So when he came in, we felt like we, at the time we trusted him, like a lot. Like he was a friend. I just, we just didn't spend as much time with him because he was always traveling. But like I said, the relationship with his wife that we had and then the, the two kids. So we thought this was a trusted friend, so he comes in in a panic, and he sits down and after, you know he's like, "I, I just got to help my friend out. I just don't have the cash, um, you know, can you guys float me?"

[00:22:10] Bob: Can you guys float me? But there's also the potential to make money, Kota says. Think of it as an investment. The items that Kota can save can be sold later for a profit, he says, but Rebecca and Ricky aren't in this for the money.

[00:22:25] Rebecca: We both didn't really question it to say, we're going to help this friend out because we felt he was good for it. And he had a payment, you know, this is, I'm going to get this to you by la-de-dah time, so it was kind of like we knew we were going to get that money back. And he had talked about like a, getting a little bit more, like he was like, "Oh, well we can sell this and you're going to split the cost of this, this, and this, or the return of like our ROI was going to be a little bit better than what we were giving him. And Ricky and I just went, look dude, you know, that's cool, like if you sell the stuff, great, but we just want our money back. Like we're not in this as an investment. So we were not looking at it, or even though he told us we would get more from the sale of something, would profit, our goal was never to profit. Our goal was to help a friend and to get our money back.

[00:23:14] Bob: And for a while Kota makes good on his promise, kind of.

[00:23:19] Rebecca: And then he would, he would pay us back, like right away. I think he brought us, but it wasn't like a lot. It could be like, I don't know, $8,000 or something like that. In cash. Everything had to be in cash.

[00:23:30] Bob: After a while, the cash thing, the stories, it all starts to spook Rebecca a little, enough for her to look into Kota just a little bit more. And she finds some details about him online.

[00:23:43] Rebecca: You know that, that whole, his life in California was nothing but gangsters, crooked cops and um, the, not the mafia, what was it? The cartel, like it was issues with the cartel. Like the cartel was thrown out there early in conversations with his California life. And what he used to do with his, you know, top secret service job as a, yeah. So it was kind of, I found that he had been arrested, but I also found he had lots of alias, and for, for man to have lots of aliases, it kind of triggers something. So then I was looking at those records just to kind of go what is happening and who are these people kind of thing. Like who are we giving money to? That's what I wanted to know. Who are we really giving money to?

[00:24:23] Bob: Who are we really giving money to? As Rebecca starts to wonder, Jamie and Sean are about to get dragged much deeper into Kota's mysterious world. A world where those life and death stories about the Mexican cartel start to feel very real. It's now September, only a few weeks before they are expecting to get their investment in that coin back and their friend who runs the clock shop suddenly appears at their door.

[00:24:50] Jamie: You know it, it was dark, but it was probably maybe 8 o'clock or so. And he said he has a problem.

[00:25:00] Bob: His voice is quivering. He's obviously terrified.

[00:25:05] Jamie: We have a screened-in closure on our end on the back side of our house, and we sat on the back porch and our friend started telling us that they had gotten a threat that they were going to kidnap one of his grandchildren, grandchild.

[00:25:23] Bob: Wow.

[00:25:24] Jamie: And that they needed money.

[00:25:27] Bob: His granddaughter was going to be kidnapped and he says, sold off into sex trafficking. Before he can finish the story which he can barely get through...

[00:25:37] Sean: Kota showed up moments later and repeated the story and gave an emotional pitch on what was about to happen. And so we were in great fear.

[00:25:50] Jamie: And Kota explained to us that the drug cartel, Mexican drug cartel was going to kidnap one of his grandchildren from this school the next day and that he needed $235,000 to pay off so that they would not take the child.

[00:26:11] Sean: We even questioned, we needed to go to the authorities to address this, get uh the authorities involved, the FBI involved to investigate this, but we were continually shut down by uh Kota saying that that would further risk the granddaughter's life.

[00:26:30] Jamie: And I looked at our friend and I said, I'm sorry, this, this part bothers me. I said, "Of course we'll get the money." You know it's a child and it's somebody that you know. And I said, "Well get it for you."

[00:26:48] Bob: We'll get it for you. Jamie and Sean commit to cobbling together $235,000 and say they'll give it to Kota so that their friend's granddaughter won't get kidnapped and Kota can protect her. The story might seem just incredible, but remember, Kota Youngblood had been talking about the danger he faced for years all around this little suburb of Austin. But especially down the block where Lane lives with his family. Lane is the clock repairman's son; the father of the child they believe is now in danger of kidnapping. You might wonder why Jamie and Sean didn't just talk to the child's parent, talk with Lane. Well Lane has suddenly left town. He's just disappeared. He's Justin Noble, a Texas-based FBI agent.

