There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript.]

Caleb Newquist: By 2017, Marvel movies were dominating the box office. Multiple films in the global top ten billions in revenue, a cinematic universe shaping pop culture in a way we hadn't really seen before. At the center of all that, at least symbolically, was Stan Lee. Cameos, conventions, interviews, the smiling public face of characters worth tens of billions of dollars. But that same year, his wife, Joan Lee, passed away after nearly [00:00:30] 70 years with her, and suddenly decisions they'd been navigating together for decades were landing entirely on him.

Earmark CPE: Are you an accountant with a continuing education requirement? You can earn free Nasba approved CPE. For listening to this episode, just visit earmarked app in your web browser. Take a short quiz and get your certificate.

Caleb Newquist: This [00:01:00] Is All My Fraud, a true crime podcast where the supervillain superpower is usually just greed. I'm Caleb Newquist. How's it going? What's going on? How are you? Um. Not good. Well, then stop. Just stop. Doomscrolling, can you stop Doomscrolling? That'll help, I guarantee it. No. No one has ever said. You know what I'm going to do to turn [00:01:30] this day around? I'm going to stare at my phone and read a bunch of things that are mostly going to upset me. Nobody says that. Although I have to say one thing I've been into lately. My wife showed me this Instagram account called The Calm Cat Whisperer and it is delightful. It always puts me in a good mood. Um, you know, it's not going to get me back on Instagram, but I, I do enjoy [00:02:00] it, I have to say. But if you haven't seen this guy, his name is Donny and he's in Dubai and you know, hopefully he's safe. It's getting weird over there. Um, uh, but, uh, you know, uh, these reels give me so much joy. Uh, there are so many cranky cats, and he makes them handsome and happy or slightly less cranky anyway. And I think my favorite moments are when he puts kind of this astronaut [00:02:30] helmet on these cats head and so they don't bite him. I mean, it doesn't happen in every single one, but when it does, I, I cannot stop laughing. It is, it's so good.

Caleb Newquist: Anyway, um, speaking of funny, uh, how about a couple of amusing reviews? These will be quick, I promise. Uh, these are both from earmark and the first one is from Shauna she gave the episode five [00:03:00] stars and wrote not interesting, which I guess means she was pleased by it being uninteresting. I don't know, Shauna. I love the contradiction though. Keep us guessing. Keep us keeping us on our toes. Okay. Um, and the second one is from Claire, and I think this was on the interview with Professor Eric Li or maybe John Whale. I don't know who can remember. Uh, but she gave it four stars and she wrote [00:03:30] absolutely love the discussion. However, it's quite a long episode. Wish I'd paid closer attention to that twice as long as the CPE credit received, but fascinating to listen to Claire. I'm glad you love the discussion, but you know that our show. It's not really that long by podcast standards. Like if you. Have you ever heard of hardcore history? I was hardcore history, the episodes of hardcore history, some of them are like 4 to 6 hours long. Okay. Just [00:04:00] like that's a, it's like a workday. You know, I listen to one, one of Zach's favorites that we mentioned on an episode a while back, decoding the gurus. It's pretty good. They, they talked about Eric Weinstein, who's one of these intellectual dark web guys. Uh, he's a minion of, you know, James Bond villain, Peter Thiel.

Caleb Newquist: Uh, that the episode about Eric Weinstein was three hours. Okay. I had it on 1.5 the whole time. [00:04:30] Okay. I would have had it on two, two, two X, but one of the guys is Australian, the other guy is Scottish. And that it made it indecipherable. I couldn't listen to it, you know. And you know, normally I'm pretty good with the accents, but you know, it increased speed. It just changes everything demonstrably. Anyway, the point is just put me on 1.25 or even 1.5 if you can handle it. It trims down the time. Makes it manageable. Unless, you know, maybe you can't live without my [00:05:00] voice at the normal speed. I don't know. Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed the episode. But yeah, just, you know, crank up the speed a bit. Okay. Today's episode. Uh, we have a new edition of the Defrauded Famous, and it's hard to believe that it's been more than a year and a half since our last one. That was August of 2020. For episode 68, uh, featuring Alanis, Alanis, Alanis, Alanis Morissette, Kareem Abdul Jabbar. That was the last [00:05:30] one. Greg was still here. Yeah, it was a while ago. Uh, we had, of course, Jonathan Todd Schwartz. He was the fraudster who defrauded Alanis Morissette. Uh, we talked to him on episode 81. That was about a year ago. So maybe you would. That's certainly celebrity adjacent.

