Mr. Social Security

[00:00:05] At the intersection of true crime and real estate, you'll find Crime Estate. I'm Heather. And my name is Elena. As real estate agents and true crime junkies, we view crimes through a different lens. So walk through the door of some of the most notorious true crimes with us and discover how sometimes the scene of the crime has its own story to tell.

[00:00:28] Hey, y'all. I am taking us back to my home state of Kentucky today. And I have to tell you guys, I felt a little bit like I'd gone home researching this episode. Yeah. You know, from the accents, the town names, to the cultural references, it was sort of a blast from the past for me. So of course, I'm Heather. I'm joined as always by my fellow realtor and dear friend, Elena, and our producer and commentator, Melanie. Hey, ladies. Hey, I'm excited for you because you've been looking for a Kentucky one for a while.

[00:00:57] I have. Yeah. Do we need to warn people about your accent that might slip out? Well, I feel like my Dallas accent is baked in now. Now, if I had been to Kentucky recording this, that's a different story because the minute I go home, I get very Southern. I love it. Yeah. So if I start to slip, you'll let me know though, right? Okay. So reminder to our listeners before we jump into today's episode that Crime Estate is now on YouTube. So you could be watching

[00:01:27] us like live in my office do this recording. At Crime Estate. Very original. Very original. Yeah. But if you want to go check out our behind the scenes and feel like you're in the living room recording with us, please go check it out. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And while we're doing some housekeeping, it's probably also good to tell some of our viewers that our website has a brand new look and feel. It's very modern if we do say so ourselves. And if you want to sign up for our

[00:01:51] newsletter or see some behind the scenes pics, go ahead and check it out on crimeestate.com. All right. Well, thanks ladies. So today's story takes us to Pikeville, Kentucky. And Pikeville is in the far Eastern portion of Kentucky. So think not very far from where like Virginia meets West Virginia in the Appalachian Mountains. And now if you don't know a lot about that part of the country,

[00:02:18] I can sum it up with one word. Do you know what that would be? No. No. Coal. And not my son. Yeah. Yes. Not your son. C-O-A-L. So coal was discovered in Kentucky in 1750. And the first coal mine opened in 1820. And while of course improvements in technology over the years have made coal mining safer for the employees who work in the mines, it's still a really dangerous

[00:02:44] job. You know, underground mines can contain flammable gases like methane, which can explode or cause fires. Above ground tunnels can collapse, trapping or injuring miners. And toxic gases can accumulate causing suffocation or poisoning. And then of course, coal dust, you know, can just lead to very serious lung disease. Not to mention the dangers associated with heavy machinery. Like black lung was a thing we talked about a lot growing up. It's like everybody was sick. You're like, oh, well, he just

[00:03:14] has the black lung. The black lung. Right. Wow. So despite all of these dangers, though, coal mining was a job that helped a lot of families in this part of the country put food on the table for their families, pay their bills. And so it wasn't uncommon to have even like a father and son working together in the mines. It was a fairly at one time, I think, you know, the industry has gone down a lot. I mean, it was a

[00:03:40] fairly like, you know, you could raise a family, you did not need to have an education, you know, and there are some people that it pulled them up out of poverty into middle class. Now, of course, the industry is greatly declining. And a lot of people have lost their jobs. But at one point in time, you know, it was a way to really sustain themselves. And I bet these communities, it was kind of the foundation of the community.

[00:04:07] You're absolutely right. So the town we're talking about today, Pike Bowl, is a town of about 7500 people. So very small town. And like many southern towns, the city does embrace its roots. They have their annual Hillbilly Day celebrations, a festival which highlights all the things the town loves about their roots. Dwight Yoakam is featured at this year's festival. Well, you know, he was born in Pikesville. No, I did not. Love to love to be able to give you a little fax. Okay, that's fun.

