The Billionaire Boys Club: Fraud, Cult Vibes, and the Murders of LA's Elite
We are exploring the true story of the Billionaire Boys Club (BBC), a group that defined the greed-is-good ethos of 1980s Los Angeles. Led by charismatic young financial expert Joe Hunt, the BBC was far from an innocent social group for the wealthy—it was a sophisticated scheme built on fraud, manipulation, and cult-like control.
The Rise of the BBC: In the early 1980s, Joe Hunt convinced a group of young, well-connected men in Los Angeles to invest their families' fortunes into his venture, promising astronomical returns. The BBC was structured as a classic Ponzi scheme, where early investors were paid off using money from new ones, making the operation appear wildly successful.
The Victims: When the scheme began to collapse, Hunt and the BBC turned to violence to cover their tracks. We detail the shocking sequence of events that led to the murders of two men connected to the club: Ron Levin, a con man who allegedly double-crossed Hunt, and the father of one of the club's key members.
A Failed Fix: Hunt’s attempt to recoup losses by intimidating or eliminating their biggest threats led to the deaths. The case reveals the extreme lengths the members would go to maintain their lavish lifestyles and protect their secrets.
The Legacy: The subsequent trial was a national sensation, exposing the dark side of ambition and wealth and cementing the Billionaire Boys Club as a cautionary tale of greed that still resonates today.
Join us as we detail the intricate Ponzi schemes, the shift from financial fraud to murder, and the downfall of the young men who traded in their futures for fast money and a place in the LA elite.
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TRANSCRIPT:
billionaire
[00:00:00] Fraud, greed, cult vibes, and murder. The Billionaire Boys Club wasn't some exclusive social club for LA's Most Elite. It was a tangled mess of Ponzi schemes, manipulation, and two men who ended up dead.
Hey guys, and welcome to the Moms and Mysteries podcast, a True Crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa. Hi, Melissa. Hi, Mandy. How are you? I'm doing well. Can I tell you, um, today's the joy of the day. Actually, this has been my joy for a while now, and I'm not sure if it's something that you really have gotten into because you're not really a coffee drinker, but cold foam.
Yes, it's all the rage right now, and it has been for a little while. It's not like cold foam is a brand new concept, but I started getting into cold foam recently. Mm-hmm. And the thing that I think is like so funny about it is that it's literally just whipped cream and like mm-hmm. I feel like this generation has like rebranded [00:01:00] whipped cream and made it.
I know a thing that you can just have any day of the week. Right. I'm like, this feels illegal. Like we should not be doing this. But now I am. I can't stop making cold foam. Home at my house, I've bought all the ingredients. I got my little mixer thing. And so, um, every day now around this time, I am just making myself an iced coffee with cold foam on top.
I'm obsessed. Whipped cream. I'm obsessed. Is it really? I was gonna say, is it like, 'cause I found out not that long ago that you could make your own whipped cream, and I thought that's really cool. But I don't drink coffee, so it's so easy. So easy. So easy. Why did I think it was such a complicated process.
They're trying to keep us down. I swear the people are trying to keep this down. The man. I mean, there's so many different flavors you can do, like different ways you can flavor it. Oh. Yeah, so flavor, I didn't even down the rabbit hole. Yeah. Oh, well actually I'm not telling my husband 'cause then I'll be making it and I'm Okay.
So today we are diving into a complex, layered, and absolutely banana [00:02:00] story that combines fraud, greed, manipulation. Kind of some cultish vibes and of course murder. This is the story of Joe Hunt in the so-called Billionaire Boys Club, which might sound like the name of a two thousands boy band, but in reality it was just a group of young, wealthy guys led by a conman.
Joe Hunt was born Joseph Henry Game Ski on Halloween in 1959. As a child, he was incredibly smart. One of his teachers actually said that he was the brightest student she had ever taught and that he was unusually mature for his age. Joe's dad, Lawrence was kind of a character. He called himself a storefront psychologist, which basically meant that he ran a bunch of really sketchy, failed businesses in the San Fernando Valley and gave out unsolicited life advice to people.
Is that what we would call a life coach these days, or like? I think so. Yeah. I know life coaches do a lot, but there are some where I'm like, you are a bigger hot mess than I am. How are you coaching people? Yes. Um, that's [00:03:00] what this kind of feels like. I like it. Yeah, so he actually told his son Joe to call him Larry instead of Dad, because as he put it, I'm not your father, I'm your teacher who can't it be both and Right, right.
