Dr. Dante | 6. The Troubleshooter
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Welcome to another round of Boardroom or Miro Board. Today we talk retrospectives with Agile coach Maria. Let's go. First question. You've spent two hours in a team retro, but the only input you've heard is Dave's. Boardroom or Miro Board? Boardroom. In Miro, Dave can't hog the space because everyone can add thoughts anonymously, online at the same time. Correct.

Next, you need the team to act on feedback fast. So you turn all those retro notes into Jira tasks. Miro all the way. And I can assign those tasks to teammates. You're nailing this. Now, you see hundreds of sticky notes from the retro. A real mess. But you organize them into five themes in just seconds. Miro.

I basically get back an entire hour when I use its AI tools for clustering. And she's done it. For a limited time, visit miro.com slash retro now for a free business plan trial to unlock advanced retro tools like private mode, voting, and two-way jira syncing. That's miro.com slash retro now. There's something I haven't told you before. What? What?

Oh.

In 1997, when charges were filed by the Central District of California in connection with Permaderm, Dr. Ronald Dante's lawyer told him that he had two choices. He could either be arrested or flee the country. The lawyer told me, he said, if I don't want to go to prison, I got to go south or north, Canada or the other place. ♪

So Dante headed south to the other place and crossed the border into Mexico with a bag filled with gold and cash and set up shop in Ensenada, a laid-back port city on the Pacific coast. And while he could rest assured that he'd be safe from extradition, his lawyer had made it clear. Step one foot back in the United States and he'd be in the express lane back to prison, which Dante had no interest in.

especially since he was in the midst of raking it in with his most lucrative pursuit yet: Columbia State University. So he was here in Mexico to set up a new life and run Columbia State from afar. A correspondence school run by correspondence, you could say.

As for accommodations, Dante stayed in some hotels in Ensenada for a time. But then he thought, this just won't do, and decided to invest in some lodging more befitting of a fugitive university kingpin. Something with room for his family.

Even though he had to drop everything and run, his new life in Mexico wasn't one where he'd be by himself. His wife Elizabeth and his kids came down often to spend time with him. We snuck down there. But we're not going to talk about that. No, we can talk about it. We can talk about it. Elizabeth and Dante reminiscing there about the good old days on the run. And honestly, they were good.

One day, Dante told his wife he had a surprise for her and brought her down to the marina where they keep all the luxury yachts. Remember the first time we went to the yacht? I told you that I couldn't afford a big one. They walked along until they arrived at a beautiful, brand new yacht. And I said, oh, here it is. And they said, oh, no, no, this is not it. Whoops, wrong yacht. My bad. Who hasn't gotten their yachts mixed up?

So Dante and Elizabeth stepped off and continued down the dock. And I keep on going into the 40-foot yachts. Yeah, you were teasing us. To the 35, 40-foot yacht, which were big yachts in itself. And he was like, geez, this one isn't it either. So they carried on, each slip holding a bigger yacht than the one before. And then I said, well, let's try this one over here. And then, after a few more tries...

Way at the end of the pier, there was this 110-foot yacht that had a crew in it, and it had five staterooms in it. Painted on the stern was its name in huge block letters, Royal Class, with a custom crest and insignia that read Mr. Dream Man, a reference to his on-air radio persona from the 1950s.

Honey, we're home. I thought we were sneaking into somebody else's home. Somebody else's yacht, yeah. Yeah, it was fun. Which was nice, but I was on the run then, so what can I tell you? Yeah. It was fun. Perhaps the reason it felt fun was because even though Dante was run out of the country, he was still collecting every cent of his Columbia State money.

So now all he had to do was sit back, relax on the biggest yacht in the marina filled with big yachts, and count his gold coins like he was Scrooge McDuck. There's a rumor that he made so much money during the late 90s that he had to start burying suitcases of it in Mexico. Which, speaking of, do you remember where you buried all that money, Dante? If I did what I tell you, come on now.

