Rajiv Gola
Appearances
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Now, to reiterate, this is Ammon's version of events, and it's not backed up at all by the eight-year-long undercover investigation federal authorities conducted to take down fish smuggling off of Florida's coasts. And to reiterate again, Ammon was found guilty and sentenced to a year in prison for these crimes, which he says were apparently not illegal and entirely fabricated.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
It seemed that no matter what claim or allegation we brought up, Eamon had a response that turned the whole thing upside down. Like when we asked why he had his nephew call the shark seller to ask him to delete all his records.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Or when we asked him about an incident where a 10-year-old girl was bitten by a lemur and sent to the hospital.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
We also have a photo of the injury, and yeah, it broke the skin. But what really set him off was when we asked about his probation, which prohibited him from working with any aquarium or zoo. What's the deal there?
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
But he was caught emailing the construction managers at his brother's new Sequest locations five days after being released from prison.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Why keep going back to the aquarium business? I'm not in it. Not in it. And I mean, after that probation, in the construction, why keep working with these aquariums? Because I wasn't breaking the law. I never did. I've never broken the law.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Ammon continues to insist that he has nothing to do with the operation of the aquariums that his wife owns today. But the reason we reached out to Ammon in the first place is because his name was all over the news articles about Miss Helen and the shark thief. Even on the aquarium's own website, he was listed as the owner of the San Antonio Aquarium.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
And in articles, we found him referred to as, quote, Ammon Covino, the aquarium's chief operating officer, which didn't really square with everything he was telling us now.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
We can go back and forth all day about the ethics of zoos and aquariums and if it's even possible to run one of these facilities responsibly. If the disagreements between Ammon, PETA, and the shark thief prove anything, it's that there's more than one way to love a fish. But you have to admit, the empire that Ammon Covino has built is impressive.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
And the handover fist success that he's had also seemed to convince him that the fact that he's being attacked is proof that he's doing something right.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
These days, it's not just the USDA or PETA on the Covino's case. The call is coming from inside the house, too. A group of former Sequest employees have now started an online campaign to bring awareness to the alleged neglect they've seen at Covino Aquariums. Their message to the public is simple. If you don't want to abuse animals, don't give these people your money.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
They've joined forces with activists and investigators from around the country to organize against these facilities. And so far, they've been successful in blocking the construction of new aquariums in Florida and Connecticut. Say you are sitting in a room across from an activist. How do you make your final case to them if you had to leave with a parting note?
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
As it turns out, building permits aren't the only permits that Ammon Covino has issues with.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
When we got into the story, we thought the shark thief was a real star of the show. Then we thought it was Miss Helen, who'd gotten so big time that her whereabouts needed to be kept secret. But once we decided to take a closer look at the kidnappers' claims, well, we found a much bigger fish, Ammon Covino.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
With all the red flags stacking up, I decided to take a closer look to see if there was any truth to the allegations against him.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
The touch pools, the interactive exhibits, and the petting zoos, these were all part of the vision that Ammon Covino had been pursuing for years to bring animals and people closer together.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
So when Ammon heard that some guy had stolen a shark from his aquarium, and then when the thief was caught, he claimed he was doing it to protect the shark from mistreatment, Ammon wasn't exactly pleased.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Ammon Covino started the San Antonio facility back in 2014, but it was far from his first foray into aquariums. For most of his life, he was actually in the construction business, but he was first and foremost a fish person. He had a large aquarium at home with exotic fish that he adored and tended to meticulously. In 2001, he decided to make good on his passions and start a fish store.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Ammon seems to hit upon a gold fame. People loved his facilities, and he was keen to grow the business. So he brought in his brother, Vince, as an investor. In short order, he had facilities in cities across the country, all offering guests the opportunity to interact with fish, birds, lemurs, iguanas, otters, and dozens of other wild animals.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Eventually, the two brothers went their separate ways. Ammon managed the Austin, Houston, and San Antonio aquariums, while Vince took the interactive idea and set up more than a dozen SeaQuest aquariums within just a few years. If you want a taste of the Covino family, Ammon's brother Vince actually made a reality show about SeaQuest and its employees called Fishy Bidness.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
And it's a brave artistic endeavor full of Dutch angles, soft focus, and low-budget graphics. My name is Vince Covino.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Ammon, the older brother who started the aquarium business, was notably absent from the production.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
When we last left off, our precious baby, Miss Helen, had been rescued and her kidnapper arrested. But before he was hauled away to prison, he told the local news why he'd taken the shark. He claimed he was an animal rights activist and was protecting the shark from negligence and poor conditions at the aquarium. but no one really took him seriously.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
In talking with Ammon, it seemed like he genuinely believed in his mission, to bring animals and people closer together. He seemed to truly believe it was the right thing to do and that it would create a lot more harmony between humans and the environment around them.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
In some grand sense, it really felt like he was trying to save the world by creating good experiences and core memories between children and their favorite animals. And he didn't want to seem to grandstand or take credit in a big public way for it either.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
But despite Ammon's best efforts to stay out of the limelight, he's become a major target on the radar of Michelle Sennett and the organization she works for.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Now, when you think PETA, you probably think about fur coats and red paint, crazy publicity stunts and super shrill activists. But that's just the tip of the spear. PETA's meat and potatoes, or sorry, just potatoes, is much more dull organizing and legal work. And Michelle's an integral part of that machine.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
She's even keeled, super organized, and honestly, one of the more normal people we spoke to in this story. According to Michelle, there is more than a grain of truth to the shark thief's claims. The San Antonio Aquarium and other facilities run by the Covino family have been under scrutiny from PETA and the federal government for years.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Turns out Ammon is no stranger to this line of criticism, that what he sees as bridging connections between species can be interpreted as animal exploitation. And well, when we got into that, it felt like we started seeing a totally different side of him. And things went off the rails pretty quickly.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
For the animal activists that say that there should be no contact between what is essentially a wild animal and humans. I mean, what is your response to that?