Why not? Both in his teen years, Joe became friends with Dean Carney and Ben Doty, who were both from wealthy families. Joe was kind of always the broke kid on the bus, but he managed to keep his friendships with Dean and Ben going anyway. In 1980 when Dean was at UCLA, he and Joe Reconnected. Joe claimed he had finished college at USC and that he was the youngest person to pass the CPA exam.
He also said he was absolutely killing it as a commodities trader. Now, none of that was true, but Joe could really make anyone believe anything. When his parents divorced, Joe moved to Chicago with his dad and began trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He had some early success with risky trades, and it kind of went to his head a little bit.
He started calling [00:04:00] himself Joe Hunt, just like his dad, who allegedly by this time had changed his name to Ryan Hunt. But I guess what Demer does it make? I don't know. Names mean nothing to this family apparently. So Joe never made his name change official, but the Joe Hunt persona is the name that really stuck with him throughout this story.
While living in Chicago, Joe kept in touch with his buddies, Dean Ben, and another guy named Ronald, and he also made a new friend named Evan. So Dean's family and others invested over $400,000 with Joe who had promised to double their investments. But spoiler alert. He did not, and this might sound familiar if you listen to Thursday's episode last week when we talked about the, uh, infamous scammer of all scammers, Charles Ponzi, and that story ends up being relevant in this week's story as well.
Yeah, Joe actually lost all of their money by 1982, but of course, nothing to fear. Joe promised that he had a foolproof plan to get it all back. [00:05:00] He actually hadn't even registered the investor's money properly in the first place, and eventually he was banned from trading for 10 years. So Joe returned to LA with $4 in his pocket and moved in with his old friend Dean who really became his right hand man and his biggest enabler.
By early 1983, Joe was just 24 years old and already cooking up his next big scheme. This time it was less about trades and more about influence. He pulled together a group of former classmates and acquaintances and described a vision of business meets brotherhood called the Billionaire Boys Club. Joe, of course, gave himself the title of administrator, which actually.
Isn't even that great of a title like you and I, we own this business. We could name ourselves anything, right? Administrator is not what I would go with. No, but he gave the other guys flashy but really meaningless titles like Executive VP and President, which I would've thought Joe would've taken. He claimed they could launch any company they wanted using just an idea.
And Joe's Genius Brains. [00:06:00] Most of these men were in their early twenties and were heirs to major wealth, but they weren't in control of that money yet, and Joe's confidence really made them feel important. Dean later said that Joe made him feel admired and accepted in a way that he had always longed for.
Evan said that Joe was like an older brother, figure someone you just didn't wanna disappoint. Joe lived by this thing he called Paradox philosophy, which basically meant that there were no moral absolutes and that the ends justify the means. That is a fun boy to live, honestly. Yeah. Yeah. Do what you want.
Um, there you go. Yeah. Wow. I think I'm sad that I didn't learn this younger in life, but he used this philosophy to assert psychological control over the other members of the Billionaire Boys Club. They actually didn't even get salaries. They were mostly living on allowances from their wealthy parents, and Joe paid for their meals, gave them cash, and made himself the glue that held everyone together for them, but he was also their puppet [00:07:00] master.
This is where it starts feeling very cult like I would say, but behind the fancy polished outer image, the Billionaire Boys Club was really. Nothing more than a Ponzi scheme. Joe promised investors huge returns, but instead he was using new money to pay off old debts and to support a lavish lifestyle for himself In his inner circle, they had super sleek offices, flashy parties, and Joe was sending out fake financial statements to keep everyone believing the lies.
Mandy, do you know how I know that? We're not big schemers. I'm sitting in my closet and you're sitting. In your room. There's nothing flashy lifestyle about what we have going on. We were literally just talking before we started recording about how we can't believe after eight years of doing this podcast that we are still recording from closets and bedrooms and no flashy studio here.
No. We really messed up somewhere. One investor named Steve Weiss brought in his own friends and family who collectively invested over $1.5 million [00:08:00] by mid 1983. They had up to 75 investors and Joe had big dreams of having the whole group living and working together in a luxury condo commune. I dunno, that's important.
