Someone in this story is a PSYCHOPATH...

one person in this story is revealed to be a complete and total psychopath at the end but before we get into today's story if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format then you've come to the right place because that's all we do and we upload three or four times every week so if that's of interest to you please offer to babysit the like buttons kids and give them candy and soda and then send them home with whistles and whoopee cushions also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads all right let's get into today's stories [Music] in 2008 28 year old chris smith was an up-and-coming star in the lead generation business lead generation is not a flashy business basically you create these ads that are designed to generically help people with things like lowering their mortgage payments or reducing their credit card debt and in these ads you leave behind a 1 800 number for anybody interested to call and the people that do call their information is taken down and then the lead generator the person who made that ad they sell that information to mortgage brokers and debt consolidators and anybody else that wants access to that lead chris's ability to create these really compelling ads and get people to call said number was so good that it caught the attention of another up-and-comer in the lead generation space a man by the name of ed shin ed worked for a lead generation company called lg tech in southern california and ed wound up hiring chris to come onto their team as a consultant right away chris and ed totally hit it off despite being very different people chris was a surfer bro who wore flip-flops and t-shirts every day and never went to college ed was a very sharply dressed college-educated father of three who went to church every sunday but where they overlapped was their shared desire to become fabulously wealthy after working together for a little while at lg tech and doing quite well for themselves they realized they could actually make a lot more money if they left lg tech and formed their own lead generation business and so in early 2009 they did just that they left lg tech and they formed a new company called 800 exchange and right away it took off generating millions and millions of dollars in revenue 80 of which was profit during this incredible time chris used some of his money to buy a brand new range rover and a beautiful condo in laguna beach and he fell in love with this beautiful ballet dancer named erica by and large chris seemed to be putting his roots down and really building a life for himself as for ed despite his squeaky clean outward appearance as being this all-star family man and father he was using his cash to party and gamble in las vegas when ed was at lg tech he would regularly go to las vegas to generate business and while he was there he developed a gambling addiction when he and chris formed 800 exchange ed continued to go to las vegas to drum up business it was something he was good at but when he and chris started making money hand over fist his gambling addiction grew tenfold and he went completely off the rails ed was spending so much money in las vegas sometimes up to six figures an hour that one of the main casinos there would fly him in their private jet out to las vegas and they would put him in their very best suite fully comped it's unclear how aware chris was of ed's crazy spending habits because chris rarely went to las vegas with it the men were living their respective dreams until october of that year when ed was charged with embezzlement their former employer lg tech had alleged that ed had siphoned off about two and a half million dollars from their business to fund his wild las vegas lifestyle ed told chris these allegations were totally false but chris was shaken he was worried that if he didn't do something about this ed could potentially embezzle money from 800 exchange and so chris went out and got a lawyer to begin protecting himself from his business partner over the following few months ed and chris attempted to run 800 exchange before ed's trial date but it was just too difficult because the trust had been totally destroyed by these allegations and in may of 2010 ed was convicted of felony embezzlement in order to avoid jail time ed had taken a deal that meant he would need to pay roughly eight hundred thousand dollars of restitution to lg tech but ed did not have eight hundred thousand dollars the only way he could make this payment would be if 800 exchange the business fronted the money but in order to do that he would need chris to sign off that he was okay with that because he owned half of the business when ed approached chris chris said no i'm not signing that i'm worried you're going to take advantage of me too but after a couple of weeks of talking to his lawyer chris finally told ed that he was ready to meet up with him and come to some sort of agreement and so on june 4th the two men met up at the 800 exchange office and chris decided to just sell his portion of the business to ed for about a million dollars and then ed can do whatever he needs to do with the business account to pay down his debts despite how crazy this situation was chris actually felt like this was kind of a win for him he got a 1 million dollar payday and now he wanted to go out and celebrate so a couple of days after this meeting with ed chris emails his family and says he's going to go on a three-week vacation to south america and just go surfing the whole time he's chartered this 45-foot yacht he's hired a captain he's hired a cook it's gonna be this dream vacation he also regretted to inform them that he had broken it off with his girlfriend erica but he had a new girlfriend who'd be coming with him on this vacation and she was a former playboy playmate named tiffany his family was really surprised to hear the news about erica because they really believed they were going to get married but the trip itself was not really out of character chris had always said for the longest time that once he made it big and had millions of dollars in cash he would just sail off into the pacific and go surfing and just be off the grid and live his life in peace and now he finally had a chance to do that and so his family said have fun stay safe and we'll see you when you get back but three weeks went by and chris did not return to his condo instead he emailed his family again and just told them he was having this great time that this was the best trip he could have asked for and that instead of coming home he was just gonna keep sailing around the world and enjoying this time that he is disconnected from society and again his family said okay have a good time stay safe and we'll see you when we see you but over the following weeks and months that chris extended this vacation his emails took a dark turn chris started to act depressed and he alluded to taking drugs and then at one point he talked about doing the unthinkable referencing harming himself his parents were very concerned and told him he should come back home or at the very least they should arrange to meet up somewhere but every time they said this chris would just suddenly change the tone of his email and seem really upbeat and cheerful and said oh no i'm actually just fine and i just need some time to myself finally in december of 