Between money laundering scams, pig butchering cons and ransomware attacks, Professor Moyara Ruehsen says we are in the middle of an epidemic of scams. Scams that are costing people billions of dollars every year. We talk how money laundering really works, the organized crime gangs behind pig butchering scams and what you can do to protect yourself.
Then, it’s every state for itself as we countdown the Top 5 Best State Names.
Professor Moyara Ruehsen: 01:09
Pointless: 26:47
Top 5 State Names: 49:36
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Interview with Money Laundering and Scam Expert Moyara Ruehsen
Nick VinZant 0:00
Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick VinZant Coming up in this episode, scams and state names
Moyara Ruehsen 0:20
and I think there is a scam demic going on right now with narco trafficking organizations, particularly those in Latin America. They have partnered with Chinese professional money launderers. These investment scams can begin like a romance scam. Some of them have a little some elements of romance scam to them, but it's, it's a con game. It's a long term con.
Nick VinZant 0:52
I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance to subscribe, leave us a rating or review. We really appreciate. It really helps us out. So I want to get right to our first guest. This is money laundering and scam expert moyara russen, what really is money laundering?
Moyara Ruehsen 1:12
It is the movement or disguising of money connected to some kind of crime, and the crime can happen first, like drug trafficking, or, you know, child sexual exploitation, whatever horrible thing you can think of. Or it could also be moving money to commit a crime, so like terrorism, or, you know, North Korea acquiring nuclear weapons technology, moving the money for that purposes would also be, would also fall under money laundering.
Nick VinZant 1:50
I think most of us are familiar from TV shows and the like. But like, how often does this happen in real life? Like, how much money is really laundered?
Moyara Ruehsen 2:01
We don't know, and any numbers that you hear thrown out there are just wild guesses, but it's a big problem. It's a lot, and I would venture to guess that there's probably more of it happening right now, because financial technology has advanced to the point where criminals have a faster getaway car, especially with crypto, which we can also talk about too. And I think there is a scam demic going on right now where people we know, I mean, just ask anyone, and somebody will be able to tell you, Oh yeah, I know someone who lost maybe half or all of their life savings in a scam. And that is a a silent crime. People don't talk about it much, and law enforcement doesn't really know how to address it well. So I think we're going to see more
Nick VinZant 2:59
of it so we talk about, like, money laundering. How does somebody do it?
Moyara Ruehsen 3:04
There are lots and lots of techniques on how to launder money, but a lot of it will depend on what you're starting with. Are you starting with physical cash, like from a drug sale, then that's going to be laundered differently than if you're starting with crypto, or if you're starting with, say, a wire that's in US dollars that's being wired from one bank to another as part of some investment scam or something. So depending on what you're starting with, that's going to depend that's going to affect what kind of laundering techniques you use, at least in the beginning, and then eventually, a an experienced money launderer, will engage in what we call different layering techniques, where they will move the funds between financial institutions, between accounts, maybe between different forms. So maybe they'll move it from, you know, fiat currency like dollars and pesos and pounds into crypto. They might move it from one type of crypto asset into another kind of crypto asset. They might move it into real estate and then sell the real estate. And so that's all part of the layering process, and those layering techniques and maybe through different offshore shell companies, those can be similar, regardless of what you started with. So what you started with affects the beginning part of the money laundering process.
Nick VinZant 4:39
Is it hard to launder money, or is it hard to launder a lot of money?
Moyara Ruehsen 4:44
It's it's hard to launder a lot of money. It's a cat and mouse game. Sometimes it feels like we're playing Whack a Mole with these criminals.
Nick VinZant 4:56
What kind of criminals are usually doing this?
Moyara Ruehsen 4:59
There are special. Money launderers out there who only engage in money laundering. And then there are also criminal organizations who commit the crime and also do the laundering. So, and it really depends on the kind of crime. So for example, with narco trafficking organizations, particularly those in Latin America, they have partnered with Chinese professional money launderers. And those Chinese professional money launderers who are often based in North America, where the money is being generated, and in Europe as well, they specialize just in money laundering, that is their role, and so it's separate from the narco trafficking organizations. They it's outsourced. In other words, that task of money laundering is outsourced, whereas with other types of organized crime, whether it's Nigerians groups or Chinese organized crime in Southeast Asia, which is behind a lot of the scams, investment scams and whatnot, they will often handle that money laundering function themselves.
Nick VinZant 6:14
And when we talk about like scams, what kind of scams are you seeing now
Moyara Ruehsen 6:18
there are a lot of crypto investment scams, we have this unfortunate term called pig butchering, which we use to describe a lot of these scams. And it comes from a Chinese term. The idea is that you get the pig to trust you, maybe even love you to the point and then you fatten up the pig to the point where the pig is so trust you and or loves you so much that they walk willingly to the slaughterhouse. You don't have to force them to the slaughterhouse. They walk of their own free will to the slaughterhouse. And what it it these investment scams can begin like a romance scam. Some of them have a little some elements of romance scam to them. But it's, it's a con game. It's a long term con where somebody will send you a text message, for example, saying, Hi, I can't walk the dog today. Can you do it? You're wondering who's sending me this message. Do not reply. When you reply, you're telling them a lot of information. Number one, that it's a legitimate phone number. Number two, what language you speak, you know what's your first language, and maybe, depending on your reply, make whether or not you are a native or non native English speaker. They might ask questions like, Oh, I thought this was Sally. Who is this? And you give them your name. Now they know if you're male or female. All of that information goes into a database that scammers then use for maybe another approach. If you stop communication,
Nick VinZant 8:08
I'm looking for one of these. I think we've all got these text messages.