Caleb Newquist: So yeah, a new edition of The Defrauded Famous and let's get into it. That's [00:06:00] enough business. It's time for some fraud. The celebrity Tim Duncan, five time NBA champion, Hall of Famer, noted adventurer. He's also one of the most low key professional sports superstars in history, which is actually part of why this story stands out. Duncan, [00:06:30] if you're unfamiliar, uh, he always came across as a quiet guy. Methodical, very cerebral, not flashy, not the type of professional athlete that has a garage full of Ferraris and a Bengal tiger lounging in the backyard. Uh, you won't find him pulling all nighters at the high roller tables in Vegas. No, the only tables Tim Duncan was hitting or is hitting are the D tables. [00:07:00] Duncan grew up in the Virgin Islands and originally planned to become a competitive swimmer. That changed after Hurricane Hugo destroyed the Olympic sized pool he trained in. Basketball came later for him and certainly later than most NBA stars, but he developed quickly. He played college ball at Wake Forest, and he was the number one overall pick in [00:07:30] the 1997 NBA draft. From there, it was basically two decades of consistency and excellence. He was the rookie of the year for 1997 1998 season. He won his first NBA championship the following season as well as his first NBA Finals Most Valuable Player. He would win four more championships over his career. He was an all star 15 times, an NBA MVP [00:08:00] twice and a finals MVP a total of three times.

Caleb Newquist: But he was probably best known and maybe most importantly, known for having this reputation as just being kind of unflappable, unshakable, and just doing things the right way. I found this fun quote from Shaquille O'Neal, uh, who wrote about Duncan in his autobiography, and he said, quote, the Spurs won because of Tim [00:08:30] Duncan, a guy I could never break. I could talk trash to Patrick Ewing. Get in David Robinson's face. Get a rise out of Alonzo Mourning. But when I went at Tim, he'd look at me like he was bored. I don't do a Shaq. I don't do a Shaq impression anyway. But you can imagine, like Shaq is the type of guy who should be able to get under anybody's skin or intimidate anyone. Anyway, it was this kind of. Attitude [00:09:00] or the way he carried himself. This earned him the nickname The Big Fundamental. He was efficient, disciplined, and didn't resort to anything flashy. If the simple thing worked and by most accounts, that approach carried over into his personal life, too. Teammates, coaches, people around the league generally described him as careful, private and measured off the court. By the time he retired, Duncan had earned well [00:09:30] over $200 million in NBA contracts alone. That doesn't include endorsements or anything else. Duncan's image was pretty much the exact opposite of what people imagine when they think about athletes getting into financial trouble.

Caleb Newquist: Like many professional athletes, [00:10:00] Tim Duncan didn't try to handle every financial decision himself. He began working with a financial advisor named Charles Banks, the fourth during his rookie season in 1997. Their relationship would last 20 years. Banks. The fourth came from money. If you know that generational suffix didn't give it away. His father was the president of Ferguson Enterprises. That's the distributor [00:10:30] of plumbing and Hvac supplies and the like. And that company eventually became a Wolseley PLC, which acquired Ferguson. And then, you know, there was some back and forth, I I don't know, boring stuff about what actually that company is named now. Anyway, his dad was the president of that business for quite a while. Anyway, uh, banks himself, banks the fourth, not banks the third banks the fourth himself [00:11:00] became a president of CSI Capital Management, a San Francisco firm that managed around $400 million for roughly 150 professional athletes. Banks cultivated a sophisticated image. He was tall, bookish, and a noted oenophile. He was, even for a time the co-owner of Screaming Eagle Winery with noted multi-billionaire and professional [00:11:30] sports team collector Stan Kroenke. Banks positioned himself as someone who could connect his clients with sophisticated opportunities, not just retirement accounts and, you know, financial planning. But. Private investments. Business venture opportunities. Longer term wealth building ideas. And for pro athletes, that kind of guidance. Isn't that unusual, especially at the top tier.

