Original subtitles

In this episode of American Greed, Dr. Fareed Fata tells his patients they have

cancer, and he holds the keys to their survival.

Fata would say that he had better equipment, that he had medicines others

have. But after pumping people full of chemo for years, Fata has a secret.

Many of his trusting patients don't even have the disease.

That's when they hit me like, oh, two and a half years of treatments that I

didn't need.

The dangerous infusions Potter provides serve only one purpose, making him

millions of dollars.

For him, it was all about the bottom line. How much time can I put the person

the chair? How many doses of different drugs can I give this person? And later,

a well -dressed bank robber with plenty of flair.

The FBI thought of that as Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction. And a menacing

violence streak.

He would pull out a gun, point it at the tellers, and say, I will kill you if

you don't get me into the vault. The feds link Joseph Jose Banks to 20 bank

robberies totaling millions of dollars in losses.

He was probably the most successful bank robber in recent memory in the Chicago

area. But from a cell in a high -rise jail, he shows the world he won't be

caged. The fact that you have people willing to carve their way out of a

facility and to rappel down a building in the middle of the downtown, it's

almost too perfect an escape plan to have worked that properly.

But it did.

Robert Soberay is a former auto worker from Milford, Michigan, about an hour

outside Detroit.

After suffering from back problems, his doctor suspects something serious and

refers him in 2010 to a well -known cancer specialist named Dr. Fareed Fada.

Right away, Fada orders a painful bone marrow biopsy.

Then he gives Soberay the news every patient fears.

He has cancer.

Your mind goes blank, and all you can think about is what's most important to

you. To me, it's my wife. She's next to me, and I just held her. I didn't know

what to do.

Being diagnosed with cancer is a frightening experience.

Hi, I am Dr. Farid Farah with Michigan Hematology Oncology.

Born in Lebanon, Farid Farah comes to the U .S. in the 1990s.

where he lands a prestigious fellowship.

Farah had excellent credentials. He had gone to medical school in Lebanon, but

he had trained at Sloan Kettering in New York, which is one of the most

prestigious cancer centers in the United States.

He was highly regarded by most of his colleagues and peers in Michigan,

nationally.

Farah sets up shop in the Detroit suburbs.

At his opulent clinics, patients are willing to endure long waits to be seen

the doctor for just minutes.

Between 2005 and 2013, Fata builds a practice of 60 employees in seven

offices where he sees more than 17 ,000 patients.

He was the largest provider of oncology treatment in Michigan.

Other doctors sent their family members to him because they thought he was the

best in town. He had a reputation of being the best.

Much of Fata's practice involves ordering expensive chemotherapy drugs.

Chemotherapy treatments are all very different, but many of them are

poisons that you hope kill the cancer faster than it kills you.

But Fada's patients are facing death.

And he promises them he has access to drugs and treatment plans other doctors

don't.

Though he's said to have a quiet bedside manner, Fada can be very persistent in

making sure patients take the drugs he says they need.

He would alternate between being very comforting and then threatening. When

staff challenged his treatment, he would say things like, did you go to Sloan

Kettering? You don't know. I'm the doctor.

When his patients began to push back on his treatment, he would tell them they

would die without him. When patients agree to take the chemo Fata says is

necessary, he bills their insurance thousands of dollars per treatment.

Eventually, the doctor becomes one of the top Medicare billers in the nation.

He actually billed over $500 million to Blue Cross and Medicare during the time

that he was practicing.

What he bills and what he receives are not the same.

But Fata does all right.

I actually thought, well, he actually knows something that we don't. I mean,

could be Bill Gates of oncology.

Between August 2007 and July 2013,

Fata received $91 million in reimbursements from Medicare alone.

Fada went from a small one -person practitioner to having approximately $17

million or more in his possession.

And that's not even counting what his practices were worth.

Fada lives with his wife and three children in a 6 ,000 -square -foot

purchased for $1 .5 million.

He owns property in his native country, Lebanon, and at one point considers

buying a castle there as well.

But in 2010...

An experienced oncology nurse named Angela Swantek notices that in Fata's

kingdom, all may not be what it seems.

That year, Swantek interviews for a position as an infusion nurse at one of

Fata's clinics.

I showed up about 8 .30 in the morning, and already all of the chairs were full.

