Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
It's always been obvious that Thomas Francis Quinn had a gift.
ever since his early childhood days in Brooklyn when he would bring home straight-A report cards to his adoring working class parents and quote passages on ethics by Thomas Aquinas to his college buddies. Ethics. That's funny, because Tommy Quinn has always had an abusive relationship with ethics. Even as a kid, a childhood friend of his told the Wall Street Journal about a time when Tommy stole beer for a party by passing himself off as a delivery man at a supermarket.
and how another time Tommy had purchased hot dogs for the entire neighborhood by "flashing a $10 bill to the vendor," who didn't discover until too late that all Mr. Quinn had was a fragment of the bill. It was the 1940s. $10 could get you a lot back then, so too could a little charm, and back then charming Tommy Quinn's deceitful behavior was minimized or dismissed as nothing more than the devious antics of a child.
But in reality, that deceitful behavior was a sign of things to come. After passing the bar exam in 1962, Tommy Quinn became the president of a small brokerage firm named Thomas Williams and Lee, Inc. Within a year, that brokerage firm was promoting the stock of a company named Kent Industries, which claimed to own more than $2 million worth of land in Florida.
The Securities and Exchange Commission would later discover that no such assets existed. In fact, the SEC referred to Kent Industries' assets as "completely illusory." Four years later, Tommy Quinn, at just 28 years old, was banned for life from the securities business for his "flagrant fraudulent practices," and he was disbarred as a lawyer. Four years after that, in 1970, Tommy served six months in prison for his role in that scam.
In the 1980s, Tommy Quinn and his long-time partner Rochelle moved to a villa in France that overlooked Cannes. The view was spectacular, as were the waterfalls and gardens. It must have cost a fortune.
but the Quinns could afford it because Tommy was now running a boiler room telephone operation selling stock to foreign investors. This criminal organization was very well structured. They had an army chain of command. They knew at the beginning that each company would have a short period of life and that another would have to replace it. It was like a hydra. One head could be cut off and another would grow. Of course, the stock that Tommy Quinn's operation was aggressively selling to unsophisticated investors
turned out to be worthless. So in 1988, French authorities arrested Tommy along with 20 other people for defrauding thousands of investors in over 40 countries out of more than $500 million. According to Detective Chief Inspector Norman Good, Tommy Quinn was the ringleader, the quote "stocksman" who organized the company's and the market manipulation. And for those reasons, Tommy Quinn was sentenced to four years in a French prison.
When he was released in 1992, Tommy's record now featured two federal criminal convictions and three SEC injunctions. A federal judge referred to him as "an incorrigible recidivist" whose customary business activities "appeared to be devoted exclusively to securities fraud." In addition to his most recent stint in prison, Tommy Quinn was ordered to disgorge $26 million in illegal profits plus interest.
but authorities had a difficult time trying to collect. Throughout the 90s, Tommy used fake passports and numerous aliases to bounce around Europe. One retired SEC official described him as quote, "Maddeningly elusive." Even when they had pinned him down, he did not offer much. During one session with the SEC, Tommy reportedly insisted on answering questions by only blinking his eyes.
At another, an airplane pulling a banner flew by the offices where he was being deposed. The banner read, quote, Leave Tommy alone. By all accounts, at this stage of his life, 50-some-odd years old, that's all Thomas Francis Quinn wanted.
When Wall Street Journal's John M. Schwiller contacted Quinn in 1995, the career con artist told the reporter, quote, Tommy Quinn was a changed man.
These days, he preferred the horse track over Wall Street. In fact, Tommy and his wife owned a racehorse named Grace Swallow, who won the Irish Derby in 2004, along with a prize equivalent to $900,000. Grace Swallow wins the derby, hit by Grace Swallow, number five, trained by Dermot Weld, owned in partnership by Mrs. Rochelle Quinn.
A year later, Tommy Quinn was being accused of stealing over $60 million in what's known as a bust-out scheme. Basically, Mr. Quinn and his associates purchased large amounts of long-distance telephone time on credit from some of the UK's largest telecom companies. That time was then resold to the public without ever paying the supplier.
It sounds simple enough, but it was a complicated scheme. According to the Dallas Observer, it played out like the movies. Quote, Fake passports, private banks run by money launderers, loot divvied up and scattered across the globe, code names uttered over prepaid bat phones, recorded phone conversations, conspirators turned informants, and packages full of money passed at the valet stand and concierge desk at a downtown Dallas hotel.
Tommy Quinn profited heavily from the stolen service, and the evidence suggested that he tried to cover up his role in the scheme, even going so far as trying to pay a witness to leave the country to avoid being questioned. But it was all for naught. In 2005, a grand jury charged Tommy Quinn with 12 counts of conspiracy and fraud. The indictment was sealed because the feds thought if he knew about the charges, Quinn would go into hiding.
Which he did anyway, moving through countries that did not have extradition treaties with the United States. But in November 2009, 72-year-old Tommy Quinn made the mistake of coming home. He was arrested by federal agents at JFK Airport after stepping off a plane from Ireland. Yet, even behind bars, Tommy kept working. In January 2011, while in prison awaiting trial, federal officials alleged that Quinn was conducting illegal business over the phone.