Not having enough room on your yacht for all your cash isn't a real problem. But a real problem was on its way. While everything looked to be smooth sailing, literally, they wouldn't be for long because Dante was about to have a new enemy. The biggest threat to his empire yet. An adversary named Riggo. Right, sorry, yeah. Riggo is a bird. RIGGO

From Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment, I'm Sam Mullins, and this is Dr. Dante. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. The following interview is being videotaped at the Dade County Public Safety Department, Miami-Dade County, Florida. And sir, would you identify yourself? My name is Robbie. I'm probably 30.

In 1976, a man in Florida tells a cop he has a confession to make. But instead of becoming his victim, I became his confidant, one of the people closest to him, as he recounted and was tried for his horrific crimes.

From Orbit Media and Sony Music Entertainment, listen to My Friend the Serial Killer. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts.

If somebody says the right words, promises the right things, anybody can become a victim. Since the early 2000s, millions of handwritten letters were landing at people's doors all across America. She truly believed that this was going to save her mind from going further astray.

into the depths of demand shut. I'm investigative journalist Rachel Brown, and I'm going to tell you the story of a scam unlike anything I've ever seen and the shape-shifting mastermind who evaded capture for more than 20 years. We never in our wildest dreams thought that these schemes were at this scale. They'd been without water for two months. All they wanted in return was whatever it was that Maria Duval was promising them.

From ITN Productions and Sony Music Entertainment, listen to The Greatest Scam Ever Written. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media.

The beginning of the end was a phone call to a local TV station. San Diego's most complete news. San Diego's ABC affiliate had a very standard news team for the mid-90s. Two anchors, weatherman, sports guy, and then a segment called The Troubleshooter. Our troubleshooter had a lot of doors slammed in her face pursuing tonight's story.

I'm Marty Emerald, 10 News, Troubleshooter. Troubleshooter was a news segment in which Marty Emerald and her longtime producer, J.W. August, would look into consumer scams in San Diego, a city which, by the late 90s, had earned the nickname Scam Diego. Here's J.W. Every kind of scam

scam would germinate here because if you're going to commit fraud, why live in Nebraska? You know what I mean? Move to San Diego, the weather's nice, people go to the beach.

and you can rip people off. Not a bad way to live, at least until Marty and J.W. found you out. The premise of their troubleshooter segment was simple. Look out for the little guy. We're here to stand up for somebody who may not have a voice. They would come to us and they'd have a voice. And we truly believed in that. We felt like we had an obligation to help people that may not be in a position to help themselves.

Throughout Marty and JW's legendary 20-year run together, they cultivated a devout following. So much so that scammers would almost expect them. Like this one fraudulent storefront they showed up at. This lady was a receptionist that said, "Oh, I knew this place was a scam. I was wondering when Marty was going to show up." And as their audience grew, so did the number of tips they'd receive. Here's the troubleshooter herself.

Marty Emerald. Once the public knew that we were out there snooping around and busting bad guys, we were buried in letters and phone calls. People that followed us were great tipsters. And in 1996, atop a mountain of tips, one piqued their attention. And this lady called us about this ad running in the penny savers.

You know the one. Anyway, she'd seen the ad for this degree. Get a degree in just 27 days. Both Marty and I right away agreed that there's something going on. Marty and J.W. got their hands on a copy of the Columbia State brochure and learned that the way Columbia State could offer college degrees in under a month was that you got credit not just for coursework, but for life experience.

So Marty and J.W. decide maybe the best way for us to learn more about this place is to enroll someone in the college. But who? Well, you know, I got my cockatiel, Riggo, applied for entry to get a doctorate in avionics. It turned out that Riggo had plenty of relevant life experience in the field of avionics. Riggo, my dearly departed cockatiel, I mean, he had experience as a singer.

And he had flown before. Not a lot. They tend to just sit in a cage. But those are the kind of life experiences I think that counts. They fill out Riggo's application, put a stamp on it, and very soon after. And he was accepted.

