The Athlete Whisperer: Ep. 6, They Know Where the Money Went
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Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio. I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil. They're just some weird guy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America.

Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford, and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life, because the more we know about what's running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives.

Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I am Lacey Lamar. And I'm also Lacey Lamar. Just kidding. I'm Amber Revin. What? Okay, everybody, we have exciting news to share. We're back with season two of the Amber and Lacey, Lacey and Amber show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network. This season, we make new friends, deep dive into my steamy DMs,

Answer your listener questions and more. The more is punch each other. Listen to the Amber and Lacey Lacey and Amber show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just listen, okay? Or Lacey gets it. Do it. Previously on Queen of the Con. Nearly $10 million that my husband had worked so hard to save for our family was all gone.

Peggy is arrested and charged with federal crimes for stealing millions of dollars from multiple professional athletes. And even though she pleads guilty, while she's out on bond, she's still scamming up a storm and using fake identities to execute those scams. So I gave her money, a total of $25,000 cash. I trusted her. And even to know that her name wasn't even Peggy Jones, it just seemed like deceit from the beginning.

But before a federal judge sentences her, he wants an explanation. You seem like you have so many skills, so much experience. Why was it necessary to do this? Was it simply a shortage of cash? No, Your Honor. Can I explain something? I'm Jonathan Walton, and this is Queen of the Con, The Athlete Whisperer, Episode 6, They Know Where the Money Went.

I'm going to suspend judgment until the end of the hearing today. Let me... Is there anything else you would like to say, Ms. Fulford? Yes, Your Honor. Please, go ahead.

It's the morning of November 7th, 2018, at a Houston federal courthouse in the Southern District of Texas. Peggy has already pled guilty and is about to try and explain herself and explain her theft of millions of dollars to a federal judge who holds her fate in his hands.

I wanted to say that I accept full responsibility and any consequences associated with my actions. I am so sorry that I hurt the people that I really loved, the Williams, the Best, and the Rodmans.

We're going to get into Peggy's alleged "mania" diagnosis later in this episode, but for now, let's let her finish.

I had a lot of tragedy going on in my life when all these things started happening. It started very early on. My first husband actually died in a plane crash. So this is misleading. Peggy was actually separated for five years and married to someone else when her, quote, first husband tragically died in a plane crash in 1985.

And then my brother died in 1995 with a gunshot wound to his head. He was murdered in New Orleans on the sidewalk of his business. My mother died five years almost to the day that my brother died in a house fire. And my eldest son was shot in the shoulder as well. He had to have extensive surgery.

Peggy is clearly hoping to leverage the tragedies in her life for sympathy from the judge. But will it work? I feel like I have done things that are wrong. I didn't do it maliciously. I didn't do it intentionally. It was something that just got spiraled out of control and one lie led into another one. And I take full responsibility, 100%.

But I promise you, there are things that you're going to hear today that I did not do. But there are things that I did do. And like I said, I love the Williams. Kristen was like a sister to me. Ricky was like a brother. And the Hilliards, I wasn't as close to. But I was very close to the best. I've known Travis since probably the early 90s and his entire family. And there was no reason for me to do the things that I did.

I appreciate your candor. I really do. Thank you very much. You're welcome, Your Honor. Now, Peggy wants to add something else to her statement. A rebuttal. If you recall when Kristen Williams said publicly, We realized that we're paying for Peggy's lavish lifestyle. The Bentley, Rolls Royce, the Range Rovers, all of her home. Well, according to Peggy, that's just not true. You know what?

I know they painted a really ugly picture, but I was actually married to an anesthesiologist during that time. I was married to an orthodontist. Those cars, a Rolls Royce Ghost and all of that, that was not in my name. That was in their names. A Maserati, that was in their names. All I'm saying, Your Honor, is that I was married to people who also made money.

