Dial M for Mom
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Sachi, I'm actually very curious because I cannot predict what your answer will be. Would you ever hire a private investigator? Sarah, I am the private investigator. I can do that myself. Why would I pay someone to do something that I am very good at? Yeah, you really kind of are everyone's personal private investigator, which I love about you. Yeah.

The story I'm about to tell you is about a bunch of private investigators trying to make the most outrageous reality show ever. It is way messier than The Real Housewives and turns out very criminal. It's January 26, 2010, and Carl Marino is sitting in a Hummer in a Bay Area parking lot.

Carl is 40 and classically handsome with a square jaw and piercing blue eyes. He's a former jail deputy, but he really wants to be an actor, which is convenient because the private investigation firm where he works has recently gone Hollywood. It's been featured in People magazine and on Dr. Phil. Lifetime is even making a reality show about it.

Carl was thrilled about getting his 15 minutes of fame, but unfortunately for him, he wasn't cast on the show. Instead, the cast was primarily made up of Carl's more telegenic colleagues. And they're not ex-cops like him. They are soccer moms. ♪

I mean, yeah, they are going to be more interesting. I would rather watch a show about soccer moms than any man. Yeah, basically, soccer moms doing pretty much anything. Yeah. Well, Carl is pissed he didn't get cast on the show, but his beef isn't with the so-called PI moms. He's mad at the other star of the show, his boss, a 49-year-old former cop named Chris Butler. Chris's name sounds pretty similar to Carl's, so to avoid confusion, I'm just going to call him Butler. Now,

Now, Sachi, I want you to conjure up an image in your mind of the most stereotypical middle-aged ex-cop that you can imagine. And then I want you to take a look at this picture of Butler. And I need to know, does it match what you're picturing? Oh, yeah. First of all, this guy fucks. That's for sure. He is a short king in a poorly fitted leather jacket. And he's a short king in a poorly fitted leather jacket.

Yeah, he has like a crazy goatee and I guess he's on a Harley Davidson. It looks like a toy bike, honestly. Well, Butler might run a PI agency, but he's really more of a public relations guy.

He's obsessed with his image, and he wants to look like a hard-nosed detective more than he actually wants to be one. That's why he's decorated the agency's office with pictures from detective shows like Magnum P.I. and Columbo. It's why he hired soccer moms and aggressively marketed them. And it's why he hired Carl in the first place. Butler sees Carl as the type of smooth, confident guy he wants to be.

Today, he and Carl are sitting in Butler's Hummer, and while they wait, they chat about one of Butler's other hustles, running a criminal drug operation. Carl tells his boss some good news. He says he's found a buyer for his latest haul, $10,000 worth of meth that Butler stole from police evidence lockers.

Butler is thrilled. But what he doesn't know is that Carl is wearing a wire and working undercover for the DOJ. He's getting ready to sell his boss out to the feds. Butler wants to be seen as a hero who does whatever it takes in the name of justice. But if Carl gets his way, the world is going to see Butler for who he really is. A disgraced, dirty cop.

From Wondery, I'm Sarah Hagee. And I'm Saatchi Cole. And this is Scamfluencers. On the surface, this is a story about moms working as private investigators. But it's actually a story about one of our favorite subjects on this show, toxic masculinity.

Chris Butler dreams of building a media empire around the idea of the PI moms. But it's all just part of his macho cop fantasy. Because when he can't make good on his reality show image, he'll turn to good old-fashioned crime. I'm calling this one Dial M for Mom.

Chris Butler starts working as a cop in the 1980s when he's in his 20s. He lives in Antioch, about an hour's drive from San Francisco. And the idea of being a man's man has always been super important to him. He rides a motorcycle and becomes obsessed with Chicago Bears quarterback Jim McMahon, to the point where he starts modeling his own appearance after him. He gets a slicked back hairdo, wears sunglasses, and even throws on a McMahon jersey. ♪

One time, he signs fake autographs as McMahon at the mall.

The 80s were stupid. People were doing stupid things in the 80s. Yeah, this is very embarrassing. Ugh. But the other cops Butler works with apparently see through his tough guy act. In fact, it seems to actively repel them. And Butler doesn't appear to even be very good at his job. He later says that his colleagues just don't understand his, quote, tactics and drive because he's too good for regular police work.

