Janeene Jones

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Some cases fade from headlines.

Some never made it there to begin with.

I'm Ashley Flowers, and on my podcast, The Deck, I tell you the stories of cold cases featured on playing cards distributed in prisons, designed to spark new leads and bring long overdue justice.

Because these stories deserve to be heard, and the loved ones of these victims still deserve answers.

Are you ready to be dealt in?

Listen to The Deck now, wherever you get your podcasts.

A report of a white-collar crime sparks a potentially deadly chain of events.

I wanted to tell them everything I knew, and they wanted every little detail.

He realized that he was kind of caught up in something, and you know, maybe he was kind of angry about it.

As tempers begin to boil, the consequences are lethal.

One of the informants knew somebody that wanted to have somebody murdered.

I was really thinking there's no way.

You think just snapping his neck and and putting him to sleep that way?

Is that what you prefer?

There have been reports that the hit list keeps growing.

So how do you know you're going to do it?

Would you be in the dirty

house?

The only other person that usually be at his home with him is his 11-year-old daughter.

And she said if she gets in the way,

kill her too.

I think that was one moment that shows how dark her heart is.

When detectives think this case is as twisted as it gets, rumors about a mysterious death from the past resurface.

There were two police officers and they told me that my father had passed away.

I kind of felt like my world came.

My world crashed.

To this day, I still have unanswered questions.

I just can't believe what she has turned into.

Over the past few decades, there has been a population boom in Northport, Florida.

That area was previously undeveloped, and during the 90s, it began to become developed.

The housing prices were excellent, and a lot of people that couldn't previously afford housing in Sarasota moved to that area.

But when the housing market crashed in the mid-2000s, Northport was hit hard.

It was the height of the foreclosure debacle, and many of the homes in Northport had been walked away from, and they were simply waiting to be foreclosed on by the banks.

But in the meantime, they were just sitting empty.

On January 25th, 2013, a foreclosure real estate scheme is what brings John Chamberlain to Northport authorities.

I walked into City Hall and I said, I want to see somebody in charge.

And they sent me to the city manager.

John tells the city manager he has information to share about a real estate company and its owner, Janine Jones.

A corporation in the name of my retirement LLC had set up to take over foreclosed properties and then rent them out to people that were looking for a place to live.

Jan and I were friends, and she's like, I'm going to need a lot of plumbing work done.

And I was like, okay, steady work.

I wasn't going to turn it down.

She goes, since you're going to be doing so much work for us, we can actually even rent you a house and reduce the rent for you.

What more could you want?

John explains that after a few months of working for Janine, he realized something wasn't quite right.

There would be a lockbox on the door, and she said, these houses have sat so long, they can't contact anybody that has the key for them, and so we've got to go in there and drill the locks off.

I did like one or two for her, and then I told her, I said, I don't feel comfortable doing this.

I don't do illegal stuff like this.

And I knew at this time now that she was involved in illegal stuff.

You knew Janine, and he realized that he was kind of caught up in something.

And, you know, maybe he was kind of angry about it.

You know, if someone's defrauding people, I wanted to tell them everything I knew so that they would know I had nothing to do with this little scheme that she was doing.

The city manager directs John to a detective who officially opens an investigation.

They took me in a room and closed everything off and put me on camera.

You're here today to give us information regarding some kind of real estate scheme to defraud that was brought to your attention, Captain Cruz.

He claimed that Janine Jones was collecting rent on approximately 13 homes that she did not own.

Why don't you take me back to like how you came to know Janine?

They wanted every little detail and that's when the ball got rolling.

I met Jan approximately nine years ago through church and I became friends with her husband Max.

When 28 year old Janine met 31 year old Max Jones in 1991, she was a two-time divorcee raising a young son.

I met Max and Janine when I started to attend a church in Inglewood.

It's a church called Suncoast Worship Center.

Max did a lot of building, a lot of remodeling for them down there.

He was just a master craftsman.

And some of the stuff that he did for me was just, I mean, top-notch stuff.

By October of 1991, their whirlwind romance led to wedding bells.

It was a big wedding.

He had that at the church out there.

They had the reception out there.

He was in love with her.

And then he lived in Northport.

Faith Faith was definitely important to Max.

It was his community.

It was his circle.

Mom and baby.

In 1992, Janine and Max welcomed a son.

When I came in the picture, it was just me and

my dad, and my mom, and my half-brother.

