From Fantasy Islands to a Coup D’État: The Dominion of Melchizedek:
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It's 1995 in Shasta County, North California. Elvira Gamboa, a Manila-born American with long black hair, a high jaw and eyes like uncut emeralds, strolls into a small bank seeking a $20,000 car loan. But she's not asking for herself.

Gamboa represents an entity called Bank Asia AG. The name itself is a combination of her home continent, Asia, and the hometown of Riverbank, between San Jose and Sacramento, that she shares with her husband, a shaggy-haired preacher by the name of David Korem.

AG is a bit weirder. It's a German suffix meaning "Aktiengesellschaft", in other words, a firm with publicly listed stock. Only, there's nothing public about this outfit, and the bank clerks sniff something sinister. They report Gamboa to state officials, who tell her it's illegal to represent herself as a bank without proper licensing. Well, shit meet fan.

Gamboa bites back with, according to a state banking investigator, quote, "...all this information about the dominion of Melchizedek and how it was a licensed bank."

Yes, that dominion of Melchizedek. The microstate based off a self-penned bible named for a Talmudic priest that's enabling all kinds of crazy conmen to carry out frauds from Dallas, Texas to Dhaka, Bangladesh. The dominion that's headed up by Kerem, aka Branch Feindresser. And now, it seems, his Philippine-born wife.

Grab yourself a Dominion passport, the couple promise, and you can be an ambassador with diplomatic immunity, free from the tyranny of the United States or any other nation's law. No matter that the Dominion's U.S. Embassy is a P.O. box and a voicemail service, or that the, quote, ecclesiastical sovereign state has won about as much territory as a cardinal's offensive drive. That's an NFL joke for you there, you're welcome.

California investigators soon realized that this bogus car loan is just the tip of an Antarctic sized iceberg of mad financial crime, capery and all-round skullduggery. Gamboa and Carem, the banking official adds, were soliciting deposits from people. There was fraud involved. Gamboa isn't one to go quietly though and she quickly declares "spiritual warfare" on the state of California.

I will do metaphysical battle with you in your dream state, she writes. And if you interpret your dreams correctly, you will know I'm the victor. I mostly interpret my dreams that I'm a loser who can't play cricket naked in front of my former girlfriend. So I guess that's one for the Elvira Gamboa win column.

But this Philippine Freddy Krueger has far more in her locker. Namely, a sacred quest. Not only to stalk Bay Area bureaucrats in their nightmares, but to launch a years-long project to secure the dominion of Melchizedek what its founding father, Kerem's dad David, could never do. A patch of land, somewhere on Earth, to call its home. It's an odyssey that will wend from South America to the South Pacific, and even an unclaimed stretch of Antarctic tundra.

That is, until she and Kerem are toppled. In a madcap and entirely funny, of course, coup d'etat. Oh, and don't forget the fake gold mines, Fijian revolutionaries, Hollywood madams and abortive plot to necromancer Queen Mary Oceanliner. Wait, I mean, you didn't think part two of this show was going to get any less insane, did you? Welcome to the Underworld Podcast. Underworld Podcast

Hello and welcome to the podcast that dives headfirst into the worst of humanity, one second-rate Hallmark movie plot at a time. I'm your host and ROTRO New Zealand, Sean Williams, and I'm joined by fellow hack and filmmaker Danny Gold in New York. The sun is out in the southern hemisphere. I'm down to a slightly overweight 26.8 BMI, according to some website I just went on.

and I even have a child now, so it's my first year with a certified dad bod. Are we still doing that? Nah, but you're in New Zealand, so all can be forgiven. You know, I'm still not over that opening line of eyes like uncut emeralds from the beginning of the cold. I just, you know, I love the little dear diary flourishes you do in the intros now as well. I aim to please, yeah. As ever, we've got stuff pinging up on the Patreon. I think you just did one, right? It's going up like today or tomorrow as we're recording this. Yeah, yeah.

Cool, cool. Yeah, thanks to everyone for helping us keep the lights on there. There's one on a musical drug caper from Australia and New Zealand as well that's coming soon that I recorded yesterday.

And I'm actually, well, as we recorded this, I just went out to meet one of the country's biggest biker gang leaders at a railway station pub. So we'll have a bit more on that soon. But T-shirts and mugs and hoodies and social media posts, I'm still holding out that Danny agrees to do a live show in New York so that I can come out there and tell everyone how stuff's got more expensive since I lived there in 2012. I mean, honestly, like a live show sounds like a nightmare. I'm trying to fade away into...

and in the countryside and not like entertain people at some Brooklyn bar. But, uh, until then, patreon.com slash the underworld podcast for those bonus episodes or on iTunes, you can pay for it as well. Yeah. You definitely put the right medium to disappear. Um, yeah. So yeah, we're back on our Melchizedek bullshit guys. Nicely done. Yep. I think,

I think I did last week's a little too wordy. I think I also brewed and drunk an entire French press of coffee and took a Ritalin. So I was basically on cocaine. Apologies if I sounded like Robert Lockyer in Scarface. Who is he in Scarface? He's the gangster that screws over Tony and gets shot at the end. Sorry to ruin it for everyone, guys. Spoiler alert. Big

Big spoiler alert for Scarface. No one's listened to that. This will be different, though. Not only because I now know the measurements for Kiwi Coffee Beans, but because part two of this micronation-based show is going to end with a bit of first-hand reporting. Ooh. And even a conversation between me and the current Prime Minister of the Dominion of Melchizedek himself.

