Original subtitles

♪♪

WILL R.: Syed is extremely smart.

This guy's a smart dude.

A lot of people saw him as, like, the math wiz.

♪♪

Not many people that are 21 years old are,

you know, have their own hedge fund.

WILL R.: I think that was the beginning of the campus legend.

But he's a class-A manipulator.

♪♪

Former UGA student is charged in a Ponzi scheme.

Ran the enterprise out of a fraternity house.

This Ponzi scheme is a bit different than the other ones.

The alleged mastermind targeted fellow students.

ARBAB: Did I want to be a millionaire when I grew up?

♪♪

I wanted to be a billionaire when I grew up.

♪♪

[ Police sirens wail ]

♪♪

[ Piano playing ]

[ Playing continues ]

ARBAB: When I get lost in a song, it's a stress relief

because you don't really have to focus on anything else

but that song just in that moment, you know?

[ Playing continues ]

The way I see piano, you know, I feel like it's math.

I like math.

I see all the keys and chords as numbers.

Number memorization in general, you know,

it runs in my family, I'd say.

I was born and raised as a Muslim.

I didn't drink growing up.

Parents were always strict.

Told to focus on our education.

Islam is definitely a very important part of our lives.

We always wanted to be a good influence to our community.

So obviously as Muslims we had a lot of pride.

ARBAB: My mother, she has her masters in economics.

My father, he's an MD PhD.

He is definitely someone I consider

a role model in my life,

who I want to be when I grow up.

MAN: When you grow up?

When I grow up. I mean, I am a grown man now,

you know [Laughs] so.

My name is Syed.

MUSHFIQUR: I've always looked up to Syed.

Syed's actually one of the smartest people I know.

At one point, he did hold the record

for memorizing the most numbers in pi.

[ Clears throat ] 3.14159265358979323...

ARBAB: Whoever can memorize the most digits of pi got a pie,

and obviously my fat self wanted a pie.

...1058209...

ARBAB: So I ended up clearing, like, 360 digits.

Is that enough?

I liked pie. I love pie.

My favorite is banana cream, but that's another subject.

[ Chuckles ]

When I was a child, I used to be, like, really fat.

I weighed, like, 190 in the 7th grade, I was 5'5".

He was a little pudgy, yeah. [ Laughs ]

When puberty hit, the interest of girls came into play.

That's when I was like, "Wow. I'm really fat.

I need to lose weight." People were like,

"Oh," I mean, "Here's these types of diets

you can do." I was like, "No,

I'm just gonna do it my way,

because I want to lose this much weight

in this timespan."

[ Drink fizzes, can pops ]

I would only drink three energy drinks a day...

[ Heart racing]

...and running, like, two miles

and just not eating anything.

[ Drink fizzes, can pops ] [ Heart races ]

When I was 11, on Mother's Day,

I was playing basketball outside, you know,

I hadn't eaten a thing. [ Can pops ]

I went up for a layup.

I got shoved and just put on the ground.

I started going lightheaded.

I couldn't even see, and I started going inside

and try and get my mom for help,

and I fell to the ground.

I wake up in the ER.

I had a heart attack.

It's actually when I developed a heart condition, as well,

just because of the diet and regimen that I was following.

It obviously wasn't the healthiest way

to go about it, but it happened.

I made it happen.

[ Bell rings ]

So, going into high school,

I lost weight, felt really awesome.

But then felt as though I needed to stand out.

One of the reasons why, obviously the girls.

What I found was humor is one of the main interactions

that attract people.

Does it look like I'm sweating?

[ Laughs ]

Aw, shit.

So, when I met Syed when we were freshmen,

he's very much a goofball.

He was always very dramatic on social media.

[ Cellphone notification rings ] I always thought he was funny.

I think that he really, like, tried to be in

with the cool kids. [ Cellphone notification rings ]

Whenever we would go out, people would be like, "Oh, Syed,"

and would come up or say, "Oh, you're Syed from Twitter."

[ Laughs ]

We were both in AP French together

and ended up going on a France trip.

So that's how we really became close.

MAN: Now, did you and Syed ever date?

No [Laughs] we never dated,

but everyone always thought we were dating.

He was one of my best friends.

He would try and talk to me about stuff,

and it just went right over my head,

because it was [Laughs] like, too complicated.

But he's so smart.

[ Cellphone notification rings ]

One day, I started seeing, like,

these girls wear lululemon leggings.

♪♪

You know, it was like a new thing.

I was like, "Damn, they look nice."

So I tell my dad, I was like,

"Hey, there's this really cool company

you should focus on, it's called lululemon."

I think they're gonna do really well.

He invests a little bit and then next thing you know...

♪♪

...he makes 40% off that.

That was, I would say, my first stock pick.

It was pretty awesome.

