0:08

School of Humans. This

0:12

is Racket inside the Gold Club. I'm

0:15

Christina Lee. This is episode

0:17

seven War Trial. Every

0:26

day, after the trial proceedings wrapped up,

0:29

the Gold Club defendant's headed from the courtroom

0:31

to Steve Kaplan's house to decompress

0:34

from the hours of testimony. Entertainer

0:37

Jackline Bush was tired of hearing testimony

0:39

bashing her all day. When

0:42

you're sitting there every day and

0:46

each person that comes on the stand is

0:48

telling another lie or another story

0:50

about one of your colleagues, and you

0:53

guys are all looking at each other like, are you

0:55

kidding me? What is this? So

0:57

at the end of the day, you're so taxed,

0:59

so maxed out. We'd get to the house and

1:02

everybody would have to have a cocktail

1:04

and just try to unwind. Then

1:06

we'd have to watch the news because we'd want to

1:09

see how they aired the interviews

1:11

that they were doing, and to you know, it

1:13

just it was so overwhelming.

1:16

It was just too much. One

1:18

day at Kaplan's, Jackel went outside

1:20

to smoke a cigarette and

1:22

she said she saw a FBI agent,

1:24

Mark Sewell, filming the house with a camp

1:27

quarter. And then we had

1:29

the FBI parked on the

1:31

other side of the cul de Sac every time

1:33

we're coming in and out there at the back of their

1:35

truck taking pictures of us, and it

1:38

just when you had no privacy, you had

1:41

you had nothing. Your

1:43

life was their life, and

1:46

no matter what you did, you were always

1:48

being watched. And it's just an uncomfortable,

1:51

eerie feeling to know that you're every

1:53

step that you're making, someone is watching you.

1:56

Everybody was scared because we were afraid

1:59

that we were all going to prison. Yet

2:06

to the courtroom audience and reporters, Steve

2:09

Kaplan seemed pretty cool and collected.

2:11

During the trial, Kaplan

2:13

and his attorney, Steve Saydal, decided

2:16

that Kaplan would not testify. His

2:19

silence was intriguing. Scott

2:21

Henry was one of the journalists in the courtroom

2:24

and he really didn't know what to make

2:26

of Kaplin. For

2:28

most people, I think watching the following

2:31

the trial, Kaplan himself was

2:34

a bit of a mystery. He

2:36

never took the stand and he didn't give

2:38

interviews outside the courthouse, of course,

2:41

so one side of Kaplan you had to get

2:44

from people who worked there.

2:46

One guy who seemed

2:50

definitely to be pretty close

2:52

talked about Steve like he was just

2:54

the greatest guy as salt of the

2:57

earth. And then you read these

3:00

transcripts where

3:03

he sounds like a ruthless

3:06

businessman and just not

3:10

a very nice guy. It's

3:12

very difficult to from

3:14

the outside to have a great

3:17

idea about what he was

3:19

really like. Attorney

3:27

Craig Gillen noticed though, that by

3:29

comparison, all the defendants were pretty

3:31

paranoid. During a defense

3:33

team huddle in the conference room at the courthouse,

3:36

the defendants looked for bugs. A

3:38

lot of the defendants were all worried about whether or not

3:41

the government was wire tapping the

3:43

conference room, which they weren't, looking

3:46

under the table, looking in the air conditioning

3:48

system. Meanwhile, Kaplan

3:50

wanted to discuss Gillen's game plan for

3:52

his client, alleged mobster Michael

3:54

did Leonardo Caplin, z I I

3:56

need to talk to you, like, oh, okay,

3:59

no, no, not here. So we get in the hallway.

4:02

What is it. I'm not comfortable

4:04

here in the hallway, all right? Then we go

4:06

into the court vestiable in there, which

4:08

is sort of this little small room

4:11

almost closet between the hallway

4:13

and the inner courtroom. Same

4:16

thing, and it's too important.

4:18

I can't can't tell you here. So

4:21

then we walk into the courtroom.

