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Aug. 21, 1995 - Art Bell
02:54:51
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - 95,000 Junk Mail Check - Patrick Combs
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Welcome to Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from August 21st, 1995.
From the high desert and the great American southwest, radiating on out to the Tahitian Islands, the Hawaiian Islands, all the way east to the U.S.
Virgin Islands, south into South America and north, probably to magnetic north.
The North Pole, anyway.
Welcome, everybody, to Coast to Coast AM, another grand week of live, overnight talk radio underway.
And we may have room for a little fun tonight.
News is heavy and light, depending on your point of view.
Light from a talk point of view, as far as I'm concerned.
Heavy from a light-lost point of view.
A computer, uh, muter... Heh, computer.
Computer's out of mind.
A commuter plane crashed, as you know.
We now know four dead, five more injured, 25 more, when an Atlantic Southeast Airlines twin-engine commuter plane went down in rural western Georgia Monday.
Many of the injured are in critical condition with severe burns.
The pilot, who died after being trapped in the cockpit, had reported engine trouble shortly before it went down.
Again, staying with the subject of death, three U.S.
diplomats killed in Bosnia over the weekend, not shot, but tumbling over in a vehicle, came home Monday in flag-draped caskets.
Our Secretary of State did what he does best, and did the diplomatic thing, led a delegation of cabinet officers, and paid tribute.
So it was purely an auto accident, actually.
In Israel, more death.
And here you've got to wonder if the terrorists have not had what they want.
Finally.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has put peace talks with the PLO on hold temporarily as a result of Monday's terrorist attack in Jerusalem.
A suicide bomber from the militant Islamic Hamas movement Killed four, including, I might add, an American tourist.
It occurred in the morning rush hour bus traffic.
And it is attributed to students of the mechanic.
The guy they've been looking for for so long now, so... Temporary hold on peace talks.
Earlier in the day, they had been saying, nothing will disturb the peace talks.
We're not going to allow this to occur.
Now it looks like it may.
It is precisely what those who are setting off the bombs want.
So I guess they're going to get it.
On the other hand, there is not peace.
So if you are an Israeli citizen, you're probably pretty ticked off right now.
Pretty angry.
Because your leadership continues to talk peace with the people that are killing your fellow citizens.
Now, it's a pretty weird psychology and I'm not surprised that they've shut them down.
NASA is going to privatize?
Yes, NASA is moving to privatize its space shuttle program.
NASA says it expects to select a single contractor to operate the 3.2 billion dollar a year program.
They think this will save a billion dollars.
And I wonder how many of you would like to be on the first shuttle flight and to be done by the lowest bidder?
That'd be something sitting up there on top of that thing.
Wondering where the lowest bidder might have cut corners.
Any of you who are good at making top ten lists ought to give me, send me a top ten list, I'm sure somebody will, about why you would not want to be on, or why you would want to be on, the first shuttle flight done by a lowest bidder.
Kevorkian present at another suicide, a 46 year old woman, uh... has taken her own life it says here critically or terminally ill uh... however uh... there are those who are suggesting she was not a terminally ill certainly she was in a great deal of pain said she was tired of being a bed veg time to say see ya that was her note
Hmm.
Carbon monoxide poisoning.
The 25th person to die with Kevorkian there.
Here's an interesting story.
Traditional Chinese medicines appear to have this, Reuters by the way, appear to have the ability to direct alcohol through the digestive system before it can be absorbed into the bloodstream, thus actually Preventing intoxication.
That's what Japanese scientists reported Monday in Chicago, during the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society.
They say the bark and roots of the angelica tree, the plant ovary of the soapberry camellia, and horse chestnut seeds, good lord, and the roots of the Seneca snake root, appear to do the trick.
Sounds like something a witch would make up, doesn't it?
But listen to this.
They say, with these substances, no matter how much you drink, it doesn't matter, you can't get drunk.
The effect, however, has been tested so far only on laboratory rats.
But wouldn't that be something?
To give that little witch's brew to some of the hopelessly drunk?
Inebriated.
Can you imagine?
They just buy it, and buy it, and buy it, and drink it, and drink it, and drink it, and nada.
Nothing happens.
I guess that would give you a better than the patch, huh?
Iraq.
We believe, of course, Saddam is, we say, preparing to make military moves.
We are moving troops now.
As well as two aircraft carriers.
And I would ask whether you think this is a real crisis, or are we, as in the CIA, shaking Saddam's tree, hoping he'll fall out?
There are reports late tonight of one of the men in Jordan, one of Saddam's top men, saying there is about to be a coup in Iraq.
And Bill of Vista, California wonders, if the enemy of my enemy is my friend, does that mean we join Iraq and bomb Jordan?
No, Bill, I don't think so, but I understand the thought.
They're going after Franklin D. Roosevelt.
As you know, Roosevelt is widely seen in profile with the long cigarette holder in his mouth.
Well, don't you know, in today's atmosphere, that's going to be a problem.
And so, they want to remove the cigarette holder from Franklin Roosevelt's mouth.
Should it be removed?
Should history be rewritten?
Revised?
I guess that's the way it is these days.
If something becomes politically incorrect, you simply erase it, so it never happened.
O.J.
Simpson, the subject of Brinkley on Sunday, the Furman Tapes, Central, of course.
Racist, violent, chilling, even frightening.
Johnny Cochran accused the media of literally being racist because he says it favors the two white victims.
F. Lee Bailey was on Brinkley, and I thought he was quite good.
Um, and you recall the line, the famous line, uh, F. Lee Bailey, uh, quote, you say on your oath, Detective Furman, that you have not spoken of black people as the N-word in the last ten years, end quote.
Well, of course he claims he didn't know about the tapes when, uh, he asked the question.
That's hard to believe, but some of the stuff supposedly on the tapes is really, really bad.
Now, there's a late problem with the tapes, and I'm not exactly clear on what the story is.
Now, I've heard that the most important tape, the first one, has been erased.
But then there was somebody on CNN midday who said, oh no, Uh, while that tape was erased, the original was not, and we've still got that.
Meanwhile, Judge Ito ruled that the whole brief filed to allow the tapes in was incoherent.
That he couldn't understand it, and he kicked it back to them, and they're having to rewrite it.
Oh, by the way, kind of a side note here, the L.A.
City Council just paid $100,000 to a plaintiff for a judgment against, guess who?
Mark Furman.
For guess what?
You got it.
Excessive force.
By the way, Bailey says if OJ goes on the stand, it's going to add about a month to the case.
Otherwise, look for two or three more weeks of the case, I would say now.
Got this one over the internet.
Hi Art, my name is Randy and I omit the last name.
I'm a police officer in the Seattle area and have been for 15 years.
In December, I resigned because of the very things that you've been talking about on your show these past few days.
I could go on forever about the problems in Um, uh, L-E today, but the essence is this.
Cops are just people.
People who get very little respect anymore, are not paid enough, are subject to the corrupt political system.
People who are not at all the cream of the crop.
They're not usually very well educated.
They're usually underachievers, and they have their own self-esteem issues.
What I'm saying is, there are good ones, bad ones, like everyone else.
Just like any other group, we cannot be lumped into any one category.
Trust me, the world is not going to come to an end because of a few dirty cops.
There have always been a few dirty cops.
No, I'm not blazed about this.
Remember, I quit to get away from it.
I spent years trying to fix things and be a good cop.
Guess what?
No one wanted a good cop.
People who do not want to know what the problems are or how to fix them, they just want to pretend they do not exist.
You know, that's interesting.
The second part of his facts appears to, in effect, contradict the first part.
In other words, in the beginning he says, well, there's only a few good cops.
Then he goes on to say, uh, but I quit because I was one of those few, or a few bad cops, and I quit because I was one of the few, and there are a lot of bad ones, so I don't know what to make out of that.
Nuclear proliferation.
That's a hard word.
Proliferation.
Senator Lugar on the weekend, holding hearings this week, He said a couple of things that you ought to think about.
He said, quote, the gravest threat to the U.S.
is the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Okay.
A lot of people say that.
But then he said, of the Russians, that highly enriched uranium is now coming out of Russian labs.
The market is there.
There are willing buyers.
And then he said this, quote, Terrorists will use this material and square miles of American cities will be vaporized.
End quote.
Now that's pretty rough.
That's Senator Lugar over the weekend.
Terrorists will use this material and square miles of American cities are going to be vaporized.
What do you think about that?
What's to think?
Hope it's somebody else's city, I guess, huh?
Nothing much you can do about it.
The genie is way, and for a long time now, out of the bottle.
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Here's what you missed on Coast to Coast AM with George Norrie.
Is this a plan to break us here in this country and make the entire planet on a more even keel?
I definitely think it is.
I mean, the people that are making these moves, they give speeches on it, they teach it in school.
You know, this business of redistribution of the wealth, destruction of national sovereignty.
These things have been written about and talked openly about for quite a while.
And that's what they're trying to create for the United States.
Now we take you back to the night of August 21st, 1995, on Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
Politics over the weekend, Haley Barber, ERNC chairman and Don Fowler, the DNC chairman,
squared off on Meet the Press.
Now, it was all about the straw poll.
Now, this is interesting.
Here are the results.
Let me give them to you of the straw poll in Iowa.
Dole, 24%.
Graham, a dead tie, 24%.
24%.
Graham, a dead tie, 24%.
Followed by Buchanan, a respectable 18%.
Lamar Alexander, Alan Keyes, Maury Taylor, Richard Luger, behind Maury Taylor, and finally
Pete Wilson at 1%.
Now, what can we draw from this?
Yes, it was just a straw poll, but boy, we can draw an awful lot of conclusions.
Number one, Robert Dole, as I told you, is not as strong as he thought he was, or people thought he was, or the press thought he was.
Does this mean that Phil Graham, who got up even with Bob Dole, is then the obvious frontrunner?
Well, in a way, just because he tied Dole, In my mind, anyway, it makes him the present frontrunner, but it doesn't say much.
I am not wild.
Actually, I like Bob Dole and I like Phil Graham, and I don't think either one of them are the right people to run against Bill Clinton.
Buchanan I like, but I'm not But I worry.
There are a lot of things about Pat that are simply too much for me.
Isolationism, most particularly.
Lamar Alexander, Alan Keyes.
Alan Keyes, a nice guy, but 8%.
Maury Taylor, Richard Lugar, Pete Wilson.
I told you Pete Wilson wasn't going to do much, and he did not.
So I'm not excited about any of the present field.
Everybody in the poll, of course, came out and put best face on it and said we're happy.
So, what does this mean?
That I was right about the media hyping Dole?
That he is not the frontrunner everybody thinks he is?
Does this mean Graham is strong?
Or just that Dole is not?
Now there's a better way to put it.
That's the way I'd put it.
That Graham is not strong.
It's just that Dole is not.
Pat Buchanan, definitely stronger than most people thought, but still a long shot.
Bradley looking as though he's going to make an independent run.
And the straw poll, of course, very interesting.
Why was Bob Dole so weak?
I would say because he's weak.
Why was Graham so strong?
I would say he's not.
He just looks pretty good compared to Dole.
And is Buchanan strong enough?
Do we need a new candidate?
Have both parties lost touch with us, as Senator Bradley said?
Could an independent win?
And what would happen to the two big political parties in America should we elect a third party candidate?
Did you know that recent surveys show the U.S.
people in the U.S.
by a margin of two to one want a third political party.
By the way, does anybody out there know what has happened to the Republican 11th Amendment?
The one that says, we shall not criticize other Republicans.
Right down the drain, I would say.
More news, and a couple of fascinating items, in just a moment.
You're listening to Arc Bell, somewhere in time, on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from August 21st, 1995.
This is a presentation of the Coast to Coast AM program.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight, featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from August 21st, 1995.
Interesting fact about the Citadel in South Carolina.
Forty percent of...
40% of all the CEOs, heads of corporations in South Carolina, are alumnis of the Citadel.
Shannon, of course, is not.
Sam Donaldson over the weekend said, she's a heroine.
And here's somebody who sent me the top 10 reasons Shannon Faulkner quit the Citadel.
10.
She only wanted the uniforms for a Rush Limbaugh's Feminazi movement.
9.
She wanted to move to Idaho and live with Mark Furman, where she could live off the eggs people throw at their house.
8.
She developed severe mental stress trying to figure out how to use the urinal in her dorm room.
7.
After spending the last two and a half years and millions of dollars of other people's money in court trying to get admitted to the Academy, she figured she's now qualified to join O.J.
Simpson's dream team.
6.
After her teary resignation press conference in the rain, she was offered a position as a test pilot for Tammy Faye Baker's all-weather mascara.
5.
After spending $25,000 to remodel a dorm room specifically for her, she was told there wasn't enough money left to buy her a set of Richard Simmons Deal-A-Meal cards.
Hmm, cruel.
4.
She got tired of telling her classmates her name was Shannon, not Shampoo.
3.
She lost the key to her dorm room, the only lockable dorm room at the Academy.
It fell out of its secret hiding place.
The crease in her double chin.
Cruel.
Two, with her newfound fame, she wanted to work on her autobiography, and soon to be made into a movie book entitled, The Thing That Wouldn't Go Away.
And one, Senator Packwood, made her an offer she could not refuse.
Now to the story of Patrick Combs.
This, um, was reported by NBC last night, and I was so amazed that I called Patrick Combs on the phone.
Got his machine.
And, um, you never know.
We may hear from Patrick tonight or tomorrow, but here is Patrick's story.
You know the junk mail.
If you've been living in a place long enough, you begin to get a lot of junk mail.
I get it.
Most of us get it.
You know the kind where you see a check with your name?
Usually it shows through a little clear spot in the envelope and you can just see a check in there and you go, YES!
But it's one of those offers.
You know, and inside the check says, this could be yours, um, this could be your check.
Only in little tiny print somewhere it says non-negotiable.
It's a big come on.
You've all seen them.
Well, Patrick Combs of San Francisco thought, what the hell?
So, he took the check, just for the fun of it, he says, like depositing monopoly money, he says, and deposited the check in his checking account.
Now, bear in mind, he did not sign it.
