[SPEAKER_06]: This series deals with troubling topics, including suicide, drug overdosing, and dependent adult abuse.
[SPEAKER_06]: If you, or someone you know is struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 right now, and speak with a counselor for free.
[SPEAKER_06]: previously on the quarterback and the con artist.
[SPEAKER_06]: Took us a while to get all the wrongs right in this case for Eric.
[SPEAKER_06]: And criminal defense attorney Todd Melnick fights really hard to get the bogus domestic violence charge that con artist Courtney Beard fabricates dropped.
[SPEAKER_09]: Well, we were pushing the case to trial.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I knew that her lawyer was never going to let her testify.
[SPEAKER_09]: She didn't want her to purge herself and make things worse for herself.
[SPEAKER_06]: Because she was caught lying, saying the daughter was with her when the things were being thrown at her, and then in earlier she said, no, she was alone.
[SPEAKER_09]: So she was clearly going to be impeached.
[SPEAKER_09]: by statements that she had made, Eric was obviously going to testify at that point.
[SPEAKER_09]: The prosecution did not want to go through with the trial.
[SPEAKER_06]: At this point, Eric is no longer conserved, and he and Anna go after that conservatorship attorney who appeared to just disregard the theft, Courtney had committed and admitted to.
[SPEAKER_06]: So, Eric sues that conservatorship attorney for Mount Practice and forces him to answer for what he's done in revealing depositions that are as eye-opening as they are unbelievable.
[SPEAKER_04]: Did you find Courtney Credible?
[SPEAKER_04]: Answer.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, you found her to be credible.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, a lot of that is at a gut feeling, but there's nothing that stuck out to you like, okay, this is a little fishy or this seems odd or nothing like that.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, she seemed totally credible.
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, my God.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then there was a whole fight for five months over confidentiality.
[SPEAKER_06]: Right, he didn't want you to tell anyone.
[SPEAKER_04]: Didn't want to tell anybody.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm Jonathan Walton, and this is the quarterback and the con artist.
[SPEAKER_06]: Episode 10, there's a lot more legal theft than illegal theft going on.
[SPEAKER_04]: Just so you know, this is through Eric's lawsuit against the court-appointed council.
[SPEAKER_06]: Anna Durgan is sifting through the court-appointed conservatorship attorneys handwritten notes now that she was able to get her hands on as part of the discovery process in the malpractice lawsuit Eric Files in Los Angeles County in June of 2019.
[SPEAKER_04]: He wrote in his notes.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is note number 15, chronology is the biggest problem per judge Johnson.
[SPEAKER_04]: So this is a judge that's telling the quarter-pointed council and Eric that chronology, how everything happened is the biggest problem looks like Courtney took advantage and then got married.
[SPEAKER_04]: Courtney is still getting money without authorization, exclamation point, regardless of conservatorship.
[SPEAKER_06]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's his own handwritten notes.
[SPEAKER_06]: I find this all so bizarre.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, on the one hand, this court appointed conservatorship attorney says in open court that Eric is competent and does not need to be conserved.
[SPEAKER_06]: And he sends an email, threatening to go after Anna and Eric's family for not only getting Eric into a conservatorship, but also for monitoring Eric's bank accounts to keep tabs on Courtney's staff.
[SPEAKER_06]: But then, on the other hand, in this attorney's own notes to himself, he writes that Courtney is still getting money without authorization.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, to me, there was a lot of these red flags out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: The court appointed attorney intentionally ignored, intentionally excused.
[SPEAKER_06]: That's conservatorship in Pro-Bait Attorney Lisa McCarley again.
[SPEAKER_06]: She's brought on as an expert witness in Eric's malpractice case against that court appointed conservatorship attorney who always appeared to be siding with Con artist Courtney Beard.
[SPEAKER_01]: The court appointed attorney
[SPEAKER_01]: did not do his duties correctly.
[SPEAKER_01]: His conduct in this case fell below the standard of what a quote-apointed council or any attorney should do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you don't ignore criminal activity, being perpetuated against a person facing conservator ship.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't ignore medical reports.
[SPEAKER_01]: To me, that was like how in the world could you pretend that you have greater expertise in evaluating a person.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then a doctor who's been trained to do that.
[SPEAKER_06]: Who's been treating everything?
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it was just absurd.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are not protecting people if you are leaving them in the care and custody of their abusers.
[SPEAKER_01]: So all of the things that the court appointed attorney was doing, which was contrary to the spirit or what I'd like to call like the beauty and symmetry of the law.
[SPEAKER_01]: The red flags were everywhere.
