Julie Watts Investigates Gavin Newsom's Diaper Contract

Something's not right here. Crime is up all over the state. The homelessness and the city is out of control. The economy is sick. Taxes are high. Housing is expensive and businesses are leaving. Leaving needs fixing. And John Phillips is just the man to lead the charge. It's the Fix California Hour with John Phillips and Randy Wang. And we continue at 105 in the afternoon on the John Phillips Show. Mr. Randy Wags in Toronto, Canada. John, we are broadcasting live on the radio on 790K ABC in Southern California, 810 KSFO in the Bay Area, and broadcasting live on video worldwide at YouTube.com slash at... Randy Wang Radio. We're also at X at Johnny Don't Like. Facebook at KBC Radio, Facebook at 810KSFO, and Twitch at Randy Wang Radio. If you want to watch the show and you couldn't find any of that stuff, send us an email. Johnny Don't Like Show at gmail.com. I'll be your concierge. I will get you right in where you need to be. We're here until 3 o'clock. Watch the show along with us. Play around in the chat room. It's going to be a good time. 800-222-2-2-2-2 is the telephone number 1-800-22-2-2-2-2-2-2-2. It is our pleasure to welcome our next guest to the program. She is a 13-time Emmy Award-winning investigative correspondent for CBS News, California, specializing in state capital accountability and consumer investigations. You can watch her in Los Angeles on KCal TV and in San Francisco on KPIX. You can follow her on X at Julie Watts TV. Julie Watts, welcome. Hello, gentlemen. I'm guessing whoever gave you that intro got it from AI because it was not actually entirely correct. Oh, is that so? If I'm fact-checking the governor, I've got to fact-check you guys as well. Sorry. Go right ahead.

Thanks for having me. Well, thank you for being here. Your ears must have been ringing yesterday because all over cable news, you were referenced right and left, sometimes by name, sometimes not by name. Because yesterday, Katie Porter announced that she is getting out of politics for good, that you won't have Katie Porter to kick around anymore. And anytime they bring on the analyst to explain why, they go, well, the moment she lost her temper with that reporter in California, I said to myself, That's it for her. You know, I've said this, I think, publicly a couple of times, certainly on panels, because as you might imagine, this comes up a lot. Folks ask me to talk about this. I will say that interview certainly. It inspired others to get in the race. It was a turning point in the race. But I do not think that you can credit that interview for the destruction of her campaign. I think that that was probably some very powerful folks inside the Democratic Party who didn't want her to be governor because they elevated that reporting. And think about this. If I had done that interview, let's just say with Gavin Newsom and it had gone bad, I would have been billified. Right? But nobody vilified me. Well, a few people did. I did get some hate mail. But for the most part, publicly folks didn't vilify me, which was a very clear indication that the Democratic Party was not rallying behind her. No, and I'll tell you, I've seen some of her defenders. I've seen some of the people who ran her campaign explaining why she, I think, ended up with 4% or 5% when all the votes were counted. And the answer that they gave is sexism, that the temperament issue became the dominant issue in the campaign for them. And they believe that she was targeted because she was a female candidate. And I've got to tell you. The candidate that she reminded me of the most was actually a guy here in California. And I don't know if you remember him, but Kevin Shelley. whose dad was the mayor of San Francisco, Jack Shelley, became California Secretary of State. And he was the Assemblyman from San Francisco. He was on the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco. And he was one of these guys who had the right name, came from the right political machine, had all the right contacts, and the sky was the limit. And when he became Secretary of State, he had a really nasty temper. And he had high turnover on his staff. And I think at one point he threw a telephone at someone, not the cell phones, the heavy ones that we used to have back in the old days. And it just got to a point to where there were enough stories out there about this guy exploding on people where that just became how voters knew him. And he actually had to resign as Secretary of State because the snowball just got so big.

