In that first meeting, King would regale Overum with stories of his experience as a developer and describe a number of different investment opportunities that, Overum thought, seemed too good to be true. Time and time again, he seemed to be telling Overum that, if these projects went as planned, he could expect a handsome return on his investment, all with apparently little associated risk.
One opportunity stuck out to Overum: land that King was preparing to develop. For the project, he had told Overum, he would need to raise millions of dollars in just a short period of time. The amount of money and the urgency of the timeline seemed odd to Overum. “Somebody with that much experience, somebody who has done all the things he’s claimed to do, shouldn’t need an investor to ensure a project goes off,” Overum told me. Something strange was going on here, Overum was pretty sure.
It would be important for Overum to continue growing the relationship, determining what additional information he could draw out by posing as a potential investor. King proposed they meet again, this time at a luxury hotel, for some fun followed by business.
When Overum agreed to let me shadow him that night, I watched him deftly channel his character, staying vigilant for all manner of speed bumps that might have spoiled the plot. The emergence of high-definition cameras on cell phones, for instance, is a major peril to undercover work. I took note of Overum ducking away at several points to avoid winding up in the background of someone’s photo.
To do this work well requires internalizing this paranoid hypervigilance, while still exhibiting a graceful self-confidence. Managing these contradictions, I quickly learned, isn’t easy. When, that night at the hotel, someone asked how Overum and I knew each other—a question I’d even been preparing to answer—I froze. Was I going to blow Overum’s cover on a simple introduction? Expertly and casually, Overum jumped in and described us as old friends, pivoting the conversation to safe territory.
Watching Overum in the white–marble-floored hotel foyer was to see someone uncommonly poised, and clearly in his element. Over the background din, I heard him speak about his supposed line of business with a level of expertise normally reserved for real industry veterans. At once, he was fully in character—but also, seemingly, fully himself.
Later that night, after leaving King behind, I asked Overum if anything King had told him might be incriminating. Overum told me that his claims will prove interesting only after he keeps digging and determines whether they’re real or not. “If he was lying to us about anything, then yes,” said Overum. “You can’t misrepresent your wealth or assets to potential investors. That’s fraud.”
It was more than just that financially tantalizing quirk of the federal whistleblower law that drew Overum toward this line of work. His own family had been rocked by fraud, he says. While Overum was still quite young, he explains, his father made a devastating investment. The details were always fuzzy, but the event cast a long and profound shadow. “It was a scam,” Overum says, succinctly. “My father lost everything.” He suffered too: His family moved around a lot in the wake of the incident, and Overum says he turned to alcohol and drugs as a teenager.
In his 20s, Overum began working in sales. “I learned how to read and react to people’s body language,” he says. “I learned people’s tells and how to capitalize on them.”
