cover of episode The Right Choice

The Right Choice

Publish Date: 2024/6/24
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Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm John Walczak, host of the new podcast Missing in Arizona. And I'm Robert Fisher, one of the most wanted men in the world. We cloned his voice using AI.

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Previously on Number One Dad. This is New 12 Long Island.

After dozens of buyers claimed they were cheated, the state attorney general's office filed suit yesterday against Veeder Sales, Inc. I'm wondering, does he live in our house still? I'm not sure where he is now, but I can say that he had the house when I last spoke with him. Do you have his phone number? I deleted his cell phone number, but the old house phone was working when we last spoke.

It is March 9th, 2022, and I am going to call my house phone. Hello, we are not available now. Please leave your name and phone number after the beep. We will return your call. Hi, Dad, it's Gary. I am, uh, I know it's been a long time, but I am calling you because I've been thinking a lot about, um... Memory full. Okay. Oh, boy. I don't know what that means.

Apparently, the message I was just about to leave my dad, I guess it's full. So, well, I have no idea what is going on. I got to figure something out here. This is Number One Dad.

I just called my dad. What? Yeah. Did you talk to him? No, I was leaving a message and it got cut off. I'm like halfway through the message and then it just like just dropped the call. So I have no idea if he got it at all. What are you going to do? I don't know. I feel like... That's not good.

I know. I feel like I... do I call back? I don't know. I don't know if he'll call back. I mean, I think you just have to wait at this point. I don't know. Wait and see. Maybe he'll call you back. I don't know. I don't even know if it went through. It was just like all that picked up was an automated message. Hey, buddy. Yeah. I don't know. While waiting to see if my dad calls me back, I did some more digging on the cons he pulled over the years.

As I said in a previous episode, court records show he was a defendant or plaintiff in 23 court cases since 1984. But the biggest case he was ever involved in was when my father was sued by AT&T. You have reached the United States District Court in the Eastern District of New York for the clerk's office. Press 1.

Thank you for calling the Eastern District. Hi, I was wondering if I could get case files for something that happened back in like the 90s. I've never done this before, but it's a public case. And I was wondering how I could like go about finding this information. Before I transfer you over, you said this is dating back 90s, correct? Correct. 1994 through like 1995. Okay.

Brooklyn Federal Courthouse. So my father was involved in a case in the early 90s, and I'm just trying to get information on that case that he was involved in. Good morning, federal court. Hi, I'm looking to pick up docs for a court case and transcription for a case that was back in the 90s, and I was told to contact your number. What is the title of the matter? The title, Vitor v. AT&T. Okay, very good. These are all documents that...

Do you know how long this process takes?

As soon as we receive the letter, we'll get the information to you. It's just a matter of looking it up in our files that we maintain here so we can turn it around in a day. And then the court can make copies for you. It would be 50 cents per page. You would come to the U.S. federal courthouse in central Iceland. We're just off of exit 43A of the Southern State Parkway.

In the early 90s, my father owned and operated a small private payphone company called Payphone Plus. He'd install payphones in various businesses across Long Island, New York City, and New Jersey. But being my father, he was less than truthful with how he represented himself. From what I know, he'd tell people he was an employee for AT&T, which was the biggest payphone provider back then. Well, AT&T got wind of what he was doing and went after him in court to shut him down.

Before I headed out to Long Island to pick up the court files, I decided to connect with a few people who worked with my father back then to find out what exactly happened. Your dad's an interesting person, and there are times I certainly miss that we're not in touch.

He was a great cousin growing up. He had personality. He was funny. He would get things done. He was considerate at times. But there frequently seemed to be a motive behind it.

I actually got into the business because of your dad. Okay, this is a good example of where your dad was looking out for me. Well, there were some enterprising people who decided they wanted to be independent payphone providers. Payphone being...

something from our ancient history, a publicly used terminal on the streets where you would walk up and I remember my earliest days, it was 10 cents and then became a quarter and you would make your call from there. So it was primarily a way to stay in touch

for business people on the road. And it was pre-cell phone days for the most part. So he had gotten into the payphone business and told me about it. Your dad was operating his company up in New York and I was operating my company in the DC metro area.

I remember him having payphones. I mean, his coverage was substantial. He had most Toys R Uses. He had pizza parlors. He had Bagel Boss, which is a huge bagel chain on Long Island. He'd have payphones in bars. He'd have strip clubs, gyms. I mean, you know, anywhere, anything that was public that had a high volume of people. I'm surprised he didn't put up phones in yours and your sister's rooms growing up because there's a chance to make something per call. Right.