An "SCC court filing" refers to Tommy Quinn's phone calls as "a veritable potpourri of code, colorful nicknames, cryptic references, and other devices that appear to be part of an illegal effort by Mr. Quinn to hide his assets." He would use names like "The Bulldog" or "The Ponytail" or "Bubble Eyes" to refer to people and places. Federal officials believe that Quinn was trying to unload his racehorse or sell one of his four properties that were spread across the globe.
On March 22, 2013, Thomas Francis Quinn was sentenced to 84 months in federal prison for his role in defrauding the British telecommunications companies out of more than $60 million. He was released from prison on May 13, 2016 at 83 years old.
In total, for all of his crimes, Tommy Quinn has spent less than 10 of those 83 years behind bars. He essentially traded a decade of his life for unlimited riches, which might be worth it considering how much time you spend in traffic. Although Tommy Quinn most certainly would have spent more time in prison if he had been charged with all of the crimes he had committed over the years, he does have connections to the mafia and organized crime after all.
Tommy Quinn also had a hand in one of the largest frauds in American history, for which he was never criminally charged. Back in the late 90s, when he was supposedly retired, Tommy Quinn had helped recruit European investors for an insurance fraud conducted by a man he knew as David Rossi.
Quinn was transferred $13 million for his troubles, but when his boss got cold feet and asked for the money back, Tommy called David Rossi on the phone and threatened him, quote, "'I'm going to come in with a baseball bat and bash your fucking head in, you little nerd.'" That little nerd, David Rossi, was actually the alias of a little nerd named Martin Frankel, a financial trader who turned fugitive after his $200 million fraud was exposed.
A stockbroker in Connecticut acquires small insurance companies and loots their assets to finance a mysterious and indulgent lifestyle on this episode of Swindled.
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In the summer of 1985, 30-year-old Martin Frankel walked into the Toledo, Ohio offices of Dominic & Dominic, a brokerage firm operated by husband and wife team John and Sonia Schulte.
Frankel told the Schultes he wanted to open a customer account with them. He was ready to invest. Martin Frankel had spent the past five years obsessing over the stock market. He spent every waking hour reading the Wall Street Journal and other business publications from cover to cover, keeping detailed notes on world events, tracking gains and losses, timing ins and outs, and smiling to himself when he predicted another winner.
Frankl's interest in the stock market developed in college, where he was studying ancient religions and philosophy. In fact, his latest obsession might be the reason he never earned a degree, nor ever held a real job. A college friend of Marty's described him as a jack-of-all-trades, master of none, and then, quote, he became a master of one, the stock market. After dropping out of school, Frankl moved back into his parents' house and transformed his childhood bedroom into a personal trading room.
The years passed by as he kept his nose buried in books. He was approaching 30 years old and he had never had a girlfriend, but only because he never wanted one. At least that's what he'd tell his mom when he would let her into his room to deliver his daily lunch. Martin Frankel was a nerd, and every sense of the phrase
A real nerd. You know, the kind that wears a blazer to class. They're usually extremely intelligent and a little socially and physically awkward with a complete disregard for personal hygiene. Martin Frankl embodied all of those traits. With a name like Marty Frankl, his fate was predetermined. His clothes were out of style and ill-fitting, as were his glasses. His hair was messy, his face was unshaven, and his personality was undeniably smug.
Yet, most people that have met Marty Frankel claim that there is something rather charming about the guy. It's no wonder that, at first, John and Sonia Schulte weren't quite sure what to make of their newest client. But over time, Martin Frankel won them over. At least he won over Sonia. Martin would stop by the Dominick & Dominica offices in that Toledo strip mall on a daily basis. He would sit with Sonia and discuss progressive investment theories and trends.
Frankl also shared with Sonja some insight about the foundation on which his trades were based. He's very neurotic and eccentric. And he's a man who's made very important decisions in his life based on astrology. Astrology. Apparently Martin Frankl chose which stocks to buy and sell based on the relative position of celestial bodies. It's the same method this hippie girl I know relied upon to name her dog.
Whatever works, I guess. It seemed to work for Marty Frankel, who is a Scorpio for those wondering. If he said it worked, who could question him? Martin was the genius. A savant. IQ of 194. A purported fact that Martin would find a way to share with everybody he met. One of the highest scores ever registered by a child, he would note.
and somehow, through conversations like those that would make anyone ask for the check, Sonia Schulte became so impressed with Martin Frankl in a year's time, so transfixed, that she convinced her husband John to hire him, to let Martin work for Dominic & Dominic as a stockbroker, let the genius learn the ropes and spread his wings. Everybody would get paid. "I told people what would happen, and it happened," Frankl would later say.
and after a while, some of them began to listen to me, and I am certain take some of my advice. I didn't do it for monetary gain. I did it with the aim of becoming a broker, and eventually having these people as clients. John Schulte relented and gave Martin Frankel a job, but he remained highly skeptical. From day one, John Schulte didn't trust the guy. The two of them were just so different. John was a buttoned-up, self-proclaimed, traditional family values conservative Republican.