[00:04:36] That even you don't. Now, you're part of Kentucky. How far away was this? So I'm like very central Kentucky. So probably, let's say three hours, this would be three hours east of where I live. Yeah, because when I looked on the map, it was like you were in spitting distance from West Virginia. Yeah. So growing up in the Southern Baptist Church, we did a mission trip every year called

[00:05:02] Kentucky Changers. And we would go to Appalachia. I don't remember if we were in Pike Bowl or if we were in a surrounding town. But we would do things like dig lines for them to lay plumbing so they could have indoor running water. We put new tar on a tar roof. Like this is a very impoverished part of the country. I think I've got it in my notes later, but I think the annual like income in this

[00:05:28] part of the country is about $20,000 a year. So I mean, you know, coal mining jobs when you can get them were very good jobs, despite the fact that they were so hard on the body and had so many dangers associated with them because they paid really well. It's in this coal mining town that attorney Eric Kahn builds his practice. Now we talk a lot about lawyers in the show. I've mentioned my husband's an attorney and Melanie and I both have kids that compete in mock trial, which I think

[00:05:53] makes us like pseudo lawyers ourselves, right? I mean, it is amazing how much I've learned about the legal profession in the last couple of years. I mean, I mean, I really should just sit for the bar. You totally should. So Eric Kahn first burst onto the Kentucky legal scene with this huge murder trial. So he represented a girl who was accused of murder and this case involved Satan worshiping

[00:06:20] and the talk of the Antichrist. He would have had like, you would have been everywhere away from this case. This would freak you out so much, Elena, I know. But you can imagine it was really big news in like the Bible Belt of Kentucky that there was this like Satan worshiping kind of murder case, right? And so that murder trial gave him a lot of publicity and he followed up on it by opening his own practice with the slogan of Eric Kahn, he gets the job done. What does it rhyme?

[00:06:49] Well, probably does when you say it Southern. Eric Kahn, he gets the job done. Maybe. I don't know. I think there's like a, gotta have some real, real Eastern Kentucky. Okay. And it's this practice that would go on to establish Kahn as the disability lawyer specialist of Eastern Kentucky. Now proudly calling himself Mr. Social Security Kahn, who we'll find out later was aptly named, was the preeminent

[00:07:17] disability lawyer in his area, helping his clients navigate social security applications and appeals. The king of social security cases, Kahn's bread and butter was built on a high volume of clients. And so in order to bring in as many clients as possible, you spend a lot of money on advertising. I mean, we get that, right? That's, um, I, you know, I actually, when I was kind of doing a little

[00:07:41] bit of research about this, it made me think about both of you and, and, and neither one of you are anything negative, but you, you put a little bit of money into the community. I don't think, I wouldn't consider it marketing, but you're, you both, uh, sponsor, um, home tours or, or like at festivals, school events, things like that, that, you know, it's a way of giving back to the communities that you live in, but also a great opportunity to meet potential clients.

[00:08:09] No, I think you're right. Um, he however did a lot of things we don't do. So he did grocery store ads like on the, the cart, you know, where it folds up. Um, he had a lot of bright yellow billboards. I don't have one. Do you have one? I do not have a billboard. I mean, maybe after this, um, he did a lot of radio commercials. And so he was just constantly like putting his face and name out there, advertising his phone number as 1-800-232-HURT. Okay.

[00:08:36] His presence was larger than life and he often hired girls wearing short shorts who he called con hotties to promote his business at sporting events, concerts, and other area festivals. Oh my gosh. Okay. Yeah. All right. Okay. So in one instance, he went so far, so far as to hire a porn star for a commercial. And in another, he hired the Obama girl to be in one of his commercials. Do y'all remember that? I do vaguely recall that. Yeah.

