April 10, 2024 • 31 mins
With Centra Tech preparing to launch their business, a mention in a prominent crypto-currency article takes their company to new heights. However, the author, Clif High, had them mistaken for another company. And the fall-out of this misprint would change everything.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
My routine at this point was I would have my
laptop open everywhere. I was hoping for more investments to
come in. And one night I'm just sitting there. I'm
on my balcony smoking a blunt, refreshing it, refreshing it,
and out of nowhere, it was just chi ching ching
chi ching. I was like, oh my god, this is crazy.
(00:32):
You're seeing those numbers come in and it's tough for
your brain to register this is actually real money. It
felt like I was looking at a slot machine. Boom jackpot.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I'm Johnny, be good, and this is creating a con
The Story of Bitcoin, Episode four. An afternoon with Uncle
Cliff as Ray and Sam rolled out their new crypto company,
Center Tech. They started an ICO, or initial coin offering.
It's like an initial public offering, but for crypto companies.
(01:17):
It's a process to raise capital by signing a value
to digital coins and offering them for sale. Ray and
Sam called their coins Centric Coins, and they were available
in the open market. Believe it or not, people were
buying them. Ray and Sam, who also goes by Sorby
or Sam Sharma, started this ICO to help fund their company.
(01:39):
Their product would allow customers to spend cryptocurrency in the
real world using a debit card called a Centric card.
People back home started to hear of their success. Here's
Ray's mom, Kerrie raised.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Telling me, Sam's got this great idea is cryptocurrency.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
This could be big blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
And really at this point, I'm rolling my eyes. I
think it's in myself. Oh gee, you know, thanks Sam.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
Here we go again.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
I remember learning about center Tech when Ray called me
late one night in twenty seventeen. He told me he
was onto something big. His mouth was running a mile
a minute. Every other sentence was a job offer. Yeah,
come down and work for us. Start you off with
like five k a week, he said. I saw what
he was making, the money, the lifestyle. It was all tempting,
(02:26):
but I never pulled a trigger. I was skeptical, so
were others. It sounded like another quick come up, as
my sister would say, but others were hopeful. If there
was one general theme between all of our opinions, it
was this none of us understood what center Tech was
or how crypto worked, and we all knew that Ray
(02:47):
didn't have the background or the education to pull something
like this.
Speaker 5 (02:50):
Off.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
This was new and way over our heads, including race.
Speaker 6 (02:55):
Someone just told me that, you know, your old business
partners started this crypto company.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Raised Former partner Bert remembers learning about CenTra.
Speaker 6 (03:05):
When I first heard about it, I felt like, why
did they deserve to have a successful company and be
legit and have all the rewards when they cheated and
they robbed me that you know that they got to
this point and not me.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
That's how I felt for our friend Maara. Just like me.
It was more of a job offer.
Speaker 7 (03:25):
I was asking a shit ton of questions. He was
trying to get me to be like a part of it.
He wanted me to like put it in my name,
and I was like, this has a saying legitimate, absolutely not.
And to his credit, he was a pretty good bullshitter,
like even to me. But obviously I know him and
I know when things aren't right. So I was just like, no,
I don't trust any of this.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
And Rai's dad Phil, he thought it was too good
to be true.
Speaker 8 (03:50):
I've never seen any kind of proposition that you give
me money that quickly legally, And I was telling him,
I thinking that rebock yup for that shit, because if
you're not fan back, government's going to get you.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
A week into the ico launch, investments are trickling in,
but to them it was too slow. Ray and Sam
knew they had to keep getting the word out about
CenTra to collect more cash.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
We're getting ten twenty, few hundred thousand over the next
couple weeks, and it's like slow steady.
Speaker 9 (04:19):
You know.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Every day we're just in these telegram and slack channels
just banging away talking to people.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Ray would keep seeing the same questions, when do I
get a card? When will the app go live? They
needed to make a splash. More than just articles impressed.
They needed to keep people eager, hungry. They needed promotions, marketing, advertising.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
This introducing CenTra your key to the future of money.
Think of it as a real life pocket bank. CenTra
can transfer money from one place to another, and from
one currency to another in the blink of an eye
and without any fees. The future is in your hands
(05:02):
with the CenTra card and wallet.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Centri Tech was cranking ads like this out. Jacob, an
early investor, remember seeing one of their videos.
Speaker 10 (05:12):
They would push a little bit of promotional material and
be like, look at our working card that we have,
or I hope.
Speaker 11 (05:18):
You guys are ready.
Speaker 10 (05:18):
We have some great partnerships in the making, and you know,
typical marketing that most companies would do.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
The traction center Tech got from that YouTube video was
nothing compared to what happened next. They were about to
go viral, and it all happened by accident.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
I go by Crypto Blood on YouTube, Instagram and I
just got on what is it called tiktik. I just
got on tiktik, So one more social media for me
to just waste my.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Day away with a guy out of Detroit who goes
by the name Crypto Blood or CB for short. Heard
about CenTra and was an early investor.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
First time I heard of at centri Tech would be
from Cliff High.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
You could say that Crypto Blood is a bit of
a disciple of one of the biggest gurus in the
crypto world.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
Cliff High is an interesting character. He's a linguistics, very
smart individual, and he was very popular with the crypto community.
I coined the term Uncle Cliff, so I call him
a charlatan. Maybe one of the smartest people I've really
kind of encountered.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Here's Cliff.
Speaker 9 (06:27):
I expect ninety seven out of every one hundred old
coins being created to simply fade away, so there's only
going to be a few gems and I'm hoping to
try and help people pick those out of the current
crop of cryptocurrencies.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
His theory is that we all leak the future in
some form of fashion through our linguistics, through our language,
through our text online. With that theory, he created these
web bots that crawl the Internet and basically picks up
on what people are talking about and pick up different
data point put those together into a report he did
(07:03):
called the Bare neck at Wealth.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Report the bare Naked Wealth Report. One might think that
was Miami Exotics monthly newsletter, but no, no, this report
contained fringe alternative financial advice, and his followers took Cliff's
advice as the gospel.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
People were utilizing his reports to get an edge on
what to buy next. It was very clear and made
a very big point to make sure people didn't take
this as financial advice. But people did. I mean, that's
what you spend one hundred dollars on every month to
find out what the latest web bot crawl was showing
you as far as you know these crypto projects.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
And gaining that edge that could be the difference between
investing in a fraudulent shitcoin or taking your investment to
the moon. People were investing in all kinds of new
crypto projects. It was a hot market. Now is the
time to cash in.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
This was in twenty seventeen, middle of the ICO boom.
The ICO is a version of crowdfunding, which is great.
