Original subtitles

In this episode of American Greed, a family at war.

Michael Scripps, heir to a multi -million dollar media empire, is charged

stealing millions from his mother, Melissa.

So he gets up in the morning, yawns, picks out, I think I will send myself

,383.

But for years, Melissa does not even notice.

She has her own issues.

Melissa looks at me and goes, hi.

I'm Melissa.

Would you like to smoke some opium?

And in this family, money is no object.

There was talk about chartering private jets for their pets.

And $90 ,000 goes to one night with high -priced strippers.

She goes, I want tits on a platter.

Half an hour later, here comes a stripper with a silver platter with

cream all over her breasts.

But when the money is spent, everyone gets desperate.

He pointed the gun on himself.

And he told me to call his mother. He was going to kill himself and make her

listen.

I'm going to call Melissa Scripture.

In the spring of 2013, in the Philadelphia Federal Courthouse, Melissa

heiress to one of America's great family fortunes, takes the stand.

She

is here

to testify against her only son, Michael.

You see your son in the courtroom here today?

Yes.

She says he stole millions of dollars of her money over five years.

On May 2, 2002, did you authorize $3 ,000 to be transferred from your

account to your son Michael's?

No. What about $9 ,100 on seven penalties?

No.

He says she knew that he was taking the money. And his college friend says that

this family fight... has no place in a criminal court.

That is like the most despicable thing in the world that a mother can do, is

turn her child, her only son, over to the authorities.

How does a family sink this low, especially a family that once stood so

Melissa Scripps is the great -granddaughter of James E. Scripps, who

century ago started a newspaper that is wildly popular.

His newspaper began as the Evening News, which had a broad circulation that

would give you all the news of the day in sort of layman's speak.

And it worked, and it worked well.

His son, William, carries on that success, starting his own car company

launching the first news radio station in the U .S.

And a fortune is made.

By the 1920s, the family is living the mansion life outside of Detroit.

This is the world that Melissa Scripps grows up in.

Her parents lived the lifestyle of very privileged people. They

were one of the most prominent families in Detroit.

But what is important today is what the Scripps did with the money they made.

When people think of the Scripps family, they don't necessarily think of how the

money was created.

how the money was given away.

Scripps' money goes to start the Detroit Institute of Arts, to support the

Detroit Conservatory, and to create an internationally respected school and art

center called Cranford.

And so, as the fourth generation of Scripps become adults, there is much at

stake. They had a legacy to protect, in a sense, a very positive legacy to

protect.

And by the 1970s, responsibility for protecting the Scripps family name in

Detroit, in part, falls to Melissa Scripps.

Well, I think a big name can be complicated because it's big shoes.

Karen Weisgerber is a psychologist with Cambium Consulting and works with high

net worth families just like the Scripps.

It's like walking onto a stage that's already been set, but you can really

it and live it large.

Joining Melissa Scripps on that stage is her older brother, David.

David has a mental disability.

I don't know that it was ever diagnosed. I would most closely describe it as

like an autism situation.

David is a kind, sweet man.

He's a happy guy.

Melissa Scripps permitted her attorney, Chris Pixley, to speak on her behalf.

Melissa, by virtue of being a woman, At the time that she was born, wasn't

expected necessarily to hold a job.

She had no formal education beyond high school.

And that leaves Melissa in a tough position.

What you're essentially being told is there's no expectation of you at all.

It's a real question as to what you're going to find in your life to get

attached to and to pull you forward in your life.

As a young woman, Melissa lives the life of a socialite.

She marries at age 23, divorces and remarries at age 25.

Her son Michael is born in 1976.

And then in 1986, Melissa and David get access to seriously big money when the

Gannett Company takes over the Scripps family business.

I believe the two of them before taxes got about $100 million.

$100 million turned over to a woman who has virtually no preparation for what to

do with it.

Already from a point where you didn't have much of an anchor point, you can be

totally disoriented. Like your compass loses magnetic north. You just don't

which directions to go.

Melissa Scripps can choose from three directions.

She can carry on the family legacy of philanthropy, or she can invest the

in ways to preserve it for future generations.

Or she can simply spend it.

Once this big money came in in the mid -80s, the stock sale, as Michael would

say, that's when the partying really began.

Next on American Greed.

Melissa Scripps likes to play the cool mom, but is there money going up in

smoke? I smoked my first joint with Melissa Scripps.

Oh, I think everybody did.

Imagine a childhood where your mother takes you out of school for months to

travel around the world on the luxury ocean liner, the Queen Elizabeth II,

as the QE2.

