34. The Tour (Jered Threatin)

Support for swindled comes from Simply Safe.

For the longest time, I thought home security meant an alarm going off after someone broke in.

But if the alarm is already blaring, it's too late.

The damage is done.

That's a reactive approach, and it leaves you with that awful feeling of violation, even if the intruder runs away.

That's why I switched to Simply Safe.

They've completely changed the game with Active Guard outdoor protection.

designed to stop crime before it starts.

Their smart, AI-powered cameras don't just detect motion.

They can tell you when there's a person lurking on your property.

That instantly alerts SimplySafe's professional monitoring agents in real time.

And here's the game changer.

The agents can actually intervene while the intruder is still outside.

Talk to them through two-way audio, hit them with a loud siren and spotlight.

and call 911 if needed.

It's proactive security, and that's real security.

I trust SimplySafe because there are no long-term contracts, no hidden fees, and a 60-day money-back guarantee.

They've been named best home security systems by U.S.

News and World Report for five years in a row, and I can see why.

Get 50% off your new SimplySafe system at simplysafe.com/slash swindled.

That's 50% off your new SimplySafe system by visiting simplysafe.com/slash swindled.

There's no safe like SimplySafe

at blinds.com.

It's not just about window treatments.

It's about you, your style, your space, your way.

Whether you DIY or want the pros to handle it all, you'll have the confidence of knowing it's done right.

From free expert design help to our 100% satisfaction guarantee, everything we do is made to fit your life and your windows.

Because at blinds.com, the only thing we treat better than windows is you.

Visit blinds.com now for up to 50% off with minimum purchase plus a professional measure at no cost.

Rules and restrictions apply.

Here are two former world-class breakdancers nominated for Grammys who have become huge international stars with record sales in the millions.

Well, girl, you know it's true.

It can only mean Millie Vanilli.

The year was 1990.

George Herbert Walker Bush was president.

Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years of imprisonment in South Africa.

And Millie Vanilli, a flashy, good-looking R ⁇ B duo from Germany, won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist.

group's breakout album, Girl You Know It's True, which featured a combination of 80 synth pop and hip-hop, had produced three number one hits and sold over 7 million copies worldwide.

It was a true rags to riches story for the two men that fronted the group.

Fab Morvin and Rob Palladis, both in their early 20s, met in Los Angeles in 1984 and bonded over their love of dancing.

Morvin, a former gymnast, had taken up dance as a form of therapy after injuring a vertebrae in a trampoline accident a year prior.

Palladis, who had dabbled in modeling and DJing, was traveling the world to compete in breakdancing competitions.

The two men continued their friendship when they returned home to Munich, but found it difficult to pay their bills using only their dance skills.

Luckily, fate intervened.

In the late 80s, a successful German record producer named Frank Farion was scouting talent for a new project.

Farion was on the lookout for young, fashionable men with model good looks and top-tier dancing abilities.

As soon as he saw Fab Morvin and Rob Palladis' moves, the producer knew that the two men fit the bill.

Farion wrote the songs and pushed Morvin and Palladis out onto the stage, dressed in long sweaters, leggings, boots, and shoulder-padded power suits.

And the American audience ate it up.

The entire country swooned over the exotic, dark-skinned European men with the fancy dance moves and catchy songs.

Millie Vanilli had tapped into the perfect formula for pop stardom, and seemingly overnight, overnight, the group was sweeping award shows and cashing checks.

But sometimes massive success comes with massive egos.

In an interview with Time magazine, Billie Vanilli were quoted as saying, We are musically more talented than any Bob Dylan.

Musically, we are more talented than a Paul McCartney.

The reporter, understandably caught off guard by the duo's boastful statements, gave them an opportunity to clarify and asked, what do you mean by that?

To which they replied, quote, creative.

To be able to produce.

More talented and creative than a Beetle.

That's bold.

So bold that those present in the room for the interview wondered if maybe the questions and answers were getting lost in translation or something, because it was clear that neither Fab nor Rob were entirely comfortable with the English language.

Which in itself was kind of strange, considering at the time, these were the voices behind the best-selling English language album in the world.

Just weeks later, Further doubts about the group's authenticity would be raised after a performance from the Lake Compounds theme park in Bristol, Connecticut that was broadcast live on MTV.

The duo were in the middle of a beautiful rendition of their number one hit when this happened.

Whoops, the backing track was skipping, and so were the voices.

Melie Vanilli had been exposed on live television as lip-syncers.

In the video, you can see Fab embarrassingly shuffle offstage in a way that would make Ashley Simpson proud.

But the crowd in attendance either didn't notice or didn't care, so the group regrouped and finished the performance to raucous cheers.

The media, on the other hand, had noticed and began loudly questioning the band's credibility.

More specifically, there were questions about the voices singing on Millie Vanilli's hit record.

Did those voices actually belong to Rob Palladis and Fab Morvin?

According to Rob and Fab, they did.

The two men denied the allegations of lip-syncing repeatedly and insisted that their talent was not a facade.

But on November 12th, 1990, Frank Farion, the man who created Millie Vanilli, admitted to reporters that Robin Fabb did not sing a single note on the album.

They've gone beyond platinum and become international stars, but behind the braids and the breakdancing, it turns out, there's a soundtrack by someone else.

Rob Palladis and Fab Morvin are Millie Vanilli, but they're not the singers heard on the group's 7 Million Record album.

The producer revealed that the voices on the record actually belonged to three Americans named Brad Howe, John Davis, and Clyde Shaw.

Although the voice talent of those three men was readily apparent, Farion said that he found none of the men very marketable.

The real singers were in their late 30s or early 40s at the time of the recordings and did not have the look nor the dance moves that would appeal to the MTV audience.