[00:27:36] Justin Noble: Yeah, so Lane was introduced to Kota through his father, and was able to convinced Lane, um, that everybody in his life, all of his relatives were, were causing some sort of danger to him and his family. So much so that Lane in the middle of the night picked up and moved his entire family to Florida and was living in an extended stay hotel for at least 10 months. So scared that Lane wouldn't see medical treatment for himself or his children. He wouldn't enroll his children in school out of fear of being found by the cartel. He really convinced Lane that he was in grave danger.

[00:28:15] Bob: This man moved his whole family to a hotel on the other side of the country.

[00:28:19] Justin Noble: He did. His family, three small children, his wife in a small one-bedroom extended-stay hotel. Um, again, not seeking medical treatment. He has, he had diabetes and needed insulin, and would not go to the hospital for treatment at the direction of Kota Youngblood.

[00:28:35] Bob: So Sean and Jamie can't talk with the grandchild or the child's parents because they're missing. And some believe Lane was actually killed by the cartel. The terror their friend feels is quite real. So they're ready to do anything to help his grandchild. And when that $235,000 isn't enough to end the danger, well Kota comes back and asks for more money several times during the next few months.

[00:29:04] Bob: How much more money did you give to them?

[00:29:06] Jamie: Well eventually we sold our house on a reverse mortgage. So we were in on the end of this deal finally at $1.3 million, our entire savings.

[00:29:21] Bob: More than $1 million to save their friend's grandchild from being kidnapped. Back at the hockey rink, Kota has asked Rebecca and Ricky for a few more loans over the months. The couple give him about $200,000 to help with their friend's collectible investments along the way. But those conversations pale in comparison to the rumors flying around the rink. Kota is telling some hockey moms and dads a very different story, a story even more scary, if that's possible. Kota's older son, a college student the entire community knows disappears under mysterious circumstances. It's just a rumor to Ricky and Rebecca.

[00:30:03] Rebecca: Because supposedly he died in October and was drowned and killed by the cartel and was left in a river. That was the story that was told. Now that wasn't told to us though. We never heard that.

[00:30:14] Bob: Okay, I got it.

[00:30:15] Rebecca: I heard that through the grapevine.

[00:30:17] Bob: Kota's youngest son, Little Kota, Rebecca calls him, well it's obvious something is wrong.

[00:30:25] Rebecca: Well it was weird because we had a hockey tournament in Houston which is about a three-hour drive from where we are, and Kota, Little Kota had just gotten his driver's license like literally the day before he had turned 16 and got his driver's license. Maybe he'd had it for two days, and he drove to Houston by himself, and this had, the case hadn't, nothing had happened with the case, it was just that was another triggering moment that I was like, I went to the coach and said, "You know he drove himself." Like I was a tattletale, he, he's in a hotel room by himself and he drove himself, and that is not allowed, like at all. That you just, you don't do that. I'm like, "Little Kota," I said, "What is happening, where are your parents? Like, are you okay? Do you have food? Do you want to stay in our hotel room?" Like I, and he drove back. That's what it was, he didn't have a room, he was driving back. I'm like after playing two, three hockey games in a day you're driving three hours home as a brand-new driver? At midnight? I was like, please text me when you get home kind of thing, 'cause I was just, I couldn't figure out what had happened to his very dedicated mom who was always there to someone who had disappeared. Like out of thin air. So yeah, the, the kids are, at that point, I'm thinking he's fending for himself. And I have no idea what that home life was like because that was just, I have no idea. But he supposedly heard when I, when Eric told me, he goes, "There's no way Little Kota did not believe his brother was dead" based, based on the reaction. Because he goes, he's just, he completely like collapsed into Eric's arms, and he's completely sobbing and, and Eric's telling me the story.

[00:32:05] Bob: Eric, that would be Eric Perardi, an Austin businessman who'd also given Kota Youngblood hundreds of thousands of dollars during a years' long relationship. Eric is also the hockey coach, and he, well he has to deal with the fallout when Kota Youngblood tells some of the team, tells his own youngest son that his older son is dead. Here's US Attorney Matt Harding.