So payphones became an attractive business for those willing to learn a bit of technology, a little bit of construction, electrical, software, and create a service team to go out, maintain phones, and collect the money, count it, and deposit it in a bank. How do you get approval to put a payphone in a restaurant, a bar, or just a public area?

Okay, this is the early days of the pay phones. I say, look, I can provide you quicker service, better service for your customers. Plus, I'll give you a percentage of my revenue and you let me own and operate my phones in your premises. So that would have been the pitch that he or I or almost anybody would have made.

What were some of the ways you recall how he ran his business? So he learned the technology first, and he used phones, equipment, and boards that were manufactured by AT&T.

AT&T was the brand name in communication. I mean, even to this day, AT&T still has one of the largest networks of cell phone coverage. Every day, over 30 million AT&T calls go through on the first try. Thanks to a remarkably intelligent network that forecasts traffic, anticipates tie-ups, and determines the quickest way around them. All in less time than it takes to dial. AT&T, the right choice.

He liked having the brand on there. And I remember once seeing a business card of his that had AT&T on it. And I don't remember, honestly, if it had Payphone Plus or not. So I think at some level, there's a lot of

there might have been the thought on the part of people who were working with him that he was the phone company. Do you ever say anything to him about that? The fact that he has a business card for a company that he clearly doesn't work for? Having never been on a sales call with him, I can't say that he ever told a client or a prospective customer, hey, I am AT&T, but I do remember saying to him,

When I call your number, that chime comes up as if it's AT&T. Are you working for AT&T now? And he would laugh it off. So I was under the impression that being confused with the big brand in terms of providing that phone service to customers was of interest to him. I said, sooner or later, aren't they going to come after you? This is a property of theirs, that brand, that logo.

My sister Jamie and I would often tag along with my father while he serviced his payphones. Some of the locations he would take me to and, you know, bring my daughter to work. And he'd have me wearing like this shirt that said AT&T and it had the logo on it. Not knowing that you can't do that. You can't just use a company's logo.

Well, you didn't know that. He knew that. Yeah. He definitely knew that he couldn't do that. And these places weren't small time places. Like he had pay phones and Costco, which was a huge account, but they believe that they were working with AT&T. That's right. He's scamming these big companies that are like signing off on these contracts. Now the contracts misrepresent him as if they're working with AT&T and they were never working with AT&T.

When my sister and I would be on the job with my dad, it wasn't your normal experience of going to work with your parent. He'd give me gum. So, you know, here you're a kid, you're getting gum, like awesome. Then he stops the car and he says, oh, you see that payphone over there? The gum I just gave you, I want you to take that gum and stick it in the coin slot. This wasn't his payphone. He would go to the nearest payphones and

surrounding his payphone and jam them up or have me jam them up. Right. I did the exact same thing with him. He'd cut the wire. He'd have pliers and he'd cut the wire with it. You always wonder, people always wonder back in the day when payphones existed and you'd go to grab a payphone and the wire is cut. That was probably Manny. Exactly. Exactly.

He would say that his payphones were getting screwed up. So that's why he was doing that. They were doing it to his, which I do not believe. But he had that, those coins that were called slugs. I think he named them that. It looked like it was a quarter, but it was more like rigid and would get stuck in a coin slot. So I think that he like kind of shaped these slugs. And then so that was another way to jam it up outside of gum as well.

I remember he was breaking the headsets too with a hammer and then we would just drive off. Yeah, he would stop at nothing to jam up his competition. Literally. Yeah, exactly. I asked Mason if he was aware of any malicious or even illegal stuff that went on in the payphone business.

I mentioned that we would interact, we'd communicate with the phone because it was a computer. And that meant there was a board inside of our phone boxes. Well, those boards were frequently worth more than the money that was accumulating in the box. And there were people who devised ways to break through the box quickly. If they could take the money, fine, but they were really after the board because they could sell those boards on a secondary market

for a fraction of their original price, which was about $800 to $1,000. So that was big-time money then. You could then resell that board to another payphone provider who is very happy to buy this used board that fell off of the truck. That was the thing. My dad, he wouldn't even go just for the computer. He would take the entire phone. He'd grab a drill...

and take it right off the wall while I'd be in the car. I was essentially a lookout, and he would tell me to honk if I saw anyone coming. That does not surprise me, but I can't say that he's done that. I don't know that. What caused you to end the relationship with my father? It was a sad decision. I mentioned that it was over some business. I wanted to know more, but Mason said he preferred not to get into the details of their falling out.

