stealing from you. ♪ show me the truth >> ed shin had two lives. his church, and then it turns out he had a real love of gambling. loved to go the las vegas. >> ed was the perfect jekyll and hyde. >> gambling a lot of money, seeing hookers. >> it was two worlds about to collide. it was helter-skelter. >> ed, i need you to be honest. now is the time for you to tell me. you get one shot at it. >> i'm sorry. just a second. ♪ this is a crime to remember ♪ broken apart and put back together ♪ ♪ yeah chris smith was a real surfer. he dedicated his life to this. and he loved it. >> chris was tall, dark, and handsome. women were drawn to him. >> very all-american, surfer/business casual, professional guy. >> chris grew up in watsonville, california, which is outside of the beach town santa cruz. it was a place where he got really into things like wakeboarding and surfing. a good place for a guy who was athletic and liked to do stuff outdoors. >> i don't know many brothers that are as -- were as close as we were. we just had a unique bond. ever since i was really little, he felt like he was there to protect me, to provide for me. >> were he and paul always as close as they were towards -- you know, the later years? >> always. >> always, they're just the best of friends. >> we had just a great childhood. you know, my dad was a firefighter. my mom was a preschoolteacher. we lived on a private ski lake, so we grew up water skiing and wakeboarding. >> chris smith. >> chris wasn't a gifted student. he was dyslexic but devilishly smart. where he really excelled was in sports, and especially water sports. >> chris was almost like an adrenaline junkie. he had more of a drive than anybody else out on the lake. >> chris was known for his audacious tricks. he would try things that other people thought were simply too dangerous, and it was doing one of those tricks that he blew out his achilles tendon, and that was it for his pro wakeboarding career. >> the water was his source of relief. he loved to surf, loved to be at the beach. >> he was a lot of fun. i felt like he was always the life of the party. like, people just gravitated towards him. he was always full of adventure. >> if you think about chris smith, you got to remember, he loved the ocean, loved action, loved beautiful cars. so he had that sort of quest for adrenaline. he liked that. thrived on that. >> outwardly he was the jock, the surfer, the extreme sports guy. he looked the part. he just sort of fit that stereotype of the beach guy. but his friends say that he always had ambitions, he had plans. >> he was very passionate about what he did, but he was very interested in being successful and making money. he wanted it all. >> his dreams involved, you know, having a good amount of cash. and so he was striving for to be able to travel the world, to be very successful in business. >> chris smith is doing great. he's living in orange county. he's got an apartment in laguna beach. >> orange county attracts very wealthy people. rich people, famous people, just south of los angeles. a lot of the movie stars, a lot of the famous athletes wind up moving to orange county, particularly in the area that chris lived in. beautiful houses, beautiful boats, beautiful cars, all of that. >> he's driving a range rover. he's surfing whenever he wants. he's encountered great business success in the lead generation business. >> debt 10,000 offers services to get you out of debt fast. >> chris becomes involved in this extremely lucrative part of the advertising and marketing industry that sells sales leads from people calling into 800 numbers. and he teams up with a man named ed shin, another young, promising entrepreneur, and together they form a company called the 800xchange. >> 800xchange got to be very successful. they reached a point where they were making millions of dollars. >> after years of that free-spirited beach-guy lifestyle of chasing waves and beautiful women, well, guess what happens? chris meets perhaps the one. a wonderful woman named erica, and she seemed to fill every void when it came to romance. >> tell me about his girlfriend, erika. >> she was sweet. yeah, i was looking forward to having her as a sister-in-law. >> did it seem like it was serious? >> yeah, i could tell that he really liked her. and he had expressed to me that, you know, he was thinking about getting even more serious, in terms of proposing to her. so i knew he really liked her. >> she had said then she just loved him so much, and he had told his father he loved her. >> did you think that, you know, he may propose? >> we did. we thought he was. he was talking about it. >> you know, if you looked at chris from the outside, you would see this hunky guy living in beautiful southern california who has this incredibly lucrative job, this beautiful ballet dancer with dazzling green eyes as a girlfriend. and you think, he has it all. but there were signs of stress. the company that he had founded with ed shin, it starts to look like it could be in jeopardy. >> chris was always talking to his friends about, hey, we should go. we should quit all this. he had visions of these faraway plac and that he could live a simpler life there. >> if you knew chris, you would know about how he believed in conspiracy theories and certain things. he was, like, anti-government and taxes. like, we shouldn't pay taxes, that kind of thing. >> he wanted to make it big so that he could cut out. he was quite dissatisfied in many ways with the modern world. >> it looks like 32-year-old chris smith finally makes the decision to do just that -- sever all ties and just get off the grid. chris emails his family telling them