Franco was a stargazing liberal Jew that didn't bother to iron his shirts. Not to mention all of the attention Franco had been giving to his wife. Martin and Sonia would be giggling at her desk while John Schulte, as red-faced as his tie and political leanings, observed from across the room.
That animosity between the two men reached its breaking point in just a matter of months. Franco wasn't adhering to the dress code. He was coming into work as late as 2 p.m. and staying until midnight. His office was disgusting. There was garbage piled on top of the new computers and equipment that Marty had purchased on the company's dime, for which he did not have permission. He had to look at his astrology charts to go to the bathroom, John Schulte told the Baltimore Sun.
To make matters worse, Martin Frankel wasn't even bringing money into the business. During his entire tenure at Dominik & Dominik, Frankel had only executed one trade, albeit a successful one. He gained $18,000 in one day, but the stress of pulling the trigger had almost killed him. It became clear that Martin Frankel suffered from a bit of performance anxiety.
When it came time to trade, Martin Frankel was as useless as a limp noodle. He talked a good game but could never rise to the occasion. Anyway, John Schulte had seen enough. Martin Frankel was fired from Dominic & Dominic after six unceremonious months. He had to stick around the office for an extra hour waiting for his dad to pick him up. As John Schulte watched his former employee leave the building, he had a feeling that he hadn't seen the last of Martin Frankel.
He seemed very knowledgeable and that's really what attracted me to him. In December 1986, former clients of Martin Frankel, namely Ted Bitter, the sole beneficiary of Frankel's only trade, received a letter in the mail from the eccentric stockbroker announcing the launch of his own venture, the Frankel Fund. A man named Douglas Maxwell, a stockbroker based in Nashville, would be Frankel's partner.
Part of the letter that contained the announcement read, quote,
Ted Bitter, a blue collar worker from Millbury, Ohio, had no idea what Martin Frankel was babbling on about in the letter. But he had been satisfied with Marty as his broker at Dominick and Dominick. Of course, he wished Frankel would trade more, but he didn't like questioning the broker's methods. Ted Bitter was convinced that Marty knew what he was doing. Bitter pulled his life savings, about $50,000, out of Schulte's hands and gave it to Martin Frankel to manage.
Franco found other clients by placing advertisements in the Yellow Pages. A retired Sears Roebuck salesman and his wife trusted Marty with their entire retirement fund. A former Exxon executive invested more than half a million dollars. The Franco Fund, now flush with cash, moved out of the Franco bedroom south to the Sunshine State. In 1987, Marty rented a house in Palm Beach, Florida owned by Queen Anne of Romania, who soon became a Franco Fund client herself.
Queen Anne invested $50,000 bringing the total amount of money managed by Frankel to about 1 million. Six weeks later in January 1988, the Frankel fund collapsed. Marty blamed his partner Douglas Maxwell for making lousy trades. But in reality, the fund collapsed because Marty's biggest client, the Exxon executive, pulled his investment without warning.
This caused Marty to have a severe panic attack. He even called 911 and told them he was dying. Marty Frankel knew he was screwed. He had been too afraid to make any trades. Not one dollar had been invested. The gains he promised on statements he sent out didn't really exist. He had been using his clients' investments as a personal piggy bank. So to cover the difference, funds that others had entrusted Marty to invest were used to repay the oil man.
What little funds remained were transferred to Franco's personal account before he moved back to Toledo. Marty delivered the bad news to Queen Anne via letter, which was heavy on the dramatics. Franco informed the Queen that a disaster had befallen his life. "As if I was a woman who was raped." He claimed that losing the money had shaken him to his roots because he had broken the sacred trust between client and stockbroker, for which he would regret until his dying day.
Franco also alerted Ted Bitter, his original client, that all of the money was gone. He was misleading us the entire time. So as our money was being depleted, we had no idea. Afterwards, some of Marty Franco's former clients, including Ted Bitter, sued the money manager for their lost investments, which caught the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Frankl's lawyers urged him to voluntarily approach the SEC to prove his innocence and to throw his partner under the bus. Instead, during the interviews, Marty, who was accompanied by his mother, buckled under the pressure. He confessed everything to the SEC. He told them how he had lied to investors about the fund's annual returns and how he had produced false documentation to hide it.
According to Ellen Joan Pollock, who wrote a book about Martin Frankel titled "The Pretender", Frankel's testimony was interrupted every 10 to 15 minutes by his mom knocking on the office door to bring him a glass of water or a brown paper bag lunch that she had packed for him. Ultimately, the cases were settled out of court with no criminal charges. He had dodged prison, but still Martin Frankel found himself in an undesirable position. He retreated back to his bedroom, depressed and angry.
All he ever wanted to do was trade stocks. If he couldn't do that, Marty wasn't sure if life was worth living anymore. Worried about their son, Marty's parents admitted him to a psychiatric hospital during the summer of 1988. His mother visited often and despite the lawsuit, even Marty's old friend and first client, Ted Bitter, stopped by. Even though his former stockbroker had stolen his life savings, Ted Bitter believed that deep down inside, Martin Franco was a good person.
