Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén
Billionaire Boys Club: Wannabe Heir Makes a Killing in LA
20 Apr 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What mythological story parallels Joe Hunt's pursuit of wealth?
In ancient Greece, they told the story of Keen Midas, a man so hungry for wealth that he begged the gods for a touch that could turn anything into gold. And they granted his wish. At first, it felt like glory, but the gift became a curse. His food hardened in his hands. His daughter froze into a statue. And Midas learned too late that the pursuit of limitless riches can cost you everything.
But Midas isn't just a myth. His story repeats itself again and again with new names and new fortunes. before Elizabeth Holmes and her bogus company Theranos, before Anna Delvey, the fraudulent German heiress, before even Bernie Madoff, there was Joe Hunt, a.k.a. Joe Gamsky.
Chapter 2: How did Joe Gamsky's upbringing influence his ambitions?
He was the man who wanted to touch the world and have it turn to gold, and he eventually found out that his own kind of golden touch was lethal. I'm Harvey Guillen, and this is Killer Story. Cue the 80s music. It's April 1980 in Los Angeles, California. Joe Gamsky is young, handsome, charming, and hungry for a kind of life most people only dream about.
He wants wealth, power, influence, all of it. And in his mind, it's not a question of if it will happen, it's when. Which sounds entitled, I know, but Joe doesn't come from money. He just knows money. He spent most of his formative years rubbing elbows with the 1% by earning a scholarship to the most elite prep school in LA.
His classmates were the sons of CEOs, heirs to enormous fortunes, the original Nepo babies. Meanwhile, Joe's father was a storefront psychologist, and his mother disappeared when he was in high school. Well, sometime after she called Joe the Antichrist at a seance. So, at school, Joe always felt like a tourist. like he didn't belong.
But being that close to real wealth showed him it didn't have to be a fantasy. It could one day be his. So he studied, he worked, he apparently read the dictionary for three hours every night, all because, as one former classmate put it, he wanted to prove he was better and smarter than the rich kids. And he was.
The real start to Joe's upward trajectory actually happens by accident when he bumps into two former prep school classmates on the street, Dean Carney and Ben Dosti.
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Chapter 3: What strategies did Joe use to build the Billionaire Boys Club?
And Joe takes advantage of the chance encounter by inviting them to a movie on him, which is both an honest invitation to catch up and a way for Joe to showcase how well he's doing, how impressive he is. And that's important because Dean and Ben are both those rich kids we talked about earlier. Their families have a lot of money, money that could one day come in handy for Joe.
So Joe turns that movie night into multiple lunches, into regular hangs, which eventually turns into Joe being invited to stay at Dean's family estate in the Hollywood Hills. for free. Because Dean's parents think Joe is a good influence on their son. And before long, Joe's long-term plan works out.
He gets a seat as a trader on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and he convinces Dean's parents to give him a bunch of money to invest. He raises half a million dollars and ships off to Chicago. The plan is obviously to take the money and make it multiply. But within 18 months, he loses it all. Every penny. He does so poorly that the government revokes his trading privileges for the next 10 years.
But here's the thing. Joe doesn't see the epic failure as an obstacle. In his mind, it only poses a problem if people find out. And he's not about to let that happen. So when he moves back to LA, he doesn't tell people he was banned from trading. He says he was forced out by bigger players in the game because he was too successful. How successful?
Chapter 4: How did Joe Hunt manipulate his friends for financial gain?
Well, he says he turned their $500,000 into $14 million. And apparently, No one questions it. Because when Joe moves back to LA, he moves in with Dean to a condo owned by Dean's father. So clearly, the Carney's still think their money is safe and doing well. Which may be hard to believe, but by all accounts, Joe is nothing if not charismatic, articulate, and convincing.
And this lie is just the beginning of him putting those qualities to use. By the spring of 1983, Joe convinces Dean and Ben to become the first two members of a new social club. He calls it the BBC, which I promise is not a reference to anything that you may have thought about and popped into your head, nope. It apparently comes from a restaurant that he liked in Chicago, the Bombay Bicycle Club.
He just borrowed the initials. Now, what do they actually do? Well, Joe says it's a social and investment club, but it's hard to pin down what that actually means because Joe's pitch to recruit members doesn't really make any sense. He speaks in what I call startup word salad. He waxes poetic about what he calls his paradox philosophy.