That's weird. The Columbia State University catalog said, quote, it would be foolish of us to require verification of the contents of your application for admission, such as asking for transcripts, employment history or past life experiences, etc.

Instead, all of our students are treated as responsible adults and, quite obviously, should not have to go through any tedious or unnecessary substantiating process. End quote. So Riggo packed his little bird bindle and prepared for college life. We call tonight's story, Riggo Goes to College. At first, it was kind of a light fun. Congratulations, Dr. Riggo. But then...

Marty and JW's phone started ringing. And the more we put these stories on the air, the more people contacted us. The human Rigos out there, the people who'd actually sent in their tuition check and who had received in return a very expensive, very useless degree. And as those calls came in, the human toll of what the school was doing started to come into focus. This one was especially galling because

He went after those people who were most vulnerable, who were desperate to find more income, were desperate to reinvent themselves and go out and get a better job, a raise, to feel better about themselves. But perhaps even more concerning than the people who were scammed into thinking Columbia State was a legitimate school…

were the students who knew exactly what they were doing. The ones who were in on the con, who knew that the degree they were buying was a sham going in, and who saw Columbia State as a shortcut to get ahead. What they were doing was creating this facade for people of expertise, and then these people would get jobs with responsibilities that they weren't qualified for.

Like they found this one guy who had appeared as an expert witness in court hundreds of times on the strength of his Columbia State civil engineering degree. And when they tracked him down, he was testifying on behalf of a drunk driver. A case involving a guy that got drunk and hit two girls, and he's up there testifying for the defense. And this was just one grad that they happened to find.

But as they continued to get calls and began to understand the size of the operation, they wondered how many experts in high places Dante's bogus school was turning out. There could be thousands of CSU grads scattered to the wind, eroding every institution in America. And that was a motivator. So the formidable troubleshooter team cracked their knuckles and shifted into high gear.

And high gear for the mid-90s? It was just old-fashioned pick-up-the-phone legwork. A lot of phone calls, a lot of faxes. I have a Rolodex, reverse directories. They began by scrutinizing every word in Columbia State's welcome packet.

It was basically all they had, and it was filled with possible clues and leads. That got us off and running, and it began a pretty long run at chasing this guy. The packet they received when Riggo was accepted listed a board of directors. The first thing I did was check the board of directors on him.

I couldn't find them. They were non-existent. Troubleshooter also got a copy of Dante's phony accreditation guide, the one that called Columbia State one of the best schools in the country. The guide said it was produced by Harold Crenshaw Publishing in Philadelphia. So they called a producer colleague of theirs in Philly to look into it. There is no listing for a Harold Crenshaw Publishing anywhere in the United States. But he said he couldn't find it in the phone book, and there was no business license for them.

So if the accreditor doesn't exist, the accreditation was fake. This was validating, but it was only proving what Columbia State was not. They wanted to know what it was, where it was, and who ran it. And then it occurred to them, well, Columbia State claims to be a school, but it also seems to run like a business, which would probably mean that they had to file taxes.

Our big break. Paper slammed on a desk. TV news gold. It turned out the school was listed as a business. According to IRS records we obtained, the university's director is a Ronald Pillar. Ronald Pillar, a.k.a. Ronald Dante, a.k.a. a lot of things they discovered.

also known as Phil Harris, Joseph Rubin, Bonnie Ritchie, and Douglas Ford, among others. He was a man of many names. Ronald, a.k.a. a.k.a. a.k.a. a.k.a. That's right. And once they found his actual name, Ronald Peller, it was like stepping on a landmine.

Now we've uncovered this Ron Pillar, Dr. Dante fellow has one strange history. Very quickly, Marty and J.W. caught up on all the crazy Dante shit that you and I already know. Pillar was a stage hypnotist. Uh, okay. Lana Turner's seventh and final husband. Girl, what? Another venture. This time, permanent makeup workshops. What? Oh, one more thing.