From there on out I was a little bit more interested

in terms of finance and analytics.

After I graduated high school, I got a scholarship,

which was like essentially a full ride

to the University of Georgia,

and that's why I wasn't at Harvard. [ Laughs ]

♪♪

I got to Georgia, you know, the sun's beaming,

blue skies, pretty campus, pretty women.

The UGA is known as the second biggest party school

in the United States, which is pretty hilarious

because my father did not want me to go to a party school,

but I digress.

The University of Georgia and the South overall

was a whole new world for me.

Didn't know anyone.

I had no friends there. I felt kind of out of place,

because I didn't drink.

Everyone else is drinking, I was just, like, chilling.

[ Cellphone notification rings ]

One day, I saw these dudes wearing New Balances

and, like, a Southern Polo.

I was like, "Wow, these dudes look like dads."

The funniest part was, like, they had the hottest girls

walking along with them.

And I was like, "Wow, I guess this is

what the girls like here."

[ Cellphone notification rings ]

I kind of gave it, like, a semester to try

to see if I could make my own friends

and stuff like that,

but the fact that there were 80 bars,

you can't really do anything without drinking.

So growing up as a Muslim, I didn't drink,

but I just broke down and just said, "Fuck it."

♪♪

I actually met him at a bar called Bourbon Street.

Syed liked to have a good time.

Three words I would use to describe Syed would be --

intelligent, ambitious, and fun.

♪♪

I first met him in organic chemistry.

I just remember thinking just like,

"Wow. This guy really knows his shit."

So I was, like, fairly impressed with this guy

just like from the first day basis.

Sorry. I mess with a hair. [ Laughs ]

It's just...

Syed was the first Muslim person

I had ever met in my life, which I thought was really cool.

He took me to the gym a couple times and taught me ways

he learned to workout with his heart condition.

He was telling me about how he wanted to go to medical school,

and I think he was more so wanting to follow

in his dad's footsteps at the time.

And I had never personally met a doctor so I was like,

"Wow this guy really has it together."

There's never been a romance between the two of us,

but we always used to say that if we weren't married by 30

then we'd just get over it [Laughs] and marry each other.

ARBAB: I had a pretty good friend group,

but the networking group is pretty small.

Being in Greek life has its networking abilities,

because if you know someone in a fraternity,

then you know their entire fraternity, sorority,

and whatnot.

Greek life is the centerpiece of UGA.

It's what everything revolves around.

WILL R.: Georgia very much has, like, an Old South vibe

where it's, like, you know, very, like, tradition.

There's definitely fraternities

that are a bit more, you know, Southern,

and I guess with that, it's, like, a lot more, like, white.

It's kind of just like an SEC thing.

There's, like, racial vibe.

This is an unfortunate fact of SEC schools for the most part.

If your name is Syed Arbab

or if your name is not a John Smith,

you're gonna have a harder time getting into a fraternity.

People like Syed, they join Greek life to network.

I mean, like, obviously you're gonna meet people anywhere.

I don't know, I think it's mainly just to talk to girls

and, like, just drink a fuck ton of beer,

and like do coke every now and then,

which is why it's surprising why Syed joined,

'cause, like, you know, I guess it just feels like

more, like, a white thing.

Kind of just made, like, a leap of faith move,

and I ended up getting a bid at Phi Kappa Tau.

♪♪

[ Cellphone notification rings ]

I joined Greek life my second semester when I was at UGA.

Joining the fraternity as the only Muslim kid --

composed of mainly Caucasians

and people living in the South for a while --

it was pretty hard... [ Cellphone notification rings ]

...but I was able to fit in.

[ Cellphone notification rings ] I knew that he was

in a fraternity, and he seemed to kind of live,

like, a frat boy-type lifestyle.

I saw him advertise it on Twitter.

[ Laughs ] Fucking...

[ Laughs ]

When we worked at the bar,

Syed started at the door, just doing the door guy stuff,

and he did have such a good work ethic.

WILL S.: While he would have all this fun, at the same time,

you see him during the day, and he's there studying,

learning, researching the market,

and I have a lot of respect for that.

[ Cellphone notification rings ]

ARBAB: After I joined the fraternity, you know,

I tell these brothers that I'm interested in finance

and, like, watching the market.

"Wolf of Wall Street" came out so there was this huge ambition

of wanting to go into Wall Street

just because you saw this luxurious life

that Jordan Belfort led on.

The real Jordan Belfort, he made himself rich

because of his drive and motivation.

I made a GroupMe called The Wolves of Broad Street

based off the movie and Broad Street was

where our fraternity house was.

WILL G.: The GroupMe was not a place to make deals.

It was really just like a chatroom

and for Syed to show off what he could do.

♪♪

[ Cellphone keyboard clacks ]

He would always be in the group chat

calling out plays, and they would end up being great plays.

