The OC Savior: Ep. 7, I've Never Told Anybody No
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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. Hello, and welcome to Haunting, Purgatory's premiere podcast. I'm your host, Teresa. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week, straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. Some will be unsettling, some unnerving, some even downright terrifying. But all of them will be totally true.

Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all.

Dr. Joy here. I invite you to join me every Wednesday on the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, a weekly chat about mental health and personal development, where my expert guests and I discuss the unique challenges and triumphs faced by Black women through the lens of self-care, pop culture, and building the best version of you. So if you're looking for more ways to incorporate wellness into your life, listen to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life in marriage. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words that I've said like in my head for like 16 years.

Listen to Miss Spelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Lizzie agreed to come down to the station and talk to me. I'm surprised she said yes. Why did she say yes? Because she's an egomaniac.

Lizzie Mulder voluntarily goes down to the Laguna Beach police station in May of 2016 and for two hours straight tells Detective Jordan Merakian all sorts of incredible things. Oh, but she most certainly is.

I mean, we're moving. You know, that's how this whole thing started. I thought if I could put more money through my bank account, I could show that we could qualify for a loan. Right. That was the only way we would get it. You were trying to inflate the number so you can't get a loan. Yeah, I did three years ago. For what? A loan for... To buy that house. That was the least option to buy it. It's the least option to buy that. Explain that.

So Lizzie Mulder doesn't own that Laguna Beach home overlooking the Pacific Ocean after all, even though she brags to everyone that she does. And she admits she's not a CPA either. But most importantly, Lizzie says, she never stole anyone's money.

But Detective Merakian has a mountain of documents, emails, and bank records that proves she did. Though it might not even matter, because the powers that be are now demanding he close the case and let Lizzie Mulder walk away scot-free.

The district attorney told me, I don't think this is a winnable case. It doesn't really have any jury appeal. And quite honestly, it's too convoluted. And I don't think you have enough to win in court. I'm Jonathan Walton, and this is Queen of the Con, the OC Savior, Episode 7. I never told anybody now. Lizzie is one of the best sociopathic crooks I've ever dealt with.

She presents herself as part of the elite class in Laguna Beach. She has a husband who's a firefighter, which, you know, when you're married to a cop or a firefighter, it gives you a certain status, whether you're male or female. When you're married to somebody in public service, there are some bragging rights to that. She has two kids, nice house in Laguna.

I mean, she's just a very well put together person when you meet her. Right. But that's all a facade. A hundred percent. None of that was true. The whole thing is a facade. In fact, I would venture to say that her husband, Jesse Mulder, was, and the kids were more of a prop.

When you're committing a crime, especially fraud, and you're facilitating that crime with an expensive house, a nice car, nice clothes, two kids and a husband, every time she would defraud people, they were part of that package. Yeah, because it made her look like a stable, upstanding person, a pillar of society. Right. A working mom. Instant credibility. Yeah. She would come in with the kids, and she'd have this story, you know, and...

of being this self-made accountant and, you know, almost self-taught, but went to Pepperdine University, which later turned out to be completely false. But she had the degree hanging in her office. Right. You can get those on the internet. It's not hard. But if you think about it, if you're a small business owner and you show up

you know, you're going to hire an accountant. And she says, well, I work from home because I got these two kids. You know, I'm a busy mom. Yeah. And you show up and they have a $2.3 million home in Laguna where you can see the water. You're going to think, this is the kind of person I want to do business with. They're successful. Right. Yeah.

In May of 2016, Detective Jordan Merakian is sitting down with his suspect, Lizzie Mulder, trying to get to the bottom of things. He's got about a dozen victims who've come forward saying she scammed them, including Jay Avery from Jack Wines, print shop owner Mike Cochran, Jen Rodriguez's boss, who runs a luxury experience booking website, and high-end salon owner Geneva Mendoza.

