Original subtitles

In this episode of American Greed, the hunt for a high -flying businessman

playing a very dangerous game.

He did have a wild couple of years.

T .R. Wright III presents himself as a globetrotting dealmaker with style to

burn. Being on fire, there's nothing like that.

Frequently posing for photos with his sports cars, yachts, and jets.

It was almost like made for Instagram.

But something odd keeps happening to all his fancy toys.

They tend to crash, sink, even blow right up. Everybody who watched this

thought that the individual was either dead or severely, severely burned. Are

these accidents proof of plain old bad luck?

Or a money -making scheme almost too wild to believe?

To find out, American Greed tracks down the key players.

The relentless investigator.

And at that point, we start to realize, isn't that a total ham?

The co -conspirator. He didn't care about anybody or anything.

And in a television exclusive from federal prison, the ringleader himself,

explains what it all adds up to.

Insurance fraud.

Inside a Texas prison, a once jet -setting criminal named T .R. Wright

time. He's never given a TV interview about the audacious scheme that landed

here. But in January 2021, he calls

American Greed to make one thing clear.

He's not a typical subject for the show.

I really don't care about money. I mean, people, they want to perceive me to be

this greedy.

you know, money -grubbing, fraud -loving, screw -anybody -anywhere type

and that's just, that's not the case.

No. Wright says that with his scheme, another factor was at play.

I mean, there's just a certain amount of thrill to it, I guess.

I mean, maybe it's my personality, maybe I'm nuts, I don't know.

More than six years earlier, 360 miles due east, someone else is making a phone

call.

Early on a September morning, it's a police dispatcher trying to raise a

detective.

Hello? Dawn?

Yes? I need a detective to go to the airport.

What's up there? We got a burnt flame.

A burnt flame?

Mm -hmm.

Got burned sometime during the night.

Nobody knew about it.

Mm -hmm.

When investigators head to the tiny municipal airport in Athens, Texas, they

find a Cessna Citation jet that's been permanently grounded.

Though its tail number, N18FM, is clearly visible, its door is charred and

blown clear off.

Paint on its exterior has bubbled up from the heat.

Its controls are all but gone.

And what was once a luxurious cockpit with seven leather seats and a bar is

just a pile of ash.

Before long, Agent James Reed from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms,

Explosives in Tyler, Texas, is on his way to investigate.

I had just graduated the ATF Academy.

I'd been an ATF agent in the field for just a couple months, still technically

on training status.

I really had only worked a handful of cases, very small cases at that time.

After making the 45 -minute drive, even this rookie can tell that something is

amiss here in Athens, the black -eyed pea capital of the world.

From day one, we know it's an arson. We're trying to really figure out at

point, is it, you know, What kind of arson it is, because in typical arson,

of the more common things you see are, you know, young kids who are doing

vandalism -type activities, or serial arson is people who just burn things to

burn them down.

As he begins his hunt for the responsible party, Reed quickly zeroes

very grainy surveillance footage taken the night N18FM was set ablaze.

So we see N18FM parked on the jetway.

An individual cloaked in the darkness behind the plane walks in front of the

plane, comes over, opens the cabin door, shuts it for just a second, opens it

up, and you see this tiny spark in one frame of the video. Then immediately a

giant fireball then engulfs the individual.

The individual then stumbles from the ground around the wing of the plane,

like he's on fire, and heads off into the wooded area behind the plane.

Everybody who watched this video thought that the individual was either dead or

severely, severely burned. So we immediately started searching the area

dead body in the woods, burn centers for someone who's severely burnt, or even

more for individuals who came in with massive burn wounds.

This early search for a dead or wounded arsonist turns up no leads, and Reed

attempts to learn more about the mysterious jet.

Five months earlier, the plane had been registered to a corporation in Montana

called Plaisir en Beau, French for pleasure in flight.

A few weeks before its destruction, an out -of -town pilot dropped it off,

saying its owners would soon be coming here from France to pick it up.