They're making it seem like I didn't have. You know what I'm saying? It's like, that's all I'm going to say. I just wanted you to know that. At this point, the Houston federal prosecutor can't believe what she's hearing. Yes, yes.

I mean, if you're the judge, who are you going to believe? The prosecutor or the perp pleading guilty? Well,

Suddenly, Peggy's probation officer pipes up. Your Honor, this offense expanded over a period of several years, resulting in a conservative loss amount of $5.7 million and the financial devastation of four victims and their families while the defendant lived lavishly with their hard-earned money. She also has a pending felony case in New Orleans Parish for fraud.

That New Orleans fraud case is for scamming that doctor out of $174,000 with a fictitious retirement home she claimed to be building, a con she was executing when FBI agents arrested her. After a little more back and forth, the judge is finally ready to issue Peggy's sentence.

I think Ms. Fulford failed to accept responsibility because she never fully withdrew from the schemes of fraud and misrepresentation even after the fraud was finally identified. I think the scheme and the artifice were perhaps 10 years in duration. I think she obstructed justice. I do think the statutory max is appropriate, a sentence of 120 months. That's 10 years in federal prison.

Peggy is visibly stunned. After all, her public defender assured her that by pleading guilty, she would get off light. And now she's looking at 10 years behind bars. Doesn't surprise me. That's Rashad McCants, one of Peggy's many victims. She tricked him out of $200,000 in just a few months back in 2005. I don't feel bad for her and I don't feel any ill will towards her. I mean, you get what you get.

What goes around comes around. Yeah, I believe that. I believe what goes around comes around eventually. So at this point, Peggy is going to prison for a decade. And you might be asking yourself, whatever happened to Peggy's son, Elkin? The son who ran her athlete management company with her. The son who she tricked everyone into believing was her brother for years. Well, Elkin thinks everyone's got this case wrong.

This was not a criminal case. This was a civil issue. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

At first, Elkin states publicly again and again that he doesn't believe his mother is a con artist. I think she just put their money in places that weren't good. And I don't necessarily think it all went in her pocket. And even after he's confronted with what the FBI found, that Peggy used 85 different bank accounts to siphon off millions of dollars from a bunch of professional athletes, in a public interview in 2022, Elkin says...

Initially, Elkin puts forth a theory that perhaps Peggy's victims aren't really victims.

You're not talking about two financial gurus, Ricky Williams and Dennis Rodman, or even Travis Best. These are guys who, they're known for not doing well with their money. They're known for not paying child support. They're known for being deadbeat dads. But the more Elkins speaks about the case in public, the more he tries to explain how all these athletes were kind of like low-hanging fruit, ripe for the picking.

So they get cool in the situation and they start loving you and they start saying, oh, Peggy, do everything for me. Well, how would you feel? You know, how would anybody feel? How is that hard not to take advantage of?

Elkin himself has tried to sort of disappear for his own safety because after his mother was arrested and charged and convicted of scamming all those athletes, a lot of people couldn't help but think Elkin might have been involved in Peggy's scams. People like Dennis Rodman's manager at the time. Elkin was part of the company that was defrauding clients. So that's his burden to carry.

I still can't understand why he would allow his mother to say that he's her brother and just allow that to go on. That to me, it makes everything else tainted. To me, if you're not part of the fraud, why are you participating in it? That's a good freaking question. And we're going to answer it after the break.

Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality after your entire world is flipped upside down.

From unbelievable romantic betrayals... The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. To betrayals in your own family... When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. Financial betrayal...

This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars. And life or death deceptions. She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio.

I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. I've collected the stories of hundreds of aspiring little Hitlers of the suburbs, from the Nazi cop who tried to join ISIS, to the National Guardsman plotting to assassinate the Supreme Court, to the Satanist soldier who tried to get his own unit blown up in Turkey. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil. They're just some weird guy.