They tried to hire an undercover cop to murder a competing hypnotist. Before starting a degree mill, he was a murderous hypnotist who married Lana Turner and made a fortune in the 80s tattooing people's faces? As we began to figure out Unfolder, we were going, wow, this guy is too much. I mean, geez, there's no end to his shenanigans. My goodness. So now Marty and J.W. had a name, and they were determined to find him.

To enroll in Columbia State, students would have to mail in physical checks for the most part, which meant that the school had to provide a mailing address. And they had one in Metairie, Louisiana. As it turns out, in the world of degree mills, Louisiana came up a lot for good reason.

As J.W. put it, They had weak-ass laws for post-secondary education. By this point in time, Dante knew which states were the loosey-gooseiest off by heart. He scoped out what states have the strongest and the weakest consumer protection laws. Marty and J.W. asked a reporter they knew in New Orleans to go to this address to check out the famed headquarters and hallowed halls of Columbia State University. But... It's nothing more...

Then this mailbox dropped 15 minutes outside New Orleans. $13 a month for box 231. Instead of a university campus or even a shady storefront, all there was was an 11-inch by 11-inch steel box in a strip mall.

But the question was, where did the mail go from here? You can forward it anywhere you want. So this is just one stop along the way to wherever he was hanging his hat at that time. Figuring out where Dante's real headquarters were wouldn't be so easy.

Anything involving the mail is privileged information, and giving unauthorized information about where mail is going is a federal offense. But JW and Marty had been in the business long enough to know how to get what they needed. They had to make a friend who they didn't want to get too specific about. You know.

Somebody in the transportation industry. Somebody in the business of delivering packages. That is connected with delivering mail and packages. Anyway. Somebody told them that Columbia State's mail is being sent to kind of your backyard in San Clemente, California. In the world of TV news, and especially the troubleshooter unit, this is the kind of moment you dream of.

of, where you have your address and you get to load the van and come in with cameras rolling. So they grabbed their gear and headed north to San Diego, to San Clemente, not knowing what they'd find. And when they got there, they arrived at what felt like an intentionally unremarkable place. It's one of those like nameless industrial parks you see all over Southern California. It could have been anywhere.

A perfect place for someone like Dante. Where they can blend in and not attract much attention. As Marty and JW approached, they saw that the office that matched the address had a perfectly ironic sign above it that read, "The American Consumer Protection League."

California division. As they knocked on the front door, the dozen or so people working turned their heads toward the film crew. And after a minute, they send out a representative, a dude in a basketball jersey. "We're looking for Ronald Pellar." "I don't know Ronald." "Dr. Dante." "No." "Oh, come on." "Yes." "Never heard of Dante, he says." "This is a secretarial service?" "That's right." "It's not the American Consumer Protection League?"

And then the dude was like, F this, and went back inside. And then closed the door and it clicked behind him so we knew we couldn't go in. She's had so many doors slammed in her face, it's disturbing sometimes.

But slam doors were so typical for them, they had a counter move. What we used to do when they wouldn't let us in is push the camera up against the window and try to get the shots. They point their camera into the office and there, in all its fluorescent lighting and strip mall glory, was the true, famed Columbia State University headquarters. It was a

It was a big room. It was one of those warehouse rooms. And there were lots of people in there stuffing these things. Stuffing envelopes full of acceptance letters, fake diplomas, plagiarized accreditation guides. Every now and then, someone would come out the back. With boxes and boxes, loading them up in a truck to get them sent out to potential grads.

So it was a major deal. He had this thing rolling. They were pretty certain that this was the place, but they still weren't 100% sure until their camera pans just over the shoulder of a man stuffing an envelope and zooms in. And there, hanging at the end of the room...

That sure looks like a picture of Dante hanging on the wall. The man couldn't resist. Even in the context of opening a top secret headquarters, Ronald Dante thought, you know what would look really good on that wall over there? It's like, we've found the right place.