It doesn't make any sense to me why individuals from France are going to fly

Athens, Texas to get this plane and not go to Dallas or Houston.

Reid also learns the name of the pilot who left the jet in Athens, Theodore

Robert Wright, known to many as T .R. Wright III.

And when a local fire marshal talks to him on his satellite phone, Wright makes

it clear that he only flew the jet to Athens.

He says its owners are in France and that they are confused about what's

happened to their aircraft.

They heard that somebody got in the plane.

uh inside the plane and like tried to start a fire like a campfire or

and it was unclear if it was vandalism or if it was uh just you know like

punks haven't like they have no idea what it was so yeah i mean so so so

what we're investigating and everything and i get it and i understand if you

can't tell me i mean i'm just i'm just a pilot intent on learning more Agent

Reed continues to ask questions of the small crew of aviation aficionados who

spend time at the Athens Airfield.

That search quickly brings him to the proprietor of Dyson Aviation.

We typically ask people, hey, do you see anything suspicious?

And usually, you know, the answer is no or, you know, something. And he looks

and says, as a matter of fact, I have.

Carol Dyson works at Athens Airfield, helping pilots who need to fuel up or

a break.

He's as much a fixture there as the red oak that towers over his hangar.

I'm out here almost every day except Sunday morning. I go to church on Sunday

morning, but I'm out here Sunday evenings.

And I keep track of the aircraft that come and go by writing their

numbers down.

With his eyes always open, Dyson noticed the Cessna Citation when it first

arrived.

It just fit.

And that was kind of raised eyebrows, but then I thought, well, it's somebody

hiding it out to keep from paying taxes, and that don't bother me. You know, if

they want to do it, that's fine.

And he noticed another plane around that time, too.

I came in about 4 .30 in the morning, and as I...

Turned in here, my light swept the hangar over there, those two big yellow

hangars. And I saw an airplane pulled up in front of that second one.

And that's unusual because it wasn't an airplane that's based here.

And I thought then, uh -oh, something's up with those guys.

Well, I thought then they might be in a dope business or something. I didn't

know what they were doing. I just knew it wasn't right.

Dyson jots down the tail number on the small Beechcraft Bonanza his box.

N273. and files it away like he always does.

A few days later, he pulls up to the airport and spots smoke and the burnt

I started putting two and two together, and I was thinking, well, now I know why

the guy was coming in here. They were hired to burn that airplane up.

When Agent Reed comes calling, Dyson tells him the story and gives him the

number of the suspicious plane he spotted, N273.

Reid checks it out with a special agent from the Federal Aviation

Administration.

He says the plane looks like it was sold earlier in the year, but they just now

sent the registration in, and it's to an individual named Raymond Foster.

Now Reid has the names of two pilots who seem to have a connection to the

incident in Athens.

There's Theodore T .R. Wright, the aviator who says he just dropped off the

Then there's Raymond Fosdick, the registered owner of the mysterious

plane.

So I pull out my phone, having gotten the name Raymond Fosdick, and Googled

Raymond Fosdick.

First, nothing really came up.

And then I Googled Raymond Fosdick, Theodore Wright, the individual who had

flown the plane in.

And lo and behold, the first thing that comes up is their Today Show interview.

Back now at 8 .35, with a remarkable survival story, a small plane catches

forcing the pilot to bring it down in the Gulf of Mexico. Their harrowing

documented on an iPad.

I believe we've been in the water for one hour now.

No sign of the Coast Guard or any rescue emergency services yet.

That was the realization that there's something more to this. And at that

the investigation...

For me, it became, I need to uncover what is going on, who are these

and what are they doing.

Up next, the crazy story that landed Fosdick and Wright on the Today Show.

I made this statement, if you panic, you die.

And later, an inside look at how this million -dollar scam comes crashing

But that's the story of this entire group of individuals, that they do

fraud by doing high -risk activities.

Two years before Agent James Reed connects them to a burnt -up Cessna

T .R. Wright and his friend Raymond Fosdick are in Wright's Beechcraft Baron

cruising over the Gulf of Mexico.