4:24

Everybody has gone for the day. We

4:26

walk over to the podium. Caplan

4:28

starts giving gill And a pep talk, and

4:31

Caplan goes, tomorrow, I really want you to jump

4:33

on this guy. Want you to really cross you damn him. I want

4:35

you to really you know. And there's some some expletive

4:38

deleteds flying around there and

4:40

I'm trying to say none to Steve, and

4:43

so he goes on for about ten or fifteen

4:45

seconds, and I say, congratulations,

4:48

you have now walked me to the only live

4:50

mike in this floor, because

4:52

that mike is broadcast back into

4:55

the judges chambers. It

4:58

was pretty funny. The

5:02

name of this episode is war Trial because

5:04

that's what Gilan call it, the Goal Club case.

5:07

He says that while every trial can

5:09

get emotionally, fraud the Gold

5:11

Clubs was particularly intense.

5:14

Every trial has

5:17

a temperature of its own, Every

5:20

trial has an emotional

5:22

energy of its own. Now,

5:25

this case, because it got the publicity,

5:28

because there was a lot of the

5:30

major forces here, the government

5:32

throwing its entire the way to the government

5:35

into this case, and the

5:38

strength of the defense team, given

5:41

also the interest of the public that

5:43

created, in my mind, what I call

5:45

a war trial. The stakes are higher,

5:48

the focus is more intense, and

5:51

everybody is in there and

5:53

you can just feel the energy

5:56

in the courtroom. That was

5:58

especially true when the former Gold Club

6:00

employees who had become government

6:02

witnesses took the stand. Thomas

6:07

Cichignano took the stand early in

6:09

the trial in June, but

6:11

his testimony became the longest, dragging

6:14

on for seven days. During

6:17

his opening statement, Prosecutor Art

6:20

Leach made sure to spell out Ziggy's

6:22

name twice so that the jurors

6:24

would remember him. After all,

6:27

he was the government star witness. Leech

6:31

as Ziggy about his youth basketball

6:33

program Brooklyn, USA,

6:35

establishing to the jury that he is the sort

6:38

of man who could be trusted with kids. But

6:41

then Leech went over all the charges against

6:43

Kaplin, from loan sharking

6:46

in Florida to extorting

6:48

scores to the fact that Kaplan

6:50

would take care of his girls

6:52

so that they'd have sex with athletes.

6:57

Ziggy name dropped athletes left and

6:59

right, adding much to the zeal

7:01

of the trial. Since no one knew yet which

7:04

players would be called to testify

7:06

in federal cases, Cameras aren't

7:08

allowed in the courtroom. Yet

7:10

the courtroom stayed packed with all

7:12

the anticipation over who would eventually

7:14

take the stand, and the

7:17

courtroom wasn't that big. So

7:20

as Ziggy spilled the beans on what was going

7:22

on at the Gold Club, he was sitting

7:24

just a few feet away from Kaplan and

7:26

the rest of the defendants. Even

7:33

though Ziggy was testifying against Kaplan,

7:36

he couldn't help a boast about his friend's

7:38

business savvy. At

7:40

one point, he compares Kaplan's

7:42

work ethic to that of Michael Jordan's,

7:46

and he detours into these long

7:48

winded press conference type speeches

7:50

about Kaplan. Ironically,

7:53

Ziggy emphasized what made the Gold Club

7:55

work was teamwork. Over

7:59

the next five days that Ziggy was on the stand,

8:02

the defense's cross examination zeroed

8:04

in on his hypocrite that while

8:06

he's out in Kaplan on all these crimes,

8:09

Ziggy seemed just as complicit. Bruce

8:12

Harvey, representing Jacqueline, had

8:14

to make the courtroom see Ziggy for who

8:17

he really was with

8:19

his flair for the dramatic. Harvey

8:21

wrote the word pimp on a flip chart

8:23

and showed it to the court. I

8:26

did I remember crossing

8:29

him for over a day, and I think

8:31

that my theme was that

8:33

he he Ziggy was

8:36

nothing but a snitch, a pimp snitch.

