ALEX MENDELSOHN: I remember calling him up and asking him if I could ask him if I could call him Daddy. I just remember my phone going, beep beep beep. EMILY GUERIN: After the break: the protest. Maybe they’d retire there. That’s just the way it is. And they talk about it as if it’s run by the mob. And then he got the job in the kitchen at Google. Now, it was up to a San Diego County Superior Court Judge, Joel Wohfeil, to approve the sale. EMILY GUERIN: You think your mom was threatened by the California City Development Company? EMILY GUERIN: Kathryn told me her friend’s name was Al. EMILY GUERIN: Well, so I sat down with Tom Maney, and, uh... KEN DONNEY: laughs. EMILY GUERIN: Do you ever, like, have dreams about it? He had 3000 salesmen, and more than 24 offices all over the world. And nearly all the pioneers knew Nat. I mean, do you, do you really think that anybody could just snap and kill their wife? I was investigating. And, sometimes I think thatâs the reason the pitch works so well. Thereâs a Baptist church, a Pentecostal church,a Catholic church, a Kingdomâs Hall of Jehovahâs Witnesses and a little white shack out in the middle of the desert, where, on the 13th of every month, women in white robes claim to see the Virgin Mary in the sky. EMILY GUERIN: Ben moved back to California when he was 19. So last January, I flew to visit Ben in San José. Like, and he was trying to like, speak the language in a really crude way, and I was, I just thought it was, like, weird. ANTONIO GARCIA: We acknowledge the fact there is some mismanagement of the money. Because land sales isn’t what they enforce. EMILY GUERIN: Okay. Which is how he ended up ensnaring his friends. Like, saying like, oh, if you buy this land now itâs gonna skyrocket later. It could happen to anybody. I lifted my shirt and the cuffs of my pants, and walked through a metal detector. Ever. Deltaville Marina is a full service marina situated minutes from the Chesapeake Bay. And there was a parking lot full of heavy American cars. No don’t, don’t do that. And two of Bob’s researchers stumbled upon California City, and they went there to see what was really going on. But for Ben, it was traumatizing — that’s his word. I had never met anyone like them. Ken Donney is a hero to some, but most people would call him a villain. I decided to ask one more person: Darryl Horowitt. I’m Emily Guerin, and welcome to California City, episode two. He didn’t have the money to fix it. I got there early, and I sat in the front row of the courtroom as people filed in. It looked identical to her world, except everything was upside down. EMILY GUERIN: The more Ken learned, the more he respected how good the salespeople were. They just wanted as much money back as possible. 20 - 22 m² (2 personer) Skrivbord och stol He said, quote, “I murdered Nina. and a gray moustache that you can almost hear as he talks. Because Nat wasn’t just building a city, he was building the idea of a city. So. It's been said many times by many different people. That’s when Marian threatened to sue him if he didn’t shut up. And I have nothing but hope. That's it. She drives up to the top of Galileo Hill. But more than a dozen people described it to me, and I have to say, their stories are nearly identical. I’d pored over hundreds of pages of government filings and court documents. Because I could see somebody who was like, looking at it from the outside being like, "Wait, Ben is a victim. I found some of them: We need additional real estate sales people! Stop running deceptive ads. Like, I feel super hopeless. I lose hope. I knew Tom was there during the Federal Trade Commission's investigation. He wants to invest in his future. Of course they don’t feel like the state is helping them by getting rid of it. A big yellow and black sign, 4 feet by 8 feet. The front gate was chained shut and a makeshift plywood sign was left leaning against it. He realized it was easier to sell the promise of a city than to build one. Nat Mendelsohn was a real estate developer who 60 years ago, decided to build a city from scratch in the Mojave Desert. She had told me that Nat sent 107 purple and white orchids to her fourth wedding, but later, she told me they were actually white roses, babies breath and a single black orchid. Shame on you. Our herds of cattle. Weâre going to do a raffle. No college. I love to buy land. Not much to do out here, not unless you’re riding a dirt bike or playing sports. KEN DONNEY: Yeah, I’m talking to you guys and gals…, EMILY GUERIN: His phone cut out, but he said, “I’m talking to you, guys and gals at the FTC. laughs. She was one of them. EMILY GUERIN: I first talked to him in June 2018. BEN PEREZ: That money is supposed to be for my future and now I lose my future I lose hope. How he spent so much of his money on a slice of empty desert land that he somehow believed would make him rich one day. And after three hours, I was completely drained. There was, as he put it, starting to be a drum beat. Anyway, so Ben and Clifford and two of their buddies set out for Silver Saddle on the Fourth of July weekend in 2017. Hot dogs, soda, party packs of chips. Instead, they believed that the institutions that were supposed to be helping them were actually victimizing them even further. She seemed willing to do almost anything for him: move to California, pose in a bikini, maybe even bend the truth a little. ANTONIO GARCIA: But remember, Las Vegas was a desert before it became Las Vegas. No book store. He'd send them to hotel ballrooms and they'd sit there, next to overflowing ashtrays, and take notes as salespeople made their pitch. EMILY GUERIN: By this point, a small group had gathered around us. That's why we have the city we have today. Dateline did a story last year about the town’s eight unsolved murders. Illinois. So I called Anthony -- her husband. He refused to move out of the house. I went through with it because, at that point in my life, it was just easier to say yes than to say no. MARIAN DUCREUX: In so many years probably thousands already. I just can speak some. They scanned any document that seemed interesting, and labeled what office it had come from. So all I did is just trust, trust them and do what they want me to sign or everything. EMILY GUERIN: I’m so sorry. And they told me the complaint they received was from someone who had