214: A Mugger, a Blind Wrestler, and Other Poor Decisions

This episode is brought to you by Fox 1. Watch all 104 matches of the FIFA World cup live in 4K for just $19.99 a month with 3 days free. Build your own multi view, choose up to three streams and follow player spotlights. Stay on top of every moment with live stats, highlights, and instant replays. The FIFA World cup, streaming live on Fox One, offers a subject to change. See fox.com for complete terms and conditions. And we're live from the living room as Doug eyes up the match. Say spread. He's reaching for the buffalo wing. Perfect. Hang on. What's this? Oh, he's gone for a can of Pepsi too. Incredible. What a finish. Sensational combination. Look at the delight on his face. There's no doubt about it. It just tastes better. Match days deserve Pepsi. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a pack of Pepsi. Zero sugar for today's match. It's poetry. In mot. It began long ago, two young boys in an American town riding their bikes to school and little league practice. Over the years, the boys became fast friends, united in their love for stories where things would go horribly wrong. Pour yourself a strong beverage and buckle up. You're in the Shallow End with Schnebly and Topf. We're in a bit of a celebratory mood here at the Shallow End with Schnebly and Toth because we got an email from a gentleman who runs a website called Million Podcasts.com and he wrote to inform us that we were ranked number 12 in the category of. What was it, JG? Foolishness. Foolishness, yeah. Yeah. We're the 12th most popular podcast in the foolishness category, and the. And the listener's type falls into two different categories, which is comedy enthusiast and casual listener. So. Damn it, we're number 12. Number 12. Isn't that the best? Yeah, well, being a person who suffers from imposter syndrome, I immediately assumed it was spam. See, being the shallow person that I am, I immediately thought, oh, this has to be real if we're number 12. Ooh, someone likes us. That's. That's very nice. Always pleasant when stuff like that happens. Isn't that the truth? I'm really very flattered by that, and I am, too. It's a. It's a nice little thing. We appreciate it very, very much. So do you have a. Do you have a story for us today? But, yeah, I think I do. Let me. Let me check here. This is about a woman in Michigan. She walked into a coin shop with a very simple request, and this Was an elderly lady. She wanted to buy some gold. Some. Some gold. And that's not that unusual, except that she wanted to buy over $700,000 worth of gold coins. Wow. It's not a silence you hear every day, is it? No. Especially in Michigan, most people buying gold are looking maybe for a coin or two, maybe. Maybe a small stack of silver rounds, something they can put in the safe and occasionally look at while imagining the future collapse of modern civilization, which, by the way, is right around the corner. We checked the. The woman wanted enough gold to make. Well, it was enough to make a pirate nervous, I would think. That's a lot of gold. So the owner of the shop listened carefully as she explained why she told the guy. Federal agents, she said, had informed her that her Social Security number had been compromised. Criminals were using her identity. Her money was in danger. And the safety. Safest thing to do was to convert her saving into physical gold and then give the gold to them for safekeeping. Okay. Okay. So she's clearly being scammed and doesn't realize it. Yeah, I hate that. I do, too. Now, there are many warning signs in life. Like, let me just give you a couple quick examples. Somebody asked you to wire the money to claim your lottery winnings. That's a. That's a good. A good warning sign. Perhaps a Nigerian prince contacts you about a banking issue. Yeah, that's. Yeah. If you just send him a visa gift card for $10,000. Yeah. He'll send you millions of dollars. Yeah, that's right. If the government tells you to buy $700,000 in gold and then hand it over to a stranger in a Lowe's parking lot, that would probably raise at least a mild concern. It should anyway. Enough to make you stop and think which branch of the federal government is now operating like an episode from Scooby Doo. Fortunately, the owner of the coin shop was, of course, paying attention. Because here's the thing about scams. When people running them, well, they're often very good and at understanding their victims. They're patient. They can be very convincing. They're very professional. The weak link is usually the story itself. Right? And at some point, every scam becomes so ridiculous that it resembles, like, a screenplay written by somebody at 3 in the morning, probably in a gas station parking lot. Right. This was one of those points. The shop owner was immediately suspicious, obviously, and rightfully so. So they contacted police. The woman, thankfully, had not handed over her fortune. Authorities quickly learned that the courier had been scheduled to collect the gold in a parking lot. Now, here's where the story takes a wonderful turn, because police had a choice. They could simply arrest the courier when he arrived. Right. That would be, you know, the simple, most efficient