Original subtitles

In this episode of American Greed, Brent and Tyler Cassidy, two brothers from

St. Louis, are bringing a splash of showbiz to the death biz, turning

into festival sites and turning themselves into celebrities.

But few know that their secret backer is their father, Doug, who is stealing

millions of dollars with a little sleight of hand and age -old sales

Yeah, I think Hooters had similar hiring requirements.

His scheme cost victims an astounding $450 million, money Doug

generously shares with his wife and son.

In the spring of 2008 in Blue Springs, Missouri, hundreds of people believe

have taken care of their last expense.

They have chosen their casket, flowers, and music, and paid in advance for their

funeral, putting their money into the hands of their local funeral home owner,

Marty Myers.

Yeah, that looks good, Liz. Very good.

The people signed the contract thinking that their money was going in trust.

They were entrusting Marty Myers.

But Myers puts his trust in a man named Doug Cassidy, who runs a multi -million

dollar funeral business and who promises to keep the money safe.

And then Myers receives the worst possible news.

The money is gone.

More than $450 million of prepaid funeral money is missing.

I trusted them.

And they ran off with the money.

Marty Myers is on the hook for nearly $4 million of that missing money.

And now he is terrified.

Everything that I owned, everything I did, they were on the line. My family

was going to lose everything.

And the question is, what did Doug Cassidy do with all that money?

To find out, American Greed heads to Buffalo, Missouri, a small town

that by all appearances is still rooted in a bygone era.

It is where Doug Cassidy grows up on a small farm.

By the time he's in high school, life looks promising for Cassidy.

He's a star athlete and has a pretty girlfriend named Rhonda.

Later, Doug and Rhonda marry, and they get out of Buffalo as fast as they can.

After Cassidy gets a law degree, they move to Springfield, Missouri, where, as

an up -and -coming young lawyer, he can afford a big house.

He starts an investment club.

And that's when people get to know the real Doug Cassidy.

He was the kind of guy that really wanted everything, and he wanted it now.

His investors claim he lies and steals their money. And eventually, Cassidy is

indicted on charges of conspiracy and tax fraud.

He pleads guilty.

He was always a con man. He was always looking for a fraud.

After serving six months at Marion, Illinois Federal Penitentiary, Cassidy

disbarred lawyer looking for a new future.

He sets his eyes on what is called the debt care industry and takes over the

business that sells prepaid funeral contracts.

Pay now, die later.

And the cost of the funeral is covered.

The company is called National Prearranged Services, known as NPS.

And in that move, Cassidy steps into a highly lucrative, growing business.

Somewhere between 25 and 28 percent of all funerals conducted in the course

of a year are prearranged and pre -funded funerals.

Cassidy sets up his headquarters outside St. Louis in the suburban city of

Clayton and hires door -to -door salesmen to sell what are called pre

contracts.

The salesmen tell customers that prearranging a funeral is a selfless act

love, a way to avoid confusion and chaos at the time of a death.

What is being exploited is grandma's fear of death, grandma's fear.

of what her death will do to the family.

It's very, very easy to sell us a bill of goods that says, you won't have to

think about it and everything will be just fine.

Here, sign this.

And Cassidy's door -to -door salesmen clean up selling the pre -needs.

We saw NPS almost like gypsies.

They would go into a town, they would start writing pre -needs with consumers.

And they would go to the funeral home and say, I have 50 pre -need contracts I

just wrote.

The funeral home is grateful to have a lock on the future business.

And Cassidy makes a promise to take care of the money.

In the early 1990s, I would get phone calls from clients that we were serving

Missouri. And they would tell me that they're doing business with this new

company called NPS.

And I'd ask a simple question, how is the money invested?

and I would get the telephone equivalent of a shrugged shoulder.

So I called up NPS, and I said I had some questions about the company and how

they were investing the money, and I got a very simple answer from the voice on

the phone.

It's none of your damn business.

But it is the state of Missouri's business, and in 1992, the attorney

charges that national prearranged services accounts are short millions of

dollars.

And suddenly, local reporters like Mike Owens want to talk to Doug Cassidy.

We had been trying to interview him for about three weeks.

He finally said, well, I'm going to ambush the guy. I'm going to sneak up on

guy. We're going to do the interview and be done with it.

Now retired, Owens watches his 1993 story and is amused by his encounter

Doug Cassidy.

We got a picture of him on a cell phone. And, you know, cell phones were not

that common back in 1993.

They were expensive.