I thought, wow, this is going to be great. This is going to be nice and

like to be busy.

When Swantek returns for a second time...

She gets a look inside one of the doctor's busy infusion rooms.

I noticed things as soon as I walked into the office. Within probably the

20 minutes, I thought, there's no way I could work here because of the way that

they do things.

Swantec has worked in oncology for almost 20 years.

In addition to disposing of chemo incorrectly, she says she notices drugs

given for longer amounts of time than recommended.

So the light bulb went off that I know what he's doing. Instead of giving

something over five minutes, he did it in an hour. So he could bill the

insurance company for more money.

I thought somebody needs to do something to help those patients because they

have no idea that they're getting inappropriate care.

The next week, Swantec sends a written complaint to the state of Michigan.

Patients are being harmed because the chemotherapy.

and supportive therapy they are being given are being given incorrectly.

I have been an oncology nurse for 19 years. I feel this physician is doing

patients more harm than good and needs to be investigated by the state, OSHA,

Medicare, and Blue Cross Blue Shield.

A year later, in May 2011, she gets a letter back from the state saying their

investigation has found no violations and that the FATA file has been closed.

It's unfortunate because the nurse is on to something.

In most oncology practices, infusion chairs are where healing begins.

But Dr. Fareed Fata seems to see his chairs in a different light.

He saw dollar signs in every chair. And the longer the person sat in the chair,

the more dollar signs were in his eyes.

Fata makes money not just with the expensive drugs he administers.

but also with the amount of time patients spend in each chair.

In one instance, Fada asks a nurse how much more he can charge by adding an

extra hour to an infusion.

She did the research and told Dr. Fada that it was only $22 difference.

And he said, no, it's not $22.

It's 22 and 22 and 22 and 22.

Next on American Greed.

Find out just how far Dr. Fareed Fada will go in order to make cancer pay.

Look at my dad. He's almost 90 years old.

Can't he just die with dignity and in peace?

The aura of authority around cancer specialist Fareed Fada is powerful.

So on those rare occasions when a patient declines cancer treatment, it's

something that really sticks out.

Fada's former practice manager, George Karachi, recalls a time when he sees his

boss after one patient turns him down.

He looked not like a doctor who was concerned about his patient, more like

had lost his sale. And he said, we're all misunderstood.

Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, they're all misunderstood.

And so is Fada.

Yes. Farah and profits go together well.

He'll stop at nothing to get them.

Among those who keep the money flowing is patient Robert Soberay.

February 7, 2012, Zometa infusion. March 8, Zometa infusion. April

5, Zometa infusion.

May 3, Zometa. Each time Soberay gets an infusion of the drug Zometa, Fata bills

his insurance $1 ,120.

After taking it, Soberay begins to notice problems.

I had a tooth break off. It just broke off right at the gum line. Couldn't

figure out what the heck's going on.

And my jaw was hurting during this time, too, this period. My jaw was hurting. I

reached out to Dr. Fata, and he goes, I don't know what it is.

I don't know. I used to see a dentist.

What it is is a well -known potential side effect of Zometa, but Fata ignores

the warning signs.

About every month or two, I'd lose another tooth.

I had one that come out with the whole socket and all and put a hole up into my

sinuses. Eventually, Sovereign loses all but two of his teeth.

It felt like torture. I kept asking myself, what did I ever do? Why me?

Not knowing how far his doctor will go to make some extra cash, Sober Ray has

kept on these dangerous cancer -fighting drugs for two and a half years.

It was two and a half years of bull that I didn't need any of it because I

didn't have cancer. I didn't use it for anything.

I didn't need to have a bone marrow biopsy because I didn't have cancer.

In his efforts to keep patients coming in and bills going out, Vara has been

doing the unthinkable for years.

Patients who didn't have cancer at all.

were poisoned with chemotherapy. Some people were on chemotherapy for years,

years, three years, that they didn't need to be on.

Fata subjects hundreds of patients to dangerously potent chemo drugs they

need. When you read his patient file and understood where the money was to be

made, then you could understand why he ordered the treatment, because it made

sense medically.

Court records say that over -treated patients will eventually suffer from

congestive heart failure.