method, professional, responsible. But instead, somebody apparently said, you know, what if we make this funny? So the alleged Courier was a 22 year old man, and according to investigators, he had sent. He was sent to collect what he believed would be about $700,000 in precious metals. Okay. Imagine that drive. Yeah. You're heading toward what you think is a life changing pickup. You're probably feeling pretty important. You know, I'm 700 grand and they've trusted me to carry it. Yeah. So this guy is not an innocent third party. He's in on a scam. He's in on it. Okay, okay. He's sitting there in his car, practicing his serious face. Imagining him. He's probably thinking like he's in a crime documentary. And the narrator says, authorities believe the suspect was part of a sophisticated international fraud operation. And then, you know, the dramatic bumper music, unfortunately, then it's like your mugshot. And fade to black. Right. So anyway, police were preparing for the pickup, and they were preparing the package, getting the gold coins together. But obviously they couldn't get $700,000 worth of gold coins. So they filled up the box with those little chocolate coins with the. With the gold foil wrapped around them. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's genius. The little foil candies that kids receive on Halloween and then immediately trade them for anything else. Right, right. The kind that spend most of their lives in novelty gift shops next to fake pirate maps. So somebody had to assemble this. Somebody had to go buy it. Somebody had to explain to their supervisor why the department suddenly needed several bags of pirate themed candy. And somehow Lynn's that plan survived every meeting. Well, I'm sure if you say this is part of a sting operation, it's like, oh, yes, well, the candy. Very important. Yes. We need that pirate candy. Yes, very important. And I think that they probably all thought it was hilarious. You know, they're gonna nail this guy, and he's just gonna end up with little chocolate coins. And nobody to their credit said, maybe we should use decoy metal. No. No chocolate. No smart. So they go to the location, the exchange happened, the package changed hands, and for at least a brief moment, the man believed he was carrying the equivalent of a small fortune. But $700,000. Yeah. But what he was actually transporting was enough candy to trigger a diabetic emergency at a children's birthday party. Then, of course, the police moved In. Can you imagine the realization on that. On that guy's face? One moment you're involved in what you think is a major gold transfer, and the next moment you're learning that your criminal enterprise has been defeated by delicious snacks wrapped in shiny, shiny gold foil. It's gotta be difficult to recover your dignity from that moment. Yeah, he's in prison, right? He gets. He gets sentenced for this, and he's in prison, and his cellmate asks him what he's in for. And halfway through the story, he goes, wait, wait, wait. Did you say chocolate? Yeah. Like pirate coins, unfortunately. Like we used to get at Halloween. Yeah. The best part is that this entire scam depended upon one very old principle. Convince somebody that something terrible has happened, convince them that only can fix it. Then keep them scared long enough to stop asking questions. As a strategy that has existed forever. Snake oil salesmen use it. Fortune tellers use it. Cable news uses it. Fear is an incredible, incredibly effective. Once somebody is frightened enough, they stop evaluating whether the story makes sense. True, they become focused entirely on solving the problem. And scammers in con men understand that. But in this case, what they apparently did not understand was that precious metal dealers hear weird stories all day long. If you sell gold for a living, you've developed a certain sensitivity to nonsense. And it's probably similar to the way emergency room doctors can spot someone who definitely did not accidentally fall on that mortar shell that's lodged inside them. Experience matters. Way to bring that one back. Yeah, it was a callback to one of our first episodes, actually. While I was researching this, there was another incident of, like that involving a mortar shell. It just happened. So this, apparently putting mortar shells where the sun don't shine is apparently a big thing. It's a thing. It's a thing. Well, we got 8 billion people on this planet. You know, someone's. Someone's always up for trying something new. Yeah, I'm a proctologist, but I specialize in munitions removal. We should be grateful that the woman was not scammed and that the guy who owned the coin shop was savvy enough to say, hey, let's call the police in on this. That's exactly right. And that's the good news. The good part of the story is the woman got to keep her savings. The funny part is everything else, particularly the image of law enforcement carefully arranging chocolate coins inside a package while trying to maintain some sort of professional composure. Because no matter how serious the crime, somebody had to look at that pile of candy and think, this is either going to be a brilliant sting operation or the funniest thing I've ever seen. Thankfully, it