[00:09:06] So it was familiar to me, but I had to look it up. So it was this gal that like made a video about how much she loved Obama, like right before his election. So I mean, I think it was in the, the burgeoning social media kind of content creator. And so she went viral for some, you know, funny videos. So like I mentioned earlier, coal mining is a dangerous profession and many people who worked in the mines ended up not being able to work because of an injury or other work related illness,

[00:09:36] which could qualify them for disability through social security. And con recognized that being able to help clients navigate the disability application and appeals process was a moneymaker for him. And so under federal rules, did y'all know disability lawyers collect a percentage of the claims that they win up to $6,000 per case. He went on to develop a multimillion dollar business

[00:10:02] preying on the needs of his lower income community now nestled in the Appalachian mountains. By 2010, con was the third highest paid disability lawyer in the country, collecting 3.9 million from the social security administration that year alone. Wow. Yeah, I mean, that I mean, he was at the perfect, you know, place, I guess, crossroads of a lot of people that maybe had social security needs,

[00:10:30] either disability, etc. As well as he put in the time, I mean, okay, say what you're going to say about this guy. And there's a lot of negative to say about him. But he put a lot of time and effort into marketing himself. So, you know, you have to admire the hustle, because I know you're both hustler. Oh, that sounds bad. I just, I just realized how I said it. But you know what I mean?

[00:10:55] Like you both hustle a lot between your personal lives and professional lives. So he apparently was hustling. We do it all legitimately. Yes, yes, I really I was like, Oh, as soon as I said that, I'm like, Yeah, I feel like I put my foot. No, no, you're good. You're good. We don't have any con hotties. No, kind of kind of wish we did. But I mean, we all are. I'm sure he would have hired us

[00:11:19] for his commercial. I mean, we are all our own hotties. Hello. All right. So think about this. So he made $3.9 million in one year alone. Again, like I said, in the part of the country where the median income is $20,000 a year, like that, the disparity is so huge. And he built up thousands of clients. He also employed 30 to 40 employees. So he was, you know, employing a portion of the

[00:11:44] community and ended up building one of the largest disability law practices in the nation. And as I said, he was larger than life and his personal life also reflected this. While hard to prove, he was said to have been married and divorced at least a dozen of times, often marrying women 20 plus years younger and then divorcing them within days. It seems like a real easy way to lose a lot of money.

[00:12:11] Well, yeah. I mean, surely to God, he had a really good prenup, right? But I mean, if you're just getting married real quick, like you just have them sign something. So according to an article in the Lexington Herald leader, which also made me so happy to see because that was our neighborhood paper growing up. I grew up right outside of Lexington, like the suburb of Lexington. It says several divorces recorded in Pike County show a pattern. He married a Colombian woman in Barbados in November

[00:12:38] 2004 and separated less than a week later. He was 44 and she was 18. He married a woman in Barbados in April 2005 and separated nine months later. He was 45 when he filed for divorce. She was 22. In one case, Khan said he married a woman in Columbia in May 2003 and they separated the same day. He was 42 and she was 21.

[00:13:04] Jamie Sloan, who worked for Khan for nearly six years, said in a sworn statement to the Senate Committee, oh, that's a little precursor to what's coming next, that Khan often sent money to an associate in Thailand to support women there. Khan also tried to smuggle women into the country, she said. That's crazy. He had a type. Non-Americans? Young and probably that he was taking advantage

[00:13:32] of. I mean, what's the point? But why marry if they're just going to divorce a year later? Like, go sleep with them. Like, treat them to a nice vacation. Like, well, yeah. The marrying is weird. That's a psychological issue, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I read that, like, his, maybe his first wife he had kids with or something like that, or at least a daughter. Uh, that might be right. Yeah. Um, his first wife left him and so I wonder if there's this, like,

[00:14:01] need to leave somebody else before they can leave you. But I mean, 24 hours in? A weekend? I feel like that's just wasted money. I mean, even if you're not going through alimony or, you know, anything like that. I feel at that point in time, he just, he spent money at the courthouse. Or I was going to say, at a minimum, he had an assistant that was like handling all of these divorces for him that he's paying, right? Absolutely. It doesn't make any sense at all.