In reality, he's repeatedly disciplined for reckless behavior, and he's ultimately given the choice to either quit or be fired after a high-speed chase ends in a crash. So, after about a decade on the job, he decides to quit. ♪

I think it's so nice that they gave him the choice as opposed to putting him in a cannon and shooting him into the sea. Yeah, it's like, hey, listen, we're going to fire you or just leave. Yeah, just leave and maybe probably get a job elsewhere, I'm guessing. Butler tries to get hired at another police department nearby, but his reputation precedes him and they turn him down. So in 2000, he pivots. He meets a former FBI agent turned PI at a shooting range and gets a job at his agency. When

When his boss decides to leave, Butler buys the agency from him. But he doesn't stray far from his policing roots. He has a good friendship with at least one of his former coworkers on the squad, Norm Welsh. Norm is a big guy with a pretty epic goatee. Unlike Butler, he's friendly and generally well-liked on the squad, and he's got the promotions to show it. Norm now works high up in narcotics enforcement, and he enlists Butler to work as an informant.

Norm might be a shining star on the police force, but he has a secret he's been hiding from his coworkers. He started abusing opioids to cope with the pain from dozens of surgeries related to a neuromuscular disease.

He actually wants to retire from law enforcement, but he's afraid of being seen as weak. He's drawn to Butler's loud, over-the-top machismo, and the two develop an odd-couple kind of friendship. Absolutely cursed dynamic. Also, Norm isn't the only cop Butler hangs out with. For a while, the PI agency is staffed by former and off-duty law enforcement officers.

That's pretty standard for this type of business, but Butler thinks these men are too difficult to deal with. And he doesn't love having to compete to be the alpha in the room. But then, one day in 2006, he gets a new employee, a smoking hot mom. As Butler later tells it, she turns out to be a talented investigator precisely because of the qualities that make her a good mom. Patience, teamwork, and the ability to multitask.

But Butler thinks she'd be perfect for something else, making him a star. It's January 2009, and Carl Marino has just moved to San Jose from the East Coast. He wants to be closer to his family, and he also wants to pursue his dream of becoming an actor.

But he doesn't have a ton of acting gigs listed on his resume. Instead, it's mainly military and law enforcement experience. His resume says he's a former New York City police officer, a 9-11 first responder, and a West Point grad who received two Purple Hearts in the Gulf War. So when he answers a Craigslist ad for a private investigator job, he must seem more than qualified. ♪

But Carl's resume contains a lot of fiction. He dropped out of West Point after two years, never served in the army, and he wasn't a police officer at ground zero. In reality, he worked for years as a jail deputy in upstate New York and resigned following an internal affairs investigation. ♪

Sounds like a really nice guy. Carl gets asked to come in for an interview, which is where he meets Butler. Carl listens intently as Butler tells him that the company has mostly hired former cops, but lately started recruiting suburban moms. One of them went to Juilliard and another one works as a Russian interpreter. The agency gets a lot of clients who want to see if their spouses are cheating on them. So one of its tactics is to recruit young women to work as decoys and try to seduce their clients' spouses.

Carl thinks it's a smart idea, but he's not really sure where he fits into the equation. Then, Butler says he already has a role in mind for Carl. With his confidence and good looks, he can help recruit the decoys. Here's how Carl later describes a process to reporter Pete Crooks. First, potential decoys do an initial interview with Butler. If they seem hot and gullible, they're introduced to Carl, who poses as a rich guy who might be cheating on his wife.

The point of the assignment, according to Carl, was to see, quote, how far this cheating, rich, handsome CEO would go on a bar hookup, especially after doing some tequila shots. If the decoy gets the goods on the CEO, then they get hired for more jobs. Butler films the resulting encounters on a hidden camera.

Carl claims that at first, he thought this was legitimate PI work. But Sachi, will you read what he later says about these stings? Yeah, he says, hey, I was a single guy who had just moved out to California. That is the most 2009 sentence I've ever heard. This story feels so 2009. I don't know what it is about it. Maybe hot and gullible. That sounds like a VH1 reality show I would have watched. Well, soon enough, Carl is embroiled in a case. The

The client is a suburban mom who thinks her 19-year-old son has been smoking too much pot with his friends. And she's starting to suspect that he's selling drugs too, since his friends call him the candy man. She's afraid her son's life will be ruined if he gets caught. So Butler and Carl have spent the past few days laying out and rehearsing their plan. It goes like this. Phase one, a

A few sexy decoys seduce the kid and invite him to a lingerie party. What 19-year-old boy could resist that, right? Phase two, the sexy decoys ask the kid if he can score them ecstasy for the party. Then finally, they're ready for phase three, staging a bogus drug deal.