Sonia Schulte believed that too. She visited Franco on more than one occasion while he was institutionalized, while Sonia's husband, John Schulte, waited outside in the car. Even with Marty Franco out of the picture, the Schultes' marriage had not improved. John Schulte had become more controlling and abusive. He would get liquored up and beat her. Sonia would go to work with bruises on her body, which she tried to cover with the clothes she had to sew for herself because John demanded she save money.
Sonia Schulte was walking on eggshells every day of her life. Her co-workers at Dominic & Dominic would often see her crying in her office. Sonia Schulte walked out on her husband for the last time in April 1989. John came home one day to find his wife and children missing. The divorce would be ugly. John reportedly left over 300 phone messages to his future ex-wife and sent postcards to both daughters every day for a full year, talking bad about their mother.
But Sonia had made up her mind. There was no turning back. Besides, she was in love with another man. A kinder, gentler man who was intelligent and caring. Sure, he might look weird and act weird and be weird, but she trusted him. Sonia Schulte was in love with Martin Frankel. A fact that did not sit well with John Schulte, who refused to go away. Until he was forced to.
Sonja alleged that John had sexually abused their daughters which spurred a criminal investigation. According to one court document, John Schulte was taking a bath with the children and encouraged them to "grab a washcloth which he had laid across his penis." John denied the allegations and was eventually exonerated, but only after spending every last dollar defending himself.
The judge who made the ruling told the courtroom, "I believe that this indictment was built on a house of cards, and I believe those cards crumbled. I cannot say that I am firmly convinced of the truth of these charges." Unbeknownst to the judge at the time, there was reason to be skeptical. In the middle of their divorce, Sonia Schulte accused John of assaulting her during a small tussle at her house. The red mark on her neck was proof enough. John Schulte spent a night in jail.
And years later, Martin Frankel told a friend that he taught Sonja how to leave that mark on herself. Less than a month after the child molestation charges were dropped, John Schulte did end up in jail. Thanks to a tip to the SEC from Sonja, John was arrested for using his client's money for personal expenses during the year the couple was separated. Money was tight at the time, John admitted. He needed the help, so he helped himself to $115,000 from six different clients without their knowledge.
John Schulte pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and two counts of income tax fraud, for which he served a little more than seven months in prison. Meanwhile, Martin Frankel and Sonia Schulte, the new romantic partners, had become business partners as well. The pair launched a mutual fund called the Creative Partners Fund in 1991, which targeted inexperienced investors around the Toledo area.
In less than three years, the fund had amassed more than $14 million. And almost immediately, Martin Frankel began dipping into that pool of money to bankroll his own life. Frankel purchased a Mercedes to drive. He paid personal assistance to handle every mundane chore. And he bought a house across the street from his parents for $70,000. Marty had dozens of televisions and phone lines installed to monitor the market, even though he remained too timid to buy or sell anything.
Franco also used his clients money to hire armed guards to patrol the property night and day. Sonia Schulte was living there part of the time. Franco wanted to protect her and himself from Sonia's angry ex-husband, but there was nothing Martin Franco could do to protect himself from himself. He was operating creative partners in the exact same illegal Ponzi scheme style way he had operated the Franco Fund. Marty knew it was only a matter of time before the SEC realized what he was doing.
In fact, Frankl would be banned from trading securities for life within months of launching the new fund because of the issues with his old fund. His days were numbered. He knew that sooner or later, probably sooner, that he would have to pay back all of Creative Partners' investors. Martin Frankl could not let history repeat itself by letting the fund collapse. He would probably spend the rest of his life in prison if that happened.
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When somebody can put together something of this magnitude and get this far with it before it's ever called anybody's attention, I think that's amazing. In October 1991, Martin Frankel made the first move in building his empire. Through an irrevocable trust, he purchased the Franklin American Life Insurance Company in Franklin, Tennessee for $3.7 million dollars.
At the time, the company which specialized in burial insurance was sitting on about $18 million in assets. One thing to note is that although Martin Frankel was now technically the owner of Franklin American, his name was nowhere to be found on any of the documentation generated for the sale, nor was Frankel's name on the trust that bought it. Instead, a man named John Hackney, also based in Franklin, Tennessee, would serve as the president, chairman, and face of the company.
Martin Frankel had met John Hackney over the phone a few months earlier when trying to buy a bank. Hackney worked for that bank and had been tasked with closing the deal. Frankel changed his mind and never sent the money but the two stayed in contact. Even though they had never met in person, Frankel could sense that Hackney was desperate for success. Before the ink had even dried on the purchase contract, Martin Frankel instructed John Hackney to send the $18 million of Franklin American assets to a different bank account.
Franco claimed he would invest those assets in order to generate a profit, like most insurance companies do. But that's not what Marty Franco did. Instead, he created a spider web of wire transfers, sending money to and fro, in hopes of creating confusion for anyone who might try to make sense of what was cooking in his books. Franco also used the insurance reserves to close the Creative Partners Fund and pay back all of its original investors, who were more than satisfied with their healthy gains.
The SEC would never know that Creative Partners had existed, which is exactly what Martin Frankel wanted. But Marty also knew that he couldn't keep the SEC or the FBI off his back forever. He knew that eventually he would have to pay back the insurance assets that he had used to pay back Creative Partners. Eventually those pre-need burial clients wouldn't be pre-need anymore.