Not to mention, none of the men were too thrilled about the possibility of going on tour.

So Farion, understanding how important visual appeal and youthful energy were to making it in the music business, had set out to recruit a few camera-friendly faces to front the group.

He pulled Rob Palladis and Fab Morvin off the streets, strapped them to the Milly Vanilli rocket ship, and launched them into Superstardom.

But once the media criticism started becoming louder, Rob and Fab went to Frank Farion and demanded that they sing on Millie Vanilli's next album.

But rather than allow for that to happen, Farion blew up the entire project.

He claims the duo forced his hand, which is why he had come forward to reveal the truth that the entire act was manufactured.

Millie Vanilli's contemporaries in the music industry reacted to the news, and some of them were not exactly happy to find out that the Grammy-winning Best New Artists of 1990 were complete phonies.

Here's what one of of the indigo girls had to say.

I think it's a drag.

I mean it's hypocritical to say that you represent that you did the work on an album and you represent that and you sell six or seven million copies of a record and it turns out that you had nothing to do with it.

It's just it's a joke.

Others like rapper Tone Loke claim to have learned the truth a long time ago.

Me personally,

I stated that I had already known that they weren't singing on those tracks well over a year ago when I was on tour with them.

I could have blown this whole thing up a long time ago, but it would have sounded like sour grapes.

And I really didn't care because it had just totally left my mind.

About a week after Frank Farion blew the whistle, for the first time ever, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences rescinded a Grammy Award.

On November 20th, 1990, Millie Vanilli faced the music by holding a press conference in Los Angeles in front of more than 100 journalists.

Robin Fab said that they had been manipulated by producer Frank Farian.

They said that they had, quote, made a deal with the devil who had enticed them with money and fame and a way out of the McDonald's job and Munich projects.

But being imposters became too heavy of a burden to carry.

Robin Fabb expressed relief that it was over.

And in an effort to prove that they weren't complete frauds, the duo used the live microphones at the press conference to show everyone that they could actually rap and sing.

But whatever talents the duo may have actually possessed would not prevent Millie Vanilli from going down in history as one of pop culture's biggest punchlines.

Even the group's youngest fans had turned against them.

When one former fan was asked by the Los Angeles Times what he thought about Millie Vanilli, that nine-year-old replied, quote, I think they're dirty scumbuckets.

As anyone who has ever been called a dirty scumbuck by a nine-year-old can tell you, it hurts.

It hurts a lot.

Mere days after the scandal broke, Rob Pallatis told the Los Angeles Times, quote, I feel very sad about my fans.

I know it's going to be hard for the kids to stand behind us, but I hope they understand that we are just two human guys who were so hungry for success that we allowed ourselves to be manipulated.

We wanted to get on the top.

We apologize and hope they'll give us a second chance.

But that second chance never came.

In fact, in the ensuing years, the only thing Rob and Fab were given by the fans were subpoenas.

Apparently, a small percentage of consumers who had purchased Millie Vanilli's album expected the faces on the album covers and in the music videos to be the same faces that were singing the songs.

The lawsuit seemed petty on the surface, but it did raise some interesting questions, such as, is that a reasonable expectation?

Should the public face of a musical act be expected to have recorded the vocals or instruments on an album?

Is what Millie Vanilli did an act of studio magic customary in the music industry?

Or was it an act of fraud that is pursuable in court?

If it is a crime for a musical act not to record their own songs, Alvin and the Chipmunks better lawyer up.

People are buying the singer who sings the songs.

They're not just buying the sounds that are being uttered.

When somebody goes into the store to buy a Milli Vanilli album, they expect to be buying an album that is sung by Morvan and Palladius, and they weren't buying that.

Okay, maybe the case did have some merit.

Disgruntled fans and opportunistic lawyers pointed out that the liner notes of Milli Vanilli's hit album had explicitly attributed the vocal performances to Fab Morvan and Rob Palladis.

In the American version, at least, there was no mention of the original performers at all.

A fact in which the plaintiffs equated to a blatant misrepresentation of a product.

For For fans like David Stalter, the image portrayed by Fab Morvan and Rob Pallatis and the voices heard on the records and videos were one and the same.

When I listened to the music, I would sort of picture them singing.

And because all their photos and stuff are on the covers, I sort of just

associated the music with them.

And that's how I looked up to them.

At a press conference in Oakland, California, Stalter's mother announced a class action lawsuit against the group, group, its record label Arista Records, and its agents, asking for refunds for anyone who purchased a Milly Vanilli album.

One of the lawsuits filed in Pennsylvania on behalf of two middle-aged men and extremely reasonable people named Dennis Friedman of Erdenheim and Mark Walick of Westchester even argued that Rob and Thab had engaged in mail and wire fraud for lying about singing on the album.

That particular lawsuit was dismissed, and so were many of the other 27 that were filed.

The remaining cases were consolidated into a class action, and a settlement was finalized on August 28, 1991.

Fans that had attended a Millie Vanilli concert were offered refunds for 5% of the ticket price.

Fans that purchased t-shirts or other Millie Vanilli merchandise were listed as contributors to a $250,000 donation by the record company to various charities.

And 100,000 fans who had bought the album and submitted claims were awarded up to $3 in rebates, which could be applied toward the purchase of a release by one of Arista Records' other exciting recording artists, such as Whitney Houston, Deion Warwick, and Holland Oates.

Victory is sweet.

Speaking of Arista Records, the record company had made statements out of both sides of its mouth.

At first, they feigned ignorance, claiming that they were completely unaware about Milly Vanilli's lip-syncing.

Later, they defended themselves and the group, labeling the Millie Vanilli facade as nothing more than music industry theatrics.