Surprisingly, Cassidy stops and tells Owens the state is wrong about the NPS

accounts. They are not underfunded. I do know, as a matter of fact, that they

are overfunded, not underfunded.

Cassidy also tells Owens that he is not in charge of NPS.

He says he is a consultant.

When Owens asks why NPS owns Cassidy's house, Cassidy has an unexpected answer.

We rent that house from NPS. And how much is the rent?

You'd have to ask my accountant. I'm not sure.

Before the interview ends, Owens brings up one last topic, Cassidy's 1982

felony conviction.

That happened over 11 years ago, and Mike, I'm not seeking publicity.

I'm a private person, and it really disgusts me that you would use something

that happened 11 years ago to try to hurt me personally. I have lived a very

upright life for the last 11 years, and I'm proud of that.

But that conviction hangs over Cassidy because it prevents him from working in

the insurance business, and that means he cannot publicly run NPS.

It means that he needs to call the shots from the background.

And he puts his 23 -year -old son, Brent, out in front.

This whole situation, we're right, they're wrong, we represent the

Brent takes on a prominent role at an incredibly young age, almost fresh out

college, and ends up, in later stages, becomes the face, the public face of

Doug is not even an owner of NPS.

The business is owned by a trust that benefits his wife, Rhonda, and his two

sons, Brent and Tyler.

But everyone at NPS knows who's in charge.

It's all Doug.

All Doug all the time. He's directing the whole show as he has all along.

You know, he can say that he's got a president and a vice president and this

kid's running this. He was the mastermind.

Eventually, Cassidy answers the state of Missouri's complaint by agreeing to

keep customers' funeral money safe in a bank trust account.

But as anyone who saw his interview knows, Doug Cassidy can be slippery with

truth.

We rent that house.

Next on American Greed.

Brent Cassidy developed a new sales team.

We'd see a booth filled with 10 girls dressed with a subtle form of

By 1997, in small towns across Missouri, salespeople for national prearranged

services have sold tens of thousands of funeral contracts.

NPS appears to be thriving.

They have full -page ads in every funeral home magazine.

They're at every major convention.

And front and center at NPS is Brent Cassidy.

now the president of the company.

I know the questions always ask, what makes your company unique?

And as the company thinks about how to expand, Brent comes up with the idea to

hire a new sales team, mainly women, mostly young and attractive.

Yeah, I think NPS and Hooters both had similar hiring requirements.

They become known as the NPS girls, real standouts in a male -dominated

industry. If you attended a convention that they were exhibiting at and you'd

see a booth filled with 10 girls dressed, not provocatively, but dressed

a subtle form of sensuality. It was, I think, an embarrassment to the

rest of the vendors.

But sexy sells.

And the NPS girls will not sell to grandma in her kitchen.

They will sell directly to funeral home directors, who will then sell NPS

-backed pre -need funeral contracts to their customers.

It's the funeral directors who have access to the consumers.

It's the funeral directors who, you know, may have buried three generations

the Collins family, right?

And that's why the NPS girls head out to small rural towns across the Midwest.

When you go through these towns, you're going to find a gas station, a church, a

diner. A funeral home and good people. And the good people ran these funeral

homes. And these were people that built a family name within that community.

And that's all they had.

In Mount Vernon, Illinois, that family name is Huey.

Carmen Huey Dykeman took over the Huey Funeral Home when her father died.

And she runs the business just as he did.

We're there for people.

you know, one of the worst and hardest times of their life.

And, you know, we meet them at the door when they've just lost the most

important person.

We have tears. We have, you know, hugs.

Many of the families Huey serves are people who have eked out a living from

farms nearby, like Farrell Payne, whose parents were farmers.

They are people for whom watching every nickel It's just a part of our heritage

that you pay your bills.

If you don't have what you want, you save for it.

And now his parents have enough money saved to prepay their funeral.

They knew it was expensive, but they also knew that the cost would be on

family if they didn't do it.

They wanted to have control of what happened to them.

Is that real wood here?

That is solid poplar.

This is really pretty here.

When everything is added up, the funeral for Payne's mother, Nellie, will cost

$7 ,389.

The concrete grave liner is $690.

What Payne is actually buying on behalf of his mother is a life insurance

policy.

When she dies, the cash benefit will cover the cost of her funeral.

Huey sends Nellie Payne's money to NPS.

I just figured that a policy was bought for the person with those funds,

and it was growing and just right there for when they needed it.

But what Huey doesn't know is that the company that issues the policy, Lincoln

Memorial Life Insurance, is owned by a trust held by Rhonda, Brent, and Tyler

Cassidy and run by Doug Cassidy.

