Transcript of #BecauseMiami: Sports Hustles

Where was I? Brittany brave is back for the second week in a row on Because Miami. I never left. Wearing exactly the same thing.

That's rude. I obviously own multiple copies of this jumpsuit.

Me too. My closet is like Batman's closet. It's just like black t-shirts.

I wear the same thing every day. I like looking like a small lesbian plumber. That's really... It's fine.

It's a me, Mario.

Okay, I'm sorry.

I was trying to come up with the pun for that, for this super Mario lesbian pun.

Listen, I'm going to be honest with you. Baby Gap was having a sale and your girl cleaned up. That's it.

That's why she's been here the entire week. No one noticed her. She's just so petite. So small. So small. Stugatz has just been sitting on you. This this whole time.

Well, consensually.

We can say that now.

Speaking of little people, we are joined now by David Samson.

What an intro.

The Miami Hérald discovered last week that the Miami Mafia has hijacked a Marlins Park Luxury Box, known as an MVP Suite. That is Suite 18, I believe. That was meant for public or charity as their own private playground. So when the city of Miami and Miami Dade County Commissioners negotiated what was then the worst sports welfare deal in history in 2009, agreeing to spend probably over $2. 2 billion in taxpayer money to finance Marlins Park, the team agreed to provide this sky box as a community benefit for local nonprofit and community organizations. Instead, the city of Miami mobsters have used it as an executive perk, according to the Miami Hérald, lavishing themselves, their friends, their cronies with free game tickets, including that franchise history making sweep against the Yankees.

I mean, being a criminal is really stressful. So they're really going to need this suite to decompress and keep out all of their antics, right?

Listen, yes. Just trying to play devil's advocate. Even criminals need a place to- Exactly.

Even criminals need vacation.

To relax. But you've got Miami mayor Francis Suarez, a. K. You've got City Manager Art Manuel Noriega, the general, and you've got Ralph Rizzado, the newly elected Commissioner, who one of his first votes, by the way, was to cancel the election in November. He has already found the time to steal Yankees tickets from the city and charitable organizations. Now, I'm trying to figure out who the hell would negotiate some bullshit deal like this. Hey, look, it's David Samson, the former President of the Florida/Miami Marlins, who You negotiated this deal. Was this suite a bribe? David, were you trying to close the deal here? What was this community perk here?

It actually is just page 32 of an operating agreement, and it's under community benefit obligations. So this was just part of the negotiation. And you characterized it wrong. These are public documents that I just happen to have, believe it or not, with me.

How convenient.

In a bound book that you get when you do stadium deals or any deals. So this These are the signed, executed copies that are available in public. But I should point out that the suite, it was asked for immediately during the negotiation by the city and the county negotiators, and we were willing to give them the use of a suite, and they wanted it to say, and it specifically says that the suite is for public and/or charity use. And public use means the commissioners. And there's actually a specific way to determine whether the suite will be used by the commissioners or for charity, because we agreed, because I was in a good mood that particular Wednesday, that when it was used for charity, we'd put food in the sweet. But when it was used by the commissioners, they would have to pay for food in the sweet. It's all right here in section 7. 3. You show down, David.

Did I ever.

Because I'm not going to be in me.

What a bird. They have to cater for themselves.

But what was this something you were like, Okay, if this is what I need to get it done, quid pro, bro, take your suite? Was this something you were anxious to give up?

It's very common. When we did our projections, assuming a sold out stadium didn't happen, assuming every suite would get sold didn't happen, we calculated that one suite would not be a revenue generating suite. And when the stadium was designed, we knew that was going to happen. Just like when we calculated how much we'd make with outfield wall signage, we knew that the city and county would get part of the outfield wall. You actually hire a company to calculate what your revenue can be in a ballpark. It turned out not to be the case, but you calculate what it can be. And so we knew exactly what we were giving as part of this, but it was a very highly negotiated provision. This whole Section 7 took up so much of my time. We're not talking hours. We're talking weeks and months in order to to get this done because these were the things that meant the most to the commissioners. Like, All right, what do we get? And you're seeing it manifested that they get to go to a Yankee game. Yipiekeye. I'm going to set aside for a moment the fact that you said your projection said that you were going to sell all of the sweets.

What the hell projection was that?

Listen, there's three types of projections that you have to give to baseball. There's a downside case, a base case, and an upside case. The upside case, of course, is selling all your inventory. The downside case is I can see from where we are, and the base case is what you expect to happen.