That's the life that Melissa Scripps offers her son and daughter in 1986.

Well, Melissa at that point in time really didn't have a care in the world.

had plenty of money. David had plenty of money. They were able to do anything

they wanted to do and not have to worry about it.

But Thomas Rutherford, Michael's good friend from college, knows that there is

another side to life with all that money.

He and I were actually in the Beverly Hills Hotel at one point in the pole

lounge. And I was talking about how cool it was. And he's like, it's cool as an

adult. It's like when you're living here and you're eight years old and your mom

takes off to Morocco for two weeks and leaves you with a servant and you're

bored all day long. This place sucks.

When the family is at home, they live in a beautiful house in Bloomfield Hills,

Michigan, where no expense is spared.

There is art and antiques and jewelry.

Melissa Scripps has told me as her counsel on more than one occasion that

had a trust advisor that told her that she could never in her lifetime spend

amount of money that she had.

And Melissa puts that advice to a dangerous test.

She amasses a collection of teddy bears, rumored to be worth tens of thousands

of dollars.

And she appears to have an obsession with all things royal.

She buys Queen Victoria's nightgown and Elizabeth II's coronation chair.

And Melissa is exceedingly generous with her children, giving them so much.

Michael cultivates an expensive interest in military history.

Michael collected war memorabilia and different swords from the Revolutionary

time, swords and different items and artifacts from the Civil War.

These items were worth tens of thousands of dollars.

He is allowed to live like everyone else in the family, as if the money will

never run out.

That's what you're raised in, and that's the role modeling you have.

You really don't have much other way to think about it. So it will seem like

that's your normal.

And also normal for the Scripps household is the smell of marijuana.

You know, by Melissa's own testimony, she had a healthy, you know, marijuana

habit, and she did smoke marijuana every day.

By the time Michael is a teenager, his house is known as the fun house.

Jill Spencer is one of Michael's first girlfriends.

Stepping into the Scripps house was like stepping into freedom for a

kid. I mean, you could do anything, say anything, act any way you wanted to.

And his friends know that Michael's mother is the cool mom who likes to get

high.

I smoked my first joint with Melissa's first.

Oh, I think everybody did.

My exposure to it.

And Melissa is not only cool, she is generous, which to Jill feels like too

too young.

I think it was Valentine's Day. I was 14 years old, and Michael gave me a pearl

necklace with diamonds in between the front three pearls.

And I was standing in the kitchen, and Melissa said, do you like your necklace?

And I said, I love it. It's gorgeous. And she said, it's real.

But Melissa is also unpredictable.

One day, she catches Spencer in Michael's room and drags her out.

By the hair.

By my hair.

It was very traumatizing.

I think it was maybe three or four days I finally went over there and she acted

like nothing happened and that's when she gave me my first pair of diamond

earrings.

Now on her fourth husband, a bartender from the QE2, Melissa often leaves him

home to care for her two children.

According to Michael, When he is 16 and his mother is gone, he and a few friends

head to Chicago and check into a luxury hotel with Melissa's Centurion American

Express card.

Years later, Michael tells his friend Ben DeHaven that he was generous with

mother's money.

There was a bar tab that people were dumping Louis Trey shots out, and almost

every person who walked in got sent a bottle of Dom P or Cristal or, you know,

whatever.

After a few days, the bill is up to $35 ,000.

American Express contacts Melissa to see if the charges are permissible.

And she said, I'm very well aware that my son has my credit card.

He has permission to use it. And she told the manager then, she said, I'd be

glad to pay that entire bill as soon as you can have someone on your team

explain to me.

how four 16 -year -old boys ran up a bill and not once did anyone in your

establishment ask for an ID.

And so she had to pay for the room, but that was it.

But according to Melissa, Michael's reckless behavior is sometimes far more

threatening.

Michael had a fascination with guns.

Michael liked to...

walk around the house with loaded guns. Michael liked to point loaded guns at

people.

There are many references made by the family that Michael terrorized them as

was growing up.

Michael denies that, but he does run into trouble.

He attends Cranbrook, the school started by his great -great aunt and uncle.

But his status as a member of the Founders' family doesn't save him from

expelled.

I think Michael just pushed the limit. I think he tested authority. I think he,

you know, wanted to see how far he could get.

By the time Michael is 18, his stepfather files for divorce, writing

been dealing with Michael's aberrational and violent behavior.

And that Melissa is back on the QE2, where she is having an affair with a 28

-year -old crew member.

