Ray Trapani had always wanted to be a criminal, even as a young boy. In 2017, amidst the economic frenzy of the Bitcoin boom, there was no better place for scammers than cryptocurrency. So when Ray's friend approached him with the idea of creating a debit card for crypto, Trapani jumped at the chance. There was only one problem: he had no idea how to do that. But thanks to fake LinkedIn profiles, paid celebrity endorsements, and the online community’s insatiable desire to "get rich quick," Centra Tech was soon raking in millions of dollars a day. Was it real? No. But did it work? Maybe. In this fast-paced, debaucherous documentary from director Bryan Storkel (Producer of The Legend of Cocaine Island + Director of The Pez Outlaw), Ray himself guides viewers through the ups and downs of his dramatic journey, alongside his family, former friends, and the journalist who exposed Centra Tech as the first high-profile fraud case of the crypto era.
Category
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:01 - Ever since I was a kid,
00:03 I've always wanted to be a criminal.
00:05 If I could have put it in my yearbook,
00:06 I would have put, "I want to be a criminal."
00:08 (laughs)
00:10 Things have changed.
00:10 Nowadays, you got to figure out
00:12 some sort of way to finesse the system.
00:14 - My name is Raymond Trapani,
00:15 Chief Operating Officer of Centratech.
00:17 - Our pitch to the world was that
00:20 we were going to create a debit card
00:21 where you'd be able to spend your cryptocurrency
00:23 in real time.
00:24 - It's an electronic money.
00:25 - Something about Bitcoins or something.
00:27 - I was all about Centratech.
00:29 I was like, "Look at this, this makes sense."
00:31 - Just watching something become extremely valuable,
00:33 it's like a drug.
00:34 - Tons of money just starts flooding in.
00:36 100,000, another 100,000.
00:38 - It was probably the most exciting thing
00:39 I've ever experienced in my life.
00:41 - We didn't know anything about this business,
00:43 but it didn't matter at all.
00:45 It was too easy.
00:45 (phone rings)
00:48 - Ray?
00:50 Visa's just saying this company, Centra,
00:52 is not allowed to issue a card with Visa on it.
00:54 - I know details about that.
00:57 I can't give you direct answers on that.
01:00 - It just didn't make sense.
01:03 Things looked funny.
01:05 - They have nothing.
01:06 So the whole thing is to now make themselves
01:09 as legitimate as possible.
01:10 - It was very suspicious.
01:12 I started noticing that things were changing
01:14 on their website.
01:15 The pictures didn't even look like real people.
01:19 I researched the founders.
01:21 Wow, the CEO is actually Raymond's grandfather.
01:25 There was an aspect of Centra that was really brazen.
01:27 - We are 100% not a scam.
01:30 - No one ever says that unless it's actually a scam.
01:33 (laughing)
01:35 - This shady company just graduated to the next level.
01:39 They started taking actions to try and hide things.
01:42 Money started going out of accounts.
01:44 - Somebody needs to figure out
01:45 what the hell is going on here.
01:47 - It took a considerable loss.
01:48 - Obviously, you know, something was not right.
01:51 - It's like giving a middle finger to the FBI.
01:53 - He's a real criminal.
01:55 - He's a raised piece of (beep)
01:56 - Absolutely wanted to take them down.
01:58 - This guy's a fraudster.
02:00 (dramatic music)
02:03 (dramatic music)
02:06 (dramatic music)
02:08 (dramatic music)
02:11 (dramatic music)
02:14 (dramatic music)
02:17 [BLANK_AUDIO]