Not a burden of fraud, though.

The record people don't call it that.

They call it illusion.

Simply part of entertainment.

Richard Roth, CBS News, New York.

Wait for it.

So girl, you know it's not true.

Good one, Richard.

Producer Frank Farion could not comprehend why his group's lip-syncing had become such a scandal in the United States.

He accused the American press of treating the story with more outrage than their coverage of Saddam Hussein.

And although he understood why young fans of the group might be disappointed to find out that their singing dancing Santa Claus isn't real, Frank Farion claimed it was an important lesson to learn.

Quote, the kids have to learn, have to open their eyes.

We sell illusions, and they are not reality.

That's a good lesson for every kid to learn.

Indeed, it is.

In fact, that lesson may be more important today than than ever in this modern world rife with Photoshopped models, Snapchat filters, product placements, pro tools, ghostwriters, and auto-tune.

Listen up, kids.

Authenticity is rare.

It's important to understand that not everything you see or hear is real.

And it is important to understand that sometimes the media targeted at you has no artistic merit.

In fact, some media is even created with the sole purpose of serving as a vehicle to shove advertisements into your consciousness.

It's true of radio, it's true of movies and television, and it's especially true of podcasts.

Hey, Swindold listeners, do you like stories about con artists?

Well, you're in luck, because every week the Podcast original podcast series Con Artists dives into the psychology of hustlers, swindlers, and fraudsters to share with you the greatest cons of all time.

Con artists come from different walks of life, and this podcast covers all of them.

They seem seem like a friend or even family.

You trust them with your life.

But behind the promises of fame, success, and riches beyond your wildest dreams is just another scammer trying to cheat you out of your life savings.

Hear the story of how the wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belford, partied hard and made millions while engaging in stock market manipulation.

Or hear about how a top Wall Street market maker named Bernie Madoff conned thousands of clients out of billions of dollars using one of the biggest Ponzi schemes of all time.

Search for and subscribe to ConArtist on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Again, search con artist or visit parkast.com/slash con artist to listen now.

Spot the con before it finds you.

Anyway, what were we talking about?

Oh yeah, the years after the scandal were not kind to the men of Millie Vanilli.

A few months after the settlement, Rob Palladis had to be talked down from his hotel room's ninth story balcony, from which he was threatening to jump.

Ever since it was revealed that pop singers Millie Vanilli did not really sing on some of their recordings, things have been going south fast for the duo.

First, they lost their Grammy and now something much worse has happened.

We then formulated a plan where we could gain entry into room 909 next door.

And once we were set in position in room 909, our station desk telephoned Miss Pilatus' room.

And as Ms.

Pilatus left the balcony to answer the telephone, we then walked across the balcony, into the room, and detained him.

That was a close call.

And yes, that newscaster was Luffa enthusiast Bill O'Reilly.

In the late 90s, when Rob was back on his feet, the duo reunited to produce new music, and Fab Morvin tried to help out his friend as best he could.

Fab even bailed Rob out of jail once after he was arrested for committing a series of assaults and robberies.

And on at least one occasion, Fab paid for one of Rob's 10 stints in rehab, but he was never able to escape the unforgiving grasp of substance abuse.

On April 2nd, 1998, Rob Palladis was found dead in a hotel room in Frankfurt, Germany.

He had accidentally overdosed on prescription pills and alcohol.

He was only 32 years old.

It makes you wonder how much of an influence the fallout of the lip-syncing scandal had on Rob Palladis' mental health.

It also makes you wonder what would happen if the Milli-Vanilli scandal happened today.

Would it even be newsworthy?

Would their fans and the media be more forgiving?

Would Rob Palladis still be alive?

Or would half of the country despise them for their deception, while the other half convinced themselves that not only were Milli Vanilli really singing, that they were the best singers of all time?

The point is that we all live in our own personally curated realities.

Everything is an illusion.

And that is exactly what a musician named Jared Threatened sell out to prove in November 2018, or so he claims.

Unlike Millie Vanilli, Jared recorded every note on his album.

The talent was real.

It was everything else that was fake.

An ambitious and talented performer recruits a backing band to embark on a European tour and pulls off one of the most delirious scams the music industry had seen in years on this episode of Swindles.

They bribed government officials to find accounting for clear violations of their interstate law and earlier they don't have the

Dummied up its books and records and high ballots.

Support for swindled comes from Simply Safe.

For the longest time, I thought home security meant an alarm going off after someone broke in.

But if the alarm is already blaring, it's too late.

The damage is done.

That's a reactive approach, and it leaves you with that awful feeling of violation, even if the intruder runs away.

That's why I switched to Simply Safe.

They've completely changed the game with Active Guard outdoor protection, designed to stop crime before it starts.

Their smart, AI-powered cameras don't just detect motion.

They can tell you when there's a person lurking on your property.

That instantly alerts SimplySafe's professional monitoring agents in real time.

And here's the game changer.

The agents can actually intervene while the intruder is still outside.

Talk to them through two-way audio, hit them with a loud siren and spotlight, and call 911 if needed.

It's proactive security, and that's real security.

I trust SimplySafe because there are no long-term contracts, no hidden fees, and a 60-day money-back guarantee.

They've been named best home security systems by U.S.

News and World Report for five years in a row, and I can see why.

Get 50% off your new SimplySafe system at simply safe.com/slash swindled.

That's 50% off your new SimplySafe system by visiting simplysafe.com/slash swindled.

There's no safe like SimplySafe.

I lie awake at night,

just buried

After months of hard work, the debut album by Los Angeles-based rock band Threaten was released for public consumption by Superlative Music Recordings on August 25th, 2017.