This is such a bad plan from tip to tail. I know. At one point, Carl and Butler are hiding in the bushes outside the county's narcotics enforcement team known as CNET. CNET is run by Butler's buddy, Norm, who was brought in to help make their stings seem legit.

Carl's heart is racing and his adrenaline is pumping. Because he and Butler aren't just carrying guns, they're also posing as police officers, which is very illegal. And to make the whole thing even more nerve-wracking, Butler has hired a camera crew to film their every move. But Carl doesn't seem to be worried. He's actually pretty psyched. After all, an undercover sting is basically just acting.

Carl watches as the kid pulls into the parking lot. As soon as the money changes hands, he pops out of the bushes, gun drawn to scare the kid straight.

Everything goes according to plan. Butler puts the kid in handcuffs and throws him in the back of his Hummer while Carl handcuffs the sexy decoys who pretend to sob uncontrollably. It's theatrical and a little absurd, but it's all for show. Because the real purpose of the sting isn't just scaring some kid straight, it's to hype up the PI agency.

Butler wants to turn the footage they shot into a sizzle reel. Once this fictional setup catches the media's attention, there will be no turning back. It's June 2010, more than a year after Carl's first sting, and Ami Curry is sitting in the audience of the Dr. Phil show.

Ami is 34 and has long, dark hair. She's a former cop who's been working for Butler for the last year or so. Like a lot of his other staffers, she found him through a Craigslist ad. She finds the job exciting, but it isn't a walk in the park. She frequently butts heads with Butler and Carl over their skeezy methods, but she has a lot of respect for the other female investigators.

Even with her years of real cop experience, she's learning a lot from these suburban soccer moms. And she has to admit that Butler's branding strategy has been effective. You know, there was a time, I feel like, where if you did any work, but it was kind of painted as like, but women are doing it, you could get really famous doing that. Yeah, this is a goldmine. And lately, they've gotten a ton of attention.

Three months earlier, they were profiled in People magazine. Ami decided to sit out the interview and photo shoot. She's been trying to keep a low profile since she's pretty private and wants to protect her children from any possible harassment. So when the PI moms get their biggest opportunity yet, being featured on the Dr. Phil show, Ami decided to cheer the other moms on quietly from the audience.

She watches as her co-workers tell Dr. Phil about what it's like to juggle motherhood with PI work. Then they show video from three of their recent investigations, including one where an undercover male decoy gets an erotic massage at a hotel. The studio audience gasps. It's titillating, shocking, and a little too perfect for TV.

Of course, Ami knows the truth. They're actually showing scripted reenactments of real cases the moms worked on, punched up to add a little something extra. I remember this episode. And I guess the thing I remember the most is the audience is gasping as if they are all like a bunch of virgins. Like the footage is designed to scandalize someone who is very easily scandalized.

Yeah, it really is classic daytime TV craziness. And at the end of the segment, Dr. Phil drops the agency's contact info for his millions of viewers. He later tells CBS News that he had no idea the footage with the PI moms was faked. But his platform is huge. And after the show airs, everyone wants a piece of the PI moms. Reality TV show producers start calling and within weeks, Butler makes a deal with Lifetime.

Ami sees that there's a lot of potential in her boss's vision. She's interested in starting her own agency one day and thinks being on the show might be able to help her get there. Even though she's been really private up to this point, she decides the risks are worth it. She's in. But if the show is going to be a hit, her co-workers are going to have to pull off an even more dramatic version of their Dr. Phil appearance, tricking the media live.

It's September 2010, about three months after the Dr. Phil episode aired. The agency has been overwhelmed by new cases, like the one Charmaine Peters is working today. She's in her early 40s with an impeccable fake tan and highlights. She and one of her fellow PI moms are in a minivan following a man in a Mercedes. His fiance has hired the agency to investigate whether he's been cheating on her.

Charmaine is a pro at this kind of thing. Before she started working for the agency, she was actually a client. She hired them to see if her husband would attempt to hook up with one of its decoys. He went for it, and that was that. They started the process of getting a divorce. After Charmaine decided to apply for a job at the agency, she was learning surveillance with the other moms and training in martial arts at a UFC gym. It's a compelling story, so it's no wonder she's been central to the PI mom's media blitz.