Here's what I would say. You need to go read or watch the, I think I call the Dipergate Part 2, 66 days and counting. So the way that the Public Records Act works in California is legally they have 10 days to respond to say, yes, these are public records and disclosable or no, they're not. And then they have to tell you when they will give you those records, right? What happens is they then... almost always, certainly state agencies will say, we need another 14 days because this is an unusual circumstance. That is also allowed under state law. They come back at the end of the 14 days and they say, we think we can give them to you by this date, but we're working on it. And so in this case, they gave me a date in the future and then they extended that date again. And this is the way it always works. They don't want to give you something. They'll just keep extending it. And legally, they don't have to provide the documents by a certain. time, they just have to tell you when they'll give them to you. So in this case, after 66 days, I'm like, I'm done. Like, this is, we're going to expose the fact that they're still holding on to these records. And then I happened upon the fact that this was a, it actually was listed as a no bid contract. And as soon as I reported that within, you know, later on that day, I got the records. And it's funny, some of these records actually were dated that day. In other words, they had been forwarded, emails had been forwarded on that day to fulfill the record request. Now, I will say, if you read our reporting, the state said they needed the time for their lawyers to go through these things. And, you know, it was this, you know, extensive process. And I don't know if you've seen my most recent post. I didn't put it on TV, but we just did a sort of follow up. So we did the story. Six hours later, I get an email after five o'clock on a Friday, this last Friday saying, here are the records you requested. And then 30 minutes after that, I get an email from the governor's office saying, You know, your reporting is demonstrably false. And they start listing all of these points that are that are wrong, allegedly wrong with our reporting. And so I spent all weekend digging through documents and responding point by point to each of their concerns, most of which we had reported anyway in our initial story and linking the documents basically as breadcrumbs for anybody who would like to do a deep dive and investigate because there's a lot of citizens sleuths out there. And so what I've done with this investigation is really give you. all the documents and the databases where you can search for more. Needless to say, I haven't heard anything since we posted that story and sent the response back. Well, and one of the things that you uncovered in all of this is how commonplace it is to have these no-bid contracts when we're under the assumption that it's a competitive bidding process for all kinds of different contracts that they have found ways around. Yeah, and this is, you know, to me, the most important point of the story. So in California, you're supposed to have competitive bids, and there is an outline process of what that means. And there's a scoring sheet, and you can see the scores, and they are required to give it to the lowest bidder or, I mean, there's a handful of things, but there are requirements in there.

So there are some exemptions for somebody like only one company makes a product or it's an emergency or it's a state-to-state transaction or state-to-state agency to state agency transaction, but none of those applied here. And so then I started looking in the Budget Act and I realized that there was an exemption for this policy. And there are a billion dollars worth of these exemptions in just this 2026 budget that was just passed. And what it does is it says this is exempt from the Department of General Services, the DGS oversight. So not only are they exempt from competitive bidding, but DGS, if it's a competitive contract, they have to upload it to a public database. So we can search for anybody who got the exemption. It's not in that database. Nobody would know, nobody will know that any of these contracts are no-bid contracts unless you were to search for the program in the state budget, then try to go figure out who got that contract. And even then, that, I mean, it could take you months before they'll tell you who got the contract. And will we ever see those contracts? You know, that's not clear either. So this is a really big exemption. And we're talking about funding for the governor's prop one. That was his big campaign. We're talking about suicide prevention, prison reentry programs, opioid crisis funds. These are all things that have been hot button issues that really don't have to go through competitive bidding and don't have to be disclosed. And so. For me, the point of the story was not diapers. It was what this tiny little diaper contract revealed. And I really hope that the folks in Sacramento inside that building start looking at this and saying, listen, if we're going to do this, maybe we should have a rule that you have to automatically upload those no-bid contracts, right? Because these exemptions are becoming more commonplace. It seems as though the attitude in Sacramento is going in the opposite direction, though. Go back to the hospice care fraud in Los Angeles that was exposed in part from your organization, CBS News, that went national and went all over the place. The cable networks were all talking about it. The reaction from the governor's office was not anger at the people who were stealing the money. The reaction was anger at the people in the media who exposed the fraud. It seemed like that's who they were mad at. They weren't mad at the money being stolen. They were mad at being embarrassed by having that being reported. Well, I think there's a distinction between the folks in the administration and the folks in the legislature. And we are seeing, you know, keep in mind, we've got, I think it's a third of the legislature. It was new. Or this is their sophomore year, right? So first term, you are, I am noticing anyway, folks who are more concerned about accountability than when I first started sort of covering this world. But you're right. You know, I don't think the administration likes to look bad.