Two years later, their daughter was born.

They had a daughter with Alex.

Alexandra, and

Max adored them both.

My dad's painting style was very laid-back.

Me, my brother, and my dad, we kind of did a lot more relaxed activities.

And, you know, I remember watching him just play his guitar.

He made sure his kids didn't go without, not for a minute.

My mother and her sister were both raised in that military household.

Growing up in a military family, it kind of put a lot of structure in my mother.

She was very strict.

With a growing family and bigger financial needs, Janine looked to build her own career and held several jobs along the way.

She was a nurse at one time.

She tried selling stuff, house goods.

Jan went to work for the Charlotte County Jail as a corrections officer.

She was doing notary work and she was also practicing as a legal aide.

Jan always had something going on where she was getting money.

While Janine was bouncing around the job market, her marriage began to suffer.

Max had his job, but he was the only one bringing any steady income into the house.

Financially, it was very hard.

Living where we were, it was living paycheck to paycheck.

It was

very stressful.

When I was getting out of high school and kind of going to college, both my parents kind of seemed a little distanced from each other.

Things went from bad to worse in 2011 when Max came down with an ailment doctors couldn't accurately diagnose.

Max, for a period of quite some time, well over a year, he seemed to be having stomach problems.

He just went through a

hospitalization and he had lost like 30 pounds.

He missed a lot of work because, I mean, the guy got really sick.

He got down to skin and bones.

But they had put him in the hospital a couple times and had to put stints in his intestine.

And they never really

got an answer of what was causing this.

Max's illness took a tragic turn in November of 2011.

My mom's telling

My mom's on the phone with the operator and you know she's kind of like walking me through what I need to do and when I started compressions

it almost sounded like I took his last breath

and because after that there was nothing

November 27, 2011 I came home and as soon as I came home, there was two police officers and they told me that my father had passed away.

I felt like everything had stopped.

I didn't understand like how all of this could be happening.

They tried to meet a heart attack, but I don't think it was.

I saw them covering the body up and my heart just kind of sunk and I started thinking, okay, why all of a sudden did my dad die from a heart attack when he never really had heart issues to begin with?

My mom's behavior that day was very unusual.

There wasn't a single tear in her eye, which to me was very concerning.

Yo, you have your husband of over 20 years not responding seeing her almost emotionless was

it wasn't normal

it was only 52 years old we were beside ourselves when max passed away i kind of felt like my world came

my world crashed

To this day, I feel like that I still have unanswered questions.

Following Max's sudden death, the Jones family struggled to get back on their feet.

She had contacted me shortly after and said that they were planning on moving out of that house.

She got rid of Max's truck.

They started selling his tools, started selling, you know, his base equipment.

There was a quick cremation at Janine's insistence, and Janine receives the $1 million life insurance proceeds.

With the insurance payout, the family had financial security.

She definitely told me that she was getting a lump sum of money and that she was going to be speaking with an attorney to try and create some kind of business.

fund it with that money so that it would take care of her and the kids.

Now, John Chamberlain tells police this second chance is built on fraud.

He says Janine has been stealing foreclosed houses and renting them to unsuspecting tenants.

I said, Dan, I said, you're going to go to jail for that.

You know, I said, that's illegal.

I said, that house does not belong to you.

As John gives details about Janine's scam, the detective realizes the name Janine Jones is not new to him.

Janine Jones was already on the radar of Northport Police Department.

They had heard the whispers of Janine

possibly killing Max.

So when her name comes up in this fraud investigation, their interest was peaked.

Coming up, sordid new details come to light.

She was fired because she had some affair going on in May.

And the alleged real estate scam leads to a murder investigation.

He said, Listen, this is a very important case.

It's going to probably be one of the biggest cases that you do in your career.

On January 25th, 2013, Florida police are speaking with John Chamberlain about a real estate scam involving his longtime friend and current employer, Janine Jones.

Police wonder if this new case against Janine might provide insights into the mysterious death of her husband two years earlier.

Well, was she like prior to her husband passing away?

What did she do for work?

She told me she used to be a guard at the prison a long time ago, and I guess she was fired because she had some affair going with an inmate.

The affair that tore Max up.

He was really shaken by that.

The situation with my mom as a corrections officer,

I believe, happened right around the time I was born.

Over the next several years, the marriage only got worse.

That almost led to them getting divorced.