And it is actually more than a life insurance company.

It's a fraud factory.

Inside Lincoln Memorial, in assembly line fashion, are data clerks with

of whiteout altering insurance applications.

Here is Nellie Payne's application.

The policy is paid in full.

That's why it says SP.

Single pay.

But here's the application after it gets the Doug Cassidy white -out treatment.

Now Nellie is on a monthly pay plan, payable over 60 months, five years.

And remember that Nellie paid $7 ,389.

But here that number is gone, and the amount paid is just one month's premium,

mere $293 .35.

With this simple trick, Cassidy can pocket $7 ,000 of Nellie Payne's money.

And if regulators raise questions, there is an application on file that looks

entirely legit.

There was people in St. Louis and people in Austin, Texas, doing that every day

for seven, eight, nine years. And that is how they did Illinois business.

Insurance applications.

were systematically and regularly whited out so they could steal the insurance

premiums.

Making the con even more cunning is that the people who are hired to white out

the contracts are told they are merely correcting an error made in the field.

These were people who didn't have the best education, and this was the best

that they ever had. So they went ahead and did that. They were unwitting

participants in a very major fraud.

But with the white -out trick, a Ponzi scheme is born.

Because to keep an insurance policy active, Cassidy now has to make monthly

payments on each of the policies he alters.

And the only way to fund that is to get new business.

Next, does the Cassidy family have an endless supply of money?

All you cared about was that the next time you used your American Express

it would be accepted and you'd be allowed to keep charging.

As the 1990s come to an end, it's clear the Cassidy family has come a long way

from Buffalo, Missouri.

Doug and Rhonda own a picture -perfect house in a wealthy suburb of St. Louis.

It is so impeccably decorated, it even merits a spread in traditional home

magazine.

Doug looks like a lifelong member of the moneyed class.

He's got the million -dollar smile. He's got the coiffed hair. He's got the nice

suit. And his two good -looking boys, Brent and Tyler, complete the portrait

a hugely successful all -American family.

It was important to those guys to have a veneer of respectability.

They knew what they were doing with Sweezy.

But if they spent enough money the right way, with the right charities, with the

right people, They could cover this criminality with disrespectability. And

did that to a great extent.

And at considerable expense.

Their individual monthly American Express bills routinely exceed $30 ,000.

For things like an $11 ,000 shopping spree at Polo for Rhonda.

$17 ,000 worth of jewelry for Doug.

$6 ,000 worth of movies and games for Tyler.

and $31 ,000 for a vacation in the Caribbean for Brent.

The attitude toward the American Express cards might be best expressed by Rhonda

when she had questioned in a video deposition for a civil lawsuit.

Now we see the Rob and Stucky furniture purchase, January 30, 2006, of $10

,354 .08.

See that? Yes. You didn't even know how much money you would put on these charge

cards every month, did you? And the reason you didn't know is because you

care. Well, I don't think that's a fair statement.

Sure. All you cared about was that the next time you used your American Express

card, it would be accepted and you'd be allowed to keep charging.

Yes. And where does much of the money come from to pay the American Express

bills?

From NPS, whose customers were promised their money would be safe until the day

it is needed for their final expense.

You look at the website, it says your money will be held in trust or in

insurance.

I mean, there was never a third option of we're going to take it and use it for

our own personal use and pay it back whenever we want.

And there is certainly no option for throwing their money around Hollywood

29 -year -old Tyler Cassidy decides to make his mark in the family debt

business.

This is Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

In 1997, it was called Hollywood Memorial Park, a bankrupt, run -down

where some of Hollywood's great legendary celebrities are buried.

Director Cecil B. DeMille, Douglas Fairbanks.

And Hollywood's first male sex symbol, Rudolph Valentino. There is intrigue and

mystery to be found in death, right? And when you've got a cemetery where famous

violent movie stars and golden era picture stars are buried, I mean, it's a

natural, right?

Tyler Cassidy looks at the ruins and sees potential.

He buys the cemetery, renames it Hollywood Forever.

and begins to turn both the cemetery and himself into a national news story.

As soon as he can, he begins staging media events.

A memorial for Valentino's death draws a huge crowd.

And recognition for a star once not allowed to be buried here brings in the

television cameras.

At all the events, Tyler assumes his role as host.

You can walk across these beautiful grounds and read the story of this

It's etched in stone.

Described as impossibly handsome, he is a natural on camera.

And when Tyler talks, people listen.

That's something I like to think of as 20th century magic.