I have a couple of investigations that I'm working on right now that also indicate that that is a thing. But I'm going to kind of stay tightlift on where that's going. I will also say we have another part for hopefully the final diaper gate piece is going to be coming out. I'm hoping to publish today and we'll get it on the air here soon. But it will reveal what was actually in the contracts and what was actually in the competitive bid records. That I find really as a mother, as a parent, very interesting. I'm going to leave you with that tease, and you'll know more when we release it later on, hopefully today. So I'm going to be hitting that refresh button on YouTube all day long, is what you're saying. Well, this one might be on the website first before it's on YouTube, but yes. What was the relationship between the first partner, Jennifer Siebel Gavin Newsom, in this group? So, you know. Listen, I think to be fair, we need to go back and say baby to baby is absolutely by all accounts, a reputable nonprofit in terms of charity navigator, in terms of how much they pay themselves. They get a ton of money. I mean, this contract is a drop in the bucket compared to, I think it was, don't quote me on this, but I think it was like 70 million a year that they're bringing in from donations, from, I mean, celebrity donations, and they do a lot of good. So I want that to be very clear. This is never an investigation into baby to baby. The relation and. The Gavin Newsom's, there's been a lot of people talk saying, oh, this is corruption, and the Newsombs are profiting off of this. Baby to Baby is not even, well, for the most part, profiting off of this. This was a sort of cost, we're paying for the cost for you to do this program. Jennifer Siebel Gavin Newsom, one of the CEOs, sits on the board of the first partners project, which is a nonprofit. And listen, this is a very prominent high profile. nonprofit that focuses on women and children. And so it is not surprising to me that this woman, like I don't know chicken and egg if they were friends before. I know that they've had donations going back to, you know, Gavin Newsom campaigns for years, but nothing that raises any red flags. So it's not clear to me whether she's on the board because of her relationship with Jennifer Siebel Gavin Newsom or if that relationship became because she was on the board. So I do want to sort of, my investigation was never into that. And I want to make that clear. My investigation is to what this diaper gate contract reveals that somebody got a contract without a competitive bid. It was not transparent. And I think that you'll, when we release part four, you're going to understand that there are really concerns with how baby to baby was selected. That's not to say that they aren't a good nonprofit or can't do this well. Last question before you go. We've been following another story involving the California Department of Motor Vehicles and allegations that there was cheating going on when people were taking their tests. And there are members of the legislature who you mentioned are more interested in finding corruption and making sure everything is kosher than the executive branch. And you have the committee chairman who looks after the DMV and is supposed to hold them accountable. who is very interested in getting to the bottom of this, and the DMV seems to be stonewalling him, and he's not happy with how responsive the DMV is to his requests and other members of his committee apparently feel the same way. It seems as if, in many cases, in a world where term limits dominate, the bureaucracy looks at it like, we're going to be here forever, and you're going to term out. If we don't like the questions you're asking, we'll just wait you out.