You know, usually with fraud, it's one or two scams, right? It's check fraud and identity theft. Or it's...

identity theft and credit card fraud. Lizzie was doing check fraud, identity theft, credit card fraud. She was laundering money. I mean, there were just so many different, it was almost like a Ponzi scheme. Like if one person was like, I'm going to the cops. I know you're robbing me. I know you're stealing from me. Um,

She would say, well, hold on one second. Let me call this person. I'll get back to you. And then all of a sudden, a deposit would show up in their account. Uh-oh, to keep them at bay. And she would say, look, I got the money back. It was an oversight. It was their fault. But there's one victim Lizzie scams in a much more personal way. An Orange County cowboy by the name of Joe Love. ♪

Who is Joe Love? What a name, right? Yeah, he sounds like a porn star. Joe Love. Joe Love. One of the motivations behind Lizzie's fraud is her love of horses.

And Joe Love is an ex-boyfriend. He's a retired military vet. Was she seeing Joe Love while she was married to Jesse Mulder, or this is an ex-boyfriend from prior? He was an ex-boyfriend prior to Jesse Mulder, who I think Lizzie used that relationship to con Joe Love. Oh, so Joe Love is a victim. He's a victim.

How much did she get from Joe Love? Well, Joe Love's father is the real victim, Fred, because he owned the business. So they owned a horse and feed company out in San Juan Capistrano. And what she did with Joe Love, and this is very clever, is she created fake USDA grants.

and told Joe that she was going to apply for a grant on behalf of the U.S. Department of Agriculture for people that own businesses that have to do with cattle and feed. And then she sends the email, congratulations, you've been selected, right? So she's sending Joe Love an email impersonating the U.S. DA. Yeah. So Joe Love gets an email, and lo and behold, $40,000 is deposited into his account. Wow.

And Lizzie fools Joe Love into thinking that $40,000 is the first installment of a grant coming from the USDA. The second installment of the grant, $45,000 more, is on its way. So Joe Love is thinking he's getting a total of $85,000 in grant money free and clear from the USDA. But first, he just needs to do one thing.

So what Lizzie had done is she convinced Joe Love to take credit out. $85,000 worth of credit. To buy a bunch of supplies for his business. She said, you need to spruce this business up. Buy these supplies, sell them, and then we'll pay off the credit card with the money you get from the USDA. So she deposited the money into the account. So he thought he was going to get the rest of it, but he never got it.

And now he's left with this huge bill of product that he bought. Joe Love never receives that next $45,000 from the USDA because it's all a scam. And it essentially put him out of business. So the scam was she made him borrow money that she just took and he still had to repay that money. Yes. But where did she get the 80 grand or whatever to deposit into his account? From her other victims. Ah, so that's the Ponzi element. Yeah. And then she took that money back as well. Right.

But when Detective Merakian asks Lizzie about Joe Love, she tells him a very different story. According to Lizzie, Joe Love is not the victim here. She is. As someone who's been investigating scams for years, I can tell you that is a classic con artist move to paint themselves as the victim and paint their victims as the perpetrators. And Lizzie lays it on thick.

He just wanted me around so he could show off somebody.

He's got so many issues, but he was so good to the girls. She's talking about her two young daughters. She's saying that, yes, Joe Love beats her, but on the bright side, he's really good with the kids. We really were best friends, but it wasn't like a healthy best friend. It was a, Jesse's gone. He's checked out mentally. He's checked out around us.

How many times did he beat you?

I still, he kicked me on the drive home last week. He was driving and he kicked me so hard. I still have the bruise on my calf. So you didn't report it to the police? No. Did you tell Jesse?

The first time I told Jesse, Clay goes, "What the hell is wrong with you? You have bruises all over you." And I said, "Joe kicks me in the car." Okay. And I said, "I never want to tell you because you would lose your job if you'd go kill him." And I don't... I'm telling you this stuff just because I feel like it's verbal diarrhea. He's an ex-boyfriend of yours? Yeah. He's a, um... We tried, like, something a long time ago. And, um...

