INTRODUCING... Chameleon: The Weekly

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Speaker 6 Hi, Park Enthusiasts. I'm Delia Diamber, host of Park Predators.

Speaker 6 Every week, we explore stories of violence and tragedy that unfold in some of the world's most beautiful places, reminding us that sometimes the most beautiful places hide the darkest secrets.

Speaker 6 But today, I want to tell you about a new kind of predator, one who doesn't hunt in the woods, but hides in plain sight. It's from AudioChuck and it's called Chameleon.

Speaker 6 This new series investigates people who live by deception, shapeshifters, imposters, and con artists, who don't just tell lies, they become someone else entirely.

Speaker 6 They blend into everyday life, they manipulate, they scheme, and they do it so well, no one suspects a thing.

Speaker 6 Each week, journalist and host Josh Dean unravels a new case of elaborate trickery, showing us just how far these deceivers will go to protect their secrets.

Speaker 6 The first episode unpacks the wild rise and fall of Raffaello Foglieri, a man who seemed to have it all. He had the charm, the looks, the connections, and he knew exactly how to use them.

Speaker 6 He stole the heart of a famous actress, rubbed elbows with powerful politicians, and convinced wealthy investors that he was on a divine mission to rescue the Catholic Church's crumbling finances.

Speaker 6 But underneath the glossy exterior was something darker. A web of deception built on lies, luxury, and greed.

Speaker 6 Chameleon follows the trail of how Foliari pulled it off, who got burned along the way, and how his glamorous facade finally unraveled.

Speaker 6 This isn't about predators in the wilderness, it's about the ones walking among us.

Speaker 6 You can listen to the first episode of Chameleon right here on Park Predators, then head over to hear episode two, Out Now, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 4 Hello? What is the what do you want me to say?

Speaker 4 Chameleon. Chameleon Weekly.

Speaker 4 Back in the fall of 2008, Anne Hathaway was a guest on Late Night with David Letterman talking about her latest movie, Rachel Getting Married.

Speaker 4 It's a thing stars have to do as part of their contracts with studios. But the timing of this one for Hathaway was unfortunate.
Because she was in the middle of a devastating breakup.

Speaker 11 You would think that maybe this happens more to people. You meet somebody, you fall in love, and then it turns out maybe that person wasn't all that great.

Speaker 4 Maybe. Yeah.
Yeah. Promotional appearances don't typically get this personal, but this breakup had unfortunately happened in full public view.

Speaker 4 And, well, as Hathaway said herself to Dave, it's, quote, what everyone is thinking about.

Speaker 11 Did you have any hints that there was a problem?

Speaker 9 You know what? I don't want to go into the specifics, but I will say that you do have to give me credit because as far as relationships crashing and burning goes, come on.

Speaker 6 I did pretty great.

Speaker 4 It was huge. It was excellent.
Yeah, it was. You know,

Speaker 4 Dave, never afraid of pushing an envelope, pressed on.

Speaker 11 And it was different from what we're accustomed to hearing, you know.

Speaker 11 This was pretty unusual.

Speaker 9 That's definitely one of the words that, yeah.

Speaker 11 And is this a person, is he in jail now?

Speaker 4 Not a question you typically hear a huge Hollywood star asked after a breakup, but a relevant one in this case, because the answer was yes.

Speaker 4 Anne Hathaway's ex, the man she nearly married after a whirlwind romance, was in jail.

Speaker 4 His name was Raffaello Folieri, a swashbuckling Italian with a deep tan, floppy hair, and apparently close ties to the Vatican, who'd arrived in New York in 2003 ready to make his fortune and meet some ladies.

Speaker 4 The two fell in love, and Anne practically screamed from the rooftops, or at least in interviews like the one she gave Newsweek, in which she said the two worshipped each other. Or Vanity Fair.

Speaker 4 It was totally love at first sight, she said. He is so good looking.
He looks like a god.

Speaker 4 It was a real-life fairy tale for an actress who was famous, in part, for playing a princess.

Speaker 4 Until it wasn't.

Speaker 4 Because on June 24th, 2008, Federal agents descended upon the Trump Tower apartment where Foliary was staying and arrested him.

Speaker 11 How long did you know the guy?

