CNBC’S “American Greed” Profiles Shapiro

Life in prison is akin to hell on earth and honestly, is there any worse thing than forced solitude for someone who used to roll hard on South Beach – a little man with the nickname Mr. Big? A scorned narcissist with vendetta on the brain and all the time in the world to plot revenge.

CNBC’s “American Greed” series profiled Nevin Shapiro last week, again giving the pipsqueak exactly what he longs for – the spotlight and a platform.

As he sits and rots in a New Orleans prison with nothing but time, Shapiro bangs out scathing email after scathing email to any reporter who will listen.

“The public is going to hate me worse in the next coming months,” Shapiro, serving a 20-year sentence for a Ponzi scheme, wrote in numerous e-mails over the past few months. “It’s going to be severe and catastrophic. My feelings are getting inflamed and I’m going to pop off pretty soon with regards to them and the NCAA. I’m coming for them both [UM and former players] and I’m going to be successful.

“I’m taking that program down to Chinatown and the former players and links to that program. Why? Because the U.S. government lined up 47 former players to testify against me in open court if I went to trial. That in itself is motivation to shove it up their collective [butts].”

And there you have it, folks. More delusional rants from a crazy person with nothing but time and an axe to grind.

Shapiro, who spent eight months spilling the beans to Yahoo! Sports with one outrageous claim after another (strippers! hookers! abortions!) is now claiming that’s only the tip of the iceberg? Please.

Everything about Shapiro to date has been nothing but excess. Does anyone really believe Mini-Me held anything back helping Charles Robinson with his investigation; in what might’ve been his final moment in the sun and one chance to take UM out?

Thankfully the CNBC segment showed more bias in an hour that Yahoo! showed anywhere in its torrid tale. For those yet to see this recent segment of “American Greed”, some notes are below.

There’s a common theme regarding Shapiro. Whether it’s Miami locals and reporters or lawmen associated with the case, all tell of a twisted little man, scorned from a broken childhood and driven by greed and a desire for power and status.

DJ Irie, a staple at Miami Heat games and a longtime South Beach figure, made some great points about Shapiro in the documentary – most notably, that Shapiro would turn on a dime and was only out for himself.

Shapiro went from being someone who would defend “The U” to his death, but the minute he felt scorned, has made it his life’s goal to destroy his once beloved program.

“You definitely couldn’t say anything bad about the Hurricanes in Nevin’s face – in his presence. There would be problems”, said Irie. But from there, an about face.

“This was the guy that was always so cool and always just a really nice guy to me,” said Irie. “When that [Yahoo!] story broke, I was just disgusted. I was absolutely disgusted.”

Irie goes on, “The core of Nevin Shapiro – he’s someone that looks out for himself. At the end of the day, if things aren’t going his way, it’s ‘screw everything, I don’t care, it’s about me’ – and that’s not the Nevin that I thought I knew.”

Irie isn’t alone in that sentiment. Shapiro snowed countless people. Older, mature, smart, successful, well-off people who aren’t easily snowed and the type of people who pride themselves on their brains, savvy and track record.

FBI investigator Michael Ward uses “American Greed” as a platform to defend, or at least explain the actions, of any college-aged athletes who were enamored by Shapiro and caught in his web.

Ward calls the athletes ‘victims’ and goes on to say that, “Nevin Shapiro is a manipulator. He was able to seduce investors with a promise of large dollar amounts. And then he turns those same seduction techniques onto 18-, 19-, 20-year olds, offering them gifts and parties, sex – those are tools of seduction that have been used going back centuries.”

Some other notes on CNBC’s profile of Shapiro:

– Shapiro sets the tone right out the gate regarding his embellishing ways, emailing “American Greed” and letting them know they’d need “eight documentaries to fill this story”.

– Linda Jackson, a local attorney who represents some of Shapiro’s lenders, attended Beach High the same time as Shapiro. She pointed out that it was a rich school full of entitled kids and that Shapiro was a little guy who didn’t come from money (raised by single mom) and stated that even as a teen he was trying to compensate for that.

– Shapiro attended the University of South Florida, never earned his degree in Criminology, and wound up leaving school after punching a referee in the face during an intramural flag football game he was playing in.

– Tim Elfrink, reporter for the Miami New Times, has covered Shapiro and told “American Greed”, “I don’t think it’s a stretch from what I’ve heard about Nevin to speculate that he might have some kind of Napoleon complex going on. He always had an explosive temper.”

– In 1995, while trying to sneak twenty friends into a Miami nightclub on his birthday. When confronted by the owner, Shapiro lost it. Filmmaker Billy Corben was quoted as saying, “unwarranted”, “brutal” and “bloody”. Shapiro knocked out the owner’s tooth and destroyed his tear duct. Elfrink describes the event as defining, being that Shapiro set himself up as someone with the connections to get something done, but when proven to be a fraud, he lashed out.

–  Shapiro’s mother married Richard Armand Adam, a man who appeared wealthy (re: a mansion and a yacht) but eventually served time for “running a complicated multi-million dollar lending fraud”. Shapiro’s first taste of the good life and real money came through a mentor who introduced him to white collar crime. He learned nothing from his stepfather’s mistake and fall.

– When Shapiro left college in 1993 he started work at a grocery diverting company called Atlantic Wholesale. Kay Balbi, a co-worker at Atlantic, called him a statistic genius regarding sports knowledge, which he used to his advantage career-wise.