8:40

Harvey's point was that Ziggy had also

8:42

arraigned sex for celebrities at hotel

8:44

rooms, like when a busload

8:46

of Gold Club entertainers went to Charleston,

8:48

South Carolina to entertain

8:51

the New York Knicks. My cross

8:53

was designed to get him to a point

8:55

where the only logical

8:57

conclusion was that he

9:00

was a pimp, which

9:02

I wanted to get to for the jury, and

9:04

that was after I think a day a day

9:07

over a day of cross. Ziggy

9:10

disagreed with Harvey. Of course, he

9:12

said, Steve did the direction,

9:15

I did the execution. Sado

9:22

was the last attorney to cross examine Ziggy,

9:25

so he had already observed Ziggy's

9:27

fondness for tangents like that one

9:29

time when he was broke, without a car

9:32

and living in his mother's attic blah blah

9:34

blah. He saw how

9:36

Harvey had to reprimand Ziggy to stop

9:39

interrupting him. Harvey said,

9:41

at one point, may I finish my question

9:43

please? Sado's

9:46

plan let the star witness

9:48

talk. When

9:50

I finally got up to cross examine. As

9:53

you can imagine, everyone had been

9:55

ready for that. They

9:57

knew who he was. They knew obviously

10:00

that I was the person that would attack

10:03

him. At least that's what they thought. As

10:05

I'm watching him, I'm saying, there ain't no reason to attack

10:08

him. This man can't keep his mouth shut.

10:10

You can't get him to answer a question.

10:13

And there's nothing that's more frustrating

10:15

to a jury than a

10:17

witness being asked a direct question

10:21

and not getting an answer. Sayt,

10:23

I figured that Ziggy would board the jury to

10:26

death, so I asked a question. He

10:29

starts talking, and I said, you know, why

10:32

don't I just sit down until he's done. So

10:34

I go back to my chair at the table

10:37

away from the podium, and I said, and

10:40

when he's done talking, I stand

10:42

up and I say, anything else you'd like to say about that question?

10:45

And I'd ask a question again, and he started

10:47

talking, and I'd go sit and I'd stand

10:49

up when he was done, and I'd ask another question.

10:52

And now the jury is getting

10:54

upset. At this point,

10:57

Ziggy is even annoying Judge Hunt. He

11:00

keeps looking at his watch before he calls

11:02

a recess out of frustration, and

11:07

at that point, nobody cared whatever

11:09

he had said, it didn't mean anything anymore

11:11

because people were so tired of

11:14

the manner he was testifying

11:16

as opposed to what was coming out of his mouth. One

11:19

legal expert and observer said that by

11:21

the end of the cross examination, Ziggie

11:24

kept dabbing his glistening forehead with

11:26

a towel and looked

11:28

like a wounded animal. His

11:31

testimony was a total wash.

11:43

All the defendant's former co workers and friends

11:46

were taking the stand. Amanda Poppas,

11:48

also Jacqueline's ex says that Jacqueline

11:51

had shown her the ropes of the gold rooms,

11:53

how to sneak around and have sex

11:55

with customers for money. One

11:57

night, Jacqueline invited her upstairs

12:00

to meet Dennis Rodman, where Rodman

12:02

handed her a fistful of gold bucks and

12:04

started taking off her shirt. During

12:07

this part of the trial, journalist Scott

12:09

Henry was taken aback by some of the

12:11

testimony that came from the witness stand. So

12:15

the Gold Club trial was unique because

12:17

you'd get these episodes

12:19

of sleeve siness. For instance,

12:21

they had a young

12:24

stripper on the stage. This girl

12:26

and a friend of hers would go down to local

12:29

cell phone store and

12:31

basically pay their cell phone

12:33

bill with blow jobs every couple

12:35

of weeks. The

12:39

prosecution's other start witness was entertainer

12:41

jan Impellness, known as Frederic.

12:44

At the club, she testified

12:46

that Capam paid her to perform sexual

12:48

acts on athletes to Kenby Mtumbo

12:50

and Terrell Davis. She

12:52

also said that Jacqueline was prosecuting herself

12:55

and others both inside and outside

12:57

the Gold Club. But

12:59

Janni's testimony was also falling flat.