Kidney dysfunction, blood clots, osteoporosis, pain in their

muscles, joints, and bones, weakness, weakened immune systems, permanent

baldness, loss of teeth, and loss of memory.

Vada also gives patients a litany of other non -chemo infusions, such as

which they don't need.

He will stop at nothing to send out one more bill.

There was one individual who was getting iron he didn't need.

He was in his 80s. He fell and hit his head. He did have cancer, but he was

given iron before the EMTs were allowed to take him to the ER, and he also later

died. And still, in some cases, Fata is taking something more than just his

patient's health and money.

The one thing Dad was cheated out of the most,

What it does.

Sidney Centilli won a Purple Heart during World War II at the Battle of

After the war, Centilli moves to Clarkston, Michigan, where he and his

raise five girls, including Diane Centilli and Barbara LaBossonere.

Remember, he loved classical music. Yeah. I listen to that on my radio.

Yeah. I think of him. Yeah.

At age 87, doctors tell Santilli he has stage 4 pancreatic cancer that's spread

to his liver.

They tell him he has less than six months to live.

Hoping for a miracle, though, Santilli goes to see another doctor who says he

can do what others can't. Dr. Farah.

Explained to my father that he currently had other stage four metastatic

pancreatic cancer patients that were already 12 months out.

So that gave my dad hope.

LaBoisinere says Fada's treatment involves many, many rounds of

other drugs.

Once he started with Dr. Fada, he was sick all the time.

He'd be up sitting at night with the chills and fever, and his bones would

He couldn't eat. He was losing weight rapidly.

After a few rounds of treatments until he has had enough, he's decided to

a shorter life free of chemo's pain.

But when he meets with Farah to say so, he gets incredible news.

He walked in, and he said,

The cancer's gone from your liver. It's cured.

It's gone.

When they left there, they actually stopped and got balloons and a cake and

a celebration back at my mom and dad's house.

Though Farah says he's cured his patient, he orders a new round of

treatments he can bill for until he grows sicker, then checks into a

where he's visited by the doctor who he thinks is his savior.

My dad looked at him with hopeful eyes, and Dr. Fata said, well, you've got,

I think, about two to three days to live.

He patted my dad on the shoulder, and they walked out of the room. And then my

dad looked at me.

He goes, what happened?

What happened?

Centelli died just days later, on Pearl Harbor Day, 2011.

His name is now memorialized on this veteran's wall at a local cemetery.

Thank you for your service, Dad. Love you, Dad.

Centilli is just one of many terminal cancer patients, cheated of the truth

out of time in order to pad Fata's wallet.

Dad never had the opportunity to accept the fact that he was going to die, to

prepare himself for death, to make peace with himself, to have last rites

properly.

For that, I really can't forgive Dr. Fata.

Next on American Greed, Dr.

Fata's scam comes crashing down and the feds take a look at his diagnosis for

dollars scheme.

Fata was not on the peripheries or on the blinds. He wasn't even close to the

line. He was so far past the line, he couldn't see it.

For many years, Dr. Fareed Fata is a master at keeping outsiders from looking

closely at his business.

He held everything really close to his vest. It would take him months to

records if a patient left the practice and went somewhere else.

In retrospect, we probably know today why.

He didn't want other physicians seeing his patients. Because if other

saw what was in their files, there would have been more questions raised than

there were.

But what about the people inside the practice?

There were RNs, there were other doctors that worked in their practice, and they

knew. They knew, and I know they knew.

While this is the sentiment of many of Fata's patients, the feds say the doctor

is well -versed at hiding his deceit. There wasn't one person besides him that

had all the information.

Maybe a nurse over here had a nugget, maybe a biller over here had a nugget,

a nugget of what? They don't know if there's a bigger problem here or if this

just is one small mistake.

They were separated.

On purpose.

According to practice manager George Karachay, Farah and his wife, who acts

his CFO, imposed draconian measures to keep staff from talking.

They didn't like the staff mingling and having private conversations.

They didn't like them to have discussions unless it was absolutely

And they enforced that through the use of cameras and microphones strategically

placed throughout the center.

Despite all this plotting...

The truth can't stay hidden forever.

While Farah is on vacation in 2013, one of his employees, Dr. Sol Mongley,

examines one of his boss's so -called cancer patients.