Moyara Ruehsen 8:12
I get them all the time. You know, several a week. I know a victim who was approached on Facebook. Someone saw the artwork behind them, like, if you take a look the painting behind me, and they said, Oh my god, I love that painting behind you. Did you do that yourself? And he had, and he was immediately flattered, and so he continued the conversation with them. And that led to, again, a long confidence game, where, after a couple of months, he felt like he knew this person really well, even though, you know, it's a fake Facebook profile, and it was probably someone in one of these scam compounds in Southeast Asia who isn't engaging with him, who knows whether they were male or female, but this fake profile was a very attractive female, and in this case, my acquaintance, the person who was scammed, was enticed by a gold derivatives investment scam. And you think, you know, law enforcement isn't always sympathetic. Like, why did you send your money to a stranger? Why did you send your money to this website? They make these websites look so legitimate and often like other websites that we use for our own, you know, retirement portfolio, and they might even have names and logos that are similar to ones that we know, like Fidelity,
Nick VinZant 9:42
yeah. Like, when you look at these kind of these scams, like, who's doing this, that's what I've never understood, like, who's doing this and what are they doing it for? It's very
Moyara Ruehsen 9:52
lucrative. So it and again, it depends on the type of crime, if you're talking about an initial coin offering. And. Scam. Anybody can do that. Okay, if you're talking about a ransomware attack, and that's very big, too, another quiet crime we don't hear much about, because no company wants to publicize, like, oh, we just got hit by a ransomware attack. You might get a notification that your information has been compromised, I think they're required by law to notify customers, and there are a lot of groups that are based in former Soviet Union. Also, what we've seen is a segmentation of the ransomware market. And so what you might have are some of these groups, say, from Eastern Europe, who are the masterminds behind coming up with the malware in the first place, right? But now you have other criminals who can who are really good at social engineering, and by that, I mean enticing you to give up your login credentials so that they can get into your company systems and and so they specialize just in that. But then there are also folks who specialize in negotiating the ransom. You know, once you get in, once these computer systems have been once your network has been compromised, then new players enter the picture and engage in the negotiation like, Okay, how much are you going to pay? And a lot of folks have backup systems, so they don't really care if they get the decryption key to decrypt all their files. But what they're now doing is what we call double extortion. Sometimes there's even triple extortion. Double extortion is when they say, Well, if you don't pay us the ransom, we are going to take your most sensitive files and publish them on the dark web, and that that'll be embarrassing. What if they hack a medical office? Now, everybody's medical records is are out there, right? It's terrible. You know, people will pay up to prevent that from happening, and if they're still not willing to do that, then they can threaten and say, well, if, if that's not going to scare you enough, we are going to contact your customers and tell your customers that you are willing to put all of their personally identifiable information at risk.
Nick VinZant 12:46
How much will they get for a scam like that?
Moyara Ruehsen 12:49
Like companies have been paying 10s of millions of dollars in ransomware payments. But again, it's going to depend on who the target is. If you are a large fortune, 500 company, you may be asked to pay 10s of millions of dollars in ransom.
Nick VinZant 13:06
For some reason, I just never thought that that was like I never really thought that that was necessarily happening, that somebody was hacking into, let's just say, Bank of America. We don't want to put names in it, but somebody's hacking into a bank, and they were going to pay them off for it, they wouldn't.
Unknown Speaker 13:23
Yeah, yeah, let's
Nick VinZant 13:24
make up a company, blamazon. So like, blamazon might have a budget. Like, hey, we need to set aside 10 million in case when we get hacked this year. Yeah. What strikes me about some of these scams is that they seem to be so the long game. And I wouldn't have necessarily thought that scam artists would be in the long game.
Moyara Ruehsen 13:47
Oh, yeah, yeah. Now you asked a question earlier about who are these different groups? So I mentioned ransomware groups, okay, but again, that feel is getting splintered, where you have folks that are putting together the malware, you have the folks that are really good at penetration through social engineering, and they all take their cut, right? And so it could be a teenager in Southern California who might be penetrating some fortune 500 company. Through social engineering. It happens. But then in terms of other types of crimes, like, for example, the pig butchering scams, well, it's not exclusively the realm of Chinese organized crime. The cases that we're most familiar with are mostly Chinese organized crime operating out of Southeast Asia, places like Cambodia and Myanmar, but we've also gotten wind that they might also be moving some of their operations to places like Dubai, for instance. So. And maybe elsewhere. And what's really insidious is that the folks who are being forced to scam these victims are themselves victims. They are often trafficked, thinking that they're going to be working maybe in a call center, and instead, once they get to one of these scams. Once they often arrive in Thailand, they are their passports are taken, and then they are driven across the border into Cambodia or Myanmar and forced to work as slaves under threat of horrible punishment, including death if they don't do it.
Nick VinZant 15:44
I've always wondered, like, when I do get one of those phone calls or text message like, how did this person decide that this was going to be their job to try to rip me off so? But it's not like that.