A licensed pilot himself,

Fosdick tells American Greed they're tracking their progress on an iPad as

fly from Texas to Florida.

If you follow that trajectory pretty much, it takes you just south of

crossed the Gulf.

It's a flight that definitely the aircraft is capable of.

Wright later tells investigators that less than two hours into the crossing,

sees smoke in the cockpit.

Then, he says, Fosdick begins yelling that he sees flames.

With no choice but to ditch in the water below, Wright says he points the

plane's nose downward and begins to dive.

As Wright tells American Greed, with two lives on the line, he remains calm.

I'm like, oh, okay, you know, do the cross on your chest and say a prayer. I

don't think that really is. It's like, okay, here's what I know that I'm going

to do, and let's focus on executing it.

Before he and Fosdick know it, the plane is almost in the Gulf.

It didn't take long.

There's not a lot of time between 11 ,000 feet in the water.

I mean, we skip that aircraft at 115 miles an hour when we hit the Gulf and

it like a lawn dart.

The two men make it out of the plane before it sinks to the ocean floor.

As they bob up and down in the water, Wright pulls out his iPad and films a

quick video.

We are hour one.

We just had a plane crash in the Gulf of Mexico, and the iPad survived thanks to

the life -proof case.

There's Raymond.

After the iPad is put away, the men float in the water for nearly three

waiting to be rescued.

The water was relatively warm. It was probably in the mid -80s, but at that

point in time, three hours.

had caused a significant drop. We were definitely in the edges of going into a

pre -hypothermic state.

Then, with night quickly falling, they hear a Coast Guard helicopter

approaching.

And, of course, we're waving and everything else.

And they finally circle over the top of us.

And I remember making the comment of, you know, don't crash, it sucks.

In this Coast Guard video, you can see their rescue.

And by the time they make it to shore, it's completely dark.

After Wright's iPad video begins to spread, he and Fosdick, now in an arm

travel to New York to talk about their incredible ordeal on NBC's Today Show.

You're flying along. You're over the gulf. You start to see smoke and fire

behind the instrument panel, right? Yes, in the nose baggage area. Basically,

we're flying along. I'm eating a bag of M &Ms, checking with Houston Center, and

then we see a little bit of smoke, which typically is not a huge deal. Usually a

radio will smoke a little. You throw the electrical power off, everything's

fine. I made a quick radio call to Houston Center, told them we had a

Before I finished the radio call, we were covered in smoke.

The National Transportation Safety Board later determines the probable cause of

the crash to be the in -flight fire described by Wright.

They note, however, that the source of the fire could not be determined.

There was no way they were ever going to recover the plane.

There was no other witnesses.

It was in one of the deeper parts of the Gulf of Mexico.

According to his indictment, less than two weeks later, A company Wright

receives a check from his insurer for $84 ,000.

This isn't the only payout.

A year after the crash, at this courthouse in Galveston, Texas, Fosdick

million -dollar lawsuit against his friend.

The allegation was basically that the negligence on the part of Mr. Wright had

resulted in the crash and that Mr. Fosick had sustained injuries in the

And there was a payout to resolve the lawsuit by the insurance carrier for

$100 ,000.

Two years later, ATF agent James Reed learns about the incident.

And about Wright and Fosdick's potential connection to the fire in Athens.

Here are these two individuals who together have been in this amazing

this amazing story by itself, plane crash in the Gulf of Mexico, who are now

connected to Athens, Texas, with this plane fire.

Something seemed wrong.

And I remember asking my boss, hey, can I work this case?

And he looked at me and says, hey, if you want to work this on your free time,

by all means, work it. And that's what I did.

Coming up, T .R. Wright tells American Greed how he goes from salesman to con

man. It seems I have a gift to convince people to do

things.

Before he begins calling himself T .R. Wright III, Ted Wright I grows up in

Kent, New York.

Well, it's a small town on the shores of Lake Champlain. I don't know the

population, but it can't be more than a couple hundred.