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Period. For what it's worth, this is not true. Lemurs are social animals, but that only means their health benefits from engaging with other lemurs, not humans. Anyway.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
It seemed like a wildcard defense tactic, just something he said to put a positive spin on things. But as I read through the police investigation, I saw that his wife had told the investigating officer a similar story, that she believed Anthony was, quote, not trying to sell the shark. He wanted to help.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
There's a laundry list of allegations against Ammon's facility and his brother Sequa's facilities. And just a warning, they get pretty dark. There's numerous accounts of animal enclosures in total disrepair, paint chipping, wood being gnawed at. In one instance, the floor of a goat pen was made of sheet metal, which reached dangerous temperatures in the Texas sun.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
There's been more than a handful of incidents of guests being bitten or scratched seriously. At Sequest facilities, there were accounts of dozens of parakeets dropping dead from mysterious illnesses or simply being stomped to death by unmonitored children. According to one employee, the birds were thrown into the garbage so they didn't have to record the birds that died.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
In another case, a wallaby drowned in a water tank overnight at a Sequest facility because there was no way for it to get out. Two slots have died from dietary issues, unknown illnesses, and stress. Sequest has denied all allegations of mistreatment and says these deaths and ailments are simply the unfortunate side of running a zoo facility.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
We have a list of citations from the USDA saying that the Austin Aquarium, the Houston Aquarium, these facilities... No, you don't.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Do you have that in writing? Because we have the USDA citations in writing.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Read what it is. Well, yeah, it's a critical citation for failing to provide a young giraffe with wholesome and palatable food. In 2022, a USDA inspector cited Ammon's facility in Houston for underfeeding a baby giraffe they had just acquired and failing to get at the nutrients it needed to grow.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
According to the citation, quote, approximately one month after arriving at the facility, he developed a life-threatening neurological condition, which veterinary records indicate was diet-related.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
On top of that, I also learned that Jenny Spellman, the brick wall, who served as the general manager of the aquarium during the whole incident, actually stepped down from her position less than a year after the whole thing.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Once that switch flipped and Ammon went into defensive mode, it didn't come off for the rest of the interview. Honestly, it felt like the dial just kept turning higher and higher as we went on.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Wow. All right. Let's reset here for a moment and talk about why PETA took an interest in Ammon Covino in the first place.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Ammon's conviction goes all the way back to the first aquarium he opened in Idaho. That enterprise had been plagued with legal troubles from the get-go. He had already run afoul of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for illegally housing puffins.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
But the crime that eventually sent him to prison was that he was caught illegally importing stingrays and lemon sharks, a threatened species, from an unlicensed fish catcher off the coast of Florida. Ammon didn't have the proper permits to buy or show those fish, and what's more, the seller had told him he was selling the fish without a proper license.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Ammon was sentenced to a year in prison for wildlife trafficking, protected species, for buying those fish without proper permits. But as you might imagine, Ammon's version of the story is a bit different. He feels he was set up by the federal government. He says he was trying to do the right thing, helping out a friend down on his luck by buying his sharks.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
When I asked her about it, she told me she left over her concerns about one of the founders of the aquarium, a man named Ammon Cavino.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
And when he found out about the permitting issue, Ammon claims he went to all the relevant authorities to clear the purchase at the state level. But when the fish came in, cops bust in and arrested him anyway. Turns out the fish seller had been working with the feds for years.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
But now, now she was gone. So with the license plate number in hand, Jenny placed a call to the Leon Valley Police Department.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
Almost overnight, Miss Helen became an international celebrity. Something about the absurdity of the theft, a shark in a baby stroller, was just absolutely captivating.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
Something about the name Miss Helen just made the shark so knowable and familiar, like she was your first grade teacher or the nice old lady you see at the post office sometimes. It felt personal.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
Yeah, well, now I'm upset. You're upset. No one's happy. But the story isn't over yet.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
Most sharks can only survive a few minutes out of water. Horn sharks are also super sensitive to light, super sensitive to chemical changes, and require pretty large tanks for their size. So being yoinked out of a touch pool, wrapped in a towel, thrown into a bucket, taken to God knows where in the bed of a truck isn't exactly optimal conditions.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
and the San Antonio police were dragging their feet. It took them two days to follow up on the license plate number that Jenny had written down. They traced it back to an address in a small suburb outside town, and when they drove by the house, they saw the red truck sitting in the driveway. They knocked on the door, and the owner of the truck stepped out.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
He told the cops he'd been out of town, that his truck may have been used without his knowledge. Before the cops left, however, they spoke with a neighbor who said they'd seen another guy next door carry a large fish into his house a few days earlier. Now they had a solid lead, and the cops returned later that day to investigate.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
But they didn't really have a protocol for what to do if they actually found the shark. So the police called up Jenny and Jamie and asked them to come over.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
As the garage door slowly raised and rolled up, a full picture came into focus for Jenny and Jamie. And finally, the police let them come inside to see everything for themselves.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
The headlines went crazy once again. Missing shark found. Miss Helen was dominating the news cycle for the whole week, and the aquarium was getting more attention than ever.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
That's Jamie Schenck. She's a fish person. And so is Jenny Spellman.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