Caleb Newquist: The [00:12:00] earning window is short. The schedules are chaotic and suddenly you're dealing with financial decisions most people don't face until much later in life, if ever. Honestly, athlete finances get really weird really fast. Nba players, for example, have to pay taxes in every state they play a game in, even if their team's based somewhere with no state income tax. So if you've got a New York game, you're taxed in New York, California [00:12:30] road trip, your tax there. They call it the jock tax. Okay. Fun story about the jock tax. When the Chicago Bulls defeated the Los Angeles Lakers to win the 1991 NBA championship. California imposed a tax on the earnings of the Bulls players, and so, naturally, Illinois retaliated by imposing a jock tax on out-of-state athletes from jurisdictions that impose [00:13:00] jock taxes on Illinois based players. By 2014, the District of Columbia and three states Texas, Florida being two of them, uh, were the only jurisdictions with major professional sports teams that hadn't imposed a jock tax. Anyway, you're flying to a different city every few days. You're playing 80 plus games a season, plus playoffs, plus endorsements, plus media obligations. Sitting down to personally [00:13:30] vet investment deals is probably not how you want to spend your limited free time. And when you're making the kind of money that Tim Duncan was making, you can just pay somebody to do that. Sometimes it's a lot of someone's a team.

Caleb Newquist: You know, accountants, lawyers, business managers, they all are keeping things organized while the athlete focuses on the career that's generating all that money in the first place. In [00:14:00] Duncan's case, banks was part of that team, a guy involved in helping shape financial decisions meant to last well beyond Duncan's playing days, which on paper is exactly how it's supposed to work. Over time, banks began steering Duncan into a series of business investments, stuff that probably sounded responsible if it [00:14:30] was being pitched the right way. But there was something Duncan didn't know, and that was in 2007. Banks left CSI Capital Management. He never told Duncan that his formal advisory relationship had ended. He just kept approaching him with investment opportunities. And after 2007, every single investment banks recommended was one where banks himself had undisclosed [00:15:00] ownership interests. For example, Duncan invested $1.1 million in a cosmetics company called limit. But that's very bad, but close enough. Banks pitched it as a profitable business, with 8 million in sales, claiming that Kevin Garnett, another NBA superstar, would also be investing. When an audit in January [00:15:30] 2013 uncovered, quote, accounting irregularities and possible fraud at the company, Banks didn't say anything to Duncan. In fact, he texted him a month later and he said, quote, need to update on a deal. All good news. Oh, what was the good news, Charles? That it was only a possible fraud and not a 100% guaranteed fraud. [00:16:00]

Caleb Newquist: The company filed for bankruptcy in September 2014. Duncan's $1.1 million was gone. Duncan also invested in banks own firm, Terroir Capital hotel funds and a winery fund that he also founded and managed. But the biggest fraud involved a struggling sports merchandizing company called Game Day Entertainment. Banks was chairman [00:16:30] of Game Day's board and held a controlling interest. He didn't disclose any of that to Tim Duncan. In 2012, banks convinced Duncan to take out a $10 million line of credit from Comerica Bank, then loaned 7.5 million of it to game day at 12% annual interest. That's 75,000 per month. Banks told Duncan another investor was [00:17:00] putting in the same amount, except that other investor didn't exist. Banks pocketed a $225,000 fee from game day for arranging the deal. And then he skimmed $15,000 from each 75,000 monthly interest payment for roughly two years, so about 360,000 total. Then, in June 2013, Duncan was playing [00:17:30] the NBA finals against Miami and Game Days CEO wanted an additional $6 million line of credit from Comerica, which required Duncan and Kevin Garnett to co guarantee the loan. It also required Duncan to subordinate his existing security interest, meaning that he would move to the back of the line as a creditor if [00:18:00] things went bad. Banks misrepresented this entire transaction through a text message, calling it an amendment that was paying down the original loan and would, quote, remove 1.5 million of risk for you, i.e., Duncan.