Speaker 9 How long? We did it for four years. Four years.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 4 was there ever like, you know, stuff missing out of your purse?

Speaker 4 This uncomfortable turn on Letterman came four months after their breakup. Foliari would later say that the last time they spoke, Annie, as he called her, phoned him from L.A.

Speaker 4 during a press tour and seemed tense.

Speaker 4 We were on the phone for 10 minutes talking about when

Speaker 4 monologue when she hosted Saturday Night Live that fall.

Speaker 9 I broke up with my Italian boyfriend and two weeks later he was sent to prison for fraud. I mean, we've all been there, am I right, ladies?

Speaker 4 This is Chameleon, the weekly show about people who pretend to be something they aren't. And I'm Josh Dean.

Speaker 4 This week, Raffaello Foglieri, the charming Italian playboy who fooled an A-list movie star, one of Bill Clinton's closest friends, and a long, long list of investors.

Speaker 4 That's after the break.

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Speaker 6 Chameleon, Chameleon.

Speaker 4 Chameleon. This is Chameleon Weekly.

Speaker 4 Back in January 2006, a Wall Street Journal reporter named Christine Haney was invited to lunch by a publicist to meet one of their newest and flashiest clients.

Speaker 4 Christine had been hearing about this dynamic young real estate developer for some time and was curious to speak with him.

Speaker 9 He was known as the Italian boyfriend of the movie star Ann Hathaway. And this is, you know, the Devilwear's Prada time.
We're talking mid-2000s in New York.

Speaker 4 Hathaway was a superstar in a time of spectacular wealth and excess. And this was indeed boom time in the lead up to the 2008 global financial collapse.

Speaker 4 And so, by association with his movie star girlfriend, Raffaello Foglieri was already a fixture of the gossip brags.

Speaker 9 He was portraying himself as a real estate developer with ties to the Catholic Church. And I met him because my beat was real estate finance.

Speaker 4 Christine's editor asked her to take a closer look into this buzzy émigré's business dealings.

Speaker 9 This guy is claiming to have ties to the Vatican. That is opening doors for him to buy up all of the real estate owned by the Catholic Church.

Speaker 4 Foliary had started a company in his name, the Foliary Group. apparently to help the church unload many of its valuable U.S.
real estate holdings.

Speaker 4 This was, of course, a time in which the Catholic Church was still reeling from a series of exposés revealing the cover-up of child sex abuse by priests. It needed money.

Speaker 9 So they were struggling for money. They were selling properties.
So in that world, it didn't sound that far-fetched.

Speaker 4 Foliari claimed that he was tight with the longtime number two official at the Vatican, the former Secretary of State, Angelo Sedano, whose nephew was a senior advisor to the Foliari group.

Speaker 9 That was his calling card, and he could come in and he could buy this real estate and turn it around for a profit.

Speaker 4 Foliari attracted tens of millions in investment from some huge names. This flamboyant Italian seemed to come basically out of nowhere.
That was what Christine's editors wanted her to probe.

Speaker 4 They met at a posh restaurant in Manhattan.

Speaker 9 Presented himself very well. There just felt something very off to me.
It was a good conversation, but my questions were really about like, what are your transactions? What are you doing?

Speaker 9 How do you plan to do this? Like, how are you going to make money? Where are you buying these properties? What have you bought so far?

Speaker 4 Really just basic journalism 101. Not exactly gotcha questions.
But Foliari bobbed and weaved.

Speaker 9 And I just left the whole meeting kind of unsettled.

Speaker 4 Christine had been in the game long enough to know when something wasn't right. And in this case, something definitely wasn't right.

Speaker 9 I worked on that story for nearly eight months, trying to piece it together. There was plenty to keep me busy besides Raffaello Foliari, but he was always in the back of my head.

Speaker 9 And then he's popping up like, oh, I'm in the Dominican Republic. Oh, I'm doing stuff with the Clinton Global Initiative.
Harvey Weinstein knew him. The Duchess of York was there.

Speaker 9 Like he was at the heart of this

Speaker 9 frothy pre-crash scene and he just kept cropping up. Like the world is just sparkling in this pre-crash moment and he was part of that and he just blended in beautifully.

Speaker 9 It's right out of like an Enedith Wharton novel.