It's a long time since I've done a head of state interview. Needless to say, if you haven't already listened to last week's episode, pause this, go back, give it a go because it's got everything on how this thing began and how it became a quote mothership for con artists worldwide. And we're jumping about a bit with the timeline a bit here because we left the first one off with a scam in the Caribbean nation of Grenada in 1997. But you can trust us guys. We're professional storytellers. It is what we do. So in this episode,

In 1995, that's two years before 97, guys, by the way, the Dominion has just declared war on France, because of course it did, over its nuclear testing in the Pacific, citing connections to a mysterious tribe in the Carpathian Mountains, which is Romania, I think. And its leader, Mark Pedley, a.k.a. Branch Vinedresser, a.k.a. David Karem, which is what we're going to call him in this part because it's now how everyone knows him,

has shacked up with a Philippine woman named Elvira Gamboa who is absolutely DTF down to fraud not bad not bad alright I'll take it but it gets worse the couple had actually married albeit I think under a dominion certificate so TLDR not married

In September 1994, their ceremony as a, quote, cosmic wedding united their common interests in magnifying the dominion for the benefit of mankind. I wish I'd got a dedication like that at my wedding. So far, so Melchizedekian. But when Gamboa walks into the Shasta County Bank in 1995, it's going to alert officials to a whole world of chicanery going on right underneath their noses. Gamboa changes her name around this time to Pearl Asia Gamboa,

Okay. And assumes the title of president of the DOM. Or we're just going to say DOM or Dominion from now on. Because if I say Melchizedek many more times, I'm going to lose my goddamn mind. I would choose more inconspicuous names if I was going to do super fraud. Like, you know, for real. Yeah, but this is, like we said, this is kind of like GeoCities era internet. So the madder you make it, the more people are going to believe it. And actually, I am heading out to do something along those lines in a couple weeks on assignment. But anyway...

Says Stephen Sucho, a Sacramento insurance lawyer who ends up investigating Gamboa and Creme in the 1990s, quote, they are highly entertaining unless, he adds, you're burned by them. Ah,

I think they're just entertaining. Anyway, the DOM maintains around this time that its own several hundred banks hold a, quote, net asset value of 25 billion bucks. But this doesn't seem to tally with the finances of its president, Pearl Asia, who's in arrears to the state of California for, quote, bad faith actions related to her bank scheme to the tune of, quote,

Wait for it. One thousand four hundred and thirty one dollars and ninety cents. Don't worry about her, though. I mean, she wouldn't be president if she didn't have a few tricks up her sleeve. But while the Dominion stock in trade literally is financial fraud and conning people out of cash by offering them passports to a country that doesn't exist, of course, it also has this spiritual Nazarene element to it.

David Corrine, remember, he conjured up the DOM on his way out of prison and the vision he had included a homeland, but he doesn't have one. Gamboa is alleged to have told him, quote, I can help you get an island because in my country we have lots of islands as long as we're doing what is righteous. Actually, that's that's how I got with my current girlfriend.

Okay, anyway, it checks out, basically, from Pearl Asia. Kerim has also had a pop at this land grab himself, and he lays claim to the barren island of Malepo, which is a few hundred miles off the west coast of Colombia...

But there are a handful of small but pretty terminal reasons why he can't get his hands on Malepo. One, it's part of Colombia. It's a pretty big one. Two, it's got a Colombian military outpost on it. Bigger. And three, it's a barren lump of rock. And four, it's surrounded by thousands of deadly silky and hammerhead sharks. He's not very good at this.

Yeah, I would say the Colombian military is a bad group to go up against if all you've got, like arming you, is vibes. Yeah, they're not known for going soft on separatist movements out there. Next, Kerem chooses one of the Caritane, or Caritane, I'm not really sure how to pronounce it, islands in the South Pacific.

This is part of the so-called Kingdom of Polynesia, run by a king called Michara, who, according to sources I read, is itinerant and claims to travel from island to island in his boat. Wait, so he's a real king, right? Or is he another fraud? I mean, you can just take these stories like you take everything on Twitter these days, like everyone involved is a fraud and not for real. Okay.

Maybe I have to, like, you know, ring a little bell when something is someone that's actually legit. Anyway, this place is supposedly near the Cook Islands, which is a tropical archipelago and part of the realm of New Zealand, which is between American Samoa and French Polynesia.

But when the Dominion declares war on France, again, check out last week's show for all that, the French send vessels out to the coordinates of these islands and they discover that they're actually just a tidal reef that's underwater most of the time. And even DOM leaders admit they're not even really sure these things exist anymore.

at all what like the french actually took it seriously seriously enough to send ships out though like that's that's kind of amazing i mean i guess the french just sniffed out a military victory for once yeah they they probably set aside a couple of boats i mean i still think a fraudulent fake state based out of an underwater atoll has a shot against them but karemba tends to the french that the whole thing was a joke and he searches for another holy land

Sometime around 1996, Gamboa and Kerem have a kid who they named Hazamak Hazamak. Borrowing from a part of Kerem's Hebrew name he gave himself after having his epiphany several years earlier.