Do you get the impression that they do the same thing with you at times where they know that you have deadlines? They know that you have newscast that you have to appear on and bosses that want to see productivity. And if they just make it as big of a pill as possible, maybe they hope that you move on to something else and you just give up on whatever it is that you're digging. I think they do that. with everyone, with all journalists. The beauty of the role that we created, that CBS created for me is that I don't. I don't have to give up. I mean, I have more investigations than I can handle right now, but I'm going to be there. And I can't tell you how often somebody's communications person says, yeah, we're going to decline that interview. And then I say, okay, well, I know they're going to be in a hearing. And so I'm just going to hang out outside the hearing. They look much better if they're sitting down in a well-lit interview situation versus me chasing them down the hall. And I will say, you know, some people call this ambush reporting. We have a rule in most investigative reporters. have a rule. You do not ambush people. If you're going to do an unscheduled interview, it's only after several requests, documented requests for a sit-down interview. But if you're not going to answer the questions, we're going to get the answers. And frankly, sometimes they look much worse when they don't want to talk. So yes, I do think that they try to make us, you know, they think that we'll go away. And for the type of accountability reporting that I have been tasked with, it frankly gives me another story to do if they don't want to talk or if they don't want to give me the documents because to me that says, okay, there's some there there because if there wasn't, you would have given them to me 66 days ago. Julie Watts, CBS News, California. Excellent, excellent, excellent reporter. You can follow her on X at Julie Watts TV. The final installment of DiPergate coming up. We'll make sure to push it on social media when it's out. Julie, thanks so much for stopping by. Thanks, guys. If you'd like to email the show, you can do so at Johnny Don't Like Show at Gmail.com. That's Johnny Don't Like Show at Gmail.com. And Randy, you're monitoring the mailbag. Listener, Mitch in Camarillo has been hard at work in the AI minds for the last hour, and he has emailed us. Somebody in the chat last hour said that we should make an AI version of California Attorney General Rob Bonta as Captain cliche, and it looks like I don't even have to do it because Mitch did it, and it is fantastic. We're focused on the work. We are sleeves rolled up, heads down, arms extended. in partnership arms locked together to collaborate to deliver. Captain cliche, the superhero nobody wanted. I'd see that movie at the Cineplex. I'd even buy the $16. Dr. Pepper. And Randy, earlier today, the newest edition of the Accountability Podcast dropped.

The Accountability Podcast with John Phillips and Randy Wang. Countability, countability, countability. Covers the thing we just talked about with Julie Watts. Dipergate. We go into that story as well as Jen Gavin Newsom's bizarre interview on MS Now with Stephanie Rule. We get into all the investigations with Gavin Newsom. Make sure that as soon as we sign off at 3 o'clock, if you haven't watched it yet, check it out. YouTube.com slash at Accountability Podcast. I'm going to put a link in the chat right now. So you can click on it. You can subscribe. Let's check that subscriber account. We're trying to get up to 2,500 subscribers for the Accountability Podcast. And we're at 1,429. Once we get to 2,500, the John Phillips Show Soundboard. will be yours, and it will be free, and you will be able to use it for at least a year. I will see if I want to keep paying for it after that. Right now, it's time to open up the California crime blotter. It's happened yet again. I see. Time for the California crime blotter. And Randy, the first edition takes us to Pasadena. Where in the middle of a heat wave, copper wire thieves are ripping out all the copper in the AC units, disabling them. Great. It's like the flooded Oakland DMV over and over and over again. For more, here's Fox 11 in Los Angeles. Small businesses are feeling the heat after thieves rip apart their air conditioning units and steal the copper inside. As Fox 11's due to Silver reports, in some shops, temperatures are climbing as high as 90 degrees. How much money could they be getting from every one of those units? Like $20, $30, and you're talking about thousands of dollars of damage and having to rebuild these entire units. It's going to be sweaty in Pasadena. We're a small business independently owned, and to think that somebody can just come in and do something like this, it's terrible. Small businesses. You know what? I like her glasses, but why didn't she go for the big ones?

