Prologue

I never wanted to write this book.

I wanted to disappear, quietly, permanently, with my son safe and the past buried under enough distance and time that it couldn’t reach us anymore. But the past doesn’t work that way when it involves people who believe they own you. When the people who tried to destroy you still send messages through hacked devices, through poisoned drinks, through strangers who suddenly want to be your friend again after a decade of silence.

This is not a conspiracy theory. This is not speculation. This is what happened to me, documented with passports, bank statements, text messages, court records, and photographs I still have in my possession. I’ve spent years trying to outrun it, and every time I think I’ve succeeded, something new arrives to remind me: the machine doesn’t stop. It just changes shape.

I’m telling this story now because I finally understand the only way to end it is to expose it. Not with paranoia or exaggeration, but with the facts: cold, sequential, and verifiable. If you’re reading this, you’re either someone who travels to Asia and needs to know what’s waiting, or you’re someone who can help turn this into the series it’s meant to be. Either way, you deserve the truth.

It begins at an airport gate in 2015, with my four-year-old son’s hand in mine. It ends, at least for the first season, on a solo flight in 2011, when I still believed love could be real and money could be replaced. Everything in between is how a man who thought he was too smart to be played got played for everything.

Read on. Then decide if you believe me. I have the evidence if you want to see it.

The Exit (2015)

The hotel in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City had been my world for two months. Not because I loved it. Because it was the only place I could measure. In Vietnam, the danger wasn’t a man in a doorway. It was the way the day could be normal, ordinary even, right up until the moment it wasn’t. The way systems could bend without breaking. The way a story could be written about you while you were still alive.

That morning I didn’t feel dramatic. I felt exact. I had my son with me. He was four, old enough to ask questions, young enough to trust the answers. The day before we left, I’d seen something I couldn’t unsee. My son’s mother Hong’s Android was on the bed, screen lit, and it wasn’t open to messages or photos or anything a normal person would have running in a hotel room. It was open to tools. Hacker programs. Connections. Processes that didn’t belong on a mother’s phone, not unless she was doing something to someone. And the “someone” was me.

I watched the indicators long enough to understand what they were doing: reaching, pairing, attempting to connect to my phone. I didn’t confront her right away. I didn’t have the luxury of emotion. I had a child in the room. I had a clock I couldn’t see. The next morning, she disappeared. Forty-five minutes. Long enough to do something. Long enough to meet someone. Long enough to set a trap and come back wearing the same face.

When she returned, I took her phone. Not gently. Not politely. I took it because I needed to know whether I was imagining what I’d seen. I wasn’t. The same programs were there. The same activity. The same quiet, technical intent. I said her name. She exploded. The fight wasn’t a conversation. It was a collision. Her voice rose until it filled the room. My voice stayed low because my son was watching and because a low voice is harder to weaponize.

Then she came at me with a knife. It happened so fast it didn’t feel like a scene. It felt like physics. My son screamed, “Daddy!” And then he ran to me. Four years old, and he didn’t run away. He ran toward me. He wrapped his arms around me like his body could shield mine. I can still feel the pressure of his small hands, the way he clung to me as if he could hold me in place in the world. Hong froze for half a beat, not because she calmed down, but because she couldn’t understand what she was seeing. Then she screamed it, loud and raw, like it offended her: HE CHOSE YOU. Utter disbelief. Utter rage.

And in that moment, something in me went cold and clear. This wasn’t just chaos. This was a choice. A line had been drawn, and my son, my four-year-old, had stepped onto my side of it. That was when I called Delta. I asked for the next available flight back to the United States. The woman on the line told me the earliest seat was eight days out. Eight days might as well have been eight years. I said okay. Then the call dropped. It wasn’t a slow fade. It wasn’t a polite disconnect. One second she was there, the next second the line was dead, as if someone had reached in and cut it.

I stared at the screen for a beat longer than I should have. Then I called back immediately. A different woman answered. Different voice, different cadence, different energy, like the day had shifted by a degree and only I noticed. I gave her the same information. She didn’t tell me eight days. She told me there was a flight the next morning. I remember the way my body reacted before my mind did: relief first, then suspicion, then the cold, clean focus that comes when you realize you don’t have time to question miracles.

I moved fast after that. Because I didn’t know what was happening outside. I didn’t know that about an hour after I’d gone inside the HCMC airport early the next morning, Hong would return, this time with police. I didn’t know she would bring them straight to the counter. I didn’t know the warrant would be in their hands. And I didn’t know the ticket agent would look at the screen and find no record of me. That single missing line of data, my name behaving like a question, would slow everything down. It would delay the police. It would buy minutes.

Hong would insist. He’s on the flight. She would push them to go to the gate anyway, to get her son, to stop me, to have me arrested. By the time they agreed, by the time they moved, by the time they ran up to the gate together, the aircraft was already pushing back. Minutes. That’s what it came down to. At the gate, time did something strange. Flights don’t leave early. Not in the real world. Not in the world of delays and announcements and lines that never move as fast as they should. But this one did. The aircraft pushed back and took off ten minutes early. Ten minutes isn’t much. Unless you’re the person who needs those ten minutes to catch you.

I held my son’s hand as the plane lifted, and I didn’t let myself exhale like it was over. I’d learned that lesson too: the first escape is never the last gate. Tokyo came next. A connecting flight. A different country. A different set of uniforms. A different set of rules. I walked through the airport with my son beside me and kept my face neutral, my pace normal, my posture unremarkable. I didn’t look like a man running. I didn’t look like a man hiding. I looked like a father traveling. And I passed through without incident. No one touched my shoulder. No one asked me to step aside. No one said my name like it was a problem. I kept walking until the next gate opened and then the next.