He did not endorse it.
He just put it in the deposit envelope and put it in the first interstate ATM there in San Francisco.
Well, guess what?
They honored the check.
He was sure some teller would look at this and laugh.
The teller looked at it and put $95,093.35 in his account.
He freaked out.
He called the bank, but the bank, over a period of several days, apparently insisted that it was in his account, his money.
So, in frustration, he drew the money out of the bank And got a cashier's check for $95,000 in change and put it in a safety deposit box.
Then a couple of days later, the bank realized what they had done and went, oops.
And they came to him and demanded it back.
Well, he has not given it back yet.
Now, he says he might give it back.
All he wants is the bank president to call him up and say, let's go to lunch.
Not a big demand, I suppose.
Thus far, no comment from First Interstate.
Now, I'm not an attorney.
But, I wonder what an attorney would say.
Now, he didn't sign the check.
It's the bank's mistake.
I suppose legally he's got to give it back, the more I think about it.
No way he could keep it, is there?
Or could he?
Is it the bank's error, legally?
I would tend to say he's probably got to give it back.
And I would also tend to say that he deserves having lunch with the president of the bank up there at First Interstate.
They're a good bank.
They're my bank.
I wonder how many other people now will try this.
I wonder what happened to the teller who put 90-some-odd thousand dollars in somebody's account without looking at the check very carefully, without seeing an endorsement on the back.
Why?
What a mess, huh?
Anybody catch the Tyson-McNeely fight?
Not me.
89 seconds it lasted.
Shorter than the national anthem that preceded it.
McNeely gets $500,000.
Tyson, 25 million.
The people seem to be very angry.
I wonder if this kind of thing will end boxing altogether.
All right, well, there you are.
I've got a call in to Patrick Combs, the guy who put the check in the bank, and if we hear from him, we will put him on the air.
That would be, I think, fun.
In the meantime, here we go.
West of the Rockies, you're number one on the air.
Hi.
Hi, Mr. Bell.
This is Earl from Seattle.
Hello, Earl.
How's it going?
Okay.
Yeah, great.
Hey, first-time caller, long-time listener.
I really enjoy your show.
Thank you.
I don't know.
I guess I just wanted to say hi.
That's it, huh?
Yeah, that's it.
Well, um, hi.
See you later, sir.
Okay.
Bye-bye.
Wanted to see if you could get through, huh?
They think that they have found Noah's Ark.
I was going to mention this.
I was going to hold this, but I won't.
They think they've found Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat.
This story was on Encounters last night.
By the way, the promo at the end of Encounters, Eric, who sent me facts from Grants Pass on the alien autopsy footage, is indeed the Roswell supposed film.
Or is it Roswell?
Whatever it is, yes, they were promoing that on the 28th.
You're not going to want to miss it.
At any rate, they think they found Noah's Ark.
On Mount Ararat.
It occurred after a May 15, 1948 earthquake.
That was the day of the birth of the nation of Israel, by the way.
A military satellite found it with a surveillance photo.
And you can quite clearly see it.
It is a ship.
An archaeologist is just about to begin digging to dig it up.
He is the archaeologist who was used as the model for Indiana Jones in all the Indiana Jones movies.
So they're going to begin to dig up the Ark.
Now get this, folks.
It's larger than the Queen Mary.
The odds of it being anything in nature, as they look at the satellite photographs, the odds of it being anything formed by nature are about a hundred thousand to one.
What if this really is the Ark?
What if it is evidence of what once occurred to the world before?
What if it really is the Ark?
How will it change the world, the way people view the world?
Do you think it will?
First time caller line, you're on the air.
Yeah, my first name's Dave.
I'm from Kansas City, Missouri.
I'm a short-term listener.
I just got turned on by my uncle the other night, and I heard a conversation about, say, aliens creating the human race.
Oh, yes.
I'd like to, I don't know, maybe throw some ideas around about that with you.
I don't know.
I seem to be a pretty firm believer of that.
I don't know.
What do you think?
You're a firm believer, you say?
I'm a very firm believer.
I pretty much believe that aliens have been visiting this planet for longer than humans have been around, of course.
Why do you believe that?
What evidence do you see?
Well, I like the abductions that we have.
Evidence of recently, you know, people saying aliens are always tampering with their genitals and such.
Who knows what kinds of experiments, you know, they have been performing in our labs or whatever.
It's true.
I mean, it took, like, ten million years from, like, a horse to get from the size of a dog to the size that it is now.
And, you know, just throwing some figures around, like, two million years for the human to evolve from where we are now.
Yes, but I'm not sure that our evolution is evidence of extraterrestrial visitation at all.
I'm just not sure.
Uh, if you meant to ask whether I believe, um, no, I wouldn't say I believe.
I would say I continue to investigate it, but I have seen, uh, even, even the Roswell, uh, footage, suppose it, aside for a second, I really haven't seen anything that would cause me to say I believe.
So, that's your answer.
Even though I'm sure a lot of people out there have other ideas, even though I investigate intensely things in this area, do I believe, as an article of faith, we're being visited?
No.
I don't.
Does that surprise you?
Any more than I would say I believe or have faith in other things that I cannot put my hand on.
Yet.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
Hi.
Say, Ava, you said the other night that you were finishing up your book.
That is true.
Well, sir, I have a suggestion.
Saturday nights are very boring.
So if you come up with a new show on witchcraft, You can call it Bell, Book, and Candle, and liven up our lives a little bit.
In other words, have me work the seventh day.
You enjoy it, Art.
You enjoy it.
I know.
I know.
But you can get too much of a good thing in seven days a week, sir.
Basically, my comment is... I love it.
But I like your title, sir.
Bell, Book, and Candle.
And, you know, I'm going to do something on witchcraft.
But I want I want a witch.
I want a witch.
I've got a bulletin here and we will hold this until the top of the hour.
Yes, we'll hold this until the top of the hour.
Should I promo it?
No.
We'll just hold it.
I think I've got a surprise coming for you at the top of the hour.
we'll see.
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That's coast to coast am.com or one triple eight seven two seven five five zero five
Here's what you missed on coast to coast am with George Norrie Is this a plan to break us here in this country and make the entire planet on a more even keel?
I definitely think it is.
I mean, the people that are making these moves, they give speeches on it, they teach it in school.
You know, this business of redistribution of the wealth, destruction of national sovereignty.
These things have been written about and talked openly about for quite a while.
And that's what they're trying to create for the United States.
Now we take you back to the night of August 21st, 1995, on Arkbell Somewhere in Time.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hi, Art.
This is, uh, Jonathan Thomas.
Uh, uh, John?
Yes.
Hi, John.
and you look at the third issue of the time of that uh... guy who deposited
their non-negotiable check patrick coles yes right uh... i just thought i'm eleven o'clock news broadcast
that story and they said that uh...
it was thirty three days after he drew the money out it's when the bank uh... try to get the money back
I would say pretty pathetic on First Interstate's part, wouldn't you?
Yeah.
I mean, what happened to the teller who deposited this check?
I'll tell you, I put my own valid checks in for deposit, but forgot to sign them, and they catch it every time.
And wouldn't you think you'd look hard if you're a teller?
I mean, how many days does a teller see a $95,000 check in an ATM period?
I would imagine not too often.
Yeah.
The other thing is, they also said that the law is on his side because the bank waited too long.
They didn't catch the mistake in time.
Well, I can't stand it.
Let me tell you a little secret.
We just got a call from Patrick Combs.
And we're going to bring him on the air here at the top of the hour.
OK.
How's that?
That's great.
We'll find out exactly what the deal is with Patrick.
I thought it was a cool story.
Absolutely an excellent story.
And I'm not even sure, I'm not really sure about the legal ramifications of all of this.
You know, it seems like it might be his money in a way.
And it seems, but it really, of course, is not his money.
But then again, I bet there's going to be a lot of people that are going to run out here and duplicate this now, try and duplicate it.
On the west of the Rockies line, you're on the air.
Hi Art, I'm Janae, KSRO.
Okay, you're going to have to speak up good and loud, dear, you're kind of weak.
Okay, Janae, KSRO.
Right.
Okay, I have two things I'd like to tell you.
First of all, I tried to call you with the story about the check the other day, the $95,000.
Yeah.
And in our same newspaper, we had a headline that read, Old Decomposed Headless Body Found in Plastic Bag.
Great.
Police Suspect Foul Play.
Great.
They're sharp, huh?
Yeah.
Okay, what I wanted to tell you is I learned something that was so interesting today, and it's about daytime soap operas, and they're obviously named because soap manufacturers sponsored them.
Yes.
But I found out that they were begun in the thirties, late thirties, because of the depression.
FDR wanted people to have something to focus on and distract them from their troubles and help them be creative.
Do you watch, do you watch soaps?
No, I don't watch daytime soaps because I said they're not reality.
But now with the OJ case, I guess they're not any more outlandish than that.
I don't know whether that's a slam on the soaps or O.J.
Simpson.
I disagree with you anyway.
O.J.
Simpson is much better than the soaps.
When the O.J.
Simpson trial concludes, and I no longer have it to look forward to, I wonder how life can even continue.
Of course it will, but for me, because I'm off on those hours, it is at times very exciting.
How many of you have noticed, as I said last week, it is far more interesting when they don't have a witness on the stand.
Now that may change.
O.J., you know, is witness.
But right now, Watching the attorneys go at each other and Judge Ito trying to control it all is downright entertaining.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hey Art, it's Jim.
Calling from Houston.
Yes, hi Jim.
I'm really looking forward to that thing next Monday night on the film.
Oh yes.
I'm involved with ViewFund pretty much a lot in Houston and I'm going to be making some copies.
If you'd like a copy of that tape, I'd be glad to send you one.
Well, um... I don't know.
Are you trying to watch it?
Oh, come on now.
Am I going to watch it?
That's a dumb question, huh?
Yeah, that's a dumb question.
Yeah, I've got a satellite dish here, so I'll put it on Fox and grab it off-satellite.
Good deal.
Let me ask you, Art.
You were talking about the UFO thing earlier.
You know, you were saying how you would have to say no to believing it.
Well, let me ask you this.
stuff we always see and read about and pictures and stuff, albeit a lot of it's probably,
you know, not UFOs or hoaxes or whatever, do you leave open the possibility that
there could be an existence of them? Of course. Yeah, I kind of felt that because I know in the
past when you've talked about it with Dreamliner, you know, you feel pretty strong about it enough
to want to have a program like that.
I do.
You're absolutely correct.
But the question was, do I believe in it?
Kind of like an article of faith.
And the answer is no, I don't.
No more than I do a lot of structured religions or a lot of other things in life.
Thank you.
I'm going to have to run.
Look, I might as well be from Missouri, like some of you out there.
I've got to be able to put my hand on it and touch it.
And then, I believe it.
Otherwise, I have doubts.
We'll be right back.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from August 21st, 1995.
Welcome to the Coast to Coast America.
Premier Radio Networks presents Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight's program originally aired August 21st, 1995.
I'm Art Bell.
This is live overnight talk radio, and as so many times is the case, because we are live, we can deal with things as they come along.
This is a most amazing story.
Junk mail.
NBC covered this story last night.
Junk mail.
Everybody gets it.
As a matter of fact, sometimes you get these letters with sort of a little clear window in them, and you can see what looks like a check, and you think, great!
Some kind of refund, or I've won, or something or another.
Anyway, a check with your name on it.
Usually, though, when you look a little closer, you notice it says non-negotiable.
Very small lettering, usually.
Non-negotiable.
But it says it could be yours!
If only you fill this out, you're the lucky winner, whatever.
You know how it goes.
Patrick Combs of San Francisco apparently thought, what the hell?
So he took this check.
Now, this is the way NBC cover did.
They put the check in the bank, in his account, without signing it.
Didn't sign it.
That's very important, I think.
Went to a First Interstate ATM.
They're my... I like First Interstate.
They've always been good to me.
And I use their ATM here in town.
That is our bank, in fact.
Well, guess what?
First Interstate took the check, $95,093.35, and put it in Patrick's account.
Now, Patrick said it was like putting Monopoly money in the bank.
He thought it'd be funny, I guess.
He called them, though, after he figured out the money was in his account and insisted that it be removed, I think.
Anyway, they left it in the account.
They insisted it was his.
It was good.
Finally, in frustration, he withdrew the money out, took the money out of the account, and got a cashier's check for $95,000 and put it in a safe deposit box.
I wonder if it was at the same bank.
Well, we're about to find out.
Anyway, finally, some days later, the bank went, oops, and went to get my back from Patrick.
As of yet, I don't think he's given it back.
As a matter of fact, Patrick is out of town.
We found him in Kansas City, Missouri.
We've got him on the phone.
What does Patrick want?
Well, the NBC story said he'd just like to have, say, lunch with the bank president.
So far, no comment from First Interstate Bank.
And I was asking, should the bank get their money back?
I'm not altogether sure.
Let's see what Patrick thinks, from Kansas City.
Here is Patrick Combs, I think.
Patrick, are you there?
I am, Art.
It is really, really a pleasure to be on your show.
Oh, well, I'm glad to have you.
I take it you are familiar with the show.
Absolutely.
I live out in San Francisco.
You can't miss it.
OK, great.
Well, all right.
First of all, did NBC get it all right or did they get any of it wrong?
NBC got it all right.
I think they did a really fantastic job with the story.
They have a limited amount of time, so they can really hardly tell you the truth in this unbelievable odyssey that's happened.
And the thing that's really visibly absent from their story is the fact that I have a legal claim to that money three different ways.
I mean, I heard you saying in the introduction, you're not sure that That they have a claim back to the money, despite the fact that they want it.
Yeah, I'm really not.
Legally, you know, I'm not an attorney.
And I'm not either, but let me tell you what I, you know, they did, I got a cashier's check when they insisted that it had legally become mine.
A teller did, you know, but it was, you know, they said by law, the check can no longer come back because it's been in your account so long.
So I got a cashier's check.
Well, then I began to wonder, you know, maybe the teller didn't know the law.
So I ended up in a law library reading law books for the first time on bank checks.
