Sara dives into the OC’s dark underbelly of dirty deals, high stakes scams, and hustlers. A mysterious new friend starts passing Sara off as his sister, and teaches her how to loan money to desperate people to make big returns, quickly. There’s no turning back now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Sarah and what challenges does she face?
in the place which it seems to meet everybody, Fashion Island at the R&D Kitchen. It's very masculine, dark leather, old school Hollywood vibes, one of Sarah's favorites.
I went there to meet a girlfriend of mine after, it was probably at three o'clock in the afternoon, and just to meet up for a drink and catch up.
It's a circular bar at the center of the restaurant. That's when she saw him.
Oh my goodness, it's like a scene out of the casino.
Chapter 2: What role does Brian Quinn play in Sarah's life?
The guy at the center of all the activity, a guy named Brian Quinn.
He gets up, starts running around the bar, like just saying hi to everybody, telling everybody, I'm buying everybody drinks. So he literally had the bartender give everybody around. And he's just running around saying hello, saying hello. You know, he has a slicked back hair. He's got like Gucci clothes on. He's short. He's just like the Italian mobster look.
So this bubblegum gangster was treating R&D like his own personal strip club. Sara was immediately drawn to him. His brashness, his confidence.
You know, he came to me and he's like, oh, I'm going to buy your drink. And I said, you know what? I'm going to buy my own drink. So I did. And after that, he was kind of impressed. We started talking. We found out we knew all the same people. And so from that, you know, at that day, I said, I know this sounds weird, but I'd like to be your friend.
The first year or so that Sarah and Brian knew each other, they weren't close, but they'd often run into each other.
It was R&D. We'd meet at Pelican Hill, the bar there. We'd meet at Fleming's Bar, just basically like the higher end bars we'd always meet up. And slowly but surely, you know, we became close.
It's something I started to notice about Sarah. She's a girl who likes to live a few drinks deep. Brian Quinn, for his part, is one of those guys that no one really knows what he does. The kind of guy who seemed to have a lot of secrets, but everyone knows his name.
So the one thing about Brian that everybody knows is he just gets hammered drunk and then he starts dancing on bars with his shirt off, like at Pelican Hill. We're not talking about, you know, strip club. We're talking about Pelican Hill on a bar dancing.
Pelican Hill is a resort in the O.C.,
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Chapter 3: How does Sarah get involved in hard money lending?
I mean, we had money. We both worked, so it wasn't a big deal. I just wanted to rid myself of him, so I signed over the house, the cars. I signed over everything. I had like a couple hundred thousand dollars in my bank account, and that was it. I was going on my merry way. I didn't care. That's not totally true.
Sarah makes herself sound chill about the whole breakup here, but I know for a fact she was heartbroken, at least over the dogs, Dino and Louie. And maybe it was friendly at first, but Gerard would eventually request a restraining order against her that painted a different picture. He had a new girlfriend, and Sarah was ugly about it, according to court records.
He describes a pattern of stalking and threats, and he had plenty of texts to make his case. But when Sarah moved into Brian Quinn's second bedroom at his villa in Pelican Hill, she was 34, had some cash, but not much else.
Chapter 4: What is the significance of the luxury lifestyle in the story?
Pelican Hill, I think their rooms start at $1,000 a night. So just to put it in perspective, we live there regularly. But it was two bedrooms. It was the bathrooms. I mean, we're talking big tubs, big steam showers, maids coming every day, changing your towels. It was living the life, like really and truly.
Zara said she felt relieved and that Brian was the friend she needed to start her new life.
It took my mind off of the divorce, right? So he just had me drinking all the time, partying with him, meeting all these big hoo-hahs everywhere. And it felt impressive. I felt like I was bettering my career. I felt safe with Brian as my brother.
She said they drank and ate snacks and charcuterie all day. On top of that, Brian had all this influence and money that Zara so clearly craved. And he needed her help.
When I moved in with him, he said, oh, can you raise me $10 million for my lending company? And I said, I'll try. We'll see. I don't know. And then he just kind of used me for business. But he also was there for me as a friend.
Brian started organizing these investor parties. He'd entertain big shots with deep pockets and everything was about appearances.
So that's, it looks successful. He drove a white Rolls Royce. And here's some crazy shit. Sarah drove a white Rolls Royce too. I had the Don, I had the convertible and he had the four door. Yeah. So we were like brother and sister, like driving up to places together and actually looked, if it wasn't such a shit story, it was, it was cute.