I love it, but the SEC doesn't.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
The SEC the Securities and Exchange Commission. They're responsible for
regulating securities markets and protecting investors. In twenty seventeen, one
of their main focuses was monitoring where all this new
crypto money was flowing in a market they didn't control.
Regulators were just trying to keep up. That will come
(08:33):
into play later in the story. During the ICO boom
of twenty seventeen, timing was everything. Ray and Sorby launched
center Tech as crypto is spiking. Ever, hear the saying
don't try to time the market. These two couldn't have
timed it. Better not to mention this happened.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
CenTra Tech ended up being published in Cliff High's latest
Bare neck At Wealth Report.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
As Cliff's latest newsletter populates raised nightly activity was tracking
every individual investment that came in. It was his new drug,
a shot of dopamine. Every time a new bioder came in.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
I'm sitting on my balcony. I'm smoking this blunt and
I just check it and I just see like one
hundred thousand invested, five hundred thousands invested, and then it
hits a million, and within an hour it's at two
million dollars invested. And I'm like texting Sorbie like little kids.
We're just kind of geeking out, and we're like, what
(09:34):
the fuck is going on? And then we're reading the
Slack channel, the telegram channels, and they're talking about this guy,
Cliff High, and we had no idea who Cliff High was. So,
you know, we do a little digging and we see
he put out an article about us.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
The problem was Cliff fucked up, and it was a
multi million dollar fuck up. Cliff posted an article intending
to highlight a different CenTra Instead, his web bots cited
centri Tech.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
That wasn't where human error could occur. He made the
mistake of thinking the data that was coming in from
CenTra Bank was actually for CenTra Tech.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
What Cliff thought was a hot tip on an emerging
financial institution was really a business started by two twenty
something smoking blunts in their bedroom while researching what an
ico was just weeks before launching their own token ridiculous.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
It was a CenTra bank, I believe in the UK
or somewhere in Europe. So people were buying CenTra Tech
based on false data.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Cliff signaled to his subscribers and eighty thousand Twitter followers
to buy and hold CenTra token. Cliff was mortified. His
whole image of being this crypto moralist was shattered. Ray
and Sowerby they had no idea who Cliff was, but
they certainly liked him. All they knew was Cliff High
just made them a shitload of money.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
After that Cliffire article comes out, you know, we jump
in the chats and we're like, oh yeah, cliff Hire,
we love that guy. He's the best, you know, right
off the bat. Instead of you know, even questioning who
the fuck he was, you know, obviously put out an article.
It made us some money. You know, we love him,
and you know we've known about cliff Hire our whole lives.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
Centric gets a lot of exposure. People started buying it.
All his investors they're big guys. They're big investors. You
have a person that's very popular, tell you X y Z, well,
you have a say upwards of fifty to six percent
of those individuals doing what he suggested. In a thin
market like cryptocurrencies, you're going to move the.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Coins unintentionally, Cliff, crowds are some serious investments into Center Tech.
Cliff tried to do damage control.
Speaker 9 (11:49):
I apologize. I did not do my due diligence.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
He came out and made an apology. Sorry, guys, I
didn't mean to put Central Tech in there.
Speaker 9 (11:59):
My reports screw me over because I believed my data.
I was tired and as my screw up.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
The boys saw the momentum Cliff created. They didn't want
this attraction to slow anything down, so Sam Sharma took
matters into his own hands. He wanted to ensure that
nothing dimmed the spotlight Cliff just shined on the company.
After launching Center Tech's initial coin offer in late July
(12:25):
of twenty seventeen, Ray and Sam Sharma saw modest investment
steadily coming in, but nothing prepared them for what happened next.
A misprint by crypto guru Cliff High catapulted centri Tech
front and Center for the entire crypto community to see,
which meant one thing for Ray and Sam money. As
(12:45):
Cliff distanced himself from centri Tech, Sam realized that retraction
could hurt this newfound popularity, so Sam reached out.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
To Cliff Sam being Sam's like, hey, no, no, no,
I need to explain this to you guys. You know
I'll come on your show in now. I'll show you
that we are with your bots. We're saying we were.
Speaker 12 (13:04):
I want to first take the opportunity to bank you, Cliff,
for allowing us to come on your show.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
The interview was live.
Speaker 12 (13:11):
I want a first step for the record. I want
to tell all the viewers that we are one hundred
percent not a scam.
Speaker 9 (13:17):
That's mine. But your statements, your statements don't mean anything.
You stating you're not a scam in no way proves
you're not a scam.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Once the pleasantries were out of the way, Cliff gets
down to brass tacks.
Speaker 9 (13:30):
Who wrote the white paper.
Speaker 12 (13:32):
Our white paper was written by our Philippines freelancer.
Speaker 9 (13:36):
Okay, well you're gonna get sued. You don't attribute copyrights
and trademarks to any other organization whatsoever.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
As they get into their conversation, Cliff was poking at
their relationships. Centri Tech had been advertising Ray and Sam
had publicized relationships with banks, specifically Visa, MasterCard, and Bankar
throughout their white paper, not to mention they had each
company's logos on Centra's website. How did two kids with
no financial, banking or crypto experience pull this off? Cliff
(14:06):
was trying to find out, and Sam felt like he
had the answers.
Speaker 12 (14:09):
If you look at our terms and conditions, we definitely
reference to go to our website and.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
You got this middle age ball white guy. This guy
so much experience. I mean, the guy is smart.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Right.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
He was calling Sam's son, Look here, Son was cringe worthy.
Speaker 9 (14:29):
Man, who's the fellow that is going to protect your
ass and is in charge of security for your system?
Speaker 12 (14:36):
Well, we're going to hire action independent company to do
that with the funds that we.
Speaker 9 (14:39):
Raised, You're fucked.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
I think he was in some type of look like
a college dorm. That was another thing. I'm like, oh man,
you just you're raising like millions of dollars and you
look like you're in a college dorm.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Cliff question why the inexperienced Sam is the face of
censritech instead of their elusive CEO Michael Edwards.
Speaker 9 (14:59):
Why are you in that chair now? Instead of the
CEO here that never really shows up anywhere, Mike.
Speaker 12 (15:05):
Mike was honestly an investor who saw my vision and said,
you know what, I'm going to do this for you.
He gave me the opportunity to get where I am today.
Speaker 9 (15:13):
Okay, so so Mike doesn't do shit, then why is
he the CEO? Does he show up at the office
every day or is he just the money dude?
Speaker 12 (15:20):
No, to be honest, he's the money dude.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Cliff was one of the first to ask about the
money dude, the Harvard educated Michael Edwards. But he wouldn't
be the last.
Speaker 12 (15:32):
My most important thing, honestly, and to make it last
statement please, Cliff, is We're not a scam. That's That's
what I came here to clear up.