Speaker 4 Edith Wharton, the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, by the way, in 1921. She documented the lives of the rich and famous throughout the Gilded Age.

Speaker 9 And this is someone who was new to the country, who didn't have all that many family connections just showing up and coming from like a poorer part of Italy.

Speaker 9 People were questioning his education, you know, background. Like, where is the creation of his wealth? Where did this come from?

Speaker 4 But Christine kind of got it. She could see how people were drawn in.

Speaker 9 It was charm. It was looks.
It was nice suits. It was a beautiful girlfriend.
It was a determination.

Speaker 9 I remember one of his close friends from this inner circle saying he just would like call and nudge and nudge and nudge, like get coffee with me, hang out with me.

Speaker 9 He was always kind of a sponge in a way to this network of like in the know New Yorkers.

Speaker 4 But she continued to probe.

Speaker 9 What I found in the reporting is that he, through that time, was definitely trying to make a lot of gestures in the United States.

Speaker 9 I think he sent gift baskets to all these Catholic officials at a major conference. He was trying to make purchases, but my headline was Vatican ties just go so far.

Speaker 9 You know, no matter how many ties and connections you have to the Vatican, it can only get you so far if you're trying to buy and redevelop a kind of dilapidated and abandoned property in the heart of Philadelphia.

Speaker 9 And trying to do this all over the country is difficult.

Speaker 9 There's that pyramid scheme that often happens with real estate, especially during booms, that you see you go from, you know, you get a little money, you put it into a property, then you spend it, get another property.

Speaker 9 So you could see what he was thinking in terms of that pyramid scheme, but he had no experience in these markets.

Speaker 9 And the contacts with the Vatican don't really help you when you have to deal with remediating a property that needs to be transformed and turned into something profitable.

Speaker 9 There also just seemed like a lot of leveraging. And as we see in his story, there's a lot of watches, jewelry, red carpets.

Speaker 9 We know that he had a relationship with Ron Buerkle's Ucaipa companies.

Speaker 4 Ron Burkel, a very wealthy and successful investor who's probably most famous or infamous for his friends, like former President Bill Clinton, who he'd famously flown around in his jet, which former aides reportedly nicknamed Air Fuck One.

Speaker 4 Burkle was also friends with Jeffrey Epstein, but was never named in any criminal complaints.

Speaker 4 He purchased Michael Jackson's sprawling Neverland Ranch, and most recently found himself closely associated with disgraced rapper Sean Diddy Combs.

Speaker 4 He's said to have invested $100 million in Combs' Sean John clothing label and is reportedly even the godfather of of Diddy's kids.

Speaker 4 Burkle had been persuaded by Foliari to invest in his business, but he quickly realized that Foliari couldn't deliver on his promises. And in 2007, Burkle took Foliari to court.

Speaker 4 The over $100 million he had invested in the business turns out Foliari had apparently been using it to fund his lavish lifestyle.

Speaker 9 To put it simply, he was in the know enough to get these very significant meetings. He is leveraging loans to have this fabulous apartment and to get this girlfriend.

Speaker 4 And as you already know, that girlfriend, Ann Hathaway, didn't stick around.

Speaker 4 This is the point at which things really start to fall apart for Raffaello Foliari. And then he was arrested.

Speaker 9 The case went pretty quickly. He was arrested in June of 2008 and he pleaded guilty by September of 2008.
And that was 14 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy.

Speaker 4 Foliari was just 30 years old.

Speaker 9 He was basically using the money that he was getting and loans for his

Speaker 9 real estate transactions to finance the luxurious lifestyle he had.

Speaker 9 There's this list of jewelry, like a gold-colored ring with light blue-green stone, silver earrings with silver clasps and blue and clear stones, a 16-inch five-strand necklace with pearl bands, and a 32-inch gold-colored chain with red-brown stone.

Speaker 9 So he liked his jewelry. He liked his beautiful actresses.

Speaker 9 And all this money that was meant for Catholic Church properties was essentially going to that.

Speaker 9 To be fair, there were a lot of people he charmed and swindled from all sectors of society, whether it was business or religion, whether real estate, you know, in the world of like the Clinton Global Initiative.