But Martin Franco wasn't worried. He knew exactly how to make his insurance company whole again. He would just buy another insurance company and raid its reserves. Martin had already proved to himself how easy that was to do. And to pay that second company back, he would buy a third, and then a fourth. Why not keep returning to that well until the luck runs out? He was very, very careful with every step that he had taken in this conspiracy to build this fraud. He was good.
Martin Frankl ordered John Hackney to go shopping. In a few short years, Frankl's trust owned eight insurance companies in six different southern states. He carefully calculated the timing of each acquisition using the moon and stars as his guide. The insurance companies were purchased with funds raised by a network of organized criminals, lawyers, and con artists. People like Tom Corbally, Robert S. Strauss, and Tommy Quinn.
people who seemed to know everybody who was anybody in the world of fraud. Yet none of them had ever met Martin Frankel nor even knew his real name, which was all by design. Now with hundreds of millions of dollars in freshly looted insurance assets at his disposal, Martin Frankel decided to upgrade his life. He moved out of the modest house in Toledo to a 3.1 million dollar mansion on Lake Avenue in Greenwich, Connecticut, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the country.
Frankl outfitted his new five-bed, eight-bathroom residence with a sprawling computer network, personal chefs, and enough security equipment and personnel to qualify as a maximum security prison. The bedrooms and common areas were transformed into workspaces. Every door had an electronic lock. Marty Frankl ran a tight ship, but his personal life was becoming as complicated as his business affairs.
Although he was officially engaged to Sonia Schulte, who lived at the new house with their kids, Martin was yearning for something else, something more, something different, and he was pretty sure he found it in the form of sadomasochism. Martin Frankel fantasized about dominating his partner. Whips, chains, ball gags, anything he says goes. The power was intoxicating, or maybe he had become desensitized from the rush of ripping off the world.
Whatever the case may be, Frankl was ready to dip a toe in. He placed classified ads in the Village Voice and on fetish websites that described exactly what he was looking for. One of those ads read: "I seek a woman who wants to give up complete control over her mind, will, and body. A woman who wants to be totally owned and controlled by her master. I seek a woman who will do anything to please her master.
I seek a woman who will help her master be sexually satisfied in any way he desires. I seek a woman who wants to serve a truly kinky, twisted, perverted master. A woman who views her master's sexual satisfaction as her highest goal in life. I am very, very rich and can make all of my and your dreams come true. Within months, there were at least 15 women living in Marty Frankel's mansion.
Sonja Schulte tried to understand. She even joined Marty in bed with one of his subs, but it must have not been her thing. Sonja packed her belongings and moved to North Carolina almost immediately, leaving Marty Frankl to his torturous devices.
That house was no place to raise children. Sonia Schulte did continue her professional relationship with Martin Frankel, though. On a regular basis, she would fly into Connecticut on Marty's private jet to enter phony information about trades that never happened, and then she would fly out. Marty paid her well, probably because she knew that his whole operation was a charade, and he trusted her.
With Sonya out of the house, the Frankel residents morphed into one of those bad reality TV game shows. This time it was 15 women competing for the attention of one very eccentric man, with unlimited amounts of cash and prizes up for grabs. Combined with the kinds of damaged personalities that it takes to answer a back page ad in the first place, there was a storm brewing, a sexual storm, and Marty Frankel was the thunder and the lightning.
He enjoyed the constant battles between the girls, all of the jealousy and sabotages and subtle stabs in the back. Although he reportedly did draw the line at the women throwing soiled tampons at one another. Marty is kind of a germaphobe. But the drama was only half the fun. The other half happened in Marty's bedroom, depending on who you ask. The experiments grew more bold and the girls more petite by the day.
At one time, there had even been a plan in place for some of the harem to kidnap a 19-year-old girl from a Phish concert to serve as Marty's sex slave. The plan was probably abandoned when they realized that 19-year-old girls do not listen to Phish. But even more disturbing than that, a woman named Karen Timmons paid $40,000 for a surrogate to carry a baby made from donor eggs and sperm that she had obtained.
Marty had confessed to some of the girls that sometimes he fantasized about having sex with children. So Karen planned to win Marty over by presenting him with his very own baby to use how he pleased. That baby, a girl, was presented to Martin Frankl in early 1998 and quite frankly he was conflicted. Initially he wanted nothing to do with the thing. He was disgusted by his own desires.
But on the other hand, according to his astrological charts, his future sex life with the child would be quote, "wonderful. What's a sick boy to do?" Thankfully, Frankl decided against ruining a child's life for his own sexual gratification. He told Karen to return the baby despite Karen's repeated attempts to convince him otherwise. In the end, Karen Timmons kept the baby for herself. Marty never had a relationship with it, but reportedly he did chip in financially.
In the off hours, when his flock wasn't busy plotting a kidnapping or breeding child sex slaves, Franco kept them occupied with bullshit jobs. Everything from answering phones to alphabetizing magazines. The professional facade for them to earn their keep. The more adept among the women were given more important roles such as personal assistant or office manager, while the others waited for a chance to prove themselves. Because there was definitely a hierarchy among the Franco women.