Can you imagine? Oh, like a frat house on steroids. It just. It's gonna be smelly just with this many men anywhere, but No, no, but this is where the cult vibes come in because you're like living and working together. Like Yeah, but also having somebody, this is too much Joe allowances and stuff, and somebody being in charge of like paying you what your allowances to eat.
I call it parenthood, but at this point in your life, it would be called a cult. Yes. In order to make this all happen, though they'd need more cash, Joe managed to convince a bioscientist named Gene Browning to give up the rights to a machine called the Cyclotron in exchange for a house car and salary.
The Billionaire Boys Club then launched a fake company called Micro Genesis to fund the project. Which is so [00:09:00] funny to me. 'cause like you have an idea, like somebody has this machine and it's something, why aren't you going the legit way with this? Right? I, I don't really get it. But Joe rented expensive office space and acted like they were these huge tech moguls.
But in reality, micros was losing money rapidly. $900,000 was lost, which would be about $3 million today. Ouch. In 1983, Joe met Ron Levin and this was a man with an even worse reputation than his own. He was a conman living at large in la, and Joe saw him as a financial savior. At first, Ron laughed at Joe's pitch, but Joe claimed that another investor had actually already joined in, and then eventually Ron offered Joe.
A fake $5 million trading credit line just to see what Joe would do. So it's like the scammers turning the scam on each other. I love kind of thing. So Joe actually used the fake account to make fake trades and he fake earned a fake $14 [00:10:00] million on paper. Anyway, that's how it appeared. And so he's thinking he's about to cash in big because he's, you know, earned this.
$14 million and he starts celebrating. The Billionaire Boys Club leased condos, bought fancy cars, and they just continued to really dream big. But that excitement soon collapsed when Joe, who never received any money, finally contacted the broker and learned that the entire account was in fact a fraud.
There was never any real money in the first place, and Ron Levin had actually used Joe's fake trading gains to con another firm into giving him a loan. Oh my gosh. That's a lot. There's a lot to unravel. And this is also why I am like, I couldn't even be someone who investigates financial crimes like this because immediately I'm already lost and confused and like I just wanna go sit down and watch TV and not think about this anymore.
I know I would need, like, I would need a visual, but still something wouldn't add up to me. Like I would still be messing it up. But Mandy, how many times do you think they use the word bro? [00:11:00] To each other during this time. I just, that's all I hear is like, bro, bro, in my head. Yeah. I would love to know the instance, like the number of instances that bro was used back then.
It's probably, well, it's actually probably as much as like kids say Mom in a day, like I had just see these guys as total bros. Yeah, definitely. Ron later told Joe that he had used the money to buy a shopping center in Chicago and promised the Billionaire Boys Club a share, but that was also a big fat lie.
So again, yeah, con men conning each other is just a beautiful thing. But Joe admitted what had happened to the rest of the billionaire boys, and according to later statements from some of the members, Joe also was very mad and vowed that he would one day kill Ron Levin for messing with him like this.
Oof. So around the same time, Dean Carney introduced Joe to another man named Jim Pittman, who went by Jim Graham. I guess, uh, just an alias. I mean, if you've got this many names going on, nobody has a real name, like it's fishy. I don't know a lot of adults that change [00:12:00] their names, just no on a whim, but. You do you boo I guess.
Yeah. You know, it is, uh, interesting because now you know, those, um, websites like been verified or like other Yeah. Binders. Like sometimes I'll look myself up 'cause I don't want my information on them. Right. So like I try to find myself and then go and do the form mm-hmm. To get it removed. But I have found that like some of them will list like aliases and of course my real name is Amanda.
But like, it will, it has Mandy on there because I've gone by Mandy for so long. But I'm like. It's not an alias. I know. It's just my nickname. Like I'm just being lazy. Yeah, exactly. Right. Like, don't put like alias, like it makes it, it seem so like nefarious or something. Well, I'm pretty sure if yours is like that, then people like Jim Pittman.
Jim Graham, right. There's this like, you know, a thousand of them. James, Jimmy, Jimmy, all of them. Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. So Jim, whoever he was, he was a very muscular guy and he said that he was a former pro football player and a weightlifting champion, but he also is actually fleeing [00:13:00] felony charges. Despite his past though, he had extensive knowledge of guns and explosives, which earned him a spot in Joe's inner Circle, and he was actually appointed head of security for the Billionaire Boys Club.