And the best name we have for it is Hollywood.

What he preaches is that cemeteries should be for the living, not just for

dead. We're here to fulfill our purpose as cemeterians, and that is to create a

place for you.

In a fierce break with tradition, he opens the cemetery to all kinds of

showing horror films on the wall of a mausoleum.

The film screenings, called Cinespia, become a huge summer -long sensation in

Los Angeles, and Tyler's popularity grows.

He goes on to host one of the largest Day of the Dead festivals in the

The news media is captivated by Tyler. He is the cemetery kid.

The story is covered in Forbes, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker. In 2000,

reaches near celebrity status when he is featured in an HBO documentary, The

Young and the Dead.

Viewers see a smart, confident young man with a bold vision.

Death isn't funny. It's the most serious thing we face. It's the most mysterious

thing.

You can treat it with nonchalance, or you can treat it as though it's

very sacred.

And I think humor doesn't make something less sacred.

The cultural stereotype that we have of undertakers is this dour, black -suited,

you know, very buttoned up, right? And to a large extent, that is true. When

see somebody young, attractive, with interesting ideas that they describe in

really interesting and compelling way, it's like a breath of fresh air.

But in all the coverage Tyler receives, there is no mention that millions of

dollars for his radical ideas come from a world as far away from Hollywood as

one can imagine.

It's money that comes from the checking accounts of middle to low income people

who are just trying to take care of what happens at the end of life.

They don't know that NPS is paying for Tyler's $800 ,000 house in the Hollywood

Hills.

or paying for his $72 ,000 BMW, or that their money is paying to prop up his

sensational business.

They were told that their money would be safe in a bank trust account or

insurance policy.

Whether it's on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, you see wire translators,

,000, $80 ,000, $120 ,000, and being sent directly to the bank accounts of

Hollywood Forever.

Later, in documents and a deposition for a civil lawsuit, Tyler Cassidy defends

the use of the NPS pre -need customer's trust money for his business, arguing it

was a good investment.

We had promissory notes.

We had payment schedules.

We paid according to those promissory notes and payment schedules.

If I walked in and said, you want to buy a pre -need plan, okay, so you're going

to pay me $10 ,000 for that pre -need plan.

But I'm going to go loan it to my son so he can, you know, develop his dream.

Now, we may pay it back, may not.

Who knows?

Is that something that you do?

Most people wouldn't. Most people are like, no, get out of my house.

Next, the NPS girls turn up the charm and rake in the cash.

They would appeal to some funeral directors that maybe no one has ever.

Hit on before.

Nantucket in August.

Once a quiet hideaway for old money, the island is now attracting new big money.

And Doug and Rhonda Cassidy are riding the wave in grand style.

The house they buy overlooking Nantucket Harbor makes a bold statement about the

extraordinary success of Doug Cassidy.

This was the ultimate landing spot, Nantucket, for Doug Cassidy.

He'd made it. For a guy from Buffalo, Missouri, to end up in Nantucket, most

people would shake their heads and say, how did that happen?

especially if he's a convicted felon already.

The answer, of course, is that he gets here by stealing.

A portion of the money for the multimillion -dollar house came straight

you guessed it, the trust accounts filled with money for funerals.

And while Doug and Rhonda mingle with their yacht club friends, back in St.

Louis at NPS, there is a daily struggle to meet the payments that are due.

The Cassies were doing well. NPS was never doing well. They were always one

away from collapse.

And that is why they need to sell.

Sell, sell, sell.

That's what they had to do to survive.

Not only to line their pockets, but just to keep the fraud going.

And they are selling to people who are easy targets.

General directors tend to make decisions on vendors in a very simple fashion.

They don't look at financials. They don't look at blue books. They don't

ratio analysis.

It's based upon relationships.

And before long, the kinds of relationships the NPS girls are

a topic in the industry.

Nan Fowler is a former NPS girl.

She became aware of the reputation some of the girls had while she was working

with them at an industry convention.

I was working the booth, and I had a funeral director who I didn't even know

from, you know, whatever state come up and say, I hear you guys, you know, are

great partiers. Where are you going tonight?

Some of the gals, they would go out, and, you know, they would have a good

Funeral home consultant Dan Isard claims that a few of his customers confessed

to him that things with the girls went too far.

They would appeal to some funeral directors that maybe no one has ever

hit on before.

And when you figure how much money these girls were making, some of them decided

to go the extra yard to get the account.

The NPS sales tactic works, and the girls bring in millions of dollars.