I was reading the definitive law book, and it was in there that I learned I have a legal right to the money three different ways.
Are you going to get a lawyer?
No, I'm not.
I don't have a plan for getting a lawyer right now.
Are you going to try to keep the money?
You know, here's the way I feel about it.
I have actually always wanted to give the money back.
Well, you tried, didn't you?
Yeah, I did try.
Another question you asked was, you wonder if I took it to a different bank and put it in a different safety deposit box.
Yeah, that's right.
I left it in First Interstate's safety deposit box.
But by law, they can't go in there.
No, they can't.
No, no, no.
Did NBC report that they wanted to drill the box?
Uh, no.
That's where this started, see.
Now, they want to drill the box open?
All right.
Here I was in an airport on my way on vacation, and that's when the bank called me.
I get three calls all at once from my bank on my voicemail that said, urgent, as soon as possible.
You know, you got to call us right now.
I'm sure.
So I call, and I tell the first two people that I'm going to give the money back as soon as I get back from my vacation.
The third person was a security officer.
And he told me he's running the show and the way things go.
And he, first he asked me to return home right then and there to fly back home.
Wait a minute, at whose expense?
He didn't, he just said, he said, well then can you fly back right now to open, to give us that check?
That was the craziest thing I've ever heard.
I was like, you know, no sir.
And then he said, then is there somebody else who can open the box?
And I said, no sir, I'm the only one on the signature card.
And then he said, Well, then will you give me permission to drill the box?
And I said, no sir.
And that's when it really took a different turn because he said, why, you're not willing to cooperate?
And I said, I am willing to cooperate, but now I feel a responsibility for this money.
And I expected that it was the person who wrote the check that was probably out the money.
And I just like, let's start at the beginning with an official letter.
Just send me a letter that says you really work at the bank and that the check really came back.
Right.
When he said no, he would not give me a letter, what I might get a policeman at my door, and that I had committed an act of fraud to the tune of $100,000, I... Let's start, right, let's stop there for a second.
He said you committed an act of fraud.
Yes.
What was the act of fraud?
Now, you didn't sign the check, did you?
No, I didn't.
All you did was drop it in there.
Uh, you filled out one of those little envelopes, ATM envelopes?
Yes, I did.
Drop sucker in there, right?
That's it?
Yes.
Well, then where is the fraud?
Yeah, well, that's exactly it.
Um, I would, you know, here's the, here's how confident I am that I didn't commit an act of fraud.
I would not be talking on television across the country to 60 million people, telling them what I did, if I wasn't absolutely confident that I had not committed an act of fraud.
I know what fraud is now, because when he said that to me for the first time, he put fear into me.
And my fear said, did I accidentally commit fraud?
Is my whole life going to go down the tubes?
And I called the best lawyer in the Bay Area who specializes in bank check fraud.
And I told him my story, which is very scary to do, because you're like, well, what am I going to tell on myself here, and he'll take me to prison?
And he laughed, and he said, you didn't commit fraud.
He said your bank legally lost the money.
Oh, boy.
It's interesting why they legally lost the money.
Well, the check said non-negotiable, right?
Art, you're in for the surprise of your life, that I got the shock of my life in the Hastings Law Library in San Francisco when I was reading about check law.
You can write a check to someone, and you can stamp non-negotiable right across the front, and non-negotiable doesn't mean anything on a check.
Really?
That's right.
Not only did I read it for myself, photocopy it for myself, but I called the author of the book himself, and he confirmed it.
It's a 1990 UCC law.
Holy mackerel.
Very potentially dangerous.
I should say, because I get a lot of that stuff myself.
Well, see, when I read that law, it hit me like, you know what really happened here, and nobody in the media has paid attention to it yet, but I've been trying to tell people that that company in Ohio that issued these checks mailed out 40 million real checks.
What you do to figure out if a check is real is, you look in the law book and you see, does it match these four criteria that every check has got to have?
And whether they write non-negotiable or not, it does not matter.
If it matches those four criteria, it's a check.
Oh, Patrick.
So, armed with this information, potentially then, first, Interstate, if they can't get any satisfaction from you... Could go to them.
Could go to them.
Yep.
And then, Then it would be your money.
Gee, I wonder.
You know, then there's all those other checks out there right now.
Isn't this likely to tempt a bunch of those people to do exactly the same thing?
Yeah, it is.
It is likely to.
I caution people that my story is very different.
I caution people because I didn't commit an act of fraud because nowhere in my mind did I ever think that the check would cash.
I just never thought it was possible because it said non-negotiable.
But you are attempting fraud if you go there putting something in that you believe is junk and you're trying to get cash for it.
Well, go back even a step further.
What were you doing?
Were you having fun?
Yeah, I was having fun.
My problem is I do things to make myself laugh.
I'll give you another for instance.
When I went to get my driver's license picture, I wore a wig in.
Really?
So yeah, it makes me laugh.
It's a funny thing to me.
To me, it wasn't so much funny, it was fun.
Have you ever filled out a deposit slip for $95,000?
Never.
And then punched in that many digits?
I hadn't either.
But when you do it for the first time, it's a blast.
It's fun, huh?
But you can do it with a junk mail check because you feel safe.
You feel like, I'm not hurting anybody here.
They're going to see it like I saw it.
All right, let's talk timeline.
From the time that you made this deposit, how long was it till you suddenly got some kind of statement saying, guess what, there's really all this money in your account?
You asked the right question, Art, because that was the burning question on the lawyer's mind, too.
This is where the bank legally lost the money, okay?
I put it in on May the 21st.
May 21st.
Okay?
twenty first okay
Yeah.
then on on may the twenty second
it turned to you on may the twenty second the check
got rejected by the third bank to handle it which was the fed
the federal reserve bank in ohio The Federal Reserve Bank stopped that check one day after I put it in and said, this is not for real.
At least somebody's doing their work.
Right.
Now, it went back through two banks that had acted as clearinghouses, and then on June the 5th, that's the key date, my bank was notified by memo from another bank in Chicago that the check had been dishonored.
Every law book published about checks will tell you that a bank has got a midnight deadline for bad checks.
If a check is dishonored, they have by midnight of the next day to let you know.
If they don't let you know by that date, courts almost always rule That they lost the legal right to the money.
Especially when they find out on June 5th and then they wait until June 21st to tell me.
Are there any legal... Okay, so there's that one legal timeline.
When did you first learn that the money actually was in your account?
Three days after I deposited it.
Three days.
Gee, usually with big checks, they say 10 days for out-of-state checks.
At least.
Yes, and they had every right in the world to do that.
But they didn't.
No.
You know, tellers... People are writing me from all over the world, and they're reading my website, and I'd like to give it out to your listeners later on.
Oh, you may.
So they can see the check for themselves, and the correspondence from the banks, and they can see the deposits and everything.
But tellers have written to me now.
And I've written back and asked them, how do you think this could possibly have happened?
And their response is, I have no idea because what tellers talk about in their day, what's exciting to them is if they handle a big check, if they handle an item over $5,000, it's office talk.
Really?
Yeah.
And so, yeah, that's it.
You sure this isn't an inside job, right, Patrick?
I mean, you don't have any connections in the bank.
No, but my friend told me what I ought to do is go try and get a job at the bank now.
Well, you've got a good point.
By the way, do you work?
What kind of work are you in?
I am an author.
Just a guy who wrote a book.
This is not my trade normally.
I knew nothing about bank checks or nothing about bank law.
Well, you are now the George Plimpton of banks.
But I did.
I wrote a book called Major in Success.
Major in Success.
Yes.
It's about success in your career and in your life.
Did any part of your book include a stunt like this?
You know, there's one part in my book that reminds me of this.
I put a line in my book, in a chapter called Bold Decisions, that does say some of the most exciting, adventurous things in your life will happen because you made a bold and irrational decision.
It was my way of saying to people that we all get inspiration, but if you try to think out every decision as if you're buying a home, Uh, sometimes you talk yourself out of a good thing.
It's true.
In other words, take a chance every now and then in life, uh, right?
Yeah, exactly.
And have a little fun in life, too.
Yeah.
It's Bill Gates, you know, saying that, uh, it's Bill Gates being a 19-year-old at Harvard, and then, uh, saying, telling the, uh, first guy to make up the personal computer that he had made software when he hadn't.
Are you rich?
No, no, no, no, I'm, I'm far from rich.
Would 95 grand do it all?
95,000 would, would, Would turn my finances around.
I'll bet it would.
Hold on just one moment, Patrick.
We'll be right back.
You never know what you'll hear on Coast to Coast AM with George Norris.
Are you concerned at all that government is taking us down the wrong path?
And why are they doing that?
What is the wrong path?
The wrong path, in my view, is that government is expanding its power and individuals are losing their freedom to make decisions for themselves.
The more crisis we have in terms of the economy or potential terrorist attacks or a swine flu and all these wondrous things that are coming at us from all sources, the government comes along and says, OK, we'll solve your problem for you.
Just allow us to expand our power and we'll take control of your lives.
And, you know, we'll solve the problems by making you a slave.
And then you won't have to worry about decisions anymore, because we'll make all of them for you.
So, anybody that's awake, I would say, should share my concern that, yes, the government is leading us down the wrong path, and it's primarily because we're allowing it.
Now we take you back to the night of August 21st, 1995, on Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
Music Back now to Patrick Combs in, uh, of all places, Kansas
City.
Patrick, you're not out there conferring with a guy named Markham, are you?
No.
No.
All right.
That's an old story.
Art, I want to tell you two more things, and then let me tell you in all sincerity.
This is the best radio interview that I've done yet in that I feel that you are a very attentive, intelligent questioner.
Thank you.
I'm going to ask you a question that I haven't asked anybody before.
All right.
But I need to tell you two things first.
The first is that another law that I read about is called final payment.
And it says that when a bank gives a cashier's check for the exact same amount as a deposit that it received, courts consider that end of the story.
You know, they look at it and say, that's the bank's way of saying, sure, your check is absolutely good.
Called final payment.
Okay, so there's a couple of attitudes you could take here.
One is, you know, you tried to give the money back, apparently, pretty hard, right?
No, I didn't.
Oh, well, see, NBC then misled us a little bit because they sort of tried to indicate that you went back to the bank after you saw the money in your account, trying to get their attention, trying to tell them, look, it's not real.
That was not true.
No, that would be misleading.
Yeah, that was misleading.
Ah, so they did mislead a little bit.
OK.
Yeah.
OK, well, so you can take two attitudes now.
One is, it's not my money and I've had enough fun and I'm going to give it back.
The other is, The law is on my side.
Let's see what we can do here.
Under no circumstances have I been trying to have fun with this.
It is fun to have $95,000 sitting in your account, even if you believe it's going to go away or it's not rightfully yours.
But I'm in no way trying to have fun with this.
Does that make sense?
Well, not exactly, because it began as fun, right?
Right, but when it went to the media, Um, it's not something I'm trying to have fun with, because I seriously want the bank to help me resolve this, but they're not calling.
Okay, what do you want?
Let's try that.
I have always wanted to give the money back, and I'll tell you why.
Because my life is far bigger than $95,000.
I feel very fortunate because early on, somewhere along the line of my life, I learned principles of success that make any person feel far more valuable than $100,000.
I'm sure you know this yourself, right?
You would not leave the country for $100,000.
No, I would not.
Exactly.
But what if, legally, the $100,000 could be yours?
Well, you know, I don't think that a person...
that you should do what you have the right to do. I think you should do the right thing.
Well, that of course is proper attitude. But here's where I ran into my own values and
considerations.
All right.
Listen, I'm at the bottom of the hour.
Plus, I'd like you to... Would you take calls?
Yes, I would.
You would?
Oh, good.
Okay.
All right.
I am currently refusing to give back the money.
All right.
Hold it there.
That's a good hook.
Hold it right there.
Patrick Combs is my guest.
He'll be right back.
You're listening to Art Bell's Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from August 21st, 1995.
The Coast to Coast AM concert, performed by the Coast to Coast Amphitheatre, was a production of the Coast to Coast
Amphitheatre.
The concert was performed by the Coast to Coast Amphitheatre.
you You're listening to Art Bell's Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from August 21st, 1995.
My guest is Patrick Combs.
He put some junk mail he got into his first interstate account.
And they credited his account with ninety-some-odd thousand dollars.
Ninety-five thousand dollars plus.
And he's still got it.
He's got it locked up in a box, in a check, in a cashier's check.
And we were just discussing, Patrick, certainly your attitude, I think, is commendable, that you want to do the right thing.
But I've got to be honest with you, if I had the money and I began to see that I might have a legal right to it, I'd think long and hard Long and hard.
And I'll tell you what it would depend on, and see if you're in agreement with this.
Okay.
If the people at the bank were cool and nice and friendly and decent people and they were nice to you, then my inclination might be to give it back.
But if they were really nasty... You got it.
And really just coming at me, you know, head on... You got it.
Then I don't know, I might give my back up a little bit.
That's about what's happening?
You got it.
You put your finger on it.
I put it in these words.
I put it like this.
You know, they would have the money back already when they first called me.
They were nice, friendly.
And that's where this whole, you know, take me to lunch thing came from because I almost imagined that they would.
I thought 12 years at their bank, you know, they will, when they find out that they legally lost money, they're going to get a VP to call me and treat me really nice.
And then, you know, and, and thank me for not spending the money right away now.
Um, but, But I refuse to give that check back under circumstances where I'm being intimidated, where they're trying to make me give it back out of fear.
I mean, you could have gone down and at least gotten yourself a brand new 100 megahertz Pentium or something like that.
I would love a brand new color PowerBook, you know, or a brand new Mustang, exactly.
I have a million things I would love to do with that money.
It does take responsibility to just sit it in a safety deposit box and even one in their own bank.
I did not want to lose money that might not be mine.
I am clear, Isabel, that I have an absolute legal claim to the money.
But I'm clearer on the fact that if I allow my life to be ruled by fear and intimidation, whether it's my fears or somebody else trying to intimidate me, my life will get boring, my life will get unadventurous, and I will feel worse about myself.
And that's where this kicked in.