Plus, like a lot of the other PI moms, she looks good on camera. Charmaine and her fellow investigators have also been courting press and local outlets, like an East Bay magazine called Diablo. They've sent one of their reporters, Pete Crooks, to follow Charmaine on her quest to catch a cheating fiancé.

Pete thinks he's getting a front row seat to all of the action. But in reality, Charmaine and the other PI moms are just restaging a previous case. Everything they're about to see will be performed by actors.

I would be so irate if I was this reporter. I would be furious. I'd never stop being mad about it. Well, Charmaine does feel a little guilty about deceiving Pete. But the case is real. It just happened in the past. And she reminds herself that the positive media attention will attract new clients, people who really need their help. For the rest of the day, Charmaine leads Pete around by the nose. They watch as their target drives into an exclusive gated community and picks up a young woman. ♪

It's not his fiancée, it's one of the agency's sexy decoys. The two of them go out for a romantic lunch and even make a brief attempt to get roadhead. It's scandalous and it even shocks Pete. He constantly asks if they should be tailing the man so closely or why they're making so little effort to hide while taking pictures. And why are they still following the guy when they already have so many photos of him cheating? But

But Charmaine confidently shrugs off all his questions. And the truth is, Pete is enjoying himself. He doesn't want their wild adventure to end.

He knows this will make for a fantastic story and he can't wait to start writing it. But then, a few weeks later, Charmaine quits the PI agency and drops out of the Lifetime show. Partly, it's because her divorce keeps getting messier and she wants to keep it from becoming a storyline on reality TV. She's disappointed to leave, but it'll turn out to be a blessing in disguise because the agency is about to become the subject of a different kind of story, a mystery. ♪

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It's early January 2011, a few months after Pete's ride-along. He's been keeping tabs on Butler and the P.I. mom since they started filming the reality show two months ago. His story is just about done and ready to go to print in the next issue of Diablo. But today, Pete and his colleagues at the magazine receive a strange email. It's from a self-proclaimed whistleblower calling himself Ronald Rutherford. He says he works at the P.I. agency and he's urging Pete not to run the story.

Pete later talked about this moment on This American Life. Here he is reading the whistleblower email. Chris totally played you. The case that you sat in on was totally scripted.

On the one hand, this is a surprising message, but it also makes sense to Pete. In hindsight, the ride-along was a little too eventful. So he starts reaching out to everyone involved. When he calls Butler and tells him about the ominous email, Butler goes ballistic and blames it on a former intern who he claims was having an affair with one of the moms. Well, Pete talks to Charmaine, the mom he met on his ride-along. I don't know if he's going to be able to tell her

Again, she left the agency a few months earlier, so she's willing to be a bit more candid about her former colleagues. She thinks that Ronald Rutherford is actually Carl. She says that Carl wasn't cast in the Lifetime show and he's been taking it out on the agency. Pete thinks Charmaine's theory makes sense. But when he calls Carl, Carl insists that everything was real and he has no idea who could have sent that email. It's a dead end. ♪

Pete doesn't know what to do. He's a movie nerd who typically covers arts and entertainment. He was supposed to be doing a lighthearted piece about the P.I. mom's upcoming TV show. Now, the story seems ripped straight out of a film noir. This story falling in the lap of the entertainment reporter at the local paper. It's beautiful. I'm just like, oh, Pete, you can do it. Oh, I hope he's okay. I'm so worried about Pete.

Well, Pete's deadline is approaching, but he hasn't been able to verify Ronald's accusations or identity. His editors are pressuring him to go ahead and publish the story as is. But then he gets another email from Ronald. And this time, Ronald accuses Butler of something far more serious than faking a ride-along. He says Butler is running a large criminal drug operation. ♪

Ronald says Butler has been reselling marijuana and prescription drugs that have been confiscated by CNET. Ronald adds that he's scared, that he doesn't want to start selling drugs, and that he's willing to go undercover and work with law enforcement to take Butler down. But he doesn't know how, and he needs Pete's help.

Pete's not sure how to respond, but then he sees the final detail in the email. Ronald alleges that Butler has a few pounds of explosives in his office he wants to sell. Pete thinks people could get seriously hurt. He feels like he doesn't have a choice. He's going to have to ignore his editor's demands and go straight to the authorities. ♪

It's the evening of January 14th, just a few hours after Pete gets an email about the explosives. Carl is running late for a job in wine country. Tonight, he'll be playing the main character in one of Butler's undercover stings. It's actually his second performance of the day because he's already finished acting as Ronald Rutherford.

