The Boasting Fraudster J. Nicholas Bryant

This is eCrimeBytes.com S 2 Ep 3-5: The Boasting Fraudster J. Nicholas Bryant – Act 5: Sentencing! Go back to Act 1 for the background.

Sit back and listen to a story about J. Nicholas Bryant, a one man tornado of fraud!

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Transcript:

00:00:10:00 – 00:00:28:24
Keith
Hey everybody, welcome back to eCrimeBytes. This is J. Nicholas Bryant the boasting fraudster, Oh, boy, the tornado of fraud. We’ve taken you through four acts. Our first act was has a good little snippet of his crime. The second act was him pleading guilty and telling us more about his crime.

00:00:28:24 – 00:00:53:23
Keith
And then our third act was, believe it or not, Bryant talking to the media after he pled guilty, but before he was sentenced, then our fourth act was going through the sentencing hearing, which was what was the defense’s arguments and what was the government’s arguments to or against either for or against him getting a long sentence or shorter sentence in prison.

00:00:53:26 – 00:01:01:21
Keith
And we’re finally now to the concluding act, Act five, which is sentencing. And this is the judge weighing all the evidence coming back

00:01:01:21 – 00:01:06:28
Keith
the judge in this case has got some shit to say and y’all better fucking listen, okay?

00:01:06:28 – 00:01:12:19
Keith
The judge says, All right. Thank you, sir. I appreciate everything you’ve done.

00:01:12:21 – 00:01:39:05
Keith
He’s talking to you, to the attorneys, and specifically Mr. Bryant, who just stood up and said, Hey, I’m really sorry for my crimes. Now we read to you a lot of stuff where he said he was a he was pretty happy during his crimes. So it depends on which side of the coin you look at. But the court the judge is saying, all right, I appreciate the statement of you saying that you’re remorseful for your crimes.

00:01:39:08 – 00:02:03:26
Keith
I wish I could believe everything you just said. It’s very hard for me to do so. You have the right to talk to whoever you want to talk to. But it’s my obligation to determine whether you have clearly demonstrated acceptance of responsibility. And that statement that you just read falls Well short of mitigating your actual conduct.

00:02:03:26 – 00:02:05:08
Keith
The judge continues on.

00:02:05:08 – 00:02:09:18
Keith
You would think, Oh, my God, he’s put the hammer down on him. The judge keeps going

00:02:09:18 – 00:02:26:13
Keith
There’s no doubt he wants to profit from this crime. There’s no doubt there that he is proud of these crimes. He laughed at the idea of them on the calls, and he’s referring to these jailhouse calls that are recorded.

00:02:26:13 – 00:02:51:14
Keith
And everybody knows are recorded. The judge is referring to them. The person he is talking with noted that there was a commenter who said and I’m paraphrasing, but yeah, he got me for $8,000. I’m still waiting to get paid back for my $8,000. But they had a collective laugh about that. That response to a victim is hard to understand and I can’t ignore.

00:02:51:14 – 00:02:53:27
Keith
As a defendant, you’re probably like.

00:02:53:29 – 00:02:55:03
Seth
Yeah, it’s not good. He goes.

00:02:55:03 – 00:02:56:15
Keith
On, he goes on,

00:02:56:15 – 00:03:04:12
Keith
The judge goes on to say, I hope you prove me wrong. I hope that’s the case. But what’s before me right now, you have not clearly

00:03:04:12 – 00:03:22:26
Keith
demonstrated responsibility or acceptance of responsibility. And so for those reasons, I’m going to remove it. And what he means by that as a judge, he removes the leniency that he would give him in his sentence if he were to demonstrate responsibility.

00:03:22:26 – 00:03:30:13
Keith
So he just took that off the table legally from Bryant. So Bryant’s sentence just went up if he didn’t catch that.

00:03:30:13 – 00:03:36:17
Seth
So apparently his advisory range is somewhere between 87 and 108 months, which is a lot.

00:03:36:17 – 00:03:49:11
Keith
I kept talking about how COVID was around and it really it made his fraud hurt even more to a lot of companies like aviation that didn’t have a lot of business at the time.

00:03:49:14 – 00:04:13:21
Keith
So the court notes that in the sentencing it says, when I say the court, I mean the judge. And they say, didn’t one of the aviation companies also say, in effect, we were so glad to get a giant, you know, contract for a private flight because COVID had stopped everything. And now we’re going to get an influx of, you know, say, $50,000 or whatever it was.