But it's gray, it's depressing, it's always overcast, and the people there,

they've never left the area.

So as urgently as I can remember, it was like, get out of here, that's the plan.

Wright's first shot at implementing this plan comes as a kid when he begins

working at a mall kiosk showing off his natural skills as a salesman.

It seems I have a gift to convince people to do things.

And I guess maybe all salesmen have that.

I don't particularly like sales, but I'm good at it.

In addition to honing his skills as a salesman, Wright says working at the

teaches him another valuable lesson.

You have brands, and whether it's Coca -Cola or Apple or yourself, being able

to market a brand and make it successful, I mean, people are brands.

that was an early lesson.

Building the T .R. Wright brand takes time and money.

In his mid -20s, Wright says he moves to Kmart, Texas for a girl.

It's here on these dusty docks that Raymond Fosdick says he meets Wright in

2008.

When they meet, Fosdick says Wright is trying to get by however he can.

At that time, the business that he was kind of starting and growing was

finding boats that had been...

pour up in the storm, and he could fix them up, and then he would sell them.

Wright says that early on, he finds great satisfaction in being a Wheeler

dealer.

I like negotiating, so I think it's the deal that I really like. I guess that's

what gets me excited.

Soon, Wright will find another commodity to deal in.

Around the time he meets Fosdick, he heads a few miles down the coast to

Galveston, where he learns to fly.

One of the airport regulars who he meets is George Gould.

He was a novice pilot.

He took flying lessons from one of the fellows that has got a plane two

hangers down from him.

And he picked it up pretty fast.

Before long, Wright is flying on his own, and he adds aircraft to the high

-dollar inventory he slings.

His business is buying airplanes, boats, and cars at the lowest

price he possibly can, fix them up with the minimal cost that he can, and then

sell them at a maximized profit.

A few years after his arrival in Texas, Wright makes the news with his

spectacular crash in the Gulf.

The incident does more than just earn him a sizable insurance payday. It also

seems to give him a taste for the spotlight.

He wants, I think, to be seen as a big player who can fly

anything.

I've heard it's true.

Who doesn't...

pay attention strictly to crossing the T's and dotting the I's, who

has a romantic life.

After his appearance on the Today Show, Wright begins to make some big changes.

In 2013, he launches a new website, trwright .com.

On it... The guy who just a few years earlier was running a mall kiosk says he

has built several businesses from the ground up into multi -million dollar

companies. And in the years that follow, people begin to believe that Wright is

the playboy he says he is.

The rumor was he was trust fund.

You know, he'd show up in a Maserati. He had some very attractive young ladies.

Had a good sense of humor.

And he's a likable guy.

As his legend grows, Wright learns to fly more and bigger aircraft.

Online, he brags about flying around Europe and visiting France, where he

to do business.

And after the jet fire in Athens, Texas in 2014, Wright says his life really

takes off.

I don't want to say they couldn't be better, but 2015, 16, and 17, I mean, I

where things were just starting to work out.

And, you know, the business is great, making, you know, literally more money

than you know what to do with.

Montblanc would call me when they got a new pen, and, oh, Mr. Wright, we have

the new JFK pen at $38 ,000. We want to offer it to you before anybody else.

Okay, I'll take it, you know what I mean?

Always focusing on his personal brand, it's on his Instagram feed that Wright

really shines.

All the Instagram photos were of this individual with fancy car, gun,

high -end clothes, high -end vehicle, yacht, jet, traveling all over the

With his 18 ,000 followers, the Daily Mail ranks Wright among the most popular

pilots in the world.

It's obvious that he knows how to craft his image.

Over the course of a few days, He crisscrosses the country, snapping

his new wife.

Together, they make stops in Telluride, Colorado, and California's Napa Valley

wine region.

I go to Napa like every week when I'm in the United States. If I spend a month

in the U .S., we maybe do three trips to Napa. So, I mean, I've been there

hundreds of times.

And in the desert outside Las Vegas, he gets the perfect shot.

As Wright pilots a helicopter, his wife points an assault rifle out the window.

