Rapper BigRigBaby's WeedGenics Company Was A Ponzi Scheme

Sit back and listen to a story where rapper BigRigBaby (Patrick Earl Williams) and his partner Max Bergmann (Rolf Hirschmann) steal millions of dollars of investor money from their “WeedGenics” company. This is eCrimeBytes.com S 2 Ep 6-5: Rapper BigRigBaby’s WeedGenics Company Was A Ponzi Scheme – Act 5: The Pyramid Crumbles.

For the background, please check out our prior acts:

Rapper BigRigBaby’s WeedGenics Company Was A Ponzi Scheme – Act 1: Meet The Playas

Rapper BigRigBaby’s WeedGenics Company Was A Ponzi Scheme – Act 2: Green Investments

Rapper BigRigBaby’s WeedGenics Company Was A Ponzi Scheme – Act 3: The High Life

Rapper BigRigBaby’s WeedGenics Company Was A Ponzi Scheme – Act 4: The Ponzi Scheme

Sources:

Transcript:

00:00:10:00 – 00:00:47:00
Keith
Hey, welcome back to eCrimeBytes Season two, Episode six. This is our favorite rapper, BigRigBaby, His company, which is WeedGenics ends up being a Ponzi scheme. So the first four acts we talked about BigRigBaby. His partner, Max Bergmann, their company INR who owns his company called WeedGenics went out there got millions of dollars from investors had all sorts of evidence that they were real company ends up grow facilities weren’t they didn’t exist.

00:00:47:00 – 00:01:11:03
Keith
They weren’t real. So all this money was just part of a Ponzi scheme. And what we saw was kind of some desperation at the end of this Ponzi scheme where they couldn’t continue the scheme in the same fashion. And they said, Hey, we’re going to restructure your investments into this weird equity ownership. And if you want your original money back, it’s going to take a long damn time.

00:01:11:05 – 00:01:15:21
Keith
And now we’re going to talk about how the pyramid crumbles, which is

00:01:15:21 – 00:01:45:12
Keith
going through pretty much where they spent their money during these time periods. Now, I segmented the two time periods on purpose. There was the normal scheme up until fall of 2022, where it was just investors investing and supposedly getting the interest payments back. And then it’s kind of where they go butt crazy that fall because I think they ran out of money and they changed how the investments work and they start spending money on other things and it just made a nice little dividing line.

00:01:45:12 – 00:02:00:15
Keith
So we’re going to give you those two eras and then we’ll talk real quick about the total numbers at the end. So the first one I’m going to give you is through October 2020. So this is the lion’s share of all their investment, right before they sort of really running out of money.

00:02:00:15 – 00:02:03:04
Keith
So. Williams, And you go, Who’s Williams?

00:02:03:04 – 00:02:17:28
Keith
Because we don’t talk about his last name. We talk about BigRigBaby. He received approximately 7.9 million investor funds up to this point. Where did he spend it? Well, 625,000 of it was spent on dining, jewelry, and

00:02:17:28 – 00:02:26:03
Keith
then I think that’s probably that big semi chain that we were looking at, adult entertainment

00:02:26:03 – 00:02:30:03
Keith
and personal expenses, $625,000.

00:02:30:06 – 00:02:57:04
Keith
I was like, that’s kind of low. I wonder if his music career is in there. $18,000. Was that his music career? And that’s why at the beginning I said, Holy shit, this motherfucker should have spent more on his rap career because his raps really bad. And out of 8 million, almost $8 million, he only spent $18,000 on his music career, at least up until October of 2022.

00:02:57:06 – 00:03:04:18
Keith
Now, what did that consist of? That consisted of payments to producers, deejays and iheartmedia.

00:03:04:18 – 00:03:14:29
Keith
And then approximately $1.9 million was transferred to cash, and they have no idea where that went.

00:03:15:01 – 00:03:35:17
Seth
Just so we’re clear, that means he spent half a million dollars or 625 on stuff that was corporately identified as jewelry was all he did that clearly through INR, the 2 million bucks that he pocketed could have been for a house, could have been for a car. That Corvette may be whatever, clearly all personal to him. So don’t worry.

00:03:35:17 – 00:03:38:16
Seth
He took care of himself pretty good on that.