I can't actually find much about him online other than he competed at the 2009 San Francisco Open Cube Championships. That's Rubik's Cube, so the copyright unencumbered. It was a first-round defeat. And he ranked third in the 2010 WKC World Karate Championships for kids aged 14. That kid sounds like a proper Renaissance man. Yeah, I mean, all I managed was sixth place in the England...

trampolining championships around that age and that is actually true this is all serious investigation wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait I'm sorry no no wait wait wait I just trampoline champion what does that mean like you just jumped on a trampoline

Yeah, you know, you do flips and shit. You go round and round. Were you a gymnast? That's cool. I think gymnasts are awesome, but I just didn't know that. You don't strike me as the kind of guy, no offense, who's that agile enough to do backflips. Were you a gymnast? I can promise you that I'm still agile, mate, but...

Yeah, I did get really deep into trampolining as a kid. It was fucking fun, actually. I really enjoyed it. Also, there were girls there. Could you do a standing backflip at one point in your life? Yeah, for sure. Damn. Dude, that is like, I'm going to do it right now. That was always my goal. I was like, that's amazing. Dude, I'm proud of you.

I'm awestruck. No female attention whatsoever. I'm awestruck right now. You should have been doing it at every party you went to. I think this may have coincided shortly before I started drinking and smoking weed, which was way more fun. But yeah, trampolining, guys. Yeah, that'll do it. Don't do drugs. Anyway, next up on David Karem's wish list, remember him, is a 14 million square mile unclaimed expanse of Western Antarctica, which is called Marie Birdland.

And if that sounds familiar, it's because we covered another micronation last week, West Antarctica, that also claims it under US vet Travis McHenry, a.k.a. Grand Duke Travis, who founded it to raise awareness of climate change on the wildlife of Antarctica.

No such high-mindedness from the DOM, of course, although when it does annex the territory, it lists among its senior officials a figure with the surname Penguini. I really, like, I hope there's a proper mafioso out there named Penguini, because that's a pretty cool name. Yeah, it's awesome, eh?

Around the same time, Karem claims Clipperton Island, which is a tiny outcrop in the South Pacific around a thousand miles southeast of the Mexican state of Michoacan. So don't mess around there, guys. France claims it. So we've got another potential nuclear holocaust on the cards. Right. It's a 2022 cracked article. Quote.

The island had become notorious in 1917 when a passing US Navy ship stumbled upon a starving Mexican woman beating the local lighthouse keeper to death with a sledgehammer. Sorry, I don't usually laugh about sledgehammer murders, but anyway. As it turned out, Mexico had once had a thriving guano mining colony on the island, but had forgotten to send the monthly supply ships when civil war broke out at home.

Trapped on the barren island, the colonists have descended into two years of Lord of the Flies-style savagery before the Navy rescued a dozen starving survivors. Since then, Clipperton has been claimed by numerous self-proclaimed countries, all of whom sensibly declined to actually set foot on Murder Ghost Island. I mean, cool. Clipperton's cool.

I really wouldn't want to be messing around off the coast of Michoacan now. I'm sure there's stuff happening there, but these are all kind of half-assed attempts to win the Dominion its homeland. And I'm sure Pearl Asia is sitting there wondering if this Messiah she married cosmically is just a very naughty boy. Whether she gives him a kick or she just gets up off the sofa, her next go is a bit more put together.

Rotuma is a remote volcanic island to the far north of Fiji, completely isolated from the rest of the country but still considered a semi-autonomous dependency. This isn't like Tibet or something, this is just an island the size of a small village, 1500 people. But what Kerem's interested in is Rotuma's revolutionary history. It's already had a go at seceding from Fiji in 1987 during a series of coups on the country's main islands.

led by a part-Rutuman, part-Scottish Kiwi karate instructor living in Auckland, New Zealand, called Henry Gibson.

That was a hell of an introduction. He calls himself Rotuma's king. Of course he does. He also says he has visions, one of which has instructed him to call himself... Okay. Gagai Salagfatmaro, or Unconquerable Victor King. Dude, what the hell is with all these people? It's just like a cornucopia of absolute lunatics. Though, I mean, they mostly sound relatively harmless, but like, why do they...

They just choose the most hard to pronounce names as possible. Like just choose a normal name. It would make it a lot easier for Sean to do this episode. The thing with the Pacific is, is mostly messed up and there,

There's loads of crazy cargo cults and Pentecostal movements. Did you know there's a thing in Vanuatu called the David Frum? No, wasn't it? John Frum, not David Frum. John Frum cult. That would be amazing if it was David Frum. No, I didn't. So these remote islanders saw planes coming over and like US soldiers kicking back during the war in the Pacific. And now they like...

They revere some totem of a made-up soldier called John Frum, because that was the American-sounding name they made up. And they do fake sergeant drills with wooden toy rifles, and that's how they sermonize this guy. It's absolutely mental. I think it's also in Vanuatu where there's a group that reveres Prince Philip. I think they think he's God.

What was that movie? Just like everyone in Britain. With the, the gods must be crazy. Did you ever see that? I've heard of that. I've got to watch this for my upcoming trip, but that's supposed to be real cool, right? Yeah. I haven't seen, was it, is it Mel Brooks? Yeah.