And you can laugh. Honestly, I think you have to. Seeing these guys for what they are doesn't mean they're not a threat. It's a survival strategy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford, and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. We're looking at a whole new series of episodes this season to understand why and how our lives look the way they do. Why does your memory drift so much? Why is it so hard to keep a secret? When should you not trust your intuition?

Why do brains so easily fall for magic tricks? And why do they love conspiracy theories? I'm hitting these questions and hundreds more because the more we know about what's running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives. Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life by digging into unexpected questions. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the all-new podcast There and Gone. It's a real-life story of two people who left a crowded Philadelphia bar, walked to their truck, and vanished. Nobody hears anything. Nobody sees anything. Did they run away? Was it an accident? Or were they murdered? A truck and two people just don't disappear. The FBI called it murder for hire. It was definitely murder for hire for Danielle.

Not for Richard. He's your son, and in your eyes, he's innocent. But in my eyes, he's just some guy my sister was with. In this series, I dig into my own investigation to find answers for the families and get justice for Richard and Danielle. Listen to There and Gone South Street on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There and Gone.

Welcome back to Queen of the Con. Dennis Rodman's manager is wondering if Peggy's son Elkin is involved in her scams. To me, if you're not part of the fraud, why are you participating in it? For the record, Elkin was never charged with a crime in relation to any of Peggy's scams, even though a lot of her victims feel authorities should have arrested him.

Arrested me? For what? I don't touch the financials. That wasn't my bag. Period. I spoke to the FBI for four hours. We went through financial record after financial record. How come you couldn't indict me? Oh, because guess what? I never made a what? A withdrawal from a bank. All deposits. He told me I'm either the smartest motherfucker he's ever seen or the dumbest.

That remains to be seen, but as I was scouring over the hundreds and hundreds of pages of court records and court transcripts in Peggy's case, I came across a couple things that directly contradict Elkin's assertion that he never withdrew money from any bank accounts, while proving Peggy was actually giving him, along with her other kids, cold, hard cash.

After she was busted for scamming $174,000 from a New Orleans doctor with that whole, I'm going to build a new retirement home out of an old high school con...

At Peggy's sentencing hearing, the federal prosecutor informs the judge that Peggy misrepresented her finances in order to qualify for a free public defender, that she concealed all the money she had, all the money she scammed, by squirreling it away amongst her three sons. And ironically, Peggy's free public defender actually confirms as much.

I think there was approximately $30,000 that was in an account. And subsequently, there's evidence that Ms. Fulford took $20,000 of that and put it in a cashier's check. And then, $10,000 and $5,000 of that was subsequently given to her sons.

Add to that revelation, near the end of that same court proceeding, after Peggy is sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for scamming all those athletes, including Dennis Rodman, that same federal prosecutor asks... Your Honor, if you could please order her to close the two Dennis Rodman accounts at SunTrust Bank. They're still being used. One is a Dennis Rodman Group and Associates account, and the other is the Star Rod Productions account.

Who's using those? She and her son have been using those accounts. So when Elkin says publicly... How come you couldn't indict me? Oh, because guess what? I never made a what? A withdrawal from a bank. All deposits. I'm not sure how true that is. She and her son have been using those accounts. Anyway, in the aftermath of Peggy getting convicted and going to prison...

And Elkin lying low, trying to keep away from people his mother scammed. I ran into her son after the fact. Elkin? Yes. Peggy's former assistant and Ricky Williams' lifelong friend, Chantel Cohen, again. Then we had a...

Did you have a fight? We didn't have a fight. We just had a very deep conversation of how mad I was and how pissed he was. And just we didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things. But like I said to him that day that we ran into each other, if your mom would have stayed legit, you guys could have actually had a great management company because your mom knows how to work the room and she got what she needed out of most of these athletes and things like that.

But people get so greedy and they just want to keep going. And it's just like, come on, you know? As for Elkin, in a 2022 interview, he actually admits the truth. The same truth that Ricky Williams, Dennis Rodman, Travis Best, Rashad McCants and others have been saying for years that his mom's a scammer. I didn't know what was going on with the money till after my mother was incarcerated. Now I'm getting the picture of where everything went.