I've always been curious about what my father was thinking when he'd rip people off. Did he weigh the pros and cons of every scheme? Mason shared his thoughts on how my father operated. Your dad always intrigued me because it always seemed to me that every one of us, when we make a decision, we weigh the rewards and the risk. We don't want to fail. We don't want to be embarrassed. We don't want to be punished. And we certainly don't want anything that could potentially lead to legal action.

Your dad, however, stretched boundaries. And I think he got a great emotional payback when he succeeded doing these things. I mean, he should have gone into politics, frankly, with that type of mindset. It would have been ideal for him. I am about to get off the exit here on the Long Island Expressway. I am heading to the federal courthouse to get the AT&T documents.

I'm hoping that there's a good amount of information in there. Shed some light on what actually happened. It's been five days since I called my dad and I still have not heard back from him. So he maybe didn't get the message, maybe he did get it and doesn't want to talk to me or

That's not even his number. He doesn't live at the house anymore. So these are the things that are going through my head right now. And I am here. Hi. How are you? To the clerk's office. Oh, okay. Um, yeah.

I am now leaving the federal courthouse. I wasn't able to record anything. They took all my recording equipment. I didn't think that they would do that, but yeah, they took it, but I got the documents. So I am, yeah, I gotta go through all this stuff.

Hey, babe. Hey, I just picked up the court documents. Oh, my God. Wow. Did you read anything yet? No, it's like a ton of stuff. It's going to take me a long time to go through it. Are you on your way home? Yeah, well, I'll be home in like two hours. I'm going to stop by my house, my home. You're going to go now? Yeah.

Yeah, I know you said to wait. I just feel like I have to, like, see if he gets some sort of sign if he's there or not. Oh, my God. All right. Well, I mean, just keep me posted as best you can. I will. Be careful, babe. Bye. I love you. Bye.

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There's no doubt in my mind that Manny could have been anything he wanted. Mark Palmieri is a professor at Mercy College, but for two years in the mid-90s, he worked for my father. He probably just didn't have the patience to go through the front door. Could he have been a detective? Absolutely. Could he have been a professional photographer? Absolutely. Could he have been a lawyer? Yeah. And I use those examples because I actually saw him play those roles.

Mark met my father when he was going into his senior year of college at Wake Forest, where he was the pitcher for their baseball team. Soon after, my father hired him to give me pitching lessons. I never thought I'd ever talk to you again. Well, it was amazing to hear from you, obviously. And one of the interesting things, I realized that I often do think of Manny and speak of him and tell some of those stories from those days.

So we met right after my fourth year of college, which was my last year playing baseball. I started a little bit of a small business, really trying to become a private pitching coach for high school kids, little league kids, whatever. You know, it's it's kind of a common thing. And your dad contacted me and we would meet at a park somewhere and

in Suffolk County and I would give you basic throwing and pitching lessons. And you were really, you were really young. You were like eight years old or something. And that was our relationship over the, over that summer. And then, so that fall I needed to make money to put down for an apartment. And I mentioned that that was the situation to your dad and, and your dad said, well, you can work for me. And that's when I joined the, the rank and file of pay phones plus and,

Which is what we're going to talk about. What started becoming like your task with the payphone company? So my job was to get to the phones, replace the full coin box with an empty coin box, put the heavy box full of quarters and nickels and dimes in the car and drive to the next phone. And he would prepare like a list with the addresses and we'd come up with a kind of

strategy in terms of the order of the phones that made sense. They were on Long Island, they were in Queens, they were in Westchester, they were in Manhattan, they were all over the place. - He had tons of accounts and he was nonstop collecting. - It was nonstop and I'd bring all the boxes into the basement of your home and he would empty out this machine that would just count quarters. He would just dump these thousands of quarters into this huge funnel.

And that was a normal day. And I could be just on my own for that, or sometimes I would ride with Manny and we would be doing that together. So that was like the job description kind of way of describing my role. Of course, my role evolved and became more complicated and adventurous. Over time, Payphone Plus became just one of the reasons my father employed Mark. The job got more interesting in that it wasn't always...

Not directly related to the pay phones. It would be like, oh, I need you to sit in the car outside the courthouse. He had a business, I guess, in the 80s. It was something to do with furniture, Veeder Sales. And my job, it was at least three hours. It was just to sit in the car, which was illegally parked.

you know, so that it like right in front of the court, like you can't park right in front of the courthouse, but that was Manny. It was another time he parked right in front of a fire hydrant. And I alerted him to this. It was a massive ticket on the windshield.