Max said he was in a pretty bad way.

I really thought that they were going to get a divorce.

And I remember just sitting on the floor screaming and crying, you know, telling them not to separate.

At the last minute, that's when they decided to take their...

problems back to church and work it out.

I think he took her back for the kids.

It takes a lot of toleration to be in the religious like he was,

but she gotta, you know, forgive.

John tells the detective that Max and Janine eventually reconciled, and everything seemed fine with the couple until 2011 when Max became ill.

He was 53 years old, and yeah, he had had some health problems, intestinal problems.

John says Max's death came as a complete shock to his friends and family.

Max, shortly before his death, had complained of some stomach problems, but nothing that would really sound the alarm that anything was significantly wrong with him.

Then he died suddenly.

I just remember like, man,

bro, I can't believe you're gone, man.

I felt so bad today.

Wrote a check for $500 to help with the burial.

Come to find out, hey, he had a million-dollar insurance policy on him.

Right away after her husband died, I can't judge, but she was like out there immediately with the new boyfriend.

This Matthew Smith, he actually came about, he was her cable guy.

He says Janine's new man, Matt Smith, quickly became a fixture at the Jones household.

Alex specifically said, Mom, dad's barely like been in the ground.

And

she's like, Yeah, your dad's dead, I'm not.

And that really hit me quite heavy as well.

Like, who says that to their child?

When I found out my mom was seeing someone else, it kind of threw me for a loop.

I just lost my pop, and I wasn't going to have someone come in so quickly and kind of

push their way into

my life.

My mom kind of just sprung him on us.

I came home one weekend and Matt was staying there at the house and my mom told me, oh, this is Matt.

He's going to stay with us for a little while.

I didn't particularly care for him trying to become my new dad.

Yeah, she knew him for a few months before they went to Vegas and got married.

Right when her and Matt first got together, it was brought to my attention that she was being investigated for allegedly killing her ex-husband, Max.

I had come to find out that these people, I guess, had gone to the Northport Police Department and said that Jan had come to them wanting to obtain some drugs they think were used to kill Max.

Well, she said Max had a heart attack and they ruled it as a heart attack, never had an autopsy done on him, and he was cremated.

He actually brought Max's ashes over to my house and asked me to hold on to them for her.

Shortly after his death, Northport

did try

to investigate whether they could determine based on the cremated remains if his death was the result of a homicide.

But there was no test that they could do on the remains of Max that would be able to definitively say that his death was

not natural.

She said that it was, you know, that it was being dismissed for inconclusive evidence.

Despite their strong suspicions, investigators already know there is little hope of bringing forth new evidence more than two years after Max's death.

In the state of Florida, if a doctor signs off on the death certificate and indicates its natural causes, there is no mechanism to trigger an autopsy.

They wouldn't have been able to build

a thorough case at that point because so much time had passed between his death.

Having already exhausted all avenues in the death of Janine's husband, investigators focus on the case they do have against her.

Okay.

And when did you kind of have a business relationship start?

I went up to New York for a few months and I returned last year in December right as her husband had passed away.

I guess she received quite a bit of money from the life insurance.

I never asked her how much.

She started to get into this business where she said she was buying up foreclosures and wanting me to do the plumbing renovations to them.

And that's how that's when it really started started taking off.

I've seen them just like, you know, hop through the window, drill the lock, change the locks out.

They've keyed all these properties into the same lock.

I don't go in there anymore, but this is the key for it.

Gotcha.

I mean, you can have it if you want.

I don't want anything to do with it.

Was that Janine and Matt both or just Janine or just Matt?

No, that was both of them.

Both of them.

And I've heard it out of Matt's mouth that none of these houses are legal and that he was trying to get Jan set up where she'd be like making 10 to 15,000 a month, I guess.

So this is, I mean, poop the brains out of this.

Jan?

Absolutely.

I just can't believe what she has turned into.

Coming up, as the investigation heats up, detectives realize they have only scratched the surface.

I received a phone call from one of the informants that I was working with, and she said it's pretty serious.

And an innocent man lands in the crosshairs of a killer.

She's just having lunch and drawing a diagram of a house of a guy that she wants to have killed.

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Candice Rivera has it all.

In just three years, she went from a stay-at-home mum to traveling the world, saving lives and making millions.

Anyone would think Candice's charm life is about as real as Unicorn's.

But sometimes the truth is even harder to believe than the lies.