Caleb Newquist: His exact words quote, all great news. No downside. Now remember, Tim Duncan is playing in the NBA finals while this [00:18:30] is going on. And so banks Faxed signature pages to Duncan. Not the full agreement. And Tim Duncan signed them on June 26th, 2013. In reality, Duncan had just taken on $6 million in a new contingent liability while giving up his priority position from those loan proceeds. Banks paid himself over [00:19:00] $1.5 million. Game day's own controller later testified that it felt like banks was using the company as his personal piggy bank. Employees talked about how banks was bleeding the business. At first, it wasn't obvious anything was wrong. Investments like these, they take time to pay off. So when performance isn't great, it can be kind of hard to tell the difference between normal risk [00:19:30] and something more serious. But in 2013, as Duncan was also going through a divorce, his legal team brought in a new financial consultant to review his finances. As that consultant started digging through his records, discrepancies started to show up. Unclear loans, missing documentation and questions about how banks investments were structured and whether his conflicts [00:20:00] of interest had ever been disclosed. When the dust settled, Duncan had invested $24.1 million with banks across an array of ventures. Duncan had received approximately $7 million back, but that came entirely from interest payments, not actual investment returns. And so finally, in January 2015, Duncan filed a civil lawsuit alleging misrepresentation and financial misconduct [00:20:30] that lawsuit led federal investigators to take a closer look at banks.

Caleb Newquist: On September 7th, 2016, a federal grand jury in San Antonio indicted Charles Bank, the fourth on four counts of wire fraud. Each count carried a maximum of 20 years. Banks surrendered two days later and was released on $1 million bail. On April 3rd, 2017, [00:21:00] banks pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud. His signed statement of facts admitted he, quote, acted with a knowing intent to deceive. Tim Duncan The sentencing hearing on June 27th and 28th of 2017 was standing room only. Approximately 70 people packed the courtroom. Duncan delivered a victim impact statement. He told banks directly, quote, I just wanted you to own up, pay up, and we'd move on. You wouldn't. So now we're here with this in front of a judge. He [00:21:30] also wrote to the judge. You may not understand how difficult it is for me to be in the public light in this horrible way, as the poster child for a dumb athlete whose financial advisor took his money. I hate it and embarrassed by it more than you can imagine. Sitting with Duncan were Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, general manager R.C. Buford and teammates Manu Ginobili and Shawn Elliott. Banks apologized. Quote, Tim, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I lied, but Judge [00:22:00] Fred Berry wasn't having it. Over 100 letters of support had been submitted on banks behalf.

Caleb Newquist: When banks own mother wrote that quote, it was never proven that there were any damages or anything wrong done to Mr. Duncan. Judge Berry asked banks pointedly if he wished to withdraw his guilty plea. He told banks, quote, I certainly have the power to let you do that and will let your mother come and watch the government prove not only this count, but prove everything else against you. Banks declined. The [00:22:30] judge compared banks to a drug dealer he'd sentenced earlier that day. Quote, people like you ought to be held to a higher standard because you know better. Judge Barry sentenced Bank to four years in federal prison, three years of supervised release and $7.5 million in restitution. Duncan's attorney later said, I wouldn't say this makes him whole. By the time of sentencing, federal investigators had calculated Duncan's actual loss at $13.5 million. Duncan himself [00:23:00] estimated his total losses around 25 million. And here is where the story gets even stranger. Sitting in the courtroom during Banks's sentencing across from Duncan with banks family was NBA legend Kevin Garnett. At the time, Garnett didn't consider himself a victim. Duncan's attorney later recalled, we tried to save Kevin. We tried to tell him. By 2018, Garnet's [00:23:30] view had completely reversed. He filed his own lawsuit alleging banks had stolen $77 million of his lifetime earnings through a partnership called Hammer Holdings LLC, while Garnet contributed $57 million. Banks put in just 2.5 million.

