Shownotes Transcript
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 am Lacey Lamar. And I'm also Lacey Lamar. Just kidding. I'm Amber Reffin. 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, and we'll be right back.
answer your listener questions and more the more is punch each other listen to the amber and lacy lacy and amber show on will ferrell's big money players network on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts just listen okay or lacy gets it do it
Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Previously on Queen of the Con. Although you claim to have a graduate degree from Harvard, it's more like your resume could be a study in fictional writing at Harvard. Dennis Rodman's attorney fires Peggy and puts her on blast for scamming Dennis out of more than $1.2 million. It was the first public announcement that Peggy was stealing.
But how did a woman with a slew of suspicious aliases and questionable qualifications... She just didn't understand, like, basic finance. ...puncture the venerated sphere of an NBA superstar like Dennis Rodman? It's an embarrassing situation, and no one wants to come out and say... Nobody. ...I wasn't watching my money, and this is what happened. ♪
Under a shroud of secrecy, Peggy tricks athlete after athlete out of millions of dollars while literally banking on their shame and their silence. Never occurred to you she's doing this to 20 other people? Hell no. Wow. Hell no. Hell no. And that's why I was so like, once I heard that she was doing it to other people and I'm like, Dennis Rodman, we hung out with his homeboy. And she used to brag about these people. And it's like, oh, you was robbing them too? Yeah.
I'm Jonathan Walton, and this is Queen of the Con, The Athlete Whisperer. Episode 3, She Was a Cougar. You're best against!
It's May 4th in the year 2000, and Indiana Pacers guard Travis Best is on fire. Sinking ball after ball in a really close game against the Milwaukee Bucks. The score is tied now, and with just 16 seconds on the clock, Travis out of nowhere makes the winning basket, leading his team to victory.
Travis Best earns nearly $20 million playing in the NBA for the Indiana Pacers, the Miami Heat, the Dallas Mavericks, and the Brooklyn Nets, garnering the respect of his teammates and the admiration of everyone in his life, especially his agent.
Everybody likes Travis, not only as a person, but his ability to play is cerebral. And the point guard, it's like being a quarterback in football. They make all the decisions. They decide where the ball is going to go and how the offense is set up. And that was Travis. You know, Travis was a guy who had a very level head. So Travis Best is making millions of dollars in the NBA in the late 90s and early 2000s. And guess who's managing all that money?
Yup, Peggy Fulford. But she's going by Peggy King at this point because she's married to a wealthy doctor named Forrest King, her third husband out of five husbands total. She had husband after husband since I knew her. Peggy's former assistant again, Chantel Cohen. Obviously something's working right, you know, and all these husbands were making over six figures. So she was doing something right.
It's like that song, "She's a man eater." She is a man eater. Yes. Exactly.
Peggy is living with husband number three, Dr. Forrest King, in a mansion just outside Atlanta in the 1990s, in a wealthy neighborhood where the likes of Whitney Houston and Usher have homes. And it turns out that Dr. Forrest King has kind of a Midas touch, because he not only makes a lot of money as a doctor, but he starts a very successful medical management business and makes a fortune there, too.
Peggy's handling the payroll and helping him with the books. Then Dr. King skillfully invests a lot of the money he's making on Wall Street and makes a killing there too. And Peggy is by his side the whole time, witnessing how it's all done, learning the investing lingo, watching all the paperwork go back and forth.
One day, Dr. King decides in addition to medical management, he wants to get into sports management. So he starts a sports management company called King Management.
Then he and Peggy throw a lavish party, inviting the who's who of Atlanta, and Travis Best attends. He's playing for Georgia Tech at this point, but his sights are firmly set on the NBA, and with a little schmoozing and seductive savoir faire from Peggy, Dr. Forest King signs Travis Best as King Management's first client.
And as the years go by, Peggy takes complete control of King Management. Even after Dr. Forest King divorces Peggy in early 2000, he gives the sports management company to her outright.
By this point, Travis Best is in the NBA, making millions of dollars playing for the Pacers. And Peggy is managing his finances while attracting attention from other players. You see, Peggy's cleverly curated a reputation for being an investing whiz. And other athletes want to be in business with her.
So it's the early 2000s now, and Peggy starts acquiring new clients. She won't meet Dennis Rodman until 2009. But in the meantime, there's chum in the water in the form of perceived opportunity, and other athletes are drawn to her like sharks. She seems really, really legit.