He just was fulfilling what Jesse was on, you know? He was like fulfilling the dad for the girl. So you were out on an affair with Joe? I was not. I never slept with Joe. Okay. No. That's what I'm trying to figure out. No. Because Joe denied that too. Yeah. We've never slept together. He did say that you sent him a couple provocative pictures via text. I probably did. Okay. I was just seeking attention.

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.

For decades, the Mafia had New York City in a stranglehold, with law enforcement seemingly powerless to intervene. It uses terror to extort people. However, one murder of a crime boss sparked a chain of events that would ultimately dismantle the mob. It sent the message that we can prosecute these people.

Discover how law enforcement and prosecutors took on the mafia and together brought them down. These bosses on the commission had no idea what was coming their way from the federal government. From Wolf Entertainment and iHeartRadio, this is Law & Order Criminal Justice System. The first two episodes drop on August 22nd.

Plus, did you know that you can listen to the episodes as they come out completely ad-free? Don't miss out. Subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel today. Available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. ...ghoules and girls, and welcome to Haunting, Purgatory's premiere podcast for all things afterlife. I'm your host, Teresa. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. ...

Some will be unsettling. When she was with her imaginary friend, she would turn and look at you and you felt like something else was looking at you too. Some unnerving. The more I looked at it, I realized that the some looked more like a claw, like a demon. Some even downright terrifying. The things that I saw, heard, felt in that house were purely demonic. But all of them will be totally true.

Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you live and get your podcasts. Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is in

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast, Misspelling.

When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words that I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Miss Spelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Okay, so Lizzie says she's not sleeping with Joe Love, but that he's filling in as a father figure for her daughters when Jesse, her husband, is not around. Just like what most of Lizzie says during this incredible police interview, her Joe Love explanations are kind of hard to believe. Now, at the same time all of this is going on, I've got Lizzie and Joe Love going up to Napa together, staying in the same hotel room.

Okay, so they're boinking. Maybe. They're bumpin' uglies. Look, if I stayed in a hotel room with an ex-girlfriend of mine, we're probably sleeping together. Yeah, hence the hotel room. Yeah.

Talking to Lizzie Mulder, Detective Merakian already knows the intricacies of how she scams Joe Love and his father's company, Love Livestock. By using fake documents and fake emails and $40,000 in cash she steals from other victims to trick Joe into believing he's got an $85,000 USDA grant coming his way.

And so, at Lizzie's urging, he borrows $85,000, thinking the grant money will cover it. Of course, Lizzie refutes those facts and doubles down on her "I was just trying to help him" routine.

- Yeah, 'cause he had mentioned a line of credit that he opened with Live Livestock through you. - There's no line of credit. He probably just means I was paying everything that needed to be paid. - Okay. - You know, $400 here, $600 here, $1,500. It just, it all adds up, you know? - So you created that USDA document that I saw that said you were awarded an $85,000 grant? - That was to show his debt. - To show his debt for the purposes of? - Buying cattle.

So he was trying to get his dad to what? To go sign a loan or? So this $40,000, why did you put that into Love's account?

because he needed to buy stuff. For the business? Yeah, all for business reasons. So you told him that came from someone else, right? Like USDA? Or did you tell him, "Hey, I'm putting 40 grand." It's mine. It's my money. Was that a loan or was that... It was just like, let's buy cattle and sell them and make money. I never had like a contract. So it was like an investment? In my mind. I don't want anything bad to happen to him.

Because he's a victim in this too, because I did say, "If you just give me time, we can do this." Well, how is he a victim if you put money into his account? He's not a victim that way. He's a victim because I said, "Joe, you can't just run this store that's making no money. You always wanted to be a rancher. Look at all the grants that are out there. There are so many opportunities for veterans." I mean, I didn't ask him to kick the shit out of me. I didn't.

