Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Teenage Con Artist or Genius? Ian Bick’s Million Dollar Ponzi
Mon, 02 Jun 2025
Ian Bick tell his story of going from teenage party promoter to nightclub owner, to running a million dollar ponzi scheme at the age of 18 and finally at 21, getting arrested by the FBI and sent to federal prison for fraud. Website: https://www.ianbick.com/YouTube Channel: @ianbickCT Follow me on all socials!Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrimeDo you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://forms.gle/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7Send me an email here: [email protected] you want a custom "con man" painting to shown up at your doorstep every month? Subscribe to my Patreon: https: //www.patreon.com/insidetruecrimeDo you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopartListen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox Check out my true crime books! Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCFBent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TMIt's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5GDevil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3KBailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WXIf you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69Cashapp: $coxcon69
Chapter 1: How did Ian Bick start his journey as a teenage entrepreneur?
This was all legitimate, maybe not, you know, ethical. I was so confident that the shows would make money that I'm just promising their initial investment.
What are you, 17? How do you scrape together 40 grand?
There's like 12 investors, and I would say eight of them are kids. I was named top 10 entrepreneurs in Connecticut. At 18 years old, they handed me a Target letter. You're officially under investigation. But why are fraud money laundering, bank fraud?
Are you starting to realize this is super serious? You were raised in Connecticut.
Yeah, right down the road in Danbury.
Okay.
I was born in New York City and then we moved to my family's summer home where we grew up. They renovated it for my dad's summer home and then grew up there on the lake, Jewish community called Lake Wabika.
Okay. So, I mean, if it was a summer home, why were you raised there?
It was my dad's summer home and he renovated it to move our family there.
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Chapter 2: What led Ian to promise investors their money back?
Are you explaining any of this to your dad? Do you have a mentor? Do you have anybody that you're going to and saying, hey, I downloaded a contract. Is it a big deal? What if I guarantee their money? Because you cannot guarantee money. You know what I'm saying?
But that wasn't like a fraud thing. That was a civil thing at that point. That was me promising to pay their money back. Right. That wasn't like a guaranteed thing. This was all legitimate for the most part, you know? Maybe not, you know, ethical, but it was, I mean, to promise their money back, I was so confident that the shows would make money that I'm just promising their initial investment.
Well, first of all, them signing a contract with a 17-year-old and expecting that he's going to pay you back. Like, first of all, you're 17. You can't sign a contract.
These are other 17-year-olds signing a contract. Oh, yeah, this is ridiculous. It's a bunch of teenagers dealing with this and parents are giving their kids money to give to me. That's what was going on. I'd walk around the high school. I'd go into a Chipotle with a contract and a briefcase, and my friend would beat me with a check for five grand. It was crazy.
And you've got an LLC set up with a business bank account set up.
I would walk into a local bank depositing checks. I'd go in there with a money bag and say, here you go. No one bats an eye.
How do you open an LLC if you're not 18 years old?
That's a hell of a question. I did it online.
Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Okay, because I wrote a book for a guy named Ephraim Deverelli.
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Chapter 3: How did the party business evolve into a Ponzi scheme?
I don't know. I know exactly. I wanted to be like, yeah. I know how you feel. You know what I'm saying? Like it's, you can look back and think I should have done this. I should have done this. I should have done this.
I could have avoided everything bad that's happened in my life. All the pain, the suffering, the trauma, everything. All I did was that one night I told the truth. That's it. That's all I had to do. But once that one lie started, it was a domino effect.
And did you ever go to your parents and say, Hey, this is what's happening.
I went to them when I needed money for a retainer when the federal FBI was investigating me.
That's not the conversation they want.
No, my dad had – I had meant to a lawyer like six months prior. This was like a year later because this all happened very quickly. Like the feds investigated within a year because this was – like this repeated itself when I raised more money. Like the year of 2013, I raised like $700,000. By the end of 2013, I was $1.3 million in debt because I was promising people a 50% interest rate of return.
um on their money because i got into like this electronic business where i was wholesaling electronics but i found out the product was fake right um so it's just this whole web and mess of lies um and within a year it all like imploded so i mean at what point did you know what's this what's the scene where you realize the fbi is investigating this
So what happened was December 2013, this is like 11 months later, when everything fails, all my concerts, the nightclub I got, all this shit fails.
Are these kids now asking for their money back?
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Chapter 4: What were the consequences of Ian's fraudulent activities?
You're making it sound like the U.S. government would lie or mislead you. So what, so when they come down, they arrest you, you get brought downtown, you get processed, you get released?
Well, I didn't even, that didn't even happen yet. What happened was that I sat outside my house for a half hour in the snow, cold as shit. They wanted to wait for the investigating detective to come just so he could say, we got you. Do you remember me?
Yeah.
Then they put us in a car. We go to one courthouse. That judge couldn't make it in that early. It was snowing. We had to go to another one. I'm in and out within a few hours. Federal bail is very easy if it's not like a dangerous offense. They knew I was getting bail. The government didn't oppose it. My parents just signed for 250 grand. You didn't have to pay that money. You just sign it.
The biggest thing was they wanted to ban me from social media. They were trying to cripple my income because my nightclub was based on social media promotion. So one of the conditions of my release was I had to close my social media accounts.
OK, so but up until that point, that that nightclub was doing well.
It was doing okay. It was a brand new business. So it would make money. My problem was with that business was, see, I was always a terrible businessman, great marketer, bad at business. Like I would take good money from an event that would make money and pay off bad debts and I could never get ahead. So like the electric bill wouldn't get paid.