[00:14:25] So in another example of his eccentric personality, Khan had a 19-foot tall replica of the Lincoln Memorial installed in his office parking lot. As one does. Of course. He said it cost him $500,000 and claimed that it was the second tallest Lincoln statue in the world behind the original one

[00:14:45] in Washington, DC. Why? Why? Why? And you might think because he's installing this statue that this was a grandiose office complex. It's not. We'll talk about that later. But it was not the kind of place that needed a grand statue. Very few places, I feel like, need a grand statue. That's true. But certainly not the parking lot next to the Dollar General. Yes. Oh, was it? Yeah. Oh, dang. Yeah.

[00:15:15] I mean, I think you're right. The number of places that need a Lincoln statue are one and it's already there. I mean, maybe. And it wasn't that this area had a big history with Lincoln, correct? I mean, Kentucky does have like, they sort of claim Lincoln as one of their own. Okay. Yeah. So he was not born there, but he did. Or maybe he was born there and didn't live there. I thought Illinois was the land of Lincoln. Illinois is the land of Lincoln. I think it's one of the other. He was either

[00:15:44] born in Kentucky and lived in Illinois or he was born in Illinois and lived. I think he was born in Illinois. So he had some relationship. There was some. Okay. All right. And despite what sounds crazy to me and you guys, it sounds like the people of Kentucky loved him. He was compared to Robin Hood, someone robbing the rich government to do good for the poor people. And they also loved him because

[00:16:08] somehow he got their disability benefits approved faster and in a way that nobody else could. That sounds nefarious right there. Yeah, it does. And robbing the rich to feed the poor paid very well. According to that same article in the Lexington Herald-Leader, Khan lived well on the money. He bought a Rolls Royce and laughed when an employee wrecked it. He wore expensive suits and took scores of trips to destinations that included

[00:16:36] Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and South America, excuse me, South America, staying gone for weeks at a time. In 2011, he paid cash for a 1.5 million, 10,000 square foot home in Pikeville, where he considered adding a bowling alley to go with the theater. What does 1.5 million get you in Pikesville in 2011? Okay. There's no S. Pikeville. Just Pikeville. Okay. Yes. Sorry, that was rude of me to correct you. No, I'm glad you did.

[00:17:04] No, I keep wanting to say Pikesville. It seems like it needs an S. It does seem like it needs an S. I agree. Well, yeah. So currently, the median sales price in Pikeville is $245,000. And that's today, not 2011. So you can imagine this was like a very expensive house. Yes. Mel, I think if you guys are watching on YouTube, you have a photo up. It's this red brick

[00:17:32] two-story home. It has- I had to click a couple of the buttons, but yes, I got the picture. Okay. Sorry if I did the wrong one there. No. Yeah. It's a nice looking house. It is. It's a very traditional brick home. And, you know, where I think a lot of homes in the area would have wood siding as like the accent to the brick. Like this has cast stone, which would be a much more expensive and elevated look. So you've got

[00:18:01] cast stone details and then you have cast stone arched windows. And then, so you're looking at the front of the house and then there's like this breezeway or covered walkway to the three-car garage, which also has a second story. I'm assuming that's like guest quarters or gym or something. But there's definitely room over the garage as well. So it's a beautiful home.

[00:18:23] I mean, I'm kind of shocked that in such a neighborhood that isn't by a major city, there really isn't. It's not like where these are people maybe suburban from, you know, the nearest city, that there's a neighborhood of million dollar plus homes, to be quite honest. Well, so you think about there are the people that work the coal mines and they're the people that own the coal mines. Okay.

[00:18:51] And so this house, surrounded by other luxury homes in the area, sits on almost three acres with trees, you know, sort of surrounding the property. So not long after Kahn purchases this property, a Wall Street Journal reporter by the name of Damian Pelletta is doing some digging into federal spending. That sounds familiar. It's like a buzz word right now. Yeah, just a little bit. A lot of digging into federal spending these days.