WILL R.: Syed was, like, into options trading,

and that's, like, high-risk.

Every now and then he'd, like, have a good move,

and he'd, like, screenshot it.

And everyone would be like, "Damn. This guy knows his shit."

The GroupMe avatar was a picture of him

with sunglasses on and a hat,

and $100 bills stuck all around the bill of the hat.

ARBAB: It was just the fact that money would be able

to give me the power to create my own destiny.

At this point, I'd been working nonstop at the bar.

I have around $5,000.

[ Cash register dings ]

I put it all in the market.

♪♪

By his sophomore year, Wolves of Broad Street,

the GroupMe, really got his name out there.

WILL R.: He started getting this reputation,

and I think he was just enjoying it.

KATIE: I think that's when Syed kind of looked at things

and said, "Let me take this to the next step."

♪♪

Oil and gold, two stocks that will --

or two commodities that will move particularly

as interest rates move as well.

Just about everybody and their brother

is expecting interest rates will rise.

ARBAB: It was anticipated that Janet Yellen

was going to be increasing interest rates by 0.25%

during this federal interest rate meeting.

I expected gold to essentially do very well

right after that meeting.

So I put in $30,000 on an option that expired that same week.

I mean, I never gambled before, obviously.

Well, I mean, if you want to call options trading gambling,

sure, whatever, but. [ Laughs ]

I don't think I'm the best [Laughs] guy to define it.

[ Laughs ] I don't want to get it wrong.

What does laymen's terms mean?

Okay. So, options trading is essentially betting

on the future value of something.

You're buying a contract to have the right to buy or sell

that stock at a future date for a set price.

It's definitely risky. It's high-risk, high-return.

MUSHFIQUR: He was like, "Okay. You know what? I'm going to risk

all of this 30K that I've worked for.

At the end of this trade, I'm either going to be filthy rich,

or I'm gonna be a poor man."

That much money on the line.

It's absolutely insane.

ARBAB: We're gonna broadcasting the fed meeting

at the fraternity house at 2:00 PM.

Some of the kids actually skipped class.

We had our monitors around the TV room,

and then we had the big TV with the meeting on.

At 2:00 P.M. on the dot...

[ Clock ticks ]

...we're watching all the screens.

I seriously almost threw up...

Good Afternoon.

...because I knew that he had put all of his money

on this one single thing.

And it's like literally just burning your money,

it's setting it on fire.

ARBAB: This was a big event. It was like watching, like,

Conor McGregor fight, you know, Floyd Mayweather,

you know, it was just something big.

Today the Federal Open Market Committee

decided to raise the target range for the federal funds rate

by 1/4 percentage point,

bringing it to 3/4 to 1%. [ Cheering ]

Gold just takes off.

♪♪

I came out with $112,000.

♪♪

[ Cheering ]

I mean... [ Laughs ]

[ Laughs ] It's just like, "What?"

Screenshots of his account being, like, over a $100k.

I remember him going downtown, hitting the bars with the boys,

and really celebrating. [ Cellphone notification rings ]

ARBAB: I got a tab for all the boys that came out to the meeting.

It was a good Wednesday night in Athens.

Yeah. I think that was the beginning

of the campus legend.

♪♪

WILL G.: That reputation did start spreading around,

and more and more people started joining the GroupMe.

♪♪

The Wolves of Broad Street at this point has already grown

to about 1,200.

Everyone was like, "Oh, my God," you know?

I was just getting congrats DMs

from, like, random people I don't even know.

Even a guy that I had dated who went to Georgia Tech

was in this GroupMe.

"Yo, I heard your name from, like, my buddy so-and-so.

He's, like, in your group.

Can you possibly tell me, like, how to trade and whatnot?

Like, I want to make money"

"Can I give you 500 bucks and you trade it for a week or two

and you can get it back to me?"

ARBAB: People were throwing $500 to $1,000 at me, you know,

and I was making the returns.

It stopped being, "Hey. Let me give you $500,"

to, "Hey. Let me give you $10,000 to invest for me."

ARBAB: That was the first time I started realize

that I could make money managing other people's money.

He was just like, "I'm just gonna start my own hedge fund

out of my fraternity." [ Laughs ]

It was called Artis Proficio Capital Investments.

In Latin it means, like, artistic profits.

♪♪

I hit Syed up, because I was just gonna turn 18.

I was like, "Hey. I have all this money on me.

What should I do with it?" He was like,

"Well, I have a hedge fund.

It's called Artis Proficio."

This college kid doing a double-major.

He's working odd jobs, and he runs a hedge fund?

Like, at this point I didn't even know what a hedge fund was

to be honest, you know.

I always heard the word, you know,

but I always thought, like, in my head,

"Green hedges and a fund," you know?