Marty kept his favorites close and let them live in the main house with him. The non-essentials stayed in a separate mansion that Marty rented for them down the street. Most of the girls had nowhere else to go. Frances Burge was one of those girls. She was 22 years old in the summer of 1996 when she responded to one of Martin Frankel's classified ads. Marty sent a limousine to pick Frances up from Long Island to bring her back to his mansion for a romantic dinner.
That night, Frances learned that Marty was a multi-millionaire independent investor. And Marty learned that Frances had lived a hard life. When her parents separated, Frances had lived in a homeless shelter with her mother. By age 16, she was pregnant with a baby that she had to give up for adoption. Frances Burge told Marty that she had struggled with severe depression ever since. She had even been hospitalized for it. Frances wanted a new life.
Living at her dad's house and working at Blockbuster like she was currently doing just seemed empty. Frances knew that she could make something of herself. She was willing to learn anything. She just needed the opportunity. And Marty Frankel was more than happy to provide that opportunity. But there were certain requirements that Frances needed to fulfill. After dinner, Marty told Frances to stand up and take off her clothes. When she complied, the disappointment on Marty's face was palpable.
Francis was a bit overweight, not really Marty's type. He wasn't very sexually attracted to her, which was unfortunate for everybody involved because Francis wanted to have sex with him. So Marty decided to let Francis hang around. Miss Burge moved into the second mansion and began doing clerical work and running errands for her new boss. Francis was disappointed that she couldn't be Marty's lover, but she remained determined to catch his eye.
Frances began teaching herself about the stock market. God knows there were plenty of books and magazines scattered about Marty's house to streamline that endeavor. And Frances began dressing differently. She was styling her hair and wearing makeup, all things Frances Burge had never done before. People hardly recognized her when she would pay a visit to her hometown.
Frances was also studying sadomasochism in preparation for the day when she would finally land a foot in the door to Marty Frankel's bedroom and whatever contraptions were currently floating his boat. But that day never came, and it devastated Frances Burge. On August 8th, 1997, an office worker found Frances hanging by a noose from the rafters beneath the elevated deck behind the house.
The personal chef on duty tried to administer CPR, but Frances' tongue was hanging out of her mouth. Frances Burge was pronounced dead at the scene. Two days later, Frances' parents arrived in Greenwich to collect their daughter's belongings. There were boxes of sex toys, ropes, and pornographic videotapes, but there was also a completed application to Mercy College and Dobbs Ferry, evidence that Frances was looking to make another change.
She had only worked and lived with Frankel for a year, but obviously she had not found what she was looking for. "My daughter was young. She made some foolish mistakes," Frances' mother told the New York Times. "She attracted the wrong men. She wanted to be wanted. It makes me very sad for the lonely girl. She was looking to better herself." Martin Frankel's staff prepared and served a buffet-style meal for Frances' parents while they were in Greenwich, but Martin Frankel himself never showed his face.
Karen Timmons, the office manager, explained to the Burgess, quote, However, Martin Frankel was able to make time to be interviewed by the Greenwich police who were investigating Francis Burgess' suicide. In the interview, Frankel shed some light on his arrangement with the women living in his house. He told detectives,
Marty also appeared exasperated with his current situation. He lamented to investigators that his attempts at building the perfect harem had fallen short of his expectations. Marty banged his fist on the table, whining about how he had taken out all of these classified ads and everything.
But soon enough, Marty Frankel would have more important things to worry about, and not just from his Greenwich neighbors who were annoyed with the constant activity at Frankel Manor. George Dale, the state of Mississippi's insurance commissioner, was demanding a meeting with the mysterious businessman. Dale's office had sent a list of questions to Martin Frankel about the nature of his insurance business and investment activities. Marty responded by the due date but provided unsatisfactory and inconsistent answers.
George Dell wanted to meet with Martin Frankel in person, and there was no way out of it. Or was there? Investors called him the Hugh Hefner of high finance and trusted him with millions. But now the FBI says Martin Frankel is nothing more than a world-class con artist.
Martin Frankel knew that this day was coming. A Ponzi scheme funded by insurance companies instead of individual people was tough to maintain. State regulators were pounding on his door trying to verify assets. That's why at the last minute, Marty tried to create an additional layer of protection between himself and the government. He thought he would be safe from prying eyes if he hid behind the impenetrable veil of religion.
So Marty Frankel, an atheistic Jewish man, founded a Catholic charity. The charity was named the St. Francis of Assisi Foundation to serve and help the poor and alleviate suffering. Frankel would use St. Francis and the credibility of the Catholic Church to buy even more insurance companies, bigger and better ones, and he would find a man of God to serve as the face. Ultimately what I believe now he was trying to get was
Monsignor Emilio Collagiovanni had distant ties to the Vatican. More distant than Franco had preferred, but at the moment it was the best priest he could find. More importantly, he was the only one taking the bait.