Speaker 9 Like I just saw it across the board. It wasn't just like in one industry where people were raising concerns or were charmed by him or taken advantage of by him.

Speaker 9 And even you saw that in the end when he was like pleading guilty.

Speaker 9 There, he just, I think he had friends, they're typically female, who just were charmed and persuaded by him and stood by him, which was fascinating to watch like at the courthouse.

Speaker 4 Foliari came quietly. He didn't fight.
He accepted the charges.

Speaker 9 He pleaded so quickly there was no trial. He was like, I did it.

Speaker 4 Like

Speaker 9 it was a reporter's dream. It was just like the fastest thing ever.
I saw him in court that day. And it's so funny.
I remember this because his guilty plea was in September.

Speaker 9 He had actually asked to move up his case because he was having such a difficult time at the Metropolitan Detention Center. So he's like, just get me out of here.
I'll plead guilty faster.

Speaker 9 It's extraordinary how quickly it fell, but it didn't feel like it was going to topple until it did.

Speaker 4 Raffaello Foglieri was ordered to pay a fine of $1.4 million plus.

Speaker 9 Yeah, he goes to federal prison and then he's deported.

Speaker 4 Back to Italy, to the homeland. And that, you might think, would be the end of our story.

Speaker 4 You might think Foliary would disappear, maybe go back to his family home, never to be seen in the business world again.

Speaker 4 But as I've learned while making this show, a chameleon rarely changes the spots.

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Speaker 4 This is Chameleon, the weekly.

Speaker 4 Raffaello Folieri. The more I read, the more I was fascinated and wanted to know who was this guy who had shown up in New York and charmed the pants off some of our most prominent citizens.

Speaker 4 How does one just become a bon vivant who opens the wallets of very wealthy men?

Speaker 10 Okay, I hear you, but

Speaker 4 you hear me better.

Speaker 4 So I called Rebecca Peccori. She's a reporter for one of Italy's largest TV broadcasters.
Okay, perfect. She worked on a special about Foliari, which came out last year, and she had a lot to say.

Speaker 10 He has been able to reinvent himself many times, pretending each time to be a businessman, but

Speaker 10 within different fields. I mean, at first, in Italy, he started in his hometown, which is Sanzo.

Speaker 4 Foliari is from Foggia, a small town in the deep south, known as the Granary of Italy. Primarily agricultural, quiet, conservative, deeply Catholic.

Speaker 4 The kind of place where if you make a name for yourself, you are not forgotten.

Speaker 10 He has always said that it was linked with this little town because it's also the town of Padre Pio. I don't know if you've ever heard about him.
It's like a religious figure.

Speaker 4 Padre Pio, actually Saint Pio since 2002, was a friar who had become a kind of folk hero in Italy in the early 20th century. Sigmata, visions, healing miracles, the whole package.

Speaker 4 And you see his image everywhere in Foggia. in homes, shops, and on car dashboards.
Rebecca told me that Foglieri saw Padre Pio as almost a blueprint for fame, a notoriety to aim for.

Speaker 10 And I've talked to many sources from also the neighborhood where they have this big house and they have told me that Foglieri when he was really young, like 18 years old, he had a big blue car, very flashy car.

Speaker 4 Even as a teenager, Raffaello wanted to be noticed. He came from money.
Nothing like the wealth he would later project, but enough to make a splash in a small place like Fogia.

Speaker 4 And certainly enough to get a leg up when he decided to go into business.

Speaker 10 He started his career, let's say, in 1999

Speaker 10 with a brand that was called Beauty Planet. And he started producing like shampoos and conditioners and things, stuff like that.
So far away from what we have read about him.

Speaker 4 It didn't go well.

Speaker 10 But the venture was disastrous financially and also in terms of public inmates. because in 2001 the company posted a loss of nearly 32,000 euros.

Speaker 4 Still, that didn't stop him. He launched a private finance firm backed with money from his dad.

Speaker 4 And the key to this business wasn't in selling a product, it was in selling himself, selling a dream, to make people trust him with their money.

Speaker 10 The strategy has always been the one of standing out with his parents, with his flattering manners. And

Speaker 10 there is another maneuver which is weird: he never drank alcohol, but he always offered others the best champagnes and the best Scoon wines.