Moyara Ruehsen 15:54
Not like that. No, they're doing many of them are doing it for their own survival. One one that I am particularly horrified by is sextortion, and there have been many suicides of young teenagers, mostly teenage boys, but females are also being sex started as well, where they are enticed by someone that they meet on social media to share compromising pictures of themselves or compromising video, and then they are threatened and said, I'm going to share this with all of your contacts and your parents and your school teachers and everyone. And this is going to be online forever and and they think that their life is over. It's absolutely horrible. And by the way, if you know somebody, if you know a teenager, you should be talking to them about it. People feel uncomfortable talking about something like sextortion, but we have to talk about it, and there are ways to remove that kind of content. So they need to know that their life isn't over, that you know that they can extract themselves from this and they don't have to pay the extortionist. Now, the groups that have typically been behind those extortion scams tend to be based in West Africa and not necessarily Nigerian, but a lot of these groups are Nigerian or other countries within West Africa. But we've also learned recently that Chinese organized crime is learning how lucrative this is, and they are adding that to their portfolio of criminal activity. So it's not just pig butchering scams, but also sextortion scams operating out of those scam compounds in Southeast Asia.
Nick VinZant 17:46
So there's pig butchering ransom where sextortion are? There other kind of broad generalizations of scams that you're seeing now,
Moyara Ruehsen 17:56
I would say the biggest growth that we're seeing in terms of financial crime, is definitely financial fraud, and it doesn't have to be crypto related. You know, there are lots of Ponzi schemes and other kinds of investment fraud out there. Fraud could also be embezzlement, where you have an insider who is embezzling money from your company.
Nick VinZant 18:19
Are you ready for some harder slash? Listener submitted
Unknown Speaker 18:22
questions, okay,
Nick VinZant 18:25
biggest scam you've ever heard of,
Moyara Ruehsen 18:28
I would say, would have to be a hack, and probably one of the North Korean hacks. You know, we're talking about billions of dollars, but I think this is the record setter. It was the president of a bank in Kansas, and it was 10s of millions of dollars that he lost in a pig butchering scam, and he ended up taking money unauthorized transfers out of his own bank for to invest in what he thought was a legitimate investment platform, but it was a pig butchering scandal, and the bank went under. And it was the thing came to an end, mercifully, when he had approached one of his friends and asked to borrow another 12 million. And his friend thought, this is very strange. This is why do you need that? And when he described it, the guy said, I think this might be a scam. But when you're these criminals are so diabolically clever at gaining your confidence that you know they come up with all these plausible explanations, if when you even you know when you express any kind of uncertainty. And so he was deep in it. It really takes a lot to break the spell and pull somebody out of this. And so even when he was arrested and. In the courtroom, he thought, Oh, my God, if only I'd had extra money to pay the so called penalties that the you know, the criminals were asking him to pay in order to retrieve his money. He really thought he could get his money back. He did. It did not click in his mind that he was a victim of something that was false from very beginning, I think only later, once he was in jail, maybe, did he begin to realize what was happening.
Nick VinZant 20:30
How do people not see it? Because it seems like from the outside, like, Oh, that's a scam, and the people on the inside can never see it, and the person on the outside sees it instantly, right?
Moyara Ruehsen 20:41
Right? Again, you're under a spell, and a very compelling spell. These people really, truly believe that they know the person on the other end of the scam, and they maybe are in love with that person. They trust that person. It's, it's really hard. Very intelligent people fall for these scams. And we'd like to think, oh, I would never fall for it, but that's just because you haven't encountered some of these incredibly clever criminals.
Nick VinZant 21:16
Smartest one you ever came across like, Oh, that was clever.
Moyara Ruehsen 21:19
There was a banker in either Singapore or Hong Kong about a year or so ago who was asked by someone who we thought was with the company to transfer $26 million to another account. We call it business, email compromise or redirection fraud, where you think their money is supposed to go to one vendor or location and somebody tells you, no, we have to switch it to another account. It's always good to get confirmation that that is that really what's supposed to happen. But never, ever call the number that they provide to you. And you should also be careful about email, because maybe their email is compromised as well. So you try to get confirmation from somebody else in the company and and so these fraudsters used AI deep fake to pretend that, to simulate all of these different high level people in the company, they said, Yeah, yeah, I understand you're you're nervous, so why don't you just come to our next board meeting and and we'll explain to you this situation and why this money needs to be transferred. So he gets onto a zoom call, or Microsoft Teams call, and every single participant in that meeting was an AI deep fake. No, yes, yes. So I mean, with three seconds of your voice, I can clone your voice, and I can also use your face and, you know, pretend that I am you and have different words coming out of your mouth. I can do it on the Zoom call, and you can convince people it's it's amazing, in some of these pig butchering cases, the criminals will get onto either a FaceTime call or a zoom call, and pretend to be somebody else with a different voice, and so that that makes it even more real. They think that person that they're dealing with really truly is who they say they are. God, yeah, like it's all his bosses at the company, or at least he thinks it is.
Nick VinZant 23:41
Is there an age demographic that seems to be like these people fall for it the most? Yeah, because obviously, I think everybody would think seniors Right, right.
Moyara Ruehsen 23:49
I'm so glad you asked me that question, because you're right. There is this misperception. It's mostly seniors. The seniors do tend to lose a lot of money because they have often have more money. But I think the age group, 40 to 60 end up losing the most money in these paper train scams. But in terms of targets, 20 somethings get targeted probably more frequently than some of these older demographics.