It's not true.

There's so many things not true.

You gotta believe me.

I'm Charlie Webster, and this is Unicorn Girl, an Apple original podcast produced by Seven Hills.

Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.

Two years after the death of Max Jones, Florida police are investigating new allegations involving his widow, Janine.

The Sarasota Police Department and the Northport Police Department had the white-collar case going on with the real estate fraud, as well as the information about Max Jones and the suspicion around his death.

With an investigation into her housing scheme officially underway, Detective Stewartson contacts John John Chamberlain for a follow-up interview.

They were forming a case against Jan, that this was,

there were a lot of loopholes and that this was a tricky case.

They wanted to know everything that I knew, which I gladly told them.

John tells the investigator things came to a head when homeowners started to discover the scam.

The homeowners returned to find someone sitting, living in this house, whom they told them.

They said, we rent this house from Jan Jones.

While I was over there working one time, they told me that they were trying to contact Jan, and so I gave her the cell number.

And probably about a half hour later, I got a phone call from Jan.

She was living.

John says right then and there, he knew something wasn't right.

He began talking to the other tenants, and just the mere fact that he was questioning them caused Janine

to go into a tail spin.

She was mad because she didn't want anybody to be able to trace anything back to her.

That's what it was.

So she had a little burner phone that she would give the number to her rental people.

And I said to myself, I'm thinking, well, if everything's only up and up, it's like, why would you need to do something like that?

John says tensions only escalated after Janine's outburst

and she decided to renege on her offer to provide John's living arrangements.

She said, okay, well, you need to get the hell out of my house.

Within three days after, you know, of us getting in this little tiff, she sent Matt over to my house to put a certified eviction notice on my door.

John and Matt came to blows in the front yard.

I pushed him and he went on his ass and rolled down the driveway.

He came up there screaming and hollering at me that he was going to kick my rear end and throw me out of here and all this other stuff.

After the follow-up interview with John, Detective Stewartson begins digging deeper into Janine's schemes.

Detective Stewartson located the actual owners of these homes.

He did title searches.

He examined the signatures and interviewed the owners to determine whether those signatures were in fact theirs or forged.

Detective Stewartson discovers that Janine's fraud is quite extensive.

We found that for several of those homes, she fraudulently forged the deeds.

Some of the names that were reflected on the titles weren't the signatures of those prospective owners.

She was going down to the tax assessor's office and she was providing them with a click claim deed to the property, but forging the person that was in foreclosure.

She was dumping money into these houses.

So who wouldn't think she owned them?

As detectives continue to compile evidence to implicate Janine in the real estate fraud case, they get an unexpected phone call that turns the investigation on its head.

I received a phone call from one of the informants that I was working with.

This informant gave me some information that they knew somebody wanting to report something very serious.

And I want to put this person known as Becky in touch with you.

Is it okay if I have her call you?

And I said yes.

Within 10 minutes, my phone rang and it was Becky.

She was nervous, but she explained to me that she had a friend in Northport that made a comment to her.

She wanted to have somebody murder.

Becky says the conspirator's name is Janine Jones.

I remember the phone call vividly.

Of course, I was thinking, no way, you know, I can't, I'm going to have to look into this.

So, the police department, their surveillance unit, was set up.

Our surveillance really consisted of what we would call rolling drive-bys, where we're gonna use undercover vehicles and just kind of go by their houses.

What our department is gonna ask of Becky is to try to use her to set up control calls and pretty much be a CI, confidential informant, to see just how real this claim is.

On February 20th, 2013, the police set up an undercover sting.

We did give Becky audio and video equipment, small covert type items, and it was a video recorded meeting.

Becky would meet up with Janine at the Sweet Tomatoes in Sarasota to go over the plan.

And the alleged hitman would call that and have a conversation with Jean.

At this time, Janine tells Becky the intended target is

John Chamberlain.

You said 25.

Then you said he's on in the room.

Janine took out a napkin and drew out some details about the intended victim, John Chamberlain, put some information on the napkin, drew the diagram of the house.

She had a deadline.

She wanted this done when she was on a cruise.

So, and she also had the deadline of the eviction here, which was February 27th.

During the meet Janine was happy, she was laughing, there was some joking in the beginning, she's just having lunch and drawing a diagram of a house of a guy that she wants to have killed and sort of acting like it's not that big of a deal.

Coming up, investigators spring a trap.