It just didn't really make sense.

I was like, "What the hell is that?"

But anyway, I googled, "hedge fund contracts."

I actually ripped from online --

I mean, I'm not a lawyer.

The pitch would start off as, like,

"We were a smaller company," you know,

"It's comprised of college students,

raising money for college students."

It was very easy to convince people

that initially invested with us, because it's just like,

"Yeah, I mean, for sure, dude,

I mean, I've been following your trades

for, like, the last three years."

Syed had a guarantee of up to $15,000,

he'd guarantee it out of his pocket.

And so, I went ahead and to start off,

I just had $3,000 in there.

I put in a couple thousand.

I put in about $1,500.

I was looking at it as a college student saying,

"Oh, my gosh. This could pay off my student debt."

And I think lot of people saw his success,

and a lot of people thought that way.

Everybody wanted to invest with Syed.

So, out of the gates, you know, so I put in all the money

that I had for myself into the fund.

And I was around $120,000 at this point.

Other people had invested.

It was around another $50,000.

A few angel investors, as well, that came on

and put in, like, around another $200,000.

We were, like, 1/4 to 1/3 of $1 million when we came out.

Yeah.

So, I heard Syed was running his own hedge fund

through the grapevine of a bunch of people

that I went to high school with.

They were like, "Yeah, like, it's great,"

and, you know, they all kept referencing this spreadsheet

which he had showed me.

WILL S.: When you invested your money, he gave you an account number

and so every week,

he would send a spreadsheet... [ Cellphone notification rings ]

...of all the different accounts,

and you look at the line with your account number.

My number was 64.

♪♪

I think I was, like, literally number 77.

He was doing that so we could all see all these other people

were making great returns, too.

All of us are making good money.

And it was going up a lot, very fast.

ARBAB: People saw the spreadsheet,

it definitely helped with the momentum.

They just loved seeing that grow,

and they're like, "Wow." [ Cellphone notification rings ]

WILL R.: I don't remember [Laughs] ever seeing a dip.

It was always like, "It was a good week.

It's always a good week." [ Chuckles ]

♪♪

We cleared about 25% returns, you know.

Nothing to joke about.

[ Cellphone notification rings ]

I was pretty focused on social media

just to broadcast.

I'd amplify my social media

based on, like, how my life was going.

♪ We got everything that we wanted, man ♪

♪ It was all a dream ♪

♪ We turn nothing into something, yeah ♪

♪ Honey for the ring ♪

♪ Now we stuntin', yeah ♪

Syed on social media, he was very flashy.

His Instagram is something else.

He's making money, he's partying.

He's living the life.

♪ It was all a dream ♪

♪ We turn nothing into something, yeah ♪

WILL S.: You know, he bought this Corvette.

You know, he would drive the nice cars.

He was going on trips.

WILL S.: Pictures of him flying out to Vegas.

[ Cellphone notification rings ] KATIE: Pictures of $100 bills.

"Big gains today."

WILL R.: "Fast lane, big money, coke,

these girls that I fly out to Vegas,

and I got a hedge fund."

The brown boy's on the block.

♪ ...over now ♪ ♪ Honey for the ring ♪

♪ Now I'm stuntin', yeah ♪

KATIE: It was the clothes, the watches.

He would even text me and say, "I'm buying you an outfit today.

Go pick something out."

And I would say, "Like, no.

I don't need that to be your friend."

Clearly he was, like, going for this image.

People were, like, buying it.

"I'm like this G, who's making money."

♪ Honey for the ring ♪

And they see a college student, like, with a Corvette,

like, with beautiful women,

they're like, "Okay. So this guy actually makes money."

It was a form of free advertisement, you know?

You definitely have to show success to get success.

♪ ...into something, yeah ♪

He more so changed his persona into the typical frat boy.

You couldn't really distinguish him from the others.

♪♪

Drugs made him efficient.

It made him, instead of five steps ahead, ten steps ahead.

[ Cellphone notification rings ]

Cocaine was the key factor in his downfall.

[ Cellphone notification rings ]

ARIANNA: Why would you be posting this

if you're starting a company

trying to get investors in?

It doesn't look responsible.

He had a drug problem.

KATIE: I would tell him I was concerned because of his heart condition.

And he would say, "Oh no, don't worry about it. It's fine."

It's just like any kind of upper, you know.

It's just a short-term effect.

It'll get you hype.

You know, obviously he had, like, a fair amount of haters.

I do remember Syed getting into a fight at a bar,

and I believe it was because someone said

something racially motivated towards him.

♪♪

ARBAB: So, one time when I was downtown,

a kid was like, "Hey, sand nigger,

what are you doing?"

And he just kept going. I was drunk myself, you know.

And after that I just got in a fight with him, you know.

I punched him in the face.