But all of that fame was dangerous for such a little fish who at the time didn't have an agent, a manager, or a bodyguard.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
With Ms. Helen and witness protection, things began to settle down and return to normal at the San Antonio Aquarium. News slowly dribbled out about the theft as the thief, a 38-year-old plumber named Anthony Michael Shannon, went through the court system. The two accomplices that had been caught on video alongside Shannon had been his wife and his neighbor.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
Both claimed that they had no idea what Shannon had in mind when he took them to the aquarium that day, which explained why he also left his wife in the dust making his getaway. And when they all got home, he told his neighbor to tell the cops that he'd been out of town.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
Shannon had seemed cool as a cucumber through the entire heist, which made sense considering it hadn't been his first time using the five-finger discount.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
Rumors were floating around about why Anthony had taken the shark, especially given all the work he did planning the operation. One theory was that he'd had a horn shark before, but that it had died, so he went out to find a replacement. Another theory was that he'd done some plumbing for the aquarium, but had been stiffed. There was no evidence to support either theory.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
Eventually, Anthony did an interview with a local news station to settle the question.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
Well, I'm sorry to say, Anthony, but your activism wasn't really received the way you thought it would be. By and large, Anthony was painted as a kleptomaniac who'd combined his two favorite hobbies, marine life and petty crime. Eventually, he was sentenced to two years in prison on felony theft charges, and the whole thing was simply forgotten.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
There really is nothing that can stand between a fish person and a fish they love. Except for, well, another fish person. which is exactly what happened on a summer morning in 2018 when a fish went missing at the San Antonio Aquarium. That fish, like many other fish in aquariums around the world, was a no-name talent, a background actor with a snowball's chance in hell at making a name for itself.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
Another crazy Texan behind bars and another weird series of headlines to put to bed. Nice and tidy. But that's a damn shame, because it turns out that all of Anthony Shannon's crazy claims of mistreatment and negligence at the aquarium, well, they might not have been totally untrue. Whatever you think about his methods, Anthony might have been onto something after all.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
But after the great 2018 aquarium heist, that fish became an international celebrity, became so famous that its exact location remains a closely guarded secret even today. One of the few people tasked with keeping that secret is self-proclaimed fish person Jamie Shank.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
She also serves as the director of the San Antonio Aquarium, a place that tries its best to bridge the physical gap between fish and fish person.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
As you can imagine, providing that sort of interactive experience is a pretty demanding job.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
But that's the sort of commitment you only find when you're dealing with fish people. And it's absolutely necessary when you're overseeing over 8,000 animals.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
The folks running the San Antonio Aquarium have seen just about everything. Newborn lemur needs to be hand-fed overnight? No problem. Iguana escape the terrarium? They can catch them with one arm tied behind their back. That's the kind of folks that keep the aquarium ticking, keep all the guests happy, and all the animals safe. Folks like whale shark superfan Jenny Spellman.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
Jenny Smelin pulled into work on July 28, 2018, expecting it to go like any other day. She unlocked the doors and started running down the checklist of her duties as general manager.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
The reason that she hadn't met all the staff yet was that Jenny had just been hired on as general manager a few days earlier.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
Her name tag might have been born yesterday, but Jenny sure wasn't. She'd worked in zoos, aquariums, and vet offices her whole life, and if Jenny had a nickname, it would be the brick wall. Because nothing got past her. This was a big job for Jenny, and the aquarium was gigantic, over 50,000 square feet, almost the size of a football field.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
Aside from 8,000 animals and about a dozen touch pools, there was a gift shop, a bouncy house, an arcade, snorkeling pools, an aviary, interactive lemur and otter exhibits, and a handful of mermaids waddling around posing for photos. Managing a place like that was like riding a bull, except you had to hold on for a whole day. The rodeo kicked off as soon as the doors opened.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
As it turned out, one of the fish keepers had seen two men leaving the cold water room, an employees-only area where highly sensitive fish were kept. The two men left in a hurry, and one of them was carrying something rolled up in a blanket. They placed the blanket in a stroller and just started walking away. The fish keeper rushed into the cold water room and saw nothing out of place.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
And when she steps back out, she saw the men carrying the baby stroller up the stairs. And each time the stroller tilted back, water poured out the bottom.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
But while Jenny's on her way out the door to find this guest, the fish keepers find a big problem in the cold water room.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
It's a big enough emergency that it warrants calling the assistant animal husbandry director, Jamie Shank, on her day off.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
This was the aquarium equivalent of a robber throwing marbles behind him. But these aren't just any old rent-a-cops. These are San Antonio's finest marine caretakers.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
With Jamie and her staff taking care of the fish tank, it's all on Jamie to track down the thief. And she is in hot pursuit.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
According to the fish keeper that called in the possible theft, Jenny then bent over and smelled and tasted the water that was in their stroller. She looked up and said to the man, this is fresh water.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
The taller man also told Jenny they needed to leave. His baby was sick. So Jenny let him go.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
The two men got into the red truck, the stroller inside with them. They hightailed it out of the parking lot, leaving the woman stranded, looking dazed and nervous.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
If you've ever spent time around anyone who keeps exotic pets as a hobby, you know they can be more on the eccentric end of the spectrum. Even calling it a hobby seems like underselling it. For them, it's really a lifestyle. It defines their entire personality and consumes an inordinate amount of their square footage and bank accounts. And personally, I say more power to them.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
It looked like the thief had just slipped through Jenny's fingers. But...