She was a good con artist. And when he's asked in a 2023 interview, looking at the totality of everything that went down, when does he think it all went wrong for Peggy's company, King Management? How about the day it started? It all went wrong the day it fucking started. It's like putting a Lego piece together that's just not straight all the way up. It's just kind of crooked, but you keep working with it. You try to bend it.

Elkin, though, loves his mother, and he's still in her life. They talk all the time. It's really hard for my mom to grasp the truth. It's just a really, really hard concept for her. But I think she's in a place where if you don't tell the truth, there's a lot of consequence. Whether it be other inmates, whether it be with your correctional officers you're dealing with, whether it be with your treatment programs. And, you know, she's been doing her treatment program.

Yup, her treatment program. Peggy claims she suffers from a mental illness called mania. According to the Cleveland Clinic, mania is a condition in which you display an over-the-top level of activity or energy, mood or behavior. Symptoms include feelings of invincibility and having false beliefs or perceptions.

So while Peggy is nearly four years into her prison sentence in 2022, she actually grants interviews to all kinds of media outlets, insinuating that it was the mania that made her scam all those athletes.

Mania, you are not yourself. I mean, you're in a whole nother world and everything that you do is to feel better. It's to feel good. You know, you go on either a buying spree, a sexual spree, a drug spree. It's just that I didn't have those vices. I had the buying vices, but I didn't have the other two.

But I mean, the bad part about mania is, is that you don't realize because your brain tells you that everything is going great in your life. You know that it couldn't be better. You know, it's a high that you couldn't even buy with drugs. I mean, there's not enough money. Your body could not take the kind of drugs, the kind of high that mania gives you.

And it can be controlled with drugs. And I was put on drugs and I did very well for a while. But what happens with the drugs is that you tend to feel like a robot after a while. You tend to feel that nothing is exciting in your life at all. And so what you do is you stop, you know, and you stop taking the drugs and then it takes a while. But at some point, your life spirals out of control again. But it all has to do with the mania.

If I could do it all over again, I would say I wish I had never had that disease. That's what Peggy said from prison in a 2022 interview, that her mania caused her to scam all those athletes out of millions of dollars. But four years earlier, in late 2018, when Peggy decides to plead guilty, her alleged mental illness isn't an issue at all. When the judge asks her,

Are you sick in any way that would prevent you from understanding what is happening here today? You're currently not receiving any treatment for any mental illness. No, I'm not. So it seems like Peggy's mania comes and goes as she sees fit. As I sift through all the court records now and all the news reports about con artist Peggy Ann Fulford, a picture starts to emerge of a rough childhood.

Her father would come home and demand that his house was clean. I mean, waxed floors. And her mother was not that type. Peggy's longtime friend, Pamela Carey, reportedly witnesses Peggy's difficult situation growing up. So Peggy, to keep the peace in a household, she would do it. She did a lot of housework as a child, more than usual. She would suck her thumb.

She was probably, you know, maybe seven or eight years old. I don't know when she stopped, but I think sucking her thumb was how she nurtured herself. And Peggy has said publicly that it was the fear of her father and his physical abuse that actually taught her how to become a convincing liar.

When you're a child and your mother tells you every day that you've got to lie in order for her not to get beaten or for you not to get beaten, then you do it because it's survival. You don't know anything else. I grew up in a household that was very controlling. My father wanted to control my mother and my entire life. My mother and I were best friends. I mean, she was my rock. She was my life. She was my everything to me.

My mother and I kept a lot of secrets because we had a person that if we didn't keep it, my mother was unbelievably abused. There's a fascinating documentary about Peggy that BET did. It's called American Gangster Trap Queens, Peggy Fulford. You can watch it on the BET Plus app.

