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This is Later with Lee Matthews,
the Lee Matthews Podcast More what You Hear

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weekday afternoons on the drive. He
does not carry his guitar in a gunny

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sack, nor sit beneath the tree
by the railroad track. This Johnny be

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Good got a degree in English and
then set out to make his own mark

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on the literary world. Little did
he know it would happen because of his

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good friend, best friend. For
a matter of fact, Ray Trepani and

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Johnny be Good and Ray Trapani now
hosts a podcast that can be heard on

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the iHeartRadio app and it's the story
of bitcoon creating a con is the name

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of the podcasts. Johnny, let's
start with you and your relationship with Ray.

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How did it begin? Let's uh, yeah, So Ray's been my

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best friend since third fourth grade.
We played Dot Kong sixty four together.

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I think that's how we met originally, and you know, you just grew

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up together. It's been like a
brother to me. We've been inseparable and

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then I think our lives kind of
took drastically different paths, but we always

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kept that friendship going. I like
to say I'm his best friend and I'm

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also his biggest critic. So it's
funny you mentioned that whole thing because I

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talked to other people that I studied
with, and they're like, oh,

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how did you get all like?
How did you break in? How did

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you do all this? I was
like, Oh, it's easy, just

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have a criminal best friend. Ray. How did this type of work appeal

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to you? And when did it
begin? So since I was a little

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kid, I was always doing kind
of like I was gambling at twelve,

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doing drugs at twelve, and that
kind of just led me into a path

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of crime, and you know,
from drug dealing into fraud essentially early on

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in my life, tried to get
straight, tried to get sober, only

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lasted a little bit of time,
and then I kind of moved to Miami,

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continued that and got into some bigger
fraud down there, which led me

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into CenTra, which was my biggest
crime to date. And you know,

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that's where we created a cryptocurrency and
raised tens of millions of dollars. They

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charged us with about a thirty million
dollar fraud, but it was more in

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one hundred million dollar range. Creating
a con is the name of the podcast.

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The story of bitcnned and the story
is brought to you on the iHeartRadio

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app and everywhere you get podcasters by
Johnny be Good and Ray Trapani. What

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did you think Johnny when he brought
this story to you? Well, I

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mean when I was when he first
called me. It was actually when The

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New York Times came out with an
article about him, and he called me

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kind of in like a fury.
And at the time, I believe you

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were still on drugs. Yeah,
you were still on drugs. And he

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was like, I'm suing them,
I'm suing the New York Times. I

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was like, I don't know if
this is going to work out that well

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for you. You know, It's
kind of it's funny growing up with Ray

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because I know where he's coming from
with a lot of these things that he's

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doing. It's it's it's the natural
progression, you know, for him and

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the environment he grew up in.
So yeah, it's I have mixed feelings

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on everything. I think. I
don't agree with what he did. I

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don't think it was right, but
I also can I can understand where he's

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coming from. Johnny be Good,
Ray Tripani. The podcast is the it's

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called a bitcoined, does story a
bitcoined? The creation of a creating a

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creating a calm the story of bitcoined? Ray, you were in Miami at

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the time all this came together.
I can imagine that you didn't have to

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reach very far to find deep pockets. Yeah, I mean twenty four in

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Miami with millions of dollars was not
a bad life at the time, I'll

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tell you that much. Well,
just finding people out there. We were

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getting money worldwide, right, so
money's coming from every country, you know,

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everywhere in the United States. This
cryptocurrency that you created, Ray,

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did you fully understand it when you
did? I don't think anybody really needs

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to fully understand it. There's not
like much to understand. It's just it's

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simpler than people try to make it
out to be. In my opinion,

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it's always it's always because it's so
intangible. That's the thing that's always puzzled

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me about it. Yeah, it's
you know, all it is is just

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basically just numbers on a Ledger where
it can't be deleted. That's the simplest

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way to put it. Johnny be
good, Ray Trapani, and the name

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of the podcast is creating a con
the story of Bitconned. It is out

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now everywhere you get podcasts, including
the iHeartRadio app. Johnny, did you

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realize how deep and how wide this
went? I mean not at first.

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No. And it's funny when you're
talking to Ray because I think he's been

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through like so many crazy things in
his life that when we were going over

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the entire story, there'd be moments
where I'm like, oh, like,

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did anything crazy happen around this time? And He's like, I mean nothing,

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really like that crazy. I mean, I almost got killed in South

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Korea, but like and I'm like, wait, that sounds pretty crazy to

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me. It's like, oh,
really you think people care about that?

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It wasn't him, it was Scarby. But there was just a lot of

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moments where there were stories Ray didn't
necessarily deemed too exciting. But I was

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like, dude, that's just because
your threshold is way out of whack creating

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a con The story of bitcondon Ray, when did it all start? When?

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Did at what point did you realize, Okay, this is about to

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crash down. Well, once the
SEC got involved, that's where it got

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really convoluted there. Did you ever
think about scramming to Korea while it all

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blown over it. I think people
always say that in hindsight, I still

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wouldn't do it. I think,
you know, you don't find one happy

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person that's running from the US government. TI, along with Johnny be Good

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and the podcasts is the Creating a
Con. The story of Bitcon available every

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way Get podcast including the iHeartRadio app. Johnny, were you did this come

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to you while the story was breaking
or had it already broken and Ray gone

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through the justice system. No,
I was actually in court the day Ray

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God's sentence. He was cool.
When we first started kind of putting the

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story together. Ray was still on
house arrest and he was still just cooperating,

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and we didn't you know, I
was, you know, living with

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my roommates and we would just get
on the phone every night and type things

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out. There was no real promise
of anything to happen. And we did

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that for I would say a year
before anyone really had any interest in the

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story. It's a true crime podcast
and the true sense of the word,

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because we're talking to the man who
actually committed the crime, Ray Trapani.

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Johnny be Good is his best friend. Creating a con. The story bitcond

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is the podcast and Ray how long
have you been clean and does it ever

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occur to you to appeal to that
lifestyle again. No, I've been sober

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six years April twentieth, twenty eighteen. And when I'm off drugs, like,

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I have no interest in doing crime. I mean sometimes I see loopholes

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and stuff and I'm like, ah, but I veer away from it,

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creating a con the story of bitcond
It is a true crime story and available

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on the iHeartRadio app with the Life
of Raytrapani and Johnny B. Good doesn't

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have to worry about his name being
l liked because it's on this podcast.

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Thanks for joining us, Thanks for
listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the

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Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to
listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from

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five to seven and iHeartMedia Presentation