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
That's right. You're dealing with a brick wall, baby. But before Jenny could call the cops to file a report, she had to gather some evidence.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
The video was grainy, black and white, and a little tough to make out. But the thief's face was clear. Jenny had never seen the man in her life. But Jamie Shank recognized him immediately. And she realized that this wasn't just some crazy fluke or some prank. This heist was premeditated.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
The thief had come to the aquarium under the guise of a salesman from Instant Oceans, a salt supply company that helps aquariums maintain their mineral levels and check on its water quality.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
In fairness, it didn't seem like a big deal to Jamie. Everything at the aquarium seemed to be running smoothly, and she didn't seem to harm in showing him around. Best case scenario, the guy was legit and could help her catch a bad batch before the fish got sick. Worst case, this was just a weird guy trying to get a free tour. So Jamie agreed to show him around.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
The fishy salesman got a tour and left. And that was that. To be clear, Instant Oceans was never actually involved in any of this. But as soon as Jamie saw the man in the grainy security footage... And at that time, it just clicked.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
Now they had a prime suspect and video evidence. But they still didn't know what had actually been stolen.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
Now, before you start imagining the shark tank from Austin Powers, a little jacuzzi with two great white sharks in it, let me clarify things here. The sharks we're talking about are not big, man-eating, shark-weak, nightmare-fuel type sharks. The sharks in question were a lot smaller, about a foot or two long, and a hell of a lot cuter.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
The tank was about the size and height of a dinner table, and the top was totally open because you were allowed, encouraged, to reach inside and touch the sharks.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
Wave that freak flag high. The exotic pet community encompasses a lot of different types of folks. And among the different communities of bug people and reptile people and rodent people and fish people and bird people... there's a definite hierarchy of weird.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
Of course, Jamie was concerned before. What professional animal caretaker wouldn't be? But this was different. This was Miss Helen.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10
A horn shark like Miss Helen was perfect for a touch tank aquarium. Horn sharks are pretty small, about the same size as a catfish, with the same dour, whiskered face and the fins and tail you'd expect on a shark.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
That simple admission, just doing parent stuff, would end up derailing Laura's entire career and turn this story from a gossipy small-town scandal into a series of felony charges and national headlines.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
Randy Etheridge is a veteran criminal defense attorney out here in Pensacola. He's a textbook good old boy, a true back-slapper and bullshitter. At least, that's the impression I got when I made the six-hour trek to Pensacola to speak with him.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
He's a lifelong Floridian who has deep roots in the panhandle. And this case was a bit more personal than most of the cases he dealt with. I guess it starts with Mr. Bubba Grover. Bubba, Laura's husband. I should also say here that Bubba isn't his legal name, but it may as well be. Even the newspapers call him Bubba. How do you know him?
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
Within weeks of the homecoming election, the school held a disciplinary hearing to figure out what to do with Emily and Laura. And both of them submitted letters to the superintendent, which were, well, thoughtfully worded. They actually both admit to snooping on other students using Laura's Focus account, and they're sorry for it. Here's what Emily wrote.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
There is no excuse for me seeing other people's grades, but insecurities and curiosity led me to poor choices. I 100% know it was wrong and would do anything to undo it, but I had no idea that this much trouble would come from this. Laura's letter said this, So, both Emily and Laura fully admitted to spying on other students.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
But, and this is a big but, they didn't say anything about the homecoming election. they took no responsibility for the fraudulent votes. Their defense was their alibis.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
When the fraudulent votes were cast, Randy says Emily was at a slumber party with a friend whose father worked with the sheriff's department.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
But Laura's alibi gets a little weaker when you consider the fact that the votes had been cast over the course of more than 48 hours, on both Laura's personal and work devices. So, unless Laura was training for an ultramarathon, it was pretty clear that she was the most likely person behind the fraudulent votes.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
After a short deliberation, the district expelled Emily just a few months before graduation. And Laura was suspended from her job.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
Cue the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the highest police authority in the state. For them, a data breach and misuse of public school data was a serious allegation. They opened an official investigation into the matter. They pulled cell tower data, internet service records, and interviewed dozens upon dozens of parents, students, teachers, and administrators.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
The investigation focused on Laura as the prime suspect. Again, her devices had cast at least 100 fraudulent votes and had viewed the focus profiles of every one of those students. For Emily's part, investigators alleged that she had a long history of misusing her mom's Focus account to snoop on her classmates, stretching as far back as freshman year.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
She would even brag about it to other students. After five months, FDLE agents obtained arrest warrants for Laura Carroll and Emily Grover. The evidence was pretty damning, but at this point, the worst outcome that Laura and Emily could probably expect was a slap on the wrist in the form of probation and fines. But then, national media got a hold of the story.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
But it's easy to see why the story took off. A mother-daughter duo was placed in handcuffs for allegedly hacking their homecoming election. It's a Mean Girls-type plotline that only gets better when you throw the word Florida into the mix. It was almost too easy to poke fun at them and riff on the absurdity of the whole thing.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
For a hot minute, Laura and Emily became the biggest villains on TV news.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
Now's probably a good time to tell you that we reached out to Emily and Laura, but they declined to speak to us. But back then, they did do one sit-down interview with Good Morning America.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
A reporter joined Laura and Emily at their house. The two sit on their porch, a pot of orange flowers slightly out of focus behind them. Emily keeps smirking, as if she can't believe any of this is actually happening. Laura has a perpetual scowl on her face, as she defends herself and her daughter.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
It's a short segment, just over four minutes. Randy says the interview was fair, but it also completely doomed Laura's chances in court.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
As a Floridian myself, this was something I was familiar with. Emily and I share the experience of having our hometowns caricatured as places where human id can run free and unbridled. Where tragedy is broadcast as comedy. And where things that might have otherwise been regular small town news items get blown out into national headlines. Simply because they happened in Florida.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
And this was a prime example of that Florida feedback loop. Something crazy happens in Florida, local papers report on it, national news picks up on it, the media circus comes to town, and prosecutors double down so they don't look bad. Now, Emily and Laura were each staring down the barrel of felony charges and up to 16 years in prison.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