You know, on the day where, oh, you're not going to deal with this, I'm referring to the bank, deciding not to deal with this in a legal, upright fashion where we talk human You don't happen to know who the teller was, do you?
I don't want a name, but I mean, have you had any discussions with the bank about the fate of the teller?
Let me tell you this.
I worry that a teller will lose their job over this, because the bank made a mistake, and people realize that, but everybody think about this.
The tellers get paid $5 an hour and they're part-time trained.
If they make mistakes it's because they're not being trained the right way.
But I view it differently when a VP makes a customer service mistake.
Because VPs are paid a lot of money and they're supposed to have excellent social skills and customer service skills.
I wouldn't want anybody to lose their job over it, but if someone had to re-evaluate the way they were treating their customers or doing their banking business, I would hope there would be somebody high up in the company.
Mike in Portland says the fraud occurred when he punched the numbers into the machine with his card and PIN number and then manually entered the check amount into the machine.
How do you respond to that?
Mike is wrong because fraud is based on intention.
I can punch numbers into a bank.
Let's say, Mike, if I walk up to my ATM machine and I literally have a Monopoly $500 bill and I punch $500 into it and then I slide that orange dollar bill into the ATM, I'm not attempting fraud.
Because the opposing party would have an enormously difficult time Convincing a judge that I actually thought that I was actually trying to get the bank to give me money.
They would have a better case, wouldn't they, had you signed the back of the check?
Then it would show more intent.
Yeah.
They would have a better case, too, if I had tried to erase the words non-negotiable in the corner of the check.
Uh... but they were still clearly printed.
Oh, of course.
No, I'm just saying, you know, if I had gotten altered or signed or something, then it would have shown that I was trying to get their money.
But I wasn't trying to get their money.
They'd also have a better case, too, if I had spent the money.
Because that would show that I was trying to get their money.
So again, getting back to what you want at this point, you just want a bank vice president, at least, to come to you In a nice, polite way, maybe take you out to lunch, say, look, we want to get this settled.
We don't want any hard feelings.
We're going to reopen your account for you.
Give us our money back!
No, see, the more I think about it, the more I think, you know, I've got to, I've got to stop saying, you know, what I want the bank to do, because this is all about what I, the way I want to live my life.
And I don't want to live my life allowing anybody to rule me by fear or intimidation.
So I'm just going to do what I have to do to not be ruled by fear and intimidation.
And if the bank comes on in any way like that, then I'm going to stand my ground and I am fully, you know, I'm going to stand my ground.
And if the bank doesn't, if that fear and intimidation factor goes by, then you're going to see me give a check back.
All right, let's take a couple of calls, see what people have to say about this.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Patrick Combs.
Where are you, please?
Columbia, South Carolina, WVOC.
Yes, sir.
Take the Burster Bubble.
The bank has its money back.
It does?
Yes.
Here is A simple fact that a lot of Americans don't seem to understand.
Cashier's checks can be voided by the issuer.
And if he went to this bank and bought the cashier's check, and it's their cashier's check, they have a record of the number of the cashier's check and they know what it is.
They're trying to get a hold of the piece of paper that's in the safety deposit box.
It's just a loose end.
The caller is incorrect.
He's correct in the fact that the issuing bank can void a cashier's check.
He's incorrect about what it takes for them to void a cashier's check.
Let me put it two different ways to you.
Number one, if the caller goes to Brady's on Bank Checks and looks up what it takes for a bank to cancel a cashier's check, he'll see that Um, that the majority of courts rule that even if a bank has a good defense, it cannot cancel its own cashier's check unless the court tells it it can.
Any cancellation before that results in my having the right for a civil suit.
The second way I'll tell you that the caller is wrong is if he calls the author of Brady's on Bank Checks, the definitive book on banking law that First Interstate Bank told me they used themselves.
The author told me, if they cancel your cashier's check, you get a lawyer, because you have a civil suit.
Well, it looks like to me, First Interstate is tangled with the wrong person here.
I mean, some nice old lady, maybe, who was just joking around, would have just given it back, but you sound a little sharp, uh, for them, and, um, I think they've got a big headache on their hands.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Patrick Combs.
Hello.
Hey, Art.
Uh, hello, Paul.
Is that Peter?
No, Patrick.
Patrick, I'm sorry.
Where are you, sir?
This is Owen.
I don't know.
minnesota okay i want to tell patrick that uh... he should fight
for this money tolietto it sounds like you've got three different legal claims to
it you know i have a lot more public bank five thousand
and uh...
a lot of the people if you want a good time
like the frank it'll good lawyer kaza you know if i let's let's try this approach
Patrick, suppose you did as he said, even because you're angry at the treatment they're giving you, and you fought this right down to the bitter end, and you won.
In other words, there it is, the final decision, the money actually is yours.
Besides changing all of America's junk mail forevermore, would you at that point, when they said the money is yours, then would you give it back?
No sir, at that point I would give it all to charity.
Charity?
No 100 megahertz Pentium laptop?
No, I'll tell you why.
I'll tell you why.
I would be so proud of the fact that I stood up for myself against a massive institution.
And I believe, as the Indians used to believe, that gifts have to stay in motion.
The minute they stop, they become property.
And you've changed the fundamental nature.
No, I would give it all away and I'd be really proud of the fact that I got to play a little bit of Robin Hood.
You would think of it as a legal gift?
No, I would think that the universe gave me a gift because I wasn't trying to get that money.
It would have just ended up, I was $95,000 richer.
You'd give it all to charity?
Yes, I would.
You are a remarkable person.
You really are.
I mean, a lot of people would either just plain give it back to avoid the hassle and not get into a fight because it might end up costing you $95,000.
How about legal help?
Would you be your own attorney?
Sounds like you could be.
No, I wouldn't.
I think that that would be... that could be naive on my part.
I would get... I would get a... Well, you've got F. Lee Bailey, but he's busy.
I would get a good lawyer who specializes in bank check law.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Patrick Combs.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Yes, sir.
Well, I think we're missing the whole point here.
That money's not just not his.
I don't care if it's legal or not legal.
The money is not his.
And I mean, I can give you a perfect example of how this works.
I went to an ATM machine at First Interstate.
I asked for $100 and it gave me back, I think it was $120.
So it's $20 more than I had in there.
I wrote a check, sent it back to the bank, sent them a brief note, and got this terrific letter back from a bank vice president pointing out that that money is not my money.
It's someone else's money.
And he also said that if at any time I want the loan at the bank to come in at any time, because I demonstrated my, you know, faith and integrity.
Your honesty.
So, I mean, it's just not his money.
It's not an issue.
I don't know why we're spending so much time on this thing.
All right, well, because apparently there is a legal question about his money.
Can I say something here?
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, it begs two questions.
My instant response is, it's not my money because I didn't earn it.
At the value and consideration level, I didn't earn the money.
It's not mine.
But it also begs a very serious question, which is, then what is the law for?
Why are there tomes and court cases on what entitles a person legally to money?
If a bank is supposed to dishonor a check by a certain amount of time in order to save
people from hardship, and we don't follow the rules when it's in our favor, but the
bank want this to follow it when it's in their favor you know what are we talking about
Yeah, isn't there a Monopoly card that says, bank error in your favor, collect $200?
Yeah, that started to seem like a very ridiculous card to me.
Well, yeah, I mean, it could have said $95,000 or so.
I mean, those laws, things like the midnight deadline, are laid down for a reason.
And I really, as much as I want to give the money back, I also think, well, what are the laws for then?
Because we don't do our money system based on ethics.
We do it based on laws.
Right.
So, are the laws only enforceable when they're on the bank's side?
Right.
Is a good question.
Hold on one second.
Why aren't people questioning the bank's ethics?
Like, hey, you know, Patrick legally got a claim to the money.
And banks depend on those laws for their profit.
It's true.
So why are they telling him that he's got to give it back?
Why don't they just go, we're playing by rules laid down in this book.
We agree to this book.
It's how we make a lot of profit every year.
He got it this time, so we move along.
Alright, hold on a second, Patrick.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from August 21st, 1995.
From Kansas City, Patrick Combs.
Patrick?
Yes?
All right.
Back we are.
Let's keep moving.
West of the Rockies.
You're on the air with Patrick Combs.
Hi, Art.
How you doing?
Hold on.
Let me turn the radio down.
Turn it off.
Okay.
Yes.
Okay.
We got it off.
Hey, I just wanted to say I've been listening to Peter all night.
Patrick.
Patrick.
Somebody else called him Peter.
Patrick Combs.
Patrick.
I just wanted to say that I really commend what you're doing.
I think it's pretty cool.
Thank you very much.
I think you started off with exactly what you're saying.
You started off I really appreciate that because it's not easy for me to stand up against this bank.
I live now on a day-to-day basis wondering if I'm going to be in court for the next two years.
not gonna push me around. I think that's pretty neat. Thank you very much. It's not, you know,
I really appreciate that because it's not easy for me to stand up against this bank.
I live now on a day-to-day basis wondering if I'm gonna be in court for the next two
years. When was the last time they contacted you? July the 6th.
It's been that long?
Yes.
You know what the last conversation I had with the bank was like this.
It took every ounce, the hardest phone call I've ever made in my life, and I called them and I said, the day they expected me to return the money, and I said, I'm not going to give the money back unless we reach a different agreement, because I know that I gained a legal right to that money, and I am upset because of the way that I've been treated in this situation.
uh... and and what i asked him for and he was in complete agreement to get it
with get it for me was a letter an official letter from the bank
and to new a t m cart and in other words you wanted your account restored yes
well that seems that seems amicable
and that's pretty easy for a nine five That's right.
So what did they say?
They said okay?
He said that he would get me a letter, and he said that he would try to get me ATM cards.
And granted, that wasn't in his control.
That was another department's control.
I've never heard from them again.
I did.
I got a letter from, you know, that was July the 6th.
And then on July the 25th, I got a letter from my bank, and I opened it, you know, anxious, nervous, wondering if it was going to be the one that put me in court.
It said, Dear Patrick, We appreciate you being a long-time customer of the bank.
We respect your business.
We're glad.
We hope you're happy.
We're happy with having you.
And we want to offer you, as a thank you, a $1,000 worth of accidental dismemberment and death insurance.
I see.
Wow, I need it.
You may need $95,000 worth.
Exactly.
I haven't heard anything from my bank now.
I have no idea why I've heard nothing from them.
Maybe they realize their legal position is less than perfect.
Yeah, maybe.
Maybe they're regrouping.
Maybe a lot of things.
Are you afraid to go back now to San Francisco?
I mean, are you afraid some sheriff is going to be there waiting for you?
I'm not as afraid now as I was around July 6th, the day that I returned from my vacation to San Francisco, and I was very frightened.
and so is my whole family.
This thing has put immense stress on my mother, who on a daily basis lights candles for me and worries I'm going to be in jail.
What did your mom say?
I mean, how did you even break this to your mom?
Well, you know, on the first couple of days when it was just completely fun, it was just completely fun for three weeks because I just had a great account balance that I didn't intend to spend, but it was really fun to walk around.
You know, if you give someone your phone number, you give it on the back of your bank receipt now.
That's right.
Well, when I first told my mother, she goes, uh, she goes, Patrick, you have got to stop doing things like this, you know?
You're not 18 anymore.
And she goes, you know, don't you spend any of that money.
I said, I'm not going to spend any of the money.
How old are you now, by the way?
29.
29?
29, yeah.
Still a kid?
Well, I don't think of myself as a kid, but I think of myself as youthful.
Well, I mean, it was kind of a thing that a kid would do.
In a way, it was youthful.
It was kind of a prank.
It began innocently enough, really.
Yeah.
It did, right?
Absolutely.
On your honor, as a tenth of a millionaire nearly, you would tell us this began as a prank.
On my honor.
Yeah, on every bit of my honor.
I tell you, it just began as, you know, a prank based on my confidence that it would hurt no one, that in no way would it take, you know, would it ever go through or clear.
I just, I walked home saying to myself, laughing at myself over and over, going, you know, in this age of uncertainty, I have certainty in my life.
I know that tomorrow my bank will call me and go, silly Mr. Combs, you put a silly, you know, not real check into the account.
Yeah, very, very cute, Mr. Combs.
Now, here's what my mother said to me in the airport.
She's in fear.
I'm going back to San Francisco.
And she looks me in the eye and she says, Patrick, I'm not going to tell you not to do things like this in the future or to stop doing this because when you stop taking risks, your life becomes boring.
Your mother told you that?
Mm-hmm.
That's quite an attitude from a mom.
Mm-hmm.
So, in other words, she's actually behind you.
She is.
She just worries for me.
Do you have a long history, Patrick, of doing things like this?
I'm an adventurous person, but I don't have a long... I have no history of doing things like this.
You haven't messed with banks before?
Never, ever, ever.
You haven't hacked your way into any of their... No, no hacking.
No, no hacking.
No.
You want to hang on for a while, Patrick?
Yes.
Good.
Stay right there.
We've got a newscast to do.
Relax, and we'll come back to you after that.
Hmm.
A chance of a millionaire.
Maybe.
You're listening to Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coaster Coast AM from August 21st, 1995.
Coaster Coast AM, or Coaster Coast AM, is a production of the National Geographic.
Coaster Coast AM is a production of the National Geographic.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in the world.
A lot of new stations joining at this hour, so a brief recap.
We all get junk mail.
You've seen them.
NBC covered this last night.
You know, the envelope arrives and you look at it and through the little window you can see what looks like a check made out to you, right?
So you rip open the envelope thinking it's a refund or something and it's some incredible amount of money.
Uh, offered to you.
This could be yours, it will say, if only you are the grand prize winner.
And the check, of course, always says non-negotiable on it.
As did this check.
The check in question.
Patrick Combs of San Francisco got one of these.
Uh, in the amount of $95,000, $93.35, according to NBC.
We'll check that out with him in a moment, because yes, he's our guest.
And so, what he did is, he took the check without signing it, and put it in a deposit envelope, put it into the ATM, entered the amount, walked away.
A few days later, lo and behold, it showed up in his account.
The money was there!