I haven't seen it. I mean, maybe like 30 years ago, but it was something like that, like worshiping some sort of whatever. You know, I got no, I don't know where I was going with this, but we can just leave it in. I like it doesn't matter. Right. Yeah. The Pacific's mental, I think is what we're saying. But unconquerable Victor King or Henry Gibson. I mean, come on, man.

That sounds like a man after David Karem's heart. And the pair plot an audacious breakaway from the Fijian government in capital city Suva.

Karem of course tells Gibson he'll bring the Rotumans under the aegis of the Dominion when they free themselves of Suva's shackles but the Rotumans themselves they see through the Karem BS and they send him packing right back to the US with his tail between his legs. A couple of years later eight of Gibson's followers are rounded up and convicted of sedition but in paid to Rotuman independence for a long while.

Oh, and all this island hopping? It's being done on Korem's Dominion passport. 9-11, eh? It's worth mentioning at this point that Dominion of Melchizedek... Ah, Christ, I just said it again. It might be the maddest offshore fraud scheme on the planet in the mid-90s, but it's part of a whole wave of them, supercharged by the internet and scamming billions out of regular people.

I mean, we've gone over this before, but the entire nation of Albania is convulsed by a series of pyramid schemes, and there are several out in the Pacific which I can't name, but well. Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm

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Because it's going to become clear in a few weeks. I just mentioned the John Frum, not the David Frum cult in Vanuatu. That's another island. I mean, it's all pretty insane. I think the MMM cult in Russia is like, is it similar era? Anyway, writes Anthony Van Fossen in a 2002 paper called Financial Frauds and Pseudo-States in the Pacific Islands. Guys, I really am doing the hard work here. Quote,

The new capital states of the former communist bloc were soon significant players in quote casino capitalism and financial frauds. Period.

Pyramid schemes were prominent throughout Eastern Europe during the early 90s in countries such as Romania. He doesn't give another example. You can't just say such as Romania. Nowhere were they more influential than Albania. You could have just said Albania, Romania, where they were endorsed by the Democratic Party government and accumulated two billion US dollars or 50 percent of the country's annual GDP from 300000 citizens.

Man, you know, I've definitely got like a very romantic image of the Pacific Islands. That is obviously not true when it's formed by, I don't know, like Gilligan's Island and that one season of Archer. But I still really want to go to like French Polynesia. But maybe I should temper my expectations. Well, I think we need another like four or five thousand Patreon followers before we're going to go out to French Polynesia. But yeah, those flights are not they're not they're not cheap.

Nah, I mean, they're not too bad from here. I want to go to Vanuatu, but I don't know if I'm going to get involved in John Frum. Beyond it being a hub for wannabe diplomat con men, the Dominion at this time is charting a silly amount of banks all over the US and Europe.

There's even one in Britain that gets pretty big. It's called the Inner Sanctum. I mean, if that's not a red flag, I don't know what is. And it's so corrupt that even the Dominion's leadership tells its own followers not to buy stuff from this bank. It's a bit like Hush Puppy telling his IG fans not to buy merch from Sean King. There you go. Keeping it topical.

There we go. I knew you'd like that one. Anyway, despite his repeated failures to set up a land-based nation, Karem is desperate for international recognition. Says US currency official John Shockey, quote, the DOM is a fraud, a major fraud, and not a legitimate sovereign entity. No shit.

Like, how hard is it to find some shit island and just lay a claim to it? Like, can it really be that hard? I love that you've just painted the entire Pacific as shit. No, I'm not.

No, I mean, you know what I like, not, not the whole Pacific, but like, you know, something that's like, I don't know, a couple hundred yards by a couple hundred yards. If you're setting up a fake domain country anyway, like why do you need something big and impressive? Right. Just find some like, like fake, uh, like there's like fake islands and like the Hudson, you know what I'm saying? Like obviously don't play those cause we'll fucking take you out. But like, there's gotta be a bunch of those in the Pacific. Just do that.

How hard is it? Guys aren't that smart. I would love those guys to get in the Hudson. That would be so much fun. I mean, this is what's going to happen, actually. I mean, they're just going for the tiniest little shitty rocky outcrops in like a far corner of Fiji and Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. But they take a bit of getting used to it. I mean, they're just fucking idiots, mostly.

But they're going to get a little bit better at it in a moment. Shockey, that's the U.S. currency official. He says he's read letters at this time addressed to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein begging for dominion recognition from Baghdad.

But it's a war-torn state in Africa where Kerem gets a massive win. The Central African Republic, which we mentioned last episode, and which is stumbling from crisis to crisis, officially recognises the Dominion. According to a letter from its government, quote, "...the Dominion of Melchizedek is hereby invited to establish a diplomatic mission in our Republic and will be granting all the consummate and traditional rights and privileges delineated in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations."

Which, if you've ever seen the 2011 movie The Ambassador, which is fantastic, getting diplomatic recognition from the CAR is not much of an achievement. Likewise, Kosovo, which is in the middle of a war for its own independence from Serbia, is gagging for powers in the international community and it recognises the DOM.