The album was called Breaking the World, and it was essentially a solo album from a multi-instrumentalist named Jared Threton, the front man of the group whose face was featured prominently on the record cover.

Every sound on the album, from drums and bass to guitar and vocals, had been written and recorded by Jared and Jared alone.

Mostly out of necessity, since Jared was the only member of the band, but also because that's how he preferred to work.

Never question the process of an artist.

I knew from a young age that I was going to be a solo artist, and

for me, it was always faster to just go record the drum part I wrote or the guitar part I wrote when I feel like I have a deeper connection with the song and I can record it faster and I can portray it the way that I want it portrayed without having to explain it to someone.

And to me,

the me playing every instrument thing is I know exactly how I want it to sound.

And

I enjoy playing all these different instruments.

That's the biggest factor, is that I enjoy playing all these different instruments, and this is, it's fun for me.

Jared's idea of fun resulted in an album full of cheesy power metal ballads with lyrics that resembled the deep thoughts of a 13-year-old.

The Italian edition of Esquire magazine, who mistakenly or maybe purposely referred to the band as The Threatens, offered up the best description of the band's music.

Quote:

They play a kind of shabby teen pop with heavy glam metal influences, or a kind of very very crappy glam metal, with the aggressiveness of a teen pop band.

That quote is translated, but you get the point.

A lot of the lyrics that I write come from a specific feeling.

I'll write down just random thoughts.

I have notebooks full of random thoughts and pieces of poetry.

If I'm in a specific mood, I'll sit down and write things.

Sometimes I'll have a particular cadence in mind.

Every conversation I have,

I feel like I'm examining the the way that the words flow together because maybe it comes out in a certain way that just lends itself musically.

And I can't ever shut that off.

That's just always there.

Jared Threaten had always been an outsider.

The 29-year-old always dressed head to toe in black, kept his hair long.

He was never one to care much about what the world thought about him or his art.

Jared was extremely proud of what he had accomplished with his new album, and he knew that there was an audience out there who would appreciate it.

He just needed to find them.

On Threaten's YouTube channel, Jared began promoting Breaking the World by posting promotional videos that featured him relating anecdotes about the construction of each song on the record, intermixed with pantomimes of him playing various instruments and head-banging to his own songs.

Those videos are about as cringeworthy as they sound.

If Nee Bee started off as just an acoustic song, a memory forgotten was to highlight the piano, like say identity that was designed to highlight the drums.

And I tried to encapsulate that in a song.

And that's what Living is Dying was.

At one point, in true DIY fashion, you can even tell that Jared is in a room alone, interviewing himself.

Listen to him pretend not to hear the question that no one asked.

Which song were you asking about?

The Place Between?

The Place Between.

I wrote the bass line for that song first.

I knew that song was going to highlight the bass.

Yeah, we get it.

Jared wrote all of the songs himself and played all of the instruments on his own, just like a million teenagers are doing in their bedrooms at this exact moment.

And he seemed to be very proud of that fact.

But the real question that Jared needed to ask himself was if anybody would care.

It's difficult for anyone to make a name for themselves in such a saturated music industry these days, no matter how much talent they actually possess.

But judging by the fanshot live footage that would soon be uploaded to that same YouTube channel, people did seem to care.

Jared Threaten was making some noise, and the crowds were going wild.

In the user comments below the videos, some fans, mostly female, gushed over the ascending rock star.

One woman expressed interest in licking the sweat off of Mr.

Threaten's body.

Another fan took it even further, typing, quote, I would let Jared Threaten do literally anything to me.

Oh, honey, that's too bad.

Haven't you heard?

Jared Threaten is a solo artist.

But it's faster for me to just do it this way.

It comes very fast.

By the end of 2017, the band was receiving attention from more than just online groupies.

The YouTube views and Facebook likes were piling up, and an online music journal named Top Rock Press had named Threaton its 2017 Top Rock Artist of the Year.

Even though the album had yet to find a wide audience, the critical acclaim would certainly help.

To capitalize on the momentum and internet buzz, in early 2018, Threaton teamed up with StageRight bookings to plan a European tour, which would run for a little more than two weeks in the beginning of November, with stops in the United Kingdom, Scotland, Ireland, France, Italy, and Germany for a total of 10 shows.

Promoter Casey Marshall at StageRight was placed in charge of securing the venues and opening acts.

He sent promotional materials to different rock clubs across Europe that boasted how Threaten had, quote, proven to be one of the most promising rock artists of the last decade, and how Jared's, quote, distinct voice and memorable songs quickly captured the attention of fans.

The materials also noted that Threaton's latest single had appeared on top 40 charts in seven different countries.

And of course, there was a line about how Jared played every instrument on the album: quote,

The world rarely sees so much talent wrapped up in one person.

How could any venue say no to that?

The schedule was set, and by all accounts, tickets were selling well.

But there was one little problem.

Jared could not play all of the instruments live by himself.

The show was sponsored by BetterHelp.

We've all been there, vinting to the group chat, unloading on our barista, or oversharing with a stranger on a bathroom line.

And while those people are great listeners in the moment, let's be honest, they're not trained to help us with anxiety, depression, or relationship issues.

That's where BetterHelp comes in.

BetterHelp has been helping people find their right match for over 10 years with a 4.9 rating across 1.7 million client session reviews.

Their therapists are fully licensed, clinically trained, and work under a strict code of conduct.

And instead of leaving it to chance, BetterHelp does the matching work for you, using a quick questionnaire to connect you with one of over 30,000 therapists.

If it's not the right fit, you can switch at any time, no extra cost.

It's all online, totally flexible, and has already helped more than 5 million people worldwide.

Therapy when you need it, at the click of a button.

As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise.

Find the one with BetterHelp.