And then suddenly people start scrambling out of the way of JW and our photographer and into the garage and down came that metal door and the clank and okay, we're locked out. But we found the place. We know we found it.

They found the place, but not the man. They did get a few leads. They staked out his brother's restaurant for a while, thinking maybe Dante would come visit him. Nope. Oh, he has an upcoming court date related to those old permaderm charges. So they go to the courthouse, hoping to finally see him in the flesh. But he's a no-show, and the judge has dispatched federal marshals to arrest him. Good luck with that.

For this time, Dante's longest running scheme, Columbia State University, is still going strong. For now, but not for long. And it wouldn't be brought down because of Marty and J.W.'s reporting or the accreditation guy John Baer or the authorities. No, Dante was going to mess this up all on his own. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media.

Down in Ensenada, Dante was chilling. There's no other word for what he was doing. He was paragliding, mingling, getting to know the locals, and generally throwing his money around. Now that Dante was here as an official fugitive of the United States, the rest of his life should have been very straightforward.

He already had more money than he knew what to do with. His loved ones were all provided for, and his school was set up to put at least a few more million pesos in his pocket. With no threat of extradition, he was home free. As long as he was in Mexico, the feds wouldn't do anything. They'd have to get the Mexican government to extradite him. I don't think he was a big enough player for the feds to spend that much money. They're not going to chase this con man.

They're always looking for bigger fish to fry. Dante was in his late 60s when he was living in Ensenada. And everything was in place for Dante to do what so many people do at his age. Retire, eat some coconut shrimp, and watch some sunsets. But obviously, Dante wasn't built that way.

After Marty and JW's reporting had put him and Columbia State on the map, the story piqued the interest of the team at ABC's 2020, and they tried to track him down in Mexico. Once they got a solid tip, they sent a team down to Ensenada to see if they could find the man, the myth, the legend. They heard that maybe he'd been living on a yacht, a very large one.

So they headed down to the docks, where Dante, chilling on his boat one day, sees a convoy of vehicles pulling up to the marina. Here's Dante in a later interview on a beach. And about 18 people came out of these trucks and cars or whatever. And then they said, hi, you're Dr. Dante, aren't you? And I said, yes, who wants to know?

Moments later, Brian Ross, a veteran reporter with 20/20, had a mic in Dante's face and a copy of Columbia State's booklet. And he started asking Dante if he was the Dr. Ronald Dante/Ronald Peller, the brains behind Columbia State University.

At first, Dante denied it. But when confronted with more of Columbia State's documents, he let on that maybe he was involved with the school. But it was only because powerful men had made him run the school. Dangerous men. What was he to do? These people who can kill me can tell me what to do. Do you really think we're going to believe that, given your background, your history? Well,

What do you mean, do I really? I don't know. It was all deny, deny, deny. But then Brian Ross plays the exact right card for when you're dealing with Dante. You are a legendary comic. And this is one of the better ones, I'm told, but... I'm being flattered. I wish I were a legendary comic. No, I'm not a legendary comic. I'm just an old man. I'm just an old dude. An old dude who's about to shift tactics into sales mode. Wait, sorry, you said you're a national show?

This was bordering on branded content. Dante liked the direction that this was heading, so he proposed that they take their conversation aboard for a yacht hang.

All Dante needed to do to live out the rest of his days in luxury was not talk to ABC's 2020. At the moment where any attorney present would have put their arm around Dante and told him to shut up, Dante did the opposite. He invited the 2020 crew to hang out with him on his yacht.

But really, what is the point of having a yacht if you can't host a national news show? Like every other time his feet were held to the flames, Dante figured that he could spar with the best of them and charm them. So he brought them aboard and he started playing host.

I fed him. I spent thousands of dollars feeding him and champagne and whatever. You know, naturally, he tried to make it look good for me, too. Dante always considered himself to be a media aficionado, and understandably so. He'd always get coverage and use reporters to print whatever made-up stories he wanted for years. But with ABC's 2020, he miscalculated. This was a story that would be told by a veteran investigative journalist.