[00:19:19] So in particular, Damian starts looking at the social security budget. And beyond that, the disability portion of social security. And he found a database of every judge who worked to approve or deny social security benefits. Okay. Now this list showed not only the list of judges, but also their case approval rates. And most of the judges approved about 50% of their cases, which sounds about right to me.

[00:19:47] Like you probably do have some people applying fraudulently, or you have some people applying in a way that's like maybe a little outside the scope of what you're willing to approve. But there was one judge that approved almost every case that came before him. That was Judge Doherty. And like any intrepid reporter, he sees this anomaly in data and wonders, well, how can that be?

[00:20:11] And how can one judge approve 99.71% of his or her cases? And so he digs a little more and finds that all of those cases came from one attorney, Eric Seacon. Interesting. Mm-hmm. And so then the journalist just calls Judge Doherty and asks to meet with him and talk about the benefits and the claims. And the judge says to him, quote, most of these people down here don't have more than a fourth grade education,

[00:20:40] and they couldn't get a job if their lives depended on it. And it's at this point, ladies, that Damien knows he has a very interesting story because this judge just admitted to giving all of these people disability in order to make sure they had income, not necessarily because they were disabled. This is why I'd be a terrible judge. I feel like I'd be the same. You would want to do it. Yes. I get it. That's because you're an empathetic, lovely person. Yeah. But you would not be a good judge. I would be a terrible judge. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:21:10] Well, you usually always want to believe the best in people. And if somebody is filing a claim, I mean, you're so heartbroken, you want to do anything to help them. Is this judge too? I'll get to that in a minute. Okay. Yeah. Just have the goodness of his heart. Right. Yeah. So the judge, not being totally unaware of what might happen

[00:21:36] after a reporter started digging into the story, retired pretty quickly. Whoa. Which means he was no longer an employee and then didn't have to participate in any inquiries from his former bosses. And as the investigation continues, it comes out that Aaron Kahn, excuse me, Eric Kahn, paid Judge Daugherty $500 for every case he approved, equating to almost $60,000 a year. That's not a bad gig. Not a bad gig if you can get it.

[00:22:03] And cash deposits into the judge's bank account seem to line up timeline-wise with calls from Eric to the judge. Hmm. But you can't run a con like this without an important other player, a doctor who provides documentation needed to submit these disability claims. Or in other words, you need a doctor who will say you are disabled. So I'm now introducing Dr. Atkins into the story. He was one of the- I'm assuming this is a complete coincidence.

[00:22:32] It's not the Atkins diet. It is not the Atkins diet, doctor. No, he did really well for himself. He did not need to make any extra money in unethical pursuits. So this Dr. Atkins was one of the unethical physicians that Kahn would send his clients to in order to get the documentation he needed. In fact, when investigators dug further into Dr. Atkins, they found that he already had templates made with several types of medical issues that would qualify somebody for disability. And he would just like pull out the template,

[00:23:01] enter the person's name and social security number, sign it, and like send them on their way. Dang. Also, he was like a psychologist, not a medical doctor. Oh. Yeah. Okay. And so, not surprisingly, the judge, the attorney, and the doctor all get arrested. Now, after paying a $1.25 million bond, Kahn is let out of jail prior to the trial, but sentenced to house arrest. And during the trial discovery process,

[00:23:31] it comes out that all of this began, Elena, you were curious, because Judge Daugherty found himself in a predicament. His daughter, who at the time was also running for judge, got arrested by an undercover police officer trying to buy crack cocaine. Oh. Whoops. And just like in the movies, the judge is looking for a way to cover this up, which of course involves a lot of money and quickly. And so, the judge turns to Eric Kahn,

[00:23:59] who he knows has a ton of money, because I mean, the guy just spent $500,000 on a Lincoln statue for his parking lot. And they come up with this like partnership of sorts. In his self-written autobiography, Eric Kahn says of this partnership, I felt like I was in a mafia movie and just made a deal with the devil. When Eric gets wind that the judge has received this call and an investigation may be imminent, he goes to his law complex and orders his employees to burn all of the files.