Randy was confident about getting Emily's case resolved, and he managed to strike a deal with the prosecutors to put her through a pretrial intervention program.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
But after the Good Morning America interview, it was clear that Laura was not going to plead guilty. She was gearing up for a fight, and Randy knew that there were no guarantees once they went to trial.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
Laura had already admitted on tape to misusing Focus to check up on Emily's classmates, or as she called it, doing parent stuff. And that made the whole case a lot riskier than Randy anticipated.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
There was a strong possibility that Laura, the wife of one of his oldest and closest friends, could go to prison. And that wasn't something Randy could stomach. Really, the whole thing had become a lot more than he bargained for when he took the case a year earlier.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
Randy notified the court that he'd be leaving the case and passed off the file to another well-known lawyer in the area.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
Randy had asked Chris to take this case because Chris is a trial lawyer. He's calm under pressure, exudes natural ease, and yeah, he's annoyingly handsome too.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
The state was using every avenue they had to gather evidence. Nothing was off limits.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
It seemed like such a drastic law enforcement reaction all over a simple school kid scam. But Chris says it's important to think about this case as two separate things. First, there was the accusation of the homecoming election scheme.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
That's what the media latched onto. That's what turned this whole case into a Ripley's believe it or not national news story.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
This was the actual meat and potatoes of the case. This is what was really on trial here.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
And it wasn't just the prosecutors and the judge that saw the case this way. According to Gabe, our resident high schooler, this was how a lot of people in Pensacola saw the story.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
It's November 2020 in Pensacola, Florida, and Laura Carroll is in a small, closed room at the school district headquarters. She's been summoned here by the district investigator, Gary Marsh. If there's something criminal happening in the schools, Gary Marsh is going to sniff it out.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
In his own way, Chris agreed that locals weren't concerned with the homecoming election part of this story.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
To outsiders, this case seemed to confirm stereotypes of a sleazy backward South that still cared deeply about old school traditions. It was dance moms meets daughters of the Confederacy. And Gabe, being a part of the rumor mill in Pensacola, saw a lot more of that side of things.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
In the end, Emily did get to go to University of West Florida and join the same sorority as her sister. She's done her best to put this behind her and just be a regular college kid, partying with her friends and going on beach vacations. And even though Emily's charges were dismissed and record expunged, her lawyer, Randy Etheridge, says that she didn't exactly get off scot-free.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
And Laura, for her part, eventually pled no contest to a single felony count, the use of a two-way communication device to facilitate a felony charge, and was given 18 months of probation. The rest of her charges were thrown out. But now she's filed an appeal claiming that the admission she made to the school investigator, Gary Marsh, should not be admissible in court.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
She was a school employee being interviewed by a school official and knew her job was on the line. So Laura's attorneys claim that she was just saying what she needed to say to protect herself. The judge in Laura's trial didn't agree with that and allowed the tape to remain on the record.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
After everything that came out of this small-town scandal— the arrests, the felony charges, the media whirlwind, the expulsions, suspensions, and firings— the biggest irony of the whole thing— was that Emily could very well have won the homecoming election, even if a single fraudulent vote had never been cast.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
Laura has been with the school district for 20 years, moving up the ranks from teacher to assistant principal at Bellevue Elementary. For a school employee, getting called to the district headquarters is the equivalent of getting called to the principal's office, and it's likely that her job is on the line.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
The system they're asking about is called Focus, and it's an online portal used to upload grades, mark attendance, and store all sorts of other sensitive student information for thousands of students within the Escambia County School District. But Marsh is curious about one student in particular.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
It's the fall of Emily's senior year, and Tate High School's homecoming game had just taken place that weekend.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
My name is Rajiv Gola, and I'm from Daytona Beach. This story takes place up in Pensacola, the panhandle, which is basically the other goofy part of Florida. So it's only natural that I pulled the short stick and had to return to a world I'd done my best to forget about completely. High school.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
I went to a public high school that had about 2,500 students and had some pretty well-regarded sports teams. You had your nerds, your theater kids, your cool crowd, your jocks, and what have you. I, of course, was a National Honor Society mathlete who competed in the annual soil identification competition. I placed third in the state.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
As you might guess with a resume like that, I didn't have much experience with going to school dances or sports events, and homecoming court was not very relevant to my life. But that wasn't the case for Emily Grover, a senior student at Tate High School in the suburb of Cantonment, Florida.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
Tate was a lot like my high school, about the same size, same sort of sports programs, and the same kind of surprisingly high quality education. Emily was your model high schooler. She was on the tennis team. She had a bunch of friends. She was well liked by her teachers. And she got good grades in everything, except math, which to be fair, is a cool subject to be bad at.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
Emily was what you might call a popular girl. Between all her extracurriculars and the student government, she knew just about everyone at Tate, including Gabe Ferguson, who was a year above her.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
That's okay, Gabe. Toot your own horn. Gabe was popular, and he was friendly with Emily Grover. But as anyone at the top of the social ladder will tell you, Being friendly isn't the same as being friends.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
No, by all means, Gabe, feel free to make our staff feel incredibly old. Anyway, given Emily's social status, it came as no surprise when she was on the shortlist for Homecoming Queen her senior year. And homecoming at a school like Tate was a big deal.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
And amidst that entire circus, there was the election for homecoming king and queen. Now, according to every high school movie you've ever watched, this is literally the most important thing for a 15-year-old.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
People may not have voted for the election, but that's not to say that the homecoming court wasn't afforded every bit of pomp and circumstance that Tate could swing. Close your eyes and let me paint you a picture. It's a cool fall Florida evening and the stands are packed with high schoolers and their parents.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
It's halftime and the marching band has just put on another one of their truly impressive shows. Chris crossing the field in perfect time while baton twirlers prance between them. They fall back to make way for the queen contenders.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
The lights glimmer off their ball gowns. Emily's is covered in silver sequins. She holds on to the tuxedoed arm of her father, Bubba Grover. The MC introduces each member of the homecoming court and starts to wind up the crowd. First, he announces the second runner-up. Then, he names the first runner-up. And then finally...