Caleb Newquist: Banks allegedly used the funds for credit card bills, mortgages, private jets, lavish family vacations and personal investments. In one instance, banks denied Garnet's request for $40,000 of his own money, citing budget constraints. [00:24:00] Three days after withdrawing $500,000 for himself combined, banks allegedly extracted roughly $100 million from Duncan and Garnet together. After sentencing, Duncan kept his public comments brief. Quote when you break a law and do a crime, you have to pay up. But he also said something else, something that captured both the personal cost and the broader lesson. I never wanted to be here, and I was coached early [00:24:30] on in my career about preparing for something like this. I thought I was prepared the right way. I thought I did the right things and it still happened. So obviously it can happen to anyone. And then, like most things in Tim Duncan's career, it went away quietly and everyone moved on. Okay, before we jump into the next story, let's take a quick detour into the world [00:25:00] of merchandise, because both of these cases brush up against it, and it's actually a much bigger business than many people realize. Sports memorabilia, trading cards, signed jersey game used equipment. This is a multibillion dollar secondary market now. Comics, movie props, celebrity autographs, same deal. Some of this stuff sells for six seven figures. Kevin O'Leary wore a Kobe [00:25:30] Bryant Michael Jordan card around his neck on the red carpet recently. I don't even like.

Caleb Newquist: What is that? I don't know, that guy's a weirdo anyway, but it's a $20 million card. It's it's crazy. Anyway, you know, people are spending, you know, basically the amount of money to buy a house on, you know, cards and baseball bats. And it's, it's, it's, it's wild man. Wild anyway, but from a fraud perspective, it's, [00:26:00] uh, it's kind of this, uh, perfect storm because the whole system, so much of it runs on trust, provenance, authenticity, licensing agreements, appearance fees. A lot of this depends on intermediaries. Kind of reminds me of the case we did a while back on Inigo Philbrick. That was the world of fine art, high end fine art. Um, you know, agents, handlers, business managers, event promoters, the celebrities or the athletes themselves. [00:26:30] They're not tracking how these things got signed or the fees that got negotiated or where the money ended up, you know? And that's exactly where the problems can creep in. You get revenue streams that are irregular. You know, lots of cash transactions. Sometimes it's international. Um, you know, and sometimes it's event driven, like conventions or signings or whatever. Um, you know, the documentation is never consistent [00:27:00] and the buyers are usually people who are fans. You know, they're not really investors. They want it for the nostalgia. Um, and you know, when you're, when you're buying something based on nostalgia, it's, it's more about, you know, the love of something and not, uh, having a keen eye or a skeptical attitude about the item.

Caleb Newquist: So fraud shows up in this space in a lot of ways. Fake signatures, [00:27:30] undervalued licensing deals, skimmed appearance, revenue handlers taking a bigger management fee than anyone agreed to, or just self-dealing where somebody controlling access to the celebrity or the athlete, they just benefit from the transactions in some way. And there's another factor that shows up in our next story aging public figures. When someone's been famous for decades, the merchandise economy around them doesn't slow down. [00:28:00] Sometimes it accelerates. The celebrity Stan Lee comic book writer cameo star in the classic sense. And depending on how you look at it, the guy responsible for a massive chunk of modern pop culture. Spider-man, X-Men, Iron Man, The Hulk, Fantastic Four, Thor characters that went from pulp paper comics [00:28:30] to multibillion dollar movie franchises, and Stan Lee ended up becoming almost as recognizable as the characters themselves. Those Marvel movie cameos turned him into this grandfather of geek culture figure. Even people who had never read a comic knew the smiling guy popping up on the screen for 10s at a time. And financially, this is where it gets a little counterintuitive. Because with all that, [00:29:00] you might assume that Stan Lee was worth hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of dollars. Honestly, lots of people do. But most of those early comic deals were not creator friendly. He didn't retain ownership stakes in the characters the way creators sometimes do today.

Caleb Newquist: But that said, he wasn't struggling, especially later in life. Convention appearances, licensing deals, media projects. There's still plenty of money coming in. Just a lot of moving parts. And [00:29:30] that meant a lot of people involved in managing it all, which as we pointed out in the last story, pretty normal for somebody, especially in this case with a massive cultural footprint, but also in this case, in Stan Lee's case, the later years especially got complicated and not in a fun superhero multiverse kind of way. A big turning point came in 2017, [00:30:00] when Stan Lee's wife, Joan, passed away. They'd been married for decades, and by most accounts, she handled a lot of the day to day stability around Stan not just emotionally, but practically, too. Schedules, business coordination. You know, she was the gatekeeper. She. She controlled who had access to him. That kind of thing. And so when she died, that protective layer around him changed quickly. Suddenly, [00:30:30] there were new advisors, new associates, new people helping manage appearances, memorabilia, deals, licensing conversations, all the stuff that comes with being Stan Lee. And, you know, none of this is immediately suspicious when someone loses a long time partner. Support systems naturally shift. But in Stan Lee's case, the situation started getting messy. Reports [00:31:00] of people around him arguing over access, disputes about business decisions, and questions about who actually had authority to speak on his behalf.