So, if you're confused, it's because literally nothing you just heard makes a lick of sense.

And this next Lizzie explanation takes the cake. What was it for?

Fred is Joe Love's father. It was a whole thing of like...

Like when I say it, how stupid. I should just say no. I wasn't going to be part of that. But I just did whatever they wanted me to do. Why? I've never told anybody no. I talked to Joe Love a couple times over the phone. He doesn't want to be interviewed for this podcast. But he tells me the scams Lizzie Mulder pulled damaged him and his family profoundly and ruined the relationship he had with his father, Fred. They stopped talking over it.

Joe wasn't as hurt as Fred, his father, because, you know, Fred was really the business owner. Yeah. And sadly, Joe Love's father, Fred, died before they could ever reconcile.

So she scammed Joe Love. Did Joe Love cooperate with you?

Yes, he cooperated up to a point. But he didn't want to file charges. It's not that he didn't want to file charges. It's that he didn't really want to be an active participant. I found myself chasing him down and I cut bait with him. Because he can't. You can't. Unless he's willing, there's nothing you can do. Right. That's the law. I think Joe was more embarrassed than anything else. You know, he got taken advantage of.

I will always paint the picture of Joe Love as somebody who did what every guy that's in love has done. Yeah. Right? They fell into that trap. You know, it's a powerful trap. Love is the most powerful force in the world. 100%. Yeah. And a good con artist gets you to love them. Because once you love someone, you overlook a fuckton without even realizing it. Correct. Yeah. I was a victim of that. I think we've all been victims of that.

So Lizzie talks to Detective Merakian at the Laguna Beach police station that night for a little over two hours. But it's later discovered that Lizzie actually checks herself into a psychiatric hospital weeks earlier, claiming mental illness.

Coincidentally, or not, that was immediately after Jesse Mulder first goes to police and starts calling up victims to let them know Lizzie's stealing from them. There's two strategies to that. Strategy number one is it paints a picture that you're the victim. Right. I'm mentally ill, that's why I did this. I have a problem. But strategy two is when you're in a psychiatric hospital, police can't come in and get you. I know. You're safe.

And for that matter, I can't even confirm that she's there. They won't give you any info? No. Because that's not allowed? No. The only way I found out that she was there was Jesse told me. And what did Jesse say exactly? That she threw a fit and left in a rage and checked herself into a mental hospital. Here's what's amazing. My con did the same thing.

Victims start circling. They start showing up to court for another case she's involved with to stare her down, and she doesn't want to face them. So what does she do? She takes an Uber to Kedron Hospital, which is like a mental health hospital here in Los Angeles. She tells them, I just took a bunch of sleeping pills. I'm going to kill myself. They admit her. She gets out of going to court for weeks, and there's nothing anyone can do. She's safe. And Lizzie Mulder did the same thing. Yeah. It just didn't work out for her the way she planned.

Because I think the mental hospital recognized very quickly that she doesn't need to be there. Because she literally checked herself in and was out the back door within a day or two. And while Lizzie's mental hospital trick doesn't do the trick, fortune really does favor the bold. Because she's about to walk away from her crimes altogether with zero criminal charges.

Detective Merakian's being told by his higher-ups to close the case, and the Orange County District Attorney's Office isn't planning to prosecute Lizzie Mulder for scamming all those people. The district attorney told me, I don't think you have enough to win in court.

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. For decades, the mafia had New York City in a stranglehold, with law enforcement seemingly powerless to intervene. It uses terror to extort people. However, one murder of a crime boss sparked a chain of events that would ultimately dismantle the mob.

It sent the message that we can prosecute these people. Discover how law enforcement and prosecutors took on the mafia and together brought them down. These bosses on the commission had no idea what was coming their way from the federal government. From Wolf Entertainment and iHeartRadio, this is Law & Order Criminal Justice System. The first two episodes drop on August 22nd.