Chicago was the last major threshold. The United States. The place I’d been trying to get back to, not because it was safe, but because it was mine. Because if something was going to happen, I wanted it to happen on ground I understood. When we finally landed, I didn’t feel victorious. I felt emptied. My son leaned into me like sleep had been waiting for permission. Vietnam was behind us. But the strangest part of that day, the part that stayed with me long after the jet lag faded, wasn’t the fear. It was the way the world had bent. A call that should have ended one way ended another. A flight that should have been full made room. A plane that should have been late left early. And a man who was minutes from being caught slipped through.

I didn’t understand it then. Not fully. I only understood the result. I had gotten out. And if you’re reading this, you need to understand something up front: This wasn’t the first time I’d had to escape Vietnam with my son beside me. But it was the first time I understood, down to the minute, how close we were to being stopped.

But to understand how I ended up in that impossible moment in 2015; staring down the barrel of betrayal, loss, and a life unraveled, I need to take you back decades more, to the very beginning.

The Steel Town Kid (1972-2009)

I grew up in the steel town of Clairton, Pennsylvania, a place where the mills hummed like a heartbeat and the air carried the sharp tang of molten metal. I have fond memories of those streets: playing high-school football, training in Judo, holding down jobs from the time I was fourteen, or nine if you count the paper routes that had me up before dawn. At sixteen, I claimed the state championship in Pennsylvania for the sixteen-year-old heavyweight class in Judo, a victory that taught me early on the value of discipline and grit.

At nineteen, still in my second year of college, I launched a pizza shop called Fast Eddie’s in my hometown, funding it with $18,000 in credit card debt. The day we opened, I had just $50 left to my name on those cards. But the shop pulled in $700 on day one, and I rode that success for the next two and a half years until the constant sweat of the hot kitchen wore me down. I sold it because I still didn’t know what I wanted from life, so law school seemed like a good stall tactic, not a passion for the courtroom, but a way to buy time while figuring out what did excite me.

I handed Fast Eddie’s over to my store manager, Will, in 1995 for $25,000, paid in a mix of $1’s, $5’s, $10’s, and $20’s that he’d borrowed from a local drug dealer serving as his silent investor. Trouble followed fast: the State of Pennsylvania was already building a case against that dealer, and his arrest came soon after the sale. Investigators traced his dirty money to the purchase of a local business, pulling me in for questioning. I had no firsthand knowledge, only hearsay about the funds’ origins, but they pressed me to testify that I’d received $25,000 for the shop. Luck intervened when the dealer took a plea deal, sparing me the witness stand.

I stayed on part-time with Will while applying to Duquesne University’s law school a year later. I was accepted, borrowed the full tuition; $55,500 over three years, through student loans, and covered rent and living expenses from my earnings. The pizza gig didn’t cut it anymore, and I was nearly tapped out from the sale proceeds when my friend’s wife, a stripper, kept insisting I try male stripping. She claimed it paid $1,000 a weekend for just a few hours each weekend. I figured, why not, and met the owner of the agency she worked for, which handled bachelor and bachelorette parties for both men and women.

I started with her agency, Blondie & Company, but picked up jobs at other places too, including Extreme Entertainment. That’s where I first saw Johnny. He was getting arrested right outside the building for dumping his girlfriend’s clothes in the front yard and setting them on fire. She’d tipped off the cops, telling them he’d show up for a driving gig that night. They were waiting beside the building when he pulled in. As they cuffed him over the hood of a police-issue Chevy Blazer, he looked straight at me, a total stranger, and started laughing. I’d never met him, but that moment ranks as one of the funniest introductions I’ve ever had. A couple of days later he was out of jail, back with the same girl, and we struck up a conversation at the agency. They broke up again a year later. I wonder why!

This was 1997; my first year of law school and my first year stripping.

Johnny and I became roommates within a year and stayed roommates on and off for the next few years. In the summer of 1998, before my final year of law school, the girl I was dating and a couple of friends from the agency kept pushing me to submit to Playgirl. They claimed a centerfold spread would almost guarantee auditions for the big soap operas. Law school was never my dream; the idea of making half a million a year on television sounded a hell of a lot more appealing than practicing law. I planned to finish the degree as a safety net, but I sent a few Polaroids to Playgirl in New York anyway. A month later they wrote back: they wanted me for a centerfold and asked if I could come to New York in December 1998 for the shoot. I did. I became the April 1999 centerfold. Lucky timing—only two months of law school remained when the issue hit the stands. Being the Playgirl guy at a Catholic university felt a little awkward, though no one ever confronted me directly.

I graduated from Duquesne University School of Law in June 1999 with zero interest in practicing law. I kept stripping for a few more months while I figured out the next move. Then Playgirl called again: they wanted to make me “Man of the Millennium” for 2000. Of course I said yes. I flew to Los Angeles in late 1999 for the shoot and met a manager, Todd Tanguay, who offered to get me auditions, mainly for soaps. I signed with him. Over the next few months he convinced me to move to Los Angeles full-time to chase acting. The girl I was dating at the time agreed to come with me. In June 2000 we loaded a car carrier, hooked up everything we owned, threw my dog Kane in the back, and drove west. We stayed at the Beverly Terrace Hotel in West Hollywood for nearly a week before renting a small efficiency on Holloway Drive.