[00:32:26] Matt Harding: Right, yeah, he, he claimed that his elder son, he claimed again, sort of slightly different versions to different folks at different times, but yes, his elder son was, was murdered, or killed, or found dead, depending on which version you're talking about, out in California related to, again, drug cartels. But you know, Eric Perardi is close friends with, he's a hockey coach, or sort of he's in the hockey community with Mr. Youngblood's younger son. And so, you know, he's consoling this younger son over the death of his brother.

[00:32:58] Bob: Oh my God.

[00:32:59] Matt Harding: This was one of those things where if somebody you've known for 7 years tells you that your, their, their son has died, you know you're probably not going to go looking for him. You know you're not going to think, this guy's just making this up, right?

[00:33:10] Bob: Let me double check on this. Yeah, no, oh my God.

[00:33:13] Matt Harding: But he did instruct, Mr. Youngblood did instruct his wife and his other son to tell people that he was dead.

[00:33:20] Bob: But by April 2023, Eric has heard enough of Kota's stories. He has too many questions, and he's getting too few answers. So he decides to take a big risk. Here's Agent Noble again.

[00:33:34] Justin Noble: Yeah, yeah, sure, so we first heard the name Kota Youngblood in the summer of 2023. Our first complainant came into the office and did a walk-in complaint, that's where somebody just walks into the FBI office off the street, and wants to file a complaint with, with an FBI agent. Myself and Agent Wilkinson met with Eric for about two hours, and he told this crazy story that he had gone through over the last three or four years, and the story involved Kota Youngblood and the cartel, valuable items, gold stuck overseas, and a tremendous amount of money that Eric have given to Kota Youngblood. That walk-in complaint was about two hours, and it was a pretty wild complaint, something that I've never heard before.

[00:34:14] Bob: And while the stories are wild, it's Eric's mannerisms that move Justin and Agent Lindsey Wilkinson.

[00:34:21] Justin Noble: He truly was a crime victim. I've worked violent crime in the past. He was, he was portraying himself and coming across as a victim of a violent crime, much like assault victim or a rape victim. He was very emotional, he couldn't sit still, he didn't know how to answer questions. He was terrified, absolutely terrified in that first meeting, something I've never seen before in a financial fraud case like this.

[00:34:48] Lindsey Wilkinson: Yeah, my first impressions of uh the initial complainant was just someone who was very scared, someone who had been through a lot that it had taken a huge emotional toll on him. I think you'll see that the story was very intricate, very difficult to follow. I know Agent Noble and I were scratching our heads trying to figure out how it all fit together, but in his mind, it was, it was very clear, and he knew every detail and every component of it very clearly. Um, he was, he was both making a lot of sense while still being a confusing story to us, and the FBI receives a number of walk-in complaints almost every day, and, and you can kind of tell the difference between victims when they walk in. And I would say this, this victim, he was very definitive in what he was saying. He was very sure of himself, but also very frightened.

[00:35:34] Bob: Eric takes hours explaining all the twists and turns of Kota's web of lies. Among the outlandish things Eric says about Kota that day...

[00:35:45] Bob: The claim to have items that belonged to Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth, is that true?

[00:35:48] Lindsey Wilkinson: That's what he claimed, yes. He claimed to have, I think ultimately, we found four baseball bats across victims. I think two were supposedly signed by Lou Gehrig, one by Jimmy Fox, and one by Babe Ruth.

[00:36:02] Bob: And Eric says Kota claimed to have a long history in the military and in law enforcement.

[00:36:09] Justin Noble: Yeah, so he also used uh military experience. He said that he had combat experience in the Middle East and that he had deployed to Central America, and that it was through his Special Forces, active-duty time, with the Marine Corps and with the Army, that he was able to develop the OGA contacts of a government agency. So contacts with the CIA, FBI, NSA, and that he would use those contacts as ways that he would know information about his, his victims. So he would collect information from one of the victim's family or friends, and then go and say that he learned that from all his contacts at the NSA and, and use that and twist it in a way that would make them feel like they're in danger.

[00:36:47] Bob: Listening to Eric, what the FBI agents begin to understand is that what Kota had told Eric and Jamie and Sean and many other victims was both terrifying and believable. Remember, Lane moved his whole family into a tiny hotel room and lived there for almost a year because he truly believed they were all in danger.

[00:37:08] Justin Noble: Sure, so there was, the danger came from a debt that was owed to the cartel. And so the money was needed to buy more time to pay off that debt or to pay people to sit on the house and watch to make sure the cartel didn't do anything. So the money kept needed to be flowing to Kota Youngblood in the victims' eyes, to continue that protection and also to pay off the cartel so that a debt could be paid in the future.