That's right. Carl has been the one sending those emails. Of course, the disgruntled man cut out of the project in place of a woman. Tale as old as time. Carl is still salty about not being in the reality show, and he's taking all of that out on Butler. But just because Carl is selling out his boss doesn't mean he can't enjoy his job in the meantime. Tonight, he's working on something called the Dirty DUI.

It's where investigators and decoys get the men drunk and then tip off one of Butler's cop friends to pull them over and have them arrested while they're driving home. It's an easy way to score a win in a custody battle for clients. And Carl knows this isn't exactly above board. But the cops are participating in their scheme, so why should he worry about it? Carl has done plenty of these dirty DUIs, and he likes to have fun with them and really get into character.

On this night, he's posing as a producer from a fictional reality show. It's about the rivalry between big shot Napa Valley winemakers and their scrappy counterparts. During the meeting, Carl drinks several glasses of wine, making sure his client's husband, a winemaker, drinks plenty too.

Okay, so they just want this guy to get wasted, get in his car and maybe hurt somebody. Like they're willing to take that risk. Yes, absolutely. They're willing to take that risk because they're like, well, cops will get him when we call them. Great.

Carl excels in these kinds of environments. He even gets competitive with himself, trying to get the subject as drunk as possible. After he leaves, he texts Butler, eager to know just how successful he was. Butler tells him that the husband was arrested for a DUI with a blood alcohol level of 0.15, just under double the legal limit. Carl texts him back, disappointed he couldn't get it higher.

Carl might not have lived up to his own standards with the dirty DUI, but he's going to outdo himself where it counts. Sabotaging the reality show.

It's a few days after the dirty DUI and Ami and the moms are sitting around in a warehouse. They're waiting to bust an unlicensed PI for the lifetime cameras. And this case is really important. The reality show has been falling apart because Butler can't actually back up his boasting. The producers want real investigations, not reenactments. And Butler hasn't been able to deliver the compelling, genuine cases he promised.

So they really need to catch this guy. But it's been hours and he hasn't shown. The producers ask the moms to call the PI and ask where he is. When they do, he says something shocking. He tells them that he received an anonymous phone call from a man tipping him off, saying that he was being set up for reality TV and warning him to not attend the meeting.

Ami is pissed. And she, along with the rest of the agency and the producers, are pretty sure they know who's behind it. Ami has disliked Carl from the moment they met, but he's been especially annoying these past few months because he keeps trying to insert himself into the show. He's been bothering the producers, hovering around cases, and generally being a nuisance. He's a natural suspect. Ami is pissed.

You know, not only is Carl weird and competitive with these women, he's also now putting them at risk because you can't go up to people and be like, hey, there's a van full of girlies in the parking lot who are tracking you and you're about to get in trouble. Yeah, I mean, this is absolutely crazy. And when the producers of The Lifetime Show hear about the drama, they try to thicken the plot. They tell the moms to concoct their own sting, this time on Carl. For

First, they convince the unlicensed PI they were targeting to meet them at his office. They assure him he won't be humiliated on TV. Then they call Carl about an unrelated case and put him on speakerphone. The unlicensed PI identifies Carl as a man who tipped him off. Bingo.

Everyone expects Butler to fire Carl now that it's clear he's been trying to sabotage a show. But Butler can't do it. He still loves Carl's macho image. Plus, Carl knows about the illegal drug operation. Perfect material for blackmail. It's too bad Carl's already one step ahead of him.

It's January 26, and Carl is sitting in Butler's Hummer in a strip mall parking lot. It's been about a week since the moms caught him sabotaging the show, but Carl isn't worried. He's got some news he knows will make his boss happy. He's found a buyer for all the meth Butler and Norm stole out of police evidence lockers. Carl says a buyer will give him the money, and Carl will orchestrate the deal himself. After his conversation with Butler, Carl walks across the parking lot and into a diner.