♪♪

KATIE: Syed did post on Instagram

a picture of him kind of surrounded by his friends.

[ Men giggle ]

Syed put on an act like he didn't care.

I think that's kind of telling of how he did respond

to those kinds of situations.

He's got to make sure people know that he's funny...

[ Cellphone notification rings ]

...and that he's unbothered.

He will try to make you believe

he's got the best life in the world.

I know that those things really hurt him deeply.

ARBAB: I was pretty mad about that.

It was definitely a similar feeling

that I felt when I was a kid.

You know, that's when I first immigrated to the United States.

People were getting better treatment

just because of their skin color and their ethnicity,

you know? So.

[ Johann S. Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" plays ]

As I was growing up,

I saw that there were a lot of kids around me, you know,

that were brown like me,

that were kind of antisocial and awkward

and didn't mix with anyone else but their own race groups.

What I wanted to do is essentially break out of that,

have more friends than just the stereotypical brown kid

that's pretty good at math.

[ Johann S. Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" plays ]

And when you experience racial prejudice,

you never want to get used to it,

because no one deserves racial prejudice.

What it did for me was made me stand out.

It drove me to be better than them,

'cause if they want to insult me

when I'm on a higher pedestal, then they just sound stupid.

That's what made me be better.

[ Playing continues ]

[ Playing stops ]

♪♪

I told my dad a little bit about the hedge fund.

[ Cellphone notification rings ] He told me to focus more

on my medical career.

[ Cellphone notification rings ] He hates finance,

because he has the connotation that it's a shortcut way

of making money, which it is.

He considered it always as, like, my hobby.

That's the extent of what he knew about it in 2018.

[ Cellphone notification rings ]

But any ways,

summer going into the fall of 2018,

that's when the market was at its peak.

[ Cellphone notification rings ]

♪♪

Because whenever you see a bullish market,

you see a lot more investors being enticed

to make more capital so it's like an expansion effect.

I had $700,000 at this point.

KATIE: I really didn't believe him that he was having all the success

that he said he was, and he would show me.

I mean, he would show me the dollar amounts in the accounts,

and he was doing well.

He had the potential where if he's getting these returns,

you could put hundreds of millions,

you could put billions in a fund like that.

Over a million dollars in the last year.

We're making money hand over fist.

♪♪

It was unbelievable.

♪♪

Today, we start with a big lump of coal for investors

and the US economy.

WOMAN: This is no December to remember.

It's been another ugly session for stocks.

ARBAB: In December 2018, I started seeing the market fall.

This is gonna be a negative year,

and we're on track for the worst December since 1931.

The total account value went down.

It went down from $1 million to $600,000.

♪♪

The losses were immense.

Who wants to hear that on Christmas,

"You lost 40% of your portfolio that you invested with me.

I'm sorry."

It's like, I compare it very much to gambling,

'cause, like, what he was doing, it was just, you know,

just super risky plays.

ARBAB: End of December, like, going into January,

I lost 3/4 of a million.

His tolerance to risk was just not there.

He only looked at the upside, never the downside.

Then, people started asking, like, "Where's the spreadsheet?"

[ Cellphone keyboard clacks ] I kind of just sent

a spreadsheet with just, like, the same numbers.

[ Cellphone notification rings ]

I had two options --

I could have filed for bankruptcy,

but these were my friends and family.

They trusted me with their capital.

I didn't want to explain these losses.

I wanted to make these losses back.

That's the decision I made.

I kept quiet.

I was telling investors that everything was fine

when really it was not.

That was definitely the first time I had told,

like, the biggest lie.

MOORE: We as a culture want things fast.

That's why we have diet pills

that are supposed to work in 30 days.

The victims want to improve their circumstances.

These schemers and fraudsters prey on that,

and that's sort of how he began to culminate his scheme

and grow his pool of victims.

♪♪

ARBAB: After I experienced these losses,

there was so much immense pressure coming in.

There was not enough money to circulate, you know?

We needed to take higher risk to recoup the losses

that we had experienced.

We -- I, I, I.

The entire time I was trying to raise money

and then at this point, there was no organization whatsoever.

The only accounting that was done by the company was me.

I initially invested 5 grand with him,

I just wanted to see how he was able to play around with it

before I was able to trust him.

I told him, you know, "Don't fuck me over."

He tried to ensure me that everything was gonna be okay.

ARBAB: My mental state was not there,

and my market state was not there either.

I was trying to turn it around before anything was noticeable.

WILL S.: At this point, we didn't know that he had lost

that much of the money.

He was trading it out of his personal account,

to my knowledge, and that's what I wanted to help him with,

because, you know, I was looking at this and,

"Wow. You're doing great,

but you don't know what you're doing."

When you're talking about building an organization

and doing legal compliance, he was clueless.