Plus, did you know that you can listen to the episodes as they come out completely ad-free? Don't miss out. Subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel today. Available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. ...ghoules and girls, and welcome to Haunting, Purgatory's premiere podcast for all things afterlife. I'm your host, Teresa. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. ...

Some will be unsettling. When she was with her imaginary friend, she would turn and look at you and you felt like something else was looking at you too. Some unnerving. The more I looked at it, I realized that the thumb looked more like a claw, like a demon. Some even downright terrifying. The things that I saw, heard, felt in that house were purely demonic. But all of them will be totally true.

Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you live and get your podcasts. Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa, I said the words.

that I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Miss Spelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If Detective Merakian just does what he's told to do, like most detectives would in this case, Lizzie Mulder walks free.

But Detective Merakian refuses to close the case. He's put hundreds of hours of work into it at this point. He gives victims his personal cell phone number, and they call him at home at all hours, annoying his wife. When one victim wants to drop out, he talks them back in. He's come way too far to just walk away and let Lizzie Mulder get away. So I started thinking about it, and I was like, well, you know,

I'll bet she's falsified her income taxes. So I called a criminal investigator from the IRS, and the minute he got attached to it, it becomes a federal case. Yeah. Dude, you are fucking amazing. I appreciate that. In 99.999% of the times, if the DA tells the cop there's no case, it's done. It's done. But you thought federally, I could leapfrog the DA who says there's no case, I can't prove it, we can't win it.

And I'll share with you, the DA was pissed. I'm sure. Because we kind of made them look bad. I did, inadvertently. But it was like, well, if you're not going to do your job, then I'm going to find somebody that will. My name is James Kim. I'm a special agent with Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigations.

When Detective Merakian reaches out to IRS Special Agent James Kim in July of 2016, the measured and deliberate investigator has got dozens of competing criminal cases he's already looking into. But what jumped out at you? What interested you to make you think, ah, this is a case for the IRS? I think the dollar amount. Yeah. The dollar amount was pretty big. And then the

the sophistication that Lizzie Mulder used to defraud her victims. At this point, Lizzie Mulder has scammed more than $1.5 million from her circle of friends and clients using a series of elaborate confidence tricks involving forged documents, fake identities, a secret bank account, and voice-changing software.

Not to mention, she's ripping off the IRS, too. Since I work for the Internal Revenue Service, I have to see if the money that she stole, she actually reported that on her tax returns. So criminals are supposed to report the money they steal. Exactly. So a lot of these grand jury investigations involves the IRS because they're not reporting their proceeds from their illegal conduct.

Remember, it was an IRS investigation that actually put reputed mobster Al Capone behind bars in 1931 for not paying taxes on his criminal income. Even though he famously robs and murders scores of people, it was tax evasion that ultimately sent him away. Now, if a criminal reports their stolen money as income,

Does that trigger another investigation, if not from the IRS, from someone else? It doesn't. No, it doesn't. So a criminal could report their stolen income and be okay. Yeah. Well, that's comforting. For all the criminals listening, just report what you stole so you don't incur the ire of the IRS.

Not surprisingly, though, Lizzie Mulder doesn't report the money she steals as income, which, if you recall, directly contradicts what she tells Detective Merakian during that police interview. But if she really is paying herself, why isn't she reporting it as income? You know, it's kind of ironic because her being, you know, the tax accountant, that's something that she should know, she should have done.

So after IRS Special Agent James Kim sinks his teeth into the Lizzie Mulder case, and Lizzie Mulder was also falsifying tax returns. Right. And that's your neck of the woods too, right? Right. He quickly surmises there's a lot of meat on this bone, enough to make a federal case out of. So he contacts the Department of Justice. Generally, the FBI can investigate anything.

basically whatever it wants. Today, Scott Tenley is a partner in the Orange County law firm, Michaelman & Robinson, working in their white-collar defense and government investigations practice group. But in 2017, he's an enterprising U.S. attorney at the Department of Justice. He kind of looks like one of those pre-possessing lawyers you see on network TV crime show procedurals. You know, one question might be, well, why is this a federal crime? And so the federal crime is wire fraud.