Kolodziej Owani signed a sworn statement indicating that the Catholic Church supported St. Francis of Assisi's. And for his trouble, Frankel promised Kolodziej Owani $5 million for his own charity. Finally, by late 1999, after stalling for as long as he could, Marty Frankel was ready to meet with the Mississippi insurance regulators. Or at least he was ready until he touched down in Jackson, Mississippi. Frankel was reportedly too afraid to get off his private plane
So John Hackney, Kalaji O'Vanney, and other members of Marty's entourage attended the meeting without him. And it did not go well. The state of Mississippi did not believe the Catholic charity story, nor could anyone on Franco's team convincingly sell it. So Commissioner George Dale signed an executive order to take over the Franco-owned insurance companies in Mississippi. As a result, every dollar his company spent in Mississippi would now require approval from the state.
Mississippi delivered a death blow to Martin Frankel's entire operation. Other states were preparing to do the same. This ruling would just open the door to more scrutiny. Frankel's companies would start falling like dominoes until there was nowhere else to hide. His time was up. Martin Frankel had to escape. How does an unlicensed securities broker bilk insurance companies out of hundreds of millions of dollars? That's what the FBI would like to ask Marty Frankel, if they could find him.
On May 6th, 1999, less than 10 days after the meeting with the state of Mississippi, Marty Frankl traveled to Italy. He brought with him $16 million worth of gold coins, $10 million in diamonds, $500,000 cash, two of his women, and a collection of phony passports. Frankl alerted the rest of his girls that he wasn't coming back. He instructed them to rummage through his house and to shred every piece of paper they could find.
A few of those women followed their master's orders like any loyal sub would do, while others began looting the residence of everything valuable. Soon, the Shred crew grew impatient with the insurmountable task, so they piled stacks of documents into two separate fireplaces and set them ablaze. Much more efficient. However, as soon as the women's attention was focused elsewhere, a recliner in the living room went up in flames.
Luckily, there was a small extinguisher nearby, which they used to smother the undisciplined fire. But the girls' problems were just beginning. The smoke detector had triggered, which had alerted the home security company, who then followed up with a phone call to the house to make sure everything was okay. "Everything's fine," one of the girls told the alarm company when she answered the phone. "That's great. Happy to hear it," the alarm company responded. "For security reasons, could you please provide the residents' passcode?"
Oh shit. Suddenly, the call disconnected. So the security company dispatched firefighters and police to the residence. When they arrived, nobody was home. But whoever had been there recently had left in a hurry. There were still fires burning in the fireplaces. In the kitchen, investigators found half-eaten dinners and an oven that had been left on. There was also a filing cabinet that had been tipped over and ignited. The half-burned papers looked like some kind of financial documents.
the bedrooms offered additional insights. In addition to the boxes of condoms and a brochure about herpes treatment, on a desk police found a handwritten two-item to-do list. It read: Number one: Launder money. Number two: Get money to Israel, get back in. Authorities also seized what appeared to be personalized astrological charts that included a list of questions such as: Will I go to prison? And Should I leave?
A warrant for Martin Frankel's arrest was issued 10 days later, on May 16th, 1999. The FBI affidavit described how he stole the reserves from the insurance companies he had purchased. "Frankel systematically drained these assets through various financial accounts and transferred them into accounts in and outside the country under his control, though at the time authorities were still not certain just how much money Frankel had stolen. The insurance companies were worth hundreds of millions of dollars on their own.
but there was also saint francis of assisi's franco's catholic charity which according to documents uncovered during the investigation could be worth as much as two billion dollars he is suspected of embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars from insurance companies say in the hundreds of millions of dollars 200 million dollars at least
200 million dollars. 220 million dollars. 250 million dollars from insurance companies. Between 400 and 500 million dollars. Hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of dollars. It may go down in history as the greatest scam of all. Financier Martin Frankel, who may have committed the biggest fraud
More importantly, authorities could not find Martin Frankel. He had been on the move for weeks and remained one step ahead of law enforcement, courtesy of dumb luck and botched police work.
but thanks to tips from the Franco women who had returned to the States after originally accompanying him on his journey. Investigators thought they finally had Martin Franco cornered in Rome, but when they swooped in, Marty and his new traveling partner had already left for Germany. By then, he had been joined by a different woman named Cynthia Allen, a one-time cast-off who was finally getting her time to shine. It's nice to feel wanted, but the longer the evasion continued, the harder it became.
Authorities were sniffing out Marty's secret bank accounts and shutting them down. He could feel the walls closing in. Truthfully, Marty Frankl was surprised the hunt had lasted this long. It's not like he had very much time to plan. The pressure was getting to Martin Frankl. The prospect of spending decades in prison was driving him mad. Cynthia Allen recalls being awakened in the middle of the night to the sound of Marty screaming. She looked over and he was dripping with sweat. Marty told her that he had heard people calling his name.
He was so scared and it was so pathetic to watch, Cynthia later recalled to the Deseret News. Our lives were hell, which probably explains why Cynthia Allen eventually cooperated with the FBI. In exchange for immunity, she shared with authorities exactly where the fugitive was staying.
and on September 4th, 1999, police in Hamburg, Germany entered a room at Hotel Prim with their guns drawn to find Marty Frankel and Cynthia Allen sitting on the bed watching Patch Adams starring Robin Williams. Upon entry of the law enforcement officials, Frankel admitted his identity and stated that, You got me.