Wright's Instagram is also full of images of him with a variety of weapons

warbirds, reflecting a new line of business he's trying to develop.

Wearing a flight suit embroidered with the word boss, Wright sometimes cuts

through the sky in a gray eastern block trainer jet that he and a partner buy

and dub.

52 shades of gray.

He did have, I think, a lot of adventures. He did have a wild couple of

Much wilder than most people have in a lifetime.

I think he wanted to project a sort of international man of mystery, James

Mission Impossible type character.

It was almost a caricature of that, though.

You know, it met all the stereotypes, but it was...

Almost too much. It was almost like made for Instagram.

But just how is Wright paying for it all?

Is it through the wheeling and dealing he's been doing for years?

Or is something else at play?

Up next, T .R. Wright reveals the secrets behind his big shot lifestyle.

If I was the guy behind the curtain pulling the handle, sure.

Having linked T .R. Wright to not one but two ruined planes, agent James Reed

suspects something's afoot.

To prove it, he dives deep into financial records, beginning with the

Mexico crash in 2012.

The first hint that something is amiss comes when he examines the flow of money

from the lawsuit Raymond Fosdick filed against Wright following that suspicious

incident.

As we get the financial records, we see that, yes, Raymond Fostick did sue T .R.

Wright and his insurance company for a million dollars.

But all the money that the insurance company paid out as the case was settled

went to T .R. Wright.

Raymond sues T .R., gets paid out, and then gives the money back to T .R.

And at that point, we start to realize this is a total scam.

From there, Reed will eventually uncover a far -reaching insurance fraud scheme.

He learns that Wright is purchasing planes, boats, and cars using a variety

shell companies.

Wright says these help him hide the fact that he's the true owner.

I was the guy behind the curtain pulling the handles, sure, but, you know, my

name legally wasn't on any documents. I wasn't even a signer on any of the bank

accounts for any of this stuff.

With his name hidden, Wright explains he can buy an item at a low price with one

company he controls.

Then, he can create documents making it appear he sold it at a much higher price

to another company he controls.

These papers help him obtain insurance policies at pumped -up values.

It's a paper trail that if the insurance company or anyone does any...

Due diligence, they see an official notarized, stamped, sealed bill of sale

an aircraft escrow and a trust and a lawyer that shows, oh no, they paid this

much for it. So it takes a red flag out of the equation, I guess.

As Agent Reed sees, it's a scam Wright pulls off again and again.

In 2012, there's the plane he ditches in the Gulf.

According to Wright's indictment, it was purchased for $46 ,000.

and insured for nearly double that.

Combined with the fraudulent lawsuit Fosdick files, the crash brings Wright

nearly $126 ,000 in insurance money.

But Wright is just getting started.

In 2014, he buys the jet that burns in Athens for $190 ,000,

insures it for $440 ,000, and collects that amount after it's set ablaze.

Reid also learns about Wright's connection to a $76 ,000 Lamborghini

that was crashed into a water -filled ditch a few months before the Athens

Though Wright maintains this wasn't fraud, the insurance payout in this case

equals nearly $170 ,000.

Then there's a $50 ,000 sailboat whose value was pumped up before it sunk in a

marina in Hawaii in 2014.

bringing a $180 ,000 insurance payout.

The court later finds that in all, Wright pockets nearly a million dollars

his insurance scheme.

But he tells American Greed the scope of his fraud was much, much larger.

Yeah, it depends on how you do the math, but if you had to go on complete

losses, let's say somewhere around $30 to $40 million.

Prosecutors say the evidence they have does not support this claim.

To help him with all these scams, Wright brings in a bevy of helpers.

They were doing the dirty work, and they were the ones who were putting

themselves at risk for small amounts of money.

I think there was always a promise or the idea that there would be a larger

payoff down the road.

In selling this dream of future riches, prosecutors say Wright lures in helpers

with the pictures of his luxurious lifestyle.