Speaker 9 (15:38):
You're not You're not a scam. You're just not very
good at what you're doing and you haven't really thought
about it.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Yeah, it was. It was pretty bad, man. It was
a bad interview, and it really exposed that Sam didn't
know what he was doing. He bit off more than
he could chew.
Speaker 13 (15:55):
It goes awful.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
That call was the first time I've ever seen soor
be scared while he was talking. Because this guy knew
every angle of how a debit card should work, and
how the bank contract should work, everything that our company
was doing wrong.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
He knew Cliff knew his shit, and he smelled blood
in the water. The crypto community they went wild. It
wasn't a good look. Crypto Blood immediately posted a ran
video from the front seat of his car, supporting a
flat brim Tiger's lid stogie in hand.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Today we are talking Cliff High. First, Sammy the Bull
or Sammy the used car salesman. Cliff High murdered this guy.
He straight slaughtered this guy. You know, I kind of
felt bad for the dude, but then again I didn't
because the guy was delusional, like just had no wherewithal
(16:49):
on how to execute on this business. In my reaction video,
I just said, you know, just because you have a
big sum of money, if you don't know how to
allocate and utilize those funds in the proper way, you're
throwing good money after bad. You were just going to
prolong the crash, right, It'll just be a slow motion
(17:10):
crash instead of a fast one.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
The buzz online wasn't good and it didn't end with
the interview. Centro was getting roasted on the forums. Investors
were running scared, including the investor we met earlier, Jacob.
Speaker 10 (17:25):
That interview was bad, was really really bad. Just watching
Sam try to defend himself in his bedroom, trying to
say that it's not a scam, don't worry, and watching
Cliff just decimate him, it's kind of embarrassing.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
People were like, oh shit, this guy doesn't know what
he's doing. I want my money back.
Speaker 10 (17:46):
As just a regular person sitting on the outside looking
at these two people have a conversation, it's hard to
tell what's fact in fiction.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
But scrolling through the comments section of that video, it
was apparent with the internet thought gems from the comments section,
this is what happens when a car salesman meets crypto.
Anyone who invests in this coin is insane. Who does
an interview with an unmade bed in the back. He
had me at Filipino Freelancer and I wouldn't give this
(18:15):
guy my grandmother's false teeth to hold. So Sam does
his own damage control and ends up making things worse.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
They tried to report Cliff to Google slash YouTube for
copyright violation for his video. That's what really got Cliff
going the Twitter fingers. I don't know if this is
worse than Meek Mill versus Drake on Twitter or what.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Man but complete idiot crypto Blood saved some of Cliff's
posts on Twitter, now known as x We asked him
to read some of Cliff's tweets around this time.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
He calls them Sam the Sham. That was the funniest.
Sam the Sham and CenTra complained to Google about their
logo appearing in the interview. They demanded, I do I
have email? Sam Sharma volunteered to do the video now
once it pulled from my sight, Sam Sharma and CenTra
can go take a step back and fuck their own face.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Sam back down with Cliff no longer an ally, he
had to turn to other influencers for support, but the
community didn't think too highly of Sam the Sham.
Speaker 4 (19:22):
He was very arrogant, right, It was delusions of grandeur.
I don't know from what, but definitely was very unaware
of his own lack of understanding of various topics. That
clip high covered.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Pat in hand tail between his legs. Sam needed to
make amends.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
Sam watched my reaction video. He reached out to me.
He's like, man, I'm sorry, I really effed up.
Speaker 7 (19:49):
Man.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
I was on Uncle Cliff's show and it just embarrassed myself.
And that's when our relationship started.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Crypto Blood saw another side of Sam, not the same
he saw on Cliff's show, a more human, approachable, authentic
Sam Sharma.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
He was a different person off camera after the interview,
very humble. I think he realized that he didn't know
as much as he thought he did as far as
how to execute on this plan. He came from a
space of vulnerability and openness, and that's where I began
to respect him a bit more.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Sam was realizing his old war tactics weren't going to work.
He had to be contrite, humble, a leader. They had
to answer the questions Cliff raised. They could have hired
a consultant to help them fix these issues, but through
that interview, Cliff gave them the blueprint.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
I think he went back and watched the video, he
saw the comments in the video, and then he kind
of took a step back, and at that point, I
think that's when things did change.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
And if things didn't change, Sam Sharma would be kicked
out of the crypto community as quickly as he was
ingratiated into it. Little did Sam know this media circus
was just what center Tech needed to take the company
to the next level. While Sam sowerby Sharma was in
(21:14):
full fledged damage control repairing his personal and professional image online,
his partner Ray didn't seem too concerned. After the dust
settled from that Cliff High interview.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
What's that saying, Oh, publicity's good publicity. That two million
from Cliff I kickstarted our whole thing.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
You heard that right, Cliff High's little mistake allowed centri
Tech to collect two million dollars. As bad as that
interview was, Cliff brought some serious attention to centri Tech.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Dumb luck, complete dumb luck that first couple million, and
if that never happens, Centrum may never be what it was.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
CenTra was ready to double down on this newfound spotlight.
Behind the scenes, Ray and Sam were solidifying other ways
to promote center Tech's New York Times journalist Nathaniel Popper,
how do you get.
Speaker 11 (22:05):
Attention for a new product. You can come up with
a great business. You can come up with a product
that people like. But in a lot of these cases,
there wasn't even a product to offer, and so people
pulled out all the stops and they went to all
the old familiar methods of selling things.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
These days, cryptocurrency is going mainstream.
Speaker 9 (22:26):
Fortune favors the break.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Stars like Matt Damon, Paris Hilton, Megan the Stallion all
pushing crypto and sponsorships. Hey hotties, let's talk about bitcoin.
Speaker 11 (22:37):
Obviously, the people who can get the most attention are
the celebrities. So unsurprisingly, these initial coin offerings, which were
operating in a sort of wild West without rules, without laws,
started going after celebrities and saying, if you tweet about
my initial coin offerings, I will offer you dollars one
(23:00):
hundred thousand dollars. A pretty wide array of people got
in on this action and made it clear that they
were willing to take money in order to promote these
point offerings, even if they had no idea what the
point offering was or how the coin offering worked.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Center wanted celebrity brand ambassadors to keep driving investments into
their company.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Were like, you know, how do we take this to
the next level.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Just a few months earlier, Rain Sam were ranting exotic
cars to some of the biggest athletes, musicians, and celebrities around.
That's a good place to start.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
We got in touch with Floyd Mayweather, and Floy Mayweather
does a commercial for us, and he does two Instagram posts, what's.