Nick VinZant 24:20
Um, what do you think, like, like, what is? What are police doing? Law enforcement doing to kind of try to catch Well,
Moyara Ruehsen 24:26
there is a a group called Operation shamrock that is trying to work with law enforcement to help them up skill when it comes to blockchain analytics. In other words, crypto tracing, in order to better help victims of these types of scams, like like the pig butchering type scams. And so we're trying to make headway that way, but we also need to just educate the public. And so the more we can do about educating the public, the more we're likely to. To stop people from falling victim in the first place to some of these scams. And maybe somebody who is already in the middle of one of these scams, they start hearing some of the commonalities of these types of scams. They think, oh my gosh, that sounds a little bit like what happened to me. But there is one effort that I'm very excited about, TRM labs, they are a blockchain analytics company that has partnered with the private sector to start something called the beacon network. This is brand new, and the idea is to stop these crypto flows in real time, because when these transactions are in crypto, the criminals have the advantage of speed on their side, and the moment we can identify different wallet addresses, we need to go after it before those funds are moved into a jurisdiction where we don't have any law enforcement reach, and they've already recovered in just a few months time, I think $130 million
Nick VinZant 26:12
last question on my end, since you teach this and study it, could you get away with it?
Moyara Ruehsen 26:20
Well, who would be my clients? My clients would be criminals, and there is no honor among thieves. If they get caught, they're likely to churn me in.
Nick VinZant 26:31
I want to thank moyara so much for joining us. If you want to connect with her, we have linked to her on our social media sites. We're profoundly pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included her information in the episode description. Okay, now let's bring in John Shull and get to the pointless part of the show. What store would you live in? Like if you had to live in a store? What store
John Shull 27:00
would you live in a grocery store? But what are you going to
Nick VinZant 27:04
do for entertainment? I thought about that. I thought about grocery store. I think that's the default answer. I don't feel like mall should count, because that's that's cheating. I would live in a Walmart, food, entertainment, social aspect, like, you're going to see some stuff, so I would live in a Walmart. Or, if you wanted to class it up, and you had one of those nicer targets, then I would live in the target. But a target or a Walmart is where I would live at
John Shull 27:30
I think I'm going to go Costco based upon food alone,
Nick VinZant 27:34
but like, you'd be wasting so much stuff. Like, I feel like they would find out pretty quickly, because they'd be like, why are all these like, why is there a half an ounce gone from this four rung of ketchup thing? Like, you would leave too much evidence around. I think you could probably live in a Walmart a lot longer than you could live in a Costco.
John Shull 27:56
I mean, if I could go to any store of all time, it would be the kmarts from the 90s when they had little caesars in them.
Nick VinZant 28:03
Imagine that. I don't remember that you must have lived in a more I'm not going to say nicer, I'm going to say more unique place. Yeah. What a, what a, what a matchup of just crap like Kmart and Little Caesars like the bottom of the barrel on both accounts.
John Shull 28:23
First off, right? Little Caesars is not bottom barrel. You're nuts.
Nick VinZant 28:27
What's bought, what's lower in terms of pizza than Little Caesars. I'm not saying that Little Caesars isn't good pizza. I'm saying that, like, if the hierarchy, Little Caesars is generally cheaper than like Pizza Hut, is there anything below Little Caesars?
John Shull 28:47
I mean, I, I mean, I'll top my head. I'm just thinking dominoes.
Nick VinZant 28:50
Maybe I don't know dominant I thought of dominoes as classier than Little Caesars.
John Shull 28:58
I think you're thinking too high highly of dominoes and not highly enough of Little Caesars.
Nick VinZant 29:04
There used to be a godfather pizza where in Kansas, where I grew up, which was by far the bottom rung of the barrel. Or there was that pizza place you could go to for like 599 buffet, yes, italianos or something like that? I don't remember what the name of it was,
John Shull 29:24
the pizza buffet. Looking back on it was not a good idea.
Nick VinZant 29:29
No, the pizza I wasn't good. I would put pizza buffet second only to sushi buffet in terms of buffets that I generally enjoy. But that's only just because I enjoy pizza so much,
John Shull 29:45
I just it's all cardboard. I don't know breakfast pizza, though. What do you think of breakfast
Nick VinZant 29:49
pizza? I'm okay with breakfast pizza. I'm not gonna get it, but I'm not gonna have any problems with it. Dessert pizza can, on occasion, be pretty good, but it's not like I. I'm not missing out.
John Shull 30:03
Anyways, back to the store thing. I think it has to be a target, a Costco. You know, I'm not going to say a Walmart. That sounds terrifying.
Nick VinZant 30:12
I'm saying the Walmart would be entertainment. You don't like my kind of entertainment, though, which is just watching disasters
John Shull 30:19
happen. Yeah? Nobody does. Nobody does.
Nick VinZant 30:22
I firmly believe that the worst parts of life, the bad parts of life, are what makes it memorable. If I had a choice between eating an average meal and eating a crappy meal, I would choose the crappy meal, because at least that's memorable in an experience.
John Shull 30:41
I mean, I don't know, I see what you're saying, but I I would rather have a nice meal and a good memory than a crappy memory.
Nick VinZant 30:51
Oh, I just don't think you embrace the suck of life enough. I know you embrace the suck, I don't, but I don't think that you embrace the suck of life. Are you like you gotta embrace it?
Unknown Speaker 31:03
Are you 12?
Nick VinZant 31:07
No, I'm What are you looking at? Nothing.
John Shull 31:12
My camera's a little off center, so I'm trying to make eye contact. You were glancing down at something. What were you looking at? I got a text message actually, hmm. Who's it from? Do you want to know what it's about? I'll tell you gladly. What it's about. Is it
Nick VinZant 31:26
going to be something that I'm going to regret knowing about.