00:04:13:24 – 00:04:38:13
Keith
And the government said, Yep, yep, Your Honor. It was excitement on their part. They didn’t foresee any flights happening because of the pandemic, and they were thrilled. They were excited. They knew they would be able to keep some employees on now. And as I think I state in sentencing memo, that excitement just morphed into despair. They were not able to recover.

00:04:38:15 – 00:04:54:04
Keith
And I don’t know if they still have not been able to recover, but it was quite a hit. And that was the company that he stiffed for $76,000 at the it was the crux of this whole crime. It was the one they charged with, the one we led with in this.

00:04:54:05 – 00:05:00:03
Seth
Podcast in Miami. So love a love to Miami and return trip with booze and limos right.

00:05:00:03 – 00:05:24:13
Keith
of course the the money never came and in roughly an 18 month crime spree that spanned several states, this defendant racked up a total of $3.5 million in intended and actual losses. He did it for the purposes of US ostentation, pretension and Instagram moments and to feed his ego.

00:05:24:15 – 00:05:29:09
Keith
As we’ve discussed, the damage of the victims is just overwhelming. And when you look at the number, it’s heartbreaking.

00:05:29:09 – 00:05:31:25
Keith
All right, Seth, you want to take us to the judgment?

00:05:31:27 – 00:05:54:23
Seth
Sure. So here we go. The court has heard from both the plaintiff and defense counsel on their final attempt to get I guess, you know, their request is sentencing. So the court says after you were caught, I’m assuming he’s talking to Bryant, you did make statements to the press despite the advice of your counsel, which just shows me you just you’re you’re just dogged determination to revel in what you did.

00:05:54:26 – 00:06:15:18
Seth
That’s your choice. Choices have consequences if that’s how you want to live, that’s fine. Those people don’t go away on this side of the room. They’ll be there for you if you want to keep making those choices. This isn’t the first time you’ve been in trouble. You’ve had multiple interactions with law enforcement since you were a teenager, and you have been given chance after chance after chance.

00:06:15:20 – 00:06:29:23
Seth
I wish that prior and more lenient sentences had deterred you from criminal conduct. They have not. Undeterred, you continued. So here we are today, all this up to an incredibly serious crime. So by the way, this is not looking good for Mr. Bryant.

00:06:29:26 – 00:06:31:08
Keith
No, not at all.

00:06:31:10 – 00:06:58:25
Seth
The judge continues. It also demonstrates an incredible danger to society. You have no respect for the law. Given your repeat fraudulent conduct. I have to impose a just punishment which weighs very heavily here, and I have to afford adequate deterrents of criminal conduct that weighs heavily here. And as I have said, protection weighs heavily as well. So what do they get, Jones, with taking bets here?

00:06:58:27 – 00:07:07:08
Keith
Well, he pled guilty to one count of wire fraud. Okay. Right. So then his sentence is handed down and it’s.

00:07:07:10 – 00:07:13:04
Seth
A 168 months or 14 years.

00:07:13:06 – 00:07:17:24
Keith
Yeah, that’s that’s rough in federal prison.

00:07:17:27 – 00:07:36:20
Seth
Yeah. And that, by the way, that runs concurrently. So he’s they’ve got him on several other crimes. Right. But the judge to hear I think because there is so many other cases they just said you know I think the sum total would have put them in hundreds of years. So they just made them concurrent here. And it’s a total of 14 years.

00:07:36:22 – 00:07:43:00
Seth
And they also made a couple of additions, recommendations, as you can imagine. You know, these are some standard ones, but they are.

00:07:43:03 – 00:08:09:09
Keith
And I don’t want to gloss over that. There’s in the actual imprisonment wording, it basically says 168 months, which is 14 years. But it says this could be served consecutively to other shit that has still not been decided. Other criminal shit this guy’s done that still has not been decided. So 14 years would be this is the minimum that there.

00:08:09:11 – 00:08:11:21
Seth
Are several other cases that are pending, right?

00:08:11:23 – 00:08:25:08
Keith
State He’s got state issues. He’s got other cases that’s going on. We’re just giving you the fun, in my opinion, the more fun electronic portion of what he’s done, because the other ones were like, I think like domestic violence and so forth.

00:08:25:10 – 00:08:52:10
Seth
Yeah. So he has upon release after 14 years, he’ll have supervised release for three years. He’ll have to participate in an outpatient mental health and treatment service that he has to pay for. And then he’ll also have to participate in a outpatient program for drug alcohol dependency that, again, he’ll also have to pay for. And this one makes sense because he’s claimed by the defendant claimed himself that he was an alcoholic.