When his divorce is final, he leaves behind a household in chaos, where the

family members, by all appearances, are set on a course for mutual destruction.

Next on American Greed, Scripps family night at the club.

Strip club, that is.

And there was some question about what the actual cost was, at which point poor

Michael disclosed to his mother that he thought it was somewhere upwards of...

$80 ,000?

If anyone is ever on the lookout for a prominent old money family, one of the

last places they may expect to find one is at a strip club in Atlanta.

But in 1999, that is where Michael Stripp, now a college senior, his mother

Melissa, and his Uncle David are having a night out.

Thomas Rutherford is with him tonight.

It wasn't seedy and weird. I mean, it sounds weird to go to a strip club with

one's mother.

And I thought it was weird, too, on some level. But it was fine.

At one point, one of the strippers asks Melissa what she would like.

And she goes, I want tits on a platter.

And that's all she said in a jocular manner. So, of course, Half an hour

here comes a stripper with a silver platter with whipped cream all over her

breasts.

It's just a fun Strip's family night.

David Strip also enjoys himself, as he always does on nights out with Michael.

He adored Michael. He looked up to Michael. I mean, Michael was his

to the outside world.

So where David did not have the ability to drive, Michael would say, hey, I'm

just going to wait for a while.

The bill at the Atlanta strip club totals an astounding $90 ,000.

And it is David who pays.

He has the largest trust fund in the family.

And with Melissa guiding his life, he is living large.

They have been on the QE2 cruise ship several times.

They now own several houses on the island of St. Martin.

The excessive spending is in evidence everywhere.

It might be an amazing special occasion to have a bottle of Lafitte Rothschild.

A $700 to $1 ,600 bottle of wine is not generally in my normal Friday night

wheelhouse. There were cases of that stuff sitting around, just sitting

There was talk about chartering private jets for their pets, dogs that were

being flown down to their ocean -flight villas in St. Martin.

I believe that there was a request for a chartered jet to fly a family turtle, a

tortoise, down to St. Martin.

It was like a race to get rid of your money.

That's the best way I could describe it.

And not surprisingly, the never -ending supply of money is running low.

Across the board, Melissa's financial advisors were telling her the money was

going to run out, that she needs to control her spending.

She was just dismissive, according to what they testified to. She just

listen. She would get angry.

By 2002, in just 16 years, David and Melissa's $100 million fortune is

now down to a little more than $9 million.

and her trust officers at Bank One are putting pressure on her to control her

spending. Sometime around that same time frame, one of Michael's college friends

became a broker with Merrill Lynch, and he knew that the Scripps family had a

lot of money and that they were of extreme wealth, and he wanted to bring

accounts to Merrill Lynch.

The college friend is Richard Gleason, known as Duke.

He's a sad sack.

You know, he really is. He's had drinking problems, like gambling

His personnel file shows reprimand after reprimand. And I think he just needed

this one home run to solidify him, you know, in this organization.

That home run is landing the Scripps family accounts.

And so in 2002, Legion traveled to St. Martin.

smokes marijuana with Melissa, and eventually persuades her to move her

and David's money into his care at Merrill Lynch.

Just over $2 million from Melissa and $7 million from David.

That means that all the family money is in the care of Michael's good friend.

And in the coming years, Michael's relationship with Melissa, which has

been difficult, begins to run especially hot and cold.

Some friends see moments of great care.

He said, Michael, I love you and I miss you, but I will buy you a Learjet if you

will just come see me more. Your mother misses you.

So, absolutely, man, she loved that kid.

But there are also moments of hideous anger.

I don't know what hit her, if it was too much wine or the pot or what, but I saw

it. It was like her eyes went blank.

And it was like... full -on anger.

The thing that popped out of my mind was something I've heard her repeat, which

is, I wish I would have had an abortion.

Next on American Greed, Michael's script brings home his new girlfriend.

To me, I'm an all -around entertainer. I just happen to use sex as a medium in a

lot of ways.

The Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston is one of the most elegant hotels in town.

And it is here in November 2003 that Michael Scripps, now 27, meets his

future girlfriend.

The woman he is meeting is an escort. Her price?

$500 for the night.

Her name is Jenna Bearden.

Later, she changes it legally to Jenna Scripps.

Even at that first meeting, Michael was very obviously

someone that came from money. I mean, how many

20 -somethings are driving a $90 ,000 Jaguar, you know?

The night goes well.