[00:37:33] Bob: So, so like in the case of Lane, Lane didn't have a debt to the cartel but yet they, they were targeting his family for what reason?

[00:37:39] Justin Noble: Yeah, you know, it's, it's very confusing with Lane and his side of the story of how he was able to weave the cartel into it. Essentially, he was able to say that Lane's brother, or another relative, had stolen some bitcoin, some cryptocurrency from the cartel, and that Lane was owed for it. And, and so that's, that's one way he got, yeah, he got with Lane is, is he was able to weave some sort of narrative that, that Lane would believe. He knew Lane was a computer programmer. He knew that um, Lane knew about cryptocurrency and that he knew about hacking, so he, he told it in a way that, that Lane believed it.

[00:38:15] Matt Harding: They left Austin because Mr. Youngblood claimed that they were within hours of being murdered and they had to leave town immediately. And they wound up out in Florida in a small, small hotel with three young children, the two parents and a dog, where they stayed for over a year, much of that time, of that entire time essentially depending on the largess of Mr. Youngblood to send them money, and when you know he would make demands of them to sort of do various things, he'd always threaten them, well if you stop doing this I'm going to stop giving you money, and by the way, the cartel will find you and kill you. And among other things he told them because of this fake cartel threat you can't get a job, you can't enroll your kids in school, you can't get healthcare and Lane is a diabetic. He needed insulin, and he went months and months and months without any insulin.

[00:39:06] Bob: Oh my God. I mean this is, it's almost the equivalent of these stories you heard about people being locked in basements.

[00:39:10] Matt Harding: He, he really did control Lane and the family in a very, I think that's a very apt analogy, but instead of physical constraints, it was really constraints of fear, constraints of emotional man--, manipulation.

[00:39:24] Bob: With Lane out of the town, out of the picture, hiding in a hotel room, Kota is able to spin a believable story that Lane is dead, killed by the Cartel, and Lane's father is terrified. Kota told many neighbors some variation of this, the cartel is out to get us story, but others were just presented with collectible investment opportunities, and some strange collateral.

[00:39:50] Bob: So describe to me why he would give a victim a baseball bat.

[00:39:53] Lindsey Wilkinson: What he would do with the baseball bat is use it as collateral, so what he would say, he would say, "You can give me this money, give me $200,000 today. I will double your money in one week, but in that time, don't worry, you're not left with nothing. I'm going to give you a very valuable item to hold. This item is valuable and I trust you with it. So it, it built this engendered trust between Kota and our victims, and it also made them feel that their money wasn't walking out the door with no, nothing in return. So it also, you know, it gave the impression that they were covered and that they, that they had this piece of collateral.

[00:40:29] Bob: He had other wild collateral as well. Do you remember any other items?

[00:40:33] Lindsey Wilkinson: We found a headdress from an Indian chief that was supposedly very valuable as well as a flag.

[00:40:41] Justin Noble: Yeah, there's stories of, of comic books, other various artworks by famous artists. He would really get to know each of his victims and find out what their interest was and then he would find something, some sort of collateral that would interest that particular victim. So he was very good at identifying what would be important to that victim.

[00:40:59] Lindsey Wilkinson: I think more we could rattle off was a dinosaur head was a huge one, photos of...

[00:41:04] Bob: I want you to get to that. I wanted to hear about the dinosaur head.

[00:41:06] Lindsey Wilkinson: Yes, the dinosaur head was very central to the, to one of the earlier fraud victims.

[00:41:12] Bob: Was there a actual skull that a person had?

[00:41:15] Lindsey Wilkinson: The dinosaur head was something that we heard about numerous times, um, that we never laid our hands on ourselves. Um, our victim did say that it sat in his office for a number of years and Kota claimed that then it was seized as part of fraud against him. Kota's narrative the entire time was that the world was out to get him, including law enforcement, and that he was being targeted. So he actually used that as a narrative with victims and the dinosaur head was an extension of that narrative.

[00:41:44] Bob: I mean how very Indiana Jones of him.

[00:41:46] Lindsey Wilkinson: (chuckles) It certainly was.

[00:41:49] Bob: Recall that Lane's father helped persuade Jamie and Sean to give Kota more than a million dollars to protect Lane's child from the cartels from being sold off into sex slavery. Kota used the clock shop and this terrified grandfather to shake down other people in the Austin suburb too.