Anyway, finally, after enough time passed, he drew the money out of the account, wisely, or not, and got a cashier's check for the $95,000 and change, And put it into a safety deposit box.
Same first interstate bank.
You know how they work.
The bank keeps a key, and you've got a key, right?
Well, after that, the bank all of a sudden went, oops, what have we done?
Actually, it took, as I understand it, the Federal Reserve Bank to determine that this was not a proper check.
And the bank came back to them.
Now, NBC said, what does he want?
Patrick says he just wants lunch with a bank VP.
And that would do it.
He'd give the money back.
But, see, we've got Patrick on the telephone right now.
We found him in Kansas City.
He's exiled in Kansas City.
And so we're talking to him about whether he ought to give the money back or what he... And actually, he makes a case.
The money is his.
And if he would again, Legally, in other words, the money is yours, if not morally.
Patrick, legally, in the best legalese you can muster, give us the best case, once again, for the new audience that this money, legally, may be yours.
In short, I've got it three different ways.
Number one, the words non-negotiable don't mean anything on a check.
Number two, if a bank does not tell you that the check was dishonored, within twenty four hours after they found out it was bad
then the money legally becomes yours
news and then the third reason is
uh... called finality of payment when a bank issues the cashier's check for the exact
fame amount is a deposit that they took in the courts
consider that in the story and so
technically legally you claim this money is yours Absolutely.
Alright, here's a faxer.
See what you say to this.
While I'm very sympathetic to this situation, I'll bet you any judge would inevitably side with the bank since there is a clear admission that this really was not a legit check.
Also, need I remind you, the bank has lawyers on staff.
You'll have to pay big bucks for yours, Mike, up in Madison, Wisconsin.
Um, I think his first point is probably not true.
You're saying it was a legit check.
Correct.
I think that a judge might take this opportunity to change that law.
Really?
I do.
I think a judge, because, I mean, if the guy who wrote the law book himself You know, he's got a footnote in that book that brought it to my attention that says, this is a dangerous law.
If you can write sample or non-negotiable on a check and it doesn't mean anything, then it's a dangerous law.
Well then, maybe there is a society in America, I believe, that fights junk mail.
Have they contacted you?
No, I tried contacting the Direct Mail Association.
If there is a society, Art, I would truly like to know who they are and I would contact them myself.
Art, while we were on commercial, I got a metaphor that I'd like to try out on you.
Listen to this.
You're driving your car faster than you think the law allows, but since it's midnight and no one's around, you think it's safe.
Police pulls you over, throws you on the hood of the car, and tells you that you've not just earned yourself a ticket, but also a prison sentence.
You're shocked to learn about a prison sentence, so you go read the law for yourself.
But what you find is that the law actually allows you to speed in that district.
What do you do?
Do you pay the ticket?
Uh, no.
You fight.
I would fight.
There, of course, is no such law.
No, there isn't.
But what I'm saying is, some people, that's exactly how I feel about my situation.
Because, remember, in what I just said, you're driving the car faster than you think the law should allow.
Right.
Oh, should allow, I see, okay.
Right.
So the law doesn't even conform to your own morality.
There is.
You know the argument I like the best?
It is that the laws are used most times for the bank's benefit.
And when occasionally the law works the other way around, even though it would be a technicality, I kind of admire you for standing up and saying, no, wait a minute here.
The law's on my side.
And so then if the law is wrong, change the law.
Right.
That is what you're saying, right?
Yes.
Yeah, I'm close to wanting to actually adopt that stance exactly, because I really see the importance in doing that, because it's the law.
Exactly.
If the law is wrong, then let's change it.
If the law doesn't conform to my morality, then maybe I ought to really put my best foot forward to have it reversed.
And everybody should know, and you really mean this, huh?
That if you win the money, if the money turns out to be yours... It all goes to charity.
I mean, what kind of fool would I look like if I didn't give it to charity?
And after saying this, of course I mean it.
Well, you could have that much in legal fees by the time this gets awarded to you.
Has that occurred to you?
If I had that much in legal fees, I couldn't afford this.
I couldn't do this.
I would need support from people.
You did say you're an author, though, right?
I am.
I wrote a book called Major in Success.
Might be the subject for a hell of a book.
It might be.
I mean, the battle.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Patrick Combs.
Hi, this is Troy.
I'm calling from Fort Myers, Florida.
Yes, sir.
I'm a first-time caller.
I have never in all my years of listening to talk radio felt my blood pump as hard as it is pumping right now, and I had to call.
It's the middle of the night for me, and I'm in a car phone.
That's all right.
I am, without sounding boastful, but I am a 28-year-old self-made millionaire.
I own a very large company that I'm sure most people are familiar with, and I'm not going to name it because I'm not here to plug my company.
I am completely repulsed by what I'm hearing.
Not only the fact that you're encouraging it, but that he is actually buying into his own instant celebrity status.
He is having so much fun with this and is trying so hard to exploit this for every bit he can get.
It is just repulsive to me.
The only people that I think are rallying around him and are saying, Great, go for it.
You know, stick it to the big guy.
He's thinking that the whole world believes, you know, stick it to the big guys and you'll always be the hero.
And that's a bunch of crap.
The only people that are telling him, good job, are the people who would steal the money anyway.
So those are not reputable people to be listening to.
Alright, alright, the only thing I would say, see if you can deal with my argument.
Alright, I'm tired of getting the kind of check that he got.
I get I'll bet you I get four or maybe five of them a week.
You know, as I said, a little clear section where you think you've gotten a check and you're kind of excited and you rip it open.
I would like to see that stop.
Well, but what does that have to do with the bank?
He's punishing the bank because somebody mailed him junk mail?
Well, in other words, ultimately, he could prove his point.
He says the law is on his side in that the words non-negotiable don't mean a damn thing.
Now, if that's right, that means people are going to have to stop sending out that kind of junk mail.
Well, and maybe he has a point to make, but this is not like he set out on a mission.
He has fallen into finding some way to rationalize what he's done.
Well, that could be.
And intelligent, intellectual individuals like yourself have given him two or three ideas and causes to fight for.
And so now, a very insecure guy who thought he was going to get his butt thrown in jail, has had a few guys say nice things, and now he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it.
Now he's trying to plug his book, and I want people to call him on his internet site.
This is a 29-year-old who's never had anything in his life, and now has got his 15 minutes of fame, and he's playing it for all it's worth, and it's repulsive.
And let me add one more thing.
As the owner of a big company with a lot of employees, I tell you what, this guy has screwed himself out of a job because I don't know anybody who owns a company that would ever hire this guy.
He's not showing any signs of leadership, any signs of common sense, or any signs of moral and ethics.
He's holding a big guy hostage, which means what?
It means one day if he's ever had a bad experience... He's one of those guys who would slip and fall at work.
That's a pretty big attack, Patrick.
up and where it takes that break this guy is is a loser all right well uh... that's a pretty big attack patrick uh...
how do you respond well you know mostly when uh... you know when i an attack
is that big i feel like there isn't a response because
He is.
His blood is pumping harder than it's ever pumped before.
There's nothing in the world that I could say that would make him feel any different about me.
The things I like to say to other people, and I don't mind him saying it either.
It's just his opinion.
The things that I would like to say to other people if they're, you know, wondering how I feel about that is, first of all, I have an enormous amount going on for myself.
At least that's how I feel about myself.
I don't feel like an insecure person who was given ideas by other people
He's right that I surely did not set out on any crusade at the beginning
I'm not a Ralph Nader who said you know I'm going to stick this in here because I'm going to stop junk mail checks
Yeah, that might have been my idea I don't know but but if he goes to if he himself goes to my
website, and he reads the account He'll he'll I can't believe that he wouldn't notice that
when things start to happen to you you form opinions each step of the way
for the way with each changing week.
That's right.
You learn something new.
I've become educated through this process.
Other people aren't educating me.
I've learned about banks and NSF funds, banks' unfair handling about money practices.
Look, I want to say something, too.
It's not like you're going to make any money by people going to your website.
You're not going to make a penny from that, as far as I can see.
Point two, you have written a book, and I'm going to let you plug it just for coming on the air with me.
I don't care.
Well, let me add to point two, too, because he called me a loser with nothing going for myself.
I don't have a book at 29 years old.
I do 40 speaking engagements a year around the country.
I'm self-employed.
My first year out of college, I made $80,000.
I've never been fit into the profile that he put before.
As a matter of fact, that's why it doesn't bother me, because I think that's the last thing in the world that anybody would call me.
I've done a few dumb things in my life as well.
I'm sympathetic at that level, and I suppose that his accusation about you're going through a period of rationalization is probably to some degree accurate.
I mean, it's a process of thinking about it as all this has gone on, and it's not as though the bank has contributed to it by being Mr. Nice Guy, or has in fact contributed to a change in attitude.
So, you know, on the other hand, I do feel sorry for that poor bank teller who may not have a job.
That did come up earlier.
I went into the bank on Saturday.
Yeah, on Saturday.
And on Saturday, I spoke with with uh... three of the tellers there
and uh... to tell her that i've actually spoken with before and there are no tellers have been fired
she smiled gave me a big handshake and said so you're the guy that did that
you've known i don't worry about it none of us have are getting in trouble
uh... and none of us will get in trouble alright patrick i will try to get to the
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now we take you back to the night of august twenty first nineteen ninety five
on our girls somewhere in time back now to patrick
combs the uh... temporary possessor of ninety five thousand
dollars plus Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Patrick Combs.
Hello.
This is Greg from San Clemente.
Hello, Greg.
I agree with the guy that just preceded me that called in.
You know, whatever the situation is with the bank, the big guy, whatever the situation is, somebody made a mistake there.
And just because it's a mistake, and maybe because the legal grounds Are there?
That does not mean that that money is that man's.
It's a wrong situation.
It doesn't belong to him.
And morally, there's an obligation to give that money back.
Even if he winds up in a court situation saying that the money is his, giving it to charity isn't any appeasement.
He should just turn around and give it back to the bank if he's got any character at all.
All right.
All right.
Is it reasonable that he would ask of the bank all, you know, all he has asked of the bank It doesn't matter what he's after.
Well, but wait.
He asked for a letter.
That seems reasonable.
And he asked to get his account restored.
I understand.
But the reasonability of it is not the issue.
The issue is who really legally, you know what I'm saying, morally... No, you're taking it yourself over whether you're asking yourself a legal question or a moral question.
or morally is to proceed everything else otherwise you're in the situational
ethics and then you get a lot of the current and it was and it was a off
your back and you were losing ninety five thousand dollar do you get do you
get upset about the fact that the law does not conform to your morals because
i do i think that each of us have got a moral character
that exactly but don't want to go along No matter what the law states, I believe that your moral character is first and foremost, and for you to compromise your own moral character with some kind of appeasement and rationalization just diminishes your own character.
The first thing I'd like to say is that I agree with this man wholeheartedly.
Because what he's saying is, I have no ethical or moral claim to that money whatsoever.
And if I've been misheard on this radio to say that I believe I have an ethical, moral claim, or that I am trying to keep the money, I have been misheard.
Because in every step, on every interview I've done, I have said, I want to give the money back.
I am not trying to keep this money.
I'm trying to point out to people, though, that legally i have a claim and my bank didn't approach me
like that saying you know paid
you're on it can you say that you don't have an ethical claim to it we're honest
and we say you know that we made a lot of mistakes and we lost the
legal right but it that they'd bent me over the hooded you know i mean it
they basically scared me to death so that
in hope that i wouldn't understand that i had a right to the situation or that i
hadn't done something wrong Um...
Patrick, let's say I'm a bank vice president and I'm going to get in touch with you.
What's it going to take, bottom line, for you to give me my money back?
We are going to go to lunch.
We're going to go without lawyers because it's a friendly lunch with two respectable people.
The last thing I think our country needs is more lawsuits.
The last thing I want to do is give people an example of another reason to sue.
I would like to publicly give people an example of a reason not to sue in a way to de-escalate problems.
Uh, and all it would take is sitting down at lunch and I want to speak first and I want to say, you know, I know that ethically and morally I didn't do anything.
I mean that I didn't do anything to earn the money and I like to have money that I earned.
Uh, and I would like to hear the vice president of the bank say, um, you know, uh, we don't, you know, we, we legally lost the money.
Well, we legally at least jeopardized our having money.
We missed the midnight deadline.
You're right.
You know, there is such a thing as a midnight deadline that we're supposed to follow.
And I would give the money back.
That's all it would take?
Uh-huh.
Because then they wouldn't be asking it back based on fear.
You know, trying to scare me.
Is that all you've had from them so far is the scare tactic?
Yeah, that's all.
You haven't had anybody come to you warmly and nicely?
No.
No?
No.
Why do you think that... Well, I'll tell you what.
Hold on to that answer.
We're here at the bottom of the hour, so hold on to that answer.
It's a good hook, and we'll be right back.
In other words, why wouldn't a big bank be human enough to send some nice guy out?
And, I mean, that is all that Patrick is asking.
Did somebody show a little human kindness from a bank?
You're listening to Art Bell's Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from August 21st, 1995.
This is a presentation of the Coast to Coast Amphitheatre, a concert hall of the Coast to Coast Amphitheatre.
Premier Radio Networks presents Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight's program originally aired August 21st, 1995.
It is the case of Patrick Combs that we talk.
Patrick, a young man in San Francisco, a holder at the moment of about $95,000 or so of First Interstates money.
Guess it's their money.
Might be Patrick's money.
I don't know.
That's what we're talking about.
A couple of faxes of support.
I'm tired of the banks charging us more and more fees with less service.
ATMs cost banks less than tellers, but fees keep going up and we keep losing tellers.
Banks are really...
Giving it to us, you know what I mean.
And I'm glad they are getting a little of their own medicine back, signed Ray in this.
Dear Art, ordinarily I would frown on Patrick for trying to beat the system.
However, that is not what he did.
He used the system to his advantage.
And due to the attention, or inattention rather, or ineptness of several people, he got the money.
Possession is nine-tenths of the law.
His requests are reasonable.
I say more power to him.
As far as employment goes, I think his actions prove he is intelligent, resourceful, creative, and so far, lucky.