So I introduced him to Stephen Romanoff.

How should I sit? Where do I put my hands?

My name's Stephen Romanoff.

I do have quite an extensive background in fund formations,

specifically around hedge funds and venture capital funds.

He felt like a genuine kid,

decently intelligent, decent trader,

but some big backers.

Opportunity.

Stephen is still under the impression

that we were close to 1 million AUM,

in assets under management.

But I didn't show him the latest one.

I showed him all the way up to, you know, November 30th,

and the first week of December, and he was like,

"All right. That makes sense to me."

I told him, like, "Hey. You got to redo this whole thing."

He was very organized

in terms of the structure and what we needed.

He listed out, like, you know, we needed a securities attorney,

new paperwork, documentation, you know?

I mean, the costs were immense.

It's always fun to hear someone doing something

quote-unquote "big"

and going and talking to them and letting them know

they have no idea what they're doing

and just being a dick about it.

So it's kind of fun to me. [ Laughs ]

♪♪

ARBAB: It was obscene.

We got the most expensive lawyers.

We needed the most expensive prime brokerage accounts.

So, I brought him some lawyers,

some really good securities lawyers here in the city,

and he paid the retainer after pulling teeth, it's $10,000.

It took forever. First red flag for me.

I needed to bring on more investors,

and that's kind of why I brought him on board,

because that's the promise that he had made.

Yeah, so this is the pitch deck that I came up with.

He had no idea how to make a deck.

I had to pull everything out of him.

He didn't know what almost any of this was.

Did you read the deck and proofread it?

To be completely honest, no, I didn't.

A pretty clear indication that it was amateur hour.

Here, his strategy summary --

"S-U-M-M-E-R-Y."

People can think what they want to

about the University of Georgia, but I can promise you

they'll teach you how to spell summary.

He puts he has an MBA from the "terry collage of business"

and doesn't capitalize it.

If we look at the front page of his flyer,

it says he has one, but on the back page,

he says he's working on it.

WILL G.: I mean, it's a complete lie.

He had everyone fooled

that he was doing this masters program.

MOORE: It's the same old tale --

he cultivated those relationships,

and he sold them a bill of goods that never existed.

And at this point I was just definitely scrambling for money.

I was introduced to an investor.

He was a Georgia alum.

I advertised to him that he could make

a lot of money within a few weeks' span.

So this investor had given me $100,000.

I took the $100,000, and I put it into the market.

♪♪

I lost it.

It was just an entire mess.

I mean, what am I gonna do?

I had to pull it together.

I had to try to get the gain back.

I decided to go to Vegas.

[ Computer mouse clicks ]

I had to take that risk.

♪♪

I decided to try to make money on roulette.

ROMANOFF: I had heard he was going to Vegas,

and I think this was right after

I had invested, and I was like,

"Well, I'm going to go to make sure

that he doesn't waste my money."

I just didn't trust him.

ARBAB: At that point I just kept on, like, a positive face,

telling investors that everything was fine

through social media.

♪♪

I was under so much time pressure,

losing even more money, bleeding, and hemorrhaging.

♪♪

I don't even -- he could have been gambling

with the hedge fund money.

I don't think he was.

Could've? I don't know.

♪♪

So I wire him $5,000, and, you know, I'm expecting him

to make some investment in the fund.

I get a call from Stephen, and he tells me,

"Hey. I don't know why you did that.

Syed had actually used all that money to gamble with."

♪♪

He lost Will's $5,000.

He lost all of my money plus a bunch of his own.

♪♪

ARBAB: The walls were closing in on me.

My life just spiraled out of control.

It was definitely just failure

that I've never been exposed to before.

It seemed pretty unrecoverable.

[ Cellphone vibrates ] I was getting maybe, like,

300 texts a day.

We were hemorrhaging a lot more money in the markets.

[ Cellphone keyboard clacks ]

This investor that had given me $100,000, you know,

I was scrambling to get that capital back to him

as soon as possible.

I needed another way.

I started dealing cocaine.

I buy an ounce of cocaine.

I bag it up in bags.

I put them in my pockets, you know, right here.

You know, I'd have, like, baggy, like, sweatpants

or something.

At the bar, people would just high five me with cash,

and I'd give them the cocaine.

And I'd just have, like, a stack in my fucking pocket.

It was absurd.

I mean, there was a lot of rumors going around

that he was, like, the biggest drug dealer in UGA.

I heard that it was, like, kind of, like, cut with, like,

some baking soda.

ARBAB: But it wasn't enough.

So, I knew a dealer.

It was through my friend

who was already connected with, like, the dark web.

Walk inside, it smells like acetone.

There was a bunch of cocaine everywhere,

and just, like, money everywhere, as well.

I bought the kilo of cocaine for $22,000,

and I sold it for $45,000.