Our listeners get 10% off the first month at betterhelp.com/slash swindled.

That's betterhelp, h-e-l-p.com/slash slash swindled.

Hi, Joe.

My name is Lisa Golding.

I am an artist manager at Aligned Artist Management in Beverly Hills, California.

We have a signed hard rock artist on our roster that is looking for a new rhythm guitarist for their upcoming tour in Europe this November.

After seeing some videos of your playing, I believe you will be a good fit.

If you are interested, I would like to set you up with an audition/slash meeting with the band in Los Angeles.

Let me know if you're available and I'll send you the details.

Sometime in July 2018, Joe Prunera, a 36-year-old guitarist working as an audio-video technician at the Wynn Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, received a friend request on Facebook from a woman named Lisa Golding, who identified herself as the representative of Aligned Artist Management.

The message that accompanied the friend request included an invitation for an audition to join an unnamed band on a European tour.

Joe was a little surprised by the invitation considering that other than a few YouTube videos, his online presence was minuscule.

He wasn't sure how this management company even found him, but he thought it was worth checking out.

Joe called the number at the bottom of the message and spoke to Lisa Golding by phone.

Lisa told him that a band named Threaten was looking for a rhythm guitarist and that an associate of hers named Joe Abrams could provide all of the other minute details related to the tour.

Through email, Joe Abrams from Aligned Artist Management instructed guitarist Joe Prunera to learn two songs from Threaton's album before traveling to SIR studios in Hollywood the following week to play them at the audition.

Prunera learned seven of Threaten's songs just to be safe.

When he arrived at the studio, Joe was surprised to find that neither Lisa Golding nor Joe Abrams, nor anyone else from Aligned Artist Management, was present for the audition.

According to Joe, the only people in attendance were Jared Threaten and his wife Kelsey, who was filming the performances.

Despite the initial weirdness of the situation, Joe Prunera nailed the audition and he was offered the position later the same day.

This is Joe describing his first encounter with Jared Threaten on the Hoax podcast.

At the time, my first impression was he was a really nice guy, very down-to-earth,

somebody I really got along with.

And

so I thought this would be a great,

you know, great opportunity to add to my resume and gain some more experience and hopefully, you know, take a step in the next direction for everything.

Over the next three months, from August to October, about every other weekend, Joe Prunera traveled from Las Vegas to Los Angeles to rehearse with Jared and the other hired guns.

Dane Davis, also from Las Vegas, had been chosen to serve as Threaten's live drummer.

And 24-year-old Gavin Carney, an auto mechanic from California, would fill in on bass guitar.

When I auditioned with him, we even had like a little bass slap battle.

It was a lot of fun.

He's got a lot of great

fusion chops on drums.

He's really good.

As November drew closer, the details of the tour became more clear.

The band would be playing at venues that housed up to 1,500 people.

Jared told his new bandmates, Joe, Dane, and Gavin that his label wanted him to get used to playing rooms that size.

He also told the band that they would be paid in advance $300 each total for the entire tour, or about $30 a show.

Obviously not great compensation, but having all of the other expenses, including food and airfare covered by Threaten, made up for it.

Well, almost.

On the band's maiden voyage to London, Joe Prunera's carry-on luggage was too big to fit into the airplane's overhead compartment.

He was forced to check the bag for $100, which he paid out of his own pocket.

No big deal.

It was his mistake, but even more concerning, the day before the tour began, Jared informed his new bandmates that their $300 payment was actually a $300 stipend that would cover their mills for the next two weeks.

Hey, no one ever said rock and roll was easy.

In London, the band rented a Mercedes Sprinter van to transport their gear from city to city.

and they rented a two-bedroom apartment hotel to crash for a few days.

Jared and his wife Kelsey, who was also doubling as the band's tour manager, slept in the master bedroom.

Two band members shared the other room, and the final member, probably the bassist, slept on the couch.

Again, not an ideal situation, but ask any band that's ever been on the road.

It's a luxury just to find a dry floor to sleep on.

And apparently, being treated like an adult is also a luxury, at least in the Threatened crew.

On the first morning of the tour, The three hired musicians went down to the hotel lobby for breakfast and returned to their room to find a furious furious Jared Threaten.

He instructed the band that they needed to stick together and that he needed to know where they were at all times.

Since Jared and Kelsey kept to themselves and did not drink or party in any way, shape, or form, the rest of the band realized that they would be stuck at the hotel every night of the tour.

Fairy metal.

On November 1st, Threaton was scheduled to perform at the Camden Underworld in London, a venue that Threaton's backing band upon sight noticed was much too small to house 1,500 people like Jared had described.

But it was the first date of an international tour.

Such miscommunications are to be expected.

So the band settled in.

Kelsey hung the stage backdrop and set up the merch table.

Everybody was excited for the show, including the venue.

The Underground had been informed by Casey Marshall at Stage Rite that almost 300 tickets had been sold in advance.

Pretty impressive for a Thursday evening.

But as the night progressed and the opening bands played to an empty room, it became apparent that either there had been some kind of mass coincidence where 300 people had a sudden change of plans or the ticket sales reported by Casey Marshall had been fabricated.

Besides the other bands, the people on their guest list, the sound engineer, and the bar staff, Threaten, on the first night of their European tour, played their set to a crowd of three people.

This is strange, Jared told the band.

I'm used to more people being here.

This is guitarist Joe Prunera.

You know, I wasn't too concerned.

I had some really bad jet lag, and it was also our first show together as a band, so naturally there's going to be a few little mishaps.

However, after the band's second show on November 4th at Trillions in Newcastle, where they performed in front of four paying customers, despite being informed that hundreds of tickets had been sold, Joe, Gavin, and Dane realized that what was happening was far more than a few little mishaps.