[00:42:07] Justin Noble: He, he need money, yep, yep, he goes to his closest friends and begs them on behalf of Kota for money, and that's why ultimately some of our victims gave a vast amount of their retirement savings to Kota was to protect his grandchild.

[00:42:21] Bob: So it went to numerous people asking for him for help.

[00:42:24] Justin Noble: He, he did, and he really believed that Lane was in danger, and that his grandchildren were in danger. He really believed it. He also believed at some point that Lane had actually been murdered by the cartel.

[00:42:34] Bob: So, so at some point after this request for money, Lane, Lane is murdered, in his mind.

[00:42:39] Justin Noble: That's right. That's right.

[00:42:41] Bob: Wow, which I'm sure only increased the urgency for whatever else it was that Kota asked him to do.

[00:42:46] Justin Noble: I mean if you could imagine, he's given his life savings and now he, his son has died and his granddaughter who he hasn't seen in 10 months is going to be sex trafficked, that's what caused him to go and beg his friends for money. He was trying to protect his grandchildren.

[00:43:03] Bob: But while Eric has told his story to the FBI, Kota gets the idea that something is up. So he does the thing he knows best. He starts telling stories.

[00:43:15] Rebecca: Well, Ricky comes in to the house one day and he is like all kinds of flustered, extremely agitated, angry, and almost like so upset he's kind of like almost vibrating. And I'm like, what is, and he come, comes in roaring and, and he goes, "Do not talk to Eric Perardi. Don't engage with him. Don't look at him." And I'm like, oh my God. What... this is coming out of left field. What are you even talking about? And Ricky's like, "He's a terrible human, and he's sex trafficking." And he's actually throwing out all these accusations, and I'm like what? Okay. Whatever, I don't really talk to Eric, he's, you know, a, a hockey dad and if I see him at the, at the hockey rink, we go have a beer together, like but it's nothing, he's not my friend, you know. I mean not someone that I call on a daily. Anyway, but why are you acting... and he's like, "Well Kota told me all this stuff and he has all this proof of Eric is a terrible human," blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.

[00:44:13] Bob: Rebecca at this point has grown deeply skeptical of Kota. After those initial few payments he'd stopped paying them back so she doesn't believe the stories Kota is telling about Eric and so...

[00:44:24] Rebecca: And I get a text from Eric the following week and Eric just text me. He's like, "Hey, friend, how's it going? I have a, a weird question. Did you ever give money to Kota?" And that's what it was, that was the, the text. And I'm not even looking at it, but I'm pretty sure that's a quote. And I said, my, my response to him was, "Yes." That's it. And he goes, "Can I call you?" And I said, "Okay." Like literally, that was it. And so he calls me and he's like, "Okay, this is crazy, this is so crazy and I hate to, to do this," and he goes, "but I'm involved with the FBI what is going on with Kota." And he goes, "I can't go into a lot of details, but would you be willing to talk to the FBI?" And that's kind of the basic conversation. And I'm like, I don't trust you either. At this point, I don't like, I don't like anybody involved. I was mad at my husband. I'm mad at Kota. I don't want to trust Eric. I, I had zero feeling of trust for, at this, on this day for anyone involved with this Kota Youngblood.

[00:45:26] Bob: In fact, it feels like the entire town of Manor has zero feelings of trust for anyone. A son is missing, a child is missing, a whole family is missing. A lot of money is missing. Families are torn apart by Kota and his stories, and the FBI needs some way to verify these outlandish claims made by Eric, but who will talk with them, especially if they believe a drug cartel could target them. Perhaps if the FBI could show the community that those missing dead aren't dead, well that would make Kota's house of cards collapse. But how can agents Noble and Wilkinson do that? Well that's next week on The Perfect Scam.

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[00:46:14] Bob: If you have been targeted by a scam or fraud, you are not alone. Call the AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-3360. Their trained fraud specialists can provide you with free support and guidance on what to do next. Our email address at The Perfect Scam is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org, and we want to hear from you. If you've been the victim of a scam or you know someone who has, and you'd like us to tell their story, write to us. That address again is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org. Thank you to our team of scambusters; Associate Producer, Annalea Embree; Researcher, Becky Dodson; Executive Producer, Julie Getz; and our Audio Engineer and Sound Designer, Julio Gonzalez. Be sure to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. For AARP's The Perfect Scam, I'm Bob Sullivan.

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