00:08:52:13 – 00:08:54:19
Keith
Yeah. And then they had

00:08:54:19 – 00:09:19:08
Keith
well, they have the at this point, the table. And we talked about this table a little bit earlier where it’s basically a victim on the left hand side and what the restitution of what Bryant has to pay them back on the right hand side. And then it then is added up at the bottom for 1.185 million is the restitution he’s on the hook for and I’m not going to read you all the different victims.

00:09:19:09 – 00:09:42:09
Keith
I’m just going to give you a flavor of some of these victims. And what he has to pay them back. The more interesting ones so that what the top ones on the list is J six Energy. And I’m not exactly sure why he owes them money, but he owes them $221,000, which is a serious chunk of change. He’s got like a well service.

00:09:42:09 – 00:09:47:18
Keith
He owns 65 thousand dollars to and I would assume that’s oil well service not a like water, that’s.

00:09:47:18 – 00:09:57:11
Seth
Probably like him. That’s probably like him. You know, all the different bullshit he was buying to make it look. Like he actually had an oil well operating.

00:09:57:13 – 00:10:19:22
Keith
Here’s an aviation company, Haskin Aviation, for $80,000. He owned somebody personally. $200. Uh, let’s heavy equipment, sales and rentals. So I would assume that’s probably faking these. This oil thing that we talked about that was almost $7,000, the one the KVC homes that.

00:10:19:23 – 00:10:44:11
Seth
So that one’s interesting, right? Because that’s only for 266,000. But I remember in the court filings, it was noted that he’s paid about $1,000,000 to have a home built essentially on full credit. So I expected to see another line item here, maybe for the bank that would have loaned him the difference or because apparently if it was $1,000,000 home and he got that far, why is the cost owed 266,000?

00:10:44:11 – 00:10:46:11
Seth
So I’d like to get the full story on that.

00:10:46:11 – 00:11:05:11
Keith
Yeah, it might be in the second part of this chart, too. We’ll take a look in a second. A couple more I want to note on the first half of the chart, one is looks like. So remember we talked about him stealing cars. Looks like Big Man Auto Group has him on the hook for about $38,000, which sounds about, well, it’s about a truck cost.

00:11:05:11 – 00:11:34:08
Keith
Maybe if I had to guess. If I go to the bottom half of this chart, we got a couple of aviation companies was one on the previous chart that was like 60,000. This one is another 56,000. Here’s another jet for 35,000. There is first shot outfitters, which I’m assuming is maybe one of those hunting companies. That’s $70,000 a few.

00:11:34:10 – 00:11:44:24
Keith
Okay. Here’s a vacation, homes. That’s 5000 executive charter and another 30,000 hanger flight ops. That’s 76. That’s the one that we talked about throughout the case.

00:11:44:24 – 00:12:02:22
Keith
That’s about it. So the restitution comes to 1.185 million. Some change over that. And you go, Holy shit, this guy’s going to be in prison for for at least 14 years. He’s on the hook for $1.1 million.

00:12:02:23 – 00:12:29:12
Keith
Let’s just say $1.2 million. He’s trying to argue to make his he’s trying to make his case that he should be able to sell his story so he could pay people back, which I think is kind of a stretch. And you think this guy has just led the craziest of life. He needs to retire. He needs to go into prison now and just take a break, take a vacation from all the schemes, all the media talking, all this court shit and just take a break.

00:12:29:14 – 00:12:58:04
Keith
But he doesn’t. After sentencing, he immediately talks to the media again, of course, and he said things went pretty rough today, he told The Daily Beast via a jailhouse text message hours after his sentencing. So that means this motherfucker went and found a phone somewhere, the prison, and made a text message after his sentencing, after he just got bitched out for doing this stuff.

00:12:58:08 – 00:13:07:07
Keith
And he says, I’m extremely upset about how things went down today. Upset. Can’t even touch how I feel. He wrote.

00:13:07:07 – 00:13:30:01
Keith
And that’s it. That’s all we heard from him. And then in the court process, he appealed on March 14th of 2023. So I told you, listen, the way to the end of this episode, because it was important and it was because he still talked to the fucking media again after he just learned he was going to serve 14 years for talking to the media, basically.

00:13:30:03 – 00:13:38:09
Keith
Ugh. All right. So at the end of this long episode, what did we learn? You want to take the first couple thoughts?