Her credentials were her ex-husband's business. Again, Peggy's ex-assistant, Chantel Cohen. It was easy for her to ride off of that coattail because he already had a successful business going on. And so for me, looking at her, I went with her a few places to like
One athlete had her dress a house in Miami. So we had to go in there, make sure he had everything he needed party-wise, food-wise, liquor-wise, and things like that. So I witnessed things like that. I met Travis Best. We're really good friends. So she was his financial advisor and, you know, everything she did for him. So it was like she had the things to show you in her face because obviously she's been working so long to get to that. So she could show you whatever she needed. Yeah.
You know, I interviewed one of her husband's Stanley Williams in 2002. Guardian journalist and author of the book Family, Gangsters and Champions, Ramon Antonio Vargas, recounting the time he talked to Peggy's fourth husband, Stanley Williams, a wealthy and successful anesthesiologist who marries Peggy in 2002.
She's living in New Orleans at this point. For those of you keeping track at home, that's after husband number three, the Atlanta area doctor with the Midas touch. Stanley Williams, he separated from her in 2008. What's important about that 2002 date is the year that the NBA franchise that used to be the Hornets arrived in New Orleans, right? And so one of the things that Stanley Williams remembers is just how she was
always socializing with New Orleans Hornets personalities, right? Baron Davies, Chris Paul, Stacey Augman, former coach Byron Scott, who was a Showtime Laker when he was a player. And he actually describes meeting her at a fundraiser where her companion was Ricky Williams, former New Orleans Saints star.
It worked both ways, right? Like the company that she kept was like, wow, like she must be legit. Like look at all the access that she has to all these people who, you know, who dominate like the local news coverage in terms of TV and who are on national TV every now and then and who are in the newspaper. That to him also was very much like, you know, man, like I have a catch here. He felt that maybe a lot of these men wanted to be to be more than just associates with her.
And that obviously motivated him to be the best that he could be for her as far as to keep her interest. But what no one knows is that Peggy is stealing from her clients. According to court records, she scams more than $2 million from Travis Best over the course of a decade. But when he finds that out in 2010, he doesn't go to police. He doesn't go to the press. He doesn't publicly say a peep to anyone.
According to his former agent, Travis hasn't done any interviews with anybody because he doesn't want to talk about it. He's embarrassed by the whole situation and he's upset and he feels like he's had his soul ripped out. And Travis Best isn't the only NBA player to go gentle into that good night, quietly licking their wounds and limping away after Peggy scams them. Five years earlier, she cons another NBA player who doesn't go public either.
It is what it is. It's not nothing you can take back. That's Rashad McCants. In the early 2000s, he makes a name for himself as a shooting guard for the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Sacramento Kings. So how did you first meet Peggy? How did I first meet Peggy? Like, what was the year? What were you up to? How did it happen? I'm actually kind of surprised by how Rashad McCants answers this question 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.
Welcome back to Queen of the Con. I'm talking to one of the pro athletes Peggy used to manage the finances for, NBA shooting guard Rashad McCants. So how did you first meet Peggy? Oh, it was 2005. 2005. This was before the draft or any of those things. This is during pretty much the courting season for agents, finding what players are going to pick up for the draft and who's good and who's not.
I met her through a close friend of mine who was Richard Hamilton's cousin. And for people who don't know, who's Richard Hamilton? Richard Hamilton is a basketball player. He played for the Detroit Pistons and his cousin was like a financial advisor and he introduced me to Peggy. At the time, I was looking for a pivot because I had just had a financial advisor that wasn't giving me the freedom that I wanted with my money. So I was just looking for other avenues
It's interesting. Dennis Rodman was in a similar situation to you. He was leaving his money manager at the time. From what I hear, the money manager had a major drug problem. He was in rehab. So Dennis Rodman needed to find someone new. And Peggy's right there. Kind of a similar situation to you. You left your money manager. I just wanted more access to my funds. They were restricting my funds. They were restricting. And Peggy seemed to be like she wouldn't be as restrictive. Yeah.
Well, I would just have more control because I wasn't with the actual, it was like a bank. It wasn't necessarily a financial company. Okay. It was like a business, like a corporation, like cold. Yeah. You felt like a number. You didn't feel like you mattered. Well, it was just the fact that I had to go through loopholes to get my own money. I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to, I wanted what I wanted when I wanted it. Right. And I didn't want to ask nobody for nothing. It's mine. All right. So when I left them,
Getting with Peggy, she put me with SunTrust Bank. But she ended up getting the power of attorney and signing, setting up all the trust and all that stuff. What's your impression of her? What does she look like? What does she sound like? What does she feel like? Cougar. She's a cougar? Yeah. Cougar. She was a cougar. Yeah, cougar. Was she flirting with you? Yeah, yeah. She's a flirter. She's an older woman that you definitely take down. Thinking back now, like...