Saying things like, reality is circumstantial, black is white, and white is black. There is no good or bad, no true or false. Everything's about reorienting perspective. And if that sounds like a whole lot of nothing, there's a reason for that. But, like I said, Joe is a type of person other people just believe.
Chapter 5: What led to Joe's first major failure in trading?
Whatever he's selling, people are buying. And when it comes to the BBC, it helps that he targets the kind of people he used to go to school with. Young men with trust funds who are living in their parents' shadow, who don't need their own success, but feel like they have something to prove. Like Tom and Dave May, twins. Their dad owns a massive real estate empire.
Their allowances fund their lives and they stand to inherit a fortune when their father passes. Despite the fact that he thinks they're both totally and completely useless. He once told them they should go get a job scooping ice cream at Baskin Robbins because that's all they're qualified to do. But when Joe speaks to Tom and Dave May, he builds them up.
He tells them they're brilliant, resourceful, filled with untapped potential. Their parents? They're what he calls normies. Weighed down by old values, he says they lack the intellectual daring to succeed in the new era. in the future of American business, which is where Joe can take them. All they have to do is trust his vision. He then repeats this speech to all the Tom and Dave Mays in LA.
And the pitch works. They all accept Joe as their fearless leader. It doesn't matter that there is no real vision, strategy, or organizational structure to the group. They believe his mumbo-jumbo, and it doesn't hurt that he gives them whatever title they want.
Chapter 6: How did Joe's lies about his trading success escalate?
President? Executive Vice President? Who cares? It's not important. As Joe says, all they need are their ideas and the capital to fund them. Of course, the initial capital comes from the new recruits.
Tom and Dave May, for example, hand over $160,000 and then they tell their dad they've been appointed to the board of directors at a new corporation called BBC Consolidated of North America because why not? Now, if stage one is recruiting members and raising capital, stage two is investing in an image, which starts with a classic movie makeover for Joe.
He's the only one in the group who needs training on how to be rich. So Dean and Ben get him a haircut, tell him what suits to wear, what cars to buy, what clubs to make appearances at, and they don't pinch pennies.
They drive parades of Porsches, Mercedes, and BMWs, take first-class flights everywhere, go shopping on Rodeo Drive, buy a massive office in West Hollywood, luxury condos with neighbors like Julie Andrews, Mr. T, and a Saudi prince. I pity the fool. They travel in packs of 20, running up tabs wherever they go and leaving $500 tips like their pocket change.
Pretty soon, the members start referring to themselves as the Billionaire Boys Club, and the joke kind of sticks. Everywhere they go, the Billionaire Boys Club makes an impression. And that's what Joe has been missing, maybe even more than capital. He's always been able to sell his promise, but now he can sell his success.
And that leads to real investors, real business deals, and real people begging him to invest their money for them. Cut to about a year later. It's June 7th, 1984. Joe rushes into Dean's bedroom to wake him up. It's 8.30 a.m. Joe's hair is freshly wet from a shower. He's wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase with something important inside, a check for $1.5 million.
And it's signed by Ron Levin, the man he just killed.
Do you want to hear something spooky?
Some monster, it reminded me of Bigfoot.
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Chapter 7: What events led to the murder of Ron Levin?
They're a bunch of rich kids who blow their parents' money doing rich kid things. Blackjack in Vegas, polo lessons, safaris, which would be totally fine if that's all it was, but no. They've convinced themselves and a bunch of other influential business people that they're incredibly successful investors and entrepreneurs. And the trail of that delusion ultimately leads back to Joe.
It's one thing to raise money. It's another thing to make money, to turn a profit, right? Well, Joe's primary plan for turning his club's money into more money is to revisit his greatest failure. trading. Remember when he went to Chicago, lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then the government revoked his trading privileges for 10 years? Yeah, Joe sees an easy way around that.
All he has to do is change his name. So Joe Gramsci becomes Joe Hunt, and he's ready to trade again. But the problem is, he's way better at convincing people to invest money than investing it himself. This one time, he gives a presentation to the stockholders of a major company as part of a potential merger deal, and by the end of it,
They make him president of the company, chairman of the board, and give him complete control over its $12 million of assets. But Joe, and everyone else in his little fraternity, can't seem to put that money to work. Joe's just proven he can run a Ponzi scheme. Which is all the club is.