Let's talk about this negotiation, you said, that took up so many weeks and months of your life on this deal. Clearly, the interest was more on the public use rather than the and/or- Charity. Charity use. Is that right?

Yeah, I love where your head's at because I didn't care. You have to keep in mind that I just wanted to get the provision negotiated and how they allocated it during the course of the term of the lease, the 38 years, it really was of no relevance to me because they had the right to choose as they want. And we had it very specifically how they would do it. And we talked about what they would do for home games, for dual events. For opening day was a big thing. Opening day is split between the county and the city. But the other 80 games, it's 40 that the county controls and 40 that the city controls. I remember the negotiation, clear as day because the county didn't want to give the city anything. It also sounds like it haunt you. The city wanted the whole thing, and we ended up settling at 40: 40 and them going together to opening day.

Wow, I'm exhausted even hearing this.

That's one little paragraph of a book that's the size of... This is the book size right there. I don't know if you can see it, but that's how thick it is.

Do you bring this with you everywhere you go? If only for self-protection. If you're walking down downtown Miami. You're walking papers.

Right. So I used to actually carry around all of the agreements during the negotiation because you never knew when you'd get a call from somebody. I always had it with me. But now that it's finished, it's neatly on a shelf behind me on the set of nothing personal.

I'd have to think that this didn't surprise you, but when this report came out in the Miami Hérald about Francis Suarez saying, How can I help myself? I guess this not only did not shock you, but this was consistent with the use that you recall negotiating back in '09?

Yeah, to me, it was a big nothing burger. I love the fact that you attacked it. I love that it got news. But this is the stadium open in 2012, for crying out loud. It's not like the agreements are under cover. They're literally available in public. All Pablo Tori has to do is read them, and anyone can find out anything. So no, when I read the article, it was literally nothing.

Right, but how was Pablo catching strays? Because of my hemy right now.

Oh, he's got to find out. He finds out stuff. Oh, he's not yet. And this one's easy to find out because it's literally in public. You're right.

I'm the one who fucks around, to be fair. It's Pablo that finds out. David, before we go, I have to ask you about this. This budget year brings extraordinary challenges. Miami Dade County's mayor is looking for hundreds of millions of dollars in savings as her team crafts the budget for next fiscal year. Daniela Lavine-Cava unvealed her proposed budget today. The general fund, The cost of operating the county is $3. 4 billion. There's an approximate $400 million deficit. The county funds things like the Sheriff's office, the County Fire Department, transportation, parks, and other core services. While dealing with the deficit, Commissioners voted in favor of giving FIFA millions of dollars to bring World Cup matches to Hard Rock Stadium. 46 million is the amount that everybody's been talking about, that the Miami Dade County is going to be subsidizing the corrupt billionaires at FIFA to have the World Cup Actually, this was after the fact. They already got the World Cup. This wasn't like a quid pro quo, to be fair. But it's actually more than that, because prior to this, years ago, Steven Ross, the owner of the Miami Dolphins and the stadium, of course, that World Cup will be taking place down here in Miami, he negotiated to increase the incentive that he gets for bringing in a World Cup to 15 million.

So when we keep saying 46 million, that's way low. The the subsidy that the broke-ass taxpayers of Miami are responsible for is well over $60 million for FIFA World Cup, and we have a $402 million budget deficit this year, David.

It's a little bit of apples to oranges because the money that's being used to pay Steve Ross, that comes out of a totally different bucket, and you can't cross the buckets. And you can take that up in Tallahassee if you want, but that's the law. So the budget shortfall can't be made up by some change in what money is used, the tourist money that's used for events or for convention centers or for sports facilities or part of the deal for the heat, the dolphins, the marlins, et cetera. It really is all separate buckets. And so in order to get the shortfall done, what this county does is they look at all the different ways that they can cut items in the budget, knowing there's certain what's called fixed expenses. And the deal with Steve Ross, it's a fixed expense. There is nothing they can do about it. They can't change it. They can't open it. And in terms of voting for FIFA, what you don't want to do is have an event in your community that all of a sudden is not properly budgeted for or funded because then it can actually impact other parts of your budget if it goes full-fire festival.

So this is pretty common when there's extra money that's attached to big jewel events that you get.

But they voted to increase the amount of money, the subsidy That's Steven Ross is getting. When you say they can't change it, they can't take it back, they increased it.

They can change it in their favor.

I don't understand. They can make it higher, they can't make it lower?

That's exactly right. Oh, wow.

That's exactly right.

How convenient is that?