Speaker 10 He gave this kind of holy impression of a really well-mannered person.

Speaker 4 Someone important, someone connected, someone who belonged in whatever room he happened to be in.

Speaker 10 So it's strange because, you know, this

Speaker 10 thing that comes again, because I think he has always been fascinated by the

Speaker 10 imaging that he could get to people. So movie stars and cinema.
I don't know. More the image than the the substance of what it was doing, I say.

Speaker 4 And nowhere is this clearer than Raffaello Foliari's obsession with soccer.

Speaker 10 Because in Italy, football is a really crucial aspect of social life.

Speaker 10 And I mean,

Speaker 10 for instance, being in the VIP tribune of a big stadium, it means to get to know like politicians, members of the police, but also managers of big industries or

Speaker 10 people from the church or from, you know, so that gets you links that are really useful.

Speaker 4 A few years after returning to Italy, following his adventures in the U.S., Foglieri made bids for several major Italian clubs, including Palermo and what would be the local club from his childhood home, Foggia Calcio.

Speaker 4 which he claimed in 2018 to be buying a 50% stake in, with backing in part from a familiar name, Ron Ron Burkel.

Speaker 4 But here's what one of Buerkle's attorneys told the New York Post when they called for comment: Foliari is just making this stuff up.

Speaker 4 There's absolutely zero chance that Ron would invest with Foliari directly or indirectly. To which Foliari replied, also to the Post, My interviews in the Italian press were accurate and precise.

Speaker 4 It is a shame that after I paid my debt to society, some people still have the need to put me down and don't give a person a second chance.

Speaker 4 Foliari did not acquire a stake in Palermo or Fogia, but he he wasn't done yet.

Speaker 4 In 2023, he made Italian headlines again by showing interest in a club you might have heard of even if you don't follow European soccer, the vaunted A.S. Roma.

Speaker 10 A. S.
Roma is the main football club of the capital of Italy, and it's a really big football team and it moves a huge amount of money.

Speaker 4 Foliari announced that he was submitting a bid of 850 million euros for the club to to buy it from its American owners.

Speaker 4 AS Roma then denied that such an offer was ever made, and Folieri fired back via a statement on his Instagram which refuted Roma's denial, reasserted his offer, provided the email address where he sent that offer, and called the club's denial, quote, completely inexplicable and untruthful.

Speaker 4 It went on, Raffaello Folieri reconfirms his intention to acquire all of the shares of AS Roma to relaunch the team on an international level.

Speaker 4 My lawyers will protect my image and reputation in every competent competent office.

Speaker 4 Whether or not these offers were ever real, Foliari surrounded himself with the appearance of power, including a mysterious Arab who had followed him around and was allegedly linked to the Saudi royal family.

Speaker 4 It reminds me of a story from earlier in his life where Foliari allegedly had someone dressed as a nun following him around to strengthen his perceived ties to the church.

Speaker 4 Rebecca tells me that buying a soccer team, a storied club, is just about the best thing you can do to plant a flag in the Italian business world.

Speaker 4 So Foliari was taking the biggest of swings, but the money, it never showed up.

Speaker 10 The fact that first he offered like 840 million and the friends and family said they've never received this offer.

Speaker 10 This strategy was the same when in the United States, money are coming, yes, they are coming, yes, they are coming, and then never.

Speaker 4 In Italy, he was known, if not exactly famous, as a kind of local celebrity.

Speaker 10 The stylist young man from Fogia who somehow ended up dating anne hathaway there was a lot of kit-chatting about it it was like the beautiful italian tape boy who was able to you know make an hathaway fall in love with him everything else though the u.s scandal the exaggerated links to the vatican in italy it seemed to just pass people by because it's not such well-known story in italy the legal issues in the united states people almost know only about anne hathaway and this Which made Foliari's home country the perfect environment for a chameleon to rebuild his empire after he was deported.

Speaker 10 Right now, he's trying to create a new image, hoping that people don't know about his past.

Speaker 4 These days, Raffaello Foliari's interest in controlling a football club seems to have cooled. The game he's interested in now is much bigger.

Speaker 4 He's been investing in clean energy, shipping, and now his main thing seems to be mining, specifically rare earth metals. The elements essential for batteries and electric cars and smartphones.