She did not have cancer. Sol Mongley sees this on the chart and tells her not

ever come back to Dr. Farah again, that she does not have cancer.

In July 2013, Karachi discusses the situation with Dr. Mongley.

I asked him what was on his mind, and he said, Dr. Prada is administering

chemotherapy to patients without need. When I heard that, I said to myself, you

know, this is really wild.

Other employees corroborate some of Mongley's allegations, and Karadjie

whistleblower lawsuit.

With his lawyer, he tells the feds about Farah's unimaginable deceit.

I hoped that they were wrong, and I thought we could be wrong. I thought we

could go out and we would have aches on our face and look like idiots because we

had gone out and asked questions about the prominent oncologist.

But on the other hand, if they were true, we had to do it. We had to go out

ask the questions. We had to go out and find out if this was really happening.

Days later, agents conduct simultaneous interviews with eight of Fata's

employees.

A lot of times when people come in and talk to us, maybe 20 % of what they say

is accurate, but in this case, everything the office manager told us

accurate.

Though the full extent of Fata's fraud is not yet known, the feds have enough

act.

Just days after hearing from whistleblower George Carace, Agents raid

clinics and his house and seize millions of dollars from various accounts.

Agents Brian Drake and Abhijit Dixit are on scene to put the once revered doctor

in cuffs.

Neither his wife nor any other employee is charged for playing a role in the

crime.

As word begins to spread, the medical community and Farrer's patients are left

in shock.

The feds say Dr. Farid Fada was one greedy, dishonest doctor.

Working with a victim witness coordinator in the U .S. Attorney's

patients are given their files to take for a second opinion.

Among the patients who go to a new doctor is Robert Sovereign.

I told him, first of all, you know, I was a modest patient. He goes, okay, how

do you know you got cancer?

I goes, that's what he told me. He says, you don't have cancer. He says, there's

nothing wrong with you. He goes, there is now.

It was a shock, a big shock. It's probably worse than hearing that you got

cancer because you don't know what's going to happen.

Though Fauna's treatment caused him his teeth, court records say he likely had

little more than inflammation.

Soon, stories like Soberay's come streaming in.

As patients started to see new doctors, we got calls from what we called second

opinion doctors. They're new treating physicians, and if they took in 20 or 30

patients, they would call us and say, I have a problem here. I have 30 of Dr.

Farah's patients and 20 never should have been treated.

As evidence mounts against him, Farah pleads guilty in September 2014 to 13

charges of health care fraud, two counts of money laundering, and one count of

conspiracy to pay and receive kickbacks.

Nearly a year later at sentencing, Farah admits he fraudulently received... $17

.6 million from Medicare and private insurers.

He says he misused his healing gift in pursuit of power and greed.

In the end, the judge calls his crime horrific and unprecedented and sentences

him to 45 years in federal prison.

I would have loved to see him get life.

And if they had capital punishment, let's go for it.

For what he's done, Not only to me, thousands of people.

They said he had, what, 17 ,000 patients?

And that's a lot of people.

How long did he go for?

Now I'm starting to get upset.

Years after Fata's arrest, his former patients gather at events like this

The government has identified 550 victims and says it's likely there are

hundreds or even thousands more.

The doctor who violated his oath to do no harm has cost them in many ways.

There are health problems caused by years of unnecessary infusions.

There are mental health effects for victims and their families.

And then there are the financial woes for people like Robert Soberay, who has

resorted to a page on GoFundMe .com to help raise $50 ,000.

It's money he says he needs to pay old bills and deal with his ongoing medical

problems. On top of this is the anxiety of not knowing what the future holds for

his unnecessarily overtreated body.

People look for closure in that, and I'm not going to have closure.

Every day I wake up thinking, you know, is there anything else could happen to

me? I don't know.

Like I said, I feel better than I did, but I'm still scared.

Today, Soberay says there's one thing new patients should do if they ever hear

their doctor say, you have cancer.

Don't believe them. Go get a second or third opinion.

Doubt them.

Every doctor you meet, doubt that doctor.

I will never trust one doctor again.

Up next, with a gun in hand, a violent thief leaves Chicago bank tellers

reeling. There's just money floating everywhere in the room. You're panicking

and pulling up bricks of money and shoving it into a bag. It's literally, I

don't know how much, but there were 20, 10 money everywhere.