Well, listen, it's all done by voting. This is not like Steve Ross or Infantino called up and said, Hey, do this or else. It's all part of the negotiations that take place when you're awarded a World Cup. It's a complicated thing when you get a dual event like that.

Personally, I'm annoyed because I'm not really a big soccer fan, so on a personal level.

You know what they say? I want either less corruption or more of an opportunity to participate in it. I love how there's different buckets. It's really just our bucket. They're all our buckets. It's just the taxpayer money buckets. You You can cross the streams, but you can't cross the buckets. I love this town. The famous proverb. David Simpson. David Simpson. Thank you.

Thank you.

This episode is supported by FX's The Lowdown, starring Ethan Hawke. Allow us to introduce you to Lee Raybon, a quirky journalist/ rare Bookstore owner/ unofficial truth seeker who's always on the tail of his latest conspiracy. This time, his most recent exposé puts him head to head with a powerful family that rules Tulsa. Meaning only one thing, he must be onto something big. Fx's The Lowdown premieres September 23rd on FX. Stream on Hulu.

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Com/go/nfsundayticket-term. Limited time offer. I've designed some very revolutionary technology. The latest one Saves Lives, which is basically a platform where individuals can store all of their medical records, and if they wanted to, to add their DNA, and when they have any medical emergency, the EMS has all of your information. Right now, that doesn't exist. This revolutionizes medicine. We have a system called LifeWallet with biometrics. We can register patients before Before they go to the doctor. Those are the dulcetones of former Miami hurricanes, NIL sugar Daddy. Man. John H. Ruiz, who we have been talking about on this program for some years, who went public with this shady SPAC, a special purpose acquisition company, that almost immediately crashed. At one point, they had threatened to actually delist the company because it was trading like a penny stock. It has rebounded now to $2 and change somewhere around there. But it's really just this law firm that the SEC has been investigating for a number of years due to all kinds of Shadyness, including some alleged financial improprietes, possibly some alleged fraud or misrepresentation of what the company is and what it can do.

Possibly not even being a company at all.

It is definitely a company the company, the question is, what the hell does it do? For a while, he actually changed the name of the company because any going concern, the first thing they do is they rebrand. They change the name of the operation.

I think we have a term for that. It's called an alias.

They called it Life Wallet. You heard in that clip that he claims that he designed. Well, the term he used is he described as he designed this technology. Joining us now on the program is Norberto Menendez, the man who designed that technology, as I understand it, the founder of Life Wallet, a software engineer who just sued John Ruiz and won $12 million. Hell, yeah. We are also joined by his attorney, Scott Diamond, who won that case. Obviously, a pretty good attorney if you just won $12 million. Scott, what exactly happened here? What was the lawsuit about and what was this victory about? When How did we get paid?

Well, if you could answer that second question, I'd appreciate it. I can tell you the case was basically a contract dispute, right? Mr. Menendez was approached by John Ruiz to sell his technology, including the name Life Wallet you were just referencing, in addition to some other information and other technology and software platforms. Basically, Ruiz bought the stuff and never paid for it. We ended up suing for essentially that breach of contract, and the jury agreed that that was the deal, and then they never paid us what they owed us, and they gave us every penny we asked Norberto, you heard John Ruiz in that clip saying he designed this technology.

Did John Ruiz design this technology?

The technology of the biometrics is something that we had designed before and that we had built before. It's something that took us a bit of time to develop because it worked on iOS, it worked on Android. So that component is something that we had designed in the past.

He acquired it, he acquired Where did he offer to buy it from you. What was the deal that you guys made, that the jury found, in fact, that you guys made?

We had an oral agreement, which was referred to as a gentleman's agreement, that included the purchase of our intellectual property. We had a health care platform that we had developed over five or six years, and he purchased those assets.

So he purchased them without paying for them? Did he tell you? Confused. Did he put this on Klarna so he could do it in payments?

It's a shitty deal you made there, Norby.

Well, that's a problem and a difficulty with an oral contract. But at the end of the day, the jury listened to both guys testify, and we explained what we said the deal was, and they agreed. And so the outcome was that he was supposed to pay us what he promised to pay us back in 2021.

Can I just say I already trust hearing the word biometrics from both of these men than I ever did from John Ruiz.

We have biometric technology. I wasn't entirely sure if he knew what that meant.

It's how I feel when I go on dates in Brickle and I ask guys what they do for a living, and they're like, biometric technology. We have biometric technology. That saves lives. It's going to be amazing. It's forever. Let's get a bottle. Let's celebrate. We only live once. And they call you Bro.