– In 1996, Premium Sales, another grocery diverting company at the time in Miami, had thirty-six people arrested for fraud (re: a massive investment scheme). Within a year Shapiro started his own grocery diverting scam, based on the model Premium Sales started. His company was Capital Investments.

– Shapiro was savvy and knew the game. He offered lenders a 14% return on short-term bridge loans. High rate of return and a quick turnaround meant big money and fast money. Investors rolled in as it was a simple story that made sense. Shapiro brought in investors from Miami and New Jersey, but earned an in-road to old money in Naples.

– Shapiro’s style wouldn’t work with the Naples community, but got his in with Sidney Jack Williams, who was embedded in the community as a real estate investor from Indianapolis. Williams invested $3.5M with Shapiro and became Capital Investments’ top pitchman. He told everyone he knew the deal was a “no-brainer” and in many cases offered a personal guarantee. In time Williams brought Shapiro sixty investors and $307M, which earned him a $12M commission.

– Shapiro had his accountant and CFO create false documents, invoices and financial statements, showing supposed action between Capital Investments and other companies that investor dollars were supposedly financing. In 2006, tax filings showed Capital Investments’ gross sales at $54M. In reality, Capital Investments did zero business from 2006 to 2009. In the end Shapiro still raised $930M in investor funds.

– Shapiro took $35M from investor funds, while paying off other investors with new investor money. Shapiro had a $5M mansion on Biscayne Bay, a yacht, a Mercedes S65 AMG (with a monthly payment of $4,700). Also bought a condo in the Bahamas, invested $7M in a North Carolina golf course and “blows through cash like a man obsessed”. Also paid $2.2M in credit card bills and $100,000 for Miami Heat court side seats, getting him in with Miami A-Listers. Shapiro also gambled away over $9M on sports.

– As the financial system imploded, Shapiro didn’t have the money to pay the lenders. He was too heavily leveraged and couldn’t afford to pay anyone back. Falling behind in paying back interest payments set things off with one investor that went to the feds.

– Feds were able to determine there was no business going on with Capital Investments due to checking the false invoices with the real companies whose names were being listed.

– Shapiro in his first meeting with feds gave up his ruse as he as tired of running, lying and hiding. He admitted there was no real business with Capital Investments and told his attorney, after surrendering to police, that he was glad the charade was over. Months later he’d tell “American Greed” that sometimes you’re “forced to plead guilty on something you don’t believe you are guilty of”.

– “Here’s someone who spent a lot of money – lavish gifts for individuals and then when he thought that, ‘OK now I’m in trouble I need you to step up and help me’ – when these people failed to do that, I do think that it had an impact on him,” said Ward, the FBI agent out of Newark working the case.

– Facing twenty years in jail, Shapiro turned his focus on taking down the people that used to be his friends.

– Corben stated that Yahoo! Sports seemed to do an eight-month investigation of “University of Miami students’ Facebook pictures”, in regards to the images that accompanied the story.

– “I go back to that incident when he was a young man in South Beach and sucker-punched that club owner. I think his instinct was to worm his way in as a power player as best he could and when things went on, he lashed out,” said Elfrink of the New Times.

The anti-UM contingent will choose not to listen to reason, but an unbiased party can look deeper at Shapiro and see the predator that always lurked. An evil, vengeful, manipulative, driven-by-greed individual who lived the lie as long as he could, took and took along the way and cheated until the moment he was caught.

Shapiro ruined lives just to make his own meaningless existence a little more exciting and when he realized that the “friends” he rented as Nevin-The-Self-Made-Man weren’t there for Nevin-The-Jailed-Ponzi-Schemer, he lost whatever was left of his already delusional mind and set his sights on revenge the same way he did financial success and a lavish lifestyle. This effort to take down UM is being treated as the start-up of Capital Investments – just another venture that he’s all-in on.

The more Shapiro talks, the more rope he gives to hang himself. One UM official spoke to the Miami Herald last week and claimed he or she personally there could be another one or two bowl games lost, as well as some scholarships, but there is still cautious optimism around Hecth – and with good reason.

UM’s understanding is that the NCAA will dismiss any of Shapiro’s claims that cannot be corroborated and they are highly skeptical about some of his allegations, most of which have not been corroborated.

Head coach Al Golden also stated that he thinks there will be a fair, logical ending to this mess.

“We think the worst is behind us,” said Golden. “The [current] coaches and 95 percent of the players weren’t here when that thing went on. There’s a shift by the NCAA to go after the perpetrators and that’s not us.”

The NCAA also hasn’t contacted many former players implicated by Shapiro. Samuel Shields, father to former Cane defensive back / wide receiver Sam Shields, told the Herald that there’s been no contact regarding Shapiro’s claim that he gave the younger Shields a TV. The elder Shields again reiterated that the claim was false.

UM also believes that former players, excluding those currently playing college football elsewhere, aren’t talking to the NCAA.

Shapiro presses on though, revenge on the brain and crazy as ever. “I’m more of a victim than a Ponzi schemer and assailant,” he said recently, though a safe bet no one is buying.

Why the Herald and other media outlets keep giving this hack a voice (instead of letting the NCAA and the process play out), that’s another story for another time. – C.B.

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