[00:24:28] That's something you could easily get away with in downtown Dallas. No, can you imagine like a fire in front of Neiman's? I don't know why. Yeah. And while we're talking about this, I do want to give you guys a visual of his law offices, because I don't think it's what you might expect. A blog post on Kentucky for Kentucky says his offices are, quote, a gang of welded together trailers that he calls the Eric Kahn Law Complex. And indeed,

[00:24:58] that's exactly what they are. On a concrete parking lot right next to the town's Dollar General, like I said, Kahn placed five trailer homes and converted them into his law offices. Okay. Yeah. I mean, that seems cheap, but also weirdly like deliberate that he's putting together all these mobile homes to be offices. Well, and so I don't have this in our show notes or script,

[00:25:24] but apparently he was like really close with his mom and his mom handled all the money. And so even to like get money to go like get lunch, he would have to go see his mom. So I don't know if she was just really tight and like was like, this is the cheapest way we can house 30 attorneys or 30 employees. But yeah, I think they wanted to keep the money for themselves and do everything else as cheaply as possible. Okay. When I, when y'all said that, I think of maybe he was trying to be like,

[00:25:54] this is my office, their trailer home. I'm just like you kind of like. Oh, maybe that's a good idea. I don't know. Maybe, maybe. And I love the way you think because, you know, that is very sympathetic to his plan and maybe, and he was a local kid. Like he had, had grown up in the area. He had gone to the army. There's some questions about whether or not he was in desert storm or not. You know, he liked to claim he was.

[00:26:20] And then he had gone to like a local ish, local ish university for law school. So, you know, he's kind of the local guy made well or made good. Yeah, I can see that. And I think to your point, that's, that's fair. You're nicer than I am where I'm just like, they just wanted all the money for themselves. You're like, they were doing it. So people felt comfortable. Maybe it's a little both. Maybe so. So when it came time for the trial, the judge took a plea deal and he spent four years in prison.

[00:26:51] Investigators were able to determine that he had made over $600,000 over the course of his partnership with Eric Kahn. Sorry. Is the prison like a, it's like a federal prison? I don't know. Probably. Yeah. Cause I think it was a federal. Like a country club. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Eric also took a plea deal. He agreed to go to jail for 12 years. However, Dr. Atkins refused any plea deal he was offered and wanted to go to trial. Now, as a part of Eric's plea deal,

[00:27:20] he agreed to cooperate with the government in the trial against Dr. Atkins. And ladies, this is where the story takes an even crazier turn. Eric is still in house arrest. And while they're getting ready for Atkins trial, like a week beforehand, he cuts off his ankle monitor and like just disappears. Oh. Yeah. Okay. So of course the FBI starts looking for him. The rumor mill is swirling in town. I mean, you know how small towns are.

[00:27:49] Can you imagine if like your do good guy that's going to jail just absconded? Right. Yeah. Some people think he went somewhere he could speak Spanish because apparently several of his ex-wives were from Spanish speaking countries. Other people thought he'd actually never left town. He was hiding in a maze of tunnels underneath the Lincoln statue. Okay. Okay. But regardless of where he was hiding, people were confident that he had money stashed all over the world.

[00:28:18] The local pet society created a fundraiser where you could vote on which country you thought he had escaped to or where he was hiding. I love that. Genius. Genius. I know, right? And indeed, we find out later that Eric had fled the state and apparently enjoyed the media circus surrounding his disappearance. He played into that, leaving breadcrumbs for investigators to follow that may or may not actually lead to him. First, investigators found a ticket purchased on Air Italia.