So I racked up a 40, 50 grand electric bill and I'd put wood in front of it. So Eversource didn't shut it off. I did like stupid shit, didn't pay the landlord, days of events. We had no cash flow. You need cash to operate a business.
So I would take ticket money from sales an hour before doors open, run to the dollar store, the shopping cart, because I didn't have my driver's license or a car, and get cans of soda and drinks and shit to sell because we had a non-alcoholic bar. It was just – every day was miserable. I had people calling me for money. I had – It's just a lot of pressure.
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Chapter 5: How did Ian's legal troubles escalate to an FBI investigation?
the prosecutors were expecting the jury to find me guilty on all counts the same day to them that would have been a win well three days went by and there was no no verdict yet and so they're sweating my lawyers trying to make a backdoor deal a lot of people are wondering why this even went to trial jury comes back and says we can't reach a verdict well in federal court
The judge is ordered by law to state, I urge you to go back and reconsider for that first time they can't reach a verdict. They come back with a question, what happens if we can't reach a verdict before Thanksgiving? Because Thanksgiving's the next day. We started jury deliberations Monday. This is Wednesday afternoon at like 5 p.m. Thanksgiving's Thursday.
And they were like, well, you'd have to come back in December after the holiday recess, this and that. Ten minutes later, they have a verdict. And it's the most mixed up verdict ever. So, you know, one of the components.
I was going to say somebody was holding out.
Yeah. One of the most mixed up components of wire fraud is you have to have criminal intent. So out of the 15 federal charges, because the U.S. attorney will overcharge you because they need one charge to stick. Right. I'm found guilty on some wire frauds, but not the others. And it's all the same time period. So how could you have criminal intent in one, not criminal intent in the other?
There was a mistrial on like four of the counts, but because it's a fraud case federally, they're able to lump all the money. I could have won 14 accounts. I could have won 14 counts and that one still would have got me the same amount.
Yeah.
I won a couple, lost a couple, and mistrial on the rest. And that's what happened. I was able to go home that day after the verdict. The government tried to have another bond hearing to revoke my bond. I won that one. And then it took almost a year to go to sentencing.
Are you, did you think about appealing it?
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Chapter 6: What was the outcome of Ian's trial and subsequent imprisonment?
So literally something similar to that happened to, not me, but to actually an older inmate who was my cellie. At one point, same type of thing where the guard never touched him, but he basically made a bunch of sexual advances toward him. And and he was like, he was like, you know, no, I'm not interested. And absolutely not. And he basically walks off.
And then he came and he told us, he's like, you're not me and my buddy Petey, like, you're not gonna believe what just happened. And he told us and we were just like, are you serious?
Yeah. I mean, the thing that creeped out everyone at the camp and stuff, because he didn't go approach any other man in that camp. He approached me who looked like a little kid. Right. Like, remember, I'm 21, 22. I look young at 28. So at that age, I looked even younger. So that was the scary part about this whole thing.
So while I was in Coleman, two, even though I'm not trying to make this about me, I'm just- Did we have to get Justin here? I know. I'm just trying to explain it. Two COs got arrested for sex offenses while I was there. One was actually using the computer at the prison. Another one-
Hooked up – well, he thought he was talking to like a 13- or 14-year-old boy, and it turned out to be a 45-year-old pissed-off FBI agent. And he met him like in the parking lot of like a Publix or something, like a grocery store. So it was two while I was there.
I tried everything to use it to my advantage. I was wearing BP8s, BP9s. Hey, I'll drop this if I could have six months halfway house. You know, this, I wrote my judge. The judge ordered the Department of Justice to investigate. And then they just wrote bullshit saying the prison system's already investigating this. I found out from my bunkmate that they investigated him at the, got an interview.
They did statements and stuff, but I think they buried it. Maybe the guy got fired, but they didn't prosecute him or anything. Well,
It's almost like the clergy. They'll move him. They'll just move him to another prison. That's their problem. And they'll move him to another prison. That's their problem.
It's fucked up, especially if there's multiple allegations. And like I met with a lawyer and he's like, you could pursue it, but like you're in a, it's not worth it. So now I just have a great story.
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Chapter 7: What lessons did Ian learn from his experiences?
Yeah. No, when you start talking about, well, you know, in prison, this is how or this is how you make Stinger or this is how you make, you know, prison pizza. Or it's like the fact that you're even saying the word prison. It's like there's no he didn't go to prison.
And then you have Jesse's angle of like everything's philosophical and stuff, which sometimes goes and sometimes doesn't. But that's him, you know, his way of doing it. So everyone just has Larry Lawton because he's older. Like everyone has their different approaches to it.
What's the guy? I'm going to say his name is Josh from 23 and 1.
Yeah, I've been in touch with him.
Yeah, yeah. I've texted him once or twice, and he'd be great to interview.
He said he doesn't fly, though. I'm trying to get him on, but he doesn't fly. We have 1090 Jake coming, though.
I'm excited for that. Do a remote. I won't do a remote. Listen, I didn't want to either. You understand, I didn't do any remotes for the first year. I've only been doing them for about a year and a half now. But yeah, like, I mean, there's, listen, everybody wants to, everybody would, would have you on their, everybody would have you on their platform.
And I think almost everybody involved, everybody in the, you know, the genre would, would definitely be on your platform.
Yeah, I won't go on other people's remote anymore either, unless it's a big name. A lot of the times you get on these Zoom ones and they're just like, tell me everything. And I'm not sitting there looking at a webcam. Like I'll do it in person all day because at least I get something out of it because I can make clips from a professional video. I can't do that on a webcam.
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