Speaker 14 (23:44):
Up is the one and only you may and Floyd
Money Mayweather got my central car, Bigcoin. I'm doing big thing,
spending some light money the new way things are doing.
Floyd Money Mayweather.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Weather has thirty million followers on Instagram. How the hell
did these guys land a heavyweight influencer like that?
Speaker 1 (24:06):
We paid them two hundred thousand cash and then we
paid him about eight hundred thousand and centric coins.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Well, that explains it.
Speaker 11 (24:12):
Floyd Mayweather. You know, his old nickname was Floyd Money Mayweather.
As a boxer, he started calling himself Floyd Crypto Mayweather.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
And that brings in five ten million right off the bat,
like so quickly, and we're like, you know, what, fuck it?
Like me and Sorbi are like into hip hop, and
you know, we wanted to be cool like these, like
the people that we looked up to. So we're like, oh,
let's get Dj Khaled, Big Cal fifty thousand he does
one or two Instagram posts and that brings in, like,
(24:42):
you know, a couple million.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
The money was flowing in.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
You can see the excitement and these slack channels.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
When it was all said and done, Ray and Sam
collected a lot of money.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
They collected thirty million dollars from the ICO. There were
headlines about it. I got them a lot of attention.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
DJ College as a working card in his hand. I
remember thinking at the time, Oh, wow, they have the
Central cards in the picture. I can't wait to get mine.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Nick Baal was another investor who liked what Center Tech
was doing.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
They're not small, you know, beat to your celebrities. They're
not some rapper that had a one hit wonder. They're
people that everybody knows. And the idea that they would
endorse these I was ninety nine percent invested, and I
think that just took that little bit of doubt away.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
With thirty million dollars collected from investors, their war chest
was established and the value of Center Tech wasn't the
only thing that grew. So did the community.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
We had probably about three hundred people in our slide channel,
and then it jumped up like crazy, probably about two
to three thousand within dates. It's tough to even read
all the stuff that's coming in because everybody's just fucking
trying to ask you questions.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
With the exposure came new skeptics. Cliff's questions about CenTra
were resurfacing. While Ray and Sam were able to avoid
the heat. New investors were now holding Cenru's feet to
the fire. How was this product going to work?
Speaker 1 (26:09):
How you know the fee setup would work on the cards,
and how is it possible that you're able to make
crypto transactions instant for the debit card to work.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
They needed help fielding all the investors' questions.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
That's why we brought in Farcas to help us go
through this on a daily basis and kind of clear
up any sort of FUD quote unquote, yeah, yeah, they
quote FUDD. So FUD stands for fear, uncertainty of doubt.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
As they say, more money, more problems, and Centri's problems
came in the form of FUD. Investor Jacob Rensel was
seeing all this take place from his laptop.
Speaker 10 (26:46):
It definitely started as little things. Somebody would bring something
up and then I would go and look at that
and be like, yeah, that is weird what's going on there?
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Each little thing could be the difference between someone sending
their money in or keeping their money out of CenTra.
And after a successful ico, Ray and Sam wanted all
the investors they could find. Farcas was on the front
lines trying to answer any questions that could create fud.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
You're trying to clear the fud all day long. That's
all you're doing is clearing the fud.
Speaker 10 (27:14):
While yes, there were people who were legitimately just trying
to spread fud, there were also individuals like myself asking
questions like, Hey, something not right here, Why is this happening?
Where did this go?
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Behind the scenes, Ray and Sam would make a decision
that would come back to haunt them.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Everybody's starting to ask us, like all these very serious
questions about bank contracts. One day, like we took off
all the bank contract the Visa master cards, and then
everybody's like, oh, where the fuck are the bank contracts.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Remember, Centra's main product was a debit card that customers
could use to spend their cryptocurrency at stores like McDonald's
or Walmart, and Center claimed that their cards were backed
by Visa and MasterCard. They literally had pictures of Centric
Cards with the Visa logo right in the just like
the credit cards in your wallet. I'm surprised the website
didn't say CenTra It's everywhere you want to be. But
(28:07):
when those logos came off the website, it caught investor
Jacob Rensel's attention.
Speaker 10 (28:12):
One are the big ones for me. Big red flag
was when there was no more mention of Bangcorp. There
was no more mention of Visa, there was no more
mention of MasterCard. All of those logos disappeared.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
And then once everybody asked these questions, we put it
back on. You know, like that was like our day
to day was just like just trying to like keep
everything afloat and not make everybody go crazy in our chat.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Jacob and the Cenra community were diligent on slack. Investors
were seeing questions that were concerning maybe CenTra wasn't what
they thought it was. One thing certainly was apparent. It
was becoming harder and harder to discertain fact from fiction.
I've always wondered why Ray and Sam were trying to
even answer these questions. They weren't over their heads. They
(28:56):
didn't know this business, remember, said himself.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
To own a tech company. You don't need to be
a technical guru. You're just incorporating yourself into this space
because you see there's value there.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
That's why they hired Michael. He worked in the banking industry.
He had the experience and wherewithal to weather these types
of storms. With this type of confusion and concern. Typically,
you'd expect the CEO to come out and reassure investors.
So where was their CEO? Michael Edwards? On the next
(29:29):
episode of Creating a Con.
Speaker 13 (29:33):
It's a business where you have to deliver and people
judge you on that.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
We'll meet their silent investor, the money dude, and hear
the extraordinary story about how Michael Edwards came to be
their CEO.
Speaker 13 (29:47):
Your reputation is vital. Are you someone who has a
record of doing things that can be trusted?
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Creating a Con is a production of Glass podcast Gusts,
a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.
If you would like to reach out to the Creating
a Con team, email us at Creating a Con at
gmail dot com. That's Creating a CEO n at gmail
dot com. We appreciate your support. One way to support
(30:18):
our show is by subscribing to our podcast on Apple Podcasts,
and don't forget to rate and review Creating a Con.
Five star reviews go a long way, a big thank
you to those who are listening. Also be sure to
check us out and follow us on Instagram at Glass Podcasts.
The show is hosted and produced by me Johnny be Good,
(30:39):
with executive producers Nancy Glass, Ben Fetterman, and Andrea Gunning.
Written and produced by Ben Fetterman and Todd Gans, additional
writing by Matt Delvecchio, Operations and production support by Christin Melchiori.
Additional production support Trey Morgan. Our iHeart team is Ali
(30:59):
Perry and Jessica Crimecheck. Sound editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio,
Consulting producer Nathaniel Popper. Creating a CON's theme composed by
Oliver Bains. Music library provided by Mive Music. Thank you
for subscribing to iHeart True Crime Plus exclusively on Apple.
We hope you enjoyed this ad free presentation of Creating
(31:22):
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you get your podcasts.