He's here to work on one of the agency's biggest cases, which involves a missing teen girl. Before he started sabotaging the production, he was assigned to look into the missing girl's boyfriend. Now, he's managed to get a meeting with the boyfriend's mother. As soon as their lunch starts, the mom admits she's been harboring the missing teen this whole time. Carl is delighted. He knows it's an important case, and solving it would be a huge deal. ♪

When he texts Butler about this development, Butler sends him a text pleading with him to let the mom solve the case for the show, complete with 10 exclamation points. Carl ignores him, and just a couple of hours later, he texts Butler a picture of him with the runaway girl.

I don't like Carl, but I have to say if somebody told me to like give my work up to somebody else so that it could seem like they did it, I would be mad. Yeah, I'd be like, no. Yeah, I wouldn't do that. Well, after the PI moms find out that their biggest case has been solved off camera by Carl, who isn't even on the show, they're on edge and the show's producers are scrambling to film a resolution.

They decide to confront the woman who had been harboring the missing teen by going to her workplace and they plan to film it. This is their very last chance to salvage the show. But Butler can't stop play acting as a macho cop.

As soon as a woman leaves her office, Butler flashes his Hummer's strobe lights, causing her to panic and flee. He then chases her down and tackles her as she runs for her car in front of dozens of witnesses and multiple cameras. When Ami sees this, she decides she is done with Butler and she's not alone.

After their outing, she and two of her fellow PI moms quit in unison. And Ami has one more surprise for Butler. She's opening her own investigation business, and the moms and the reality cameras are coming with her. And this is exactly the resolution the show needed. But Carl still wants a starring role, and he's about to cast himself in it as the guy who brings down Butler. ♪

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It's been less than three weeks since the PI moms quit, and the reality show is in shambles. So is Butler's agency. But at least he's still got his side hustle, selling drugs.

Carl, Norm, and Butler all meet in Butler's office. Norm brings a pound of crystal meth wrapped up in tinfoil to look like a burrito. And Carl brings the $10,000 he says he got from his buyer. Butler sees the money in Carl's hand and decides to use a code word for it. He says, let me see that salad. Carl lays out the money while Norm and Butler count it.

When they realize it's all there, Butler tells Carl he'll go get the, quote, burrito. He goes into another room, and when he comes back, he hands off the burrito full of meth. He has no idea that Carl paid for the meth and marked bills and immediately went to the DOJ, or that he's been recording them using equipment from CNET, Norm's own department. ♪

That's some delicious little irony, isn't it? Oh, it's brilliant. The next morning, Butler goes for his usual workout at a UFC gym. When he leaves the gym, he's met by cops who tell him they have a search warrant for his car. Butler watches as they go through his Hummer and find a loaded Glock, a gun he got for free by promising Glock that he'd give them product placement.

Later, he learns that the cops were simultaneously searching his office. There, they found additional guns and several types of drugs, including anabolic steroids and meth.

Butler is charged with 28 felony counts, including conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute drug charges, civil rights conspiracy, and robbery affecting interstate commerce. Once he's booked, he learns that Norm was also arrested that morning and has been charged with the same number of felonies. Their extracurricular activities are over.

It's May 4th, 2012, more than a year after Butler and Norm were busted and charged. Butler sits under harsh fluorescent lights in a courtroom at the United States District Court in Oakland, his head hung in disbelief.

He has to pause to collect himself, even to answer basic questions like his name and age. He never thought it would actually come to this. In an interview with the feds, he claimed to have wanted to live up to the badass image of CNET. But his criminal enterprise was so unwieldy that the Contra Costa district attorney willingly turned over the case to the feds.

Butler eventually realizes that he's out of luck and agrees to cooperate. He starts trying to sell out several of his cop buddies who engaged in illegal activity. He ultimately pleads guilty to eight counts. Norm, on the other hand, was immediately cooperative and remorseful. He blamed much of his criminal behavior on feeling miserable and self-destructive because of the effects of his neuromuscular disease.

He says he was drawn to Butler's world and selling drugs made him feel like a man again.

Selling drugs wasn't all Butler was doing. He was also robbing sex workers, coercing potential decoys into having sex with himself and Carl, and even running a brothel, which didn't even turn a profit. Oh, and as for those explosives, there's no proof they ever existed. It's just about the one thing Butler wasn't charged with. But it seems like there was no moral or legal line Butler would not cross in the name of being the man.