For the next year I took acting classes with Howard Fine and landed auditions at every major soap opera running at the time. I never got a single callback. My acting was terrible. I couldn’t make someone else’s words feel like mine, no matter how hard I tried. Worse, I didn’t even like it. The dream died fast, but I already loved Los Angeles and decided to stay.

I studied for, and passed, the California Bar on the first try in mid-2001. I started a credit repair business in 2001 that grew to seven figures by 2005. I met my friend Isa at Gold’s Gym in 2000, and it was Isa who introduced me to his friend Chris Whalley in 2001. Chris was a club promoter, and through him I would later meet his lawyer, and friend, Jeff, a connection that would chang my life in ways I couldn’t foresee.

That same year, I was introduced to Aaron Tonken. He came to me as a wealthy Hollywood figure with terrible credit. Tonken was a charity fundraiser and self-styled insider who had built a reputation orchestrating high-profile celebrity events. He positioned himself as the man who could deliver stars for lavish fundraisers, pulling in big money from donors and sponsors. In reality, he had become notorious for schemes that promised glittering galas while misappropriating funds meant for charity. He would later chronicle his own downfall in a memoir called King of Cons after federal convictions and a 5-year prison sentence.

The deal started innocently enough; or as innocently as anything could in Aaron Tonken’s glittering, smoke-filled world. I promised to scrub his credit clean for a modest $2,000 upfront. But Aaron being Aaron, the real hook came next: use my credit cards to float his endless parade of “business” expenses, and in return I’d pocket a tidy 20% bonus on every dollar charged. Add to that a $5,000 monthly retainer as his part-time assistant, pocket change for someone who could already smell the private-jet fuel; and the math felt irresistible.

My credit-repair side hustle was printing money, sure, but the real grind was hunting high-net-worth clients willing to shell out what amounted to $400 an hour for the service. So most days I was out there hustling seminars, running ads, chasing leads. The five grand a month, the occasional ride on a Gulfstream G4 alongside Cher or Dylan McDermott, the nights at Mr. Chow in Beverly Hills where Aaron hosted celebrity dinners like a modern-day Gatsby; it was all too seductive to turn down. I told him straight: no way I’m fronting this circus unless you drag me along for the show. He laughed, waved a hand, and just like that, I was in.

The spending escalated fast. Thirty thousand one month, a hundred seventy-five the next; my various credit cards groaning under the weight of his ambitions. He paid the bills, but always on the razor’s edge, the very last possible day, dangling threats if I slowed the flow. The promised 20% bonus? It evaporated like morning fog; he’d cover the balance just enough to keep the accounts open, then hold the next payment hostage until I charged more. A slow, grinding nightmare disguised as opportunity.

Two years in, the cracks became fissures. FBI agents started showing up at his door, polite but persistent, asking about complaints, mishandled funds, the usual prelude to handcuffs. By then I was drowning: Nearly $150,000 in credit-card debt racked up on his behalf, three luxury vehicles leased in my name that Aaron loaned out as glittering bribes to impress politicians and stars. I needed my money back, the cars repossessed, my name scrubbed from the wreckage before the whole empire imploded.

Aaron owed half of Los Angeles; donors, vendors, charities, you name it. I was just another creditor in the queue, my credit maxed, no more juice to squeeze. Except for one card: my American Express, upgraded to the mythical Black Card thanks to the avalanche of spending I’d funneled through it the year before. Aaron, in his carelessness, had slipped up. A few unauthorized charges slipped through without my signature: $48,000 for a private jet, fuel courtesy of my Amex; $25,000 donated to the California Republican Party in his name; a scattering of smaller hits in the thousands. Sloppy. Desperate.

I knew the rules cold: sixty days from the statement date to dispute fraudulent charges. The clock was ticking. I had to extract whatever back pay I could, reclaim those vehicles, and position myself to claw back nearly $125,000 before the window slammed shut. The Feds were at his home office every week now, their presence like a storm cloud rolling in. Arrest was inevitable; maybe days away.

In the end, it was a race against collapse: me against Aaron’s unraveling lies, against the federal machine closing in, against the ticking deadline on that Black Card. I moved fast, quietly, calculating every step. Because in Hollywood’s shadow economy, loyalty buys nothing, proximity costs everything, and when the music stops, the only winners are the ones who get off the dance floor before the lights go out.

The plan was audacious, born of desperation and the kind of cold calculus you learn when the ground is already shifting beneath your feet. I held spare keys to two of the three luxury cars leased in my name: the Mercedes S430 and the Cadillac Escalade. The Mercedes SL500? That one was trickier. Jonathan Silverman, the actor whose easy charm had carried him through a dozen sitcoms, had the Escalade parked in his Hollywood Hills garage. Senator Dick Gephardt’s chief of staff—then working out of an office on Doheny Drive—had the SL500. And Aaron himself was driving the S430 like it was his personal chariot.

I started with the easiest mark. I called Aaron, spun a story about needing the S430 for a double date. My Mustang Cobra was too cramped for romance, and he handed over the keys without a second thought, probably too distracted by the federal heat closing in to care. Next came the SL500 which I didn’t have a spare key for. I rang Gephardt’s chief of staff, voice steady, and fed him the perfect lie: I’d hidden my girlfriend’s engagement ring in the trunk and needed to retrieve it so I could propose to her. He bought it. I went up to his office, got the key, and I drove the car straight to my house, parked it in the driveway like it had never left my possession, then had a friend shuttle me up into the hills for the final piece.