that he and ed met and they reached an agreement. ed had bought him out of his share of the company they founded, 800xchange. >> everyone knew that chris was a free spirit and that he wanted adventure. but it was a little bit surprising when suddenly, unannounced, they find out through emails that chris is off the grid. he's leased a yacht. he's gone on a world traveling adventure. but nobody knew about it until they got these sudden emails. >> monday june 7, 2010. i'm going on a vacation. probably three-week trip to galapagos and costa rica. love you too. >> it made total sense to you that chris would just up and leave it all? >> yeah. i remember him in the kitchen saying, i'm so over all of it, i'm just gonna be done. i'm gonna go be a bartender on the beach. >> amazing sailing for the past two weeks. there's no internet or phones. just us and the sea. >> every surfer has this dream of sailing off into the sunset with a bunch a money and a beautiful woman. in this case, the problem is it was not erika. >> chris sends paul an email, and attached to it is a picture of his traveling companion, and she is stunning. she's former playboy playmate, tiffany taylor. >> this may seem like chris' dream trip, but it's nothing but a nightmare for erika. so through a message from chris, she learns she's been tossed overboard. >> you know, most people would be like, a playboy playmate? come on. but chris was good-looking enough. >> yeah. >> wealthy enough that that actually made total sense. >> yep. >> i remember i got one e-mail from, and she was really mad. she was like what the -- is going on? is he bipolar? i said, no, sometimes he just needed to get away. >> there's only my friend and me and the crew. i miss you guys too. i see things so much more clearly now because i've unplugged myself of that crazy society and fast lane, something i should have done so much sooner. >> she was saying, i'm headed to peru. i'm going travel a bit. and i remember saying, wow, i love you. take pics. have a great time. >> i'll be home probably around early to mid-august. want to get up to buenos aires if possible. the seas are choppy, sometimes smooth. >> at first chris said that this trip would last a couple of weeks. those weeks turned into months. and suddenly he's on this sort of around the world epic adventure. >> hey guys, i just finally docked in ushuaia, a port in argentina. we have 20 to 25 islands to explore. >> the question as these emails develop are, is he running to something or is he running away from something? because as time went on, originally it looked like he just needed a break. and then the emails started to look like he might have been running from something. ♪ show me the truth geico really save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance? do woodchucks chuck wood? hey you dang woodchucks, quit chucking my wood! geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. ♪ kevin sure does talk a lot. ♪ but your car's in the shop and this carpool's all you've got. ♪ the best part of waking up is folgers in your cup. infallible up to 24hr demand morfresh wear.wear. by l'oreal paris. excellent coverage with no weigh down. a breathable formula for fresh skin hour after hour. defies transfer, no excess. infallible up to 24hr fresh wear. by l'oreal paris. taco parte! taco partyyyyy! taco party! taco partyyy! which one of you ladies ordered dessert? i did. strawberry chocolateeee! anything goes in old el paso. delivered to your car door so you can do more. try drive up at target. ♪ feels so good ♪ feels so good target run and done. big thing i recently learned as a parent? 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♪ show me the truth >> this past year and a half was such a nightmare for me and i even contemplated doing unspeakable things because i was so stressed, angry, scared and confused. >> at that point it was just, this isn't making any sense. this guy -- he's lost his mind, you know? >> chris's family didn't know what to think, because he seemed so up in some of his emails and then he talks about even contemplating suicide. >> yeah, we were replying the best way we could to comfort him torque reassure him, do anything we could. >> yeah, they were super worried. >> i don't know if i'll ever get over some of the things in my life. but this traveling and living on a sustenance level has really started to change how i see things and what matters to me. i'm actually journaling now. and one day i'll share some of the things i wrote down about our relationship growing up and the [ bleep ] that happened within our family. >> this disclosure about problems that chris said he experienced as a kid, this comes out of nowhere for the family. as far as they knew, he'd never experienced any emotional trauma. >> that was strange to me. because we had a good relationship. there was -- what he was saying wasn't true. >> it was just like someone that was just very conflicted, and so, that's when it got really alarming to my parents. when they started getting emails like that about my brother's past and childhood. and we started to have suspicions but didn't want to entertain that train of thought too much because of where it would lead to. i think it was so emotionally hard to even think about. >> chris has been gone for several months now and his emails reflect a lot of mood changes, erratic behavior almost. in the beginning, it's very happy. then he reveals that he's very depressed, considering the unthinkable. then he goes back to very happy and adventurous once again. >> according to his emails, chris has now ditched the playmate and is on his own. >> as time goes on, the family gets increasingly