He would be an asset to any company, from DJ in Phoenix.
That should make you feel better, Patrick.
And bear in mind that there are a lot of computer hackers who many call criminals, and in fact they do take criminal actions, but then they are hired by companies to protect them from people just like them.
So, that could be the case with you.
Patrick, are you there?
I am.
Okay.
Let's go east of the Rockies and say hi, you're on with Patrick Combs.
Hi, this is B.J.
Hart from Owensboro, Kentucky.
Yes, sir.
And I was just wondering, Patrick knows a lot about the laws and everything, and I was wondering if you knew anything about bad check laws and about the non-negotiable thing, not really meaning anything, before any of this came along.
That's all I wanted to know.
That's a good question.
In other words, when did you begin to research all this?
I began to research this the day, three weeks after I deposited the check, the day that a bank teller told me the money legally became mine.
I wanted to read it for myself.
I didn't want to move that cashier check if the teller had been wrong, on the possibility the teller had been wrong.
As a matter of fact, I did not know what non-negotiable meant in terms of check definition until I read in the law book myself.
I used to use the word invalid.
You know, the check wasn't valid.
What is the actual definition?
Non-negotiable?
What I meant to say, Art, is that I used to use the word invalid until I began reading the law books three weeks after this.
And now I understand that in banking terms it's called negotiable or non-negotiable.
Alright, East of the Rockies again.
You're on the air with Patrick Combs.
Yeah, this is Scott from Indianapolis.
Yes, Scott.
I just want to tell Patrick hats off to him.
I think banks, as well as many other large corporations today, they get away from the customer service aspect of it.
I don't feel like he's asking too much.
No, I don't either.
The personal feel from it just isn't there anymore.
I think companies tend to act like we need them rather than they need us.
They are there for our service.
It is a good point, and there was a day when you went to a gas station, Patrick, and they used to wipe your windows and say hi to you and check your oil and stuff, and banks have kind of gone the same way.
There's not very much personal attention anymore.
And you would think when $95,000 is involved, you know, they wouldn't be so adverse to giving you a little personal attention.
I really appreciate the caller's comment.
I also bring to attention that I understand that banks have, you know, they've got, they're guarding our money and they have security policies and they have to have security officers.
My customer service complaint in this situation is that if I didn't break the law, I do believe it's wrong to call me and tell me that they're going to put policemen at my door and that I committed an act of fraud.
Uh, they froze your account, right?
Yes.
Do you have a lot of money in your account?
No, I don't.
So that's not really doing them a lot of good.
No, it's really, it's a non-issue.
So you could tell them, keep my account, give me my check.
Yeah, it would be a great trade.
Now what would happen if you went into the bank and tried to get that check out?
Would they have to let you get it?
Or could they seize it the moment you went in with your key and they put their key the way they do?
I have no idea.
So right now, the safest place for that check is exactly where it is?
Yes.
I'm not moving the check for the bank's sake.
I'm not trying to send the bank signals that I want to keep their money.
I'm trying to send them signals that I want to give their money back.
At the same time, I'm trying to send them signals, you know, that I want them to treat me as a human being.
As a human being.
Not just an ATM.
Yeah.
Alright, you're on the air, coast-to-coast AM with Patrick Combs.
Where are you, please?
No, you're not.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Patrick Combs.
Hello.
Hello.
Yes, sir.
Where are you?
Tucson.
Tucson.
Alright.
Uh, are you on a speaker phone?
No, I didn't.
Alright, well get good and close to your phone, sir.
Alright.
Alright, go ahead.
Well, I think he has a bit of jealousy with everybody telling him that they're gonna get sick and all this because they don't think it's morally right.
I think they should go ahead and get sick and throw up and whatever they want.
In other words, you're thinking, uh, they wish they'd done it?
Yeah, that's what I think.
Alright, do you think there's any of that in there, Patrick?
I have no idea.
I appreciate his response, because to me it feels like support, and I can see that maybe some people would really like $95,000.
I mean, I would like $95,000, but I think that the first caller who really laid into me definitely feels that way, because he actually believes that I have Nothing going on in my life, and that I'm a loser, and that this is the biggest event in my life.
And the thing that I've actually kept track of for myself, on a daily basis, since this exploded in the media, is that my life is bigger than this incident.
Are you afraid?
This is an incident in my life.
This didn't make my life.
Yeah, I'm wondering, are you afraid that this incident will become, you know, sort of your footnote in history?
No, no, no.
I'm not afraid of that.
This isn't my first 15 minutes of fame, either.
That's a good line.
First time caller line.
You're on the air with Patrick Combs.
Hi.
Hi.
I'm Lori from Layton, Utah.
Yes.
I have a problem with legally and morally.
Morally, that money's not his.
And even if he's trying to teach him a lesson, it's not his money to teach him that lesson.
I think that's what's wrong with society now.
We're going downhill because legally is a lot lower than morally.
Agreed.
And so I think that what he needs to do is give it back.
He said he's not going to let them guide his actions by giving it back, by intimidating him, but yet he's willing to let their actions make him keep money that is not morally his.
Well, um, certainly banks do use intimidating tactics at times themselves.
True, but same thing.
And he is arguing the law, technically.
He is, but the whole thing is, morally and ethically... He agrees with you.
It's got down the tube.
And so that money isn't his to teach them the lesson.
If he doesn't like a big bank and he doesn't think they're to have good customer service, go to a small bank.
The bank we bank with has three branches total, and that's it.
They have very good customer service.
They take care of you.
They say hi to you every time you go in.
They know who you are.
So quit doing business with a big bank.
That's stupid to say that you can teach them a lesson.
You take your money out of the bank, that teaches them a lesson.
Alright, and to be fair, I'm a first interstate customer myself.
I have an account there, and they've always treated me very well.
Now that may vary branch to branch or person to person or manager to manager.
I don't know.
I like this woman a lot and I like what she's saying and I also like this is the first bad incident that I've had with First Interstate.
I too have had nothing but just fine experiences for the 12 years that I've been with First Interstate Bank.
I also don't think that it really is my place I kind of agree.
teach the bank to a lesson what i'm and that's why i started off this hour maybe
she didn't hear it by saying but this isn't for me about getting them to do anything
this is for me about retaining my own sense of honor
if i you know if i bowed down because they told me they're gonna
white me out if i don't give this back then i'm gonna start living my life in fear
i'd look i i kind of agree i i would expect reasonable decent treatment under the circumstances not
threats of jail and police and all the rest of it
This is the kind of thing that you would first, at least first, want to try to reach some kind of amicable agreement before you start calling in the Federales.
Yeah.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Patrick Combs.
Hi.
Hi.
This is Kirk from Voicing.
Hi, Kirk.
I want to talk to Patrick about A check is a check is a check, and he's entirely correct.
You know, you can write a check on a fish, or a watermelon, or whatever it is, or just a piece of paper.
I guess the key is whether it's on a banana peel.
I've heard them written on banana peels.
If you write non-negotiable on it, that peel is still negotiable.
Right.
Yeah.
I appreciate it.
I appreciate it.
The labels of immoral don't bother me because the one thing that I've done throughout this
whole thing is say I have got to retain my integrity through doing this.
And, you know, if I know I've retained my integrity, it may not match other people's integrity.
All right.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Patrick Combs.
Hi.
Yeah, hi.
This is Derek from Phoenix.
Yes, Derek.
Yeah, I just wanted to say I applaud him for what he did.
I think that if they were dumb enough to let it slip by and legally he can prove that he deserves the money, Or it doesn't violate the laws.
I think he deserves to be able to keep it just on the fact that there's stupidity.
Well, he doesn't agree with you exactly, right?
No, not exactly.
Because, um, you know, this isn't about their stupidity.
It's, uh, actually, you know, I feel like, um, yeah, it's not about their stupidity.
I think that they have a problem in their system.
And I bet that many banks do.
I think that many banks are processing more checks than they have the capability to process.
I think the banks also probably are not educating their tellers the way tellers need to be educated.
I bet the tellers do not know that non-negotiable doesn't mean anything on a check.
So no, I feel for the banks and the system and the number of the checks they're processing and maybe computers have something to do with this too.
But I don't feel for the bank about the way an individual treated me.
Do you think a teller actually processed this or do you think it may have been processed by a machine?
I have no idea.
That's an interesting question.
And if it is, I bet they're looking real hard at the software now.
Mm-hmm.
Well, I'll leave it at that.
First time caller line, you're on the air.
Yeah, what I'm saying is that any check, regardless of what's put on the front of the check, don't mean nothing.
But what you put above where they signed, that's what's binding.
Well, um, I'm not sure I understand that.
All right, yeah, well, it's right above where a person signs for the check.
It's non-negotiable.
Okay, but he never signed.
I know he didn't, but I'm saying that nothing on the front of a check means anything.
I mean, you put non-negotiable on the front, it don't mean nothing.
But you put non-negotiable above where you sign for the check.
Oh, I see.
That's interesting.
Would there be anything to that, Patrick?
I don't know.
I have no idea.
Okay, good answer.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Patrick Combs.
Hello, Art.
This is Cindy in Kansas City, Missouri.
Hi, Cindy.
Hi, I have a question for Patrick.
If this case should happen to go to court, And he should win and the money should be his?
Yes.
And he does give it to charity?
Yes.
Would he claim it on his taxes at the end of the year?
Because I think it would be a great tax break.
It's true.
You said your income level was pretty good.
You would be able to claim it then at the end of the year, right?
Yeah.
If it was a charitable giveaway, I would have to look.
I don't know.
I'm not a tax expert either.
I don't know.
It's an excellent consideration.
Okay.
All right.
Stay right there.
We'll be right back.
The After Dark Newsletter was started by Art Bell back in 1995 and it's still going strong
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Call right now to subscribe.
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George Norris are you concerned at all that government is taking us down
the wrong path And why are they doing it?
What is the wrong path?
The wrong path, in my view, is that government is expanding its power and individuals are losing their freedom to make decisions for themselves.
The more crisis we have in terms of the economy or potential terrorist attacks or a swine flu and all these wondrous things that are coming at us from all sources, the government comes along and says, OK, we'll solve your problem for you.
Just allow us to expand our power and we'll take control of your lives.
And, you know, we'll solve the problem by making you a slave and then you won't have
to worry about decisions anymore because we'll make all of them for you.
So anybody that's awake I would say should share my concern that yes the government
is leading us down the wrong path and it's primarily because we're allowing it.
Now we take you back to the night of August 21st 1995 on Ark Bell Somewhere in Time.
Now back to Patrick.
Patrick, I'm going to let you go here at the top of the hour, because you sound tired.
I know you're in Kansas City.
It's got to be coming up on four o'clock, and you've got to get up in about two hours.
But I do want to ask this.
If it comes down to it, Patrick, and you're facing jail, possibility of actually going to jail, or giving the money back, and the bank has not budged, and they still have a foul attitude as far as you're concerned, And would you then give it back or go to the pokey?
I'd probably give it back because my work is really important to me.
I mean, tomorrow I'm doing a leadership retreat for 140 students.
I'm not going to go to jail for this, you know, and stop doing my work.
I love my work.
So I would doubt that I would choose to go to jail.
If they push it that far, then... Yeah, if they push it that far, I would doubt.
I believe the bank has a bigger legal staff than I do.
By a lawyer or two.
All very interesting.
You're just one of those people who have done one of those things that will be at least in your life a footnote.
Look, I'm giving you a chance to plug your book.
You've spent two hours with me.
And that's above and beyond the call of duty out in your time zone.
It was the NBC story that caught my attention last night, so I could not resist.
So, plug your book.
Art, my book is called Nature and Success.
It's about being successful in your career and in your life.
And the highest compliment that I keep receiving since it's been published is People write to me every week about my book and what they say is, I read the whole thing cover to cover without putting it down.
It's the first book I've ever done that on.
When I published that book, I fully expected that it might fall into the category that all books do, which 90% of books aren't read.
People read the whole thing and it only takes a couple of hours, but at the end they say that it changed their life, that it's the first book that really made sense to them on how to How to become successful and find a job that they love and
tap back into that passion for something that they've always wanted to do but didn't think
was possible.
They're all doable steps.
All right, so how do they get your book?
Where is it?
It's in bookstores.
It's in all major bookstores.
I have had the finest time on your show and I want to compliment you from the bottom of
my heart that I wanted serious treatment of this subject exactly the way you made it happen.
I wanted people to get to exercise their right to morals and values about this.
And you have them.
Those who have accused you of not having them, I think, have been unfair to you.
It is the way people are, though.
And you have acknowledged you have no moral right nor claim on the money.
However, there are some principles, and it just seems to me that what you're asking is not unreasonable.
That they deal with you on a human basis.
That they restore your account.
That's it.
You don't want part of the money.
You don't want a pound of flesh.
You just want reasonable treatment.
And I'll bet you that you'll get it.
I'll bet you, perhaps as a result of this show, I mean, I'm sure there's a bunch of bank people listening to this right now, and listening to you, and my guess is that's what they'll do when you get back.
When do you go back to San Francisco?
August 31st.
August 31st.
Well, that's a while yet, isn't it?
All my speaking engagements right now.
Well, Patrick, I wish you all the luck in the world.
And, um, if anything should happen, and they give you only one call, call me.
I, I, I absolutely would.
Alright.
Thank you so much.
Take care, my friend, and, uh, say hi to Mr. Markham if you should happen to run into him, now or in another life.
We'll be back.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from August 21st, 1995.
The Coast to Coast is a production of the National Geographic Association.
This is a story about a man who was a sailor on a ship in the Pacific Ocean.
He was a sailor on a ship in the Pacific Ocean.
All somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from August 21st, 1995.
Well, I told you.
This is the kind of talk radio where anything can happen.
Usually does.
This is Coast to Coast AM live talk radio throughout the night time.
The largest live overnight program in America.
From Blaine in Honolulu, how about this for an ethical question?
Check this out, folks.
I work for a TV station.
The station was recently sold.
The old owners did not stop the automatic deposits.
So even after they no longer owned us, and technically I no longer work for them, they accidentally put money in my bank account via automatic deposit.