Caleb Newquist: Eventually, that messy situation around Stan Lee spilled into the legal system. Several people in his inner circle ended up facing allegations tied to finances. Access and control over business decisions during his final years. We're not talking about small time grifting here. The [00:31:30] combined allegations across three of the disputes totaled over $26 million. One of the biggest disputes involved his former business manager, Gerardo Jerry Olivares, a florist turned publicist who'd worked his way into Lee's life starting in 2010. After Joan Lee died, Olivares allegedly moved fast, convincing the grieving Lee to sign over power of attorney within days, then firing Lee's banker of 26 years [00:32:00] and his longtime attorneys. The lawsuit, filed in April 2018, alleged that approximately $4.6 million had been transferred out of Lee's Merrill Lynch account without authorization of that, 1.4 million was traced directly to Olivares through wire transfers. Another 850,000 of Lee's money allegedly went to buy Olivares a West Hollywood condo. Now, this next part sounds [00:32:30] like something out of a twisted horror movie. Olivares allegedly had a nurse extract vials of Stan Lee's blood, which was then used to stamp Black Panther comics that sold for up to 500 bucks each. Lee reportedly never authorized any of that. The lawsuit describes it as a, quote, diabolical and ghoulish scheme, which honestly feels like an understatement. Another [00:33:00] figure who became part of the controversy was Max Anderson, Lee's longtime road manager, who'd been handling convention appearances and memorabilia operations since 2006.

Caleb Newquist: The civil lawsuit filed by Lee's estate in 2019 alleged Anderson stole over $21 million. 11 million in autograph revenue and 10 million in appearance fees. To put that in perspective, at one 2017 New York Comic Con, Anderson allegedly collected over $800,000, [00:33:30] paid himself 700,000 as a management fee, and gave Lee just 50,000 bucks. Anderson also allegedly got Lee, whose vision had deteriorated so severely he couldn't even read what he was signing. To grant him a worldwide license to Lee's name and likeness in perpetuity for $1. The lawsuit also claims Anderson stole specific memorabilia. Bob [00:34:00] Kane's original drawing of the Joker, Iron Man's movie mask and props from various Marvel films. And then there was Keya Morgan, a member memorabilia dealer who took direct control of Lee's business affairs in early 2018. Unlike the others, Morgan's situation escalated into criminal charges. The LA District attorney charged him with false imprisonment of an elder, three counts of grand theft totaling $222,000 and elder [00:34:30] abuse. The alleged methods were dramatic. Moving the 95 year old Lee from his home late at night, and when social workers showed up for welfare checks, Morgan allegedly called 911 to report them as trespassers, apparently trying to convince Lee he was in danger and needed Morgan's protection. Morgan was convicted of making those false 911 calls, but he denied the broader theft allegations, publicly, stating, I never took [00:35:00] a penny from Stan Lee.

Caleb Newquist: So by the end of Stan Lee's life, it wasn't one dispute. It was three overlapping cases, with each man accusing the others of theft and all of them exploiting the power vacuum created when Joan Li died. Like a lot of late life financial disputes involving public figures, the outcomes weren't especially clean. [00:35:30] The case involving Gerardo Olivares ultimately settled in July 2022 for an undisclosed amount. No admission of wrongdoing, no criminal charges filed, just a private resolution after years of legal wrangling. Notably, background checks later revealed that Olivares had 45 tax liens for unpaid taxes and 15 court judgments totaling roughly $40,000, none [00:36:00] of which Li had apparently verified before handing over control of his finances. Max Anderson's civil case settled in 2025, one week before it went to trial on undisclosed terms. But he did face federal charges not for the 21 million the estate alleged, but for failing to report 1.25 million in memorabilia income on his taxes. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced in June 20th 25 to 12 months in one day in federal [00:36:30] prison, plus nearly half $1 million in restitution to the IRS. And then there's the Kia Morgan case, which is genuinely wild. The criminal trial finally happened in October 2022, more than three years after the charges were filed. The defense called Lee's daughter, Jaycee, as their star witness and played audio recordings that allegedly showed she, not Morgan, had received the signing proceeds. [00:37:00]