And so he took out his camera and said, all right, so the garbage bags are in front of the restaurant. Let's put those all around the fire hydrant. And so he buried the fire hydrant in garbage bags and then took a series of photographs to prove that the garbage obscured the fire hydrant. He had no idea there was one there. So he had all these ways. He was very confident he was never going to pay a parking ticket. That was just his approach. He'll deal with it.

after it happens and he'll come up with some kind of a creative way to fight it, fight the system. In the first episode of this podcast, I mentioned that my father used to drive a blue Chevy Caprice because it looked just like a cop car. Well, Mark actually got to go along and purchase this car with my father. And one day I always said, we're going to New Jersey today. We're getting a new car. So I had brought my car and I drove us to this junkyard in Kearney, New Jersey. And he had this

a relative who was a former Israeli Defense Forces Air Force pilot, some tough, mean-looking and just amazing figure. And this man was just standing on this heap smoking a cigarette. He's like, that's my cousin. I wish I remembered his name. He had a, it was an Israeli name. Shlomo. That's it. Wow. Yeah. Amazing. Shlomo. Yes. So he walks us to this, what looks like a, it's a refurbished cop car. This is

blue, repainted. It was so obvious that it was once a cop car somehow, even though it was nothing to read on it or whatever. But, you know, one of the telltale signs was the big flashlight thing on the driver's side mirror.

And so I remember Manny getting cash and the guys kept saying, "Manny, this car is clean, Manny. Very clean. It's fast." You know, I'm like this sort of delicate suburban kid. And I felt like I'm somewhere different right now. I don't know what's going on here, but this is like a cop car, no license plate. And I don't know if this is stolen. Somehow he talked me into, I would drive the car back and he would drive my car. And I remember I was so scared because the car had no license plates.

For all I know, this was a stolen, like I had no idea what I was driving, but I had to drive it over the bridge back into New York and back to Long Island where he then affixed plates that he had onto this car. This is the kind of car if you pulled up or you were behind, you look in the mirror and this thing's behind you, you're sure that it's an undercover cop. So he loved that. And this was our new company car.

And that ended up an important detail because there were moments where Manny would assume the role of undercover police officer. I mean, that was his mentality. He would just give off this false perception of who he is. Completely.

So at this point now, my friend Rich also was working for him. Rich was just like me, same kind of situation. He had this summer off, he was just trying to work. And so when I couldn't work, Manny said, you know, you have anyone else that wants to do work? And I introduced Rich and man, I'm still, you know, in contact with him. And we've always, always told Manny stories together, you know. And so it's kept Manny alive, you know, for us because that was just a profound summer. We had just graduated college. None of us had real jobs yet. Rich

Rich Petrick is an ER doctor and one of Mark's good friends. He also worked for my dad for a couple years in the mid-90s. He always paid us well. He was always trying to help us out. I mean, I think he always meant well. But we all knew that he was doing something that was off. So Manny would like send us out and your dad was always good to us. He would take us to lunch or he'd be like, hey, we're going to this place today. And he would know the owner and then he would introduce us. You know, like we're with the owner of the restaurant.

Whoa, you know, that was a big deal, you know? And when we would have lunch at these places, he was always working some angle, working some deal. But we were there just to like help out, do something if needed. And there was one time he took us along and he was like, hey, come with Mark and you can bring Martinez. We have a third friend that used to come along. But I think your dad used this to like tacitly intimidate somebody.

Really? It was some diner, some diner like deep in Queens, places that we would never go, off the beaten path. It looked like the diner at Goodfellas or something, you know, like classic diner. He was like, guys, sit in this booth and don't fuck around. And we're laughing because we're like, we always fuck around. What do you mean don't fuck around? That was like all we did all day long. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so we're just sitting there strategically angled towards where the guy stood. And this is a serious meeting.

And so we had to keep straight faces. The owner wanted him to take the payphone out, and he didn't want to take the payphone out. We asked Manny about it later. We were like, hey, what happened there? And he was like, oh, well, he wanted to take the payphone out, and I told him he shouldn't do that right now. But I'm like, oh, it just dawned on us, like, oh, we were here to just intimidate this guy a little bit.

I mean, that's some of the pageantry that would go on. You know, the wrong way to look at a lot of these experiences would be to assume that everyone that Manny was working with was on the up and up. And you had some tough characters. So it wouldn't be crazy to want to show up not alone to these places. Mark recalled a story about one of the sketchier places my father did business. I have a day, afternoon, and night with Manny. He said, we're going to head towards the city. We're going to go to Queens. We got to go to this place in Regal Park.