By 2006, the company boasts that it has served 340 ,000 families and has

paid $120 million in claims.

But the big secret, of course, is that Cassidy is running a Ponzi scheme.

And at his insurance company, the hunt is always on for cash to keep the fraud

alive.

Now Cassidy's team is taking out loans against customers' policies without

knowledge. It all looks legitimate on paper.

A customer in Ohio buys a policy paying in full more than $8 ,000.

Three months later, NPS takes close to $6 ,500 from that policy in the form of

loan, leaving just under $1 ,800, not nearly enough to cover her funeral.

And the customer in Ohio has no idea that her money has been taken.

They're not doing this one at a time. They're doing it 5 ,000, 10 ,000

individual policies at a time. So the policy loans are figures like $2

$3 million, $5 million.

Eventually, Cassidy and his team will take $130 million in loans against

customers' policies.

And when regulators in Ohio are tipped off about the loans, Doug and Brent

they have a simple answer.

They take all the policy loans on Ohio policies, and they transfer them to

states. And they do that for all the Ohio policies. So they can then write a

letter to the regulators saying, there are no policy loans on Ohio policies.

Maybe the Cassidys think they are fooling Ohio regulators.

But it is really the people in small towns across the Midwest who are most in

the dark.

They think the money they spent for their funerals is being kept safe by

They have no idea that they are really helping the Cassidy family buy a big,

beautiful house on Nantucket.

It's infuriating. It's infuriating as a consumer advocate, and it's infuriating

as a human being that you can do this to other people. The people who prepay for

their funerals are generally middle -class people or poor, right? They are

people who take care to spend their money wisely to the degree that they

and it's disgusting how easy it was for them to take advantage of those people.

Next, the real cost of doing business with the Cassidys.

This firm could potentially, over the next 20 years, lose somewhere in the

vicinity of $7 to $10 million.

Listen to how Doug keeps his cash flow flowing at AmericanGreed .CNBCPrime

Want inside information from the show?

Join the Greed social network.

Like us on American Greed's Facebook page.

We'll be right back.

If you'll come in tomorrow at 10 o 'clock, we'll discuss it and assure you

we'll take great care of your loved one and make sure everything is the way he

wanted it.

In 2007, while Doug Cassidy is long gone from the small towns of Missouri,

funeral director Marty Myers is hard at work in the business he entered when he

was just 12 years old.

When I was in the seventh grade, I was a trumpet player in the band, and the

local funeral director asked if I would be willing to play taps for veterans,

and I got paid for it.

What he sees in that experience makes a lasting impression.

I've never been in any business or seen any business that a family pays you

and they thank you.

And they're so grateful for what you do for them.

Out of high school, Myers heads to mortuary school and begins working at

homes around Kansas City, dedicating his life to his customers.

I'm here for him.

I miss birthdays.

I miss Christmas, you know.

For more than 20 years in the business, he wants only one thing.

I always said I wanted my own place. That was my goal.

Finally, in 2007, he has enough cash and enough loans to put in an offer to

purchase two funeral homes.

As a condition of the purchase, Myers is required by law to sign an agreement

saying he will honor the funeral home's existing pre -need contracts.

Basically, when you do that, you're on the hook. You have to do it, and the

state required that we did it.

700 of the contracts, totaling close to $4 million, are with NPS.

And at the time, Myers has no reason to worry.

He's been dealing with NPS contracts for years.

They would pay him?

It was not really a big deal. We would send in the contract that they had.

Within 30 days, I had a check with growth from NPS.

But the checks from NPS are the products of a fraud that is nearly out of

control.

Now it is becoming impossible for NPS to come up with the millions required each

month to pay the loans taken out on customers' policies.

There is just one answer.

Throw out the policies with loans.

They can do that by...

surrendering the policies and replacing them with new policies without loans.

Surrender is a surrender. It's as if the policy never existed.

Obviously, they never tell the funeral home individual that their policy has

been surrendered.

In 2007, in order to keep their house of cards standing, Cassidy and his team

surrender 56 ,514 policies.

The surrenders were the last bit of the fraud.

Reflection of the Ponzi scheme collapsing.

But across the Midwest, funeral homes received statements showing that all is

good. Their customers' money is growing.

On this particular one, with all the contracts, there was the inflation

was $567 ,000.

That's how much each of these had grown.

We got this every month, and so had no reason to believe that something was

wrong. The money is growing, and there's no problems.

In Blue Springs, Marty Myers also knows nothing about the financial problems at

NPS. And at the start of 2008, he closes on his funeral homes.