2010 so six months after chris has gone on this vacation he reaches out to his brother paul and asks him if he'll come to costa rica the following february to go surfing with him paul was excited and said he would go and he and the rest of his family breathed a collective sigh of relief that now one of their family members would get to see chris and actually check in on him shortly after this email exchange chris told his family that he was headed off into the congo to sell some gold coins to a trader who was prepared to buy them at a 30 markup and chris was really excited about it after this there were no more emails the family was concerned that this gold buyer potentially had kidnapped or hurt chris but chris was going long periods of time between his emails to family and so they figured you know what paul's trip to costa rica where he's gonna meet up with chris is coming right up so let's hold off doing anything drastic until then but when february of 2011 rolled around and it was time for paul to fly out to costa rica to meet up with chris before paul left he called the hotel in costa rica to confirm the reservations chris had supposedly made and the hotel said we've never heard of chris smith there are no reservations under his name and so paul tried to contact chris but to no avail and so paul told his family about it and they decided it was best for paul not to go to costa rica because probably chris wasn't there and the family instead got in touch with the state department and asked them if they could help them find their son their brother and right away the state department discovered chris's passport had never left the united states and his family said that was impossible because for the past year chris has been sailing around the world but the state department said this is what we got so chris's dad who used to be a cop drove out to california to speak to ed who was the last person to see chris before he left on this vacation and ed would say he has no idea where chris is however he did say chris had a fake passport and that might be why his passport was not showing up as leaving the country chris's father didn't really know what to make of this information and so he decided it would be best to just file a missing person report and put the investigation in the hands of the police shortly after the report was filed the police brought ed in for questioning and ed reiterated that he didn't know where chris was and that he did have this fake passport and he also said that they had not ended on good terms they were kind of fighting and bickering at the end and that's why he hadn't heard from chris since he left ed was cooperative and didn't really have much to give police and so the police let him go while the police hit dead end after dead end in this missing person case the property manager of the office building where the 800 exchange business had been located was growing increasingly frustrated shortly after chris had sold his portion of the business to ed and then gone on this vacation ed had moved 800 exchange from that office building to another and ed had not paid his final rent which was 40 000 and this property manager had repeatedly tried to get in touch with ed but ed was totally blowing him off one day the property manager was griping about ed and his delinquent payment to another tenant in the office building a guy by the name of joe dulu who just happened to be a private investigator and during this discussion the manager was saying that not only had ed not made this payment but he had also been recently questioned by police about his missing business partner who was still missing and so joe is immediately intrigued by this and he says to the manager you know it sounds like ed is a pretty shady guy would it be possible for me to just poke my head around their old space now that it's fake it because you never know there could be something in there and so the manager said that was fine he opened the door to the old 800 exchange space joe walked inside and immediately found blood spatter on the doorframe of where chris's office used to be he also found blood spatter on the ceiling and on the walls and so joe called the police who showed up and sprayed luminol all over chris's office and there was blood everywhere it would turn out chris didn't sell his portion of the business to ed on that day june 4th 2010 chris did go into the office to try to reach some agreement with ed but when he walked in ed promptly killed him with a knife or some other blunt object then he or someone he hired dumped chris's body somewhere after that ed stole all of chris's money to pay off the debt to lg tech as well as some other large debts in las vegas and then after that ed hijacked chris's email accounts and pretended to be chris for almost an entire year chris never took a boating trip around the world he never broke up with erica and had this new girlfriend from playboy he just got killed inside of his office and ed created this ridiculous elaborate lie that was designed to make his family believe that chris had become unstable and that maybe he did end his own life or maybe he did get kidnapped or killed in the congo ed was just trying to create that seed of doubt that he had anything to do with it but in 2018 it all came crashing down for ed when a jury convicted him of killing chris and sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole to this day ed maintains his innocence and to this day ed still will not give up where chris's body is so that's gonna do it guys if you found the secret in today's episode let us know in the comments what it is and where you found it and if you're the first to do that we will pin you at the top of the comments section if you got something out of today's episode and you haven't done this already please offer to babysit the like buttons kids and immediately fill them up with candy and soda and then send them home with whoopee cushions and whistles also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly 3 or 4 video uploads if you want to get in touch with me you can direct message me on instagram or on twitter my username for both platforms is the same it's john ballen416 i also have a ton of content over on tick tock where my username is mr ballen i also have a second youtube channel called mr ball and shorts where i post random short videos and lost episodes if you have a story suggestion please submit it to our subreddit just called mr ballen it's linked in the description below so whether i see you on instagram twitter tick tock reddit youtube or some combination just know that i really appreciate your support and until next time that's gonna do it see

Channel: MrBallen

Views: 2,039,955

Rating: 4.9665494 out of 5

Keywords: strange, dark, mysterious, true, story, scary, scary story, horror story, disturbing, narration, narrator, storyteller, storytime, storytelling, unsolved mystery, solved mystery, true crime, oof, nope, laguna, Laguna Beach, lead gen, lead generation, Las Vegas, wynn hotel, gambling, gamble, blackjack, poker, casino, penthouse, murder, murder mystery, mystery, horror, true story, crazy story, psychopath, psycho, detective, whodunnit, Southern California, cali, socal, surf, surfing, yacht, South America, vacation

Id: FRnPwaR_CW8

Length: 12min 44sec (764 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 14 2021