Remember those silly titles that didn't mean anything, I guess Head of security probably. Meant something to Joe. Yeah, I'm thinking that one something. Yeah, for sure. But by this time, the stakes had really never been higher with this whole Ponzi scheme starting to unravel, and just the humiliation of being conned by Ron Levin.
Joe came up with a plan for revenge. He was gonna force Ron to sign over assets and then he'd murder him and make it look like Ron just disappeared. Joe made a to-do list, not a, not a little to-do list on a post-it note. This was seven pages long and it included staging a business deal, planting documents at Ron's house, and outline steps like taping.
Ron's mouth shut, handcuffing him, and horrifically killing his dog, which seems. So unnecessary, but it was written down as part of this plan. [00:14:00] The plan was to make it look like Ron willingly signed a one and a half million dollars check over to Micro Genesis, and then they were gonna fake a trip to New York that Ron would never return from.
And we're gonna get into how they pulled this off after a quick break to hear a word from this week's sponsors. So before the break, we were discussing Joe Hunt and his seven page list of how he was gonna pull off what he believed was the perfect crime, which would be killing Ron Levin and covering his tracks.
On June 6th, 1984, Joe, who was 25 years old, carried out the plan with Jim Pittman. They staged a meeting and coerced Ron into signing the check. Then they handcuffed him and shot him to death in his bedroom. The men then wrapped Ron's body in a comforter, put it in the trunk of a car, and dumped it in a remote area of the Soledad Canyon.
But Joe later told Dean that Ron was shot multiple times to prevent identification. Dean later said that Joe shared some gruesome details of the murder and seemed a little too [00:15:00] enthusiastic about the whole thing. Unfortunately for Joe, he had made a critical mistake while committing the murder. He ended up leaving that seven page to-do list at Ron's house, all this planning, and you didn't add to the bottom of a list with an asterisk.
Bring this with you, like throw me away. Anything that's crazy. But Joe told some of the billionaire boys members about the murder and told them if they said anything to anyone that they'd be dealt with severely. He bragged to his most trusted members that it was the perfect crime and that nobody would ever find Ron's body.
So after Ron was killed and disposed of, Jim Pitman went to New York to pose as Ron and to use his credit cards around the city to fake a trail. But while at New York City's Plaza Hotel staff noticed that Ron Levin had racked up a $2,000 bill. And this was mostly from limousine use. It was that movie blank check.
Remember that kid? Blank check? Oh yeah. Look, that's what this feels like. Like it's a little too [00:16:00] much. Um, but a credit check showed that the American Express card was significantly overdue. So security from the hotel intercepted him in the lobby and he was arrested and booked under the name Ronald Levin, though in fact it was Jim Pitman.
Joe actually flew to New York to bail Jim out. And in an ironic twist, even though Ron was murdered, he did kind of get the last laugh. That $1.5 million check he was forced to sign, actually bounced. The entire deal was a con. One of the members of the club named Raymond told David May what Joe had confessed about murdering Ron.
David May then took this information to his own father and they hired an attorney and spoke with the Beverly Hills police. The attorney explained that building a case against Joe would be challenging as there were no eyewitnesses, no body, no physical proof, no missing persons report, and the fact that Joe had a reputation for dishonesty.
He advised them to keep going about their [00:17:00] daily routines to avoid raising any suspicions. While investigators worked to uncover evidence, they were ideally looking for documents. Ron Levin's father eventually reported his son missing, and at that point, authorities learned about Ron's lengthy record of fraud, theft, and scamming.
Given his history as a con artist, they weren't exactly surprised that he had vanished, and initially they dismissed the case without so much as visiting Ron's apartment. But in the fall of 1984, several of the members of the Billionaire Boys Club. Informed police that Joe had actually murdered. Ron Dean Carney contacted police and agreed to testify against Joe and other members.
He actually feared that if he didn't work with the police, he'd be implicated along with Joe, which, yeah, you would've been, yeah, less than two weeks after Ron's murder, Risa es Lania was introduced to the Billionaire Boys Club. He was really eager to join after he attended a party where he was boasting about his father's alleged wealth and [00:18:00] said that he was worth around $30 million from the opium trade.