was the first one. I'm just wondering if the kid, the 22 year old who was there to make the drop, the swap, rather had to hold those coins and think, boy, this feels a little light for $700,000 in gold coins. Yeah. I wonder if they like put some kind of Waiting in the box. Yeah, like a steel plate or something in the bottom to give it half. I'm not really sure how they delivered them in my mind, of course. Again, just pictured the giant sack with the big dol sign on this on the side of it. Yeah. So the alleged scammer spent countless hours manipulating this victim. They. They built an operation sophisticated enough to target hundreds of thousands of dollars. And then the whole thing collapsed because a coin dealer was paying attention. And a police department briefly transformed itself into Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. Which is a reminder that criminals awful. Also imagine themselves as masterminds and the reality us far less impressive. Exactly. Reality is getting arrested while unknowingly carrying a bag of chocolate treasures. Reality is becoming the answer to a question nobody thought to ask, which is can a major financial fraud operation be defeated with candy? The answer is yes. Yes, it can. This came from money control, the Times of India, and US Law enforcement and consumer protection data. Nice. Now I'm data. If you prefer. Now I'm all hungry for cheap candy. That's never good stuff. No. Remember when we were kids, Easter? They get us those hollow chocolate bunnies. Not even the good ones that were solid, they would be hollow. And the chocolate was like the cheapest kind of chocolate you could. You could imagine. The box that it came in tasted better than. Than the hollow chocolate bunny. I was gonna say it always had like a slightly acidic, cheap, cheap plastic taste to it. Yeah, it was probably not even edible, but by God, it was Easter. Mm. Forget the fact that he has risen. I got. I got some chocolate. It tastes like asbestos. Introducing Taco Bell's new Jalapeno citrus salsa. With bright citrus, real red jalapenos, guajillo chiles. 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And in the Gospel of Luke chapter 22 verse 36, Jesus says if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. That's good enough for us. We're Christ is King. Guns and Ammo the Christian owned store for all your self defense needs. We've got every make and model handgun and rifle you can dream of and more bullets than Satan has. Evil lies. Come see our recreation of Da Vinci's the Last Supper with Jesus and his apostles all wearing guns on their hips. Christ is King. Guns and Ammo just off Interstate 4 in Orlando. Look out Lucifer. This Christian is packing heat. The email address is lifeguardshallowndpodcast.com the writer of this email is a gentleman named Adam who says so I didn't just dip my toe into the shallow end. I didn't skinny dip in the shallow end. I jumped off the high dive and did a swan dive right into that son of a bitch. Let me preface my story by saying I was in the Marines for five years thank you for your service, pal. JG May remember reading my story on Inbox of Oddities a while ago. Well, Marines like to drink and should not under any circumstances, be left unsupervised. After my unit got back from Afghanistan, a buddy of mine and I, he had been in my sniper platoon, went on post deployment leave for a few weeks and we wanted to blow off some steam. Now, we're both from South Georgia, so it was only logical we rode home together as we were only about an hour or so away from each other. Well, on the way home, we stopped in South Carolina to buy a shitload of fireworks. I mean like $750 worth. Oh my God. In 2010, that got you significantly more bang for the buck. We'll fast forward a couple of days and we proceed to partake in a few adult beverages and decide to break the fireworks out. Now, Marines are very adept at blowing stuff up, especially infantry marines. So we proceeded to cut the fireworks open, empty the powder out of them, grind it up extremely fine, then fill 4 empty big coke bottles with the powder. Oh my. To the top, taped them together. We then drilled holes in the lids to braid fuses together and run to the bottles. We lit it and ran like hell. I weighed them approximately £230 worth of gunpowder. £230 of guns of gunpowder. The force of the blast knocked me flat. The sky looked like a tie dye shirt. And the next thing we heard was quote, oh shit, boys, we got a fire on our hands, unquote. I neglected to tell you that we did this in a field of dead grass that also bordered a plot of pine trees that had dead pine straw all over the ground. Well, thanks to the help of neighbors, we got that grass fire put out just before the fire marshal. And then the forestry fire service pulled up with their bulldozers to cut a fire break. Oddly enough, my buddy knew them and we got off scot free. Small town, everyone knew everyone. The conclusion from the blast blew out my friend's parents windows on that side of the house. The bad news, we weren't allowed to run their fourth of July festivities after that. I'll bet. Yeah. Wow. Don't dive into the shallow. And love, Adam. Thank you, Adam. I love that that story started with you guys cracking open a beer and it ended with the forestry department cutting a fire line. That's bulldozers. That's beautiful. That's impressive, man. Yeah, it is. 250 pounds, 230 pounds. 