But the show must go on.

So the band kept playing as threatened's Titanic of a tour continued to sink.

You know, again, you know, there's just basically nobody there.

We were playing to practically, you know, an empty room between like three and

seven people on average.

The same experience repeated itself in Glasgow and again in Bristol, where upon realizing that no one was showing up, the booking agent at the Rebellion had allegedly told Jared that the show could continue but only if it were a free event.

Quote, the manager was apologetic, but Jared said, I don't care if you do it as a free event, and he brushed past me with his long hair.

After playing to nobody in Manchester, and then again in Birmingham, everybody in the band had grown to expect an empty room.

Kelsey had even stopped bothering to display the t-shirts and CDs the band had brought to sell.

She did, however, continue to film the band's performances, although the camera was focused on Jared for the entire duration of the shows.

Why were the venues so empty?

Had the promoter really failed to market any of the shows?

Nobody in the band could explain what was happening, but when the tour rolled into Belfast on November 10th, once Jared and Kelsey were out of sight, drummer Dane Davis pulled his bandmates Joe Prunera and Gavin Carney aside.

and confronted them with the truth.

That's when Dane brought it to our attention.

He basically said,

I've got to show you guys something and we need to keep this on the down low.

And then he showed us the first article that broke out and it just

shocked us.

On November 9th, 2018, heavy metal music news website, metalsucks.net, published a report titled, LA Band Threaten Faked a Fanbase to Land a European Tour No One Attended.

The article included comments and social media posts from the venues where the band had had played, as well as first-hand accounts from members of the opening acts like The Unresolved.

Most notably, however, was the publication's accusations that the frontman of Threaten had, amongst other devious acts, quote, lied about ticket sales numbers to swindle venue owners and talent buyers into taking on the shows.

Jared and Kelsey were upstairs in the bedroom when the rest of the band read the news.

For Joe Dane and Gavin, it was like being in some kind of cheesy horror movie where the victims discover they're trapped in a house with a serial killer.

But in this case, the maniac was wielding a different kind of axe.

When Jared finally appeared, he could sense something was off about the group.

He asked his bandmates if they had talked to anyone or seen any of the articles.

When the band confirmed his suspicions, Jared blamed everyone but himself for the promotional snafu.

He told the band, quote, I'm the guy.

I'm the artist.

I just show up and play.

Everyone else takes care of the other stuff.

Jared admitted to the band that he was not sure what to do next.

He wondered aloud if it would be best just to cancel the rest of the tour or continue on like everything was normal.

But Joe and Dane had already made that decision for him.

Dane and I

basically came to the decision that we're going to leave.

We don't want to be a part of this.

We don't want to be associated with this.

This isn't what we signed up for.

In fact, Dane Davis had already stashed half of his drums in a safe place just in case he needed to make a quick escape.

Dane left the band that night to stay with his mother and other family members who had traveled to Northern Ireland to watch him perform.

A few days later, he uploaded a video message to Facebook.

Hey everyone, I just wanted to give you an update on what's going on with me and the rest of the hired band for the Threatened Tour.

By now,

you know, you probably have heard what's going on with everything.

None of this should have happened.

And

I just want, you know, first and foremost to let everyone know that

Joe and Gavin and I

had no idea we were blindsided by

everything that came up

on Friday.

And

Joe and Gavin are great people, uh very talented musicians and

um

yeah, I

it's it's shocking and we're trying to wrap our heads around you know what happened.

Um

guitarist Joe Prunera flew home to Vegas the morning after the confrontation.

Gavin Carney, the bassist, decided to stay.

No, I decided to stay.

Um

I didn't have the money on me to leave if

but

I could have always asked my family and my parents to get me out.

Jared and Kelsey also offered if I ever felt like I wanted to leave, I could leave, and they would pay for my ticket home.

And they also

said they would pay for food if I ran out of food money or anything like that.

Yeah, we still had a good time sightseeing and everything, so

it was still a fun time.

Although Jared Threaten was reportedly disappointed with his band's disintegration, he told them that he completely understood.

The story had spread quickly.

Even mainstream press outlets like the New York Times and the BBC were reporting on it.

Some of them were even digging into the singer's past.

The remaining shows were cancelled.

The tour was officially over.

But the real entertainment was just beginning.

On November 14th, 2018, The official Twitter account of Threaten tweeted out, quote, What is fake news?

I turned an empty room into an international headline.

If you are reading this, you are part of the illusion.

Support for Swindled comes from Quince.

Kohler temps are rolling in, and as always, Quince is where I'm turning to for false staples that actually last.

From cashmere to denim to boots, the quality holds up.

and the price still blows me away.

Quince has the kind of fall essentials you'll wear on repeat.

Their 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters are unbelievably soft and started just $60.

Their denim, durable, fits exactly how it should.

And I've been living in their leather jacket.

It's got that clean, classic look, but without the inflated price tag.

What makes Quince different is simple.

They partner directly with ethical factories and cut out the middleman.

So you get top-tier fabrics and craftsmanship at half the price of similar brands.

I've also started branching out beyond clothing.

Their bedding and travel accessories have been just as impressive.

Honestly, Quince has become my go-to for just about everything.

Keep it classic and cool this fall with long-lasting staples from Quince.

Go to quince.com/slash swindled for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

That's q-u-in-ce-e.com/slash swindled.

Free shipping and 365-day returns.

Quince.com/slash swindled.

The illusion began in Moberly, Missouri, a small town near Columbus where Jared Threaten was born and raised as Jared Eames.

He was a normal middle-class Midwestern kid who fell in love with music at an early age.

and taught himself how to play every instrument he could get his hands on.