13:02

She said that while yes, she'd

13:05

reimbursed, quote, I was

13:07

never commanded or told to do anything

13:09

by mister Kaplin. He would

13:12

encourage it. When I examined

13:14

her instead of attacking, I said, so,

13:16

as far as your concern, Steve Kaplan

13:19

was a voyor. He was just in there

13:21

for his own personal pleasure. And she goes, absolutely,

13:24

that's exactly what it was. He wasn't

13:26

in there, had anything to do with the club. It

13:28

was personal pleasure for Steve Kaplan, and the

13:30

jurors looked at her like you

13:33

were making this story up. Not another person

13:35

has said this. This is disgusting, and

13:37

you know that's the only reason you're saying this is

13:39

a government has told

13:42

you to say it. It was just

13:44

it was a shit show. It was embarrassing for her,

13:46

and the jurors would look

13:48

over at me and just shake their heads and

13:50

go shrug their shoulders, like what

13:52

the hell is she saying? Like what is

13:55

wrong with this girl? She's just being proven

13:57

a liar, So now your testimony

14:00

is null and voyed by next Jacklin

14:03

was particularly irate during Yannas testimony,

14:06

and Yanna kept rolling her eyes in Jacqueline's

14:09

direction. She got so mad at one

14:11

point that she moved

14:13

her mouth and looked

14:15

at me and said, fuck you. She

14:19

was so pissed. I'm like, are

14:21

you kidding me? We'll

14:23

be right back. It's

14:34

late July and journalist Bill

14:37

Rankin was shocked to enter the courtroom

14:39

and see one of his favorite baseball players.

14:41

I was stunt when I walked into the court

14:43

room money. I was kind of late and I walked in and

14:46

Andrew Jones was sitting on the witness band

14:48

and I was like, oh my god, one

14:50

of my favorite baseball players of all time.

14:53

Elana Brave's outfielder Andrew Jones

14:55

was there to testify about a night where

14:58

a Gold Club limo whisked him to a hotel

15:00

room and sue entertainers

15:02

performed some girl on girl action before

15:05

earning their attention to him.

15:08

If anybody looks at baseball in those the Braves

15:10

in the nineteen nineties and with

15:12

Andrew Jens the center field, he's a cocky

15:15

guy. And he always had this nice

15:17

grin, kind of a shittyating grin. And

15:21

when the prosecutor asked who did you have

15:23

sex with, he had that little grin and he just said

15:26

both of them. That was quite

15:28

a moment. And then he said after

15:30

that he went about thirty times to the club.

15:32

I guess he enjoyed it. He was only nineteen

15:35

at the time. Jones

15:38

was amongst several well known athletes who

15:40

testified about sexual favors either

15:42

performed or arranged by the Goal club

15:44

to implicate Steve Kaplan as the leader

15:47

of a prostitution ring. Yet,

15:50

while Jones didn't mind recounting his exploits,

15:53

he swore that he never saw money change

15:55

hands. And the allegation

15:58

was, of course, that Steve Kaplan was

16:00

having women paid to have sex with him.

16:03

And this is defense attorney Bruce Morris.

16:05

When we asked Andrew Jones about

16:07

that, he started laughing

16:09

and said, no, woman's

16:12

ever had to be paid to have sex with me. I have to

16:14

beat him off with a stick. Eventually,

16:18

Patrick Ewing himself took the stand, and

16:21

while Ziggy's testimony was seven

16:23

days, Patrick Ewing's was

16:25

only twenty five minutes. The

16:28

New York Knicks player had been to the Goal Club

16:30

twice during the ninety six Olympics

16:33

and a year or so later. He

16:35

says that both times Kaplan and

16:37

Ziggy insisted on treating him to drinks,

16:40

a private room, and sexual

16:42

favors from entertainers. He

16:44

swears that he didn't seek this out or pay

16:47

anyone to do anything so,

16:50

Like Andrew Jones, Ewing explicitly

16:53

says he only received

16:55

blow jobs and he's never

16:57

had to pay for them.