00:03:38:19 – 00:03:42:09
Keith
I would say probably not spent on his rap career, though, just based upon the video.

00:03:42:09 – 00:03:44:05
Seth
Clearly not right. Clearly not.

00:03:44:08 – 00:03:57:17
Keith
Hirschmann Hirschmann made more. He received 15.6 million and he spent 4.8 on residential real estate. So like a home, not a business,

00:03:57:17 – 00:04:13:12
Keith
and renovate and related expenses. So like renovations, utilities, landscaping, all that stuff costs money to point 4 million was a luxury cars and I couldn’t find out what luxury cars he bought Seth But that’s a lot of goddamn money in cars.

00:04:13:12 – 00:04:33:06
Keith
He took 3.2 million of investor funds and made credit card payments. That must be some expensive ass credit cards. And then for him, he kind of. He was low on the cash side. He was only $913,000 worth of cash that was unaccounted for.

00:04:33:06 – 00:04:45:06
Keith
Now, Delgado, which was one of those relief defendants that we didn’t spend much time on, it was one of the entities that helped them transfer money around that big blob of entities that I showed you.

00:04:45:08 – 00:05:08:10
Keith
He made 5.2 million and then 2.2 million of that 5 million was withdrawn in cash. The other individual, Campbell, which helped them again facilitate these funds, 1.18 in investor funds. And they just had personal expenses against cash withdrawals.

00:05:08:10 – 00:05:15:11
Keith
Now, during this time, they’re trying to make their company look like it’s a real company, so they’re paying back some investors.

00:05:15:11 – 00:05:31:28
Keith
So from June of 2018 through October 2022, INR spent approximately 10 million. And of those funds paying back other investors to make it look like they’re being paid back. So that’s that’s the whole premise of a Ponzi scheme.

00:05:31:28 – 00:05:39:29
Keith
There’s another distribution of about 1.6 million for another company that BigRigBaby owned

00:05:39:29 – 00:05:43:21
Keith
that also fake paid back investors.

00:05:43:23 – 00:05:49:18
Keith
I guess they paid back for real, but it wasn’t from actual investments. It was from other investors money.

00:05:49:18 – 00:06:12:07
Keith
So now, like we said, Bovee didn’t say what she spent it on, but she made $715,000 from that scheme up until October of 2022. Now, there’s a huge shift at this point. This is the shift where I think they start running out of money and this is where those other relief defendants that I kind of breezed over the names, Campbell, and so forth.

00:06:12:07 – 00:06:23:04
Keith
That’s where these individuals play a role in this whole scheme. It was hard for me to try to do everything chronologically and introduce it in order. So this is one of those things a little bit out of order for you.

00:06:23:04 – 00:06:26:27
Seth
All right. So let’s move to November of 2022, right? This is like right after,

00:06:26:27 – 00:06:46:04
Seth
they, I guess, had sent all the documentation and such to their investors and change the terms of the agreements. INR raises money through a different account. So now a new account associate with a company called INR C.A. Investment Holdings LLC controlled by a guy named Eric Francom.

00:06:46:24 – 00:07:16:16
Seth
Some guy named from from Texas age 40 began to receive investor funds. So for about six months from November 22 to April 23, he received over $21 million across 110 investors. They were really good at raising money. I mean, you got to tip your hat to them. So from this 15 million went to INR his primary account and then 6 million and change went to this I N R Consulting and Mr. Campbell.

00:07:16:16 – 00:08:00:07
Seth
So what was that money used for since October of 2022? Of that 21.2 million we have already, Francom’s I N R CA. That’s another business we just mentioned sent over 15 million the primary Williams BigRigBaby controled INR bank account and over 6 million to the RD INR consulting and Campbell. Williams BigRigBaby and R.D. WCW again received millions of dollars, much of which was passed through to Hirschmann and other RDs and approximately 3.7 million, which was directed directly to BigRigBaby’s personal accounts.

00:08:00:07 – 00:08:09:08
Seth
So this is clearly when they were like, Oh shit, we’re short money, let’s raise some more money in a different version of our business, but we’ll funnel it right back to where it was.

00:08:09:10 – 00:08:12:08
Keith
Yeah, and when says, says R.D., that stands for Relief.