Yeah, I mean, Peggy was somebody that would probably have sex with one of her clients. Make a note of that because Peggy's perceived sexual dalliances are going to come up again and again. I'm not going to say that she goes out of her way to try to sleep with anybody. I don't think that that's her personality, but she gives more auntie vibes than
And that game, in 2005, has Rashad McCants signing over power of attorney to Peggy.
She's supposed to be paying his bills while investing the rest of his money to create. What do you call that? Wealth. Generational wealth. That was her buzzword to everyone, right? Generational wealth. So something for your family, your kids, your children's children, your children's children. All that. That's what every financial advisor hits you with, though. Yeah. And that was appealing.
It wasn't necessarily that it was appealing because I had just left a whole other firm to hear the same pitch. It was the same type of pitch, but it was just coming from a black woman who's trying to get into the industry. Ah, so you had like a soft spot because like... She never, nobody had never done it. Nobody gave her an opportunity to do it like this at this level. I mean, I wasn't thinking of Dennis Rodman or anybody else. I wasn't asking those questions.
It was just, hey, she's good at this. This is what she do. She sounds like she's, you know, she's like, I got my degree in this. I went to school for this. She's selling it. Did she tell you she went to Harvard? She did. So she came in and just kind of filled all the positions. You know, as a black woman, she talked the talk. She got in with my mom good, my family. And that's just kind of how it happened. Once they're comfortable with the family, it's an easy decision for the athlete.
to just keep going on if everyone's comfortable with her. And your mom liked her? Everybody liked her. And she was very good at the whole black woman, heartstrings pull on you with the family thing and we got to stay together and all that stuff. Like you identified with her, your mom identified with her? Well, my identification with her wasn't so much on what she could do, more of the opportunity of giving a black woman
a place in our workspace where she could come in and say that she's doing these things for us because there wasn't women doing it at the time. And when you saw her interact in this basketball world, in this professional basketball world, did she seem to know a lot of people? A lot of people seem to know her and respect her. What did that look like to you? Did that kind of legitimize her to you even more? Did she seem to fit in? Well, I wasn't really legitimized
Yeah, because I'm still wet behind the ears. So the people that I was around were grooming me for the NBA and the luxury of the lifestyle.
but I hadn't understood it completely yet to be able to weed out what she was doing. So a lot of the things she was doing was just introducing me to the lifestyle and the people I didn't know, none of the people. So she could have introduced me to anybody. This was all new to you. It was all new. It was all new. So I was buying Brioni suits and all different things that I didn't need or know. It was just like, oh, you're an NBA player. You need this. You should be wearing this. You should be driving this.
that kind of stuff. Driving what? I had a Range Rover Sport. Nice. No, at the time I had a BMW, but then she's like, you should be driving a Range Rover. Just little small things that made it where...
I could trust the adjustments because this felt like the lifestyle. It felt like a lifestyle switch. And how old are you at this point? 2005? 20. You're 20 years old. So here's this woman with like 10 times more experience, seems to be this huge success, telling you how you should look, what you should buy, who you should be, and she wants to help. Yep. It's an attractive offer. Yeah. You know? Especially at that age.
But here's the thing. When Rashad starts playing in the NBA for the Timberwolves, it's months before he sees his first paycheck. I hadn't had money coming in yet. I hadn't gotten paid. This was like preseason. But it was coming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was definitely coming. And at that point in 2005, Peggy has all the paperwork in place. She's got power of attorney over Rashad's finances. And that first paycheck is earmarked for her.
At the time it was to get my first check, it was like nothing's in there because it's all gone. And the way Rashad finds out that his paycheck is all gone is just heartbreaking. I couldn't pay for donuts one day. Picture it, Timberwolves training camp in the fall of 2005. Rashad's grunt work as a newbie on the team is to buy and bring donuts to practice.
But that morning, his debit card is declined at the donut shop because his bank account is completely wiped out and Rashad shows up to practice empty-handed and flat broke. It was my first rookie check. My first rookie check, I got a call from my agent saying, "Peggy got us." Rashad's first paycheck for $200,000 from the Timberwolves is MIA.