Producers of that documentary actually arrange a video call with Peggy in federal prison and her biggest victim, former NFL running back Ricky Williams, who Peggy scammed out of millions of dollars. I'm posting a clip of that video call at Queen of the Con on Instagram so you can be as shocked as I was by what goes down.

Can you see me, Peg? Hey, Ricky. Hey, what's up, Peg? How are you? Good. How are you doing? I'm good. You know, I just, I think about you often and I imagine how you're, like, how you're getting on. Well, you know what, Ricky? First, I want to say I'm so sorry. Never meant to disappoint you. I always wanted to be...

You know, I'm supposed to be angry and bitter.

and hurt and all that, but maybe I'm delusional or it's not there, but I don't feel it. You brought a lot to my life and I wanted to be on the Peggy train. I didn't realize the ticket would be so expensive. But when you invest in creating a bond with someone, you take the good with the bad.

I'm not innocent. You know, there are many clues and things that I could have pointed out and things that I could have said that I didn't. So it made me take more responsibility for my life and my finances. And so it's an expensive lesson, but thank God I learned it at a relatively young age. Yeah. My story's not over. Your story's not over. You know, the fact that we can be sitting here smiling, having this conversation, it's a positive thing. But you know what, Ricky? I promise you, with all my heart,

I will make you home. I will make you proud of me. I promise you that. I will. Take care of yourself, all right? I will. I promise. Okay. All right. Yeah. I knew it. I knew it. Chantel Cohen again. What was your reaction he forgave her? My reaction, because me and my husband were watching it at the same time, I said, yep, that's Ricky. I honestly wouldn't expect anything else out of him. Literally.

I mean, I'm part of me. I envy that. I wish I could be that evolved. Yeah. But I'm still mad. Yeah. I'm still mad. He's still mad. I'm mad until he gets his money back. I'm still mad. My con was only like not even $100,000. We're talking $6.4 million or more. I just, I don't.

I wish I had it in me. Yeah. I wish I could be that good. Yeah. Godlike. Yeah. I'm smaller. And that shows you what type of person he is. Like literally. And he's like, when you get out, I'm open to a conversation with you. I'm like, I'm open to choking you. Like what are we even talking about here? You know, but like I said to him, like I said to my husband, that, that just proves to you.

how evil you have to be to do something to someone that humble and that nice. Like, period, point blank. He's a good guy. He's a great guy. But there might be another reason Ricky Williams is so quick to forgive Peggy, and we'll get to that right after this break.

Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality after your entire world is flipped upside down.

From unbelievable romantic betrayals... The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. To betrayals in your own family... When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. Financial betrayal...

This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars. And life or death deceptions. She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio.

I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. I've collected the stories of hundreds of aspiring little Hitlers of the suburbs, from the Nazi cop who tried to join ISIS, to the National Guardsman plotting to assassinate the Supreme Court, to the Satanist soldier who tried to get his own unit blown up in Turkey. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil,

They're just some weird guy. And you can laugh. Honestly, I think you have to. Seeing these guys for what they are doesn't mean they're not a threat. It's a survival strategy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford, and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. We're looking at a whole new series of episodes this season to understand why and how our lives look the way they do. Why does your memory drift so much? Why is it so hard to keep a secret? When should you not trust your intuition?

Why do brains so easily fall for magic tricks? And why do they love conspiracy theories? I'm hitting these questions and hundreds more because the more we know about what's running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives. Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life by digging into unexpected questions. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the all-new podcast There and Gone. It's a real-life story of two people who left a crowded Philadelphia bar, walked to their truck, and vanished. Nobody hears anything. Nobody sees anything. Did they run away? Was it an accident? Or were they murdered? A truck and two people just don't disappear. The FBI called it murder for hire. It was definitely murder for hire for Danielle.

Not for Richard. He's your son, and in your eyes he's innocent, but in my eyes he's just some guy my sister was with. In this series, I dig into my own investigation to find answers for the families and get justice for Richard and Danielle. Listen to There and Gone South Street on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Queen of the Con.