My routine at this point was I would have my
laptop open everywhere. I was hoping for more investments to
come in. And one night I'm just sitting there. I'm
on my balcony smoking a blunt, refreshing it, refreshing it,
and out of nowhere, it was just chi ching ching
chi ching. I was like, oh my god, this is crazy.
(00:32):
You're seeing those numbers come in and it's tough for
your brain to register this is actually real money. It
felt like I was looking at a slot machine. Boom jackpot.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I'm Johnny, be good, and this is creating a con
The Story of Bitcoin, Episode four. An afternoon with Uncle
Cliff as Ray and Sam rolled out their new crypto company,
Center Tech. They started an ICO, or initial coin offering.
It's like an initial public offering, but for crypto companies.
(01:17):
It's a process to raise capital by signing a value
to digital coins and offering them for sale. Ray and
Sam called their coins Centric Coins, and they were available
in the open market. Believe it or not, people were
buying them. Ray and Sam, who also goes by Sorby
or Sam Sharma, started this ICO to help fund their company.
(01:39):
Their product would allow customers to spend cryptocurrency in the
real world using a debit card called a Centric card.
People back home started to hear of their success. Here's
Ray's mom, Kerrie raised.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Telling me, Sam's got this great idea is cryptocurrency.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
This could be big blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
And really at this point, I'm rolling my eyes. I
think it's in myself. Oh gee, you know, thanks Sam.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
Here we go again.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
I remember learning about center Tech when Ray called me
late one night in twenty seventeen. He told me he
was onto something big. His mouth was running a mile
a minute. Every other sentence was a job offer. Yeah,
come down and work for us. Start you off with
like five k a week, he said. I saw what
he was making, the money, the lifestyle. It was all tempting,
(02:26):
but I never pulled a trigger. I was skeptical, so
were others. It sounded like another quick come up, as
my sister would say, but others were hopeful. If there
was one general theme between all of our opinions, it
was this none of us understood what center Tech was
or how crypto worked, and we all knew that Ray
(02:47):
didn't have the background or the education to pull something
like this.
Speaker 5 (02:50):
Off.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
This was new and way over our heads, including race.
Speaker 6 (02:55):
Someone just told me that, you know, your old business
partners started this crypto company.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Raised Former partner Bert remembers learning about CenTra.
Speaker 6 (03:05):
When I first heard about it, I felt like, why
did they deserve to have a successful company and be
legit and have all the rewards when they cheated and
they robbed me that you know that they got to
this point and not me.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
That's how I felt for our friend Maara. Just like me.
It was more of a job offer.
Speaker 7 (03:25):
I was asking a shit ton of questions. He was
trying to get me to be like a part of it.
He wanted me to like put it in my name,
and I was like, this has a saying legitimate, absolutely not.
And to his credit, he was a pretty good bullshitter,
like even to me. But obviously I know him and
I know when things aren't right. So I was just like, no,
I don't trust any of this.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
And Rai's dad Phil, he thought it was too good
to be true.
Speaker 8 (03:50):
I've never seen any kind of proposition that you give
me money that quickly legally, And I was telling him,
I thinking that rebock yup for that shit, because if
you're not fan back, government's going to get you.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
A week into the ico launch, investments are trickling in,
but to them it was too slow. Ray and Sam
knew they had to keep getting the word out about
CenTra to collect more cash.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
We're getting ten twenty, few hundred thousand over the next
couple weeks, and it's like slow steady.
Speaker 9 (04:19):
You know.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Every day we're just in these telegram and slack channels
just banging away talking to people.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Ray would keep seeing the same questions, when do I
get a card? When will the app go live? They
needed to make a splash. More than just articles impressed.
They needed to keep people eager, hungry. They needed promotions, marketing, advertising.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
This introducing CenTra your key to the future of money.
Think of it as a real life pocket bank. CenTra
can transfer money from one place to another, and from
one currency to another in the blink of an eye
and without any fees. The future is in your hands
(05:02):
with the CenTra card and wallet.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Centri Tech was cranking ads like this out. Jacob, an
early investor, remember seeing one of their videos.
Speaker 10 (05:12):
They would push a little bit of promotional material and
be like, look at our working card that we have,
or I hope.
Speaker 11 (05:18):
You guys are ready.
Speaker 10 (05:18):
We have some great partnerships in the making, and you know,
typical marketing that most companies would do.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
The traction center Tech got from that YouTube video was
nothing compared to what happened next. They were about to
go viral, and it all happened by accident.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
I go by Crypto Blood on YouTube, Instagram and I
just got on what is it called tiktik. I just
got on tiktik, So one more social media for me
to just waste my.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Day away with a guy out of Detroit who goes
by the name Crypto Blood or CB for short. Heard
about CenTra and was an early investor.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
First time I heard of at centri Tech would be
from Cliff High.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
You could say that Crypto Blood is a bit of
a disciple of one of the biggest gurus in the
crypto world.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
Cliff High is an interesting character. He's a linguistics, very
smart individual, and he was very popular with the crypto community.
I coined the term Uncle Cliff, so I call him
a charlatan. Maybe one of the smartest people I've really
kind of encountered.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Here's Cliff.
Speaker 9 (06:27):
I expect ninety seven out of every one hundred old
coins being created to simply fade away, so there's only
going to be a few gems and I'm hoping to
try and help people pick those out of the current
crop of cryptocurrencies.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
His theory is that we all leak the future in
some form of fashion through our linguistics, through our language,
through our text online. With that theory, he created these
web bots that crawl the Internet and basically picks up
on what people are talking about and pick up different
data point put those together into a report he did
(07:03):
called the Bare neck at Wealth.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Report the bare Naked Wealth Report. One might think that
was Miami Exotics monthly newsletter, but no, no, this report
contained fringe alternative financial advice, and his followers took Cliff's
advice as the gospel.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
People were utilizing his reports to get an edge on
what to buy next. It was very clear and made
a very big point to make sure people didn't take
this as financial advice. But people did. I mean, that's
what you spend one hundred dollars on every month to
find out what the latest web bot crawl was showing
you as far as you know these crypto projects.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
And gaining that edge that could be the difference between
investing in a fraudulent shitcoin or taking your investment to
the moon. People were investing in all kinds of new
crypto projects. It was a hot market. Now is the
time to cash in.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
This was in twenty seventeen, middle of the ICO boom.
The ICO is a version of crowdfunding, which is great.
I love it, but the SEC doesn't.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
The SEC the Securities and Exchange Commission. They're responsible for
regulating securities markets and protecting investors. In twenty seventeen, one
of their main focuses was monitoring where all this new
crypto money was flowing in a market they didn't control.