And more: Dante was so deep into wine and dine mode, he didn't stop to consider what powerful people might see this segment. Every time they asked me a question, I answered properly, and I answered in a way that made rational sense. Even years later, he can't seem to believe he came off poorly in the 2020 piece. He feels like it was all a setup. Those answers that I had that were intellectual answers, they weren't put on.

Only the negative question, "Aren't you a schmuck?" was put on. "Aren't you a thief?" was put on. And then when you answered it intellectually, that wasn't part of the show.

When the interview was over, he saluted confidently, proudly to the camera. And it was this shot that would seal his fate. And I waved to him goodbye off the edge of this 110-foot beautiful $2.5 million ship. The image of a man on his luxury yacht with Brian Ross's kicker. Thumbing his nose at American law enforcement and...

at American Higher Education. As Dante watched them pulled away, he was confident that he had sufficiently won over the 2020 team and that he'd win over their viewers as well. His wife, Elizabeth, on the other hand, wasn't so sure. I thought it was very exactly what it appeared to be, like he was thumbing his nose at authority in the United States. And, you know, that's not a good thing to do. So...

I kind of had a feeling that things would escalate after that. You're listening to Camellia from Campside Media. You're listening to Camellia from Campside Media. Dante participated in the 2020 interview knowing that the United States would not come after him. As long as he was in Mexico, he was like a kid on his half in a game of capture the flag. He was convinced that, you know, nothing would ever happen. But then, one day...

They hired some soldiers of fortune, so to speak, go down there and throw him in the trunk of the car and drive him across the border. Elizabeth calls them soldiers of fortune. Dante calls them federales. We don't really know who they were or who sent them. It wasn't

It wasn't legal. Nobody in the United States would have claimed that that's what happened, but that's actually what happened. When his captors put their hands on him, Dante tried to pay them off to leave him alone. He told the story to a reporter on a beach a decade later. I had like $18,000 on me, cash and coins and everything like that. And I'm trying to speak to them, but I don't know Spanish.

Like I'd pay him a million, two million, ten million dollars to let me go because then I'd take the boat, go down to Cabo San Lucas. But whoever they were, they couldn't be bought. Here's Bobby Gold. Liz called me and goes, they finally all raided and Interpol got him and threw him in a trunk. And I said, well, he's out there on television and he had such a big yacht you couldn't even park it. And gee, a lion low? Yeah, sometimes a medium-sized yacht will do.

The federal authorities raided the Columbia State headquarters in San Clemente, and details of how the school ran started to emerge. Day-to-day operations were run by his wife's cousin and others, who would go on to testify against him. She testified that the fake school had been in existence since the 1980s, but didn't really hit its stride until 1996, when Dante came up with the get-credit-for-life-experience angle.

During the raid, the authorities found thousands of applications and started to learn exactly how many people were using these degrees out in the real world. Thousands. There were police chiefs, magistrates, people who worked at NASA, engineers. Here's J.W. again. The White House had two employees that graduates from Columbia State University, which when I heard it was a mind blower, I thought, wow.

That's bad. The entire curriculum, no matter the degree, consisted of receiving one book. And the courses were named after the chapter titles in that book. They'd send out a pre-printed report card as your transcript. That would be mostly A's. The whole thing was out in the open now. And the size of the operation was staggering.

By the time Dante was settling into the yacht life, Columbia State University was churning out more graduates than Columbia University. As in the actual Columbia University, the Ivy League institution that exists. Dante was a heavy hitter, it turned out. Columbia State ranks number two in the world in the history of fake schools and degrees on the basis of income.

