For the past three years, Jack Laurence has gone behind the bars of America’s toughest prisons, hearing the stories of robbery, arson, murder, and everything in between. He thought he’d heard it all… until he met one prisoner with a story unlike any other.A man who wasn’t just fighting for his freedom, but was on the verge of becoming one of the richest prisoners in the world, by suing Sean “P. Diddy” Combs for $100 million.But that was only the beginning. What Jack uncovered was a rabbit hole of alleged assault, corruption, cover-ups, and murder. A story so unbelievable it made headlines around the globe and left him questioning everything he thought he knew.If you think you’ve heard it all before when it comes to crime stories… you haven’t heard anything like this. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
While on a routine catch-up call with one of Jack’s contacts inside a Michigan prison, he’s told about allegations of a major issue within the judicial system that has started murmurs of the release of thousands of prisoners. At the centre of it all was one man, Derrick Lee Cardello Smith. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jack makes contact with prisoner Derrick Smith, who had just been awarded a $100 million settlement in a case against music mogul Sean Combs, aka P. Diddy. Derrick sets out some of his allegations and the paperwork he says he has to prove his claims. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
After spending three years in the army, Derrick is back in Detroit and looking for work. After finding employment as a bartender, he says he would meet and start working for Sean Combs and, in fact, supplies Jack with documentation that he says proves he soon became an investor in the music mogul’s record label. Things are looking up for Derrick, until at a party, Derrick alleges things take a dark turn. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Following on from Derrick’s alleged assault, he talks Jack through the moments after, where he claims to have confronted Diddy in a parking lot. Full of adrenaline and fear, he attacks him but is quickly subdued. After the dust settles, Derrick attempts to move on and get his life back on track, until one night, where his life changes forever. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
After Derrick drops a bombshell about hundreds of files being destroyed from criminal cases between the ’80s and ’90s in Detroit, Jack does some digging and speaks with a private investigator he knows in Michigan who not only knows about the purge but was, in fact, the one to uncover it. Jack struggles to work out what is real and what’s not as the stories from Derrick come thick and fast, and would conclude with allegations of an organised assassination on a police officer’s wife. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
As Jack sits in his office contemplating just where to start with this story, his phone unexpectedly rings. It’s Derrick and a woman reporting to be Carly Carpenter, a woman Derrick has claimed from the start was an alleged former victim of his who had since recanted her claims, stating she was made to lie and was now his biggest supporter. With Jack caught off guard, he’s completely unprepared for one of the most important interviews in this story, though little did he know just how unprepared he really was. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
With Derrick’s story quickly falling apart, he scrambles to get Jack back on side with more bizarre and incredible claims, but it’s too late; the house of cards has crumbled. As Jack bids farewell to Derrick, he makes contact with an investigative journalist named Michael Volpe, who has also been looking into Derrick’s claims and, more importantly, all his so-called ‘evidence’. Jack and Michael try to break down the man that is Derrick Smith, and just how he managed to scam the U.S. justice system. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.