00:08:12:08 – 00:08:14:09
Seth
Defendant Relief defendants. Yes.

00:08:14:11 – 00:08:28:22
Keith
Strange defendants I tried to explain that a couple of times earlier. Yeah. And it’s, it’s that when you say R.D. the WCD that’s just a company that BigRigBaby owned. He owns a lot of companies.

00:08:28:23 – 00:09:01:03
Seth
So let’s continue on. What about Hirschmann? So him in his entities he and his entities received about 7.2 million of which approx of this new money, of which approximately 1.4 was spent on guess for it luxury automobiles, another 1.3 on credit cards, and about 640 on real estate and related expenses. So he must have been like a luxury car, credit card spewing real estate magnate out there in Vegas or wherever the hell he was.

00:09:01:06 – 00:09:31:23
Seth
Idaho. I don’t remember. Relief defendant Delgado. His entities got about $2 million, again, almost all on personal expenses and relief. Defendant INR Consulting. That’s the company that Campbell was a part of. He received about 8 million bucks, of which about 537,000 was transferred to Campbell’s personal bank account or withdrawn in cash. And a nearly a million was transferred to third parties for unknown purposes.

00:09:31:23 – 00:09:42:11
Seth
I guess you got to pay people down. And starting in February 2023, 384,000 was used to form another company called Relief Defendant

00:09:42:11 – 00:09:43:10
Seth
Hidden Springs. Thank you.

00:09:43:10 – 00:09:44:11
Seth
Okay,

00:09:44:11 – 00:09:56:22
Seth
so we know that INR and relief defendant WCW also use investor money, mostly consisting of money from the California INR company.

00:09:56:28 – 00:10:19:07
Seth
That’s that new wing that they started to generate more funds at different funds, at least 1.6 million in to the investors. So they were keeping investors kind of, you know tasted here. The INR moreover INR sent back about 386,000 back to the INR California entity, which then made payments to INR investors who invested directly through INR CA.

00:10:19:10 – 00:10:29:11
Seth
So you had a lot of this in terms of people getting paid back through the two different companies, there. INR and INR CA. So similarly, you had the INR Consulting, Campbell

00:10:29:11 – 00:10:35:02
Seth
Sent about $1,000,000 back through INR CA. So now you’re really starting to see the Ponzi part of this kicking in.

00:10:35:04 – 00:10:47:01
Seth
You’re having a new set of money come in and everybody’s kind of paying within the INR suite of companies. They’re all paying each other back, kind of like a shielding where the investment money is coming from to basically pay other investors back.

00:10:47:01 – 00:11:17:13
Keith
So we have the totals again, and this is we talked about this earlier, but I’m going to give you the real quick rundown. If we take the total from those two time periods and add them together, we have defendant BigRigBaby. He’s sitting at about $19.2 million. We have defendant Max Bergmann, a $22.9 million. We have Defendant Delgado at 7.2 million.

00:11:17:15 – 00:11:38:25
Keith
We have defendant Campbell at 9.1 million. And Campbell was the one that helped him with that second scheme in that shift. And then we have Alexandria Bovee with her $715,000. And then again $16.1 million of that went back to investors. So,

00:11:38:25 – 00:11:47:13
Keith
I guess that’s their expenses in their, in their Ponzi scheme. That’s the expense category when they when they file their taxes on that Ponzi scheme.

00:11:47:15 – 00:12:25:08
Seth
Right? So may have that May 19th. It’s one of my best friend’s birthday of 2023. A temporary restraining order is filed. So a temporary restraining order or a tiara freezes all assets of a shell company here or of a company here. It froze all assets of the shell companies here, INR and the individuals personally so they couldn’t use INR and its entities as a bank anymore, a receiver was appointed, which basically means the government appoint somebody usually from a law firm to say, hey, you’re in charge of the money now because these guys can’t anymore.

00:12:25:11 – 00:12:28:11
Seth
So that’s basically what what a receiver is.

00:12:28:13 – 00:12:42:25
Keith
So this is where the case. And yeah, I mean is we we had the temporary restraining order and now we have a receiver that’s getting in there looking at all the finances, figuring out who the investors are, trying to figure out where the money is seeing,

00:12:42:25 – 00:12:45:18
Keith
who they can pay back and all that kind of stuff.