John Shull 31:29
The Detroit Tigers are currently winning. Let's go.
Nick VinZant 31:33
You have to get a text message alert that's that big of a deal. Like, Oh, wow. The Detroit Tigers aren't losing something in Detroit isn't falling to pieces. That's worthy of a push alert.
John Shull 31:44
I will, I will say this about Seattle. I'm not going to bash Seattle, because a friend of mine just went
Nick VinZant 31:52
there here and came back. Did not come here. He went to forks, which is 95 miles away, and said
John Shull 31:57
that there are ferries to take your vehicle from whatever to whatever. And on these ferries, they had taps of beer, so Oh
Nick VinZant 32:09
yeah, the ferry is, to me, one of the greatest modes of transportation. If I'm gonna rank my modes of transportation, number one would be my electric scooter. It's the greatest mode of transportation. It's all the speed of a car and the convenience of walking. It's fantastic. Nothing else can you go the speed of a car on the city and then just ride it right into the grocery store with only a few looks.
John Shull 32:34
My nuts got cut off this week, so I am now the proud owner of a minivan. I Oh, yeah.
Nick VinZant 32:47
What kind is it? What kind of what's the name give me? Let me look at it. Let me look at it and see how sad your life is.
John Shull 32:52
What it's actually, it's a nice
Nick VinZant 32:55
Can I try to guess what? Can I try to guess what kind you got? Sure there's only so
John Shull 32:59
many out there, so you have at least, like a one in six chance of picking the right one
Nick VinZant 33:07
Dodge Caravan. No, what is it?
John Shull 33:11
Kia, Carnival. And I will say, I will say this, by the way, and this, I Oh, my God, do you know how so the kids are made primarily overseas.
Nick VinZant 33:29
They're not made for men. I'll tell you that I
John Shull 33:31
never thought that I would care, and I don't really care. But there is something about buying a car and they hand you like this, the you know, the one sheet on it, and it says, like, 96% of the parts made in Korea. And you're like, am I not being an American right now by not buying an American made car, it was.
Nick VinZant 33:50
You have much bigger concerns that you've progressed to the point of where you were getting a minivan. You are now a minivan person. You are now the exact Wow, dude, your life is over.
John Shull 34:04
Yeah, I have hit that next part of life where, like, the next part of life, I'll be dead, like I'll be
Nick VinZant 34:12
dying. What's the engine size?
John Shull 34:16
I don't even know. I think it's, I think it's a V, v4 v6 maybe.
Nick VinZant 34:21
Yeah, the Kia carnival top speed is under 100 miles an hour.
John Shull 34:25
Yeah, it's a Mia, it's a mini fan man, right?
Nick VinZant 34:28
But still, I will say that I got a rental car, mini van one time and had a blast. But, I mean, I was like 25 with a rental minivan, just driving it over curbs. And I mean, how do you feel going in? You spend your hard earned money, probably big, the second biggest purchase that you would make, the second biggest purchase a person makes your hard earned money, and you walk out of there with a minivan. It. Are you going to be the one driving
Unknown Speaker 35:02
it? No, I am not. Okay.
Nick VinZant 35:07
Okay, that's you a little bit, but not much.
John Shull 35:11
It's all. I was disappointed in my wife because I had worked a morning shift that, and then we went to the dealership after that, and I thought we were just looking at a car. No, we weren't just looking at a car. They had it pulled up. They had it washed like she had already started the process of buying the car. She just needed me to be there for my signature. So I feel a little duped there.
Nick VinZant 35:38
Did you try to put your foot down? Did you try to be like, Absolutely not, or did you just see it and accept
John Shull 35:44
no, I learned after my basement fiasco that I wasn't I might as well just go with it. It doesn't matter.
Nick VinZant 35:50
Oh, but does that mean that after the basement fiasco, have you mismanaged affairs of the household, and now your wife has taken them away from you, and this is your punishment, like John, I told you to handle the basement, and this is what you did. I can't trust you with the car, so we're getting a Kia carnival, because you would come back with a moped or a Mazda Miata, and we can't have that. She thinks get you as fired up as I
John Shull 36:16
can about she thinks I'm irresponsible, because when we lived in Orlando, this is before I met her. I went to an exotic car dealership, and I wanted to Lisa Lamborghini, and I went through all the rigmarole. I don't even know how they let me how even got to the process, but then when they ran my credit and they came back, they're like, Do you realize this is going to be like, a $3,500 a month payment.
Nick VinZant 36:44
Did you have the money in any way? Like, no. How did that happen? Oh, I understand now. Yeah, I had to take she had to take it from you. Where did you think that this was going? Like, what if they came out and were like, here's your Lambo, sir.
John Shull 37:00
Would you have done? I would? I would have driven it for one it's very rare to find dealerships that will lease exotic cars like that, but they were all about it. And here I'm I was thinking maybe 678, $100 which would have broke me, but I, who knows, I was young and dumb, maybe I would have done it, man, three grand, so I didn't start the relationship off with my wife on the best foot in turn.
Nick VinZant 37:26
Oh no, no, she's made the right decisions. That's the thing for people who are not married, like if you are married, your wife will never forget. She will never forget. No, a mistake that you made, it never
John Shull 37:39
I feel like men, we don't even pay attention like we just let that stuff slide. But women, and I'm probably gonna sound really sexist here, that's fine for this. Women never forget a damn thing.