Brother and sister showing up at meetings in their matching white Rolls Royces. Can't make this up.
We would go to the best nightclub in Los Angeles. Brian would buy the best table in the club. He would actually hire escorts to be sitting at the table. That's all I know. And so it looked like he had a big group of girls around him.
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Chapter 5: How does Sarah's relationship with Brian evolve?
Seems to me Sarah did her fair share of day drinking too. She said most mornings they wouldn't talk. He'd head out to his office for a few hours and by lunchtime he'd be back in the villa. She'd prepare a charcuterie board with wine and tequila and beer for Brian, hang there for a bit, then hit the Pelican Hill bar.
Brian and I would go drinking Pelican Hill Bar after, like, around 5 or 6 o'clock. Brian would get so hammered, he would start dancing on the bar, throwing his shirt up, and it was humiliating.
Chapter 6: What legal troubles does Sarah encounter?
What seemed cute at first was now just messy. She'd apologize to everyone at the bar, tell them she was his sister. And she said that seemed to work most days. Her humiliation was a small price to pay for being on permanent vacations. At this point, she was still on the right side of legal. Soon she wouldn't be. She had a problem.
She might be living high right now off the coattails of Brian's success, but she wasn't profiting from any of that. And she certainly didn't have enough dough to invest like the guys who showed up to their investor parties. She needed to find a way to make big money. That's when it hit her. There was a way for her to make a lot of money.
Doing a job that requires two things Sarah most definitely had. A law degree and discretion.
I don't have to be a lawyer. I can just be a fixer.
A fixer.
Let's go ahead and capitalize that F. It's usually typically with a business, and we fix the reputation of the business, of the owners. Any litigation going on, we try to control the narrative.
Remember Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, the man who tried to keep his affair with Stormy Daniels secret? That's a fixer.
I mean, their legalities are that if I can find the loophole, so I am a master of loopholes. If I can find the loophole, I will do that and I will get things done.
She told Brian that's what she wanted to do, and he helped her do it. He set Sarah up with clients at places like the Pelican Club and this ritzy yacht club called Balboa Bay.
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Chapter 7: How do parties and appearances affect Brian's business dealings?
It sounded like a cross between a personal assistant and an enforcer.
Okay, I have a client who had lots of legal issues. So I helped clear up the litigation. And then he had all these issues with investments as well where he wasn't getting paid on them. And he needed basically someone strong to go and bully people to get what actually he deserved. He did deserve it. He did earn it.
Um, so I would go and I would just do negotiations with all these people and bully, I would bully them. I would just straight up lie and say, I'm going to take you to court. I'm calling the FBI on you. And boom, he got paid. So it worked out. And then, but those things also turned into. hey, my son got a DUI. Can you fix that? And I would. I absolutely would.
Or I need to go meet a senator so I can get this other job done. I would make the meeting happen. It's about as much as I can say on it because I know that any more that I get in trouble, yeah.
That work, she said, paid exceptionally well. She would have several clients at a time and would bill to the tune of $1,200 an hour. She said she was bringing in about 1.2 mil a year. she was finally bringing in the kind of money she wanted to be making.
One of my, the fixing clients, he wanted to go to Las Vegas and he wanted me to go with him because first of all, he wanted puppies. I happened to have a puppy owner on my speed dial and I made an appointment and he said, I want to stay there for one or two nights and I want to gamble, you know, a little bit. And so I said, okay, I'll go with you. Let's go. So we stayed at Encore Tower Suites.
I paid for all the rooms. We drove out to Vegas together. We stopped at the puppy shop first and he chose two dogs out and he put the deposit down. I chose my dog, which is Kula, which I love her to death. Still my dog now. So we go back to the hotel, but he's like, okay, I want, I need a hooker. And I was like, okie doke. Well, I guess that's my job.
So I go online, some website to look to me to have a good eye on, how good looking a girl is. And so, you know, I would set it up and whatever they did and they transacted is on them. I didn't transact. Then when he was done, he would meet me for a cocktail at the bar. So, you know, I would hold on to his money while he gambled. He would drink so much that he would just...
Tens of thousands of dollars would go in a minute. But it turned out that I was there more to facilitate the strip clubs, the limos and the strip clubs. And I had to talk to the girls at the strip club so that they would go home with them. And and it became I was, you know, the pimp of the night, essentially.
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