They had taken in $72 million, or rather he had taken in $72 million in four years. John Bear Thayer, you'll remember him. Accreditation expert, lover of rules, nemesis of Dante. In an industry that raked in half a billion dollars a year, Columbia State was number two. The Pepsi of degree mills. There are many other ways to evaluate a fake, and they'd be in the top few categories.

for cleverness, for the quality of their fake materials. Did John Bear just compliment Dante? Don't get used to it. I was tremendously pleased when all this happened, needless to say. When it was all over, John Bear was asked what he would say to Dante if he had the chance. Not going to be, "Hi Ron, how you doing?" It's an interesting question and the only answer that comes first to mind is, "Gee, I hope my wife, who is a very long time practicing Buddhist,

is right and the laws of karma really are out there because boy, is he going to get it if that is true.

It should be noted that Dante truly believed that he didn't do anything wrong. To hear him tell it, he was exposing the education system for the crooks they were. The gatekeepers telling hardworking Americans that they can't achieve their dreams without paying a toll. And if Dante was the one stealing, he insisted that he was stealing for the greater good. Like Robin Hood. Robin Hood. Dante is Robin Hood.

J.W. and Marty again. That's a stretch. I think that's a pretty big stretch. He was into Robin, and there's certain hoods he worked. He loved Hollywood. He loved San Diego. So that's the only Robin Hood involved in that cat. He was not a Robin Hood. Anybody telling you that is full of it.

Did you get a sense that he was after anything beyond money? Can I say the F word? Yeah. I think he liked fucking with people's heads. I really do. He was not a nice man. He had no moral groundings whatsoever. There is an emptiness in the soul.

I mean, somewhere along the way early on, he learned that it was okay to go for what he wanted and didn't care about the consequences to other people. We didn't care the fact that these people were getting jobs that shouldn't get jobs in sensitive places that could affect other people's lives. That didn't matter to him. He was a con man.

When it was all said and done, Dante was given only five and a half years. Ironically, not even for the Columbia State stuff. Those charges were dropped entirely. Given all that he'd done, the thing that put him away feels relatively petty. They got him for contempt of court, for ignoring an injunction related to

to Permaderm. The FTC told him to stop lying in the promotional materials for his permanent makeup business, and it was easy for them to prove that he did not do that.

It felt like they were trying to put him away for something easy, like getting Al Capone on his taxes. The charge felt small, and ultimately, so did the sentence. Dante's crimes were white-collar, so he got a white-collar sentence. I think that there was still this mentality in the court system, well, it wasn't, he didn't really hurt anybody. You know, he didn't kill anybody. He just stole things, and he lied.

And I remember we used to talk about a guy would hold up his go into a 7-Eleven and grab food for his kids or something. And he would get more time than a guy doing a white collar crime. White collar crimes. They got away with murder. Murder. They still do.

Dante walked back into prison at 69 years old, with a five and a half year stretch ahead of him. What Dante would do with that time, it was unclear. Would he charm the guards and inmates like before, or would this be a fatal blow? He was out of money, as none of it was laundered. And he was also out of a family. His wife Elizabeth, who'd stuck by his side through everything, had finally hit her limit, and she divorced him.

With nothing but time, maybe he'd finally give up, make amends, reimagine himself like he did so many times before, only this time for the good. The guy was a con. Once a con, always a con. They don't change the stripes. I don't care what anybody says. You cannot rehab a con. Or maybe when he got out, he'd have enough left in him to write one final chapter. Next time on Dr. Dante.

Dr. Ronald Dante. I like your outfit. You look great. It just seems so ballsy. He was going to keep running his small time cons no matter what.

Chameleon is a production of Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment. Dr. Dante was written and hosted by me, Sam Mullins. It's produced by Aboukar Adan and edited by Karen Duffin. Our associate producer is Tanita Rahmani. Original music, sound design, and mixing by Garrett Tiedemann.

Additional music by APM and Blue Dot Sessions. Fact-checking by Lauren Vespoli. Our consulting producer is Bradley Beasley. Special thanks to Johnny Kaufman and to our operations team, Doug Slaywin, Aaliyah Papes, and Destiny Dingle. The executive producers at Campside Media are Josh Dean, Matt Scher, Vanessa Grigoriadis, and Adam Hoff.

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