17:07

Remember, Sado had found that technically,

17:10

under Georgia law, prostitution can

17:12

only be defined as intercourse. That's

17:15

why even throughout Ziggy's direct testimony,

17:17

Sado kept objecting to leech his vague

17:20

allusions to sexual activity. This

17:23

sexual activity included hand

17:25

jobs, blow jobs, lesbian sex

17:27

shows, but technically none

17:29

of that qualified as prostitution. Attorney

17:33

Bruce Harvey remembered Judge Willis Hunt's

17:35

constant interruptions in the courtroom

17:37

during all the blowjob testimony,

17:41

well as Hunt would turn to the jury and say,

17:43

remember, ladies and gentlemen, oral sex

17:46

is not prostitution, So you can't

17:48

consider this testimony to be

17:50

part of a predicate act. So

17:53

it became a study

17:55

in oral sex as opposed

17:57

to prostitution. Meanwhile,

18:08

no one could agree on why these celebrity athletes

18:11

had to testify in the first place. In

18:14

his opening statement, defense attorney

18:16

Dwight Thomas even asked why only black

18:18

athletes were being called to the stand. He

18:21

said, quote, there are

18:23

some questions that are going to be raised during the

18:25

course of this trial, some things that

18:27

maybe people don't like to touch on, kind

18:29

of sensitive. We think that we've come

18:31

a long way, and yes

18:34

we have, but we still haven't arrived.

18:37

You were told during the opening statements about a couple

18:39

of athletes, and you saw pictures

18:41

of them, and you saw their color.

18:44

Terrell Davis, Patrick ewing,

18:47

these are not the only people that came to the

18:49

goal club. But

18:53

then Leech had a word with the judge. He

18:55

said, counsel has spent much

18:57

of this time making arguments that are totally

19:00

inappropriate before this jury, he

19:03

meaning Thomas is about to launch

19:05

into to a racial argument. I

19:07

moved the court to advise the story that the arguments

19:09

that are beyond his reference to what he expects

19:12

to prove is inappropriate. At

19:14

this time, I said,

19:16

there were a lot of white's leverages who

19:18

were not being brought in the trial

19:21

and subjected to all of that, and they

19:23

were just bringing in Patrick Ewing and

19:25

the various other people they were thinking

19:27

about calling, and I thought that

19:30

that might have some racial component

19:32

to it. There were some things that were

19:34

going on that I felt

19:36

that crossed the line, and

19:39

in of course, obviously get ready to call

19:41

it for what I saw it. You know, it was called

19:43

balls and strikes as they are. Later

19:46

in the trial, one athlete ended

19:48

up suing Ziggy. Ziggy

19:50

had claimed that Antonio Davis of the

19:53

Indiana Pacers took Kaplan

19:55

up on an offer to have sex with an entertainer.

19:58

Ziggy stuck to his story even

20:01

after Davis sued him fifty million

20:03

dollars. Apparently

20:06

ziggihid mistake in Antonio for his teammate

20:09

Dale Davis. And

20:16

it wasn't just the athletes were mad about

20:19

their names being brought up during this high profile

20:21

trial. Part Way through Roy

20:24

Chicola's attorney, Nick Latito, got

20:26

a call. You know, I

20:29

got a call that the King of Sweden was

20:31

going to sue me for slander

20:33

or something, which was kind of funny.

20:36

In his opening statement, Latito mentioned

20:38

that secret service agents, once accompanying

20:40

Carl the sixteenth Gustaf to one

20:42

of the gold rooms. That

20:46

ignited a wave

20:48

of interest from the Swedish press,

20:51

and two Swedish newspaper

20:53

people came and covered the trial for the rest

20:55

of the time there. Initially

20:58

I got the call from

21:00

somebody connected with the King of Sweden that

21:02

they were thinking about filing

21:04

a lawsuit against That never materialized.

21:07

But as we were leaving court

21:09

that day, I said to somebody,

21:11

and Bill Rankin, who covered the case,

21:13

was close by and he heard me say, I'm

21:16

not trying to start a war with Sweden. I love

21:18

blonds. We'll be right

21:21

back well.