That video call between Ricky Williams and Peggy... Can you see me, Peg? Hey, Ricky. Hey, what's up, Peg? ...is earth-shattering for so many reasons. I think it's just a remarkable exchange that shows a couple of things. Guardian journalist and author of the book Family, Gangsters, and Champions, Ramon Antonio Vargas. The extent to which...

Her victims, associates, were willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. And the extent to which, you know, when you're talking about investing and creating a bond with someone and taking the good and the bad, you're talking about more than business. But, you know, how far that goes into personal, that can be up for debate. He loved, loved, loved her, you know? Chantel Cohen, again. Someone speculated, was there a sexual relationship? Was there more than a professional relationship between Ricky Williams and Peggy?

I don't think so at all. I think that Ricky would have told me by now. I've asked him a thousand million times. You have asked him? Absolutely, I asked him. Like, are you sleeping with her? Yeah, like, did something happen to her? You know, like, what the hell? You know, and he's like, no. And I really, truly feel like he looked at her like a mother figure. Like, no, no. And he forgave her. Yeah. Yeah.

Though I can't help but recall what Rashad McCants said about Peggy's flirtatious nature. Yeah, I mean, Peggy was somebody that would probably have sex with one of her clients. Was she flirting with you? Yeah, yeah, she's a flirter. She's an older woman that you definitely take down.

Also keep in mind, this is what Peggy has actually said publicly about her first client, Travis Best. And by the way, Travis says Peggy scammed him out of more than $2 million. Travis was attracted to me in very, um, more than just a friendship way. He was very shy when he was in college and he had a friend of his call and ask if I would meet him for dinner.

And I said, you know what? You're sweet. You're very, very, very handsome. You're a cute little boy. And that's exactly what I said. He was still very fascinated and still infatuated with me. I can remember when I started dating a guy who played for the Jets and he was a lot younger than myself. And Travis made a comment and he said, if you were going to date him, you could have dated me. And I was like, wow.

And I don't mean to sound like braggadocious or anything like that, but I used to have so many men coming at me. But still, it is entirely possible Ricky Williams just forgave Peggy. No inappropriate relationship attached. Because he's a changed man now.

Since retiring from the NFL, he's undergone a major, major metamorphosis and completely reinvented himself. He launched his own cannabis line called Heisman, like the trophy, but... Spelled with an H-I-G-H. Ricky's company hopes to spark greatness by offering cannabis products as well as accessories and clothing. And believe it or not, Ricky Williams is now a bona fide astrologer.

Actually doing readings for people through his website, rickywilliams.life. Get in touch with your astrological side. My buddy, Evan Goldstein, and I are reading his splash page. 16 years ago, Ricky discovered astrology as an excellent guide to finding and understanding himself. Time booked in consultation with Ricky is spent taking a long, deep look in the astrological mirror. Ooh, that sounds mysterious and mystical. Wow.

He's like the Snoop Dogg of astrology now. As for Peggy, while she's in federal prison giving interview after interview to various media outlets, she ends up strenuously walking back that apology she made to the judge during her sentencing hearing. I wanted to say that I accept full responsibility and any consequences associated with my actions. I am so sorry.

After spending three years in prison in the summer of 2021, Peggy has changed her tune, saying publicly that the criminal case against her was made up, orchestrated by a dirty FBI agent named James Hawkins, who was in fact one of the FBI agents who arrested her.

In March of 2016, there was a knock at my door and it was two agents. Well, they said that they were there to investigate Ricky Williams. I said, "How did a civil lawsuit turn into anything the FBI would be interested in?" And he said, "Well, you've had some other people come forth and say that you stole money from them." And I said, "That's crazy."