Yeah. Wolo. They say Wolo?

Wolo.

Yeah, exactly. So $12 million. Was that what the deal was? That was what the oral agreement was for? That's why that amount?

Correct. That's what we asked for, and the jury gave us every penny.

How did this go bad, Norby? I remember reading some details about a meeting that you had with John Ruiz where shit got dark.

Yes. Basically, essentially how the agreement went bad is that a payment never came for the IP.

But he's talking about the meeting. It's unusual as a lawyer to be able to use the word, in a pleading that you file, and it's even more unusual to be able to say it during your jury argument. But basically, that was the quote from John Ruiz. That's what everyone admitted that he said to and got in his face in a meeting, and that's why Norb eventually left the company.

But what did he say? What did John Ruiz say? So right in Norb's face.

We were in a meeting and talking about figuring out some solutions to connecting the data of other departments. Basically, we got to a point where John was explaining how to do it, and I told him, We I don't know how to do it. The problem is that we need additional people to do some things that needed to be done for certain technologies that we were working on. Then he looked at me aggressively and he walked towards me. I was sitting down in a meeting with 15, 20 people. And then he walked towards me and he said, I could fuck you up real bad. I looked at him and I said, You probably can. And then he said, he repeated, I could fuck you up real bad, and if you don't like it. And then I said, Okay, stop. I don't like it, and I'm leaving. And I left the meeting. The meeting was ajourn at that point, and that was my last day.

This was like a professional environment? You said 20 some odd people in the room?

Well, you could call it professional, but it was an executive meeting, basically. Okay.

The only thing that John Ruiz looks like he could fuck up box of croquetas.

Can I just say-We have biometric technology. Also, by the way, if this guy came up to me, he sounds like a Muppet. They're being threatened by like, I could fuck you off.

He was out of breath on the way over.

All right, the F-bombs.

All right, let's not do that anymore.

He had to walk all the way around the table.

Yeah, he doesn't look like a picture of health. By the way, call me next time he says that to you. I got you. Believe it, I'm scrappy.

You're like a Shalala in a half high. You're like- Yeah, it's called Napoleon Compact.

I'd stay far away from it.

She's scrappy. You had this judgment, 12 million bucks. Again, it's on paper for the moment. How do you turn that paper into a bank transfer here? Do you take LifeWalet coin? Has John Ruiz launched some cryptocurrency now? What are next steps here, Scott?

Well, we're still getting it reduced to a judgment. There's post-trial motions and this and that, but eventually it will be. We'll have our judgment, and then we'll start to collect on it, and we'll find out what there is there. There's a lot of creditors out there. We're not the only ones, so these assets may be encumbered, but we won't find out until we start showing up with sheriffs and so. That's phase two.

Yes, this is the grab him by the ankles, turn him upside down, and shake the pocket set?

Shake the change out of him. I really want to be a part of phase two, so if you guys need backup, let me know.

She can stand on my shoulders and we'll be about the right height, maybe.

We'll be about five feet tall.

We'll be about 5. Oh, come on. You Five, six. We'll be like five, six, I think, with you on my shoulders, Sarah. I'll still be taller than you.

Or how guys say, 5, seven in the right lighting and angle. Yeah.

By the way, and I think the real takeaway from this is hire the lawyer whose name is Diamond, right? I mean, holy shit, right?

And get a And get a girl in phase two whose last name is brave.

You want to get that money, you hire Diamond, right? Get me Scott. Diamond and brave. That's the name. Get me Scott Diamond. That's the name you like.

We should go into business together, and we should just claim for the bitches, Get Money, Diamond and brave.

Let me see if that URL is taken already. I just want to say that... Tate the phone.

Remax.

I think that's our whole tone.

That is your ringtone, dude. Norberto Menendez, Scott Dimon, congratulations, and good luck to you from here.

Thanks, guys. Nice seeing you all. Thank you very much.

Brittany brave. Thanks so much for being here again. You all got to Google Brittany brave, Indiegogo, or Indiegogo Muchacha.

Or Indiegogo Brittany brave. Or if you just scream into your computer, I want to send a small woman money for her documentary, I believe. If you do it three times and click your heels.

And Beatle just to show up. I believe you'll get a lot of different documentaries if you actually just say that, generally speaking.

You'll get a whole bunch of content.

Or go to Instagram at Brittany brave, and you'll also find everything you need there to support the cause here of broke ass comedians in to make entire movies about the past, present, and future of their comedy scene. Cocains.