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
The local papers run photos of Emily wearing a tiara and a sash. Bubba's smile could stretch from Miami to Tallahassee. But something already seems off.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
Even though Gabe had already graduated and moved away by this point, he was still plugged into the Tate High School rumor mill, which was running at full bore that week.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
Before Emily had even finished her hair and makeup for the ceremony, there were rumors that the homecoming election votes didn't add up right. Tate's homecoming election was held using an app called Election Runner. Students logged in and used their birthdays as their secret password. And once they cast a vote, they would be barred from editing their decision or voting again. Simple enough, right?
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
Except when some students logged in to cast their vote, they were told that a vote had already been cast in their name. What's more, Election Runner had also flagged hundreds of votes which had originated from the same IP address. In the days that followed Emily's crowning, rumors continued to run rampant, and a phone call was placed to the school's fraud, waste, and abuse hotline.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
The caller left a message that would set off an atom bomb in the Escambia County school system for years to come. That message claimed that Emily Grover and her mother, Laura Carroll, had hacked the Tate High School homecoming election. That tip went straight to Gary Marsh, the former NCIS investigator who could make even the hardest criminal sweat in an interrogation room.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
Right away, he set the wheels in motion to launch his internal school district investigation. That's when he showed up at Bellevue Elementary with a piece of paper, ordering Laura Carroll to meet him that afternoon at the district headquarters for the interview you heard earlier.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
It's unclear if Gary is making this up, but he's giving a master class in playing bad cop.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
To Gary, the evidence was definitive. Laura Carroll was the assistant principal at Bellevue Elementary, and her Focus account had accessed the personal information of hundreds of students at Tate High School, a totally different school than the one she worked at. There was no professional reason to look at any of their information.
Big Time
The Homecoming Queen’s Gambit | 1
Laura Carroll maintained her innocence. She denied all the allegations and any potential involvement in the whole mess. But, almost offhand, she does make one admission.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
Andrew's store took off despite the rumors of fraud that were beginning to brew. And now that he was in, he turned the dial up to 10. He started frequenting parties at the home of Ivan Wilzig, a millionaire banker musician who makes some of the most dogshit electronic music songs I've ever heard. No offense.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
His medieval castle-themed home was known as the Playboy Mansion of the Hamptons, and hosted some of the most legendary parties of the era. Andrew also started dating a retired porn star, and he tried his hand in that business too.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
Peter Davis was a journalist who covered the city's nightlife and was a staple of the scene.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
But it was in these later years, the tail end of the glory days, edging up to the 2008 economic meltdown, that Andrew's fortunes began to turn as well. His bad behavior was finally catching up to him. A fur company that Andrew had fleeced for 20 grand had come calling, and a cascade of phony credit cards and unpaid bills followed suit.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
Eventually, he was arrested and pled guilty to identity theft, beginning a string of arrests that would define the next few years of his life.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
Maybe Andrew lived by the old PR canard that any press is good press, that being infamous was just as good as being famous. Almost immediately after those initial arrests, Peter Davis reported that Andrew hit the clubs. He quoted a friend of Andrew's who said, Andrew thinks he's a celebrity now. He's enjoying all of this.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
For Andrew, small stints in jail or probation orders couldn't slow him down. He was just getting started. He was hell-bent on making his mark and getting his name in the papers. Those small scams and schemes weren't the big ticket. Andrew was going to aim higher. His next scheme was the most complex high-stakes operation he'd ever had a hand in.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
Andrew had started hanging around a guy named Louis Damian-Jakas, or DJ, as he was known better. DJ was another guy on the fringe of the socialite scene, and Steve never liked the way he smelled.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
According to statements from the cops, DJ was also a master at organizing and operating a vast criminal enterprise, and he was pretty talented at replicating fake credit cards, some of the best the agents had ever seen. DJ had been engineering a massive credit card skimming operation that was aimed at some of New York's biggest spenders.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
The whole operation relied on waiters and bartenders that DJ had recruited at high-end steakhouses across the city. He gave those waiters handheld card skimmers and told them to be on the lookout for high rollers with premium cards, people who wouldn't notice if a few hundred or thousand dollars were missing.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
With that information, DJ would emboss blank credit cards with the information and create perfect replicas and hand those out to his shoppers. Those shoppers would go to high-end retail stores and buy Rolexes, Birkenbags, and fine wines. The shoppers would hand those goods to their managers, and the managers would pass them off to Fences, who would resell them for cash.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
On different occasions, Ander would serve both as shopper and manager in the scheme. The operation may have been large, but the scam was simple. Almost too simple. Nevertheless, they managed to get away with it for more than a year. And maybe it's because the scam preyed on the belief that people at the top don't steal from other people at the top.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
But in 2011, the scheme got too big, too sloppy, and eventually started caving in.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
This group was certainly well organized and very selective. Police raided a storage unit in Manhattan, where they found $1.2 million in cash and more than $1 million worth of goods, including 35 cases of wine. They also began seizing cash from other big players in the scheme, including $300,000 from DJ, and all told, more than $900,000 from the other characters involved.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