Speaker 4 This is big business, the kind of industry that's usually dominated by entire nations. So I was shocked to see that Foliary claims to control 8% of the world's rare earth market.

Speaker 4 To put that in perspective, if true, this would put this slippery Italian man somewhere between the whole of the U.S. and a medium-sized mining country like Australia or Canada.

Speaker 4 And he's certainly not shy about it. On his Instagram, the Foliary of Today shares a strange mix of images to his 1.9 million followers.

Speaker 4 The lavish lifestyle of an international jet setter, fancy suits, rich-looking pals, with screenshots of business media profiles touting massive deals with headlines like Raffaello, King of Rare Earths, or Raffaello Foliari, powering the future through rare metals and clean energy.

Speaker 4 They come from publications like American Daily Post, The American Reporter, and Vogue magazine, which are not publications I'm familiar with.

Speaker 4 They feel a lot like PR puff pieces placed in friendly outlets to help burnish his reputation, which honestly wouldn't be a bad strategy. Now, I'm no rare earth metals expert.

Speaker 4 Who am I to say whether his claims are legit? But Italian reporters are skeptical, and something about this feels flimsy. Rebecca Beccori agrees.

Speaker 4 She sees Foliari as someone who just isn't going to change.

Speaker 10 In high school, he was one of the most popular guys. He went out with his fleshy guard and was well-known from a a wealthy family.

Speaker 10 So, this is the only thing that he has to offer, this image of power and of, I don't know, wealthy life. And so, given that,

Speaker 10 I don't think it will change.

Speaker 10 I hope so. But, I mean, as far as I know, he has always done the same thing using different names and different

Speaker 10 places and different fields and different companies, but

Speaker 10 the aim is the the same.

Speaker 10 I think it's part of creating this image of someone who can be the great manager that leads you to make a huge amount of money in an easy way, investing once in river, once on oil, once on real estate.

Speaker 10 I think it's part of a strategy on pretending to be someone that I think he has never been.

Speaker 4 Some people are just resilient. They get knocked down and stand right back up.
Raffaello Foliari seems to be one of those guys.

Speaker 4 Christine Hani, the former Wall Street Journal reporter, is married now. She's Christine Dare Bryan these days.
She's still a business reporter who loves a good investigation.

Speaker 4 And after covering Raffaello Foglieri's fall from grace in New York way back in 2008, she's never been able to totally get this mysterious Italian man fully out of her head.

Speaker 9 There just seems to be similar patterns. There seems to be a lot of activity with him in buying football club, having this career now in minerals and energy.
i mean

Speaker 9 i wouldn't speculate for the record christine herself is not back on the beat she had no interest in reopening this particular file she just wants to say to anyone who does have that interest pay very close attention to what he may be claiming i just know all businesses take a lot of work and a lot more work than you would think so i would just look at those numbers That's the art of being a con man and being so charming and to construct this world around you.

Speaker 4 The ability to change colors, to fall and rise. Isn't that the definition of a chameleon?

Speaker 9 There's this kind of wave that these criminals ride where they just can kind of emerge and keep coming back and reinventing. And that's what we love also about American stories.

Speaker 9 We love that reinvention and narrative. We love that.
You know, you look at, it's like, this is no Miss Havisham. This is like, I'm going to keep emerging and rising again and never give up.

Speaker 9 And we all kind of love those stories, even though we don't want to have our money stolen from us. I see that a lot with like children's literature, like Laura Ingalls.

Speaker 4 The author of Little House on the Prairie.

Speaker 9 They keep like locusts, you know, scarlet fever. Nothing stops them.
They're kind of like Raffaello Foliere. They just keep getting up and getting on that wagon and like driving further west.

Speaker 9 And yeah.

Speaker 9 He's created this myth and was the boyfriend to the princess of Princess Diaries, who we all grew up with. And it's fascinating to watch.

Speaker 4 One of Christine's specialties back then was real estate, a business niche that is actually quite kind to charlatans. Throw a rock at a developer's conference and you'll probably hit a fraud.

Speaker 4 So it makes sense to Christine why Raffaello Foliari gravitated toward it.

Speaker 9 There's no regulation. Like if you want to work on Wall Street, you have to take your X and Y exams.
There are no certifications like that.