Dena Animal Hospital are sweltering in the middle of a heat wave after copper thieves ripped apart their... Okay, this is getting extra cruel. They stole the air conditioning unit from a veterinary hospital? Well, maybe they thought that they specialize in reptiles because they're cold-blooded. Air conditioning units to steal the copper inside. And I'm sure whatever measly money they got from the scraps is already spent and done and we're still here with the after effects. Security cameras captured the thieves jumping over a block wall while another man on a bicycle lingered in the alley. Moments later, the suspects climbed back over the wall carrying something with them before taking off. Yeah, it's absolutely not fair. The heat. It's like it's on you directly, but we're still trying to provide customer service. I'm sweating pretty closely. The same thing happened at Sweet Red Peach, a popular Pasadena bakery. Thieves climbed on. You know, it sounds real good in July? Hot cake. You know, I recently went out to a restaurant for breakfast, and I walked in, and I saw a million fans all over the place that were all on. And I walk up to the hostess and I go, is your AC out? And she goes, yeah, but we have many, many, many fans. And she goes, how many can I put you down for? I said zero. And I turned around and walked out. To the roof, tore apart the air conditioning unit, stole the copper inside and left the owners with an expensive repair bill. And then we discovered that we're one of the fifth or six locations that this has happened to. Now, with no air conditioning, temperatures inside the bakery have climbed to around 90 degrees. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. The bakeries as hot as the oven. The whipped cream's going to start curdling. Employees are doing their best to keep things running and even customers are feeling the heat. It's horrible. It's hot. It feels so hot. It's just as hot in here as it is outside. So it's very uncomfortable. But yet the faithful employees of this business are still here working, serving us. This is the most damaging crime for the littlest reward possible. And the only way we're going to crack down on this outside of, you know, arresting the people stealing this, is actually shutting down the smelters and the junkers that are buying the stolen goods that apparently are untouchable in the state of California. Well, that's how you fix this. What you do, because the crackheads are going to do what the crackheads are going to do, and you have no control over them because you refuse to put them in prison. So set that aside for a moment. All of the scrapyards rely on business licenses from the state of California to be operational. You can lean on them. You can go to them and say, listen, if we hear that you're accepting any copper wire from any crackheads, we're going to shut you down, lickety split. But for whatever reason, they refuse to do that.

Chris writes in, is this just an HVAC company looking for business? I don't think that's what this is. No, it's crackheads looking for things that they can get drug money with. And honestly, this time of year, HVAC companies are way too busy to begin with. So it's really sad. All of the businesses targeted by copper thieves were hit within the past two months. The most recent theft happened just last Tuesday. In every case, the air conditioning units that were damaged were located on the roof. Once they start, they think they can keep on going. Pasadena Public Information Officer Lisa Derdarian says business owners should remove or secure anything that could give thieves access to the roof, making it harder for them to reach air conditioning units. Yeah, but wouldn't that violate some kind of fire code? Yeah, and if you make it harder for the crackheads to get there, you make it harder for the people who need to be up there. They can be stacking boxes that are left there. There can be ladders that are not secure. There can be picnic tables or cars, anything they can climb to gain access to the rooftop. You're hurting so many people, including yourself, including your own family, by hurting small. If we're going to harden our places, maybe we start with electrifying the wall around the air conditioning unit. Oh, they'd sue you in a heartbeat. businesses. We're one community. Let's stick together and help one another. This poor lady, you can see the sweat coming out of her face. Oh, I'm getting hot just watching her. They're out instead of taking from one another. Gina Silva, Fox 11 News. So there you go. More copper wire destruction in the state of California, this time in Pasadena. It does remind me of that DMV in Oakland where they ripped out the AC, they ripped out the copper wire, and the building flooded and it was closed for like six months. All right, Randy, it's time to reopen the California crime blotter. If the cashier, it's dummy. We couldn't make this stuff up if we tried. I said, hell no, baby boy. Let me get up on out of here. It's the California crime blotter. And this edition takes us up north to the city of Hayward. where a smash and grab happened at a cell phone repair shop, and guess what? It's not the first time. It's happened yet again. For more, here is Cron 4. And surveillance video captures armed thieves, breaking into a Hayward phone repair shop and taking off with hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise. The owner of this store has only been open since April, and this is now the second time it's been hit. Cron 4 Sarah Stinson has the store. Wait a second.