[00:28:48] So was he in Italy? The FBI alerted a trip to the police. And then they found an email sort of like hidden on his computer from someone who appeared to be Julian Assange. You guys remember him, right? Right. And the FBI wondered if maybe Eric Kahn had fled to join Julian somewhere. And then Eric starts emailing with a federal prosecutor who was prosecuting his case. He had figured out how to make his emails hard to trace. Well,

[00:29:16] that is until he screwed up and investigators were able to track him to Honduras. I wonder how many people had that in their pet society pool. I really want to know who won that pool. yeah. If y'all live in the area and know, will you please email us? That would make me so happy. So it should come as no surprise to you at this point that they were able to capture Eric in Honduras and bring him back to the States to stand trial where he was sentenced to 25 years. And this time he actually went to prison,

[00:29:46] dying only a few months before he was set to be released. Now, Dr. Atkins was also found guilty and received 25 years in prison. He tried to kill himself in his holding cell only minutes after the verdict came down. That's super dark. I like the story better when they were talking about, you're talking about porn stars and commercials. Right? A little bit funnier back then. Would it make you happier if we talked about what happened to the house? Okay, good. So under the terms of his plea deal,

[00:30:14] Kahn had to pay back $5.75 million, which doesn't seem like enough to me, but that's okay. It's just our tax dollars paying for that fraud. It's fine. And when his house sold, the proceeds were used toward that debt old, but it might not surprise you that the house was a little bit tainted after all the media surrounding the case. And it sold in 2018 for $750,000. Half of what Kahn paid for it in 2011. Now in 2019,

[00:30:43] a Kentucky businessman purchased the 11 acres of the law complex, along with the Lincoln statue, which he donated to a local civil war museum. That's really kind. I was reading on Reddit, people talking about how they had like actually moved the statue to the local civil war area and had to restore it. Right. So, okay. So it's a lot of financial crime. Yes. So does that change how either of you would answer the question that we ask at the end? I think it does for me.

[00:31:13] Yeah. I think the financial crime is a lot easier to deal with. I agree. Then, um, as long as it's not drug related, I, I worry like if it was drug related, like you had a house where that you were selling drugs out of, like somebody in prison would come back later. Right. And be like, Oh, this is where I used to get my X, Y, Z. Right. And I'm just there trying to bake some cookies. Yeah. Um, but yeah, given this situation, I would live there. I would list the house. I wouldn't have any qualms about it. Yeah. Same. A hundred percent. Yeah. What about email? Yeah.

[00:31:42] I, I, I wouldn't have any problems. I mean, minus the fact it's in Appalachia. Pikeville. Pikeville. I have to say it kind of deliberately because I want to add the S. That should be their motto. Pikeville. It's probably more like Pikeville. Pikeville. Pikeville. Pikeville. Yeah. Yeah. I know I was texting one of my girlfriends, um, while we were doing this and she's like, Oh yeah, my father used to be a, uh, her stepfather was a pastor in Pikeville. Oh really? Does she know about this story?

[00:32:12] I should have had her come on. Well, I didn't realize that until now. So, uh, well, she was like, I will reach out. Okay. If, if I get any, uh, data, uh, you know, information, we'll put it, we'll, do an after the cap recap. I love it. I love it. Yeah. My, um, youth minister growing up was from Shelbyville and we always gave him a hard time because he said, should be, should be, should be. That's cute. They got some creative names. They, yeah. And some creative accents.

[00:32:42] You put the bill on anything. I have a question. Did anything happen to his mom? Well, I didn't really research that. And I probably should have. No worries. I'm just curious. We can answer that on socials, but, um, well, I mean, I think she was complicit. Oh, really? Yes. She was handling all the money. She knew what was happening. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Right.

[00:33:32] Right. Is my mom mommy? No. I do. I call my dad daddy. Okay. Is this a, is this a cultural thing? I don't know. My mom doesn't, or not my mom, my sister does too. So. She calls her mommy. By the way, how are you sure he died? Because everything says he's still in prison. Oh, well, no. Do we need to redo this whole ending? No, that's okay.