It made the sales pitch that he was giving to them maybe a little bit more

believable because he would tell these seemingly fantastic stories about

different adventures here and abroad.

And then he could show them pictures online or post things that seemed to

support that story.

Among those he brings in is Raymond Fosdick.

Even to this day, I don't really have friends.

And I wanted a friend to be, you know, I wanted a friend, basically,

and wanted to be, you know, part of something.

And that was easy for him to kind of prey upon. He didn't care about anybody

anything. It was all about money in his pocket.

Though many play a role, Agent Reed says financial records make it obvious who's

running the show.

We followed the money. And so we saw that the money would go to these holding

companies and then it would go right to T .R. Wright's personal bank account or

right to the purchase of an asset that T .R. Wright did actually own.

By 2016,

circumstantial evidence is mounting against Wright.

To make their case, however, the feds need a witness.

That April, Agent Reed flies to Hawaii to talk to the man who helped Wright

the scheme there involving a sunken sailboat.

I confront him head -on with the evidence, and he immediately gives it

That's that first time that we really have him.

100 % not only circumstantial, but hard evidence on an insurance fraud scheme.

Still, Reed and prosecutors aren't done. They need more.

In March 2017, he serves a search warrant on Raymond Fosdick and leans on

give up what he knows about the 2012 Gulf crash and the 2014 Athens airport

fire.

Raymond...

made the right decision, and he laid it all out. And from Raymond's cooperation,

we're able to wrap up the entire case.

Up next, Raymond Fosdick and T .R. Wright take us inside the last moments

they ditch in the Gulf of Mexico.

I can't say that I regret doing it, but I regret the way that I did it.

After his rescue in the Gulf of Mexico, T .R. Wright claims he had to ditch his

plane because of a fire.

Now from behind bars, he admits that's not the case.

I mean, there was no fire in that plane, right?

No.

I can't say that I regret doing it, but I regret the way that I did it. If I

could do it again, I would have been alone.

I mean, if you commit a crime with someone who you can't trust, who ends up

being a rat, that's a problem.

The person Wright is talking about is his old friend, Raymond Fosdick, who

begins talking to the feds in early 2017.

Now, Fosdick tells American Greed about the moment he says he learned about

Wright's plan while already in the air.

He basically turns to me and starts, laying out his plan.

And he basically said that we're going to ditch in the Gulf of Mexico.

There should be more than enough time for rescue services to get there.

Once he set his mind to it, I know that it's pretty much going to go down.

It's quite the unexpected ending for what Fosdick said he thought would be an

ordinary flight to Florida.

That's a pretty traumatic event.

Whether it was on purpose or not or anything, it's still a very traumatic

in life.

Though Fosdick says he's certain Wright ditched his aging plane on purpose, his

friend never tells him why, but he has his own opinion.

It was time for those engines to be rebuilt and the annual to come up on it,

he didn't have the money to do all of that.

The plane was actually worth more on the bottom of the ocean than it was.

Flying in the air.

Fosdick also admits that the million -dollar lawsuit he filed against Wright

little more than a setup.

And he's like, sue me, you know. That'll be easy money.

Well, it turned out to be for him.

We got $100 ,000, and 42 of it went to Ted.

I ended up with $8 ,000 of it, and the rest went to the attorney.

While he speaks freely to American Greed about the crash in the Gulf, Fosdick

clams up when asked about the arson in Athens, Texas.

That's an area that I'm not going to really talk about much.

But prosecutors say he told them exactly what happened.

Mr. Fosdick blew it up. There was gasoline placed inside of the plane, and

it was ignited.

He sustained injuries in connection with the arson.

Looking back, I'm sure he probably realized that I've risked my life for

pretty stupid things.

Having secured Fosdick's cooperation, a Texas grand jury returned an indictment

against Wright and others in May 2017, charging them at first with wire fraud

conspiracy, wire fraud, and arson.

But there's a problem.

Typically, it's relatively easy to find an indicted defendant and execute an

arrest warrant. In this case, executing an arrest warrant was not quite so easy.