And he said, I just want to let you know, it's a strip club. We're putting a phone in the back. So we get there, this place in Regal Park. And, you know, we walked in and it was just like four or five guys, you know, who were by the bar or the dance floor or whatever. And so we're in the back and I'm standing there and holding up the phone to where a man is screwing it into the wall. And he starts kind of telling me the story about who's back there, like who those guys are.

And, you know, and I get I get the picture pretty quick. These are Italian mafia guys opening this place up and and they greeted him like like he was a made man and they loved him. One of the guys just total textbook suit, slick back hair, built, scary, comes back and he's like, you come here. He's talking to me. He's like, come here, come to the bar. Manny, can I borrow him? Yeah, yeah, go. The guy goes.

Brings me back into the main part of the of the joint and I see there's a woman topless woman up on the bar Like moving dancing. No one's watching It's just this and she's got like a bikini bottom on and the guy says sit down I sat down and my first thought was like I don't have singles I don't have like I don't have money I got it like all I have are quarters like pouring out of my pants and he takes out a beer pops it open and he's like I want you to watch her and we're having auditions and

And there's like another girl waiting, sitting with a trench coat on. And he's like, "Let me know what you think." And then he calls out to the girl to start dancing. And it's just for me. And I'm supposed to give feedback to this guy. And in the spirit of Manny Veeder, I just said, "You know what? I'm just gonna actually do it." And so I start telling the guy, I'm like, "She's good. She's good. Ooh, I like that. She's good. Yeah, she's hot, man. She's hot." Sipping the beer.

Finish it. Guy gets me another one. Next girl gets up. That went on for like at least 45 minutes. I think I saw like three or four girls that night. I decided I was just going to, I'm going to be this. I'm going to be, I'm going to be a mob guy in a strip joint tonight.

The interesting thing about my father, if someone close to him was in a jam, he would use his talents to mislead and deceive people to help them get out of it. Like the time he pretended to be a lawyer. He actually represented me and in quotations represented me. This is exactly what he did all the time. It's like a benign move where he's completely fraudulent. He's posing as my attorney in a court with a judge.

So I go out to a bar in Huntington, and as I'm leaving the bar, like, this melee that has nothing to do with us breaks out. Huge fight. A cop says, hey, start walking. And I'm like, I'm waiting for somebody. He's like, start walking. He, like, hits me. He, like, pokes me with his baton. And I'm like, whoa. I'm like, oh. And I just turn around and put my hands up. He's like, what are you, a wise guy? And he just, he blows me up. The guy blows me up. He puts me in, like, a half Nelson, and he puts me up against a car, and they start giving me the business, like...

flashlights and batons on the side of the face and the ribs, you know? Jeez. So I get arrested. I'm like, what the fuck? It was like misdemeanor, felony, melee, some crazy stuff, you know? Yeah. It was like a crazy amount of stuff that they were trying to pile on me. And I'm like, look, I'm trying to go to med school here. Yeah. I didn't have money to pay an attorney. And your dad was like, I'll represent you. And so we show up in court.

And he's dressed all up. I'm dressed up. He's got like a briefcase with folders in there, random folders. The judge reads out the thing. There's a stenographer, all this. And he says, I represent Richard Patrick. And he goes up to the front. He has a conversation with the DA. He's talking to the district attorney, you know? And I'm like, oh, my God. He's like presenting evidence, right?

So then they both break, and then the DA goes to the judge, and then the judge says, Richard Petra, would you please step forward? So I went up there.

And the guy dropped the case. And so I felt like I owed him after that. And I told him that. And, you know, he was like, oh, you could just take me out to a steak dinner. And I never got to give him the steak dinner. He loved access, Manny. That was ultimately, I think, like what drove him in these exchanges. And this ultimately, he had nothing to gain but the sense that he had access. And maybe that played into the way he parked and felt like, well, I should just park here while I'm being deposed, you know, for whatever reason, whoever's suing him from the 80s, this furniture business.

he should park like, you know, where the judge parks. Why not? And why not? Why shouldn't he get the respect of an undercover cop? You know, why not? Why shouldn't he have courtside tickets to the Knicks game with his son there and take great pictures with movie stars? Yeah, it might mean, might mean you got to fib a little bit, but who cares? You know, who's it hurting? Nobody. And he loved that. And when it was over, he had a big kick out of it. We would be laughing about it. You know, it wasn't like he was like a psychopath or something and actually believed him.