They cannot legally remove it without my permission.
There it sits.
What would you do with it?
Hmm.
And he does, uh, well, yes, he does sign it.
Lane in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Interesting question, not dissimilar to, uh, to Patrick's, uh, dilemma at the moment.
You're welcome to talk about anything you like.
I thought the Encounter Show last night was fabulous, all about Noah's Ark.
They think they found Noah's Ark in eastern Turkey, on Mount Ararat.
May 15, 1948, the very day the nation of Israel was created, you believe in coincidences, there was an earthquake, and one of our satellites saw what may be Noah's Ark.
To give you some idea of how real this may be, the possibility, numerically, That this is something out of nature, as opposed to the real thing, are a hundred thousand to one.
It is a military surveillance photo that found it.
I saw it.
An archaeologist, in fact the very guy who the Indiana Jones movies were modeled after, is beginning a dig on Mount Ararat this summer.
Now, this thing that they think is Noah's Ark, is larger than the Queen Mary.
Try and imagine that.
Larger than the Queen Mary.
What would it be doing up on Mount Ararat if it is not Noah's Ark?
On the other hand, if it is Noah's Ark... Oh my!
That's going to change a lot of things, isn't it?
There are a number of stories right now in the headlines, including the Roswell, or wherever, autopsy films, and we had real breaking news on that, on Dreamland, Sunday, to Noah's Ark.
You know, we are on the, we're at a very interesting precipice right now, this human race of ours, and it's a very narrow little fence we're sitting on.
And I really frankly wonder what would occur socially if they prove this is Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat.
Try and imagine it.
Try and think about it.
Try and dream about it.
What if this is it and they think it is?
What does that mean?
Fair amount, actually, when you think about it.
It happened once before.
The Earth flooded so that mankind basically, with the exception of those who were saved in Noah's Ark, perished.
Everybody else gone.
The animals two by two, remember?
Could this be it?
If it is, what does it mean?
Quite a bit.
If these aliens that are depicted in this film are real, What does that mean?
I should say, quite a bit.
It's going to be broadcast on Fox, August 28th.
Worldwide, in fact.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hi.
This is Arthur in Santa Clara.
Yes, sir.
Hi, Arthur.
I think it is on Mount Ararat.
Ararat.
You think it is, eh?
Yeah.
The last one was Buzz Aldrin.
You know, all signs are pointing toward it actually being Noah's Ark.
Well, the people that live around there have been on the actual Ark for years, but it's in Turkey.
Turkey.
Eastern Turkey, right.
And they have to get permission to... Well, apparently that's done, and as I said, this archaeologist is beginning In the summer of 95, that is now the dig, so... Good!
I guess we'll know soon.
What kind of effect would you think it would have socially around the world to learn that's real?
Well, it proves that that part of the Bible is true.
Ah, that's... you said it all, sir.
You said it all.
It proves that part of the Bible is true.
And with real scientific proof that a major portion frankly an unbelievable portion of the Bible for a lot of people is true.
The whole Noah's Ark story.
You think that'll have an impact?
You bet it will!
If we are on the at that magic moment when we're about to prove aliens are real Will that have an effect?
Oh, you bet your bottom dollar it will.
There are a number of stories right now that are really, really interesting.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
Hi, Art.
I'm Carl Vickerstrom.
First time caller?
Yes, sir.
Hey, I've got one about Mr. Combs and his check.
Yes.
And, you know, there's a couple of considerations that need to be taken into consideration, and one is the tax liability.
It would seem that as soon as that money went into his account, anything over $10,000 is going to be reported to the IRS.
I'm sure that's correct.
So even if he gets to keep the money, he's going to have a big tax liability on it, $95,000.
Well, sure.
You know, but you run out and you buy some IRS and you do what you can't.
But you're right.
But that would not occur, I think, until legally it was determined that it was his money.
Well, I'm not sure about that.
I think once it goes in his account, the IRS takes note of it.
Well, they take note of it, but if he ultimately does not retain the money, then I doubt they could tax him on it.
Yeah, that's true.
Another thing is that the federal government is going to be involved in this, because anything that deals with banking, that comes under the federal jurisdiction.
Oh, well, as a matter of fact, thank you, it was the Fed that finally, you know, that check cleared, I think he said, three banks.
Three banks.
And then finally it got to the Fed, and they caught it.
That's amazing!
You know the kind of check we're talking about.
He didn't even mention the company, it doesn't matter, because everybody gets a million of them, right?
This much money, this check could be yours, it could be real.
Well, according to Patrick, the words non-negotiable don't mean a thing.
I wonder how many people are going to be checking their mailboxes Digging through their trash for whatever might have come yesterday.
I wonder how many ATM machines out there are going to be filling up on these types of checks.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello.
Turn your radio off, please.
Yes.
Okay, where are you?
I'm out of Hillsboro, Missouri.
Hillsboro, Missouri.
All right.
I'm listening on KJC.
KGCF is it?
KGCI?
Anyway, DeSoto Station.
Okay.
Would you like to have quite a bit more information on Vendell Indiana Jones?
Well, what can you tell us?
He's the archaeologist who's doing the digging.
Yes, I'm well familiar with him.
I'm a contributor to his work.
You are?
Yes.
Well, alright.
Tell us, you know, give us a thumbnail sketch.
Yes, a small contributor, and I'm a first-time caller.
I was a little disturbed with the photograph in the Fox Network viewing.
Why?
It showed no snow on the mountain and there evidently must have been a previous expedition and Vendel was along as the biblical advisor and on that expedition they deliberately went up there when there was a snow cover over the ark.
Right.
Ground radar could be slid along the smooth snow without vibration and to get better imaging of what's below.
Now they found out that each of the chambers within the ark were of the same total area capacity.
Regardless of the shape of the ark, each of the chambers We're the same capacity.
Wow, so there's a symmetry to it.
Yes.
They found out that they had the, of course it showed one of the stones, it showed the stones that they used over the sides of the ark to stabilize it in the heavy seas.
And yes, and they did, and they called them anchors.
Yes, and the ark also had an opening in the floor engineered So that as the thing would go up and down, it would breathe at the same rate as a human being.
Oh, that's incredible.
And it would get rid of the refuse of the animal, and at the same time it would replace the air in the ark.
So it constantly got fresh air, and I forget how many cycles per minute this thing would go up and down.
And automatically from the work of the ocean and the water, it would automatically breathe as a human being and replace the air and get rid of the refuge.
And there's considerably more that they found out from this ground imaging radar that they drug over the snowbank that was over the Ark.
Now, the most interesting thing of the Ark is that it was made of reeds.
And the reeds were basically destroyed by other humans that got in the area and by rot.
But inside the ark, it was plastered with a concrete substance and that concrete was still intact after all of these centuries.
And it had minute particles of metal in the concrete.
And they have no idea how or what the concrete was constituted of.
They cannot duplicate it to this day.
They sent it to several laboratories, and they have no idea how NOAA developed this concrete to plaster the inside of the ark.
And that's why the image of the ark is still visible today, because of this concrete liner that was on the inside of the ark.
In other words, the metallic content allows the radar return.
Evidently, it was as though the sand they used in the concrete had minute particles of metal in the sand.
Sure, well, it would.
I mean, there are minerals, and it may be that what they used had a high mineral content.
Yes, yes.
Uh, but further what you don't know, and by the way, you ought to have Wendell on your program.
You can spend ten hours with him easily.
I'd love to, and if you know of any way I can do that... Yes, I have a phone number for you.
Um, do you have a fax machine?
Uh, no.
All right.
Would you hold on the line for a moment, please?
Well, let's continue.
We will continue, but I want you to hold for a moment, all right?
All right.
Can you hold?
Yeah.
All right, then hold.
and uh... i'm what i'm going to do is take a quick break and get that phone
number and we'll be right back you're listening to our girls somewhere in time on premier
radio networks Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from August 21st, 1995.
Now I've got the information this caller gave me.
Back now to the caller on the line about Noah's Ark.
You're back on the air, sir.
Yes, and you can call me Hareville Helm.
You're missing the most important excavation Vendel is on.
He is about to unearth the Ark of the Covenant, the Tabernacle Tent, And all of the temple artifacts of the ancient Hebrew temple.
No, sir, I've not missed it.
I am aware of that search as well.
I've seen a number of programs on it recently.
And so I am very well aware of it.
Are you aware he's going back in November and December and he will probably unearth it probably then?
Well, yeah, I am aware of it.
Thank you for the call, sir.
And here's what I would say.
Whether it's the Ark of the Covenant, truly an important find.
Or Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat, proving so many things at one time.
It is going to force the world, it is going to force the world to look at the Bible afresh, wouldn't you say?
To discover the Ark of the Covenant, to discover Noah's Ark, Either one of these two would cause the entire world, all religions, to review suddenly what's contained in the Bible.
It would change many, many things.
There would, of course, be people who would not believe anything.
But for the vast majority, if it is proven to them, scientifically, believe me, it's going to bring on a lot of changes.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Good morning.
Canceled, default.
Yes!
Hi, um, I used to work in a bank, and... And were you a teller?
No, I was in debt entry.
Okay.
And I agree, something needs to be done about those checks, because we got so many in.
Really?
And we had a system that caught them.
But, um, I didn't hear the whole interview.
Did this check have a routing, a bank routing number on it?
Did he ever say that?
I'm sorry.
All I know is he told us it went through three banks and finally the bank that caught it was the federal bank, you know, the Federal Reserve.
Right.
Well, I have a hard time believing it would go through three banks if it didn't have a routing number on it.
And here we've got a $95,000 plus check that is not endorsed.
He never endorsed it.
That is unreal.
But if there is a legitimate bank on that check and a legitimate Routing number, I would say it's that bank's problem.
Whoever this company banks with, that sent the check out.
Well, you know, that's what Patrick suggested, and it seems to me if they can't get the money from Patrick, the bank is probably legally, if the case is that the non-negotiable is in fact negotiable, Oh, I'll tell you, uh, this is going to bring on many changes.
Yes, well, there'll probably be a big legal battle between banks.
Yes.
Bank against customer.
Yes.
But, um, so he just went down in the first place and deposited to see if he could get away with it.
All he did was take it and put it in a deposit envelope, throw it into the ATM, punch up the numbers, and waited a few days, and the money showed up in his account.
Well, I don't think he'll end up getting to keep it, but if he does, I guess.
Would you?
Would I?
I would be too scared to spend any of it, and I think he is, too.
Oh, he hasn't.
No, no, he went out and he got a bank, what do you call it?
Not a money order, but a cashier's check in that amount, and put it in a safety deposit box.
In fact, one of first interstate's own.
Well, yeah, he's covering his butt.
That's right.
Right.
That's right.
I can't wait to see how this comes out.
Yeah, well, keep us posted.
Well, believe me, we will.
This is the program that stays on top of weird stories, no matter how weird they may be.
I worry I'm going to get a call from him in the pokey somewhere.
But he did say, coming down to giving the money back or going to the pokey, Uh, he would, uh, definitely give the money back.
That remains to be seen.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air.
Well, good morning to you!
Oh, good morning.
You know, I didn't get to call you and say congratulations that you have two of the radio stations.
Oh, um... You know what?
I was gonna let you publish my picture.
Well, you know what?
It's too late now.
You threw him out, huh?
No, I didn't say I threw him out.
Uh, but we already went through the photograph thing with the publisher.
For your newsletter?
Your book?
You were going to put my picture in your book?
Well, oh well.
You can still publish them if you want, though.
Really? Yeah. Alright, well I'll think it over. I mean you initially didn't want it published.
Yeah, well, I feel prettier now.
You feel prettier? Yeah.
Well, do you want to take another picture?
No.
Oh, very funny.
You know what?
I think that FM radio station thing would be cool.
It is cool.
I think it would be really neat.
I could have my own radio station.
That's right.
You know, to be in in the 90s, you have to have a conspiracy theory.
Oh yeah.
So yeah, I'd be Conspiracy Theory Radio.
You know who the, you know really who could do it well would be somebody in an apartment building Uh, they could broadcast, I would think, to the majority of the apartment building.
That would be funny.
Um, yeah, you could have, uh, boy, you could have a lot of fun with something like that.
I know, and it's only $34.
I could sit here and, like, bother my neighbors.
For $34?
Well, you mean determine what station they're listening to and zoom in on it?
Or something.
I don't know.
I'm thinking of all the practical joke applications.
Oh, they're endless.
I know.
Absolutely endless.
Yeah, sure.
You could probably go on and do an End of the World broadcast, you know?
Oh, yeah, you mean like... The comet we've been tracking is incoming.
Quickly, check the sky.
You could interview an astronomer who would say, yes, it's going to be impacting the Earth in 24 hours and... And watch everybody.
You know how cruel that would be?
Then see how many ambulances arrived at the front of your apartment building.
Or how many police cars, maybe.
How many bodies went sailing past your window.
Or how many FCC agents come to my house.
Actually, it's, you know, obviously these are fully legal.
It's just that they never made any really good ones, and now they've made this very stable, state-of-the-art FM transmitter.
I mean, technology has come a long way, and it's even in stereo with the subcarrier and all.
It's amazing!
So, like, could I boost its power in any way?
Um, now see, depend on you to ask a question that I can't deal with, alright?
So I don't want to answer that.
Oh, you know what?
The guy with the check, I am so jealous that I did not think of that first.
Well, I appreciate your honesty, you know what?
I know!
And I'm not saying that the people who came down on this case really hard were jealous, but I'll betcha, I'll betcha some of them were, huh?
Yeah, I know.
Bloomingdale's, look out.
That's all I'd have to say.
Alright, well, thanks.
Good night.
Good night.
See you later.
This check could be yours.
Non-negotiable.
New way of looking at all that, huh?
You're not gonna do it, are you?
I'm not gonna do it.
You're listening to Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from August 21st, 1995.
Here is a fax from a very talented person.
This is the guy who's doing my book cover.
The cover for my book.
He's the artist.
And he says, Hey Art, Patrick has probably saved banks a lot with this one incident.
He's saving them money!