Stranger and even more meta is the 1997 establishment of diplomatic ties with something called the Kingdom of Eninkio, a fellow micronation that's also laying claims to tiny chunks of the Pacific, in its case, a part of the Wake Island Atoll, claimed by the US and the Marshall Islands that had been occupied by Japan during the Second World War.

Here's a brief story of Enon Keogh. In 1987, Muriel Hermios, and sorry Muriel, but here's my take on your surname, Iroi Laplap, declares a traditional claim to Wake Island. Oh, and 250 other islands in the area of that. He grants power of attorney, again, over nothing, to Waikiki resident Robert F. Moore, who's already been involved in some scammy shit across the Pacific in Vanuatu.

Moore then starts petitioning the US government saying it's deposed Hermios, and in 1994 he demands almost $100 million from DC for its use of the island. In April 1997, NNKEO, get this, declares war on the United States.

I do not know how Moore is able to do this without getting arrested and tried for treason, but I guess it's not my fight. Yeah, it's probably because no one takes him seriously. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's probably that. And then Keogh consensus builds for its coming showdown with the States, forging alliances with military heavyweights, including, checks notes, the Cherokee Nation, the Kingdom of Landriff, and the country of Oceanus. I mean, I don't think the Cherokees want to go back there again.

In 1998, Muriel dies and his brother, Iroi Lap-Lap-Rameos-Hermios, yes, I got it right, signed a 50-year lease of the islands. Again, they're not real to David Karem and the Dominion of Melchizedek.

Kerem even flies to Maduro, the capital of the Marshals, to declare his own stake. Which, isn't this just all American imperialism? I don't know. In January 1998, the Marshals' Ministry of Foreign Affairs tell these guys where to go. Quote, the government of the Republic of the Marshall Islands condemns the claims of activities asserted by representatives of the, quote, Kingdom of NNKEO and the, quote, Dominion of Melchizedek.

The representative making claims of separate sovereignty of not citizens of the Republic of the Marshall Islands and have no right to make claims on behalf of Marshallese landowners.

And that's that, right? Nope. Because this is, of course, ultimately all about money. And Kareem and Moore have got their teeth into this thing. In 2000, NNKio announces it signed an agreement with Kuwait to provide citizenship for stateless people. Are loads of refugees washing up in Kuwait? I think...

I mean, they kicked a ton out. They kicked a ton of Palestinians out for siding with Saddam Hussein after Desert Storm, but that was the early 90s, so I'm not sure what that was about. Yeah, maybe this is like Filipino construction workers and housemates. I have no idea, but...

It also says that it's going to issue war bonds for NNKEO's development for a Bahamas offshore venture. Hmm. It also competes with the Dominion over the territory. I mean, I don't know. This thing is so goddamn stupid. Are you following it? Is it at least entertaining? I stopped saying Melchizedek, but I went mad anyway. You know, I'm not really following it, to be honest with you. Definitely not 100%, but it's entertaining. I mean, I'm sure someone listening is following it.

Wicked. All right. Cheers. The SEC finally gets a hold of this whole thing in 2000, and it files a financial restraining order against Moore for trying to sell fake bonds worth a billion dollars on his NNKEO website, emailed out to folks like a really crap Nigerian print scam. Rice, the filing quote, the kingdom of NNKEO is not recognizing any international forum as a sovereign state, nor is it a corporate or statutory entity.

The complaint alleges that Moore's offering materials represent that the bonds will pay a compound interest rate of 10% after five years. The complaint also alleged that Moore represents that the bonds are quote backed by gold reserves, guarantees, real estate or other assets. However, according to the complaint, Moore has no gold reserves and no security real property or otherwise exists for the bonds. He's cooked.

So, that's good for Karem and Perleja, right? They are only just beginning.

They stick with their claim to Taongi Atoll, an uninhabited corner of the Marshalls, and they try to establish a Dominion embassy on the Chatham Islands, about 500 miles off the coast of here in Wellington, part of New Zealand. It too has a cultish breakaway movement, a guy named James Ngatoa who claims to be the so-called King of the Maori, and where there's a wannabe king, of course, you know Kerem's going to show up flashing his Dominion passport and a bunch of fake bank accounts.

In April 2000, CBS airs an episode of 60 Minutes 2. I mean, what's that, like the reserve team for 60 Minutes? I don't know. About the Dominion. And Karem is widely ridiculed. The Dominion, in response, actually sues the broadcaster for a billion dollars. But since it files under Dominion jurisdiction, CBS just ignores it. Hey, that's more than you got sued for. What a story.

Damn, I should start working for 60 minutes too. Is this a thing? Is that still a thing? I've never even heard of it. Dude, I don't know. Yeah, God knows. But look, growing a straggly beard and calling yourself king and founding a fake country and scamming poor Pacific nations, it's all good and well, but it's hardly alpha.