The exchange of money was important because we weren't sure how deep that Janine would commit to the deal and the stakes couldn't be higher.

What I was really concerned about was if I mess up this might cost somebody their life.

Though Janine Jones is already on tape hiring a hitman to kill her former friend, John Chamberlain, detectives said another meeting to catch her in a cash exchange.

Becky and Janine had decided to meet in a shopping center parking lot on the 25th, and this particular parking lot was near John Chamberlain's house.

I talked with Detective Armstrong, and I remember he said, listen,

this is a very important case.

It's going to probably be one of the biggest cases that you do in your career, and you have the opportunity to do it if you want.

And if you handle these five things that I tell you to handle, we can bring this case home.

On February 25th, 2013, Patrolman Harris is given very specific instructions as he and Becky assume their position.

The five things that I needed to do to make this case be successful is one, I needed to get a picture of

John Chamberlain from Janine.

Two, I needed to have Janine show me where John Chamberlain lives.

Three, I needed to have Janine tell me how she wanted the murder committed.

The fourth thing was I needed to negotiate a price for this hit.

And the fifth thing was to collect money for it.

Anything can happen during an undercover transaction.

I was really concerned about if I mess up, this might cost somebody their life.

With the trap set, Becky initiates the meeting with Janine.

Hello.

How you doing?

How are you?

I'm doing all good stuff.

I don't shake hands.

But nice to meet you.

How about it?

And she blows the hitman a kiss.

That tells you a lot about who Janine Jones is.

After the brief pleasantries, Janine gets right to business.

This is the best I had.

Okay, so we got a good picture.

Janine hand me a picture of John Chamberlain, which that was one of the things that I needed to check off the list.

The trio immediately heads towards John's house.

So now we have undercover Dominic Harris driving the vehicle, Janine Jones in the passenger seat, and we have Becky now in the back seat sitting behind Janine.

Okay.

That's this house.

That's the orange house on the right hand side.

Those people, my man knows.

Yeah, those are right here.

Now,

the back window is the room that he stays in.

Okay.

While we're driving by the house, she also handed me a drawing.

almost like a floor plan of the home where John sleeps and the layout of the home, the back door, front door, and different places where I could enter the home to murder John.

Janine is pretty open about wanting to have this murder of John Chamberlain done.

He has too much knowledge of my life that can come back and bite me in the ass.

Okay.

And then I say, well, do anybody else live in the home with him?

Rest of his family is up in New York.

Okay.

He's got a daughter, which I don't care about.

She said if she gets in the way,

kill her too.

And at that time, I knew, man, this lady is evil.

She gives him the green light to kill a child if he needs to.

And I think that was one moment that shows how dark Janine Jones' heart is.

Once we make it back to the grocery store, I expect you to step out of the vehicle so me and Janine can negotiate more.

Alright, so exactly how do you want it done?

If you think just snapping his neck and

putting him to sleep that way.

Is that what you prefer?

Well obviously the least messy the better

for both of us.

Okay.

So option one.

Snap of mess.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then two is what?

Um, shoot him.

Despite capturing Janine's desired murder method on tape, for the sting to work, police need evidence of payment.

That's when we negotiated price.

And I told her with removal and with me doing a job that it would be $4,000.

I can give you what I have on me.

Okay, what you got on you then?

$1,000.

Just $1,000.

She had $1,000 of cash on her at the time, and she wrote out a check for cash to go to her bank.

Before going to the bank for more cash, shockingly, Janine adds to the hit list.

That is when she brought up having someone else killed, but she wanted to have that one done later.

She added her husband, Matt Smith, to that list.

And she asked for a twofer.

How would you want that with that?

That's going to be a little more trickier because, like I said, he carries.

We have cameras at the house.

So, you know, it could be

something along the lines of a carjacking.

She was getting tired of Matt, and she knew, like, with Max, she could make some money off of him.

So, on January 3rd, when the $1 million life insurance policy on Matt's life became effective, she had every reason in the world to add him to her hit list.

At that time, I had to make a decision:

do I give the signal, the takedown signal, or do I allow her to go to Chase Bain?

Deal, deal, deal.

When Janine steps out of the vehicle, Officer Harris gives what's called the good deal sign.

And she was taken down as she exited the vehicle.

Janine had a shocked look on her face.

She was definitely surprised that, oh my gosh, now there's the police here.

And that shock turned to anger.