Caleb Newquist: After two days of deliberation, the jury deadlocked 11 to 1 in favor of acquittal, which resulted in a mistrial. The judge immediately dismissed all remaining charges. Quote, in the interests of justice. So when you zoom out, what actually happened here? Total alleged financial harm over $26 million. Total proven financial misconduct. Anderson's 1.25 million in unreported [00:37:30] income to the IRS. That's it. That's the only adjudicated finding of wrongdoing in this entire saga. The rest sealed settlements, dismissed charges, and a very complicated legal mess around a 95 year old man who co-created Spider-Man and the Avengers, but couldn't protect himself from the people closest to him after his wife died. Stan [00:38:00] Lee passed away in 2018, before most of those legal disputes fully played out. And depending on which headlines you read at the time. His final years could look very different to fans. He was still the smiling guy doing cameos, signing autographs, talking about creativity and imagination. Behind the scenes, though, there were clearly disputes over money access and who was actually looking out for him. So [00:38:30] did we learn anything? Yes. First, trust is necessary. Nobody manages this level of complexity completely alone. We've talked about this in the other defrauded famous episodes. In Tim Duncan's case, he wasn't reckless. Stan Lee. He wasn't naive. They were working with people they had pretty good reasons to trust. That [00:39:00] is normal. But trust without oversight is, you know, basically the equivalent of keeping your fingers crossed.

Caleb Newquist: Independent review, second opinions. You know, periodic check ins. Those aren't signs of distrust. That's just good governance. Another lesson scale changes risk. We've talked about this before, but once you reach a certain level of income or brand value, [00:39:30] you're not just a person anymore. Financially, you're basically a small business. You have multiple revenue streams, licensing deals, investments, you know, taxes across multiple jurisdictions. You know, appearance, income, intellectual property. You know, at that point when there's so much to manage, you're going to need internal controls of some kind. You're going to need to separate. You know, you don't want one person overseeing it all and you want it to be documented. [00:40:00] I mean, this is a pattern that we've seen over and over and over. Another lesson is fraud usually comes from the inside. We're not talking about hackers or random strangers. It's, it's it's almost always people who are already in the ecosystem. The ones who understand how the money moves, where the documentation is thin or non-existent, where no one's double checking anything. The familiarity [00:40:30] that people have with their advisors, the closeness of those relationships, that's when defenses get lessened or lowered, and that's when the problems often start. And finally, getting older comes with more than just fun, new medical surprises. And, you know, realizing [00:41:00] that for whatever reason, you have to get up three times a night to go to the bathroom.

Caleb Newquist: It also changes financial risk in ways that people don't always plan for because supportsystem shift. And when you lose a long time partner or you have an old advisor who retires, new people, you know, step in. They fill that void. And even someone who's managed to successfully take care of their finances [00:41:30] for a very long time, they can suddenly be navigating unfamiliar territory. So having a plan in place ahead of time helps not just mentally, but legally. Powers of attorney. Identifying clear decision makers. Having defined financial processes, making those decisions is easier when you do it in advance and calmly Rather than [00:42:00] in the middle of a crisis. None of this guarantees fraud won't happen, but it does explain why we keep seeing cases like these, even with very smart, very successful people. All right, that's it for this episode. And remember, not even Thanos can snap away fraud. If you have questions, comments or suggestions for stories, drop me a line at oh my fraud at earmark cpe.com. Oh my fraud is created, written, produced and hosted by me, Caleb Newquist. Zach Frank [00:42:30] is my co producer, audio engineer and music supervisor. Laura Hobbs designed our logo rate review and subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. If you listen on earmark, that's where you get the CPE. Okay. All right. Join us next time for more ava-r swindlers and scams from stories that will make you say, oh, my fraud.