Pearl Asia's been sitting here with a karate-loving son wondering if her messianic hubby is ever going to bring back home the bacon. And by bacon, of course, I mean a sovereign nation and stacks of cash. So she does it herself. In 2004, she starts soliciting investment in Philippine gold mining operations called Pearl Asian Mining Inc. or PAIM, P-A-I-M.

damn these guys make me feel so unaccomplished you know one thing fails and they're like fuck it like let's let's take another shot you know what i'm saying yeah don't get brought down for fraud and they don't even waste like a year they're already doing like a whole new fraud yeah we felt like two years ago and it's less yeah look at that i gave up a long i mean these guys deserve to succeed to be honest with you yeah i mean it's nuts right this pat

Paim, I hate that, P-A-I-M. This later becomes something called Xenex Mining. And Pearl Asia writes a ton of PRs claiming she's onto massive deposits and has a turnover of $37 million. But, of course, this isn't true. It's a pump and dump. There are 49 acre plot on the Islamist riddled southern island of Mindanao in the Philippines. Sure, there is. But that's about it.

Oh no, no, wait. Pearl Asia claims she's bought a $160,000 gold refining machine from China. Quote, not a dinky one. But it's actually just a small machine bought online that's used to purify scrap jewelry. Basically, this mining company is just a piece of paper from the Philippine government, a shitty little gadget bought online, and Gamboa say so.

By June 2009, the SEC has sued Xenex Mining Corporation and Gamboa for fraud, claiming she's been hyping up this fake mining firm to pump its penny stocks. Take the cash and run.

Quote, PAIM was and currently is nothing but a shell used by Gamboa to generate stock sale profits and any gold mining operations that do exist belong to a separate Philippine company of the same name owned almost entirely by Gamboa, says the filing. Barron's, by the way, it currently has Zenex stock valued at $0.00 per share.

Things really take a tumble from here. The Z-Next affair brings unwanted attention to David Karem, who gets swept up as part of Operation Broken Trust, a nationwide police crackdown on small-time fraud. He's ex-resided to Florida and sentenced to two years in prison in Miami for his role in the pump and dump.

At the same time, Pearl Asia tries to pwn a Palo Alto real estate guy out of 300 grand in a supposed bid to rebuild the famed 1930s ocean liner, the Queen Mary. Eric Diesel, no relation of Vin, an associate of infamous Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, says that Pearl Asia snared him in the phony deal before hiring Filipino thugs to kidnap him and ferry him from hotel to hotel.

According to an email Diesel sends to the Palo Alto City Clerk headed David Karem's Elder Abuse Crime Ring, he writes, quote, The kidnapping was directed and funded from the Gamboa property's Palo Alto address, and I was taken to Palo Alto as outlined in the attached medical board complaint. The kidnapping was in part to stop my threat to report to the Palo Alto PD.

When authorities fail to act, Diesel begins editing Gamboa's Wikipedia page. That's like, that's when you know the war is on right there, when they get going on the Wikipedia page.

Yeah, I mean, she's well up for a scrap as well. I mean, she responds by emailing, quote, and this is all caps, "...you are totally possessed by Satan and the devil that taught you to fabricate untruthful stories you came up with, and that you should have to bite your tongue hard until it bleeds and your hands will be cut into several pieces until you are no longer able to write or post malicious and vicious lies in the Wikipedia."

Which is pretty much how I feel when I read The Grey Zone. Anyway, Pearl Asia and Karem then break up. Not only have their recent cases put the cosmic union under black hole levels of stress, but Karem, and it's hard to believe this given his squeaky clean past, has been living a double life. Complete with, according to SF Weekly, quote, its own set of esoterically named loved ones. To the one he conducted in the Bay Area with Gamboa and Hazamak.

In February that year, Sadia Barameda, the proprietor of a fashion boutique in Brentwood, California, presented a letter to the federal court in Miami begging for leniency in Karemp's sentencing.

David Karem is many things, she wrote. The most important, from my perspective, is that he has been an excellent father to our six-year-old son, Sedeq. Ouch. Epic hammer blow for Pearl Asia. She's out there pumping and dumping, and her husband is, well, he's dumping and pumping.

That, I mean, I feel like it's still pumping and dumping. Yeah, I mean, you can pump then dump and dump then pump. I mean, whatever you want to do with your spare time, guys. A little something on Karem's side, Chick Barrameda. And if you thought this was going to get any less weird, well, you haven't been listening at all, have you? As far as I can tell, she's also Filipina and she got in trouble back in 2014 for trying to sell fake Louis Vuitton, Celine and Dior gear in California.

Her Facebook page claims she's a fashion designer and a legal weed advocate. Same as me. She's penned a few novels alongside somebody called The Holy Ghost Writer, including, prepare for this one, 9-11 terrorist descent into Jahanam. Jahanam being a lair of Muslim hell.

She's also written Michael the Friendly Ghost, which according to the Amazon entry asks, quote, What if Michael Jackson's too early death didn't cut short his good deeds on earth? What if God had a greater plan for Michael's spirit and it involves sending Michael's soul back to help those in need? I can hear the desperate pleading of teenage boys everywhere. I think she ends up saying in the book that the King of Pop was murdered by a secret society, but...

The best one is a shit you not called Piroz the ISIS Slayer. I saw a Buffy fanfic set in Raqqa or something, but I really need you to read the plot summary on Kirkus. I mean, this is one of the best things you hear on the pod, and apologies if you're listening to news on global organised crime and not obscure self-published literalia, but anyway, quote, when members of the terrorist group Al-Dawah Al-Al-Sulmiya Fi Al-Arat Al-Sham

My Arabic's a bit rusty these days, guys. AKA the Islamic State Group, ISIL or ISIS, massacre a village. It turns out that they have a hidden agenda. Do they? What? Retrieval of some Ebola samples and their corresponding research. Soon they create weapons armed with the virus, a new strain that rapidly infects and kills its victims. Dude, that was a fucking plot line in, um...