Pocketed $20,000 and just put it all in the market.

♪♪

The deadline came to pay back the $100,000,

and I didn't even have half of it.

He seemed stressed, and he always seemed like

he was watching his back.

He had gotten paranoid.

ARBAB: I was scared.

My anxiety started to build up like crazy.

I got a gun just for safety purposes.

I felt like everyone was, like, against me

in some way or another.

I had no grasp on, like, reality

and what was going on, you know.

It was really hard to watch him change like that,

'cause he was really a great guy.

And I saw him just get consumed by a lot of demons.

There was a point of no return.

I mean, at this point it was just, like, scrambling to get

any type of dollar amount that I could,

but it wasn't enough.

I needed money so I was asking every single investor,

"Hey," like, "There's a decent opportunity

in the market right now, like,

would you want to put in more money?"

It takes a particularly devious person, I think,

to be a thief like this when you take somebody's money,

and you don't invest it, using it to take trips,

and you know you're doing the wrong thing.

I mean, this isn't just a naive kid.

He approached it as if he could outsmart the people

that he had invested with him.

He had actually asked my dad for [Laughs] $250,000.

It kind of offended me, because we were really close,

and he was really close with my family,

but, like, we live in a normal, like, middle-class area,

suburban town.

My dad was kind of like, "What the hell?

Where does this kid think I have $250,000

to just give to him?"

You know, after Vegas, I pretty much started finding

some fishy stuff.

You know, started monitoring some accounts more.

So I was gonna send Syed $2,500,

and I had reached my limit on Zelle that day.

And so he told me to Venmo $2,500 to an individual

he said was the FinTech manager and label the transaction

"Artis Proficio capital investment."

A couple of weeks later, I received a comment

and the FinTech manager said,

"Hey, do you have any money to send

on behalf of Syed today?"

In the account I would see Venmos,

Cashapps, Zelles, come in to the tune of $1,500,

$2,000, $3,000 from certain people,

and it would leave as soon as it came,

and it would go right to this one larger investor.

Never left the account,

never went to a brokerage, nothing.

And at that point I had asked Syed,

"What is your FinTech manager talking about here?"

And he goes, "Oh. LOL he's just fucking with you.

He likes to joke around."

He started having people send it directly

to this larger investor under the guise

of him being the "FinTech,"

you know, and that's not even the right terminology.

Just lying.

I was like, "Well, that's really fishy."

Like, "Why would someone just mess around about that?"

[ Cellphone vibrates ]

I got a phone call from the FinTech manager,

and I came to the conclusion that this FinTech manager

was actually an investor who was owed over $100,000.

My money that I'd sent him

was to satisfy debt that Syed owed him.

He was taking that money

and paying back other investors with it,

textbook definition of a Ponzi scheme.

And that was pretty much when I sent an e-mail to the lawyers,

and I told them, "Remove me from all the documents,

and I didn't want to be involved with it. Best of luck."

So, yeah.

It really is an investment scheme

where the head of the Ponzi scheme uses money

from a second investor to pay the first investor.

You've now got two disgruntled investors

who've been put together.

And that's where the dominoes start to fall.

So me and the other investor go

to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And this was kind of a hard decision at first for me,

because Syed was my friend.

Maybe this was some big misunderstanding.

But eventually, I decided that this was

what would be best for me, and this is what's gonna be best

for all the investors who've gotten scammed,

and I decided to go through with it.

MAN: Syed Arbab from the website of Artis Proficio Capital.

That's the name of the hedge fund

SEC Regional Director Richard Best says was a fake.

And then the more we looked into it,

the more we saw that he was engaging

in a Ponzi scheme.

I was like, "What the fuck?"

It was big news.

I mean, all of the major newspapers --

"The UGA Ponzi scheme."

This article posted saying, "Ponzi scheme."

I'm like, "All right. This can't be good."

And after all of this, they say he only had about $350

left in his account after spending the rest.

♪♪

MUSHFIQUR: What the hell?

What just happened?

When Syed found out that I was affiliated

with going to the SEC, he goes,

"How could you do this to me, man?"

[ Cellphone notification rings ] "I've known you

since we were 14. You're screwing me over,"

like, "My life is ruined."

I said to him, "If you did nothing wrong,

and you were actually investing our money,

then you have nothing to worry about."

He made it seem like he was a victim

and that I had put him in this terrible situation.

He was going off on like, "I hope you're happy.

I'm never gonna be able to get a job.

I spent all this money on school for nothing.

I'm not gonna go to med school.

I'm gonna go to prison."

I couldn't believe that someone, you know, so crazy,

in such a situation could actually think the way

he thought at the time.

It's unbelievable.

The day of the SEC statement, my buddy, Will Rittmeyer,

we were grilling out at the pool, and he was like,

"Hey, man, like, we got to do a rap together."