The Escalade ended up being the problem child. Silverman had it locked away in his garage, and when I dialed OnStar to trigger the horn; hoping to confirm its location. I heard nothing but silence. No bleat, no echo. I pivoted to Plan B: a call to Jonathan’s mother, whose number I retrieved from Aaron’s rolodex. I laid it out plain: I was cutting ties with Aaron, the vehicle was registered in my name, and I needed it back. She pushed back hard; Aaron owed them money, she said, and the car was leverage. I didn’t blink. “You’ve got ninety minutes,” I told her. “After that, I report it stolen, and I tip off The Hollywood Reporter that Jonathan Silverman’s riding around in a hot Cadillac given to him by a fraudster. Your call.”

Thirty minutes later my phone lit up with Jonathan’s number. He was furious, voice tight. The Escalade was waiting in the Ralphs parking lot in Hollywood, keys in the glove box, just like I’d demanded. My buddy drove me over. I slid behind the wheel, felt the leather settle under me, and drove away. Possession restored.

The next morning I filed disputes on the Amex Black Card for over $125,000 in unauthorized charges: the private jet fuel, the Republican Party donation, the rest of the bleeding, and won every single one. American Express didn’t even fight it. Aaron’s calls came in waves after that, dozens a day, voicemails stacking like accusations. I picked up once. “We’re done,” I said. “There’s nothing left to talk about.” Then I blocked him.

He didn’t quit. Threats pinged through AOL Instant Messenger for weeks, pleasant one minute, rage the next. I ignored them all. About a month later, I was standing in my West LA living-room in nothing but boxers, coffee going cold in my hand, when I glanced out the front window and saw them: eight figures in dark windbreakers moving across my lawn, yellow letters blazing FBI on their backs.

My stomach dropped through the floor.

They knocked. I opened the door in my underwear, heart hammering. The lead agent held up a warrant; search and seizure for all computer-related equipment: hard drives, discs, anything that could store data. I thought instantly of the stack of pirated software DVDs and CDs in the office closet, the kind of thing that could turn a bad day into a federal indictment. One of the agents caught my expression, gave a small shrug. “We don’t care about that stuff,” he said. “Not today.”

Relief hit like oxygen after drowning. At least one small mercy in the storm.

They boxed up the computers, the external drives, the tangle of cables, and left as efficiently as they’d arrived. I stood in the empty house afterward, staring at the spot where the tower used to sit, coffee finally gone stone cold. The game had shifted again. Aaron was gone, the cars were mine, the debt erased; but the Feds had just walked through my front door. And in this town, once they knock, they rarely leave empty-handed.

The call to my attorney, JJ Little, felt like grasping at the last rope in a burning building. He told me to meet him; quietly, urgently, in an alley off Santa Monica Boulevard. When I pulled up, he was pacing under the sodium glow, eyes darting skyward as if helicopters were already circling. JJ had been burned by the Feds before, he said; lost his practice, his savings, his nerve. His voice cracked when he admitted he wasn’t the man for this fight. But he’d find someone who was.

He asked the question that hung between us like smoke: “Are you a target?” I told him the truth; I didn’t know. The referral came fast: David Eldon, a federal criminal defense lawyer who didn’t blink at retainers. Thirty-five thousand dollars, half upfront. Plus a forensic accountant to scrub my books clean and package them for whatever storm was coming. I wrote the checks, over thirty-two grand total that day, feeling the weight of each signature like a nail in a coffin.

For months I hounded Eldon to force a sit-down with the U.S. Attorney’s office. He thought it suicidal; better to stay low, let the heat pass. But everything was unraveling: the Feds breathing down my neck, my two-year relationship with Faith collapsing under the strain. She’d started secretly seeing some rich, five-foot-nothing guy with gray balding hair months earlier behind my back; when my cash dried up and the freedom looked shaky, she vanished. My business partner Linda, whom i was having an affair with at the time and who was also my business partner on a side venture, tried to steal our top client while I was distracted. “Fuck my life” became less a motto than a prayer. Cash strapped, I sold the house in West LA and rented a West LA apartment in early 2004, walls closing in.

Layered on top was another lawsuit in Ventura County that started in 2002, someone claiming conflict of interest over a measly four-grand referral fee I’d earned. It would drag on for years, costing me nearly $750,000 in legal fees before it finally died. But the big meeting with the US Attorney finally came in 2004. I walked into a conference room downtown LA like a man stepping onto a gallows: U.S. Attorney, California Attorney General, FBI, IRS; all arrayed around a long table. Eldon at my side. The air thick enough to choke on.

The U.S. Attorney opened a folder, slid out a printout of an AOL Messenger chat. Supposedly me threatening to kill Aaron. “Did you write this?” he asked. I said no.

To understand what came next, you need the backstory: a guy Aaron did business with, morbidly obese, cruising LA in a vintage brown Lincoln limo. Gay, flamboyant, nicknamed “Squishy” behind his back because Aaron claimed the man had chronic hemorrhoids requiring multiple surgeries. Whenever Aaron and I fought online, I’d throw Squishy in his face like a grenade.

Now the prosecutor handed me the next sheet. Another chat log. The words stared up: “Hey Aaron, why don’t you go and fuck Squishy and hold his legs up in the air while doing it so his hemorrhoids can squirt blood all over your face, you fucking P.O.S.”

I read it slowly. The room watched; Eldon frozen, IRS agent stone-faced, Attorney General impassive, FBI impassive, U.S. Attorney waiting.