Speaker 9 I mean, you have to get a broker's license if you want to sell co-ops on the Upper East Side. But other than that, there is no regulation like there is in Wall Street.

Speaker 9 So a lot of people who have gotten in trouble on Wall Street, they can just like migrate to real estate and be totally fine. Also, you have a lot of generational wealth.

Speaker 9 So you have people who aren't trained. They've come into it because they inherited 300 apartment buildings from their dad or their grandpa.

Speaker 9 You have a lot of immigrant wealth than can get into real estate because you buy it and then you have this upward mobility.

Speaker 9 And as one of my real estate sources said to me, real estate moguls thirst for money like water in the desert. And nothing is going to get in their way for them to get that because they're so thirsty.

Speaker 9 So you have to factor that primal feeling in when you're reporting on them that what their motivation is.

Speaker 4 Really, all you need is money. Capital is everything.

Speaker 9 You show up with a bag full of cash and you win. It's not based on like where you went to college.
It's not based on the fact that you passed your Series 7.

Speaker 9 It's not based on the fact that you went to Wharton. You have the most money, so you win.
And so it is the greatest entry point for upper mobility in America.

Speaker 9 And it's also a great entry point for criminals because it's just perceived to be like easy money. I had this one source once say to me who was a victim of Madoff.

Speaker 9 He said, like, how, almost like, how dare you to be a journalist? Because your purpose in life is to make as much money as possible so you can give it to your family and for future generations.

Speaker 9 He thought I was...

Speaker 9 very honestly, like I was doing a disservice to my family legacy by not devoting my life completely to just amassing millions and billions of dollars.

Speaker 9 Like you were not a good family member if you were not doing that. There is no chit chat.
There is no like fake, let's talk about how your garden's going. It's all like, I have a deal.
I want press.

Speaker 9 I got to make more money. And there's something refreshing about that.
And that is hilarious to me, but also like I admire it. There's no wasting time.

Speaker 4 Looking back on this man decades later from across an ocean, Christine is skeptical, but really more bemused than anything.

Speaker 9 It's illuminating how he's reinvented himself. And they're asking a lot of the questions that I was asking in the mid-2000s now in Italy.
Where did the money come from? How do you buy a team?

Speaker 9 Wow, that's kind of interesting. Yeah.
That came up on another show I was reporting recently. It's like, they don't learn.
I'd love it if they learned, but they usually don't learn.

Speaker 4 Foliari did speak at least once about the idea of a comeback. This was to ABC's Lama Hassan shortly after his release from a federal prison in Pennsylvania back in 2012.

Speaker 12 You have two choice.

Speaker 12 One choice is to give up and you know be broken you know psychologically forever or stay stronger and overcome it and I choose the second one.

Speaker 9 There's this interesting magical thinking and optimism that comes with these con artists that is kind of fascinating to watch.

Speaker 9 In the case of Foliari there was also that arrogance of like, I'm part of this world. And you gotta love it.

Speaker 9 They don't sit home and cry.

Speaker 9 They just like get up and put on another Brioni suit and think up another idea that might get them in a whole world of trouble and women just fall at their feet and they keep going.

Speaker 4 Chameleon is a production of Campside Media and Audio Chuck. It's written and hosted by me, Josh Dean.
This episode was written by me and Joe Barrett. It was produced by Joe Barrett.

Speaker 4 Our associate producer is Emma Simonoff.

Speaker 4 Sound design and mix by Tiffany Dimack.

Speaker 4 Theme music by Ewen Leitramuen and Mark McAdam. Our production manager is Ashley Warren.
Campside's executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriatis, Matt Cher, and me, Josh Dean.

Speaker 4 And finally, if I can ask a few favors before sending you on your way today, please rate, follow, and review Chameleon on your favorite podcast platforms to help spread the word.

Speaker 4 I know everyone says this, but it's true. Ratings and reviews really do help.

Speaker 4 And if you have any feedback, tips, or story ideas, you can email us at chameleonpod at campsidemedia.com or leave us a message at a special number we've set up: 201-743-8368.

Speaker 4 Dial plus one from outside North America. Thanks for listening.
We'll see you next week.

Speaker 13 I think Chuck would approve.

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