00:12:45:21 – 00:12:53:20
Keith
This is not criminal. Everything we’ve talked about, this is not a prosecution that we’ve discussed yet. This is let’s.

00:12:53:20 – 00:13:01:25
Seth
Put a hard yet on all of that. They’re going to be named yet in both a criminal and a civil case. I guarantee it.

00:13:01:28 – 00:13:16:00
Keith
I yeah. And I think it’s not going to take long. I think the SEC is going to do their job, probably bring a lot of evidence and then the DOJ is going to be able to use a lot of evidence in some kind of criminal trial. Well, they.

00:13:16:00 – 00:13:33:23
Seth
Have to be. People were defrauded for tens of millions of dollars. This was not a small amount of money. And it also involves the government has significant interest in the regulation and the sale of marijuana. So they’re definitely going to be interested in this. Plus, they did register with the SEC, which was a big mistake by there,

00:13:35:24 – 00:13:58:26
Keith
Yeah. Some of the thoughts I had so that criminal thing being was I thought about that throughout was wow we’re not even seeing the criminal part yet and this is already really incredibly juicy. And I think once the criminal portion happens, we do an update and we if we see new evidence, we make an update to it and we follow it because how would you not follow someone called BigRigBaby?

00:13:58:29 – 00:14:04:21
Keith
And so some other final thoughts I had about this is grown ass men wear fanny packs?

00:14:04:21 – 00:14:09:18
Keith
So when I saw a fanny pack, I was like, Listen, I don’t have fashion sense, but I know that’s probably not good.

00:14:09:18 – 00:14:11:11
Keith
Wearing a fanny pack in front of people.

00:14:11:11 – 00:14:19:11
Keith
And also we found that BigRigBaby, his music sucks. I was hoping that I could be like, Hey, you really you need to go check this guy out,

00:14:19:11 – 00:14:24:27
Keith
as his business sucks, but his music’s great. No, no. His music sense is just as bad as it.

00:14:24:27 – 00:14:36:20
Seth
Might be Fair to say that his music sucks, because if it didn’t suck, he could hopefully make a living from that. Instead, he made a living through fraud on marijuana. So maybe that is a factual statement.

00:14:36:22 – 00:14:37:04
Keith
Yeah.

00:14:37:04 – 00:14:51:16
Keith
And so the last thing I want to point out is here, like almost all of our cases, fraud happens typically when there’s some level of trust. And here it was trust and faked data. And,

00:14:51:25 – 00:14:56:04
Keith
if you don’t get anything else, if you don’t even laugh at any of our jokes or if you don’t,

00:14:56:04 – 00:15:06:11
Keith
care about or anything else, just know, don’t always trust stuff, verify. It’s okay to trust something, but just verify it, too.

00:15:06:11 – 00:15:21:27
Keith
And I think in this case, I think you had some investors that tried to verify it. I think they went out there and they tried to go to a site that they thought was probably a growth facility and they were like, hey, this Max Bergmann guy, he knows what he’s talking about. I’ll put some money into this.

00:15:21:27 – 00:15:23:18
Keith
I think that actually happened in this case.

00:15:23:21 – 00:15:24:13
Keith
Well, for sure.

00:15:24:13 – 00:15:26:07
Seth
But yeah.

00:15:26:10 – 00:15:43:04
Keith
I just say in general, though, if you take nothing else away, do verify don’t just trust, because that’s typically how victims become victims in almost all these cases that we’ve talked about is where they don’t do that step. Here, they actually did you have any final thoughts, Seth?

00:15:43:06 – 00:15:44:12
Seth
A couple. I mean,

00:15:44:12 – 00:16:00:11
Seth
the SEC actions are civil, not criminal. I strongly suspect the SEC going to refer their findings to the DOJ. I also suspect that the IRS will get involved. I’m pretty sure that from a tax perspective, everybody wasn’t on the up and up here. The investors are probably going to collectively file suit.

00:16:00:14 – 00:16:06:26
Seth
The receiver will only be able to pay back a portion of what’s there and then whatever they don’t get back, they’re going to probably file suit,

00:16:06:26 – 00:16:11:07
Seth
criminally and civilly. So this is not going away anytime soon, in my opinion.