A beat. Then I looked up, met their eyes, and with a slight smirk, said, “Yes.”

Laughter exploded; everyone but Eldon, who sat stunned as the room dissolved into incredulous chuckles. The tension shattered like glass.

They asked me to step out. Minutes later Eldon emerged, shaking his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. “You just talked your way out of an indictment. They’re dropping pursuit; full immunity for your testimony against Aaron.”

Years later I spoke with Marty Laffer, the former IRS forensic accountant who’d combed my records. He said Eldon called it the only time he’d ever seen a target walk into a conference room and walk out a free man.

I still had to pay forty-five thousand to settle with the State of California. But the noose loosened. Aaron wasn’t so fortunate. He pleaded guilty to federal mail and wire fraud; diverting millions from donors and underwriters. In 2004 he drew sixty-three months in prison. The plea deal had him looking at thirty-six to forty-eight; lying about that AOL threat tacked on extra years.

In the end, the house of cards fell hardest on the man who built it. I walked away scarred, wiser, and, for one surreal moment; laughing in the face of ruin.

In 2004 I met Pablynie, a beautiful Brazilian woman. Married her on New Year’s Day 2005 at the Grand Canyon. Sweet girl, good heart. But something was missing. While we were married, I created a credit repair software system called CreditCRM that was wildly successful. It made millions per year.

I almost hired Alec Baldwin to do a voiceover for my ad and had Gary Brackett from the Super Bowl Championship 2006 Indianapolis Colts as my spokesperson. Life couldn’t get any better. This ride lasted from 2005 to mid-2008 when everything went to hell.

The mortgage meltdown came, and my sales went from 320K per month down to 90K overnight. The worst part was that I had just filed for divorce the month the sales plunged, and Pablynie still wrongfully thought I was swimming in cash.

She was scorned and wouldn’t see reason. She somehow convinced her attorney to take her case on a contingency, and they came out of the gates swinging. I was spending 15K a month on the divorce with no end in sight.

To make matters worse, I started talking to Faith again. My psychic later told me that Faith was a witch and used magic on me to lure me back. Wouldn’t surprise me at all; she looks a little bit like a witch, come to think of it.

A couple months later in mid-2008, Faith moved in with me, and we ended up getting engaged. I know, I know, stupid move, but my penchant for slutty, sexy Asians got the best of me. Faith never had a kid and wanted to have a baby with me. I did not want that at all, but she kept bugging me. I did agree to go to the fertility clinic with her to get tested to see if it was me or her that had the issue since she was now 42 and never got pregnant. The tests came back that I was fine, and she was the one that couldn’t conceive.

In the meantime, her salon business was a complete failure, and she was carrying $87,000 in credit card debt. Since I was planning on marrying her, I decided to pay off the debt in one fell swoop.

A few weeks later, we went in for another fertility consultation where the doctor told me that this procedure could exceed $200,000 with no guarantees. Not only did I not want to have a kid with her, now my business was at the point of no return and was dying on the vine, which meant my income was nowhere near what it was the year before.

That’s when I decided to end it. I told Faith I wanted to break up and that I didn’t want to have a kid with her. She threw the 3-carat $55,000 engagement ring at me and stormed out.

She went to stay at a friend’s for a few days when all of a sudden the maid called me while I was at work. “Mr. Edward, Mr. Edward,” she said. She told me that I needed to come home right away.

I happened to be speaking at a seminar in West Covina at the time and by the time I was able to leave, plus traffic, it took me over an hour to get home . By the time I got there, Faith was gone, and the place was a wreck.

She stole a box of documents that she knew were very important to me and also ripped the lining out of every jacket and suit I had looking for the engagement ring that she gave back. Lucky for me, I took apart an old computer and hid the ring inside there, a place she never thought of looking.

I gave this witch $87,000 just a month prior, and this is how she repaid me.

Needless to say, my experience with Faith and the continued divorce drama pushed me to finally accept a guy’s trip invitation to go to Macau with a couple of attorneys I knew.

The Ventura County lawsuits had already been bleeding me since 2002, adding to the pressure. The Ventura County lawsuits started as one lawsuit but morphed into 8 by the time it was over in 2009. Let me explain. A previous client, Patrick McComb, showed up with an elderly woman he introduced as his “long-lost aunt,” Merle Peterson. They needed a fast loan to invest in a nightclub. I wasn’t their lender or advisor, but Patrick asked if I could find someone who could close quickly. I did; a hard-money lender. Secured by Merle’s house, the funds went straight to Patrick’s account. I never touched the money.

Merle died from surgery complications two weeks later. Patrick skipped town. Craig Wood, trustee of Merle’s trust, sued everyone, including me. Craig’s lawyer, Thomas Roth, pulled me aside: “We know the real bad guys are Patrick and the lender. Cooperate, we’ll let you out.” I agreed. No more discovery. I waited for dismissal.

Roth kept saying, “We have a deal, but my client doesn’t want it in writing.” They settled with the lender. I expected release. Instead: “Client changed his mind.”

Trial came in 2004. Everyone else settled or vanished. I was the only live defendant. Everyone agreed I had nothing to do with the earlier money Merle gave Patrick, the loan went straight to him, and it was legally unenforceable because Merle’s ailing husband didn’t sign off on the loan. Yet Craig honored the unenforceable loan, paid $118,000 in interest from the estate, then blamed me. Claimed I was secretly Merle’s attorney. No retainer. No payments. No witnesses. Their expert based his opinion on inadmissible testimony. Judge Fred Bysshe relied on it anyway.