And just as he did as a 14 -year -old boy, he gives his new girlfriend

The next day, he showed up with a Cartier necklace

with a pavé diamond and platinum pendant with the two seeds on it.

That was kind of the beginning of the romance.

As a regular at strip clubs, Michael is drawn to sex workers.

In choosing Jenna, he is dating not just an escort, but a porn star.

Her stage name is Kiki Dare.

To me, I'm an all -around entertainer. I just happen to use sex as a medium in a

lot of ways.

Shortly after Michael meets Jenna, he invites her to Michigan to meet his

mother. Everyone's upstairs in Melissa's room.

And there's Michael, hammered.

Had been drinking red wine and eating pain pills.

And I kid you not, I wish I could make this up.

Melissa looks at me and goes, hi, I'm Melissa.

Would you like to smoke some opium?

So that was my introduction to the Scripps family.

But if Jenna has a low opinion of Melissa, it is not hard to imagine what

Melissa thinks of Jenna.

Oh, a Scripps has no business being anywhere near Kiki Dare.

A Scripps is above all other people. I mean, in Melissa's mind, she was

At one point, the ill will between Melissa and Jenna literally comes to

after a dinner out in St. Martin.

We're walking towards the car, and next thing I know, Melissa walks up, and

she literally does this.

You little whore. And slaps me in the face three times.

And I didn't even think.

I just... I didn't mean to, but I

gave her a black eye.

Dating a porn star may not be the typical route to domestic tranquility.

Michael tells friends that all he wants is a simple life.

Michael's ambition, insofar as he disclosed it to me, consisted of to have

family that he could give some structure to and have a loving family, be in one

place, have a child, and the child not grow up the way he did.

But his friends are skeptical about his choice of Kiki Dare for that kind of

life.

I said, you know, are you dating this person, like, just to agitate your

You know, and of course, he said, oh, no, you know, I love her.

You know, name one quality that makes her a good wife or a mother. One, just

give me one. And of course, he couldn't.

But for years, Michael and Jenna stay together, despite a sometimes brutally

destructive relationship.

New Orleans police reports show arrests on both sides for domestic violence.

I'm not going to sit here and say that.

It was roses and Cinderella and beautiful. No, it was chaotic and it was

And I'm not proud of certain things that I did and said during that period.

By 2003, Michael has gotten an MBA.

He is running a business, Scripps Properties, renovating run -down

selling them.

But it's clear that the income from his business could not be supporting his

lifestyle. The Kentucky Derby is always the first weekend of May, so it would be

that spring we went to the Derby.

We've been near the Afton.

There again, had a great time.

So, where is the money coming from?

From Merrill Lynch.

From the trust accounts of his mother and his uncle.

It's easy. According to federal prosecutors, he just contacts Duke

assistant and asks her to make a transfer between accounts.

So he gets up in the morning, yawns, picks out. I think I will send myself

,383. And literally, and that's what he does.

That was the work for the day. I guess you go and get lunch at that point. I

don't know how it worked.

There were days when there were three and four and five transactions.

totaling tens of thousands of dollars that were flowing out of these accounts

Michael's account.

It goes on for five years until August 2006.

It's Michael's birthday, and he puts in a request for $40 ,000 from his uncle's

account.

Later in St. Martin, Melissa happens to open one of David's Merrill Lynch

statements and sees the transfer.

She contacts Marilyn and eventually learns that in five years, Michael has

transferred more than $2 million from her and David's accounts to his own.

And she learns that the money that she was told would never run out is nearly

gone.

As of the middle of 2006, the accounts have been pretty much depleted.

There is not a lot of money left in the Scripps accounts.

One day that fall, Jenna returns to the apartment she shares with Michael.

He looked at me and he said, there's no more money.

And I asked him what he meant.

He said, you don't understand. There's no more money.

It's all gone.

Michael disputes her story. But Jenna says she listens to the voicemail from

Melissa saying Michael has robbed her and the family is broke.

He was really upset.

He always had lots and lots of guns.

And I remember him pointing the gun at me.

I remember just feeling panic.

And next thing I know, he pointed the gun on himself, and he had it like that

to his head.

And he told me to call his mother in St. Martin.

And he was going to kill himself and make her listen.

And it took a lot to get the gun from him that night.

Up next, Melissa makes a bold move.

I mean, you might be pissed at him. You might just shown him. You might hate him

for the rest of your life for stealing all this money.

Seriously? The FBI?

Who does that?

Hear Melissa Scripps' testimony about her dwindling finances at AmericanGreed

.CNBCPrime .com.

