Con Man Page #7
- NOT RATED
- Year:
- 2018
- 100 min
- 175 Views
I'll tell ya, I don't
know if you ever saw him in church,
in front of his congregation,
he was masterful.
I mean, he had them
in the palm of his hands.
Thank you. Nice to meet you.
Hi.
Hi.
Nice to meet you.
Thank you for coming.
First time here? Yes.
Wonderful sermon, Pastor Minkow.
Pastor Barry, please.
And this is my wife Lisa.
Hi, it's a pleasure
to meet you.
Hi, I'm Ellen Scott
and this is my husband Don.
Don, it's good to meet you.
We drove down from Santa
Barbara. Santa Barbara?
Well, my sermons don't merit that kind
of sacrifice, but thank you anyway.
We're here
for another reason.
The past 10 years, we put all our
retirement savings in a hedge fund.
About $250,000.
I earned that money, working
31 years as a longshoreman.
Now we're worried about the fund
and thought you could check it out.
Ma'am, I'm sorry,
I'm a pastor.
I don't really know a
whole lot about hedge funds.
I'm really sorry. I...
Look, why are you concerned?
The manager just moved
his office to the Bahamas.
How long
have they been around?
Twenty years. They're worth around
$800 million, about 2,000 investors.
Twenty years, $800 million...
Sounds like you don't have a
whole lot to worry about there.
Please, would you check on it?
I brought the prospectus.
Why me? I'm not an expert
in these kind of things.
Everything was fine until I
tried to withdraw the money.
They've been telling me that
it's in process for three months.
and he suggested I see you.
Your nephew.
Who's your nephew?
Mike?
Mike
You look great.
You look great.
Not even you can
pull off that lie.
Well, I'm not exactly winning
any beauty contests myself.
How you been?
I'll be a lot better if you tell
me you can help out my uncle.
Yeah, well...
This hedge-fund guy, Lewis,
right, he's telling me
he's getting monthly gains
of 1.5% to 3.5%.
Yeah, I don't think anybody's
quite that good.
Hedge fund, I...
You know, I got that letter
you wrote to me from prison,
apologizing for what you did.
Were you lying then
or are you lying now?
Look, Mike, I'm not
the same guy I was before.
I'm married. I got the
church. I got twins.
prevention in Quantico. I...
I don't really want to hear about
the good deeds of my old schoolmates.
You can tell me you're working
with lepers on an island,
my opinion of you
wouldn't change, Barry. Okay?
I'll believe the change
when I see it.
Anybody who's ever been in a financial
dealing with me has lived to regret it.
You know that.
Yeah, I'll take my chances.
Besides, your rates
are unbeatable.
Rates?
I don't have any rates.
Exactly.
It became just too much
of a temptation for him.
Barry wanted to kind
of do the Catch Me If You Can.
It was impressive. I
mean, he really knew his stuff.
And there you have
the six red flags for fraud.
Should you choose to
commit those to memory,
you will be able to stop
the next Barry Minkow
before he is the next
Barry Minkow.
That's all I have today.
Thanks for joining me.
as a hero in a sort of twisted way.
Well, well, well.
If it ain't the preacher man.
Good to see you, Smooth. I see
the streets have treated you well.
You look good, my friend.
Yeah, right.
You get a chance to look at the
copy of the prospectus I sent you?
Does your PO officer know that
you're associating with an ex
'Cause I will tell him.
how this Lewis guy has managed to
run a Ponzi scheme for 20
years without it imploding.
Either I'm missing something,
or he's a financial genius.
Little of both.
Can I get a beer
and a whiskey, please?
Look, I need your expertise.
You're the best there is.
You already got
what you're looking for.
In the prospectus.
They practically advertise for people
to invest their retirement money.
Yeah, so?
When people take their IRA money and
put it into a fund like this one here,
there are heavy penalties if you
pull out before you're 57 and a half.
They can invest the money all they
want, they just can't pull it out.
The perfect ingredient for
the successful Ponzi scheme.