Judgment against me: $122,000 plus fees in a bench trial decided by Fred Bysshe.

The lawsuits peaked in 2006, costing me $30,000 a month in fees at their height. Months later I located a contract Merle signed with Patrick that promised her a 10% bonus, rent paid for life, and half ownership of the nightclub. Checks matched. She got paid. Craig testified previously that she never received a cent. His lawyers later admitted in papers they knew about the checks. They committed perjury and fraud upon the court and directly admitted to it after.

I moved for a new trial. One Word. Denied.

That’s when I realized it was an ambush. I hired a PI. Found Judge Bysshe and William Steinmeyer “Roth’s Law Partner” were Rotary Club buddies. Steinmeyer did six-figure work for Ventura County Schools where Bysshe’s wife was an administrator. Bysshe was substituted the day before trial. The court reporter changed a transcript that should have ended the case. I got hosed and I was furious!

I fought back. An impeachment website went up. “Someone” scraped court employee emails and blasted it. The Estate’s Attorney Tom Roth’s house got swarmed by people responding to a fake “free computers” ad on Craigslist. Roth’s personal cell phone blew up with responses to a personal ad titled: “Horny Bottom Needs Hole Filled TODAY!” Oh, it was full-on war! My Attorney JJ was dying laughing for months while it played out.

Six more lawsuits followed. I spent $700,000 in Attorney’s fees over the next few years. The cases finally ended in 2009. By late 2008, the mortgage crash had gutted my business income. When you added the $500,000 hit to my Bel Air home’s value, I was broke on paper, even if I still had some cash left to keep fighting. I ended up settling the cases in their entirety along with an agreement from them to vacate the judgment for a mere 3 months worth of what I was spending on Attorney’s fees. The weight lifted from my shoulders was immense.

It was right around that time when my friend Jeff, another attorney originally introduced to me by Chris Whalley, who had been pitching me for months on a guys’ trip to Macau, said: “You need to get away. Come to Macau with us”

I finally said yes.

I had no idea what I was walking into.

MACAU

If you haven’t heard of Macau, it is a 1-hour Ferry Ride from Hong Kong and is the Las Vegas of Asia. It makes two times more gambling revenue than Vegas, and most Vegas Casino Brands have a casino in Macau, i.e., Wynn, Venetian. None of the American Casino brands have Saunas in the Casino. However, most of the Asian-owned Casinos also have a Sauna somewhere inside the Casino. You can go hang out all day and get every kind of body treatment you can think of in addition to getting your haircut, and finally, you can pick a girl from “Showtime” to take to a private room.

The Casino does not own the Saunas in each Casino. The Saunas are all owned by the Triads, who lease the space from the Casino. The businesses are not connected; they only occupy the same building. Many patrons don’t realize that and feel secure in these Saunas since they are inside a multi-million-dollar Casino. I remember when I asked the front desk if they had any coupons for the Sauna and the Lady was quick to say that they have no affiliation with the Sauna as though I just accused her of a crime.

When you go to any Sauna in Macau, every 30 minutes to an hour (depending on the Sauna), a bell would ring, and the ladies doing the regular sauna services would all start shouting “Showtime, Showtime,” where they coerce you towards a room blasting loud music. Once you enter the room, you will see over 100 beautiful girls wearing dresses with a number on them, and you can pick a girl by her number and go to a private room for an hour and do whatever.

Prostitution is legal in Macau and has been pretty much since The Portuguese colonized Macau in 1557. I was told by a friend (whom I now think was completely wrong) that prostitution is normal and not taboo in Asia and that the girls are very grateful that they can help their families with the money they make. At that time, I wasn’t aware of the real dark substance behind this industry, and the human trafficking and advanced scams aspect were not even crossing my mind or apparent from what I observed while there initially. My naive assessment almost got me killed more times than once, and escaping Asia once the bottom-feeding underworld sunk their teeth in left me with a story that is a cross between “Catch Me if You Can” & “Constantine.” Asia is different from the Western World; deception is mastered in ways the Western World is not akin to.

MY 1ST TRIP TO ASIA

The date I first visited Macau was July 25th, 2009. I arrived in Macau around 1 AM, upon which I was greeted at the lobby of the Wynn by my friend the moment I arrived. My friend then introduced me to his friend and asked me if I wanted to check out a few hotspots, but he couldn’t join us because he already had a girl meeting him at the hotel. I said yes even though I hadn’t slept in 24 hours, and it was 1 AM already. After taking a quick shower, I met him in the lobby, and we went to a place called the “Racetrack” in the Lisboa Hotel where about 100 girls walk around the halls and wait for you to come to say hello to negotiate a price and take them back to your hotel. These girls are independent, and they must keep walking, or they will kick them out of the hotel since this is done in the public hallways of the hotel and is not an official business like the Saunas in Macau. I approached a Chinese girl who looked at me like the Night Stalker and said no as she quickly walked away. I said WTF to the guy I was with, and he told me that he never saw that happen, but two minutes later a girl did the same thing to him, so we said screw this place and went to the MGM where he said there is a pick-up bar with tons of girls hanging out. The bar ended up being dead, so we almost called it a night when he asked if I wanted to go to a famous Sauna called the Eighteen Sauna inside the Golden Dragon Casino.