I can't believe an arrogant bank officer can't admit their mistake and have lunch with Patrick.
I can only hope that somebody associated with his bank heard your show and the word gets back to the bank.
One listened to this and they would know the guy is very intelligent.
He beat them and now he appears smarter than them.
Also, when are you going to let me know about the cigarette on the book cover?
Right now, John.
And this relates to something else going on in the news.
As you know, Franklin Roosevelt has been depicted for years and years and years the way he was, with a big cigarette holder in his mouth, in profile.
Now, I've got a choice of doing a... It's going to be a wonderful book cover.
Hardback book, by the way.
My book.
And there has been the choice of putting the cigarette, and I do smoke them, in with this incredibly, wonderfully done art, or excluding the cigarette.
And I hereby say, include it.
I refuse to go the way Roosevelt apparently is getting ready to go, and that is to have his image change.
I smoke, and while I'm not proud of it, I'm certainly not going to play anybody's politically correct stupid game.
John, put the cigarette in.
I smoke them.
It's real.
I'm no Franklin Roosevelt.
I didn't mean to compare myself, but in the sense that I'm not going to bow to the political correct crowd.
They can all go jump in the largest lake they can find, long walk off a short pier, all that kind of thing.
No, put it in is the answer.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hello.
Hello.
Hold on just a second.
There you go.
Where are you?
I am in Havre, Montana on a cellular.
All right.
And I'm real sorry I missed Patrick.
I tried to get in.
I want to compliment him, I hope he's still listening, with the integrity that he's shown in this whole ordeal.
and he should expect no less but i think that the back
well i i guess i agree with that uh... in other words the guy is not saying
he's going to keep the money he's saying though that the law even though it may be a quirk
really is in his view on his side
and all he wants is maybe a launch and a letter
and his bank account back That's all.
Yeah, and that's not a reasonable, unreasonable request.
I think not.
I would like to have seen him put it in an interest-bearing account with another bank.
Yeah, I thought about that myself.
The hardship that he's going to encounter over this, if any, It'd be nice to know he got a little something out of it if he had to give it back.
At least enough to pay for his time and trouble.
Well, maybe he'll end up doing us all a favor.
Now, I may have given him this idea and somebody criticized me for that, but I'll tell you something.
I'm sick of getting those checks that really aren't checks myself.
And if this stops that practice, then I'm all for it.
I agree completely.
This is basically poetic justice for the little old lady in South Carolina that I read about a few years back that misunderstood the check and thought she already had won and went and charged up on her credit card.
Oh no, now see, I hadn't heard that one.
Oh God, that's awful.
You mean somebody got one of those?
Oh, that's terrible.
Little old lady in South Carolina thought she had actually won the money.
When she saw the check, went out, ran her credit cards.
Oh, that's very sad.
Some of the checks do look very, very real.
And what really, I guess, annoys me more than anything else is they put them in the kind of envelope where you can just see a part of the check.
You know, like a one and a whole bunch of zeros after it and your name So, there is a kind of a poetic justice to it.
And frankly, a couple of people hit Patrick pretty hard on the moral angle.
But the truth of the matter is, if you listen to him, he does want to give the money.
He's trying to give the money back.
He would like to give the money back.
And his demands, if you want to call them that, are not that outrageous.
Or maybe from your point of view, they are.
But, I mean, the guy's got a life.
He's got to continue to have a bank account and, uh... I don't know.
I'm sure we'll get more reaction.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello?
Hello!
Sir, um... Let me ask.
I'm not even sure I have the right number.
Well, you might not.
Who are you trying to reach?
I'm trying to reach Art Bell.
Well, you've got the right number, then.
You're on the air.
Question.
Did you hear the deal?
Let me turn this lower.
Did you hear the deal about the, uh...
James Norman.
Okay, turn your radio on.
I got it off.
Alright.
James Norman, no.
Works for Forbes Magazine.
Yes?
He wrote an article, uh, and Forbes would not publish it, so he got, uh, Bypass Media, Media Bypass, to publish it.
Right.
Call toll-free 1-800-618-8255.
Yeah, I know.
I'm aware of... You're aware of this?
I'm aware of the story, yes.
By the way, where are you calling from?
From Louisiana.
Louisiana, alright.
So... Alright.
I think I heard the end of the story yesterday as I was coming in from the desk that I think that James lost his job.
James Norman lost his job because of this.
Because he published that article?
Yeah.
Well, was he under exclusive contract to Forbes?
Here's what they told him.
I'm not sure, but they told him You can publish it somewhere else, but we can't publish it.
But then he said that Forbes went on to publish it.
I tried to get hold of the magazine.
I don't know when they come out.
I don't know.
But anyway, the White House, this is the last I heard yesterday, the White House told Forbes not to publish it, to quash this.
They didn't want this out.
You know, that is a damn shame.
Well, it is.
I cannot confirm any aspects of that story, of course.
I guess it would depend on the nature of the contract that he had with Forbes.
I don't know whether he was just under contract or whether he was a freelance journalist that did work for Forbes actually on the payroll.
It's going to depend on a lot of facts and we're going to have to wait and see.
First time caller line, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hi.
Hi.
Turn your radio off.
He's taking it outside.
Anyway, I wanted to talk about Patrick.
Yes.
First, I'm Marion from Reno.
Yes.
And I was in total agreement the minute I heard it.
I was going, that's great, because several years ago, they messed up, First Interstate messed up my account.
Yes.
And deducted $200 from it that I hadn't spent.
So I stayed up all night, got all my records in order and everything, took it down to their bank.
Right.
And the teller said, well, I can't look at it.
If you want to have this fixed, you have to hire an accountant for $35 an hour.
Really?
Wouldn't even listen to me, wouldn't even talk about it, and I ended up $200 that I couldn't afford.
I'm just glad that he's drawing attention.
So to you, it is poetic justice, eh?
Yeah, it is.
I don't think he's going to keep the money by the way he talked.
In a way, I agree with you.
That's awful.
If you have all the records to prove your case, then somebody, some human being at the bank should be willing to sit down with you and go through it just as a service to a customer.
Right.
And especially what I really appreciated.
I mean, $200 to them is not that big of a deal.
But to me, it was a whole week's wages.
No, I hear you.
I hear you and thank you.
I agree with that lady.
That's awful.
You know, and it's not just First Interstate, but it's all of the banks.
Things are changing, and banks are becoming more technical.
Everything's being handled now by computer, and there's less chance of human interaction.
There was a day in America where you knew your teller.
You know, you knew him by name.
And, you know, things like this didn't get in the way.
If there was a mistake, you sat down with him, And you worked it out.
The bank was like a partner.
And I'm sure from a PR point of view, they want it to appear that way today.
And in fact, it should be that way.
But it is.
Sadly, it is changing.
And all of us are becoming numb.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hey, York.
This is Milton in Phoenix, Arizona.
Hello, Milton.
How are you doing?
Real good.
You know, I was trying to get ahold when Pat was on the air.
I work at a bank here in Phoenix, and I can kind of understand a little bit about where he's coming from.
And you had made a comment about how they process the items?
Yes.
I asked a question.
In other words, does a human do that, or does a machine do it?
Well, the machines do it.
You see, what happens when a person takes a check into the bank, they take it into the tellers.
Tellers put all their figures into it and give the money out.
That's basically all they do.
And then it goes over to a bunch of other people who sit there, and all they do is encode the dollar amount on the checks.
And then from there, it goes into the machines which processes the checks, and it all does it electronically.
And if all those little numbers at the bottom of the check are on there, then the item is good, and it'll pocket, and nothing will ever be seen.
Until it's got some way sometime later down the road.
So then how do you feel about his position?
I mean you heard what he wanted.
You know what happened.
Yeah I was at the same time he was on the air I was also on his web.
Oh you were?
Yeah I was.
I kind of brought everything over down onto my system.
So you've got a photograph.
I hope somebody will take some of what's on his web page and send it to me.
Attach it to a message on AOL and I'll get it up on our bulletin board too.
I'll see what I can do about that.
The trouble is it can't come in some kind of a format other than an actual GIF.
It's got to come GIF or I can't use it.
Okay, yours is what?
ArtBellAOL.com?
ArtBellAtAOL.com.
That's my email address.
Okay, but like I was saying, you know, If the machine reads all the micro-line down at the bottom, because any check, you'll be able to see it.
Well, alright, what about this?
How do banks know... I have occasionally made a mistake, and First Interstate always caught it, you know, forgetting to endorse a check.
He didn't endorse the check.
Well, that I believe was a teller's mistake, because they're really the only ones who would catch that.
Can you imagine, alright, are you a teller?
No, I'm not.
I work in the operations center.
Is it possible to understand how a teller, I mean at $95,000, that's a big check.
That is.
And how could a teller look at a check for $95,000 and not check to see that there was an endorsement?
You know, I think that's a mistake that teller make, and if I was like the manager of that branch, I wouldn't have that teller there.
Not a position I'm in, unfortunately.
But most of the time, I have seen so many checks come through that have said non-negotiable, but people try to cash them in and sellers pass them right through.
Anything from a buck and a half on up to... Really?
So you mean a lot of this may be done and never caught?
That's very possible.
Wow!
Alright, thank you very much for the call.
Wow!
That's amazing!
Here's what you missed on Coast to Coast AM with George Norrie.
Is this a plan to break us here in this country and make the entire planet on a more even keel?
I definitely think it is.
I mean, the people that are making these moves, they give speeches on it, they teach it in school.
You know, this business of redistribution of the wealth, destruction of national sovereignty.
These things have been written about and talked openly about for quite a while.
And that's what they're trying to create for the United States.
Now we take you back to the night of August 21st, 1995, on Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
Wildcard line, you're on the air.
Yeah.
Hey, Mr. Bell, uh...
Can I respond there to your guest there, Patrick, with the money?
Yes.
Okay, I would like to encourage him to contribute as much as he can to the country of Iraq as a friend of Saddam Hussein.
I would like to encourage him to contribute as much money as he can.
Let me stop you right there.
Are you a friend of Saddam Hussein's?
Are you a friend of Saddam's?
Yeah, I'm a friend of Saddam and I would like to give some of our old atom bombs to Saddam so he could drop it on Israel!
The parasitic Jew leeches that are sucking our lifeblood out of our country!
Alright, well... Did you catch the slight whiff of anti-Semitism there?
That wasn't just a whiff.
That was a full-blown blow in the nose, wasn't it?
Wanna give that money to Saddam so he can bomb Israel with nuclear weapons?
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Good morning.
Hello there.
Goodbye.
On the wild card line, you're on the air.
Hi, Art.
I'm calling from Fairbanks.
Will we get your first two hours lap?
This question has been asked.
I apologize.
But my point with Patrick is, why is it not the company's fault who issued this check?
He's correct that non-negotiable does not make a check non-negotiable.
Apparently not.
Why shouldn't they be responsible for paying for it?
Well, you know what?
Legally, he suggested in the end they may be.
In other words, if that constitutes a valid check.
Right.
Then it may be that the bank, if they can't get it from Patrick, is going to have to take legal steps to try and get the issuer to pay it.
Look, I'm no attorney.
I have no idea.
But there is that possibility.
And if that should be the case, I would imagine a lot of people are going through their trash right now, real quick, and I worry that there's going to be a lot of checks and a lot of ATM machines And a lot of tellers are going to, there's going to be a red alert going out to every teller in the U.S.
later today.
Look out, here it comes.
But you know, as you stated Art, and I think many of us out here, I hate that kind of junk mail.
And there are people such as this little lady that we heard about, North Carolina, this elderly lady, that are fooled by this, that are taken in by it, and maybe this is what it will take to stop that nonsense.
So maybe a lot of good will come out of what Patrick did, and I for one, I think he took the right approach.
I like his attitude.
He's not trying to cheat them.
Well, I'm not sure he had thought of that attitude.
I kind of gave him that idea, and then a caller kind of jumped on my case for giving him that idea.
But it is reasonable, and I'm sick of that kind of mail, and if it stops it, then I'm glad.
And I am, too.
Thank you for your show, Art.
Thank you for your call, ma'am.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hi, this is Donna from Bakersfield.
Hi.
No, no, this is East of the Rockies, dear.
Okay.
You want to call 1-800-618-8255.
Okay.
All right.
All right, thank you.
Yes, this is East.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air.
No, you're not.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hi, Art.
Hi.
Boy, that rang a bell there when you were talking about the telephone company.
Well, haven't you ever had that happen?
Oh, that rang a bell.
I'm not making a pun, either.
Oh boy, when I was young my mom sent me to the store one time and she gave me X amount of money to go to the store and buy something for and I went to the store and they did not have what she wanted and I put, this was when I was 42 years old so this was a long time ago, I put in a quarter and called her and said well they don't have what you wanted and she goes well then try and get this other thing and then Hung up the phone, and I didn't get any change.
And I'll never forget that my entire life.
Well, what was it supposed to be?
A ten cent call?
Well, it was a nickel then.
It was a nickel?
Yeah.
Or a dime.
I don't know.
Whatever.
But anyway, it didn't give me any change.
Then I didn't have enough money to get the other things she wanted.
Oh boy.
And I never forgot that my whole life.
I said, I don't know how they can make these machines that they don't give you change.
Well, look, it's even, thank you, it's even worse than that.
Look, I went to a car wash not long ago, and the car wash swallowed $5 of my money.
This is one of those things where you put bills in, right?
And it swallowed $5.
And so I left a big note there You know, hoping that, uh, whoever, uh, managed the car wash, uh, I left my name and phone number and address and stuff, and I thought whoever managed the car wash would make it right, but they didn't.
So, I realized that this is, uh, I suppose, uh, an example of maybe even the quickening.
But, I consider me and machines to be about even.
Machines and me.
Anyway, in our relationship, they have, in my opinion, taken more from me than I have taken from them.
So, I know that sounds like rationalization, and it may be, but it's life in the modern world.
Maybe we'll talk about this some tomorrow.
Sort of ethics, situational ethics 101, if you will, for modern America.
Thank you very much.
It was a lot of fun.
Talk radio is best when it is different, he says.
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