00:13:38:10 – 00:14:04:20
Seth
Well, I think, you know, one of the things that we’ve already alluded to is like, what? Like how is this even possible, 2021? I mean, could you imagine his walking into like, you know, a Ferrari dealership like, Hi, I want that one, send me a bill. And they’re like, all right. I just exactly I mean, it’s just me or I mean, I mean, I was actually, you know, to be fair, it’s more complicated than that, but not much more.

00:14:04:20 – 00:14:37:16
Seth
Right. I mean, a lot of people have what’s called the DBA doing business as. Right. So Keith Jones could very, very quickly, for about $100 online, could set up a Keith Jones Inc. business, buy himself some QuickBooks and have invoices sent out or received under Keith Jones, Inc. Right. Get a tax I.D. number really easy and by the way, how a lot of people work the tax system to start using your business to funnel through and to try to take depreciation and deductions and expenses on cars and, homes and stuff like that and vacations.

00:14:37:18 – 00:15:05:02
Seth
So it is possible. But, you know, it is scary that I guess there’s almost like a gentlemen’s agreement amongst businesses that, you know, if you’re a doing going entity that you have money and you have credit and that you will pay your your debts. So he clearly exploited that to an incredible amount. Then it is wondering like there’s so many ways to do some basic due diligence that somebody is not bullshit or not a real thing or a legit.

00:15:05:02 – 00:15:23:26
Seth
And it’s just fascinating that he was able to get as far as he did with, you know, in 2021. The other thing I think is that most of the crime here, as we just noted, boiled down to personal trust, is like a social contract and victims trusted payments would come. We know that because he texted I’m paying you now, buddy.

00:15:23:29 – 00:15:25:14
Keith
My secretary sent it.

00:15:25:16 – 00:15:32:02
Seth
Right. So really, I guess just a real abuse of trust, which is, you know, shame on me, shame on them kind of thing.

00:15:32:02 – 00:16:02:06
Keith
All right. So I have a couple of points here before I close us out. So criminals, if you want your case to go, well, never fucking talk to the media from jail. Now, from the other hand, from the prosecution standpoint and as a goddamn podcaster, please keep calling the media and and and tell them all about your story. Because it’s some of the best research about the case that I can pull is when you tell the media exactly how you did your crime.

00:16:02:10 – 00:16:05:25
Keith
And we can have podcast episodes like this that are kind of fun.

00:16:05:27 – 00:16:06:12
Seth
Course.

00:16:06:15 – 00:16:32:05
Keith
So. So depending what’s on the coin you’re on either talk to the media or don’t. All right. Another point, Bryant, I thought kind of walked away with a stiff sentence. Now, you know, I kind of go back and forth is a stiff sentence or not for 14 years. For some of the crimes that we’ve seen. We’ve seen people get a lot less for more so 14 years kind of felt stiff at the beginning.

00:16:32:05 – 00:16:54:02
Keith
But when I look at it from the victim standpoint, there were a lot of victims that actually lost out money in their pockets. So other episodes we’ve talked about, we’ve had victims that didn’t really lose anything. It was somebody used their identity and filed on their behalf and they had some legwork that they had to clear up their name.

00:16:54:05 – 00:17:18:06
Keith
But in this case, Bryant left people holding the bag with of money or, you know, basically they would pay out whatever it was that they swindled and they were actually out losses on this that we haven’t seen in a lot of our other episodes. So I kind of go back and forth where I say, Yeah, it’s a stiff sentence, but oof, I think he I think in this case he deserved it.

00:17:18:08 – 00:17:44:23
Keith
Now I want to leave you and let you answer this before I take us out. Do you think he was really remorseful or do you think he was remorseful he got caught? My ppinion before you give your’s Seth is I think he was remorseful he got caught because out of all the stuff I read, he only showed remorse and like three words out of a whole paragraph boasting about all the cool shit he did to be remorseful about.

00:17:44:26 – 00:17:46:28
Keith
What do you think?

00:17:47:01 – 00:17:53:20
Seth
Well, I don’t think it has to be one or the other. I think it could be both. I think the bigger issue is,

00:17:53:20 – 00:18:01:28
Seth
I mean, maybe he’ll contact me if I say something here, but kind of like that for 14 years. Yeah, well, if he’s sending out text once a show.

00:18:02:03 – 00:18:03:05
Keith
From jail.

00:18:03:07 – 00:18:21:02
Seth
Once a shitbag, always a shit bag. Right. I think that he I think people are complicated. I’m sure that at some level he realized, hey, I’m going to jail for 14 years minimum. All right. So as a father and as a you know, as a as a child, that’s really, really going to have a negative impact on his family.