[SPEAKER_06]: At first, this court-appointed conservatorship attorney seems determined to defend the malpractice suit Eric Files against him, and even access his own expert witness in emotion his attorney Files to dismiss Eric's lawsuit.
[SPEAKER_06]: which a judge denies, but after five long years, and multiple hearings and depositions, this court-appointed conservatorship attorney offers to settle, agreeing to pay Eric six figures to drop his malpractice case, but that money doesn't come from this court-appointed attorney himself, it comes from his insurance company.
[SPEAKER_01]: They paid money in order to avoid a potential bigger judgment.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the potential of a humiliating situation where our judge may finally, like the arbitrator, may react the way that I react, which is, where are you thinking?
[SPEAKER_01]: Diding with the person facing criminal charges, and she's admitting that she took this money, and she's admitting that it was without Eric's permission.
[SPEAKER_04]: How do you listen to the family?
[SPEAKER_04]: How do you listen to the detective?
[SPEAKER_04]: How do you listen to Dr. Thomas Chesky?
[SPEAKER_07]: Someone should have read Dr. Thomas Chesky's medical report.
[SPEAKER_07]: Eric Kramer.
[SPEAKER_07]: You do have to call, Linkshy.
[SPEAKER_07]: You do have to read the report and call Dr. Thomas Chesky.
[SPEAKER_07]: You do have to talk to people within Eric's family.
[SPEAKER_07]: You cannot have Courtney B in for any reason in the same interview as the person you're representing.
[SPEAKER_07]: You don't represent Courtney Bear.
[SPEAKER_07]: If she's there, she has to leave.
[SPEAKER_06]: While Eric Triumph's in the Malpractice case against this court-appointed conservatorship attorney, the criminal case against Courtney Beard is another story.
[SPEAKER_06]: Detective Dave Linkshite, who investigates Courtney's staff and her scam marriage to Eric, is adamantly recommending she be charged with multiple crimes.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yes, this case is unusual, and yes, it might be a little tricky to lay out for a jury, but that's all par for the course in Detective Langshides' mind.
[SPEAKER_08]: If you're a crook and you commit a crime, you're going to get what you deserve.
[SPEAKER_08]: Working financial crimes in LA County, I mean, I was dealing with doctors and lawyers, and, you know, I arrested all kinds of people.
[SPEAKER_08]: I wasn't arresting the gay mayor on the
[SPEAKER_06]: a criminal mastermind behind the gangbanger in the street.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: Sadly, though, detective Linkshite retires in January of 2017, and the criminal case against Courtney Beard starts dying on the vine, fast, because the prosecutor does not want to charge Courtney with a crime.
[SPEAKER_06]: And the new investigator assigned to the case after Linkshite retires sends an email to
[SPEAKER_02]: Based on the conversations with everybody involved, I expect the DA will decline to prosecute.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure several reasons will be listed, included Mr. Kramer marrying Ms.
[SPEAKER_02]: Beard and him only wanting to pursue the matter after his arrest for domestic violence.
[SPEAKER_06]: This new and bizarre narrative seems to have sprung up out of nowhere.
[SPEAKER_06]: This idea that Eric is only going after Courtney Beard criminally because she got him charged with domestic violence.
[SPEAKER_06]: And that since they were married, even though we all know by now that marriage was a whole other scam, they can't charge a wife with taking money from her husband.
[SPEAKER_06]: But none of that makes any sense because the criminal investigation into Courtney Straft actually began before she coerced into marrying her.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean at that point in December of 2016, Eric Cramer is mentally incapacitated and has the brain of a six year old and does whatever anyone tells him to do.
[SPEAKER_06]: He could not legally consent to getting married in the first place, but all of that doesn't seem to matter.
[SPEAKER_04]: the case is closed with a DA.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're not going to charge Courtney now because it would seem like it's retaliation.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now I'm being told the case is closed.
[SPEAKER_06]: But Anna Durgan isn't giving up.
[SPEAKER_06]: She's shocked that detective is being so dismissive and she's more determined than ever to prove that what Courtney Bear did to Eric Kramer is in fact a crime that needs to be prosecuted and Anna Durgan doubles down.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, 18th century German writer, Johann Wolfgang von Garthau once penned, at the moment of true commitment, the entire universe conspires to assist you.
[SPEAKER_06]: Well, call at the entire universe, or God, or just a really fortuitous twist of fate.
[SPEAKER_06]: But the next email that honest sends to that detective triggers a chain of spectacular events that breeds new life into the nearly dead criminal case against Courtney Beard.
[SPEAKER_06]: When Anna hits send on her very last email to that detective, in December of 2018, he's not there to receive it.
[SPEAKER_04]: They get an out of office reply that he's on leave, and then that's how I got the different detective to reach out to.