230 pounds of gunpowder. And of course, you know, a little liquid courage to get the ball rolling. Thinking after a couple of beers. No, this is a great idea. When you finally find your thing, you want the whole world to know about that thing. So you use a thing called Canva to make it an even bigger and better thing. Whether you want to create flyers for that thing, make presentations for that thing, or design merch for that thing, you can do anything so people can see your thing, feel your thing, love your thing. The next thing you know, it's a thing. Canva. The thing that makes anything a thing. You thought this was your Run Club era. Turns out it was more of a thinking about Run Club era. The good news? Someone's marathon training is about to start. Sell your workout gear on Depop. Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. They get their race day fit and you get a payout for trying. Someone on Depop wants what you've got. Start selling now, Depop. Where taste recognizes taste. You're in the Shallow End with Schnebly and Toth. I got a story that was suggested by a listener named John. He said, my wife and I are huge fans of the Shallow End and members of the Order of Freaks. Thanks for everything you two, cat and nan do to keep the people of Earth entertained and informed. I've always loved stories of criminals who accidentally punish themselves for their crimes by way of poor decision making. I heard this story recently and thought it would be great for the Shallow end should you choose to accept the mission. So we did. JG. This goes back to October of 1996. That's. That's. Geez, that's 30 years ago. That's hard to believe. Yeah. And it's about a resident of Philadelphia, a gentleman named Courtney Beswick. Isn't that a cool name? That's a. It's almost. It almost sounds like royalty, doesn't it? Does. Put. Put the third at the end of it. Courtney. Courtney Beswick. The third. Third. He was taking a perfectly ordinary evening walk. Now, the interesting thing about Courtney is that he had been blind since birth, but he was also a former wrestler and martial arts enthusiast. I think that's fascinating. To be blind from birth and then excel as a wrestler and martial arts. Incredible. Now, that combination of wrestling and martial arts enthusiast would normally make any criminal stop and consider their life choices, but unfortunately, one aspiring mugger apparently skipped that chapter in the handbook. Now, in doing some research about this, most muggers like to imagine themselves as master predators. Like they are the lions stalking the helpless gazelles or wildebeests. This Particular mugger apparently looked at Courtney, could tell he was blind, and said, ah, easy target. What he actually did was to walk into the human equivalent of a bear trap. Excellent. According to reports, Courtney was walking. It was late afternoon. He was walking near his home, headed back home, when this guy grabs him from behind, puts his arm around his neck like he's about to choke him, and demands money. Except this plan is already a little shaky. Because if your criminal strategy begins with, let's surprise, a wrestler and martial arts expertise, you've made an administrative error. Now, for better or worse, Courtney himself had spent years dealing with people who had underestimated him. And this mugger was about to become the final exam. Yeah. The attacker grabs him from behind, around the neck, and Courtney reacted. The mugger says, hand over your wallet. Nobody gets hurt. But Courtney wasn't having that. In one slick, quick motion, Courtney manages to pull the guy up over his head, like, over his shoulder, and throw him to the sidewalk in front of him, flat on his back. Nice. One second you're thinking, hand over wallet. The next hand over your wallet. The next second, you're flying through the air, wondering why gravity has become more aggressive in the sky. Looks like a Titan T shirt. T shirt straight onto the pavement. Boom. At this point, most criminals would probably be thinking, you know what? Maybe crime isn't for me. Maybe they think I should become a florist or learn pottery or start a blog about birds. Sure. But the struggle continued. Courtney, running entirely on instinct and training, kept control of the situation while the attacker discovered that every decision he'd made that day had been catastrophically wrong. Eventually, police arrived because somebody sees this go down and calls 91 and explains, here's the deal. This guy just, you know, threw this mugger over his shoulder and has him down on the ground. Officers pulled up expecting a robbery report. Instead, they found the alleged victim in complete control of the situation. Police spokesman Jim Pauley later summed it up perfectly. Quote, he picked the wrong guy to rob. And that might be the understatement of the decade, because pick the wrong guy is what you say when you challenge, like a chess grandmaster to a game of checkers. Yeah, here's what's. Here's what's mind blowing to me. The attacker actually died