What's it called? The show with John Krasinski on Amazon. I think Jack Ryan, right? No way. I'm like, I had to turn it off because it was so bad. But the plot line was like some ISIS group stealing Ebola, like the Ebola virus to like weaponize it in like the White House or like a school in the US. I swear to the Clancy one. I swear to God. Jack Ryan.

Yeah, yeah, I'm almost positive. Let me look, hold on one second. Like, this is, uh, I'm almost positive it was season one or season two, but it was so bad that I had to, um, I had to stop watching it, like, almost right away. And, uh, dude, I, fuck, it might have been season two. I don't, dude, I don't know.

Awful. But I wonder if... Jesus Christ. So they pumped it up. Here you go. Here you go. Yeah. I wonder if they stole it from this terrible book.

or if the more i think came out like 2018 or like what like if they stole it off this terrible book or if they it's so much better if they did uh it'd be incredible like they'd have grounds for like a lawsuit if they did which would be amazing but uh this is this apparently was published by weed growth funding in february 2015 i think they need yeah yeah dude

Yeah, they might have nicked it off. Like they literally might have stolen this plot line offer. I have to look up. I don't want to keep us like recording for, for hours. All right, wait, actually. Okay. It's something like it was, uh, I found like a plot, uh,

Right up thing where it's like in season one, episode six, Suleiman and his brother excavated an Ebola victim's body from Liberia and go to Azerbaijan for six months. They provide 12 captive doctors without borders with some requested medicines and they they give them Ebola. They affect them with Ebola to try to spread it to the president. So something along those lines. But it's like it's definitely like ISIS.

radicals trying to infect people with Ebola in the States. I don't know, man. I think she's got, I think her suit's got merit and I think she should, she should get on it. Oh my God.

Sadia, you've got to get on this. If you're listening out there, forget Michael the Friendly Ghost. Concentrate on this lawsuit. Forget the islands. It's not even worth reading the rest of this plot now. Forget the islands. Forget all these fraudulent plans. Sue Amazon.

I mean, do that too, because we want more content. But yeah, definitely, definitely so. Anyway, this thing, there's a character called Ren. Her weapon of choice is a knife, because of course, when you're fighting Isis...

You're going to need to come at them with a knife, especially if they've got Ebola. Anyway, yeah, this is actually a really good review from someone on Kirkus, which is I don't know what Kirkus is like respected. It's better than half the stuff we've had reviews of the pod. But anyway, there's a reason that Baromeda is so into Ebola, too.

I mean, I don't know if you can be into Ebola. She actually patents Ebola.com during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. And it seems to be aimed at convincing folks that weed kills the virus, which that's way less cool than Piroz and the selection of anti-terror kitchen knives. I think she should stick to the writing and the lawsuits. Anyway, for Pearl Asia, it's got to be tough seeing her former man with such a successful writer. And despite somehow avoiding prison, Pearl Asia suffers too.

In 2010, she has a serious aneurysm. And when the SF Weekly reporter asked what her condition was, she responds, quote, without missing a beat. I died. You died? I died. At least that's what I call it. She says she was dead for three days, not unlike another well-known religious leader, and then returned to the world of the living.

Pressed about the details of her resurrection, Pearl Asia Gamboa, aka Olvera Gamboa, aka Pearl Asia, aka Bay Kataguman, princess of peace, declarer of war, past president of a country that does not exist, simply bats her dark eyelashes and smiles. It was a miracle.

And that, kids, is How to Write a Kicker. Really cool story. It's on the reading list. You should read it immediately. David Coram gets out of prison in 2012, just in time for the London Olympics. But he emerges to discover he's been usurped by an American named David Williams.

Only he spells his name, get this, David-Parker-Williams, which is a kind of tell that he's part of the extremely cool and interesting sovereign citizens movement. That year, Williams takes over the Dominion and he denounces the Melchizedekian Bible like a kind of con man Khrushchev. Yeah, I don't get what you mean by usurped. Like, was there an election? I thought this was a one-man operation.

Well, are you questioning the functions of the Melchizedekian government? Yeah, I mean, it's just a bunch of old white guys sitting in school halls mostly and talking bullshit. So they can make up whoever they want. It seems he just kind of took over while Karen was in prison.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. But he writes on the website, quote, the dominion of Melchizedek hereby denounces the Melchizedek Bible and hereby declares it has no bearing to the functions of administration or philosophy of the current standing sovereign members of the dominion of Melchizedek.

Mr. Karem can choose to believe and profess what he likes. However, in relation to the dominion of Melchizedek, this guy is making me say the words so much, his beliefs have no bearing on the functions of the state and are separate and apart from how we conduct ourselves as members of the family of nations. Karem is gone. Guy got banished from his own fake country. That's got to hurt.

And for a while, the Dominion kind of fizzles out. In 2015, Williams films himself and six others in a Florida meeting hall simply with the purpose of cutting ties with the former leadership. Williams' play is basically that anyone who's committed crimes associated with the Dom has been tried and convicted as US citizens under US law and therefore cannot have anything to do with the Dominion. I mean, you see how fucking tedious these people are?

