#BecauseMiami: The Man Behind the Curtain
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Who is John Ruiz and why is he controversial in Miami?
Nobody has made more waves in the name, image, likeness, waters than Miami businessman John Ruiz. He can spend his money wherever and however he wants to. He's not going to bulldoze a public high school. He's not going to build a stadium anywhere in the city of Coral Gables. Miami is a sunny place for shady people, and I resent when some of that shade overshadows the good that people are doing, a positive moment in the history of this community and this
And this program, a billionaire whose money may or may not be real, who is very interested in you knowing he has money and is looking to, you know, buy the Marlins, buy the Dolphins, the change, put stadiums on top of stadiums and conquer all of South Florida. But he's saying it. Certainly you've heard of Nevin Shapiro. This is Nevin Payaso. The Ruiz thing smells like Miami. And when something smells like Miami, I am left to distrust anything that smells a little too much like Miami. And we drape in some of that good Cuban cologne. Big booster man on money that may or may not be real, is real, kind of real. It's definitely real. Okay. Real money that's confusing to many people. It was subject to all sorts of scrutiny and it went public, guys.
At a time when things being real in currency seems less real than it's ever been.
Obviously the concern always has been for what like the last two years that shady man with shady money pouring it into the Miami University of Miami again was going to end the same way that always ends and it looks by all indications like that's exactly what's going to happen. I was labeled a hater for just sort of saying hey look the sky's blue for stating what I thought was the obvious or abundantly clear what is now proven to be a fact. That last headline reads that U.M. Booster, the former, I should say, University of Miami Hurricane sugar daddy, John Rees' company, once called MSP Recovery, then called LifeWallet, now called MSP Recovery again. Because you know a going concern keeps changing its name and rebranding, Roy. Well, the company has notified the SEC through public filings that it may only have six months left to live. How about another rebrand then? What? I don't know whether they could—they should start a defibrillator company, maybe, Roy, to revive this dead brand.
But what you just heard was a series of clips from this program dating back—the first one was from December of 2021. Hell, Dan was on the show. Back when I was 14 years old, Roy, okay? And so, like— We were the first people to put up the red flags when John Ruiz came out of nowhere, became a at the time a self-proclaimed billionaire and started writing checks upwards of 10 million dollars for name, image and likeness contracts with prominent University of Miami athletes. We're talking about contracts worth like eight hundred thousand dollars plus a car. We're talking about contracts, some of which kind of eventually got the school in some trouble afterwards. with the NCAA, of course, because if any school was going to be the first to get in trouble over NIL deals with the NCAA, it was going to be the University of Miami. And this guy was a classic Miami character.
His company went public through what they call a SPAC, or Special Purpose Acquisition Company, which is... That sounds offensive. Well, but it's also... It is offensive, not for the reason you're suggesting, but it's a shell company formed solely for the purpose of raising capital through an IPO, a public offering for the purpose of acquiring or merging with a previously existing company. If it sounds like some sort of a fast one. That's because it is. These were highly suspect vehicles. The SEC was already kind of like not looking kindly on them, but he managed to slip it in and it became one of the biggest SPACs of all time. The company valuation was like $32 billion. So on paper, this guy was worth $20 billion because he owned 65% of the company, which basically resulted in a day one collapse, by the way, of the stock. Day one, collapse. And this year alone... No tariffs were involved, by the way. Over the past year alone, the stock is down, I think, 92%, 93%. Okay? So, I don't know how long this guy was a billionaire on paper for.
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