The search for missing money manager Martin Frankel spanned four months and two continents. But tonight he's in police custody in Germany. Frankel is accused of embezzling millions to bankroll his lavish lifestyle. German authorities charged Martin Frankel with counts related to using a fake passport and not declaring and paying taxes on the $5 million worth of diamonds he had smuggled in. He was sentenced to three years in a German prison after pleading guilty to those crimes.
But the US was anxiously waiting to extradite Frankl for his giant swindle back home. But Martin Frankl did not want to go home for numerous reasons. For one, even though he couldn't speak the language, the German prisons weren't so bad. In fact, Marty had become kind of a celebrity there. The other inmates referred to him as Herr Wirtschaft, which translates to Mr. Economy. And for two, Frankl considered the United States prison system inhumane.
Not only were the facilities concerning, but so were the heavy sentences that were handed out for non-violent crimes. If he were extradited, Martin Frankl fully expected to receive as many as 30 years in prison, virtually a life sentence. He argued that by sending him back to the United States, Germany would be sending him to his death, which, he argued, the German constitution explicitly prohibits.
Well, the main issue is the issue of human rights. In America, you can send someone to prison for the rest of their life and you can have capital punishment and kill someone. But in Germany, you can't do that. It's against the German constitution to put someone in jail for the rest of their life. And it's against the German constitution to kill someone. So that's the important part. Obviously, I'd rather stay in Germany.
But, Mr. Frankel did not get his wish. Germany agreed to send him back to the States in December 2000. When Frankel heard the news, the press in Germany reported that he had attempted a pathetic escape. Marty and a fellow inmate were caught trying to saw through his cell window bars with a small wire and full view of surveillance cameras. After 18 months in a Hamburg jail, Marty Frankel was extradited to the United States in March 2001.
Brian Ross for ABC News' 2020 program interviewed Martin Frankel behind bars before he was sentenced. He never denied the charges against him but rather argued for leniency on the basis that his crimes were non-violent. When asked if there was anything he wished he could change, Martin Frankel replied, "I wish that I didn't have this incredible ability to predict things in the markets because I never would have gotten into this position."
and Franco added that the only reason he committed these massive frauds was to help people. With his Catholic charity, Franco claimed it was never his goal to get rich. His goal was to end world hunger. "Probably the main reason that I'm here is that I love people too much.
Also, in the interview, when Brian Ross asked Martin Franco if he thought of himself as a genius, Franco laughed and said, "I am not a financial genius. If a financial genius would end up in here, then they're not a genius by definition." In May 2002, Martin Franco pleaded guilty to 20 counts of wire fraud and single counts of securities fraud, racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, and forfeiture.
Frankl also owed $208 million in restitution, a million short of the $209 million it was determined that he had stolen. The $2 billion said to belong to Frankl's Catholic charity was determined to have never existed.
Frankl's guilty plea is part of two agreements made with the government. For pleading guilty to 20 counts of wire fraud, security fraud, racketeering and racketeering conspiracy, the government will ask the judge for a reduction in Frankl's sentence. The statutory maximum to what Frankl pled guilty to today is 150 years in prison. His attorney says he hopes that will be substantially reduced.
On December 11th, 2004, Martin Frenkel was sentenced to 16 years and 8 months in federal prison.
15 of Franco's associates, including John Hackney, Sonia Schulte, and Monsignor Emilio Colagiovanni, had pleaded guilty to various fraud-related charges as well. Hackney and Schulte were sentenced to four years in prison each. Colagiovanni was fined $15,000 and banned from the United States. In time, almost all of the insurance companies that Martin Franco looted have been repaid, mostly through auctions of Franco's assets.
Insurance companies in Mississippi reportedly suffered the greatest loss, only recovering $100 million of the $189 million that was missing. At the time, Martin Frankel's scheme was one of the largest of its kind, until a few short years later when Bernie Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme trumped it by billions of dollars. Poor Marty Frankel didn't even have a chance to brag about his high score, but surely he had realized by now from his study of astrology that he was a predestined loser.
and that no amount of money or cars or nipple clamps was going to change that story of his life.
Insurance winneler and former international fugitive Martin Frankel will now spend the next six months in a residential program for ex-cons in Hartford. Frankel was sentenced to 17 years back in 2004 for plotting to cheat insurance companies out of $200 million. He used that money to pay for a luxurious lifestyle, including cars, jewelry, and a mansion in Greenwich. In August 2015, Martin Frankel was released about five years early from prison into a halfway house.
Within days, he was sent back to prison for breaking the rules and displaying a quote "generally bad attitude." Frankel was given another chance at residential living in October 2015. By December of that year, he was back in jail for another six months for violating the terms of his release. Marty Frankel had been caught visiting online dating websites. He had lost interest in the stock market years ago in prison, but apparently his quest for the perfect lover continues.
Martin Frankel, at 62 years old, was released from custody in October 2016. Perfect timing for Scorpio. Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen. With original music by Trevor Howard, aka Deformer, aka Mr. Economy.
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