00:18:21:02 – 00:18:37:08
Seth
I think that he I think he acknowledged that. I also think, though, at the same time that he’s a shit bag and he’s like, well, in any situation I’m in, I’m going to try to do what I do best, which is fuck people out of money. So he’s basically telling The Daily Beast, Hey, I got a great story to tell.

00:18:37:10 – 00:19:01:14
Seth
You’ll sell a lot of newspapers or a click for more ads. I want some money out of it and I need money because I got to pay a lot of shit back and I got to do more of my thing. So it’s a symbiotic relationship. I’m not convinced between you and me Jones that had he been truly a better able to sell his remorseful ness to the judge, that that the judge, he or she would have slashed his sentence in half.

00:19:01:14 – 00:19:19:06
Seth
I think that he was going to get what he got, period, regardless of his jailhouse conversations with The Daily Beast. So I don’t know that it really mattered, but I think it’s both. I’m sure he is remorseful to some extent. Just as a father, I hope that he has some positive feelings for his family. And I’m sure he’s upset he got caught.

00:19:19:06 – 00:19:41:24
Seth
I’m sure that’s kind of a given, right? No one’s happy they got caught, although he did say he was happy. He got caught because now is on the steps of becoming a better person. I think that’s bullshit, but maybe it is. I mean, it’s not for us to judge. Maybe he legitimately is on a better path, but at the same time, at least in his mind, but he feels like, Hey, I got to pay back these bad guys and sorry, these good guys that I as bad guy ripped off.

00:19:42:02 – 00:20:03:20
Seth
I don’t really have an income generating possibility right now other than selling my story that makes him shit baggy. It does. I think he’s also a narcissist. I think clearly since he had indicated how much he’s into Frank Abagnale and Anna Sorokin and he wants to kind of be a notorious fraudster, I think it’s complicated, but I think ultimately he wants a shitbag, always a shit

00:20:03:21 – 00:20:09:04
Seth
bag. In this instance. And that is the overwhelming message I got.

00:20:09:06 – 00:20:45:13
Keith
You know, good points. All right. So if you like anything in this episode, please give us a five star review on Apple. And I say this because I look at half of our viewers are on Apple Podcasts. So if you can five star reviews there will be appreciated. That moves us up the search chart there. The other side of the coin, if you’re watching on videos, let’s say like YouTube, if you can like us there, subscribe If any of these platforms you can share our material with other people that haven’t seen it, we’d appreciate it.

00:20:45:15 – 00:21:19:21
Keith
We pretty much have just focused, not necessarily and, you know, pushing out ads for other people to see us were more of a word of mouth hobby type of podcasting could just use your help introducing to people that might not know about us, that might enjoy a little bit of humor in their computer crime true crime stories. So with that, if you want to see even more about us, if you want to, you know, check out our social media accounts or you want to go to our glossary that we put together, or you want to go to our videos.

00:21:19:21 – 00:21:44:26
Keith
For instance, if you’re on our audio side, go to eCrimeBytes dot com. And if you’re on your phone, it’s going to look a little different than on your desktop, on your phone is going to have these three lines we call the hamburger in technical terms. If you click on that, it’ll pop down this menu for you with all our social media accounts and you just go nuts there and talk to us everywhere if you want. If you’re on a desktop,

00:21:44:28 – 00:21:53:21
Keith
that whole thing that I just described to you, you don’t have a button. It just shows up across the top. So all your choices will be across the top of your browser.

00:21:53:21 – 00:22:04:18
Keith
So with that, I want to leave you a real, real fast or just preview of what’s coming next week. And I am so, so excited about this one.

00:22:04:18 – 00:22:32:28
Keith
This one, my excitement level is pretty close to the Jimmy Zhong excitement where I’ve been sitting on this one for months. It is about a YouTuber that was also Olympian that was also part of Nitro Circus, if you’re familiar with that on TV, who crashed his private plane for the YouTube likes. Yeah, you heard me right. We have the video.

00:22:33:01 – 00:22:47:22
Keith
We’re going to go through the video. We’re going to talk about the video. And it’s an incredible, incredible story that I just recently researched and just recently happened to is not an old story by any means. It’s just happened. And it’ll be a lot of fun to

00:22:47:22 – 00:22:56:05
Keith
talk about. So hope to see you back next week when we talk about the YouTuber that crashes his plane just for the likes.

00:22:56:08 – 00:22:58:03
Keith
All right, thanks. Bye.

00:22:58:05 – 00:22:58:24
Seth
Thanks. Bye bye.

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The Boasting Fraudster J. Nicholas Bryant – Act 5: Sentencing

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