All in all, 28 people were arrested, including Andrew. For his part, Andrew pled guilty to enterprise corruption, grand larceny, and a few charges of possession of a forged instrument for his involvement with the identity thefts. At that time, Andrew was already on probation in Connecticut and Pennsylvania already for larceny and identity theft.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
His enterprise corruption charge would add a sentence of up to nine years imprisonment on his rap sheet. If people weren't paying attention to Andrew, they were now. His ex-girlfriend cheerfully posted about his misfortunes on her blog, noting when he was in and out of prison for his various charges. In the comments, readers shared any Andrew sightings they saw around town.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
And according to Steve, folks in the club business were shaken by the scheme. These were names they knew, people they'd partied with for years.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
Steve spoke to some of the folks who knew Andrew on the condition of anonymity and put out an article on his nightlife blog, trying to get a better sense of the guy. And this is what Steve wrote. After Andrew changed his name, he went crazy, not paying for anything, like stealing fruit from supermarkets. And he was stealing customer credit cards, using the money to pay for his lifestyle.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
Completely lost his mind." To be clear, we weren't able to independently verify any of this, but this is what Stephen Lewis wrote back in 2010, and that blog post quickly made the rounds among the socialite class.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
This was the new era, where what happened in the club no longer stayed in the club. You went out to be seen. And in New York, you could become a celebrity just by being seen.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
We did our best to reach out to Andrew and hear his side of the story ourselves. We called nearly a dozen phone numbers that were associated with him and reached out to him in all the social media profiles we could and heard nothing. We managed to speak to his mother, who only told us that this was a long time ago, and to leave her alone.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
Jason, one of Andrew's few lifelong friends, lost touch with him a few years back.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
The last we found, he'd taken on yet another new name, Andy Z, and opened a small fashion boutique with his new wife in Las Vegas. We also tried reaching out to her, but never heard back.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
Andrew spent what seems like his whole life trying to become part of the in-crowd, and he showed over and over again that he'd do whatever it took to do that. There was nothing too seedy, no price too high. So when Andrew finally saw himself in the hallowed pages of the New York Post, the Daily Beast, and his holy grail, Page Six, it was as sweet a success by any other name.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
Sure, the headlines read, Eastside Boutique King Busted and Party Boy King Shoplift Spree, but they called him king, didn't they?
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
One of the people on the scene at the time was Mr. Andrew Parker. He was a flashy 40-something, always cloaked in fur coats and sunglasses, no matter the season or the time of day. He seemed to be at every party, and depending on who you asked, he was the owner of an up-and-coming fashion boutique, a nightclub promoter, or simply an entrepreneur.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
But the way his clothes hung on his shoulders, the way his voice was just a bit too affective, and the way his charm seemed just a touch too put on, well, it was all a dead giveaway.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
As a man on the fringes of the socialite world, banging his fists on the glass to get in, Andrew was willing to do anything to see his name in page six. Anything. Even breaking the one rule of high rollers. Don't steal from your friends.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
But long before Andrew was a high roller and elite grifter, he was a middle schooler. And back then, in the early 1980s, he still went by his birth name, Andrew Pollack.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
That's Jason Ressler, one of Andrew's few friends that we were able to track down. The inside joke in the New York private school world was that Dwight stood for dumb white idiots getting high together.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
Andrews High School was full of rich kids. It was the perfect place to see up close how people of that social class dressed, how they spoke and how they carried themselves. And more than anything, how these kids acted out and got away with it. These were the children of some of the most powerful people in the city.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
People who screwed over everyone else in New York, made a killing, and never got in trouble for it. Instead, they got their names on parks and buildings. But Andrew wasn't in that social class. According to Jason, even though Andrew's father was a Wall Street banker, things never really seemed very stable at home, financially or otherwise.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
That stayed middle-class path never really appealed to Andrew in any case. And he sought out other role models.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
This was the 1980s, and New York's nightlife was pulsing like never before, generating and exporting trends that would infect the entire country. Clubs like Danceteria and Aria became household names, and every sort of debauched indulgence you could imagine was on display.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
If you were a teenager looking to make your mark in the city, looking to be somebody, there was nowhere else in the world you'd rather be. And that's exactly where Andrew wanted to make his mark. The first place he ever took me was Palladium. That was the most sort of important club. There were few clubs as legendary and institutional as Palladium.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
From a gigantic, imposing mural on the facade to the spaceship lighting on the walkway leading to the dance floor, the bass pumping through your body, almost lifting you off the ground, it was impossible not to be swept up in the moment and feel like you were on top of the world. This is where the who's who of New York's party life congregated, and Andrew was right there with them.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
In this crowd, it didn't matter how much cash you could flash or who your parents were. The only question was whether you were deemed cool enough to step inside. In some ways, it was less about fitting in as much as it was about standing out. This was the sort of equalizer Andrew needed. And boy, did he step up.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