On the island of St. Martin at the end of 2006, Melissa Scripps is reeling from

the news that her money is nearly gone.

And while she blames Michael for helping himself to her money, she also blames

Merrill Lynch.

Merrill Lynch certainly, you know, had knowledge of all of the transfers that

were being placed between all of these accounts.

And it all happened right in front of the Merrill Lynch trust officers.

After searching for an attorney for more than a year, she finds Chris Pixley in

Atlanta.

According to the FBI, Pixley finds a smoking gun for the government's case, a

document that gives Michael Scripps power of attorney over his Uncle David's

money.

The cornerstone of the Justice Department's case was the power of

purportedly signed by David Scripps in the state of Pennsylvania.

notarized by an assistant to the financial advisor at Merrill Lynch at a

and time when David was in fact on the island of St. Martin using his bank card

to make cash withdrawals and to go to restaurants.

The Merrill Lynch notary later admits she notarized the document without David

there, saying she acted on Michael's instructions.

In late September 2008,

Pixley lays out his complaint to Merrill Lynch and presents his demand for

damages, and a settlement is reached.

Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Merrill Lynch is prepared to

Mrs. Script approximately $6 million of money back.

But before the money is turned over, Melissa and David must report in detail

alleged fraud to the U .S. Department of Justice.

And they must also reasonably cooperate with any criminal prosecution of

Michael. So essentially, Melissa Scripps was not going to receive the $6 million

settlement without agreeing that she would press charges, criminal charges,

against her son.

And so in December 2008, after signing the settlement agreement, Melissa

takes what might be a family dispute settled in civil court.

to an entirely different venue as she meets with federal prosecutors and the

to turn over her son.

We did speak with Melissa and David to make sure that they were saying, yes,

this was done, and this was done without our knowledge and our consent.

Her attorney is adamant that Melissa did not betray her son.

Where does the betrayal start? Does it start with the person who clandestinely,

through forgeries and self -dealing, steals millions of dollars?

Or is the betrayal on the part of the person that says, stop, that's not going

to go on any longer?

But the timing of her meeting with the feds leaves Melissa open to the

that she turned her son in to get the settlement money.

She had never contacted any federal prosecutors, even from the time that she

says she discovered the theft by her son in 2006.

The first time she takes any step to do so is after she enters into the

settlement agreement with Merrill Lynch.

And let's say you end up with $100 million.

Not only is there $100 million in the pot, the pot is making quite a bit of

money. And when you reach the point of desperation...

In your life, where you've gone through all of it, all hundred, plus the

interest it was making, and it's time to either be destitute and to hear her

tell it, go live under a bridge, or put your child in federal prison, and you

think the more likable of those two options is to watch your only son go

the wall with monsters and murderers, that is the most morally bankrupt thing

can possibly imagine.

Meanwhile, Michael is rebuilding his life.

He and Jenna end their relationship.

He goes to work for Smith Barney and eventually marries. And in 2012, he

a father.

The woman that he's married to, she's really supportive, and she had a job

they met. You know, like, she came from a nice family, and, you know, she wasn't

the sex industry worker.

I mean, it's a pretty big step up.

But despite the turnaround in his life, his mother's meeting with the FBI four

years earlier finally pays off.

In June 2012, Michael Scripps is indicted on charges of wire fraud in a

in which it is alleged he stole more than $3 million.

Duke Gleeson is also indicted on two counts of wire fraud.

Up next.

The verdict is in.

I couldn't believe that a family argument had gotten this far at hand.

April 2013 in Philadelphia, seven years after Melissa Scripps called Michael to

accuse him of robbing her.

his criminal trial begins.

And on the fifth day, Melissa is called to the stand.

Right away, she testifies to something that Michael believes is a patent lie.

She says his scheme to steal her money began in that strip club in Atlanta,

arguing it was a setup.

Michael told me that we'd go out to dinner if he knew of a good restaurant.

What happened?

The limousine took us straight to a gentleman's club, a strip club.

Thomas Rutherford says, no way.

I was there, and I am absolutely certain there was no plot to blackmail Melissa.

The strip club idea came up.

Everybody blessed it. No one was coerced into it. So that is completely untrue,

top to bottom.

And that is the nature of the trial. Much of it revolves around Melissa's

against Michael.

Melissa says when trust officers at Bank One question her spending, Michael

throws pictures of the $90 ,000 strip club outing on the table, embarrassing

deeply.