[00:34:02] Mel just is fact checking us because that's what producers do. So maybe he's not dead. Is he still in prison, Mel? Well, that's what I'm looking at. And because what I read, I mean, his Wikipedia, he's still alive. Um, it's something I saw said, you know, he's at some federal prison in Pennsylvania set to be released in 2039. Well, that would be interesting. Cause I thought it was interesting that he died before he was supposed to be released. And I was like, that's not been 25 years. So you're probably right.

[00:34:30] I probably just got a bad source on something. I apologize. Um, I will say most of the information from this episode came from the Apple TV series, the big, that's what I was worried about. Maybe you saw it in that. Um, which is fascinating. And then I listened to a podcast and then I Googled. So that's probably a wrong piece of small piece of information, but I'm confident that 99.9% of the rest of the information in this is accurate.

[00:35:01] Um, you know, last summer there was a lot of press that came out about Eric con. And, um, finally there was some good news that came out that for the former clients, because if you think about it, the former clients by and large didn't do anything wrong. They were doing as advised by their lawyer and the, you know, the professionals like the doctor that they met with. And so he, after he was convicted of all of the social security administration cheating, um,

[00:35:31] finally, the new commissioner of the social security administration ruled that former con clients no longer had to make back payments to the federal governments. Um, yeah. And I, I didn't include this cause it's, it's really dark and very heartbreaking. So essentially when they were doing this investigation and found out that so much of what he did was fraudulent, anybody he had ever worked with, they just cut off benefits to. Oh wow. So there were people that were like committing suicide. They couldn't afford their medication.

[00:36:01] And, um, I'm not going to come up with a guy's name off the top of my head, but in the Apple TV series, there is this attorney who goes back and tries to help all of these people pro bono, like get their medical benefits back. But part of the issue was they didn't have medical records and like they hadn't kept them. They had just turned them into the social security administration. They're like, well, if you can't show us what you originally provided, then sorry.

[00:36:29] Like you've got to go through the whole process again. Meanwhile, these people are like paycheck to paycheck and don't have a two year process in them. So yeah, it really ruined a lot of people's lives, but that's good Mel that they seem to have some. Yeah. I mean, it's horrible because I'm sure the vast majority of these cases, we're actually authentic, you know, real cases. And, um, yeah. Well, yeah.

[00:36:59] Like we said, I mean, coal mining is a very hard job. Like it's not uncommon that at 30 you would hurt yourself badly enough that you would not be able to have another job in any sort of physical industry. Right. So, well, today con is currently serving his sentence at the Fort Dix federal prison in New Jersey and kind of near Philadelphia. He is release date is 2039.

[00:37:26] And what kind of crazy is so for the social security administration piece of this, he, he received, um, 12 years in prison, but another 15 years had been added on because he had, uh, cut off his ankle monitor, leading the federal authorities to have to chase him. And, and then of course, you know, go down to Honduras and, and, uh, bring him back. So if you're going to get a, come in a crime, don't, don't also cut off your ankle monitor.

[00:37:54] Interesting that he was caught because he was sort of taunting the FBI. Like he was emailing them. He could have just laid low for the rest of his life and they probably would have never found him. Which kind of goes with his whole personality that like, I mean, he really was like larger than life. He was probably Mr. Popularity or, you know, at least very celebrity figure in his hometown. And, you know, he liked all that attention. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, thanks guys for joining us today.

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[00:39:22] and then we'll see you all next week. Bye. Hey y'all. Thanks for listening and being a part of our crime estate family. If you're curious about today's featured crime estate, you can find additional photos and details from today's episode online at crimeestate.com or on Facebook and Instagram by following at crimeestate podcast, have a crime estate we should cover. Let us know. Shoot us an email at crimeestatepodcast at gmail.com until next week.