And she had a very angry face.

She was not happy that she was getting arrested.

She scuffed her knee when she was taken to the ground.

She urinated in her shorts.

She had a criminal defense attorney already lined up.

And she knew that if ever she was in trouble, that she would use this attorney.

So she was savvy enough to know not to speak at all.

Coming up, details of Janine's crimes go on display.

I just remember the look on his face with complete and utter shock.

Every feeling I had to talk to my mom was kind of gone when I found out all the evidence.

After a successful sting operation by Sarasota police on February 25th, 2013, 51-year-old Janine Jones sits in custody for soliciting a hitman to kill her friend, John Chamberlain, and her husband, Matt Smith.

A day after Janine's arrest, investigators notify Matt of his wife's plot.

We told Matt about the, you know, the murder case and that he was a victim and that Janine wanted to have him killed.

I just remember the look on his face was like it would be, I think, for anybody, just complete and utter shock.

Though Matt was almost the victim of a murder, investigators have reason to believe he was in on Janine's real estate scheme.

When police question him about the fraud allegations, his demeanor quickly shifts.

Matt's reaction was to clam up.

He told law enforcement he did not want to speak with them, and he just shut down.

So that made me suspicious about his involvement.

Police leave Matt for the time being and work to solidify their case against him.

It took a while for the real estate charges to come forward because there was a lot of investigation that had to be done.

After a few weeks of digging, police have enough information to arrest Matt Smith for real estate fraud.

Matt Smith was arrested on March 15th of 2013.

He faces charges of multiple counts of burglary and scheming to defraud.

Despite the charges against him, Matt Smith doesn't admit to anything.

He played dumb, but we had evidence that Matt himself did the forgery.

Matt was usually the person that was having contact with the tenants and collecting the rents.

With his back against the wall, he asks prosecutors for a plea deal.

Eventually, Matt Smith communicated through his attorney that he would be willing to engage in a plea deal in which he would testify against Janine in in the solicitation to commit murder trial in exchange for a more lenient sentence for him.

That offer was immediately rejected.

Furthermore, I did not feel it was appropriate to call him as a witness.

On May 19th, 2014, Janine's case goes to trial.

Janine's defense attorney announces that she's going to be entering what's what's called an open plea to solicitation to commit murder.

By doing an open plea, you open it up to the judge's decision on what happens to you.

I was worried because the judge that presided over her, she was so nice and polite and respectful of Jan and giving her time to speak.

And I was like, wow.

I said, what is she going to give her a slap on the wrist?

Ultimately, the video of the police sting played a vital role in Janine's fate.

The video was very powerful.

I think it eliminated any doubt of what her true intentions were.

The judge did give her two life sentences in Florida State Prison.

The fact that Janine Jones would allow or even encourage an 11-year-old child to be killed in the mix in order for her goal to be accomplished was a significant factor, I believe, in the judge's life sentence.

In addition to the two life sentences for the murder plot, Janine is also convicted of occupational license fraud for the real estate scheme.

The judge was pretty much smiling at her as she gave her that sentence, too.

So I was like, way to go.

If I were to pinpoint anything why Jan would have snapped, I guess it would have to be just her love of money.

Janine was never charged in the death of her late husband, Max Jones.

But in the end, his friends and family still feel a sense of vindication for what they believe happened to him.

At Jan's sentencing, I actually sat next to Max's father while they were reading the sentencing off to Jan.

And And when they were reading the sentencing, his father turned to my side and grabbed my arm and said, Thank you for getting justice for my boy.

She deserves what she got.

We all said, well,

somehow Max got justice.

Every feeling I had to talk to my mom was kind of

gone.

When I found out all the evidence, I

had no respect left for her, and it just kind of went away.

I think the most thing I miss about my dad being around is for him to tell me he's proud of me.

Janine Jones is serving two life sentences at Florida Women's Reception Center.

Matt Smith pled guilty to one count of scheming to defraud.

In 2014, he was sentenced to four years of probation and ordered to pay $17,500 in restitution.

He has been released.

For more information on Snapped, go to oxygen.com.

How hard is it to kill a planet?

Maybe all it takes is a a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene.

Are we really safe?

Is our water safe?

You destroyed our top.

And crimes like that, they don't just happen.

We call things accidents.

There is no accident.

This was 100%

preventable.

They're the result of choices by people.

Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime.

These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet.

Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it.

Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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