Jared graduated from Columbia College with a bachelor's degree in psychology and had even begun pursuing his master's.

But his dreams of rock stardom never faded away.

In fact, Threatened was not Jared's first serious band.

From 2005 to 2010, he had played with his brother Scott and an extreme metal band named Satith.

I've got to say, we traveled a long fucking way

And even though Satith was relatively successful, having even played shows in Puerto Rico to an actual audience, according to his brother Scott, Jared had an issue sharing the glory.

Scott remembers certain instances where Jared's ego seemed out of control.

Like when Satith released their second album and Jared tried to take sole credit online for the entire recording, even though other people had worked on it.

Or even at family functions where Jared acted like he deserved special treatment.

Even when he wasn't on stage, the guy just couldn't turn it off.

But Jared Eames was never that close to his family anyway, or so it seems.

He moved out of his parents' house when he was just 17 years old and began living with his girlfriend Kelsey, who was also still in high school.

Jared told Rolling Stone that when he was 20 years old, he experienced a sudden and violent coughing fit that made him re-examine how he was spending his time on Earth.

As he stared at the sink full of blood, he asked himself, quote, am I really happy doing what I'm doing with my life?

Apparently not, because soon after the health scare, Jared and Kelsey packed their things and moved to California.

According to Scott Eames, the couple eventually just dropped off the face of the earth and failed to keep in touch with their immediate families.

One of the comments on a December 6, 2010 Facebook post from Jared was from Jerry Eames, his father, who wrote,

Love you both.

Call.

Miss you two a lot.

Lost touch.

Anyone who knows Jared or Kelsey Eames, have them give family a call.

Scott had not spoken to his brother in over six years when he saw the articles about the threatened tour.

He claims no one in the family was that surprised by the news.

Scott, who has built a legitimate career for himself as a musician, felt compelled to release a statement of his own.

The beginning of that statement reads, quote, All I can say is I'm disappointed in the choices my brother has made.

With the current news shedding light on his real identity and our relation, and that we did have a band together in the past, I have to actively disassociate myself with his current actions.

Details about Jared's current actions had come to light thanks to the media and internet sleuths.

It appeared that Jared was able to plan Threaten's European tour by constructing an impressive universe of phony companies, starting with the record label that released the album, Superlative Music Recordings.

The history section of the label's website claims the company was formed in 1964 and even details a short-lived rebranding and change of direction that took place in 1980.

It's an insane amount of detail for a company that never existed.

As The Guardian put it, it's this intense attention to detail which threatens to elevate the whole affair from the slightly tragic to an absolute work of art.

They are not kidding.

The live videos Jared had posted to YouTube to promote himself were nothing more than stock video overdubbed with Threaten's music and the sounds of screaming fans.

The views on the videos were purchased in the comments sexualizing the front man were nothing more than Jared an internet drag.

And judging by the lack of fan engagement on Threatened social media, the 38,000 Facebook page likes and 16,000 Instagram followers were presumably paid for as well.

In addition to the Facebook event RSVPs to the shows on the European tour, where most, if not all, of the attendees appeared to be from Brazil.

And the hits keep coming.

Aligned Artist Management, the company that contacted Joe Prunera, Dane Davis, and Gavin Carney to audition for the band, was not real either.

Lisa Golding, who sent the initial invites, was not an actual person.

Her Facebook profile picture was discovered to have been stolen from the portfolio website of a photographer in Montreal.

The voice on the phone that the hired band believed was Lisa Golding almost certainly belonged to Jared's wife Kelsey.

And those emails from Joe Abrams, almost definitely Jared Eames behind the computer screen.

Which would explain why, after the band was hired, neither Lisa nor Joe were ever seen or heard from again.

As for Casey Marshall and StageRide Bookings, the company responsible for scheduling the shows and securing the venues and opening acts, completely fictional.

The physical address listed on the company's website actually belonged to a Los Angeles charity for suicide prevention.

And what linked all of these companies together besides the obvious connection to Jared Threaten was that the domain names for their respective websites, including threaten.com, were all registered to the same GoDaddy account within the same time period.

Not to mention, all of the websites were constructed using the same template from a popular web design service.

Jared had also manufactured reviews and interviews and past tours related to Threaten, which he used to source his own Wikipedia article.

Even the Best New Artist award given to him by Top Rock Press was a figment of his own imagination.

As it turns out, the entire history of the band was fraudulent.

Threaten was not the next best thing in rock music.

Threaten was nothing more than a portrait of a hapless narcissist and a tireless self-promoter with an extremely inflated ego.

which was unfortunate for Joe Prunera, Dane Davis, and Gavin Carney.

Three innocent men who just wanted to play music and live out their dreams.

Instead, they were out of thousands of dollars in lost wages and unplanned expenses due to Jared's delusional scheme.

This is bassist Gavin Carney.

So I can't imagine why he would need to fake his way through anything.

He has the skills and talent, obviously, to not have to do that, I wouldn't think.

He's also recently had some physical ailments

that have made it painful for him to even do basic things, so the fact that he went on tour with that just doesn't seem like something

somebody with a con artist mentality would do.

And even though Jared had paid the venues an upfront rental fee to reserve the dates, that rental fee did not cover the cost of additional security and equipment required to run the show.

On top of that, the opening bands, some of which took days off of work and drove for hours to play for very little in the first place, left with absolutely nothing.

In the wake of the scandal, some of the venues organized benefits to compensate the bands and staff who had been wronged.

At the event held by the Exchange in Bristol, Threaten's album was played on loop, while the support bands played for real-life people.

The venue's owner Matt Autridge told the Bristol Post, quote, the word I would use to describe the whole thing is surreal and also a little bit annoying.