Nick VinZant 37:52
No, they don't, not when it can, not when it involves your shortcomings. They do not, not the same thing. But my mother rest her soul. Up until the day that she died, I lost my credit card once, when I was like, in college, when I was maybe 18 or 19, and I lost my credit card, and up until the time I was damn near 40, she'd be like, don't lose your credit card again. One fucking time, I lost my credit card, and I heard about it endlessly, and then my wife said something about me losing credit cards. It spans generations. They all get together and tell each other about it. It's like, Ooh, you know what seems like a nice guy, but he'll lose a credit
John Shull 38:35
card or he'll buy a minivan. Don't worry.
Nick VinZant 38:38
Well, you didn't. You didn't even get to buy the minivan.
John Shull 38:42
I didn't I, I was such a dick, too. You know how they, they make you sign on, like, a, you know, an auto sign thing. You don't even actually sign paper anymore. You just sign a tablet. I just put us, I just put a smiley face. See?
Nick VinZant 38:57
But then you like, that's one of those things that comes back to you, because now they're like, this dude got a minivan. He was pissed off about it. Still had to buy it, right? Like you should have made him like it was your idea. I wanted carnival. Does it? 2026 What year is
John Shull 39:12
it? 25 economical makes no sense, but the 25 and 26 is where, literally, this embrace. I don't know how that's even possible.
Nick VinZant 39:22
What color did you get?
Unknown Speaker 39:25
Black baby, black bat.
Nick VinZant 39:28
Okay, okay. If you want to name your minivan, you got to do something to it. That's like, makes it seem cooler.
John Shull 39:39
I mean, I don't know. I'm not gonna pretend I have driven it probably a total of 10 minutes, and it was to pick up my father in law and drop him off.
Nick VinZant 39:48
So okay, good, good. All right, all right.
John Shull 39:51
Let's give some shout outs. Shall we? We're gonna start with Wayland Sanford, who I'm in let me know Wayland, i. Marlene Benitez, Kelly, Villegas, Javier Brooks, Zachariah summers, Thelma waters, Olin the luckiest Buckley Byron green, Osvaldo, Kim and Betsy Perkins,
Nick VinZant 40:20
appreciate all of you. The Kia carnival can go zero to 60. That can't be right in 10.9 seconds, and zero to 100 miles per hour in 19 seconds. So if you need to ever escape and floor it, you will not be I
John Shull 40:43
will, I will tell you this that is probably accurate, that's not a misnomer.
Nick VinZant 40:50
Imagine, like punching it and not going anywhere. Punch it and you like, punch it burn. And you guys go,
John Shull 40:59
I think the bigger surprise of this, of this whole situation, and for those of you that listen to this, that know what I had driven was the fact that I got $1,000 trading credit for my 2013 Chevy Cruze man.
Nick VinZant 41:19
I mean, I guess that's 12 years old. Now, do you know what's ridiculous, my old little truck. Do you remember my old little truck?
John Shull 41:27
Oh, yeah, I remember your old
Nick VinZant 41:28
truck several Chevy Colorado, before they started making them a bigger size. That thing was 15 years old, and I got 4500 for it because they didn't make little No, they didn't make little trucks. They stopped, like, making little trucks like that. And they were really coveted for, like, parts delivery. So people really wanted that specific kind of car. I got 4500 for it 15 years after I bought it for 12 grand
John Shull 41:56
Good God. I mean, that's yeah, good old that was amazing. It's a great deal. Got a black bat there, alright, not to get in the politics of everything, which it seems like everything nowadays is politics related, literally everything. What do you what do you make of the Jimmy Kimmel saga? Glad he's back. Don't care. Late night TV been dead to you for 15 years.
Nick VinZant 42:29
I don't know if I've ever actually walked Ooh, excuse me, I don't know if I've ever actually watched late night TV in probably 10 or 15 years. I don't particularly care about Jimmy Kimmel, but it's government censorship, right? Like that's a problem. That's a big problem. And my thing with any kind of this political stuff I feel like is always the same. Don't be a hypocrite if you feel like this about one side. Feel like that about the other side, right? The cancel culture people weren't talking very loudly when this happened. So my thing is always like, don't be hypocrite about it. If you feel like this about one person doing it, feel like that about somebody else on your side doing it too. Otherwise you're just hiding behind your beliefs.
John Shull 43:18
Apparently, Sean Combs is going to be sentenced in 10 days. Did he? Did he? Yeah, sorry, whatever his name is. Now, he could legitimately be sentenced to life, but I think he's going to play out, or has pled out and it's gonna get a year and a half, which I had a question to ask you, and that is, if you're powerful, if you're rich, doesn't matter. You're never gonna get actually held accountable for anything that you do,
Nick VinZant 43:53
unless they really got you. I think that the like the barometer or the barrier or whatever you want to call it is much higher. Yeah, the bar is much higher. But you like the justice system. You know this working in news, and I used to cover news, so I learned this too, is like the justice system is slow, but once it happens, it happens like you might not go to trial for seven years, but when you're guilty, oh, you're going right to jail. So I think that once the wheels finally start turning, they do turn for just about everybody.
John Shull 44:31
Alright, let's get to some fun questions here. Um, would you rather have six toes or six fingers?
Nick VinZant 44:40
Well, I mean, probably six fingers, to be honest, because I would think that an extra finger would help you out with thing things, and if you had six toes, you'd probably have to buy special shoes. So purely from an economical standpoint, I would go with six fingers.
