The Wedding Scammer

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I guess this is what you’d call low stakes in the true crime game. Nobody is dead, there’s no like CSI evidence and, ultimately, the bad guy is one of those narcissistic messes who continuously gets in over his head and whose intentions aren’t 100% evil or meant to harm people. He just kind of sucks. It has Fyre Festival vibes, where it’s unclear if the multiple scams were built to scam, or started off with a vague plan but devolved into scams because the dude is just kind a deranged idiot. Which can make for a variable narrative when it’s tough to nail down the target of our investigation’s motivations.

Justin Sayles, the podcast host, is usually a producer. At least that’s my understanding from listening to other Ringer podcasts. His lack of hosting experience is honestly one of the weak links here and I feel like his somewhat stilted delivery may be a deal killer for some. The podcast can, at times, sound more like an ad read than a conversation or investigative piece of media. It’s too… script-y. You can feel and hear Sayles reading the words off his screen and it’s not naturalistic or natural. Which is interesting considering this is actually a personal story for him to some extent. As he was a “victim” of this scammer. Hired by a dude he knew as Michael Esposito to a incredibly scammy-sounding news and media startup called Newsaratti, only to be left high and dry — along with all of his co-workers — after Esposito shut the site down and split without paying a single one of them. But why hire a staff, make promises and then just bail? That’s not a money-making scam. So, why do it?

It turns out that Esposito — and this is my armchair whatever — basically just suffers from some sort of personality disorder. He started this scam media company with no experience in media. And somehow lured people away from legit jobs to work at his illegitimate company. Mostly by offering above-industry salaries and making up a fake bio. Which should have been a serious red flag for Sayles and the others he ended up “scamming.” A guy with no media experience — which any and all of them as reporters and editor types should have been able to discern pretty quickly — offers a too-good-to-be-true job with no guarantees or business plan and you’re surprised it turns into a shitshow? And in the process the “scammer” gets nothing in the process either financially or professionally? I’m not sure how this could be classified a scam. This is just another poorly planned business that ends up going under before it gets launched. The dot-com era was filled with these and start-up fails. The only difference here is that nobody did their due diligence, the founder had absolutely no idea what he was doing, and he skedaddled at the end of the day without a word. Instead of just sending the typical “Sorry this business was a bust, none of you are getting paid, but you can take your Aeron chair as compensation.” Move on.

But, it turns out, reporters be reportin’. Or more like the naturally curious are never going to give up on their curiosity. Sayles, despite not really being the biggest loser in this fake media start-up, always wondered what Esposito’s story was and realized there were others from that time wondering the same thing. So he teamed up with some sleuths to get to the bottom of it. And in the process figured out that Esposito (going under various aliases) had left a trail of failed businesses, unpaid bills and general incompetency and hurt feelings along the way. No dead people, though. Not one. It seems this media thing was too complicated to pull together, so Esposito (not his real name) moved on to catering and whatnot. And from catering to wedding planning. Which in the world makes a whole lot of sense. The weird thing is that along his journeys he was relatively public. Even appearing in in at least one industry magazine with his boyfriend and stupid dog, but continuously going under various names like Carl Butcho, Laurence Tonner, Lance Miller, Mark White and Danny Gismondi. Yes, he would start a catering business, seemingly be good at it but then burn a bridge by not paying people and/or just ghosting an event or wedding and moving on to another city or state under a new name and do it all over again. Weird scam.

Which leads to the personality disorder. And clear substance abuse issues. Because, again, the dude proved he was actually a decent chef and caterer, but could only keep it up for a short time each time before burning people and having to go on the lamb. Assuming the money that he made each time — which definitely weren’t huge sums — went toward drugs and stupid shoes and stuff. Like he totally could have run a legit business and been successful doing it, but just continuously self-sabotaged and bailed. Making fake promises, writing bad checks and taking advantage of a system that makes it next-to-impossible for employees and vendors to sue for non-payment or customers to sue for a ruined wedding. Even with union and law enforcement intervention. But, again, the small increments of the scam make it less of a scam than a guy who continuously gets in over his head, tells people what they want to hear with no plan to make the thing come true and then has to lie and obfuscate until he can exit. A personality disorder.

And while this all sounds relatively compelling, the narrative itself becomes a bit choppy. There are points where Sayles hits dead ends and has to take hiatus to focus on his day job, but then picks it back up when Esposito/Butcho pops back up again, or someone from his old life comes out of the woodwork. And then the stories are just kind of repetitive. Because the pattern is always the same. The backstory on our scammer is exposed to some extent and it’s also interesting. Sayles even goes “undercover” with a partner to expose Esposito, which is kind of fun and cool. But also pretty silly. Because, again, the stakes here are on the low side for a true crime story. What Sayles is good at — which makes sense in his producer capacity — is building anticipation from episode to episode. Writing those outros to set up the next step in the story. But where it fails to deliver on the promise is in his actual presentation of the material. In the hands of a more experienced investigative reporter and on-mic podcaster this could have been a much more compelling narrative at the end of the day. Because it is quirky. It is strange. And, as it turns out, Esposito/Butcho is pretty much exactly the damaged weirdo we thought he might be. He is the George Santos of the wedding business and who doesn’t love that?