It's a cold December day at this Citibank branch on Chicago's north side.

Jim Love is working inside when he notices a strangely attired man

He's walking in full suit, afro wig, sunglasses on, and my first reaction was

laugh, going, good luck with this guy. I mean, I'm glad I don't have to deal

with him. It soon becomes clear that this is no laughing matter.

My next real memory is suddenly seeing a flash. It's this big blur of Afro wig,

brown clothing. And within a matter of seconds, I turn around and there's a big

silver gun in my face telling me to get down on the floor.

The robber orders the employees to open the bank's ATMs and its vault, then

subdues a customer who happens to wander in.

Speaking gruffly and trying to move fast, the robber hits Love with his gun.

and another employee collapses in apparent distress.

All I thought was, I don't know how I'm going to get out of this. I didn't want

to die, and I felt that at that point, things were going to get bad. I mean,

guy was pretty crazy.

When the robber leaves, his final take adds up to $317 ,000.

Not bad for a few minutes' work.

For Love, it's not until he gets home that night...

that he's hit with the gravity of what's happened.

That morning was just another morning, and it could have been my last, and I

don't remember it.

And just the thought of being that I'm going to go home, I'm actually going to

go home, is just the most wonderful feeling in the world, that I get to

again.

Love is not the only person to look down the barrel of this robber's gun and see

the possibility of death staring back.

About seven months later, at another Citibank ranch not far from the first,

robber walks off with a little more than $272 ,000.

This time, he's wearing a slightly different disguise.

But the way he operates bears his unique signature.

His M .O. was to walk into the bank heavily disguised.

usually with a creative disguise that he created himself.

He would leap over the counter in a single bound. We're talking about

here who has extreme physical ability.

And then he would point the gun at one of the tellers or one of the workers,

scare that person, and then he would lead them into the vault and at gunpoint

demand that they open the vaults. These so -called takeover -style robberies are

much more rare and dangerous.

Then a robbery carried out with a threatening note.

In a city that's known its fair share of crooks, the man behind these crimes

earns himself a reputation as one of the best.

He was probably the most successful bank robber in recent memory in the Chicago

area. The FBI linked the robber to over 20 bank robberies, totaling millions of

dollars in losses.

The robbers' creative disguises, which looked like they came from a thrift

store, earned him the nickname the second -hand bandit.

He was a construction worker, and one of them with literally a two -by -four on

his shoulder. There was another one where he had a fisherman's cap with a

and a pipe.

Another one where he had a big Afro -style wig with another large beard and

sunglasses. We, and I know the FBI, thought of that as Samuel L. Jackson in

Fiction. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon

thee. This robber had a flair for the dramatic.

Though his disguises may seem comical, those who find themselves in front of

gun are hardly amused.

There was one victim in particular from one of the robberies. She was just never

the same again.

She broke down, and she has been suffering consequences and mental

from that time ever since.

So who is the man dubbed the secondhand bandit?

Chicago police detective Dominic Ciccola leads an effort to try to figure that

out.

Sekola gets a break when DNA evidence left on a juice bottle links a career

criminal named Joseph Jose Banks to an attempted robbery at a restaurant on

Chicago's north side.

After arresting him, Sekola talks to Banks' associates and begins to suspect

may be doing more than knocking over breakfast joints.

Mr. Banks had a cousin.

who was eventually picked up and charged and convicted of bank robbery, and he

did admit that he did some bank robberies with Jose Banks.

The informant says Banks led about 10 takeover -style robberies in Chicago in

2004 and 2005.

And while Banks is behind bars,

Ciccola notices a pattern.

When Mr. Banks was in custody awaiting trial, all the robberies, the takeover

-style robberies in particular, had ceased.

Though police now have a suspect, they still need more info to say that the

second -hand bandit is Jose Banks.

After all, he hardly seems like your typical stick -up man.

Jose Banks fashioned himself to be a clothing designer, a trendy guy who's

to make a splash.

And this was a way for him to finance his business.

Up next.

With their sights set on Joseph Banks, authorities find proof that he is the

secondhand bandit. It is very hard for a jury to not get picked on that

evidence.

Locked up on allegations he robbed a restaurant.

Joseph Jose Banks has become a suspect in the secondhand bandit case.

