A Life Built on a Lie: Part 2

June 23, 2025·1 hr 45 min·5 clips

Andrea's husband calmly reveals his 15-year Ponzi scheme and that he's already turned himself in to the government.

This second part of a two-part true crime story follows Andrea, who met and married her husband at Brigham Young University, raised four children while he ran what appeared to be a successful financial advisory firm, and then learned in a single morning in March 2009 that everything was built on fraud. Her husband had already hired an attorney, turned himself in to the U.S. government, confessed to his church leaders, and been given until that morning to tell his wife. He informed her calmly — the hosts note the eerie absence of emotion — that the firm was a Ponzi scheme from the start, that all assets were frozen, that he faced five to seven years in federal prison, and that she would need her own lawyer. When she asked "is that all?" he added that he had hired call girls during his travels. The hosts digress briefly on the absurdity of volunteering that information on already the worst day of someone's life. Andrea describes the numbing shock of the moment, her immediate worry about what would happen to the clients — including the father of one of her closest friends — and the physical reality of trying to function while her world collapsed. Her husband told her assets would be sold and restitution paid; she later found out that was not fully accurate. She drove away, pulled over two houses down, called her sister (no answer), then called the daughter of one of the victims, whose parents happened to be nearby and heard everything in real time. Acting on advice, Andrea withdrew a few thousand dollars from her savings account. Returning home, she found her husband in the backyard handing her a phone — it was the attorney he had hired for himself. Andrea describes herself in this moment as a "lunatic," so disoriented she questioned whether the attorney's name was real. The youngest of her four children was three years old; the oldest was about to enter college. Her mother had already died. She had no job and no assets.

As heard by us

A readable fraud story with warmth, curiosity, and enough grit to hold attention.

The episode gives a grim money story a steady, human guide. It keeps the mechanics of a Ponzi scheme legible without losing sight of the damage, and it moves through IRS scrutiny, the collapse, and the luxury spending with plain language and a few well-timed check-ins.

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Why you'd press play

You want the Ponzi-scheme breakdown without the jargon fog.

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