We arrived at 2:20 AM and sat in an area where they offer services like manicures, ear cleaning, thigh massages, and body scrubs. I got my ears cleaned which is a scary thing if you never had it done before. It makes you think they will pop your eardrum the entire time, but luckily, I was OK. The guy I was with was perplexed at why Showtime was taking so long to start (I now know why; it’s because they were delaying it to make sure their best English-speaking girls were available since Western Guys were there). After pondering for a moment, I said, “what the hell,” why not. We were there for an hour and 10 minutes before they rang the bell, and the guy I was with said it always happened every thirty minutes. Around 3:30 AM, a bell started to ring, and the woman that did the massage and ear cleaning services started saying “ShowTime, ShowTime” and motioned for us to go to the other area of the Sauna where you could hear loud music playing. The guy I was with lit up like a Christmas tree and said, “come on, let’s go”! I walked into the room and was stunned by the number of beautiful young women walking around in Evening Gowns with a unique number pinned to the top. Holy Shit! I exclaimed as I laid eyes on Hong for the first time.

At that time in my life, I liked to save lost souls; However, even though it wasn’t my plan originally, after falling in love with Hong, I decided the concept of being with a girl I met at a Sauna long term wasn’t a deal-breaker because I know these girls came from nothing. It wasn’t their fault that they ended up since their families pushed them towards it. I believe everybody deserves a second chance and figured that a girl like that would be 100 times more grateful than the average girl, but I now know I was wrong only because of the horrors their families and the evil men who own and control them have subjected them too. This harsh environment effectively reduces them to a learned helpless state where Evil Men that respect nobody completely control them.

Anyways, I noticed Hong right away and was stunned by her beauty. I picked her immediately, and the Manager called her number, and she was whisked away to a room downstairs as I waited for the other guy I was with to pick who he wanted since I didn’t want to leave right away and be rude. He took ten minutes to pick his girl, and I almost changed my choice because I almost forgot how beautiful Hong was as I stared at the other 100 women for ten minutes after she left. I ultimately decided not to change my pick. I got Hong’s phone number before leaving. I proceeded to call her every day without an answer or a callback, but in the meanwhile was visiting other Saunas throughout Macau and met a striking girl at “Darlings 1” named Phuong that went by the name Hanna and was #301 at Darlings 1 (There is a Darlings 2 also). The first video below is of the “18 Sauna” and the one below that is “Darlings 1.”

The 18 Sauna in Macau

Darlings 1 in Macau

HANNA “PHUONG” (DARLINGS 1)

I started to like Phuong “Hanna” a lot and went back to “Darlings 1” once more that week in addition to paying to have her come to my hotel and decided to pursue her when suddenly Hong calls me the day before I went back to America. Little did I know then that Hong’s sudden call, the one that came right before I flew home at the end of my first visit, was no accident. Her boss had already clocked me. He saw how I looked at her, how I hesitated between her and Phuong, how I kept coming back. I was perfect: attached, generous, far from home, and clearly willing to spend. They all saw it. So they colluded. Hong, Phuong, the circle around them, the people pulling strings higher up. It wasn’t random romance anymore. It was a deliberate, deadly game designed to bleed me dry. They do this all the time in Macau, and they run the same playbook across the globe. Target the lonely traveler, build the illusion of love, then extract everything.

I liked Hong a little bit more than Hanna though, so I went to see Hong one last time before leaving and proceeded to communicate with both of them via phone and Yahoo Messenger for the next three weeks. I planned on returning to see both of them for five days each without disclosing that I liked two girls, not one like I led each to believe. Being the multi-tasker, I would send a message and just copy and paste the same message and send it to the other to save time. Statements like “you are beautiful” and stuff like that, but little did I know, there was a Vietnamese girl named Nhan translating the messages for both girls. I thought I was playing them, but they were scamming me from day 1. BUT, after spending five days with Hong on that second trip, the guilt I felt was overwhelming. I decided to tell her everything and said that I am starting to feel love for her and cannot love somebody 8,000 miles away, so I wanted to say goodbye to her and Phuong forever because it is too hard loving somebody so far away. I told her I wanted to pay off the debt she owed so she didn’t have to work in a sauna anymore and gave her $4600 US before I left and said goodbye for the last time. She was crying and went into the bathroom and called somebody while I continued to talk to an interpreter that I hired to help us talk since Hong’s English was bad at the time. Ten minutes later, Hong walked out of the bathroom, threw the money on the floor, threw the iPhone on the bed that I bought her, and walked out crying. I was shocked! Never have I seen any girl give anything back when I was saying goodbye. Did I just lose an amazing girl???

I still had five days in Macau, so I decided to stick to the plan and spend it with Phuong even though I told her the same thing. I only gave her $1400 though, and she kept the money and the iPhone I bought for her also, which was fine because it was a gift. The second day after telling Hong goodbye, while with Phuong, Hong kept calling and texting me saying Why Why Why!!! Phuong kept telling me to look at my phone when a text message would come in; I now realize that she did it to help forward the scam, which was to get me to love Hong since Hong was the better option to assure success since they all realized that I liked Hong the most. After about a day of sending me messages, I couldn’t take it anymore and agreed to see her even though Phuong “acted as though” she was angry. The second I saw Hong, I was floored. Hong looked so innocent and heartbroken that I quickly thought to myself the possibility of moving here to be with her since I knew it would take over a year to bring her to America. I decided within 2 minutes. I quickly realized that I could still run my business from Asia and was tired of all of the bullshit in America, so it wasn’t too hard to make the decision based on love since I wasn’t scared of the unknown either. I shot the video below just three days later as we waited for me to go to the Airport. Look at how convincing and sincere she looked. The picture below that was a caricature a street artist drew of us during the first 5-days I spent with Hong before going to meet Phuong. Now you see how I got pulled in; I thought this girl would take a bullet for me by the way she seemed as though she loved me. She was diabolical.