He wore his hair like a member of Motley Crue and his jeans looked like they'd gone through a mulching machine. For what might have been the first time in his life, Andrew found his crowd.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
Everywhere else, Andrew was used to waiting his turn in line. Behind all the kids who got picked up from school in chauffeured cars, or the kids who didn't think twice about putting it on daddy's card. But this was Andrew's world.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
Andrew'd always had an entrepreneurial drive to him too. So he decided he'd try to get into the club business himself, which was a short-lived experiment.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
In the years that followed, Jason and Andrew would slowly drift their own directions. Jason would go off to college and eventually leave the city to chase his creative ambitions. Most of the kids they went to high school with left for prestigious universities. By and large, they left the party life behind, and Andrew along with it.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
It was a constant reminder that he wasn't one of them. But Andrew was determined to do whatever it took to secure his place among that crowd. He had to build himself up from nothing. He started selling ties on the street, going to street fairs. Andrew was just getting his feet wet. He had a hustler spirit and an ambition to join the upper ranks of the New York elite.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
It didn't matter where he started because he knew where he'd end up.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
To be clear, Steve Lewis is not a nerd, and he's covered from the neck down with tattoos. I have no clue what he meant by being a nerd, and he never really explained it either. But what you do need to know about Steve is that he was a prominent club designer and manager for decades.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
If you want to get a sense of what partying in the city was like back in the day, there's really no one better to ask.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
I did Webster Hall. In any case, it was through Steve's line of work as a man about town that he ran into one Mr. Andrew Parker.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
Andrew had traded in his torn-up jeans for pinstripe suits. He was no longer a bummy teenager without a college degree who was just living at home with his mom. He was a fashion retailer, and he reinvented his style to look the part.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
It's the late 2000s in New York City, and the only people who think the economy might tank are wearing tinfoil hats. There's more money than ever and Manhattan is the center of the universe. The uber-wealthy are living bigger than ever before, and an elite group of young, fashionable trendsetters among this already exclusive club emerge as the face of this new era.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
Andrew made a good impression on Steve, which is saying something, because Steve generally didn't go for the preppy types. It was incredible how far Andrew had come from his ratty high school days. For someone who didn't come from fabulous wealth or pedigree, it was a real achievement to run with a crowd that he did. Andrew finally had more than a foot in the door with the socialite elite.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
Steve remembers Andrew hanging out with people like Zoe Kravitz or Noel Ashman, a prominent movie producer, or Jocelyn Wall, the daughter of a real estate mogul, and Eric Brahms, whose father Maurice had been in the nightclub business.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
There has always been honor among thieves and scoundrels. It was an unwritten rule of the higher echelons of society. An echelon that it seemed Andrew was well on his way to joining. By 2006, his little tie and pockets of square street stamp had become a brick-and-mortar store on one of the most desirable zip codes in the city. Jason Ressler, Andrew's childhood friend again.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
It was around this time that Andrew allegedly changed his name from Pollock to Parker. And it's what he decided to name his boutique. A.S. Parker. He sold high-end designer labels. He threw swanky parties and invited all the socialites of the moment to come be photographed in his store. He began calling himself the Mayor of Madison Avenue.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
It seemed that Andrew had finally gained admittance to the Cool Kids Club. But there was that dark streak, that old obsession with crime as a lifestyle that Andrew never quite shook.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
You heard Peter Davis at the top of this episode. Back in the 2000s, he was a veteran journalist who reported from the trenches of the New York social scene. And that's how he got a tip about a colorful character named Andrew Parker. He'd seen Andrew around town, at parties and events, but never really took him seriously. Because Peter was a born and bred New York socialite.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
and he could tell what block in the Upper West Side you were from just by the way you wore a scarf. And to him, Andrew never looked quite right. He might have had everyone else fooled, but Peter wasn't convinced.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
So when he got wind of some less than kosher business practices at Andrew's store, he decided to take a closer look, and eventually wrote an article for the Daily Beast full of Andrew's alleged misdeeds.
Big Time
The Mayor of Madison Avenue | 9
To Peter, it was a case study in everything that was a little seedy and schemey about the fashion boutique industry. The whole designer boutique market was a totally fabricated economy where you paid for a name instead of a product. But there was something particularly interesting and unscrupulous about Andrew that set him apart from others in the industry.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
If my friend transgresses, I forgive once. But if he repeats the offense, I ensure his regret.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
I was repelled by your great wrongdoing. A person who has spent his life hunting, he has never hunted. His deeds are like a lion's.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
My spirit is cured of you, girl, when your face appears no pleasure I feel.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
I have heard that you were sitting in the palace with the British security. I am starting to doubt you.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
We will take your son. Your daughter is ours. Your life is over.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
In a few months we will take him from you. You will see.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
You see, Haya, we don't need you anymore. We don't need you or want you.