I really shocked that she would do this and I trusted her. I was completely blindsided and then not being able to get it back and then just not having money. I didn't have money and I just got robbed. And it being like weird and crazy, I tried not to like, it just kind of let it blow over and keep going. It was like the first check and I knew that if I get her out of the way now,
We'll never have to deal with this again. So it was just kind of a, you learn, you got burned. This is an NBA lesson. Look out next time. Peggy is only Rashad's financial manager for a few months when she gets away with stealing his $200,000 paycheck. After you realized what she did, what'd you do? Did you confront her? Did you try to text her, call her? Yeah, I tried to call and text, but never got through. She ghosted you? Yeah.
My agent had figured it out. And once he figured it out, he was already kind of, he wasn't big on her. So he already had his antennas up. And when it happened, it was just kind of like I knew she was a bad, a bad seed. Didn't feel right. Did your agent call the cops? Did you call the cops after you realized what she had done? Nope. So she knew she was in the clear because there was no paper trail. So he said, she said. Oh, yeah, he came down here. But where's the proof?
Right. You know, if she has all the documents and I don't got the emails, she never sent me the stuff. So it's like, were you here? Did you say those things? Did you give her permission? Did you say she couldn't take the money? This is kind of sexism in reverse because she's the woman. You're the man. She's automatically believed. You're automatically suspected of lying.
I've been a victim of that too. A month before the trial of my con artist, she files a restraining order against me claiming I'm threatening to kill her. - That's crazy. - I know, but it was brilliant. - Yeah. - Because in nine times out of 10, the judge just approves the woman's thing and I must be the crazy guy trying to kill her. - Narcissism. - Oh my God, it's the worst. These people. - The audacity. - Yeah. - That they even know they can be protected through the bullshit that they do. - Yeah. Oh, they're thinking 10 steps ahead all the time.
The timeline of how Rashad's scam intersects with the other athletes Peggy scammed really paints a disturbing picture 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. I'm talking to former NBA shooting guard Rashad McCants about how Peggy tricked him out of $200,000 in a matter of months. It was my first rookie check. My first rookie check, I got a call from my agent saying, Peggy got us.
So Rashad figures out Peggy was scamming him all the way back in 2005, four years before she began her $1.2 million scam of Dennis Rodman, and five years before Travis Best realized she scammed him out of more than $2 million. And, you know, Travis was in the fucking Pacers and he was in movies and stuff. Yeah. And when Travis found out, he didn't tell anyone either. Because it's embarrassing.
But other than embarrassment, the primary reason Rashad never tells anyone what happened back in 2005 is the same reason a lot of victims don't think to speak up. For me, it wasn't about her being like a serial con artist. It's not even about me knowing that she was a con. You didn't? Oh, you didn't think she was a con. You thought she just screwed you over. I just thought she screwed me over. I had no idea. Dude, chills. I have chills now. No idea.
I was like, oh, I got fucked over. I'm glad I got fucked over early. Let's just get this out of the way. It never occurred to you she's doing this to 20 other people? Hell no. And even to this day, nearly 20 years later, Rashad's feelings about getting scammed by Peggy are not what you'd expect from a victim who took a $200,000 hit. What do you think of her now and after all that's happened? It kind of blew up. Thank you, Robert.
It doesn't surprise me. I don't feel bad for her, and I don't feel any ill will towards her. I mean, you get what you get, but it's my fault. I think all the victims have themselves to blame. You blame yourself. Accountability is everything. The one thing I learned about people who are con artists and take advantage of you, you go back and you listen to Don King talk about Mike Tyson, and they ask him a question, why did you do that to Mike Tyson?
and it was only one answer he said because he let me because he let me that opened my eyes and i said well damn mike tyson can't say nothing back to that it's the greatest answer of all time you let her i let her but she was like a wolf in sheep's doesn't matter i mean i liken it to the most simplest explanation is you go to a fancy restaurant right you have a nice car
You see someone who is dressed like a valet, Parker. They got the hat, they got the uniform, they got the tickets. They give you a ticket, you give them your keys, but really they steal your car. They're not a valet. They were just dressed that way to trick you. Is that your fault? - Yep. - I don't think it is because they were, you know, this is what con artists do, right? They assume the role they need to to trick people out of their money.