But much to Detective Dominic Ciccola's dismay, he's acquitted of the restaurant

robbery charges due to lack of sufficient evidence in January 2007.

Months later, the takeover -style bank robberies pop up again.

When Jose Banks was released, based on the disguise, the subject war, the way

moved, the weapon, the area where it was committed, I had a strong feeling this

was Jose Banks.

Though Banks is now being tailed, he's able to successfully hit two targets.

At another attempted robbery, he causes a four -hour standoff before police

realize he's already ducked out.

Ciccola is now working on the FBI's Violent Crimes Task Force, and he slowly

builds a case against Banks.

Cell phone data places him in the area of one robbery.

And surveillance video shows him inside a thrift store buying clothes that are

seen in a robbery committed weeks later.

What's more, victims are beginning to get a good look at his face.

Mr. Banks made some mistakes towards the end. I think greed got to him. He was

overconfident that he would never be caught.

He would stay in these banks sometimes for up to eight minutes, which is a long

time. So some people got some different looks at him, and we did some photo

arrays, and people were able to identify him.

With these positive IDs, the feds arrest Banks in September 2008.

When they search his property, they find a fake beard and a ski mask.

And evidence leads them to a safe deposit box that he has opened.

Inside, cops find $42 ,000 from an earlier bank robbery.

Certainly the discovery of the sequentially numbered crisp new bills in

Banks' safe deposit box was an important step in the investigation.

It directly linked Mr.

Banks to a bank robbery.

After his arrest, authorities bring Banks to Chicago's Metropolitan

Center.

A well -known building, says NBC Chicago reporter Charlie Wojciechowski.

This is a rather famous building in downtown Chicago.

It rises up right in the middle of the South Loop, and because of the way it's

designed with the very thin windows, everyone knows what that is. That's the

downtown jail.

It's here that Banks shares a cell with another unrelated bank robber.

Ken Conley walked into a bank that...

was located in a chain of grocery stores in the south suburbs of Chicago.

He walked up to the teller, and he told the teller, I've got six bullets in the

gun. If you don't give it to me, I'll put them in your head.

Connolly's take is just shy of $4 ,000, a pittance compared to his cellmate.

But the two get to know each other during the years that Banks spends

leading up to trial.

During this time, Banks fires a litany of lawyers, and when he goes to trial in

late 2012, he represents himself.

Following a four -day trial, a jury takes just two hours to find Banks

two counts of bank robbery and two counts of attempted bank robbery.

As the trial wraps up, the second -hand bandit gets in the last word.

After the jury came back with a guilty verdict, the defendant said that you'll

be hearing from me.

And I remember, without showing it on my face at the time in front of the jury,

thinking, yeah, okay, man, you're going to be in prison for 30 years.

I'll see you then.

Up next, news of the secondhand bandits' even grander second act.

begins to spread. I slammed on my brakes, pulled off to the side of the

and I'm going, what just happened?

On December 18th, 2012, FBI Special Agent Tim Batcham is assigned

to handle crime investigations inside Chicago's high -rise Metropolitan

Correctional Center.

Five days after Joseph Banks tells a courtroom, you'll hear from me,

Tim Batcher finds out what he may have meant.

I was contacted by my supervisor, and he said we had an escape at the MCC.

And I asked him if it was a walkaway.

And he said, no, we had two inmates go down the side of the building.

And I said, there's no way.

Something dangling 17 stories out of Joseph Banks and Ken Conley's cell

indicates that there is a way.

NBC News Chicago reporter Charlie Wojcicki is one of the first people on

There wasn't police cordon around the building, so we actually got really

We were right across the street from the building, right in front of a pawn

shop. And we looked up, and there's a rope.

dangling from one of the windows. Oh, my goodness. They rappelled down the side

of the building.

I can't tell you how long they worked on it because I don't know, but it

certainly was not an overnight endeavor.

It is hard for me to imagine someone getting through the window of a cell at

Metropolitan Correctional Center.

These are windows that are not normal windows. They're custom -made. They're

very thin. So a normal person really couldn't squeeze through a window that

unless they altered some of the stone around it.

A portion of the window at the very bottom was removed. The concrete was

away just enough to where they could fit their bodies out.

When I looked at it, I thought of, wow, this is like shock and redemption.