For those who don't know what that means, it's a type of investment fraud that pays early investors by using money collected from new investors rather than actual profits. It requires a constant flow of cash from new clients and new investments to create the illusion of success because that illusion is what attracts investors.
But the thing about Ponzi schemes is the people running them don't necessarily think they're doing something wrong because they always see a way out. They just need their next bet to pay off so they can stay afloat long enough to take someone else's money. It's a form of gambling, but just like in Vegas, the house always wins.
Ponzi schemes inevitably collapse when the pool of new investors runs dry or when too many people try to cash out at once. In May 1983, there are no cracks in the Billionaire Boys Club. No one's killed anyone yet, no one's waking up to checks written by murdered men, and there are plenty of potential investors left in the sea. Joe has been trying to reel a big one in for a while now.
His name's Ron Levin. He's the type of gay man who appears charming and polished, who always greets you with a smile, but you're kind of worried about what he's saying behind your back. He's 42 years old and travels around with a gaggle of young gay men. And even though it's the 80s, he's too wealthy and well-connected for his sexuality to be an obstacle.
He's longtime friends with Muhammad Ali, and he throws massive parties that everyone wants to be at. They include guests like Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, and Andy Warhol. The lore is Ron has a 186 IQ. He's a genius who, after graduating from Harvard, took his $200,000 inheritance and turned it into 25 million. So you can see why Joe wants to do business with him.
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Chapter 8: How did the aftermath of Ron Levin's murder affect the Billionaire Boys Club?
which makes Joe look like a fool and turns Ron into public enemy number one. Pretty soon, Dean and other members overhear Joe making some really inflammatory comments, like how he's going to kill Ron. You know, those kind of things. And that makes some members nervous. Some start to see the writing on the wall and decide to leave the club.
But people leaving only makes Joe's leadership even more cult-like. Anyone he's close with, he draws closer. You're either all in or you're all out. It's like that meme with that dog. Even though everything's on fire, Joe's sitting there saying, it's fine. It's not. In fact, he raises expectations. He sets higher goals. He says he wants to recruit thousands more members.
And he starts saying the quiet part out loud. That the BBC needs to be a national organization of kids close to their inheritances. One that can expand and create companies all over the world. In places like Hong Kong, Hamburg, and Rio.
Meanwhile, in Joe's loyal circle, people start talking about buying what they call an ice house, which is a retreat they can escape to should things really hit the fan. And Joe starts buying books like Hitman, Technical Manual for Independent Contractors, and Black Bag Owner's Manual, too. Which brings me to the person Joe buys those books for, Jim Pittman. Jim is Joe's bodyguard.
They met while Jim was working security at some event Joe attended. They got to talking and Joe ended up hiring Jim to teach karate lessons, one of the BBC's many random extracurriculars. He then brought him on board as his personal security guard. Jim is 5'8 and 210 pounds of solid muscle.
Joe tells people he's a former All-American NFL football player who also spent some time working for the mob, and none of that is true. That's just a backstory he invents. Why? I don't know. But Jim really is a karate guy. He's good at it. He's won lots of competitions. While Jim's on payroll, Joe buys him really expensive presents, but not the kind you can buy at a mall.
He buys Jim weapons and surveillance tools. I'm talking about CIA-level stuff. Voice-activated microphones and pistols built into ballpoint pens. That's on top of the more standard tools of warfare. You know, your run-of-the-mill machine guns and silencers. At first, he says it's just because Jim's interested in those kinds of things. But then, yeah, he buys Jim books on how to murder people.
For fun? I'm just interested in, you know, killing people. What? I don't think so, Jim. I don't think so. Things first escalate to real violence in March. Joe disappears one night, and when he reappears, he tells some of the people closest to him that he and Jim went and shot up a lab with machine guns to fix some business problems they were having.
Come April, someone notices a strange vial of liquid in Jim's car. When they ask about it, Jim warns him not to touch it. He says it's an industrial chemical solvent that, spiked with poison, it can cause instantaneous heart attacks. Which brings us to June 1984, when Joe wakes Dean up with that $1.5 million check with Ron Levin's name on it.
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