I have, like, a little mic set up in, like, my apartment.

It's a pretty good mic.

It's the same mic that The Weeknd uses

so it's, like, quality shit.

And so I was like, "Dude, I can't think

of what to rap about." He was like,

"Well, rap about anything.

Rap about what just happened today."

Like, "Oh, Syed!" [ Laughs ]

[ Rapping ] ♪ Want my fucking money ♪

♪ Damn, you think you're real funny ♪

♪ Going fast 'cause I'm hungry ♪

♪ Call me crash test dummy ♪

♪ Hey ♪

♪ Hey, bro, when you gonna pay me? ♪

♪♪

Mr. Arbab met with the SEC alone without a lawyer.

I didn't go in there with an attorney or anything, you know?

I went in there, and I just made some stuff up, you know,

I didn't tell them anything of what happened.

They were pretty annoyed with that.

From a prosecutor's point of view,

that's a pretty brazen act by a defendant.

And it seems here that he thought he could outwit the SEC.

So the SEC filed a complaint against Syed Arbab stating

that Syed defrauded eight investors out of $269,000.

That amount is understating it by a good bit.

He lost over and over.

I could have lost everything.

Friends' money, like, family's friends' money.

He lied about having an MBA.

He lied about his returns,

he lied about his assets under management.

I could sit here all day and tell you about

every single thing that he's ever said,

and it's probably on that list.

♪♪

As Muslims, we always have to be responsible for our actions,

making sure that you're telling the truth.

I will say he did let the Muslim community down a little bit.

I felt horrible, because my parents were very distraught

about the entire event.

I just didn't want my dad to get involved at all, you know?

I just wanted to start handling my own problems and stuff.

But at that point it was irreversible.

My dad is definitely compassionate

and caring just because I am his only son.

So, ultimately, I decided to plead guilty

to one count of securities fraud

which faces a maximum time in prison for five years.

I wouldn't say that the entire fund

was operated as a Ponzi scheme.

I would say just that action was a representative

of a Ponzi scheme. Yes.

I mean, I needed to essentially pay out the investors,

and the only way to do so was to just pay off the investor

with someone else's capital.

Think about the ego behind somebody

who says that I can con you out of thousands of dollars.

I can make them believe in something that doesn't exist.

He may have very well thought

that he could use his velvet tongue

to get away from the wrath of a federal judge

or a vigilant prosecutor.

ARIANNA: Since awaiting sentencing,

everything he's posted on social media,

it seems like this is all a joke to him

and that he's above the law.

Syed, yes, is definitely all about getting attention.

I remember an Instagram post,

and he was dressed up as Jordan Belfort for Halloween.

AARON: Someone even said on the comments

to that picture of him being the Wolf of Wall Street,

"Aren't you supposed to be in jail?"

And he comments back,

ROMANOFF: "Do I look like I'm in jail, bitch?"

It's like he's just soaking it up.

He's loving it.

MAN: You got a little backlash dressing up as Jordan Belfort

after you had been...

Indicted of securities fraud, yeah.

So, I mean, like I said before,

I try to find the funny situation

where people don't think there is, you know?

I always like to have, like, a light side on a serious note,

you know.

I'm telling you, he does not care,

and he does not feel sympathetic for what he did at all,

and he's honestly the worst kind of person that this earth has.

MOORE: Some people think that money crimes are victimless crimes.

They're not. Yeah, you don't have somebody

who's got a physical scar to show it,

but you may have somebody who's had their life savings

wiped out.

ARIANNA: It hurt everybody that was involved.

It sucks. I hate that this happened.

And I just don't understand,

because he was one of my best friends for years.

KATIE: It makes me mad that I feel like

I won't be able to see him become,

like, the full person he could have.

Like, I don't know if he'll ever be able

to chase after those dreams

he used to have of being a doctor, things like that.

I just don't know if that's even, like,

a possibility anymore.

♪♪

[ Beethoven's "Sonata No. 14 'Quasi una fantasia'" plays ]

ARBAB: Of course I feel remorse.

I mean, most of the investors are my friends and family,

very close friends and family,

but my biggest regrets were not being completely honest

about it.

[ Playing continues ]

I'm just gonna keep doing what I do.

MAN: Gonna keep working?

Mm. Keep grinding.

[ Playing continues ]

I still have a few more years of learning to do.

Hopefully I can still go along that path

and try to make my father proud, you know?

[ Playing continues ]

My hope is for someone who's viewing this

to essentially take into light everything I did and not just,

like, say, "Damn. he lived, like, a really sick life."

You know, I want them to essentially focus

on the mistakes I made,

expand on it without making the same mistakes I did.

[ Playing continues ]

♪♪

[ Playing stops ]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