21:24

Caplan was accused of funneling Gold Club

21:26

profits to the mob. Much of

21:28

the trial ends up revolving around claims

21:31

of credit card fraud and

21:33

trying to distinguish credit card fraud from

21:35

buyer's remorse. Leach

21:39

brought in several men who said they lost their

21:41

families and their lives were ruined

21:43

after the Gold clubs screwed them over by

21:46

tens of thousands of dollars. One

21:49

said that in October nineteen

21:52

ninety nine, a night out at the Gold

21:54

Club until Fourium left him

21:56

with a bill of over thirteen thousand

21:58

dollars. He summed

22:00

up the night by saying, I had a good

22:02

time and I was stupid. Another

22:06

had somehow missed all the zeros and

22:08

his ten thousand dollar bill before he signed

22:10

the credit card slip. He insisted

22:13

that even after having eight

22:15

Crowning cokes and three hours, he

22:18

was sober, calling himself a

22:20

big boy and

22:23

at his hound. Businessman said that he asked

22:25

manager Roy Chicola to remove

22:27

one hundred dollar tip off at a thousand

22:29

dollars membership fee, but then he

22:31

asked to have the whole bill avoided when

22:34

he realized that champagne wasn't

22:36

even included in the cost. They

22:38

ended up settling for two hundred and fifty

22:40

dollars, the cost of a single

22:43

hour in a Gold room.

22:45

All this wouldn't have happened, he said,

22:48

if a Gold Club staffer didn't imply

22:50

that he'd get some action if he signed

22:52

up Leech

23:03

developed this theory during the trial. If

23:06

someone did partake in sexual favors

23:08

at the club, they weren't going to complain

23:10

about their bill, But

23:12

if they didn't get some action and their card

23:14

was charged, they would. Those

23:18

people never defrauded. In

23:21

other words, there's not fraud

23:23

on their credit card. They are agreeing

23:25

to pay that. They're just agreeing to pay that for sex.

23:28

Okay. Then there's the other

23:30

category, which is people

23:33

that are simply victimized in terms of credit card

23:35

fraud. And it took me a while to

23:37

understand that the two

23:40

never mixed. In other words,

23:42

you are never going to have a credit card

23:44

fraud person over here that is participating

23:47

in sexual activity. Because when

23:49

you see that somebody has

23:51

paid twenty five thousand dollars, the

23:55

natural conclusion is what

23:57

did he get for twenty five thousand dollars?

24:00

You know, it doesn't make

24:02

sense to me that

24:04

that could be anything but some sort

24:06

of sexual liaison. Andre

24:11

the regular and the first episode, who

24:13

was there the night of the raid, the guy

24:16

who liked to spray down the entertainers with

24:18

champagne. He was one of the government

24:20

witnesses. He admittedly

24:22

had sex at the club. Oral

24:25

sex and intercourse. He

24:28

never accused the club of fraud, but

24:31

he also admits he might have been overcharged

24:33

a few times during

24:36

the trial. Did you agree with any

24:39

of the charges or did you

24:41

have any impression that anything they were charging

24:43

with and left was true? At

24:47

that point in time, I was

24:49

by my tunity just to get out of it. That

24:52

you just lost it. We

24:55

did say that I was overcharged,

24:57

but we didn't go through and find

25:00

tune comb everything because

25:02

what we're not going to do. They're gonna give me back my money.

25:05

So why go through that? Why go through

25:07

the embarrassment? I mean,

25:10

look at it. I spent over one

25:12

hundred and seventy thousand dollars in six

25:14

months. Who does that? I

25:18

could have bought another house for that. Yeah,

25:21

runs my mind. But back then and into

25:23

it, I didn't know I was

25:25

even closer that figure. I didn't

25:27

know. Well, I don't know. If you

25:29

want to talk about this about prostitution,

25:33

um, I

25:36

will say that. I'll say

25:38

I'll say this, there

25:41

was no prostitution at the Gold The

25:44

act of sex sometimes

25:48

did happen, but that's

25:50

it. So no,

25:54

all right, there was there was There

25:56

was no money exchange

25:58

for any sexual activity. That's

26:01

the best way I could put it. By

26:10

the dog days of summer, journalists Bill

26:13

Rankin noticed that Judge Hunt was getting impatient.