00:16:11:07 – 00:16:20:02
Seth
In terms of, I guess, other final thoughts, I know that a lot of people are trying and have been trying and successfully making quite a bit of money on the,

00:16:20:02 – 00:16:23:00
Seth
relative legalization of marijuana across places.

00:16:23:02 – 00:16:34:19
Seth
I mean, shoot, I have a friend who asked me to invest in a marijuana dispensary. I didn’t really have any money to invest, but it is a big business for sure. So I’m not shocked that people who have real money I mean, there were what there was,

00:16:34:19 – 00:16:37:24
Seth
a lot of money raised here, tens and tens of millions of dollars.

00:16:37:27 – 00:16:52:12
Seth
So to their credit and I said this earlier, they were really good at raising money. But I also feel like there’s a market for people who want to invest in kind of a I don’t say get rich quick, but you would think that given the current state of things, marijuana is probably a pretty good thing to invest in.

00:16:52:15 – 00:16:55:09
Seth
I mean, you go to any grocery store or any,

00:16:55:09 – 00:17:04:02
Seth
Whole Foods store, there’s so many CBD, THC products now, let alone the actual marijuana stores. It is big business. Now. Why wouldn’t you want to invest in that? Right?

00:17:04:02 – 00:17:11:07
Seth
So it’s just sad that so many people were separated from their money so aggressively here. So I’m very curious to keep track of where this goes.

00:17:11:07 – 00:17:32:08
Keith
Yeah, definitely. All right. So how do you reach us now? Don’t turn off the video at this point. I’ve got a preview of next week, so just stick with me. How do you reach us? You go to our Web site, you go to eCrimeBytes, which is spelled e c r i m e b y as in yellow milk t e s dot com.

00:17:32:11 – 00:17:41:07
Keith
And across the top you got all our social media accounts and you can go visit us on any of them. We got our glossary up there, got our newsletter up there.

00:17:41:07 – 00:18:08:25
Keith
Now whatever you’re watching or listening to us on, please subscribe and like if you liked anything in any of these acts, that helps us out. And specifically for audio only listeners, anybody on Apple Podcasts, if you could give us a five star review and unimportant what you say in there, I mean, we will read it, but could just say, Hey, I like the podcast and that just helps us move up the charts and we really appreciate it because half of our audio only listeners actually

00:18:08:25 – 00:18:17:11
Keith
come from Apple Podcasts. So we could use the help there. And so with that, let me pop something up on the screen for you.

00:18:17:11 – 00:18:22:19
Keith
We’ve got next week, we’ve got a criminal.

00:18:22:19 – 00:18:34:20
Keith
And even though we’re going to talk about this criminal, we’re actually talking about his brother who ends up stealing $5 million worth of Bitcoin back from law enforcement.

00:18:34:23 – 00:19:02:24
Keith
And you’re going, Oh, how do I wrap my head around it? Yes, law enforcement seized a lot of Bitcoin from a person A and that person A’s brother who is person B stole some of it back from law enforcement and the picture that you have if you’re watching this video, you see a bunch of bitcoin and money around, but you see this individual sitting in something with a bunch of money like physical money on top of him.

00:19:02:26 – 00:19:23:22
Keith
That’s a picture of him in a bathtub at a nightclub full of about $100,000 worth of cash that he had cashed out. So you don’t see the rest there. But there’s a lot of scantily clad women all around him. I think it might even be at a strip club. And that’s how he spends his money that he stole back from the law enforcement in this case.

00:19:23:24 – 00:19:25:09
Keith
And it’s an absolutely amazing case.

00:19:25:09 – 00:19:39:00
Keith
And so with that next week, we’re going to bring this criminal’s brothers swipes $5 million worth of Bitcoin back from law enforcement to you. We hope to see you there. So stay safe and we’ll see you then. Thanks.

#ecrimebytes #cybersecurity #computer #electronic #truecrime #podcast #security #hacker #humor #funny #comedy #bigrigbaby #rapper #weedgenics #ponzi #ponzischeme #fraud

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Rapper BigRigBaby’s WeedGenics Company Was A Ponzi Scheme – Act 5: The Pyramid Crumbles

Sources:

Transcript:

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