Making that hole and hiding it took some ingenuity.

Must fake is a prison term for doing with what you have, just kind of making

something work.

They were able to mush fake some tools out of some metal and get the concrete

chipped away.

My understanding is that Mr. Banks and his cellmate created a fake bar that

could insert into the spot where the bar was supposed to be so that it wouldn't

look obvious that they had removed the bar from the window. Having chipped

way out and removed part of the window, they've also figured out a way down. It

was... A real ramshackle rope. This didn't look like anything you'd buy at a

true value.

It was made of fabric strips.

So rather than save a bed sheet, save a pillowcase, you just tear off a little

piece of it and save that. And because of that, no one caught on to it.

The rope was made of what we believe is bed sheets.

They were braided. There was portions of it that had dental floss to kind of sew

in there and reinforce the actual rope.

Well, one thing we know for sure, Mr. Banks was the one who designed the rope

that was used to get out. He admitted that, but he didn't need to admit it to

know that the guy who was the clothing designer was the one putting that

together.

Banks and Conley's escape from cell 1707 is a feat of daring that clearly

impresses even those whose job it was to put them away.

I stuck my head out the hole and looked down. I thought, No way. Not a chance

would I ever do that.

I cannot imagine having the courage to scale down the side of a building like

that from 17 stories up. It was a pretty amazing feat.

When they hit the ground at around 2 .40 a .m., Conley and Banks, now wearing

street clothes, walk to Michigan Avenue and hail a cab.

Oddly, jail surveillance cameras capture Banks and Conley on the street.

and a head count at 5 a .m. comes up two prisoners short.

But no one at the jail raises an alarm until it becomes glaringly obvious

happened. This wasn't supposed to be able to happen, yet still it did.

Was there someone on the inside who helped them cover up the fact that they

chipping away at the walls?

Was the fact that recent government budget cuts had caused a staffing

at the MCC, did that contribute to their ability to escape?

Those questions never really got answered.

The Bureau of Prisons did not return multiple requests from American Greed

comment. And the response to a Freedom of Information Act request was almost

entirely redacted.

What is known, though, is that the first day, cops began scouring the city.

Hours after the initial discovery, The search leads to Conley's mother's house

in the Chicago suburbs.

From there, the trail goes cold.

To be frank, with the amount of money that Banks had at his disposal, I

he could be literally anywhere.

But just days after the escape, authorities learn that Banks hasn't gone

For many men, love is an undoing, and I think Mr. Banks was...

looking for his girl somewhere on the north side of Chicago.

Late at night on December 20th, law enforcement, guns drawn, enter an

in this building.

Moments later, they come out with Banks, who's in cuffs, but looks calm.

This is kind of the neighborhood he grew up in, and it's probably a little less

than five miles from the Metropolitan Correctional Center.

You think you have this elaborate plan to get out of prison. You scale 17

stories down the side of a building. I thought that the plan would have been a

little better once they hit the ground.

Ken Conley still remains at large for two more weeks.

Then, on January 4, 2013, local police arrest him at the Scenic Trees apartment

complex in Palos Hills, outside Chicago.

When FBI agent Tim Batcha is transporting him back to the MCC,

Conley has some choice words for him.

He said, I ought to choke you out, you ain't.

And he looked at me a little later and said, I did it once, what makes you

I won't do it again? I took it as he was referring to escaping.

But there will most likely be no more escape attempts for Conley or Banks.

Both men are now behind bars at the Bureau of Prisons notorious...

Supermax facility in Florence, Colorado.

Conley is serving 23 and a half years for his bank robbery and the escape

attempt. Banks is serving out a 36 -year term for the bank robbery charges.

His lawyers say he no longer has access to needle and thread.

But in 2014, he finds a new outlet for his creativity, a bold lawsuit.

which he illustrates with pictures of his breakout.

He turned around and sued the jail for allowing him to escape, that they didn't

do a good enough job protecting him from himself and the possibility he might

commit other crimes.

The judge very quickly threw that out.

On the next American Greed, with a $100 million family fortune, nothing is off

limits. But when the cash flow stops, a vicious feud begins.

American Greed, next.

CNBC, get yours.

From executive producer LeBron James, Stephen Huffle. Premiere episodes

Wednesday to 10.