Ezra Marcus

And at a certain point, they were like, OK, we want you to work with us.

We want to invest big in your thing.

And like I was like, OK.

And they're like, well, and to do that, we need to, you know, make sure that your that your crypto is clean.

We just make sure that, you know, foreign governments haven't corrupted it in some way.

And so you need to give us your passwords.

And the guy was like, are you joking?

Like, that's crazy.

And in that moment, he realized, like, these guys are just thieves.

I mean, they're just trying to, like, use the sort of posture of investment as a way to find targets.

Which brings us to this case where they had this friend.

He was in his late 20s who they had done some sort of business with prior.

Michael had credited John with, like, helping him out of a...

financial jam previously.

And he had spent time with them.

He spent a lot of time with them.

He had come to the Smith mansion.

They had spent Christmas with him.

And they sort of invite him to the mansion under the auspice of, you're going to work with us.

We're going to bring you into our thing.