Regulators were just trying to keep up. That will come
(08:33):
into play later in the story. During the ICO boom
of twenty seventeen, timing was everything. Ray and Sorby launched
center Tech as crypto is spiking. Ever, hear the saying
don't try to time the market. These two couldn't have
timed it. Better not to mention this happened.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
CenTra Tech ended up being published in Cliff High's latest
Bare neck At Wealth Report.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
As Cliff's latest newsletter populates raised nightly activity was tracking
every individual investment that came in. It was his new drug,
a shot of dopamine. Every time a new bioder came in.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
I'm sitting on my balcony. I'm smoking this blunt and
I just check it and I just see like one
hundred thousand invested, five hundred thousands invested, and then it
hits a million, and within an hour it's at two
million dollars invested. And I'm like texting Sorbie like little kids.
We're just kind of geeking out, and we're like, what
(09:34):
the fuck is going on? And then we're reading the
Slack channel, the telegram channels, and they're talking about this guy,
Cliff High, and we had no idea who Cliff High was. So,
you know, we do a little digging and we see
he put out an article about us.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
The problem was Cliff fucked up, and it was a
multi million dollar fuck up. Cliff posted an article intending
to highlight a different CenTra Instead, his web bots cited
centri Tech.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
That wasn't where human error could occur. He made the
mistake of thinking the data that was coming in from
CenTra Bank was actually for CenTra Tech.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
What Cliff thought was a hot tip on an emerging
financial institution was really a business started by two twenty
something smoking blunts in their bedroom while researching what an
ico was just weeks before launching their own token ridiculous.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
It was a CenTra bank, I believe in the UK
or somewhere in Europe. So people were buying CenTra Tech
based on false data.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Cliff signaled to his subscribers and eighty thousand Twitter followers
to buy and hold CenTra token. Cliff was mortified. His
whole image of being this crypto moralist was shattered. Ray
and Sowerby they had no idea who Cliff was, but
they certainly liked him. All they knew was Cliff High
just made them a shitload of money.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
After that Cliffire article comes out, you know, we jump
in the chats and we're like, oh yeah, cliff Hire,
we love that guy. He's the best, you know, right
off the bat. Instead of you know, even questioning who
the fuck he was, you know, obviously put out an article.
It made us some money. You know, we love him,
and you know we've known about cliff Hire our whole lives.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
Centric gets a lot of exposure. People started buying it.
All his investors they're big guys. They're big investors. You
have a person that's very popular, tell you X y Z, well,
you have a say upwards of fifty to six percent
of those individuals doing what he suggested. In a thin
market like cryptocurrencies, you're going to move the.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Coins unintentionally, Cliff, crowds are some serious investments into Center Tech.
Cliff tried to do damage control.
Speaker 9 (11:49):
I apologize. I did not do my due diligence.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
He came out and made an apology. Sorry, guys, I
didn't mean to put Central Tech in there.
Speaker 9 (11:59):
My reports screw me over because I believed my data.
I was tired and as my screw up.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
The boys saw the momentum Cliff created. They didn't want
this attraction to slow anything down, so Sam Sharma took
matters into his own hands. He wanted to ensure that
nothing dimmed the spotlight Cliff just shined on the company.
After launching Center Tech's initial coin offer in late July
(12:25):
of twenty seventeen, Ray and Sam Sharma saw modest investment
steadily coming in, but nothing prepared them for what happened next.
A misprint by crypto guru Cliff High catapulted centri Tech
front and Center for the entire crypto community to see,
which meant one thing for Ray and Sam money. As
(12:45):
Cliff distanced himself from centri Tech, Sam realized that retraction
could hurt this newfound popularity, so Sam reached out.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
To Cliff Sam being Sam's like, hey, no, no, no,
I need to explain this to you guys. You know
I'll come on your show in now. I'll show you
that we are with your bots. We're saying we were.
Speaker 12 (13:04):
I want to first take the opportunity to bank you, Cliff,
for allowing us to come on your show.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
The interview was live.
Speaker 12 (13:11):
I want a first step for the record. I want
to tell all the viewers that we are one hundred
percent not a scam.
Speaker 9 (13:17):
That's mine. But your statements, your statements don't mean anything.
You stating you're not a scam in no way proves
you're not a scam.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Once the pleasantries were out of the way, Cliff gets
down to brass tacks.
Speaker 9 (13:30):
Who wrote the white paper.
Speaker 12 (13:32):
Our white paper was written by our Philippines freelancer.
Speaker 9 (13:36):
Okay, well you're gonna get sued. You don't attribute copyrights
and trademarks to any other organization whatsoever.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
As they get into their conversation, Cliff was poking at
their relationships. Centri Tech had been advertising Ray and Sam
had publicized relationships with banks, specifically Visa, MasterCard, and Bankar
throughout their white paper, not to mention they had each
company's logos on Centra's website. How did two kids with
no financial, banking or crypto experience pull this off? Cliff
(14:06):
was trying to find out, and Sam felt like he
had the answers.
Speaker 12 (14:09):
If you look at our terms and conditions, we definitely
reference to go to our website and.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
You got this middle age ball white guy. This guy
so much experience. I mean, the guy is smart.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Right.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
He was calling Sam's son, Look here, Son was cringe worthy.
Speaker 9 (14:29):
Man, who's the fellow that is going to protect your
ass and is in charge of security for your system?
Speaker 12 (14:36):
Well, we're going to hire action independent company to do
that with the funds that we.
Speaker 9 (14:39):
Raised, You're fucked.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
I think he was in some type of look like
a college dorm. That was another thing. I'm like, oh man,
you just you're raising like millions of dollars and you
look like you're in a college dorm.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Cliff question why the inexperienced Sam is the face of
censritech instead of their elusive CEO Michael Edwards.
Speaker 9 (14:59):
Why are you in that chair now? Instead of the
CEO here that never really shows up anywhere, Mike.
Speaker 12 (15:05):
Mike was honestly an investor who saw my vision and said,
you know what, I'm going to do this for you.
He gave me the opportunity to get where I am today.
Speaker 9 (15:13):
Okay, so so Mike doesn't do shit, then why is
he the CEO? Does he show up at the office
every day or is he just the money dude?
Speaker 12 (15:20):
No, to be honest, he's the money dude.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Cliff was one of the first to ask about the
money dude, the Harvard educated Michael Edwards. But he wouldn't
be the last.
Speaker 12 (15:32):
My most important thing, honestly, and to make it last
statement please, Cliff, is We're not a scam. That's That's
what I came here to clear up.
Speaker 9 (15:38):
You're not You're not a scam. You're just not very
good at what you're doing and you haven't really thought
about it.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Yeah, it was. It was pretty bad, man. It was
a bad interview, and it really exposed that Sam didn't
know what he was doing. He bit off more than
he could chew.