So of course, the billionaire boys hear this and they're very interested. Since they were desperate for a new source of funding, things really escalated quickly. From there, the club came up with what they were calling Project Sam, which involved kidnapping Risa's father, which Reza was in also on this, right?
Like he's like, sure, let's kidnap my dad. And hold him for ransom, I guess. Risa's Father Hadda was planning a trip to Europe, so the group rushed to act quickly. They wanted to use this already planned trip to deflect suspicion and to mask his disappearance, just like they had done with Ron Hadda was a 57-year-old former Iranian Army major and religious advisor to the Shaw's government.
He was living in exile in Belmont and he disappeared on July 30th, 1984. Joe, Jim Pitman, Dean Carney and Ben Doty [00:19:00] all conspired to kidnap his diet for ransom. They disguised themselves in UPS uniforms, and Joe and Ben used chloroform to subdue him after they broke into his home. They put him in a large steamer trunk and loaded it into a camper truck, which they had borrowed from Joe's father.
Then they drove in the night from San Francisco to Los Angeles as members of the club listened to, had diet as he was gasping for air inside this trunk that he was locked in. At one point, Dean drilled some ventilation holes, but he ended up covering them again because Hadia wouldn't stop screaming, and they didn't want any passerbys to hear the commotion coming from the car.
Hope to torture her diet enough so that he would be more than willing to sign over his power of attorney, which I, I mean. I guess, but like, I just honestly don't understand the logic there. Um, so at some point though, they realized that had diet had stopped gasping for [00:20:00] air. And so Dean opened the trunk and found him unresponsive and with no pulse, and he announced to the group at that point that had diet had passed away.
He died of suffocation while inside the trunk. After his death, the group forged had diet's signature to gain access to his accounts. But unfortunately, Risa, his son, had heavily exaggerated how much money his father had, and the billionaire boys soon discovered that had diet's, financial accounts either had very low balances or were absolutely empty.
So they kill this guy. To take his money that he doesn't have and then end up just forging his signature. So at, at worst, this could have just been a forgery. There's no money. Again, Joe's getting screwed in that sense, but to let somebody die and end up still forging their signature and he still doesn't have money, it's the wildest thing I've ever heard.
Crazy, crazy. So since Dean had already been granted immunity for his [00:21:00] testimony and cooperation with the police, he was able to lead the investigators to had diet's. Body Dean was then also placed in witness protection program. Three months later, federal agents found had diet's remains, which by that point had been scattered by animals.
At this point, the walls were closing in and Tom May joined his brother David, and a few others to help the police. Detective Les Zolar, who was investigating Ron's disappearance didn't feel like they had enough to make a case, but in a wild twist of fate. Ron's father gave them permission to search Ron's house and that's when they found Joe's handwritten to-do list, the one where he was detailing exactly how to pull off a murder and to make it look like a disappearance.
The detectives called Tom May to clarify whose handwriting it was, but he had to leave a message. At the same time, Joe started to become suspicious of the maze and he went over to Tom's apartment to search for documents. While there, he listened to the voice [00:22:00] message that Detective Zola left and Joe was furious hearing this, and he shared a plan with the members of the club to run the May Brothers off the road using a truck.
However, he wouldn't get to do any of that. Joe was arrested on September 28th, 1986 for the murder of Ron Levin. Joe was able to stay calm while Detective Zola questioned him up until the point they showed him that to-do list and that's when Joe asked for an attorney. Jim Pitman was also charged with Ron's murder, and Joe and Jim were also accused of killing Risa's.
Father had diet with the help of Risa himself. Ben Dosti Joe was released on bail in both cases after his girlfriend's father, who was a Hollywood agent named Bobby Roberts, posted a $2 million bond. He also hired attorney Arthur Barons to represent him. Ben Dosti Andreza were both convicted of the abduction and murder of Hadda, and they were sentenced [00:23:00] to life in prison.
Joe and Jim were to be tried later. The trial for Ron Levin's murder began in 1987 in Santa Monica. The big challenge for prosecutors was that they had to use circumstantial evidence to prove that Ron was actually dead. They also had to establish that Joe and Jim were responsible for his death. They argued that Joe and Jim shot Ron out of revenge after Ron had duped Joe in the fake commodities trading scheme.