won a raffle at at Filipino grocery store. KEN DONNEY: But that's, those were his words. They’d ride the bus out to California City. I drank shots of Jack Daniels with Arthur the bartender at the Green Tea Garden, the townâs only Chinese restaurant. That's what con artists do. And the roads... just, there’s so many roads on every single direction. I didn’t know that the way some of them were pressured into buying land, it wasn’t just unethical, it was illegal. EMILY GUERIN: He denied that his vision for the future of California City had anything to do with Nat Mendelsohn’s. And then, at Panera Bread inside this stripmall near where she lives an hour or so east of LA, she walked in slowly, taking small steps that made her seem older than she is. It wouldn’t be a place where you can just belt out Karaoke, and then wander home, still singing, on curving, moonlit roads. The horseback ride was just two laps around a dusty circle. He came closer than anyone else to stopping the scam. EMILY GUERIN: At the time, James and I did not understand what John was talking about. If you see another Van Nuys, or another Encino, or another Salt Lake City, then you've got the vision. And Steve said the guy just seemed... evasive. A punishment for scamming at least 73,000 people out of hundreds of millions of dollars. KEN DONNEY: And it was a lot, lot, lot higher after I got done with it. The number of salespeople plummeted from 3,000 to less than 200. Rheana peeked inside the bathroom. But, I was still nervous. He wasn’t building a case, but he said it kind of felt that way. I’m still struggling to make sense of what he did next: he handed me his bankers box of documents, and he told me to make copies of whatever I wanted. EMILY GUERIN: Was this kind of the thing that convinced you to do it? KEN DONNEY: And I hope you don't take this the wrong way: good girl. What, what about him? MARIAN DUCREUX: In so many years probably thousands already. BEN PEREZ: I feel like I lost hope. All masterpiece baby onesies ship within 48 hours and include a 30-day money-back guarantee. The one thing that people always seem to put on the back burner because it's out of their reach is real estate. Like a Santa kind of laugh but lower. EMILY GUERIN: And it was true: everyone I talked to at the assessor’s office that day knew that Silver Saddle was selling the same pieces of land over and over. My point was that there is a difference between running a business that caters to certain kinds of people, and targeting them with a confusing sales pitch. It could happen to anyone. One, God keeps making babies and doesn't make any more land. Ben says Marian told him there was a promotion going on, but only if he bought today. Not because they got to choose from a lot of potential. After he signed away his life savings. There was a piano, and while Sylvia played, Nat would dance with Alex around the living room. And talking to him was as close as I could get to being in one of Nat’s sales offices, almost as good as hearing the pitch myself. KEN DONNEY ... a guy, who I later found out was former FBI. But he didnât stop thinking about it. The barrister Marina Wheeler, with her first name, her âlight-ish skin and dark hairâ, is generally taken by chatty cabbies to be Greek. And this is part two: the neighborhood. Landbanking is where a bunch of people jointly own a huge chunk of land. EMILY GUERIN: Iâm in the parking lot, Iâm looking at the building, it says 464 on the side and then there's⦠thereâs like, two, four apartments. So, in May 2018 -- one month after I began my research for this podcast -- the DBO told Silver Saddle to stop. Me too. It’s where sales agents divided people up by ethnicity, showed them a powerpoint about Elon Musk and Bill Gates supposedly having interests in the area, and then pressured them into buying a piece of empty desert land. But then, 50 seconds later…. Because Nat wasn’t just building a city, he was building the idea of a city. So, they’d stop paying their property taxes and the county would take possession and auction it off. You can read the transcript below, but the story is meant to be listened to. No clinic. I'm grateful. A man in a dark suit, wearing a homburg hat. EMILY GUERIN: So that was, and that was a lie. BEN PEREZ: There's five of us and it's a two bedroom apartment. Twitter. Because, that’s how Ben Perez felt too. Caltech: Cal Tech Science Exchange provides trustworthy answers, clear explanations, and fact-driven conversation on critical topics in science and technology. He didn’t know that the guy in charge of it all, the president of Silver Saddle, was someone he’d met years ago, during his negotiations with Great Western Cities. So I called her younger sister Susan, to fact-check it. And he got up to leave. Should I find a lawyer? The sales manager got up and walked over to the gong. KATHRYN EFFORD: Absolutely. Um. Unfortunately, millions of others received nothing. They had nothing there to sell. So I couldn't listen to podcasts. STEVE COLERICK: Looking back on it, what I remember is countless Christmas parties, retirement parties. EMILY GUERIN: There were other things that didn’t add up. He was always reciting little limericks and poems and made some very fun playful faces. Jag är väldigt glad och tacksam över det för detta har öppnat upp många nya dörrar för mig. BEN PEREZ: I don’t know what to do, I been doing research since day one… and, no one, you know, no one can help me. They complained to lawyers. schizo-sketching-blog:. EMILY GUERIN: Marian Lee was literally the first mother of California City. Stop making false and misleading statements. ANTONIO GARCIA: Anything that you heard otherwise is, is not true. And in his online reviews of Silver Saddle, I mean, his anger was practically jumping off the screen. Yeah. BEN PEREZ: Yeah, because I want to open a food truckâ¦And I lose all that money. And when I told him, he brushed them off. JOHN DAVIDSON: It’s just a small town, people know everybody. KATHRYN EFFORD: Oh yeah! “This is the right place,” he proclaimed from the back of his wagon. He wants to be his own boss. CORRECTION: Since we fact-checked this story, the California Department of Real Estate received 3 additional complaints about Silver Saddle. I’m Emily Guerin, and welcome back to California City.
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