worried and they begin to wonder, are there some clues that we've missed? >> what would make him turn away from all the things he held so dear? so naturally it makes sense that they want to talk to his old business partner, ed shin. what might he know? >> ed shin was the son of immigrants. and he grew up in a conservative christian home. and they demanded achievement from him, and that's what he delivered. he was a really good student. he was a good athlete. pretty much everything he did, he did well. and eventually he goes to uc-san diego. >> on paper, ed shin was more naturally set up for success. chris struggled in school. he didn't make it through college. ed was doing all the right things, getting his degree, getting his first jobs. he had sort of the more obvious path to becoming successful in business. >> ed shin was an upstanding member of his community. he was a married father of three. he was the member of a christian megachurch and was religious. dressed very nicely. he just looked the part of the successful business and family man. >> ed and his wife were members of our church here in temecula, california. >> joseph gray, who's actually run successful companies and he's a completely legitimate businessman, and he meets shin in this church group bible study. >> i thought he had some skills that, ironically, were in the vein of what we were looking for as we were starting a new company called lead generation technologies. >> listen up america. have you been denied credit? >> lead generation, if you've hear this ad that says, reduce your credit card debt. get a new mortgage. and they tell you an 800 number at the end of it. you call in. they take down your information, and then they actually sell that off to companies that are in the mortgage business or in the credit card business. >> a few examples up here. >> call 800 -- >> so it's really just a way of grabbing customers and selling them off to the highest bidder. >> call now. >> so the more phone calls that are generated by these television ads, the more money your company gets? >> this is how google makes most of its revenue today, they sell clicks online. we're selling phone calls. >> so shin is hired by joseph gray. joseph gray gives him a job. and it's a position of trust. >> what i really needed was somebody to go out there and develop a marketplace for the leads that we would be generating off of our television and i felt he could be employee number one. we gave him that kind of title. >> in early 2008, ed and chris were both working in the lead generation industry, meet each other, and hit it off. >> and ed recommended to joseph that this guy chris would be -- he's a promising up and comer. i think we should bring him on board at lg technologies. >> on the sales side, chris would have been employee number two, but i would say that at that moment, ed and chris were kind of the face of the company. so i was optimistic. the guys seemed to know what they were doing, seemed like they were executing, and we were growing. >> now, the key to building a successful lead-generation company is finding buyers that are willing to pay big money for those leads, those calls that come into the 800 numbers. to find those buyers, there is no better place perhaps on earth than the convention circuit in las vegas. that's where ed goes to try to rustle up these buyers. while chris is back at lg technologies, ed is trying to entice these new clients with parties, booze, and women. along for the ride, in one of these incredibly lavish junkets in las vegas is one of joe gray's most trusted employees. he's an ex-marine called michael montgomery. >> so we landed in vegas. we get picked up by the phantom fury rolls royce that was part of the wynn. they pull us up to the entry of the wynn. the suite was bigger than any room i've ever seen. three bedrooms. it had a massage room, its own dining room. >> just picture this -- one of the nicest hotels in las vegas. it is a two-story suite with butler service, its own billiard room, and an elevator. >> ed would hire what are known as atmosphere models or arm candy models. and these are beautiful women in las vegas who, for a fee, will come and hang out at your party. >> so it would just look like to ed's associates like, this guy is the coolest guy in town. look, he shows up and suddenly these women flock to him. >> my early impressions of ed were -- he seemed very charming, but then there were sides of him that i really started to see that were not so charming. >> ed shin had two lives. he's got his churchgoing, upstanding, community member life in orange county. and then it turns out he had a real love of gambling. and he was the type of player who could win or lose $100,000 in the space of a couple hours. >> i come down, and i'm walking through the casino floor. and i saw ed sitting right at the blackjack table. i would suspect that he had about $20,000 worth of chips sitting at the table there. >> ed shin is gambling so much money in vegas that they comp him that suite. >> i heard crazy stuff like that. i felt, based on the relationship that we developed, things i had done for him personally, i felt that there would be some measure of loyalty. that ed might be one of the last people that would take advantage of my generosity and kindness. but it all boiled down to one salient point in my mind -- ed was living beyond his means. i think i spent the next week working from my home, trying to figure out, what's going on here? because we knew there was some fraud that had taken place. i think it was at that moment that i realized, oh, boy. we've got a big problem. 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