Arlan Galbraith

So he sets up this company based around this lie and he calls it Pigeon King International.

Then he starts running classified ads in some local farming magazines, trying to recruit some investors.

And this surprisingly works.

Soon he's in meetings with investors who are mostly just farmers, but they're willing to invest.

And he like bullshits these guys.

Arlen even brings along a picture of Mike Tyson to these meetings and he shows it to people because Mike Tyson is, I guess, famously into pigeon racing.

So Arlen tells these investors that he sold pigeons to Mike Tyson before.

And these farmer investor guys are impressed and they like believe him.

Now, Arlen tells these people that if they buy two of his super racing pigeons off of him and breed them, he guarantees that he will buy back all the pigeons offspring later at a higher price.

So they will end up making money off this deal.

It's not just buying birds.

This is actually an investment, according to him.

But regardless, it works.

The people are like, sold.

So now the money is flowing in and Arlen is pulling in new investor after new investor.

Now, in order to keep investors believing that his scam is legit, he is actually fulfilling part of his deal.

When the first investors come back with their offspring pigeons, Arlen does, in fact, buy them from them.

Then he just finds more investors to sell those baby pigeons to, and he tells them the same lie.

So it's not long before this pigeon-selling scam...

turns into one big Ponzi scheme where he buys back the young bird from current investors and sells those same pigeons to new investors.