26:16

Other journalists were predicting that the trial

26:18

could drag into November. It's

26:21

my understanding that Judge Hunt, Steve

26:24

was kind of frustrated, I thinking how long it

26:26

was taking, that the prosecution

26:28

was overly ambitious, and the case was kind of

26:30

convoluted. Here's the prosecutor,

26:33

Art Leach. The

26:36

media aspect of it doesn't bother me, and

26:39

you know, you just do your job day to day. And

26:42

you know, you know, I was accustomed to long

26:44

trials. I enjoy long trials. You

26:47

know, all of these defense lawyers

26:49

are people that I have dealt with many, many,

26:52

many many times over

26:54

the course of the years, and they are consummate

26:56

professionals, and you

26:58

know, obviously they are

27:01

trying to get the information out that will help

27:03

their clients and so forth. I mean, you know, they

27:05

know I'm trying to get all the evidence I can in

27:07

that hurts their clients and will lead to

27:09

an a conviction. And

27:12

that's just the nature of the beast. A

27:17

trial can end a few ways. Both

27:20

sides can present all the evidence and give it

27:22

to the jury to decide, or

27:25

the defendants can take a plea in collaboration

27:27

with the prosecution, or

27:31

like in this case, the judge can

27:33

call for reinforcements. Here's

27:35

say it ol again. Leach

27:38

appears to be oblivious to the fact that he's getting

27:41

beaten around the head. It's like a

27:43

drunken puncher boxer,

27:45

someone who's just been hit around the head so many times

27:48

he doesn't realize anymore. He's just getting the

27:50

s kicked out of him. All of a sudden,

27:54

a former prosecutor

27:57

involved in the case by the name of Janice

27:59

Gordon. All of a sudden,

28:02

she's back in the case. But

28:04

she's back in the case because

28:07

she has been told by the US

28:09

Attorney that the government is not doing

28:12

real well and there

28:14

would be nothing worse than the

28:16

government losing

28:19

this case. Across the board.

28:22

They asked her to get involved to

28:24

find out if there's a way to work out a plea.

28:28

Everyone was tired no

28:31

matter what. This trial had

28:33

to end, and that meant

28:35

somebody had to go to prison on

28:54

the next and final episode

28:56

of Racket. So this

28:58

thing wrapped up in two thousand and one,

29:00

and then nine eleven happened. The

29:03

entertainers were all being fired. They were all losing

29:06

their jobs. It was really kind of sad

29:08

in a lot of ways. Half of the guys

29:10

from the trial were hanging out at

29:13

the smoothie game cash.

29:17

I said, yeah, three million,

29:19

give or take in cash. I

29:21

looked out of mindset. I'm doing fine? How

29:24

are you? Don't choke on your steak?

29:27

You know when she said, hey, we should, why

29:29

don't you check into the Gold Club? And I was like,

29:32

yeah, right, and she went no, you could

29:34

call it God's Club. I was like, you've

29:36

got to be kinning. Oh

29:41

my life, how's

29:44

billicking? Racking?

29:49

Racking? Oh

29:51

my love?

29:58

How's bill? Oh?

30:10

Racket? Inside the Gold Club is a production

30:13

of School of Humans and iHeartRadio

30:16

Rackets, written and narrated by me Christina

30:18

Lee and produced by Gabby Watts.

30:21

Caroline Slaughter is our supervising producer,

30:25

special thanks to Taylor church In Sonambashi.

30:29

Music is by Claire Campbell and

30:31

sound design and mixes by Tune Welders.

30:34

Executive producers are Brandon Barr,

30:36

Elsie Crowley, and Brian Lavin,

30:39

along with Scott Grubman and Lauren

30:41

Zimmerman. School

31:11

of humans,