They further argued that the motive was a desire to raise money for the struggling Billionaire Boys club. Maybe call it the a hundred, a hundred Airs boys club. Like let's just bring our expectations down a lot because this is crazy. They described this lengthy to-do list as well as several other lists found on several yellow legal pads.
Founded Ron's home that were written by Joe. He wrote down instructions like tape, mouth, kill dog, and explain situation and. We'll keep explaining the situation after one last break to hear a word from this week's [00:24:00] sponsors. So before the break, we were just getting into the trial for the murder of Ron Levin.
There were 62 witnesses called to the Stand. One of the former Billionaire Boys Club members, Jeff Raymond, testified that Joe bragged about killing Ron Levin. Jeff was the first ex-member of the club to actually break the silence about the murder and report it to the police. As you would expect, Dean Carney was the state star witness.
He had received death threats, so he actually wore a bulletproof vest during the trial and as we said before, he was placed in the witness protection program. Dean explained that Joe had been deceived by Ron and the Billionaire Boys Club was left in financial ruin and that's why Joe killed him. Dean said that he helped Joe create the to-do list and plan for Ron's murder, and said that on June 7th, 1984, Joe woke him up and showed him a check for one and a half million dollars, and claimed that Ron had been forced to sign it before they killed him The night before he said Joe confessed to [00:25:00] killing Ron, and days later he told him that he had shot Ron in the head at his apartment and disfigured his body with multiple shotgun blasts to make identifying him impossible.
The next day, Joe returned to the burial site only to find the body missing, and he speculated that coyotes may have taken it. Joe also revealed that the check had bounced, which prompted Joe and Dean to practice forging Ron's signature in anticipation of some blank checks that they had ordered. Oh my gosh.
Yeah, so they were just planning, I guess, which is also like very risky because obviously at that time, like even if they didn't realize Ron had been murdered, like they would realize he was not around or he was missing, and so he's just right. There's all these. Checks that are being written, but he's nowhere to be found.
Like surely you can't get away with that for very long, which you should know. Yeah. It just doesn't seem very, um, very well thought out. Yeah. I would hope that if you wrote a $1.5 million check, the bank would be like, actually, we need to see you in person to make sure for sure you, the person is sending this money.
[00:26:00] It's crazy. And we need you to bring your driver's license, your birth certificate, like everything else is proof your dad to come with you. Just anything. It's, it's so much money that it's, yeah, it's just wild. It really is, but Dean actually had a key to Ron's mailbox, and so he was able to use that to look for and retrieve these blank checks When they actually did come in, Dean testified that when Joe found out some club members had spoken to the police, Joe started trying to think of a plan to frame a guy named David May for the crime.
Defense attorney Arthur Barons argued that the to-do list never mentioned killing anyone, and he claimed that disappearing was just simply Ron Levin's Ultimate Con. They argued that he faked his own death to escape a pending fraud case, which they said, explained why his body had not been found. And honestly, this is pretty smart for the defense.
Not that bad to say like, Hey, all these people are con artists. Like, what makes you think this guy didn't just go fake his own death and disappear? Like we all, like all these guys are up. To like no good. You know what I [00:27:00] mean? So like you would Yeah. It's actually not a bad way for them to go, considering there is no body.
I can totally see being on a jury and being like, I don't, I really don't know. Yeah. You know? And all they need is reasonable doubt. That's all the defense needs, and this is a great way to get it. For sure, so the defense only called four witnesses. Two were a couple from Arizona who claimed to have seen someone resembling Ron at a gas station the previous fall.
The other two were Joe's girlfriend, Brooke Roberts and her mother Lynn, who both provided Joe an alibi. Brooke testified that Joe was at home preparing for bed at the time of the murder, and her mother said that she spoke to both of them briefly on the phone that night. Family had used their Bel Air home as bail collateral, and Joe had been living with them during the trial.
Although the defense promised that Joe would testify, ultimately, he didn't take the stand. In April of 1987, after more than five months of trial and two days of deliberating, the jury [00:28:00] delivered their verdict. Joe was found guilty of first degree murder and robbery. In the case of Ronald Levin, he was sentenced to life in prison with a possibility for parole.
He was just 27 years old at the time of his sentencing. After his conviction, Joe spent decades trying to get it overturned or just to get his sentence reduced. He filed multiple appeals, but in 2016, federal courts denied his final habeas corpus appeal, effectively closing traditional legal routes. Joe was still determined to try so He appealed to the governor for clemency.