It wasn't your typical individual who has a steady residence that drives the

same vehicle, that uses the same phone, that travels commercially.

So we had to take a lot of steps to identify where he was.

Since beginning his insurance fraud scheme, The kid from a small lakeside

village has become ever more international.

He lives in hotels, including Trump International in Las Vegas, and at times

his 110 -foot yacht, which is called Never Enough.

And by 2017, authorities say T .R. Wright is no longer just portraying a

on Instagram.

The feds say his insurance fraud has helped him to become one.

There's the saying that perception becomes reality.

And he simply created the image that he was the millionaire with

fancy jet.

And people believed it. And it became reality for him.

Obviously, the insurance scheme paid off and helped acquire the assets. But to

his credit, he became this individual.

Wright goes from flipping planes in Texas and posing as a James Bond wannabe

actually importing French attack helicopters into the U .S.

Really more than anything, I was a deliverer.

So when you become known as a guy who is reliable, you know, you can really do

well in the business.

And I'm creative. I'm creative. I'm resourceful. You know, when people say,

that's not possible, I make it happen.

Agent Reed will later testify that Wright also attempts to buy 24 Israeli

trainer jets to sell to the African nation of Guinea.

And according to testimony given in a French court, Wright receives $18 ,000

smuggling Glocks to his associates in France.

Wright admits to flying these handguns to France, but denies one part of the

story.

Come on, $18 ,000.

That wouldn't even cover the fuel for my jet to fly them over there.

Up next, the feds close in and make one last wild discovery. It was pretty

surreal kind of opening that briefcase. I don't know how to describe it except

that it was PR.

Three years after opening his investigation, agent James Reed develops

information that TR Wright may be at the Trump International Hotel in Sin City.

Upon his arrival there on June 27th, Reed is preparing to question hotel

when the elevator door opens onto the lobby and Wright emerges with a

in hand.

About that time...

He walked out of the elevators carrying his briefcase right by me. And I look at

him and I say, that's him.

I follow him out the door.

And as he's going to the valet to pick up his car, I say, T .R., he turns

around. I say, you're under arrest.

And at that time, the marshal's task force jumped out and arrested him.

After the marshal's place right in cuff, Agent Reed takes a look at what he was

carrying.

It was pretty surreal kind of opening that briefcase and seeing here's this

cliche of this guy who's presenting himself as a James Bond -like character

walking out of the Trump Tower in Las Vegas, carrying a briefcase with $70

in cash, two pistols, a car title, and a burn phone.

I don't know how to describe it except that it was PR.

Even as he's escorted out, Wright says he yells to the hotel's concierge.

and has no idea what kind of trouble he's in.

I said, hey, Jimmy, I'll be back tomorrow. And the federal agents and U

Marshals, oh, you're never going to see him again. And there was never any point

where I thought, oh, my God, I could get five years. I could be in prison.

Now, that's exactly what's happened.

In December 2017, Wright pleads guilty to wire fraud conspiracy and arson

conspiracy.

The next year, he's sentenced to five years and five months in federal prison.

His old friend, Raymond Fosdick, pleads guilty to the same charges and receives

three years and three months in prison.

He's released in 2020.

Now, Wright is locked up at a federal prison in Texas, and his wife, who was

never charged with anything, has left him.

All alone, he says he has no regrets.

Except one.

The last decade of my life before I was arrested, I never spent more than a

week, ten days, two weeks at the most in one place.

I guess being stuck is a big problem for me.

His cell is not far from a landing strip like the one in Athens where he and his

co -conspirators thought they could burn up a jet and get away with it.

To this day, eagle -eyed old -timer Carol Dyson thinks...

He knows why Wright chose Athens.

Most everybody thinks we're a bunch of ignorant rednecks, and they're right.

But it's desolate, there's nobody here, there's nothing on the ramp, and it was

an out -of -the -way place.

But there was one thing Wright didn't count on.

A young ATF agent showing up and taking the time to piece it all together.

Had they chose any other airport?

In Texas, they probably would have got away with this.