April, May, June, July. Two break-ins in four months. Hey, give it time. They could get a hat trick. The owner and manager here at Mr. Phone Repair are still reeling from the smash and grab and counting inventory to see just how much was stolen. My goodness. It always sounds like an explosion. And this is old school. While if you're listening, that sounds like a Kia, it's a good old-fashioned crowbar. Probably stolen from Home Depot. Security video captures masked thieves using a crowbar to break through the front window of Mr. Phone Repair and Hayward. They're so violent with it. Going Barry Bonds on it. After several attempts, they break through the glass. And head straight for high-priced items like gaming consoles, iPhones, speakers, and other merchandise. Smash, they broke the glass, they broke the showcase. Come in or stealing in, they stole the big... I do like the logo for his business. A little phone with a mustache. This poor guy. Beaker, the store a bunch of stuff, clothing. Manager Sammy Sabon says the store has only been open since April, but this is already the second time it's been hit. I feel like we're getting targeted, to be honest with you. You know, I'm not used to going into one of these shops, but is it common for you to go to a cell phone repair shop and they're also selling energy drinks? Yeah, that seems like an odd combination. Fashion grab happened early Friday morning just after 315 at the store in Gateway Plaza. At one point, one of the thieves appears to be holding a gun as he runs towards the back of the store. Sabon says that's the room where the owner sometimes sleeps while working overnight phone repairs. This time he wasn't there. Wait, an overnight phone repair job? So wait a minute. So they were fully prepared to kill him. Apparently, over some iPhones and what, a PS5? Just heartbreaking because he was about asleep that day. And who knows if you go out, he was on the trigger ready. Another suspect is seen filling a box with merchandise before the group takes off. When the owner and Sabon arrived later that morning, they found shattered glass scattered across the floor and empty showcases. It's just upsetting. It's a sad world we live in. That we have to come next day open up and we see the business broken into pieces. Hayward police say the investigation is still in its early stages and no arrests have been made. Well, we knew that was coming. In the old days, you used to go to prison for a long time for doing something like this. You have to get caught first. And when it comes to burglaries, whether it's commercial burglaries or home burglaries, right now these guys have like an 85% success rate of not getting caught.

Despite another setback, Saban says they have no plans to close their doors. God willing to cash them or not, but hopefully... Okay, again, not an important part of the story. But there is nothing to me more crass than a phone case that says Louis Vuitton. If you have a phone case that says Gucci or Louis Vuitton, you've got issues. New money. Their doors. God willing, if they cash them or not, but hopefully we will still keep going positive no matter what. We're going to keep going stronger than ever. The owner has already replaced the massive window that was shattered saying it's just one. You mentioned the logo of the guy, the phone with the mustache on it. And I thought to myself, yeah, it kind of does look like a can of Pringles. Go back to the logo. There are Pringles in the logo. Well, we don't want this guy to get sued over copyright infringement, so we won't highlight this too long, but that's pretty good. Stronger than ever. The owner has already replaced the massive window that was shattered, saying it's just one added cost to this theft. Meanwhile, next door at Ohana Hawaiian Barbecue, one of its doors is covered in this plywood. Employees telling me off camera, they left it up after a break in that happened earlier this year.