He claimed that he had been reformed and became a spiritual leader in prison. His supporters launched a free Joe Hunt campaign as of 2018. A website called Free Joe Hunt offered a $100,000 reward for credible evidence that could help secure Joe Hunt's release, including information about Ron's whereabouts or any plans he had to disappear.
Anything that would support Joe's defense that Ron staged his own death. Jim Pittman was [00:29:00] tried twice for Ron's murder, but both times resulted in a mistrial. He eventually took a plea deal and was sentenced to just three years in prison, but since he'd already been in custody for over three years, he was released on time served.
In 1993, Jim confessed to murdering Ron on a TV show called A Current Affair. He stated quote, yes, I did kill Ron Levin. But I can't be tried for it twice. End quote. Which is like the thing people always say you can't, you know, double jeopardy's a thing. So why don't people confess? This is like the first time I've ever heard someone say, yeah, yeah, I did it.
It's, you know, it's. Unheard of really. But despite his confession, police were not contemplating new charges. Jim ended up dying in 1997 from kidney failure in the trial for the murder of Hiday. Ben and Risa were both found guilty of second degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. However, both of their convictions were overturned 10 years later.
The court found that the jury had heard a tape that was never officially admitted into [00:30:00] evidence, and that was enough to overturn their convictions with a retrial possible. Ben pleaded guilty to manslaughter and kidnapping in August of 2000 and was sentenced to time served, which had been 12 years and eight months.
At that point, on November 6th, all the charges against Risa were dismissed. His lawyers argued that they could not properly cross examine Dean because his current identity and whereabouts were undisclosed due to his participation in the witness protection program, and they said that not being able to cross examine him violated Risa's Constitutional right to confront his accuser.
Risa admitted that he felt guilty for boasting about his father's wealth, and he called himself a stupid, naive young man. Joe went to trial for, had diet's murder in 1988, though he did start off with legal representation. Eventually he dropped them and he chose to represent himself after a few months of preparing for this, I guess.
And so in this time, the [00:31:00] trial gained widespread attention, especially when, uh, a local TV station re-air, the Billionaire Boys Club mini series just as jury selection was starting to begin. The trial ended up being lengthy and featured complex evidence, including information about Ron Levin's murder, which prosecutors used to establish a motive.
Joe countered by presenting his defense from the Levin case and claimed that witnesses had seen Ron alive after his alleged death. Prosecutors argued that Joe Dean and other members of the Billionaire Boys Club kidnapped and tortured her diet to extort money from him. They said that he died by accident after suffocating in the trunk.
Joe testified that there was no kidnapping. He said the group had helped Hadda escape from Iranian agents by smuggling him to LA where they safely delivered him. Joe claimed that Dean killed Hadda later on, all on his own. Prosecutors called 42 witnesses while the defense called a hundred, and Joe testified [00:32:00] for 19 days.
Oh my gosh. How much do you have to say buddy? 19 days. I know. Imagine. If that trial was, now imagine the tiktoks that would just be out. I mean, constantly. This is so much That's gotta be like the longest I've ever heard somebody testifying. Yeah. Yeah. And when you're like representing yourself, it's also, it's just giving very, like, it's very, it just seems like egotistical kind of to me.
Like I don don't think Absolutely. It wasn't 19 days of. Quality testimony. I'm sure it was like a lot of like self-serving nonsense on his part. Yeah. But after deliberating for 26 days, the jury was deadlocked in, uh, eight to four in favor of quitting Joe. So prosecutors ended up deciding not to retry the case and the judge dismissed it, which honestly, after all that 19 days of testimony, 26 days of deliberating like.
I'm surprised IED bring new charges against him, just for sure. Yeah. But let's talk about Joe's mindset, because really it's a lot. A [00:33:00] forensic psychology expert named Katherine Sland wrote a profile called Joe Hunt, white Collar Psychopath. She used Dr. Harris's checklist of psychopathic traits, which included superficial charm, lack of empathy.
Rationalization of harm and of course narcissism. Joe was clever, he was charismatic, and he was ruthless. Even as a kid, he was always obsessed with winning, even if that meant cheating. He knew how to spin a story, twist logic, and use language to dominate and manipulate. He was very persuasive and that's part of what made him very dangerous.