Agent Hawkins said to me, I'm going to prosecute you regardless of whether you're innocent or whether you're guilty. He said, it doesn't matter to me. You're going down. Oh, it gets better. Peggy also says in another interview that she didn't steal anyone's money and she's really the one who got conned.

I was going to invest in a good spot for them. So I invested in something I thought was really going to happen, and it never happened. I got scammed. As for the millions and millions of dollars she was convicted of stealing from all those athletes, in particular when she's asked about Travis Best and the million dollars he wired her to pay his taxes that she ended up stealing...

I can honestly say that that's not true. You know, where you got that from, if you got that from the court documents, they were just fabricated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And so therefore, no, there was never a million dollars in unpaid taxes that was wired to my account or to me to pay taxes. If you look at all the parties involved, they all had tax problems.

Prior to me, prior to my existence, they had tax problems. You know, Dennis had a big IRS lien against him prior to meeting me. When you look at it and understand the workings behind why it was all done and why it was all orchestrated the way that it was, I think that you can read between the lines that

So if you say that it's a tax issue and all of them had the same tax issues, which they all did, and because they say that I didn't pay their taxes, that's not true. Now, I can say that's not true. I don't think that a lot of things were documented. I don't think a lot of investments Ricky made as well as Dennis made that did not go through.

And as well as other issues that I will not discuss because I feel that it was very, it's very personal. But they know where the money went. That's what I will tell you is they definitely know where the money went. And on top of that, as far as not receiving or having access to their accounts, that's not true. If that was the case, then, you know, the government would have had charges against me for, you know, fraudulent bank accounts.

Never once was a bank account ever in question. So if you look at it, every last one of their bank accounts had their names on it and they did have access to it and they used it. I mean, that's the thing. They actually signed on the account and they actually use the accounts. So that's not true.

According to Peggy, the entire criminal case where she pled guilty was orchestrated by the FBI and by all the victims who say she scammed them. I guess her mania wasn't a factor after all? And it gets even crazier. So Peggy goes to prison in late 2018.

Then in 2019 and 2020 and 2021, she files several motions for early release that she writes up herself and signs. And guess what? Peggy has changed her tune again, writing, I do not justify, diminish or detract from the seriousness of my offenses. And I unequivocally accept responsibility for my criminal conduct.

So I guess it's not an FBI setup now? Peggy makes the case that she's completely rehabilitated, and she attaches to one of the filings a slew of certificates that show, while in prison, she successfully completed courses in drug and alcohol treatment, computer applications, electronic law library, FDIC money smart, job readiness, TIPA,

team building, seven habits of effective people, self-esteem, 21st century women, healthy mind and body, art classes. And she writes that she's currently enrolled in a medical billing specialist program.

Peggy also submits that I have a full time job in laundry and I assist the education department in teaching classes to fellow inmates, as well as assisting inmates in a host of activities. I am no longer the woman who made irrational and irresponsible choices to engage in criminal conduct.

And there is no concern that I would be a danger to the public if released. This is because I have learned to respect the rule of law in conjunction with my rehabilitation. And Peggy tells the court that her father, the same father who she said used to beat her and her mother, is now really, really sick. I am my father's only surviving child. He has no living siblings and no friends to take care of him.

I humbly and respectfully ask the courts to grant me elderly home detention or any other relief the court sees fit.

In another filing, Peggy outrightly blames her public defender and bad legal advice that led to her 10-year prison sentence that she says should be drastically reduced. My legal counsel led me to believe that the federal case was not very strong, which also induced me to plead guilty to one count.

Also, I had a plea agreement which indicated the maximum sentence of two to three years. That was completely disregarded at the sentencing hearing and substantial additional allegations were assumed correct and were used to increase my sentence via the federal sentencing guidelines.

If you recall, during Peggy's sentencing hearing, it came to light that she was actually scamming new victims in New Orleans while she was out on bond. And she was later convicted in one New Orleans fraud case for scamming that doctor out of $174,000, and she got a three-year sentence for that. And the judge in her federal case held that additional New Orleans case against her and gave her the maximum 10 years.

