Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
She Scammed $400,000,000 - The Gina Champion-Cain Story
14 Oct 2025
Gina Champion-Cain is a former San Diego business executive who orchestrated what is considered one of the largest woman-led Ponzi schemes in U.S. history. Beginning around 2012, she raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors by promising to use their funds to make high-interest loans to individuals seeking California liquor licenses—funds she claimed would be held in escrow. In reality, she diverted the money to prop up her struggling businesses, to pay returns to earlier investors, and to sustain her lifestyle, while fabricating documents and attempting to conceal her fraud.
Full Episode
So this woman scammed $400 million. Oh my God. Now the woman's name is Gina. And Gina, she's about 47 when the story starts, living in California. And she is a successful business owner in San Diego. She does a lot of work in real estate development. Not only that, people in her community love her. Here she is on the cover of a local magazine. Here she is on another magazine cover.
Here she is getting interviewed on a podcast. She even ran for mayor of San Diego at one point. In fact, she's made so many contributions to her community that the city council names June 28th Gina Champion Kane Day. So she literally has her own day named after her in San Diego. That's how much people like this woman. Well, all that's about to change.
Because one day in 2011, she decides to expand her business portfolio and she buys a restaurant. But when she starts the process of buying this restaurant, she runs into a little problem. She has to get her liquor license. And she quickly finds out that the state of California has some pretty strict laws about liquor licenses. A lot of red tape, you know, it costs money, etc.
But whatever, Gina goes through the process and she gets the proper one for her restaurant. And afterwards, she feels like this process sucks so bad that it actually gives her an idea to get rich. What if she starts a business that could give loans to other bars and restaurants that they can then use to get their liquor licenses? It's not a terrible idea. Seems legit enough.
So she starts this liquor license loan business. Then she goes to her wealthy friends and family and business people and anyone who wants to invest in her idea. And she explains to them how difficult and tedious and expensive it is for a bar or restaurant to get a liquor license. And that her company can help by loaning these places the money to do it.
and she'll charge high interest on these loans and they're all gonna make so much money. And these investors love this idea and they start investing in it. And suddenly Gina's little idea now has millions of dollars in funding. Here's the problem though. Getting a liquor license for a bar or restaurant in California, It's not as hard as Gina is making it out to be.
So she has essentially created a business to solve a problem that doesn't really exist. And because this problem doesn't really exist, she's not really loaning out any money to any bars or restaurants because there's no demand for these loans. So then what is she doing with all these millions of dollars that people have invested in her company? Well, she's taking a whole bunch of it for herself.
She now owns a bunch of restaurants and she's buying homes and turning them into rental properties.
She opens a couple of small clothing stores. She buys herself stuff like nice cars and hundreds of thousands of dollars in jewelry and box seats to professional baseball games and football games. She buys herself a $22,000 golf cart for some reason. She even allocates $2 million a year as a salary for herself. Damn, Gina, what do you need all $2 million a year for?
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