As of today, Joe Hunt is 65 and still serving his life sentence at the California Healthcare Facility. He's been pushing for clemency for years. In 2006, he married a woman named Jamie Thomas while in prison. What Mandy and I think is a crazy turn of events. Dean Carney actually changed his name, became a lawyer, and passed the California bar in 1985.
[00:34:00] Risa had a string of legal troubles. After his release, he was arrested in 2002 for drugs and driving on a suspended license. Then in 2012, while he was working as a taxi driver, he ran a red light and struck a pedestrian who later died. He was charged with vehicular manslaughter, but he failed to appear in court as of 2013.
There was an active warrant for his arrest bin Dosti has been smart and kept a low profile since his release. So if you're sitting there thinking like, well, what if Joe was lying to the others about killing Ron? Right? Like, what if he actually didn't kill Ron? And Ron really did fake his own death. Well, that is what Joe's legal team sure seems to think.
They've pointed to multiple alleged sightings, including a couple who claim to have seen Ron on Christmas Day at a restaurant. And there was also a Major D in Beverly Hills who said she saw him driving down the street, I guess, and a former reporter also swore that Ron greeted him in line at a movie theater.
A funeral director [00:35:00] claimed that Ron showed up at a funeral in Westwood and at that point he had white hair and a beard. So who knows? Prosecutors though, and the courts all agreed that Joe Hunt murdered Ron, and that's just the way it is. In one final bizarre twist, according to People Magazine, the Billionaire Boys Club Saga may have inspired another notorious murder case, which is the case of the Menendez brothers.
So apparently Eric and Lyle watched the 1987 NBC miniseries about Joe Hunt just weeks before killing both of their parents. What's even stranger is that Risa's older brother Amir, was classmates with Eric and actually testified during their second trial. Wild. Yeah. Since Joe's crimes, the story has been dramatized multiple times over there is the 1987 mini series that Joe actually tried and failed to block.
There's true TV's power privilege and justice IDs behind Mansion Walls and the 2018 feature film Billionaire Boys [00:36:00] Club, which was overshadowed a bit by controversy due to Kevin Spacey being involved in it. I actually, um, when I was telling my husband that we were covering this case, he was like, oh, I think he had.
Heard about this movie or like, I had never, I didn't realize that there was, I neither either. Um, yeah, so I apparently don't know where I was when, when that happened because I don't recall. But my husband was like, oh yeah, I think there's a, a movie or something. So, yeah. Yeah. The story is really, I, I don't know.
I, I said, I think I may have said last week that Ponzi schemes always are just like so wild to me because I never, I just don't understand how people get. Sucked into them, but it happens, like it really does happen. Oh yeah. And unfortunately in this case, two pe, two innocent people, um, were killed for, for money and for like greed and like Yeah.
For outrageous amounts of money that like, it doesn't even make any sense anyway. Right. Like we were saying, write me a check for one and a half million dollars. Like it doesn't even Sure. I will. It's not real stuff. Can I write it in crayon? Yeah. Right. It doesn't make any sense, but it really is like a fast [00:37:00] money kind of thing.
And I remember, this is years ago, Mandy, when we had an episode about a realtor who died in Arkansas, I think. And we had someone that was a defense trainer on that you knew. Do you remember this? I remember her saying something about sometimes when you're in a desperate spot, this idea of fast money, you will be more inclined to do it than if you were comfortable or something.
So sometimes people really do get in this like, oh my gosh, if I can just get this, then everything will be fine, and not think about all the consequences that it could be. And that always sticks with me. Yeah, because that's, I mean, desperation is like a very powerful motivator. Huge for sure. Yeah. So I guess in that way it makes sense.
But I do remember there was a Ryan Murphy, the Menendez Brothers few part series that was on last year or the year before, and I watched some of it. And a big part of it was them watching this billionaire boys club, which I don't remember that they named it that. I don't remember that. But then [00:38:00] like the scene going to them killing their parents.
But it was a lot of this that they could have gotten motivation or something like that from it. Wow. But yeah, that's really interesting. Pretty fascinating. Yeah, definitely. Alright guys, that was our story for this week. Thank you so much for listening. We will be back next week. Same time, same place. New story.
Have a great week. Bye.