Oh, it was the greatest day of our lives, other than my children being born

getting married to my beautiful wife.

You know, we were ecstatic by finally...

got and did what I said I was going to do. And so that day came to fruition.

And then three months later, it all went south.

Next on American Greed, Doug Cassidy has some answers.

In April 2008, Doug Cassidy gets bad news.

It took a while, and he got away with a lot, but finally state regulators begin

to ask questions, and the truth about his operation is out.

There's no money in any part of what was represented to the funeral homes and

the customers. There's no money safe and secure in insurance policies.

There's no money safe and secure in bank trusts.

It was a business model of fraud. It wasn't something that collapsed because

there was mismanagement. It wasn't an attack by a competitor.

It was by design a fraud to line the pockets of those people that stood to

benefit the most. And that was Doug Cassidy and his family.

The total bill for the fraud is more than $450 million.

For Marty Myers, who was holding close to $4 million in NPS contracts, the news

is devastating.

None of us knew whether we were ever going to be paid. I got people coming in

with these contracts. I'm not going to get paid for them. It was going to put

under. A few months later, there is a partial rescue.

State insurance guarantee funds that pay the bills of insurance companies that

become insolvent step up to pay funeral homes what customers pay.

but not the inflation factor that NPS promised.

And because he signed that agreement saying he would honor the NPS contracts,

Myers is legally stuck with hundreds of contracts like this one.

Written in 1982, the customer paid $3 ,075 for a funeral that today costs $10

,000.

This gentleman was born in 1942.

If he lived to be 100,

That's 2042.

What's a funeral going to cost in 2042?

A lot more than it does today, and we're still going to get face amount of $3

,075.

This firm could potentially, over the next 20 years, lose somewhere in the

vicinity of $7 to $10 million off these contracts.

And that's our hit. That's not the consumer's hit. That's the funeral

hit.

The consumer's going to get what they pay for as long as I'm alive.

In Mount Vernon, Illinois, months after the NPS collapse, Carmen Huey Dykeman

learns how customer Nellie Payne's application was altered.

I just couldn't believe it. I mean, I saw my contract there, the way I filled

out, and then the way it was changed. I just couldn't believe it.

I don't know how they could live with their self, you know, knowing that

taking this person's money and putting it somewhere else. It's just

unimaginable. But Carmen, like many others stuck holding the bag, continues

honor her NPS contracts.

And she does so at a huge loss for her small business.

It'll be maybe $5 million before it's over.

I mean, that's a rough estimate, but...

I would say it would be close.

And I will probably not be here when the last one goes through the office.

In November 2010, the U .S. Attorney's Office indicted six officials of NPS,

including Doug and Brent Cassidy.

It's a 50 -count indictment charging wire, bank, mail, and insurance fraud.

I was thrilled in 2010 when they got indicted. It was like manna from heaven,

because for years I'd been saying terrible things about these guys, and

the United States government agreed with me. Doug Cassidy pleads guilty to

directing all aspects of what is called a Ponzi scheme, including whiting out

the policy applications and taking money from customers' accounts for his

personal use.

He is sentenced to nine years, six months.

Cassidy agrees to be interviewed by American Greed, but the Marion Federal

Penitentiary warden does not allow the interview.

And so Cassidy writes to us by email and defends the NPS business plan as legal.

He writes that he pleaded guilty only because prosecutors offered to let

keep her house and Tyler free of charges.

If he doesn't take the deal, the entire family would be destitute.

Brent Cassidy also pleads guilty to his participation in the fraud and is

sentenced to five years.

Brent was the only one that apologized.

And I felt extremely sorry for his wife and daughters.

Because I feel like his dad took him down a wrong road.

Rhonda and Tyler Cassidy are not accused of wrongdoing and are not indicted.

Later, Tyler tells lawyers in a deposition he regrets his use of NPS

Hollywood Forever didn't go to banks for its money, did it? What you're saying

is in retrospect, you wish you had done it differently.

That's very true. But at the time, you knew it's trust for monies that are

propping up Hollywood Forever.

At the time, yes.

Today, Doug Cassidy is in the federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois.

where he served his first sentence more than 20 years ago.

For a moment, he made it into the high life and then ended up right back where

he started, hurting the small -town people he so desperately wanted to get

from.

This is who Doug Cassidy is.

This is where he grew up. This was his real playground.

This is what Doug Cassidy understands.

I think that's kind of the ironic part of this whole thing.

On his way... Up the ladder, he was stepping on the people that he once

with. Doug Cassie was doing that.