John Shull 44:55
That's a good point. I was gonna say six toes may allow you to run faster, but. But you know, I that may not make any sense, so I'll go six fingers too. Yeah, you
Nick VinZant 45:04
got to think about it from an economy standpoint, although, I guess, but you don't spend nearly as much money on gloves as you do on shoes.
John Shull 45:11
Yeah? I mean, listen, you're
Nick VinZant 45:13
talking to six fingered gloves. Do you have to buy special gloves?
John Shull 45:19
Yeah, you have six fingers. Of course you'd have to,
Nick VinZant 45:25
oh yeah, yeah, there are, there. They are sold on Etsy. They usually are specially made. But yes, there are, yeah, you mean Etsy, whatever. I've never used it. Sorry. I'm not over there buying candles and minivans on the damn thing.
Unknown Speaker 45:46
Teemu. I
Unknown Speaker 45:49
don't know what team
John Shull 45:51
Jesus. What are you a boomer?
Nick VinZant 45:54
No, I, I don't go on things like that.
John Shull 45:58
I don't know what temu is, Mama?
Nick VinZant 46:02
Just because you're changing your voices doesn't mean it. Oh, okay, now I know what it
John Shull 46:05
is. I'm gonna live my husband. Tell you what it's like, the Asian version of Amazon, but they have everything. It's a knockoff, like, it's third hand things that you can get, like, say, you want a candle holder on Amazon that's 30 bucks. You can get one that's much cheaper, made that's probably going to be worth an end to the value for 499
Nick VinZant 46:33
on team. You so you can, you can buy, like, pieces of shit.
John Shull 46:37
Yeah, pretty much. Okay, so
Nick VinZant 46:39
you can. It's the old question to me, man, I go back to the old question, what's more expensive? A $50 pair of boots or a $200 pair of boots?
John Shull 46:50
Kind of like my grandpa used to say, you don't answer, you can always hustle that corn. But it doesn't mean that that shoelace is going to
Nick VinZant 46:59
become any softer. Grandpa. Show had some good saying.
John Shull 47:02
One more thing, so I was at a funeral last week. Okay, rip aunt Noreen and walking through, you know, you pay your respects and at the viewing, and you know, family and friends are there. Well, I have an aunt who is there. Well, not my aunt. She's my dad's aunt, so, but I call her aunt regardless. My God, this story. She's like, 95 right? I go to hug her, and as I'm hugging her, she goes, I don't know who you are. Then she looks at then she looks at my retinue, she looks at my wife, and she goes, Melissa, it's so good to see you. And I was like, What the fuck Juanita, like, I've known you my entire life. You don't remember me, but you remember my wife. My wife's just she won the week last week. She won the
Nick VinZant 47:53
week I won. She destroyed you.
John Shull 47:57
I clearly, I'm just useless in life. This is
Nick VinZant 48:01
what happens when you have a minivan. Everybody like this is this is what I warned you about. This is what I warned you about. Going back as far as when you threw your back out and had to go to the emergency room while picking up dog poop, that your family was going to start seeing you as weak, that you needed to reestablish dominance, and you didn't do that, and now you're forgotten by your family. They walk all over you, buying mini vans without even you knowing like this is what I told you was going to happen, and you did nothing about it.
John Shull 48:35
You're right. I I should have put my foot down, and here we are. So can we get the top five, get this
Nick VinZant 48:42
the biggest guy in the neighborhood, or done something like a fire in your own house, and then put it out like you've got to re establish dominance in some way or some form?
John Shull 48:56
No, I think every man, you're a man that is married knows exactly what I'm going through. It's better just to go sometimes I don't sure you don't
Nick VinZant 49:10
Sure man out my street,
John Shull 49:12
I just have a Hyundai Elantra
Nick VinZant 49:15
by a car with you had a Hyundai Elantra? No, I'm talking about you. You seem like a kind of Toyota Highlander and a cross track, like every other single person in Seattle. When you move to Seattle, if you have a family, you're automatically issued a cross track and a Toyota Highlander. It's how it works here.
John Shull 49:33
Top Five, yeah, please for God's sakes
Nick VinZant 49:35
so our top five is top five state names, not saying the state is cool, just saying we like, we like the name, the name of the state. John resides in pussyville, popular, not a man Boulevard.
John Shull 49:53
Are you done? Are you done? Just want
Unknown Speaker 49:54
to repeat that.
Nick VinZant 49:57
John lives to the corner.
John Shull 50:01
I think the whispering even gave it more of an effect.
Nick VinZant 50:05
It did a little bit right, all right, my understanding you got to do what you got to do, keep happy wife. My number five. I mean sacrificing your dignity.
John Shull 50:12
My number five is Idaho.
Nick VinZant 50:17
Re why? Why Idaho? You just like, cuz, yeah, I know why.
John Shull 50:21
I just like saying it Idaho. I understand you to hope, Idaho. Idaho.
Nick VinZant 50:28
Idaho. How proud are you on a scale of one to 10 about that right now,
John Shull 50:35
I actually spent some time in trying to figure out this list, and this was the only one where I was like, it has to be on the list, but it can't be high. It has to be, you know, five is
Unknown Speaker 50:45
perfect.
Nick VinZant 50:46
I understand why you would want Idaho. My number five is similar Mississippi. I just love spelling it. M, i s s i s s i p, p i m, i s s i s s i p, p, i i just love spelling the state name.
John Shull 51:03
Cool story.