from his injuries during this encounter. Now the DA Reviews the case and interviews Courtney, interviews eyewitnesses, and instantly rules Courtney acted in self defense. More than that, I mean, and then come to find that the. The guy who died, the mugger, was a guy named Anthony Irvin. He had been arrested, get this, eight times in the previous nine years on assorted charges of robbery, weapons possession and assault. What's cool about this story to me is that the people who knew Courtney were not at all shocked. There was a guy named Bob Ashbridge who had actually coached Courtney when Courtney wrestled at Overbrook School for the Blind. So a reporter from the United Press decides to do a little follow up and, and calls Bob Ashbridge when he finds, finds out that Courtney had been this, this star wrestler. And Bob the coach says, quote, Courtney was never one to back down from a challenge. When I heard what happened, I have to tell you, I was kind of proud. I hope it sends a message that blind people are not always victims. Yeah, yeah. Come to find that Bob the coach said that Courtney had been blind since birth. He was voted outstanding wrestler for the Eastern Athletic association of Schools for the Blinds back in the late 1980s. And everybody who heard this story said, yeah, that sounds like Courtney. So isn't that cool? Imagine being this, this muggers ghost and you float into whatever afterlife there is and a clerk says, what happened? And you mumble, I tried to rob a blind guy. And the clerk nods sympathetically, oh, that doesn't sound so bad. Well, he was a wrestler and he studied martial arts. The whole story became famous because it shattered every stereotype imaginable. People often assumed that people with disabilities are helpless. And Courtney proved the exact opposite. The mugger saw blindness and assumed weakness. He had no idea that Courtney had wrestling experience and martial arts training. One writer said it's sort of like seeing a parked bulldozer and thinking, I bet I can push that thing. Technically you're welcome to try, but history suggests you might want to choose another decision. Somewhere out there, there is probably another Courtney Beswick quietly walking home, minding his own business, completely unaware that he's about to become the most unforgettable lesson in poor decision making that some criminal will ever make. I love this. Not great. That's amazing. Love this. I want to thank the, the listener, John. And then the follow up stories that I found. A lot of stories about this UPI archives, the Orlando Sentinel, the Washington Post and Deseret News. Well, yeah, I'm sure it was widely coverage covered because it's the kind of story that we all love. Somebody who on a, on the, on their first appearance, would they look like they could be victimized pretty easily. But then the, the person who is trying to inflict that injury ends up taking one. And it reminds me of the story that, that we did early on about the former Vietnam vet. He was an old man, but he had some incredible hand combat experience. And some guy broke into his house thinking he was going to rob this little old man and the guy just got beat the shit out of him with his cane. Yeah, yeah. Using it like Jiu Jitsu. Right, guys? You know, it was amazing, particularly when somebody either elderly or they have some sort of disability and they more than hold their own. Yeah, I think it's a really inspirational thing to everybody else. You know, like you don't, you don't have to take crap. Yeah, we've had a couple of stories like that. There was an elderly woman, somebody tried to steal her cigarettes and she beat them up with a lawn chair. Wasn't that like in Australia or something? It was in Australia. She was having a smoke on her front deck. A couple of punks walk by, give me your cigarettes. And she just beats them to death with a lawn chair. Yeah. You go, girl. Love it. Lifeguardallownpodcast.com that be our email address and we want to thank you for listening and making us number 12. We're number 12. We're number 12. If we had merch, that would be. I was saying to Nancy this morning, that would be a great coffee mug or T shirt. Yeah, the Shallow End with Schnebly and toss. We're number 12. We've, we've got to. To put some merch together. Yeah, for sure. Anyway, we'll see you next time. Continue to make good choices. Your life might depend on it. So concludes another episode of the Shallow End with Schnebly and Toph. We thank you for listening. Oh, be a dear. Would you please subscribe to this podcast, Give these boys a five star rating and think of something nice to say even if you have to make something up. And visit us online@shallow endpodcast.com okay, This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability. Various 18. Your call has been forwarded to voicemail. Hi, this is Zoe Deutsch and Nick Robinson. Our brand new movie Voicemails for Isabel is all about those little moments that feel like the universe is looking out, feeling homesick then your sister calls, hearing that perfect song exactly when you need it. Please stay. Sometimes life rigs things in our favor, like learning about your new favorite rom com voicemails for Isabel, now playing only on Netflix.