Boy, it's rough in that shopping center. Well, this is what I don't understand. When these things are happening over and over and over again, why don't more businesses just say, screw it? We're going to stick with the wood because every time we put up glass, it's going to get broken again. Hayward, that's where the rock is from, isn't it? They say these overnight thefts are a growing concern in this shopping center. I'm Sarah Stinson reporting in Hayward. Back to you. So there you go. The smash and grab at Mr. Phone in Hayward. And if you don't want to get robbed, I'm not going to blame the victim here. Because had that guy been there and been in the back office, he could have been shot and killed. But don't make your logo a cell phone that looks like the Pringles man if he was in a street gang. You put that logo up and people make certain assumptions about what other businesses you might have going on out of that location. And you make yourself a target. Just a little advice from the John Phillips Show. If you're watching us live on YouTube, make sure to hit that like button. We're at 141 likes. We want to get that number as high as humanly possible. So please hit that button if you haven't done it already. All right. It's time to reopen the California crime blotter. It's happened yet again. It's wild wild west out here. It's the California crime blotter with John and Randy. And Randy, this one involves Facebook Marketplace. One thing that you can take away from this show, nothing good ever happens on Facebook Marketplace. I should know you should have seen all the scam messages I got when I tried to sell my rowing machine and then decided to just donate it to the LAFD. For more, here is Fox 5 in San Diego. Warning tonight from a man who says he got swindled while trying to sell one of his old belongings on Facebook marketplace. That man telling Fox 5 that it seemed like a normal transaction, he even got a confirmation of payment. But when it was all over, he realized he was only paid a penny. Our Juliet Vara spoke with him and joins us live in Kearney Mesa with the warning. and his story. Hi, Andrew. Yes, so the victim in this case is speaking out because he doesn't want anyone else to be a victim. And he says that really it's so important to be extra careful. The better business bureau also saying that it's so important to be vigilant so that you're not a target. In the world of online business, you can find anything and anyone. Buy, sell, you name it. Fritz Petitouin considers himself pretty savvy, but says he is now the victim of being ripped off and scammed by a con man. He engaged on the popular Facebook marketplace. And this is the first time that I've dealt something.

uh not very pleasant fritz used facebook marketplace to sell an LED light after numerous conversations with a buyer and an agreed amount of forty five dollars the two what why are you even wasting your time to sell something for forty bucks risking your life for that amount of money Come on. Decided to meet in a public parking lot. Fritz's car even captured video, which we've blurred for now of the two meetings. He asked me if it could take Zelle, which, you know, my gut feeling was saying I should got... Wait, for a $45 payment, he asked if he could wire you the money. By the way, it looked like a drug deal. A little bit. By the way, if you're going to do one of these things, do it in front of the sheriff's station. They actually have a parking space ready for you. I actually just like said cash because it wasn't that much. Going against his intuition, Fritz agreed to receiving a Zell payment. A few seconds later, he got this text message that confirmed a $45 payment was sent to him. And I said, okay, legitimate. I walk into my car, grabbed up the item, and then handed it to the gentleman. And he said, thank you. And he took off immediately while I was still waiting for a transaction to show up on my account. A couple minutes later, though, he still didn't see a deposit into his bank account and instead got a new notification from Zell, showing a new amount of only one cent was deposited. That's one hell of a discount. This is better than Black Friday. Fritz knew he'd been duped, especially when attempts to reach the guy failed. He immediately block me or... Also, look at this from the other side. You're going to scam a guy and risk yourself and screw up all this stuff with Zell over a $45 light. Loser. of his account. Corey Snyder with the Better Business Bureau says it's unclear how the scammer pulled this off, but says he's not surprised because creative con artists tend to find a way. There's always loopholes that people find or workarounds. If you're not on top of it all the time, you know, you don't know about it. And most legitimate people who are doing, you know, just using the platform as intended, don't know about these workarounds. So his expert advice always use a credit card when you can. It has the best fraud protection and tracking. Only exchange. Yeah, MX won't even judge you when you tell them you got scammed. Why are they blurring out the crook's face? Wouldn't you want to put his face out there so people know not to do business with him? I think they wait until he's actually been charged with a crime. He's not going to be charged with anything. All right, we've got one more hour coming up on the John Phillips Show. Don't you go anywhere.