Speaker 13 (15:55):
It goes awful.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
That call was the first time I've ever seen soor
be scared while he was talking. Because this guy knew
every angle of how a debit card should work, and
how the bank contract should work, everything that our company
was doing wrong.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
He knew Cliff knew his shit, and he smelled blood
in the water. The crypto community they went wild. It
wasn't a good look. Crypto Blood immediately posted a ran
video from the front seat of his car, supporting a
flat brim Tiger's lid stogie in hand.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Today we are talking Cliff High. First, Sammy the Bull
or Sammy the used car salesman. Cliff High murdered this guy.
He straight slaughtered this guy. You know, I kind of
felt bad for the dude, but then again I didn't
because the guy was delusional, like just had no wherewithal
(16:49):
on how to execute on this business. In my reaction video,
I just said, you know, just because you have a
big sum of money, if you don't know how to
allocate and utilize those funds in the proper way, you're
throwing good money after bad. You were just going to
prolong the crash, right, It'll just be a slow motion
(17:10):
crash instead of a fast one.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
The buzz online wasn't good and it didn't end with
the interview. Centro was getting roasted on the forums. Investors
were running scared, including the investor we met earlier, Jacob.
Speaker 10 (17:25):
That interview was bad, was really really bad. Just watching
Sam try to defend himself in his bedroom, trying to
say that it's not a scam, don't worry, and watching
Cliff just decimate him, it's kind of embarrassing.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
People were like, oh shit, this guy doesn't know what
he's doing. I want my money back.
Speaker 10 (17:46):
As just a regular person sitting on the outside looking
at these two people have a conversation, it's hard to
tell what's fact in fiction.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
But scrolling through the comments section of that video, it
was apparent with the internet thought gems from the comments section,
this is what happens when a car salesman meets crypto.
Anyone who invests in this coin is insane. Who does
an interview with an unmade bed in the back. He
had me at Filipino Freelancer and I wouldn't give this
(18:15):
guy my grandmother's false teeth to hold. So Sam does
his own damage control and ends up making things worse.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
They tried to report Cliff to Google slash YouTube for
copyright violation for his video. That's what really got Cliff
going the Twitter fingers. I don't know if this is
worse than Meek Mill versus Drake on Twitter or what.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Man but complete idiot crypto Blood saved some of Cliff's
posts on Twitter, now known as x We asked him
to read some of Cliff's tweets around this time.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
He calls them Sam the Sham. That was the funniest.
Sam the Sham and CenTra complained to Google about their
logo appearing in the interview. They demanded, I do I
have email? Sam Sharma volunteered to do the video now
once it pulled from my sight, Sam Sharma and CenTra
can go take a step back and fuck their own face.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Sam back down with Cliff no longer an ally, he
had to turn to other influencers for support, but the
community didn't think too highly of Sam the Sham.
Speaker 4 (19:22):
He was very arrogant, right, It was delusions of grandeur.
I don't know from what, but definitely was very unaware
of his own lack of understanding of various topics. That
clip high covered.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Pat in hand tail between his legs. Sam needed to
make amends.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
Sam watched my reaction video. He reached out to me.
He's like, man, I'm sorry, I really effed up.
Speaker 7 (19:49):
Man.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
I was on Uncle Cliff's show and it just embarrassed myself.
And that's when our relationship started.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Crypto Blood saw another side of Sam, not the same
he saw on Cliff's show, a more human, approachable, authentic
Sam Sharma.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
He was a different person off camera after the interview,
very humble. I think he realized that he didn't know
as much as he thought he did as far as
how to execute on this plan. He came from a
space of vulnerability and openness, and that's where I began
to respect him a bit more.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Sam was realizing his old war tactics weren't going to work.
He had to be contrite, humble, a leader. They had
to answer the questions Cliff raised. They could have hired
a consultant to help them fix these issues, but through
that interview, Cliff gave them the blueprint.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
I think he went back and watched the video, he
saw the comments in the video, and then he kind
of took a step back, and at that point, I
think that's when things did change.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
And if things didn't change, Sam Sharma would be kicked
out of the crypto community as quickly as he was
ingratiated into it. Little did Sam know this media circus
was just what center Tech needed to take the company
to the next level. While Sam sowerby Sharma was in
(21:14):
full fledged damage control repairing his personal and professional image online,
his partner Ray didn't seem too concerned. After the dust
settled from that Cliff High interview.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
What's that saying, Oh, publicity's good publicity. That two million
from Cliff I kickstarted our whole thing.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
You heard that right, Cliff High's little mistake allowed centri
Tech to collect two million dollars. As bad as that
interview was, Cliff brought some serious attention to centri Tech.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Dumb luck, complete dumb luck that first couple million, and
if that never happens, Centrum may never be what it was.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
CenTra was ready to double down on this newfound spotlight.
Behind the scenes, Ray and Sam were solidifying other ways
to promote center Tech's New York Times journalist Nathaniel Popper,
how do you get.
Speaker 11 (22:05):
Attention for a new product. You can come up with
a great business. You can come up with a product
that people like. But in a lot of these cases,
there wasn't even a product to offer, and so people
pulled out all the stops and they went to all
the old familiar methods of selling things.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
These days, cryptocurrency is going mainstream.
Speaker 9 (22:26):
Fortune favors the break.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Stars like Matt Damon, Paris Hilton, Megan the Stallion all
pushing crypto and sponsorships. Hey hotties, let's talk about bitcoin.
Speaker 11 (22:37):
Obviously, the people who can get the most attention are
the celebrities. So unsurprisingly, these initial coin offerings, which were
operating in a sort of wild West without rules, without laws,
started going after celebrities and saying, if you tweet about
my initial coin offerings, I will offer you dollars one
(23:00):
hundred thousand dollars. A pretty wide array of people got
in on this action and made it clear that they
were willing to take money in order to promote these
point offerings, even if they had no idea what the
point offering was or how the coin offering worked.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Center wanted celebrity brand ambassadors to keep driving investments into
their company.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Were like, you know, how do we take this to
the next level.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Just a few months earlier, Rain Sam were ranting exotic
cars to some of the biggest athletes, musicians, and celebrities around.
That's a good place to start.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
We got in touch with Floyd Mayweather, and Floy Mayweather
does a commercial for us, and he does two Instagram posts, what's.
Speaker 14 (23:44):
Up is the one and only you may and Floyd
Money Mayweather got my central car, Bigcoin. I'm doing big thing,
spending some light money the new way things are doing.
Floyd Money Mayweather.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Weather has thirty million followers on Instagram. How the hell
did these guys land a heavyweight influencer like that?