Hong the day I was leaving

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After going back to America on September 2nd, 2009, from my 2nd trip to Macau, within a week, I already had a 7-week trip planned from October 10th, 2009, to December 2nd, 2009, where I planned on staying with Hong in Vietnam so we could look for a place to live and so I could make sure I was ready to make such a big move. The plan was to go back to America and close shop from December 2009 to February 24th, 2010, when I would move my entire household and my two dogs to Vietnam for good. At that time, I was intrigued by Asia; even though I couldn’t speak the language, I liked the simple way of life and was burned out on L.A. Women and American Materialism. As far as I knew, I would live with Hong in Asia for the rest of my life. The cost of living was next to nothing, and being in love was enough to keep me from being too homesick. Even though Hong went back to Vietnam, I had her meet me in Macau for eight days from October 10th through the 18th to see my friends before we left Macau together for my first visit to Vietnam on October 18th, 2009. On the second day in Vietnam, Hong suggested we go to Cangio, nicknamed “Monkey Island,” a 2-hour drive by motorcycle from HCMC. Hong’s sister Tuoi, her cousin Muoi “Kiwi” and two guys that were supposedly their friends came with us.

I now know that the two guys were Triad Soldiers meant to study me for any weakness, etc., to fleecing me for everything I had in the future. Hong always told me how her friends were amazed that I lasted almost two years in Vietnam and that most Westerners tire and want to leave within three months. I now know that she was statistically speaking from experience due to the hundreds of scams her people and the Triads pulled off against unsuspecting Westerners. I didn’t see those guys again for over a year because a friend of mine had his Vietnamese friend meet us for dinner later that night, and that guy saw their tattoos and warned my friend that they were “Banditos” (a slang description of Asian Gangster) and that he thought I would end up dead one day and disappear. I told Hong that, and she must have told the guys not to come around because it was blowing their cover and jeopardizing the scam.

The 2 Triad Soldiers

RANDOM FACT: The “Rooster” Song

On the 2-hour ride to and from Monkey Island that day, I kept singing the song “Rooster” by the band “Alice in Chains,” but I only knew two verses to the song, and I just kept singing those two verses in a silly loud way, and Hong and I laughed the whole time. I didn’t even hear the song recently, but it popped into my head for some reason. I never even listened to Alice in Chains other than hearing them occasionally on the radio. I didn’t have any of their songs in my 22,000-song iPod either. I never sang a song to Hong for more than 15 seconds the whole time we were together, but this song I sang for at least 90 minutes between the rides there and back. I didn’t even know what the song meant. I thought it was about a real Rooster being slaughtered for dinner; it wasn’t until I had moved back to America in early 2012 that I heard the song and listened to the words and realized it was about an American Soldier in Vietnam. The only song I ever sang to Hong repeatedly was a song about an American nicknamed “the Rooster” surviving his Vietnamese enemies during numerous attempts where they tried to kill him. What are the odds of that? I don’t know even one other song that describes an American surviving over in Vietnam; the odds must be more than a million to 1. I think God planted that in my head as humor! I didn’t realize how meaningful that song was in describing my future until long after leaving Vietnam. The lyrics to the song are below; the real “Rooster” was “Alice in Chains” Band Member Jerry Cantrell’s Father that survived death on many occasions while in the Vietnam War. I highlighted the verses that hit home the most, even though I only knew two verses at the time.

During the rest of October and November, I toured Vietnam with Hong, rented a house, bought furniture, and was the best man in her friend “7’s” wedding of 400 people in Can Tho, Vietnam since her Chinese Triad husband didn’t have anybody at the wedding. Even though their marriage was legitimate, the fact that they asked me to be the best man was a last-second ploy to make me feel loved, so I would continue to put my guard down more and more as they dug into what was initially supposed to be my murder but then switched to frame me as a drug smuggler when that got sidetracked due to Hong feeling guilty since I was the father of our son born on December 2nd, 2010 (exactly one year after I left Vietnam for the first time on December 2nd, 2009, which was three months before moving there permanently on February 24th, 2010. I got her pregnant the first week after I moved there, around March 3rd, 2010). I ended up leaving Vietnam for the last time on my son’s one-year birthday “December 2nd, 2011”. This 2nd day in December was very significant the whole time from 2009 to 2011.

Let’s go back to December 2nd, 2009, when I returned to America. I found the picture below when I ran forensics software on Hong’s hard drive that recovered deleted items. This picture was taken less than 12 hours after I departed Vietnam to go back to America. On December 5th, 2009, my ticket to America was from Hong Kong to Los Angeles, but I stopped in Macau for three days before my flight. As you can see in the picture, Hong (pictured on the right of the picture three seats down from the guy in the red shirt) was out with her husband Cuong, who is sitting to her left. Hong’s sister Tuoi was with the guy sitting next to Hong and is pictured directly across from that guy wearing the brown striped shirt.

From December 2, 2009, until I moved to Vietnam for good on February 24, 2010, Hong and I stayed in constant touch. We spoke every other day on the phone, and I Yahoo Messaged her several times a day. Three and a half months of messages, calls, plans, promises. I was counting down the days, wrapping up my life in the States, selling what I could, packing the rest.