He was these things he didn't. He was enjoying the, you know, the pageantry and the game. All right, I just pulled into my neighborhood. I'm about 200 feet from my childhood home. I was hoping I could get some sort of sign that my father lives here. Because right now, I mean, I haven't heard from him. I definitely am getting a little nervous because, I mean, if he doesn't live here, I don't, I'm not really sure what my next move is.

So I gotta figure that out. I'm gonna drive past the house. Alright, there are no cars on the driveway. There's two giant shipping containers though on it. Alright, I could see in the backyard a little bit. I see there's a kid's bicycle in the back. That's weird. And one of those like little kid radio flyer like wagons. I am gonna...

I'm going to check the mailbox. Shit. Nothing's in the mailbox. I have no idea if this is his house. Right now, all signs are pointing to no. What did you know about Payphone Plus and how it was presented? Not only to you initially, but to people that my father would do business with. If someone straight out asked, and I was there a few times for that, are you AT&T? And he would answer with,

The right choice, which was the slogan at the time of AT&T, you know, AT&T, the right choice. And so that was like the first time I caught on like, oh, you know, he's dodging that question. And I saw that the card, the business card had his name, number,

It said payphone plus, but it had like the AT&T insignia on it. So his act was that while he's not AT&T, he never said he was, but he's using AT&T made stuff. And so therefore, that's why that's on there. You know, I see these little maneuvers. They're funny. They're successful. And I'm thinking like this is this is how it's done. Why?

Watching him maneuver, that was where I thought the sort of mentoring came in. Even though it's not exactly how I would go about things, but he had all these accounts where he went in there, represented himself as AT&T people. He would convince them that, oh, you need a payphone here. That to me was the learning aspect of that job. It was like I learned that you could just sort of go into a place fearlessly.

and get people to buy into what you're doing. Even though he's 5'7", he walked in like he was six feet tall. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He owned the place. Yeah, exactly. Like, even though... He was a manager. He belonged there. That's really the key to life. Like, in court. He belonged in court representing me. My father was unstoppable until all the AT&T stuff came crashing down. I got a call from him one day saying, this has been a bad week. He had been getting notices, I believe, from AT&T, which were basically stop-and-desist orders.

Don't use our trademark. Take our logo off of your business card, off of your stationery, get rid of the ringtone. You are not AT&T. This is proprietary. This is our intellectual property. This is our brand. It's legally protected. Then, on October 17, 1994, I woke up at 6 in the morning to someone pounding on our front door. The next thing I knew, our house was being raided by the U.S. Marshals.

On the next episode of Number One Dad. So what's the latest, Gary, in tracking down your father? Well, I saw my child at home and I'm not exactly sure if he lives there. So both Rich and I eventually had to give testimony. Manny was smart. He never went to law school, but he learned the court system. Good morning. Calling the case of AT&T Corp versus Manny Veeder.

Number One Dad is a production of Radio Point, Big Money Players Network, and iHeart Podcast. Created and hosted by Gary Veeder. Executive producers are Gary Veeder, Adam Lowett, Alex Bach, Daniel Powell, Houston Snyder, Kenneth Slotnick, and Brian Stern.

Written by Gary Veeder and Adam Lowit. Produced by Bernie Kaminsky. Co-producer is Taylor Kowalski. Edited and mixed by Ian Sorrentino at Little Bear Audio. Recording engineer is Kat Iosa. Original music by Andrew Gross. Special thanks to Charlotte DeAnda. Jonathan Karsh is creative consultant. Executive producers for Big Money Players Network and iHeart Podcast are Will Farrell, Hans Sani, and Olivia Aguilar.

Sound services were provided by Great City Post. Does money stress you out? Let Facet flip your financial chaos into clarity. Finding Facet immediately put us at ease. Facet's innovative approach to financial planning ensures your money works as hard as you do, enabling members to experience the joys of having your finances in order. That makes us Facet for life now, I guess. Visit Facet.com.

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Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Walzak, host of the new podcast Missing in Arizona. And I'm Robert Fisher, one of the most wanted men in the world. We cloned his voice using AI. Oh my God.

In 2001, police say I killed my family and rigged my house to explode before escaping into the wilderness. Police believe he is alive and hiding somewhere. Join me. I'm going down in the cave. As I track down clues. I'm going to call the police and have you removed. Hunting. One of the most dangerous fugitives in the world. Robert Fisher. Do you recognize my voice? Listen to Missing in Arizona every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.