At one point when they mentioned the peddlies as branch vine dresser and today's dominion, somebody called Ambassador William Trevino pipes up to say, quote, that's like holding Chancellor Merkel responsible for the damages that Adolf Hitler did.

Damages? Come on. And William goes, yeah, right, exactly. I mean, this is proper facepalm stuff. Except there's a moment in this 30-minute recording when one of the main guys was a missionary named Huey Painter who's been with the DOM forever. He admits they've been sending aid, don't know what that aid is, to countries that help, quote, name drop the DOM worldwide. And this is pretty much the key.

The Dominion has been busy over the past few years shipping aid, which is like desks and solar panels and books and bags of rice, as far as I can tell, all over the world. Actually, David Williams says that he shipped 50,000 books to Liberia, which that's not true, is it?

it. Nothing wrong with that in principle anyway, of course, but the fact is that it's focused on two countries above all others in the past pretty much decade, and that is Liberia and Haiti. And that suggests a deeper purpose. And actually, when I spoke to David Williams last week for two hours, he admitted they're doing this stuff to get the Dominion back off the ground. He's getting the old gang back. But why? Like, what purpose? Just to do more fraud? Yeah, I mean...

It's tax fraud, basically. It seems like tax fraud. I don't know. I support tax fraud. Maybe I should join the dominion of Melchizedek.

I'll put you in touch with him. I mean, all you've got to do is have about a two day conversation about, you know, the tyranny of United States law, which I don't know. It could be fun. Wasn't fun for me. In 2021, the DOM appoints a Liberian named Mike Sonpon as, quote, emissary extraordinaire. And he's busy setting up something called Tangi National University near Monrovia, the capital.

There's a big problem in Africa with unlicensed educational facilities stealing students' money. I've asked a couple of local journalists actually to look into it, and I'm going to do an update on the Patreon soon. There's also something called, weirdly, Kennedy University of Baptist, singular, a Miami faith-based university with the goals of, all caps again, guys, truth, freedom, and beauty?

It's accredited by, here we go, the Florida Department of Education, which, no, it's not, the Dominion Melchizedek Ministry of Education, the International Education Professional Accreditation Association, or AIPAR, actually, for short, which is an agency of the Dominion of Melchizedek. Also, the Ministry of General Education and Instruction of South Sudan, which,

the Royal Council of Aceh Dar es Salaam, which as far as I can tell ceased to exist in 1945, Tony National University, because of course, and the President of the United States. Oh, and their email is .pl for Poland, because of course.

Now, the IEPA, the IEPAA, for what it's worth, claims to have graduated 499 children. Loads of the website is peppered with Laura Mipson placeholder texts. Testimonials include, quote, Donnick fell a guy listener by Laura Fenty, who is a, quote, senior gardener farmer and facelus sit amid una acmetis aquilum vote pet in an ULA, which, of course, means the fleet should be a lot of fun and fearsome vote to pay in an ULA.

That's by Al-Hussein, by the way, and as luck would have it, he's also a senior gardener-farmer.

I mean, what is this? Is this sounds scammy as shit? David doesn't think so. He runs a Patreon called David Williams Unleashed, which costs $200 a month and covers topics like the Maryland Naturalization Act of 1779 and the British Stamp Act Congress of 1765. Basically, just legal papers are used to push his sovereign citizens agenda. Does he is he doing better than us?

What does he need, like two followers? Yeah, maybe. I mean, if you pay us 200 bucks a month, we're going to send Danny on assignment with Max Blumenthal. Jesus, terrible joke. I mean, you would have to spring for a defense attorney.

I've since been emailing with David. I mean, he calls me a, quote, prolific writer of fiction, which thank you, David. I did do a bit of fiction back in the day. I'll spare you some of the details of these email back and forth. But basically, he denies all illegality related to Dominion since 2003. And he's really obsessed with his Wikipedia page. See if you can make sense of this, quote.

There are no actual verified reports of any illegality, since illegality is a matter of law and jurisdiction, a matter of standing and court judgments. I have read all of the U.S. agency information, which I found weighted and likewise duplicity based on the operations of its Federal Reserve at its off-book money printing operations, which is used, as I have been informed more than once, to bribe other nations and its leaders in such instances as

as former President Obama, giving 400 million cash to Iran, the alleged US enemy. So, yeah, does that make sense? I'm not really sure it does. I mean, this guy does like voice to dictation as well. It's like completely batshit. And

And David, since I don't want to get on your bad side again, I'm going to end this episode. We are at the end, guys, with one of David's emails to me. See if you can detect any red flags. Quote, the massive amount of fraud on this planet with men such as Biden, Zelensky, Clintons and elite families control a fraudulent global banking system. And your best, he means me, is to try and do some hit piece on me and DOM.

I mean, what do you reckon? Is this show a hatchet job? I'm exhausted, man. Yeah, I would be exhausted too. And hopefully people appreciate your effort. As always, bonuses up on the Patreon, patreon.com slash underworld podcast, iTunes. Yeah, I guess that's it, man. Enjoy your holidays. Wait, is it the holidays next weekend? Holiday weekend? Anyway. Yeah, there's something. Enjoy yourself in general.

so