Nick VinZant 51:06
You're gonna make fun of me, but you got Idaho,
John Shull 51:09
Idaho. It's easy to spell. It's five letters, um, all right, my number four is Alaska.
Nick VinZant 51:18
Oh, why Alaska? That's an interesting one
John Shull 51:23
to me. Just say it Alaska, it's crisp, it's strong. It's the biggest state by far. Even though we're going names only just it's it's a strong word to say Alaska, like I live in the United States in Alaska.
Nick VinZant 51:41
Hmm, okay, okay, I feel that same way about a state that's actually my number one. It's not Alaska, but I feel that same way that's like, there's something about saying it Arizona. I think that's a great name for a state, Arizona.
John Shull 51:58
Okay, why is that
Nick VinZant 52:01
just like the way it sounds like Arizona. Also, I would make an argument that Arizona, while the number four state name, would be the number one name if you were naming a person after a state, best state to name someone after is Arizona.
John Shull 52:20
All right, my number five or three. Sorry, not five. My number three is Montana.
Nick VinZant 52:28
Okay, okay, I'm not gonna say anything about Montana. Have a little bit higher on the list, but I agree. I like Montana. Montana.
John Shull 52:34
Man, tell you what, it's not at all
Nick VinZant 52:40
Hawaii, our most exotic sounding state name, Hawaii, Hawaii, I think it's actually Hawaii. I don't know how to say it. Oh, the right
John Shull 52:51
way, Hawaii. My next one, my number two, Alabama. What Alabama? I love it because it starts off animal and sends, you know, Alabama, Bama,
Nick VinZant 53:09
Alabama, just, just fun to say. It's better than Kansas.
John Shull 53:15
I mean, how many, how many state names are fun to say, like Florida, New York, Michigan, California, Alabama.
Nick VinZant 53:25
Alabama is a fun one to say. I'll give you that right. Bama Roll tide, my number two is Rhode Island. Just if you never knew anything about Rhode Island, just imagine what a place called Rhode Island looks like, right? Rhode Island and also the only state with two words that isn't directional or just says new, right? It's the only state with two words that isn't just new or directional,
John Shull 53:59
that says a lot. I think that does say a lot. That's actually a good
Nick VinZant 54:03
one. What's your number one gonna be?
John Shull 54:06
So my number one, and I swear this isn't a homer pick, but I went with Kansas. Did you really? I did for two reasons. One, it's it's simple, it's short, and if you want to really get, you know, into it, you it's the only word that has a bad word in it. When you say it, Kansas, gonna go to Kansas or Arkansas, Arkansas, but we're gonna say Kansas.
Nick VinZant 54:40
Did you know that growing up in Kansas, we actually learned that it was Arkansas, and so whenever people would say Arkansas, you'd be like, what? Damn, really Arkansas? Yeah, in Kansas, when I was growing up, people said Arkansas. They didn't say Arkansas, because you also. I grew up also had the Arkansas River wasn't the Arkansas River was the Arkansas River. Wonder how many people made no sense
John Shull 55:06
around the country would say Arkansas, I've being a Midwesterner. I've never heard that before.
Nick VinZant 55:12
I think it's only a Kansas thing that people in Kansas say, are Kansas we're gonna go to? Yeah, my number one is Montana.
John Shull 55:21
Oh, yeah, I thought your number one was gonna be Texas.
Nick VinZant 55:26
No, Texas is like, somehow doesn't have the pop of Montana, like Montana, classic, crisp. I think that Montana is what people think. I think that Montana is what people from overseas think America is
John Shull 55:50
really I feel like they think it's like a, you know,
Nick VinZant 55:53
not anymore, but yeah, no, not your honorable mention. There big Hoss, Louisiana. I thought about Louisiana.
John Shull 56:04
I also put in Georgia, Kentucky, and I also put Texas in there as well, just because, you know, I like the for the most part, I like the shorter state names because it's just, it's just sounds, sounds more like authoritarian
Nick VinZant 56:23
ish, yeah, it needs to kind of pop a little bit
John Shull 56:27
Alabama, but not Ohio, cuz fuck Ohio.
Nick VinZant 56:32
I agree Ohio is one of the worst state names. Yeah, and John, I don't, I mean, I don't really have anything in my honorable mention, because you can't put any of like the Norths or Souths or news in there, because it's like, oh, you couldn't even come up with, like, your own name. You just had to be North Dakota. Like, we're South Dakota.
John Shull 56:53
Like, I thought about putting Maine on the list, but like, Maine doesn't pop for being a short, you know, a five letter state, Maine going to Maine,
Nick VinZant 57:00
not like Montana. Going to Oregon,
John Shull 57:04
Utah, I'm going to Alabama.
Nick VinZant 57:07
Yeah, it has to pop more. Oregon doesn't pop, nope. Utah is not bad.
John Shull 57:14
Going to Washington State, going to Colorado.
Nick VinZant 57:18
We're the only state that has to have, like, a spec to specify the fact that we're a state
John Shull 57:24
because all that acetaminophen out there,
Nick VinZant 57:27
instead of, is it a set of auto
Unknown Speaker 57:30
Oh, okay,
Nick VinZant 57:31
that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless, I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate. It really helps out the show and let us know what you think are the best name states. I don't understand the selection of Kansas. I've never really thought that was a great name, but maybe it's because I lived there or grew up there, or lived there and grew up there or or lived there, grew up there and are from there. I should I'll just stop. I.