That's their gun. But if people are so loosely to just get out of the car, hand their keys over. Everyone hands their keys to a valet. Don't be like everyone. I know I don't. I don't trust valets. That's the differentiator to me is like, if you want to be like everyone else, get robbed like everyone else. Yeah. I don't want to be robbed. So I have to take different precautions now because things have happened. And if you don't take precautions and you're not aware, you'll get it taken advantage of. So if you want to be green in this world, be green, take the bumps,
and look back and be like, yeah, somebody robbed me. That's because I let them. I'm so conflicted about it. You got to have discernment. That's it. Are you trust? You don't trust anyone now. Trust is a sticky word because you have to allow people and their intentions to manifest so that you can see who they are. Say if you don't, then you're going to be contributing to the fraud that they portray up until the point that you actually believe
allow them to show you who they are. So you have to at some point trust the people who are faking so that they can reveal themselves. So I can't say that I don't trust anyone. I think I've actually allowed people more. I've give people more chances now because I don't want them hiding from other people. So I can give the people more chances to do the things that they may not be truthful about because I'm going to find out now. I'm willing to wait.
You want to catch them before they move on and get someone else. Rashad's been retired from the NBA for more than a decade now, and he's become kind of a renaissance man. He's a frequent contributor on Gil's Arena, a popular basketball podcast. Why would I want to win? Why? Because we play to win. That's why you would want to win. You sound dumb. And Rashad's actually a published author now, too.
What's your book titled? Called The Light With Love. The Light With Love. And what's that about? It's about three urban kids who find themselves immersed in supernatural abilities and they go about unlocking their abilities to spread truth and light. Wow. Dude, you blew my mind. How long has this been out? So this is like a fiction, like you wrote this. I did.
Yeah, it just released actually like two weeks ago. Congratulations. That sounds like a hell of a story. It definitely is. You've completely just reinvented yourself. Absolutely. My God, talk about a pivot. Yeah. Bravo, man. Appreciate it. That is awesome.
So in the early 2000s, Peggy scams $200,000 from Rashad McCants, more than $2 million from Travis Best, and $1.2 million from Dennis Rodman after taking over his finances in 2009. But by far, Peggy's biggest victim of all turns out to be Miami Dolphins running back Ricky Williams. Because she used to brag about Ricky all the time. Oh, Ricky's my baby, and
Ricky didn't care about money like that. Peggy's former assistant again, Chantel Cohen. How much total did Peggy take from Ricky? I think they said about $6 million. Do you think it was really more? I think that it was definitely more. And there's something I haven't told you about Chantel Cohen. Yes, she was Peggy's assistant at one time, but how she actually met Peggy was through NFL running back Ricky Williams. How do you know Ricky Williams?
I know Ricky. We call each other brother and sisters because we've known each other since I was five. He was six. So we went to the same elementary, junior high, high school. He went away to UT. And then when he got drafted to New Orleans, he happened to get hurt. And so I came to visit him and ended up living with him throughout his whole career and still my best friend to today. But I call him my brother. That's
That's my brother. Brother, sister. Brother and sister. Yeah. Brother from another mother. For sure. Sister from another mister. Yes, exactly. Yes. His family's my family. My family's his family. Like, yes, we're just not connected by blood. That's the only thing. And the way Peggy infiltrates the lives of Ricky Williams and Chantel Cohen is just one of the most bizarre stories I've ever heard. When I met Peggy, her name was Peggy King.
I met her in New Orleans. Ricky was doing MTV Cribs. Now we are going to my closet. And here...
And he had just bought a condo down in the French Quarter in New Orleans, and he needed to furnish the whole place and everything like that. And so a cousin of Peggy's worked in, I don't know if she was an interior designer or worked at the actual furniture store, but she came over, she helped out, she furnished a place and brought Peggy in to help her. ♪
And so that was the first time that I ever met Peggy walking into Ricky's condo, helping him furnish the place for MTV Cribs. And is that the same time Ricky first met her? Yes, that was the first time he met her. And how Peggy goes from helping Ricky Williams decorate his new condo to stealing millions and millions of dollars from him is just the definition of evil genius.
So she kept you guys separated. She kept us separate so she could do whatever she needed to do over in that household. It was that domino effect of just people feeling embarrassed. It was crazy. Next time on Queen of the Con. She just showed up and she made herself available.
But one by one, people start figuring out what Peggy is actually up to. Peggy claimed to be a Harvard-educated attorney. I called the Florida Bar Association, the Georgia Bar Association, the Louisiana Bar, anybody that I could think of, any place that she had lived. I just started going down a checklist and no one knew her.
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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