We're not really sure what to make of it, to be honest.

The booking agent of Rebellion in Manchester shared that sentiment.

Quote, I was annoyed at the start, but as each day passes, I feel like I've been catfished along with the whole music scene.

And that was the point, at least according to Jared Eames, who admitted to the BBC in December of 2018 that the entire tour was a carefully planned scheme to manufacture controversy.

He confessed to creating the fake booking agency and the fake management company.

He even showed the reporter a notebook full of usernames and passwords for various social media accounts that he used to promote his own band.

Jared knew the whole time that he would never be able to fill those rooms with physical bodies, so he found a way to fill them with digital eyes instead.

It's a publicity stunt, he told Rolling Stone, but the music is very real.

Jared said he spent about $10,000 to record the album and more than $5,000 on the tour.

He told Rolling Stone that the funds came from over a decade of savings from working at Burger King and installing breathalyzers in people's cars.

Quote, I'm not some fucking rich kid.

All this is, is good money management.

Jared even claimed that he was the one responsible for blowing the lid on the whole scandal.

He said he sent anonymous emails to multiple media outlets exposing the hoax and everyone played right into his hands.

He had copies of the emails to prove it, but those copies turned out to be backdated forgeries.

The BBC dug up those emails from Jared, who was using the pseudonym E Eevee Knows It, and confirmed that they were actually delivered on November 17th, almost a full week after the story broke.

Needless to say, nobody was convinced that manufacturing his own destruction was Jared's original intent.

To most, Jared's claims that everything went according to plan seemed like a thinly veiled attempt to save face.

Even Jared's brother Scott predicted in an interview with Metal Sucks that his brother would try to spin the story in his favor.

Quote, I know him well enough that he's going to try to turn this into it all being an elaborate hoax, and that he was the mastermind of that too.

I know that's what he's going to pull.

But the craziest part about Jared Eames' stunt is that it might have actually worked.

Before the controversy, Threaten's top song, Living is Dying, had less than 1,000 plays on Spotify.

Today, that same song has been listened to more than 100,000 times.

Even more surprising is that at least one of the venues that he scammed has forgiven him.

The Underworld in London announced that Threaten would be performing live on November 1st, 2019.

Jared confirmed the news in a post on Threaten's Instagram, in which he was soliciting guitarists to join him.

Two people that will not be joining Jared at the upcoming gig are his former guitarist Joe Punera and drummer Dane Davis.

In December 2018, Punera and Davis, as well as Davis' mother, sued Jared and Kelsey Eames to recover lost wages and other expenses related to the disastrous tour.

All three cases were heard at the same time on April 8, 2019, but neither Jared nor Kelsey attended the proceedings, resulting in a default judgment for the plaintiffs.

Joe Prunera was awarded $10,000, the maximum allowable in small claims court, while both Dane Davis and his mother recovered about $4,000 each.

As of today, None of them have received a single penny.

Although Jared Eames has never commented publicly on the lawsuits, it is evident that he has other plans for his money.

He announced that a new Threaten album is in the works, as well as a documentary using the European footage shot by his wife.

After that, who knows?

Now that he has actual fans, maybe there will be another tour.

Fingers crossed.

that things aren't always as they seem.

Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard, except for that song used in the commercial.

I bought that for $20 from some stock music website.

Trevor has made it clear that he wants absolutely no credit for that whatsoever.

Special thanks to Michael from the Hoax podcast for letting me use snippets from this conversation with Joe Prunera.

Michael also hosts a podcast called Unresolved, which just started its new season.

So be sure to check that out.

I also want to thank Erin from the podcast All Crime No Cattle for providing the voice of Lisa Golding.

She and her husband host a conversational true crime podcast all about Texas, but you don't have to be from Texas to listen.

All Crime No Cattle.

Check it out.

For more information about Swindled, visit swindledpodcast.com and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at SwindledPodcast.

You can support the show by going to patreon.com slash swindled and joining the Valued Listener Rewards program.

For as little as $5 a month, valued listeners get early access to new episodes and exclusive access to bonus episodes.

If you sign up today, you will get instant access to all of the past and future bonus episodes.

There's a crazy one about an acid attack coming up.

I promise they're coming.

Thanks for being patient.

Besides the music, I'm still doing all of this by myself.

And if you're wondering why, it's because...

I knew from a young age that I was going to be a solo artist and I can record it faster and I can portray it the way that I want it portrayed without having to explain it to someone.

I know exactly how I want it to sound and it's fun for me.

That's right, Jared.

It's fun for me.

And your support makes it all possible.

Patreon.com slash swindled.

You can also support the show by buying something at swindledpodcast.com/slash shop.

There are stickers, patches, hats, hoodies, posters, t-shirts, and more.

New stuff is added all the time.

Go check it out.

Swindledpodcast.com/slash shop.

If you don't want anything in return for your support, you can always simply donate using the form on the homepage.

Anything helps.

Finally, on Saturday, September 7th, Trevor and I will be in Los Angeles at 6th and Labrea Brewery and Restaurant.

On Friday, October 4th, yours truly, we'll be in Boston, Massachusetts Massachusetts at the Winter Hill Brewing Company in Somerville.

Jeff, the co-owner and brewer at Winter Hill, has offered to brew a swindled-inspired beer.

You know, I'm not going to miss that.

You can RSVP to either of those events at swindledpodcast.com/slash events.

Please come.

It would be a shame to travel all that way if nobody showed up.

That's it.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks to Simply Safe for sponsoring the show.

Get 50% off your new SimplySafe system at simply safe.com/slash swindled.

That's 50% off your new SimplySafe system by visiting simplysafe.com/slash swindled.

There's no safe like Simply Safe.