In September 2012, Butler is sentenced to eight years in federal prison. He only made about $20,000 altogether. He didn't get rich and he barely even got famous. The irony is he could have had both with his TV show if he didn't screw it all up. But there's a silver lining. Once Butler is in prison in Colorado, he befriends another scamfluencer's Hall of Famer,

disgraced former Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich. And while Butler is hanging out with Blago, Norm is incarcerated in Texas. There, he starts seeing a prison psychologist and attending chapel, earning his master's in theology. He's released after eight years of a 14-year sentence. Now, he works as a drug and alcohol counselor and motivational speaker. And his new model for masculinity is Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Butler is released in 2018. About four years later, he becomes the CEO of a new nonprofit. It's called Center for Police Integrity. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Perfect. As for Carl, he's continuing his detective work, this time finally on camera. Fittingly, he was cast as Lieutenant Joe Kenda in all 137 episodes of the Discovery docuseries Homicide Hunter. His specialty? The reenactment scenes. As for Ami, after leaving Butler & Associates, she opened her own PI agency, which she ran from 2011 to 2019. ♪

She still wishes that the world would have gotten to see PI moms in action without Butler.

Sachi, this story is so zany. There are too many things happening, too many layers. No one is smart enough for any of this to take off in a normal way. And I just need to know, what are your thoughts? The scam is so confusing because I can barely locate like what they were even scamming. Like the money isn't that much. The attention isn't huge. The business wasn't enormous. So much effort for so little reward. Yeah.

He created his own scam where a scam didn't need to happen at all. Completely unnecessary. One of the weirder ones we've talked about because it really didn't need to exist. I think there are some people who in their life, like they just can't function without like a base level of drama and stress and like duplicity. You know what I mean? I just, I really think Butler was just one of those guys. He just can't live a normal life. Yeah, the amount of ego clashing. Yeah.

this story, none of them should be trusted to do anything. Yeah. They are functioning with like maybe two brain cells. And I also think the inclusion of drugs was so unnecessary. Yeah. I understand the point of like, okay, you want to have a PI agency. You're doing things that are not above board with the cooperation of cops. Fine. I could see how you could talk yourself into that. But

But wanting the intention of a reality TV show on top of all of it while you're also secretly selling drugs and not just like any like real drugs. Meth. Like not a starter drug. I thought you were going to be like, oh, they're pushing pills. I think also there is very little reward in snooping. Usually...

Whatever you need to hear, you'll get that gossip eventually. And if you think your husband's cheating or doing something, there's a lot of stuff you have to think about there. Like, okay, so you hire a private investigator. You get these sexy decoys to push themselves on him.

he does something and then you're like, well, there's my proof that he's a cheater. It's like you're manufacturing cheating and someone you know will cheat. Just leave them. Yeah, I mean, the reality is, is if you're already asking those questions to a private investigator, you have already lost. I think the lesson here is that everyone should be listening to the song Before He Cheats by Carrie Underwood. It's a banger. And there are lessons there. You know, it says it all in the title. Yeah.

So don't hire a private investigator. Just dump him. Get ahead of your husband cheating on you by dumping him before it happens. Lessons learned. This is Dial M for Mom. I'm Sarah Hagee. And I'm Sachi Cole. If you have a tip for us on a story that you think we should cover, please email us at scamfluencers at Wondery.com. The idea for this story actually came from a listener of the show. Thanks, Tylan.

We use many sources in our research. A few that were particularly helpful were The Setup, A True Story of Dirty Cops, Soccer Moms, and Reality TV by Pete Crooks, The Truth Behind PI Mom Scam Exposed, produced by Chuck Stevenson, Peter Shaw, and Greg Fisher for CBS News, and Justin Burton's reporting for SFGate.

Taylor Brogan wrote this episode. Additional writing by us, Sachi Cole and Sarah Hagee. Sarah Enni is our story editor and producer, and Eric Thurm is our story editor. Fact-checking by Gabrielle Drolet. Sound design by James Morgan. Additional audio assistance provided by Adrian Tapia. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Freesound Sync. Our coordinating producer is Desi Blaylock, and our managing producer is Matt Gantt.

Janine Cornelow and Stephanie Jens are our development producers. Our associate producers are Charlotte Miller and Lexi Peary. Our producers are John Reed, Yasmin Ward, and Kate Young. Our senior producers are Ginny Bloom and Jen Swan. Our executive producers are Jenny Lauer-Beckman, Marshall Louie, and Erin O'Flaherty for Wondery. Wondery.

If you like Scamfluencers, you can listen to every episode early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.