Peggy meticulously includes a bunch of case law and legal precedents with one of her filings. She definitely seems very lawyer-like now, on paper at least. Perhaps she's putting that electronic law library certificate she earned in prison to good use. Miraculously though, something Peggy files actually sticks.

So Peggy Fulford was released in April of 2023. Guardian journalist and author of the book Family Gangsters and Champions, Ramon Antonio Vargas. He actually broke the story in The Guardian that Peggy had been released way early and no one will tell him exactly why.

The record shows that she spent a significant amount of time seeking a compassionate release, saying that she got bad legal counsel, citing the COVID-19 pandemic, citing her age, saying that, like, I got too harsh of a sentence given that I spared the federal government from having to take me to trial by pleading guilty.

Some of them were very kind of stock arguments for early release. She served less than half her 10 years, which my understanding of how the federal system works, that's unheard of. With federal cases, federal prison time, you have to serve at least 80, 85 percent is my understanding. That's been told to me by several federal prosecutors I've interviewed in the past. How did she get out so soon? Less than half the time.

So when I reported that, it wasn't immediately clear to me and there wasn't much information. I couldn't get a comment from her. I couldn't get a comment from the Bureau of Prisons beyond them saying that she had been released from a federal prison in Alabama where she was serving as a security and she was moved into basically a halfway house program in Orlando. There's opportunities for recreational passes. There's opportunities to kind of begin living your life as if you were free, but you're still under some level of supervision.

It's just, I mean, how someone can steal millions and millions of dollars and get out in less than five years. Yeah, I mean, that's something that's begging for additional reporting on. In the meantime, I've heard whispers that Peggy is actually planning a huge Anna Delvey-like comeback. What's you wearing? You look poor.

Peggy wants the opportunity to tell her story in her own words, and she wants it to be big. I did some things that I am very, very, very sorry for. I made some mistakes, but I didn't kill anybody. I didn't hold up anybody. And I believe that society will forgive me.

Next time on Queen of the Con, I sit down with a woman who got to know Peggy better than most. She had begged me. She was just like, you know, please, like you see how Ricky responded to me when we did the interview. Could you please just ask him to like write a letter about the type of person that I am? And I was just like, I'm a television producer. I don't get people out of prison.

There's still a lot of crazy stuff that you don't know about con artist Peggy Fulford and her son Elkin. Shortly after she went to prison, he got shot in the face. Oh, like retribution, it sounds like. Elkin said that she was like scamming some drug dealers in the streets or whatever. And I think that that is what he got caught up in.

If you're enjoying Queen of the Con, leave us a five-star review. Reviews help other listeners find us. And by all means, click that share button and send Queen of the Con to anyone you think might be into it. Queen of the Con, The Athlete Whisperer, is a production of AYR Media and iHeart Media, hosted by me, Jonathan Walton. Executive Producers, Jonathan Walton for Jonathan Walton Productions, and Elisa Rosen for AYR Media. Consulting Producer, Evan Goldstein.

Consulting Producer, Trace Sheehan. Written by Jonathan Walton. Sound Design by Zach Hirsch. Edited and mixed by Zach Hirsch. Audio Engineer, Justin Longerbeam. Audio Engineer, Chris Desmond. Studio Engineer, Graham Gibson. Mastered by Justin Longerbeam. Legal Counsel for AYR Media, Gianni Douglas. Executive Producer for iHeartMedia, Maya Howard.

Voice acting by...

Statements from press reports, public interviews, and from court records were dramatized verbatim on this season of Queen of the Con. BET's American Gangster Trap Queens, TNT's Rich and Shameless, CNBC's American Greed, The Guardian, Sports Illustrated, The Times' Picayune, The Opportunist Podcast, Victim Interviews, and countless court records were the sources used on this season of Queen of the Con.

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