Speaker 1 (24:06):
We paid them two hundred thousand cash and then we
paid him about eight hundred thousand and centric coins.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Well, that explains it.
Speaker 11 (24:12):
Floyd Mayweather. You know, his old nickname was Floyd Money Mayweather.
As a boxer, he started calling himself Floyd Crypto Mayweather.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
And that brings in five ten million right off the bat,
like so quickly, and we're like, you know, what, fuck it?
Like me and Sorbi are like into hip hop, and
you know, we wanted to be cool like these, like
the people that we looked up to. So we're like, oh,
let's get Dj Khaled, Big Cal fifty thousand he does
one or two Instagram posts and that brings in, like,
(24:42):
you know, a couple million.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
The money was flowing in.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
You can see the excitement and these slack channels.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
When it was all said and done, Ray and Sam
collected a lot of money.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
They collected thirty million dollars from the ICO. There were
headlines about it. I got them a lot of attention.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
DJ College as a working card in his hand. I
remember thinking at the time, Oh, wow, they have the
Central cards in the picture. I can't wait to get mine.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Nick Baal was another investor who liked what Center Tech
was doing.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
They're not small, you know, beat to your celebrities. They're
not some rapper that had a one hit wonder. They're
people that everybody knows. And the idea that they would
endorse these I was ninety nine percent invested, and I
think that just took that little bit of doubt away.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
With thirty million dollars collected from investors, their war chest
was established and the value of Center Tech wasn't the
only thing that grew. So did the community.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
We had probably about three hundred people in our slide channel,
and then it jumped up like crazy, probably about two
to three thousand within dates. It's tough to even read
all the stuff that's coming in because everybody's just fucking
trying to ask you questions.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
With the exposure came new skeptics. Cliff's questions about CenTra
were resurfacing. While Ray and Sam were able to avoid
the heat. New investors were now holding Cenru's feet to
the fire. How was this product going to work?
Speaker 1 (26:09):
How you know the fee setup would work on the cards,
and how is it possible that you're able to make
crypto transactions instant for the debit card to work.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
They needed help fielding all the investors' questions.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
That's why we brought in Farcas to help us go
through this on a daily basis and kind of clear
up any sort of FUD quote unquote, yeah, yeah, they
quote FUDD. So FUD stands for fear, uncertainty of doubt.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
As they say, more money, more problems, and Centri's problems
came in the form of FUD. Investor Jacob Rensel was
seeing all this take place from his laptop.
Speaker 10 (26:46):
It definitely started as little things. Somebody would bring something
up and then I would go and look at that
and be like, yeah, that is weird what's going on there?
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Each little thing could be the difference between someone sending
their money in or keeping their money out of CenTra.
And after a successful ico, Ray and Sam wanted all
the investors they could find. Farcas was on the front
lines trying to answer any questions that could create fud.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
You're trying to clear the fud all day long. That's
all you're doing is clearing the fud.
Speaker 10 (27:14):
While yes, there were people who were legitimately just trying
to spread fud, there were also individuals like myself asking
questions like, Hey, something not right here, Why is this happening?
Where did this go?
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Behind the scenes, Ray and Sam would make a decision
that would come back to haunt them.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Everybody's starting to ask us, like all these very serious
questions about bank contracts. One day, like we took off
all the bank contract the Visa master cards, and then
everybody's like, oh, where the fuck are the bank contracts.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Remember, Centra's main product was a debit card that customers
could use to spend their cryptocurrency at stores like McDonald's
or Walmart, and Center claimed that their cards were backed
by Visa and MasterCard. They literally had pictures of Centric
Cards with the Visa logo right in the just like
the credit cards in your wallet. I'm surprised the website
didn't say CenTra It's everywhere you want to be. But
(28:07):
when those logos came off the website, it caught investor
Jacob Rensel's attention.
Speaker 10 (28:12):
One are the big ones for me. Big red flag
was when there was no more mention of Bangcorp. There
was no more mention of Visa, there was no more
mention of MasterCard. All of those logos disappeared.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
And then once everybody asked these questions, we put it
back on. You know, like that was like our day
to day was just like just trying to like keep
everything afloat and not make everybody go crazy in our chat.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Jacob and the Cenra community were diligent on slack. Investors
were seeing questions that were concerning maybe CenTra wasn't what
they thought it was. One thing certainly was apparent. It
was becoming harder and harder to discertain fact from fiction.
I've always wondered why Ray and Sam were trying to
even answer these questions. They weren't over their heads. They
(28:56):
didn't know this business, remember, said himself.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
To own a tech company. You don't need to be
a technical guru. You're just incorporating yourself into this space
because you see there's value there.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
That's why they hired Michael. He worked in the banking industry.
He had the experience and wherewithal to weather these types
of storms. With this type of confusion and concern. Typically,
you'd expect the CEO to come out and reassure investors.
So where was their CEO? Michael Edwards? On the next
(29:29):
episode of Creating a Con.
Speaker 13 (29:33):
It's a business where you have to deliver and people
judge you on that.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
We'll meet their silent investor, the money dude, and hear
the extraordinary story about how Michael Edwards came to be
their CEO.
Speaker 13 (29:47):
Your reputation is vital. Are you someone who has a
record of doing things that can be trusted?
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Creating a Con is a production of Glass podcast Gusts,
a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.
If you would like to reach out to the Creating
a Con team, email us at Creating a Con at
gmail dot com. That's Creating a CEO n at gmail
dot com. We appreciate your support. One way to support
(30:18):
our show is by subscribing to our podcast on Apple Podcasts,
and don't forget to rate and review Creating a Con.
Five star reviews go a long way, a big thank
you to those who are listening. Also be sure to
check us out and follow us on Instagram at Glass Podcasts.
The show is hosted and produced by me Johnny be Good,
(30:39):
with executive producers Nancy Glass, Ben Fetterman, and Andrea Gunning.
Written and produced by Ben Fetterman and Todd Gans, additional
writing by Matt Delvecchio, Operations and production support by Christin Melchiori.
Additional production support Trey Morgan. Our iHeart team is Ali
(30:59):
Perry and Jessica Crimecheck. Sound editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio,
Consulting producer Nathaniel Popper. Creating a CON's theme composed by
Oliver Bains. Music library provided by Mive Music. Thank you
for subscribing to iHeart True Crime Plus exclusively on Apple.
We hope you enjoyed this ad free presentation of Creating
(31:22):
a Con the story of bigcom Continue binging the rest
of the series one hundred percent ad free, and stay
tuned for early access to bonus episodes and additional content
exclusively for subscribers. And for more podcasts from iHeart and
Glass Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Host
Jonny B. Good
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