Barry becoming a fraud
buster didn't surprise me.
You know, I always wondered if going
undercover was an opportunity for him
detective shows, and he had many,
or was it part of a larger plan
to actually do good this time?
I don't know.
I mean, I don't know.
Let me explain this to you.
There's just a slight difference
between lecturing these guys
and dodging bullets for them.
And it's not like you've been
trained exactly. Not to a fine edge.
Look, the guy has been around for
over 20 years and he's a ghost.
No license
to sell securities,
no assets held
in the fund's name, nothing.
Who the hell is this guy?
It's the only way.
I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll
send Matt down to the Bahamas,
and he'll record
the meeting.
If there's any misreps,
we'll move forward from there.
How's that?
Uh, just one last thing is,
a bogus bank statement
showing the church has $5
million parked in a money market.
Wait a minute, how do you know this
guy's gonna show up in the first place?
Any Ponzi scheme operator
desperate for new cash
would do whatever it took to get
their hands on new cash. He'll show.
Uh-huh.
So, you're asking me to give
the carpet guy
this bank statement
for $5 million.
What, am I crazy?
Ernest Hemingway said,
"The only way you can learn
"to trust someone,
is to trust 'em."
Ernest Hemingway said that?
been Churchill. Or him.
"Barry,
you don't understand.
"You're going undercover,
you're not a cop.
"You're a pastor."
He said, "Listen,
I'm uncovering fraud.
"I'm helping people that are getting
scammed and victimized by others."
I said, "Barry, working so
closely with the government,
"if you're wrong one time,
you're in trouble."
You say Don Scott's
a friend of yours?
Yeah, he's a member
of our church,
and the church has been
growing so much lately
that we've established
a building fund,
to purchase some land
to accommodate the growth.
We wanted to invest that money, have
it working for us until we build.
Well, it would grow here, I assure
you. How much do you have to invest?
A little over $5 million.
Those returns that you've been
generating, can they be corroborated?
Yes. We earn 18% to 40%
annual. A 20-year track record.
And 800 million? Eight
hundred million. Yes, correct.
$800 million fund.
You just gotta forgive me. Numbers
like that get me a little bit nervous.
You are aware of my past, I was
convicted of securities fraud?
I read about you, yes.
I like how you disclose it up-front
on your church's website, too.
I'll be happy to work with
you. We all make mistakes.
You were just a kid.
You got greedy.
I have the money market
account, bank statement
Translation
Translate and read this script in other languages:
Select another language:
- - Select -
- 简体中文 (Chinese - Simplified)
- 繁體中文 (Chinese - Traditional)
- Español (Spanish)
- Esperanto (Esperanto)
- 日本語 (Japanese)
- Português (Portuguese)
- Deutsch (German)
- العربية (Arabic)
- Français (French)
- Русский (Russian)
- ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada)
- 한국어 (Korean)
- עברית (Hebrew)
- Gaeilge (Irish)
- Українська (Ukrainian)
- اردو (Urdu)
- Magyar (Hungarian)
- मानक हिन्दी (Hindi)
- Indonesia (Indonesian)
- Italiano (Italian)
- தமிழ் (Tamil)
- Türkçe (Turkish)
- తెలుగు (Telugu)
- ภาษาไทย (Thai)
- Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
- Čeština (Czech)
- Polski (Polish)
- Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
- Românește (Romanian)
- Nederlands (Dutch)
- Ελληνικά (Greek)
- Latinum (Latin)
- Svenska (Swedish)
- Dansk (Danish)
- Suomi (Finnish)
- فارسی (Persian)
- ייִדיש (Yiddish)
- հայերեն (Armenian)
- Norsk (Norwegian)
- English (English)
Citation
Use the citation below to add this screenplay to your bibliography:
Style:MLAChicagoAPA
"Con Man" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 25 Dec. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/con_man_5848>.
Discuss this script with the community:
Report Comment
We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.
Attachment
You need to be logged in to favorite.
Log In