And that, she says, is the reason she turns her money over to Michael's friend

Duke Gleeson at Merrill Lynch.

Michael disagrees.

There was information that Mrs. Scripps wanted to move her money from Bank One

because the trust officers were not allowing the family to spend as much and

freely as what they wanted to.

Early on in the trial, Michael's former girlfriend Jenna testifies about money

he spent on her.

As Michael glares.

It's not like there was any trace of the

person that I knew. I mean, his eyes were so cold.

On day three, Duke Gleeson takes the stand.

He is pleaded guilty and testifies with the promise of a reduced sentence if all

goes well.

He says he was receiving kickbacks from Michael for helping to grease the wheels

at Merrill Lynch.

I had nowhere else to turn for the money.

I asked Michael for the money, and he gave me $8 ,000.

Did you do whatever he told you in terms of transferring this money after that?

Yes, I did.

And then there are documents.

like Michael's power of attorney over David Scripps' account.

David never signed a power of attorney, and the allegations are that Michael

forged David's signature on that power of attorney.

But for Michael's defense team, the documents prove nothing.

Michael admits he took the money.

There was no dispute that he had gotten this money from his family and that he'd

spent it.

And the challenge was to prove that his mother was aware of his spending habits

and that she acquiesced in that.

Michael says that some of the money was used to cover costs of purchases he made

for his mother, like the coronation chair.

But Michael's primary defense is that he was living life as he had been taught

to live it, as they all lived it, and that the never -ending pot was always

accessible to everyone in the family.

And, he says, Merrill Lynch documents reflect that.

In this document, we have a wire transfer from David to Melissa Scripps

,000. We have a standing letter of authorization from Melissa Scripps to

Michael's sisters for $100 ,000.

But then we also have Michael Scripps to David Scripps for $6 ,000.

So I think what this shows is just, you know, it was Michael.

Michael's position had been that this was one pot of money that was used by

of the family members for whatever they wanted.

The never -ending supply of money seems to have mattered only when it was gone.

What really changed was that the money ran out, and there was never a problem

with the spending when there was money to spend.

And all Melissa had to do to know what Michael was doing was track down her

statements and David's.

and read them.

Every one of these transfers were reflected on bank statements that had

sent to her over a number of years.

If you're trying to steal money from someone and you're trying to hide it, it

seems a very strange way to do it by having each and every one of these

transfers listed on bank statements that are sent to the person from whom you're

allegedly stealing.

For almost five years, no one questioned Michael's spending.

Until he had spent $3 .6 million.

But it was not his money to spend.

David makes that clear when he testifies and says, very simply, he did not know

Michael was spending his money.

I think there was a lot of jury sympathy for David.

And they felt like his money had been spent.

And so, you know, somebody had to be held responsible for the fact that his

money was gone.

The real victim was David.

And David could not fend for himself. David did not have the wherewithal to go

out and make a living.

And, you know, that's pretty atrocious.

In the end, Michael is convicted on all seven counts of wire fraud and is

sentenced to nine years in federal prison.

I was speechless. I couldn't believe that a family argument had gotten this

out of hand.

At some point, a parent has to think to themselves, I have taught this child, if

not by instruction, then by example. I have shown this child that it's okay to

piss away $97 million.

And now I actually have the temerity to be offended and hurt that he pissed away

three?

Melissa and David Scripps are still living on St. Martin.

Following his testimony, Duke Gleason receives a sentence of one year and a

in prison.

And today, While Michael serves his time in the federal pen, it is impossible

not to think back to where all this began, with the entrepreneurial spirit

more than a century ago.

Somewhere along the line, the power of the family story and the intention of

money and the purpose of it became diluted, and other...

motivations began to overtake it. So the motivation of self -gratification and

living large and overtook the original sort of philanthropic intent of the

money. When money becomes decoupled of any purpose or any sort of reason or

cause, it can unfortunately end up like this.

Over time, the house in Bloomfield Hills falls into disrepair and ends up in

foreclosure.

And even those who are wary of Melissa Scripps are sorry for what greed has

to the family.

I feel bad that her money is gone, but I feel bad that she's lost a son. And I

feel bad that Michael's lost a mother.

And they're not going to get that back. And no amount of money is going to get

that back for them.

Next. When money is no object.

They had so much cash in these clinics, they kept the cash in garbage bags.

The object is to get more.

There's not many people who were able to scam as well as he did. Enter the dark

side. American Greed, next on CNBC.

From executive producer LeBron James, Delan Hustle. Premiere episodes