Once you swipe a credit card, it pings in another state. Bam, that's the FBI. That's across state lines. Right, exactly. Almost anything you do, you swipe an ATM card, you send a wire, it's going to go through the Federal Reserve, it's going to go through Bank of America. All over the place, multiple states. And these days, it's almost impossible not to be committing a federal crime when you're doing fraud.

Once the Department of Justice gets involved, they use the vast resources of the FBI to dig deep into all the alleged crimes of Lizzie Mulder, issuing dozens of new subpoenas for bank records, email accounts, and cell phone records. So I think the winery was interesting because it was the, I'm going to help you sell your business. And

one of the unique aspects of the case is one of the ways that she made it seem like she was going to sell the business is she created this false persona. Yeah, the Chinese investor. Right, and used his email address to make it appear as if there's this acquisition activity going on.

But then the other big one, which obviously caught the attention of the IRS was this income tax payments DBA, where she sets up a company called Income Tax Payments and then takes a check made out to her company that says income tax payments to the victim and says, sign this because I'm going to pay your income taxes. And the signatory looks at the check, income tax payments, perfect, signs it, and it's just going right into her account, not to the IRS. I mean, those were kind of the two ones that you saw the most.

The FBI agent who investigates Lizzie Mulder for the Department of Justice really builds on and strengthens the criminal case that Detective Jordan Merakian put together during his investigation. And U.S. Attorney Scott Tenley goes on a lot of field trips to suss everything out. One of the other things I remember vividly about this early part of this case is I went to Laguna Beach Police Department with Jordan and Special Agent Kim from the IRS.

And he's like, "Well, I seized all these boxes from Lizzie. Maybe we'll find—" I can't remember what we were looking for, bank records. He's like, "Let's go look." And so we go to the back of the Laguna Beach Police Department and we walk into their evidence trailer.

I think I immediately got high from all the marijuana that they had stored in there. And so we're looking through boxes and I'm like, guys, I think we got to do this outside. At one point. That was one of my earliest case memories working with Jordan. Yeah. It's really funny. So they confiscated a lot of marijuana. Tons of marijuana in there. And I don't even know if they sealed it in bags. Maybe it was just open. But it was like that seemed to be most of their evidence locker at the time. It's really funny.

Hijinks aside, now that the FBI is involved, it's a big freaking deal. And it isn't long before Lizzie Mulder finds out she's the target of a federal investigation. And what she does next shocks everyone. You know, it's a bold move. Right? But I didn't bat an eyelash. Next time on Queen of the Con, the OC savior. Lizzie's victims confront her head on. Lizzie, you're a horrible person.

And for the first time ever, Lizzie Mulder speaks publicly about all her scams.

Queen of the Con, the OC's savior, 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. Written by Jonathan Walton. Consulting Producer, Evan Goldstein. Senior Associate Producer, Eric Newman. Sound Design by Baked ZD Media.

Mixed and mastered by Cameron Tagge. Sound editing, audio and studio engineering by Matt Jacobson. Legal counsel for AYR Media, Gianni Douglas. Executive producer for iHeart Media, Maya Howard.

That's F.

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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. Hello, and welcome to Haunting, Purgatory's premiere podcast. I'm your host, Teresa. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week, straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. Some will be unsettling, some unnerving, some even downright terrifying. But all of them will be totally true.

Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all.

Dr. Joy here. I invite you to join me every Wednesday on the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, a weekly chat about mental health and personal development, where my expert guests and I discuss the unique challenges and triumphs faced by Black women through the lens of self-care, pop culture, and building the best version of you. So if you're looking for more ways to incorporate wellness into your life, listen to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.