[SPEAKER_06]: So basically, the previous detectives out of office reply sends Anna, the contact info of another detective to reach out to while he's away.
[SPEAKER_06]: So Anna emails that other detective immediately.
[SPEAKER_06]: he was very kind and reached out to us and when that new detective actually starts looking into the Eric Kramer case he is stunned that Courtney Beard isn't being charged with a crime and he plans to do something about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was very appreciative of that new detective wanting to pursue this case and goes, there's evidence.
[SPEAKER_04]: We feel it's a very strong case.
[SPEAKER_04]: We don't understand why the DA didn't file at the first time.
[SPEAKER_04]: We want to do is remove it from that DA and get it in front of another DA.
[SPEAKER_06]: There are, in fact, more than 900 deputy district attorneys working for the LA County DA's office, and what one considers to be a week-case, another might completely disagree.
[SPEAKER_04]: Another great detective can very clearly see everything that was happening and was pushing hard as well to get the DA to file charges.
[SPEAKER_06]: Eventually, the case lands on the desk of an entirely new deputy district attorney, who actually ends up charging Courtney Beard with a slew of felonies, including Grand Theft, Identity Theft, and Forgery, among others.
[SPEAKER_04]: She was reluctant, at least that's where she told me.
[SPEAKER_04]: But in the end,
[SPEAKER_04]: She did charge Courtney with 12 felony counts and the bail amount was $670,000.
[SPEAKER_04]: She was charged on February 7, 2020, or rested on February 10, 2020, and released on February 12, 2020.
[SPEAKER_04]: On a $670,000 bail.
[SPEAKER_06]: Courtney's family ends up covering her $670,000 bail.
[SPEAKER_06]: If she skips town at this point or doesn't show up for courts, they're on the hook for all that money.
[SPEAKER_06]: At Courtney's arrangement hearing, on February 26th, 2020, the Deputy DA tries to temper Eric and Anna's expectations.
[SPEAKER_06]: Eric's son Dylan is there too.
[SPEAKER_04]: And they are all shocked when they hear that Deputy DA say, you know, Eric, these type of cases are very hard to prove and Courtney's most likely not gonna do any jail time.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I just wanted to set your expectations of the types of cases.
[SPEAKER_04]: I've done a lot of these before, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, Eric, it's good that you're well off, so, restitution's not that important.
[SPEAKER_04]: Basically, giving the criminal cart blanche, it's okay that you stole, don't worry about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the message that she's telling us.
[SPEAKER_04]: Then, I ask, okay, I'm a bit confused.
[SPEAKER_04]: You had Courtney's admission under a recorded statement
[SPEAKER_04]: by the detective, why didn't you guys charge her?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, you know, Eric called twice saying not to press charges.
[SPEAKER_04]: I go, he was incapacitated and only telling you, telling the linkshite exactly what she told Eric to say.
[SPEAKER_04]: Eric was incapacitated.
[SPEAKER_06]: So needless to say, the criminal proceeding against Courtney Beard is off to a rocky start and to make matters so much worse, one month later in March of 2020, the pandemic hits.
[SPEAKER_00]: The White House coronavirus task force tells people to avoid bars, restaurants, and groups of more than 10 people.
[SPEAKER_00]: They call it, quote, 15 days to slow the spread.
[SPEAKER_00]: States soon start closing schools and announcing stay at home orders.
[SPEAKER_06]: Stay at home.
[SPEAKER_06]: Stay home.
[SPEAKER_06]: Stay safe.
[SPEAKER_06]: They quite simply stay at home.
[SPEAKER_06]: And in the L.A. County Criminal Court System, nonviolent crimes, like the one's Courtney Beard committed, are relegated to the bottom of the list.
[SPEAKER_06]: It was around this time in early 2020 that Eric Cramer first reaches out to me for help and advice after seeing news coverage of me bringing my con artist kicking and screaming to justice.
[SPEAKER_07]: When Mary and Smith showed up at Ellie's criminal courthouse today, she was sporting a pair of crutches.
[SPEAKER_06]: But Jonathan Walton says, save your sympathy.
[SPEAKER_06]: We knew she was going to pull something today, but to show up in crutches.
[SPEAKER_06]: Keep in mind, police had initially turned me away telling me what my con artist did to me was not a crime and that there was nothing they could do.
[SPEAKER_06]: At that point, high-pulled and on a Durgan, and relentlessly fought back, eventually getting the con artist who scammed me out of close to $100,000, convicted at trial, and sentenced to five years behind bars.
[SPEAKER_06]: Watching the judge that day, the honorable Craig Veels lay into my con artist during the sentencing hearing was such a profoundly healing experience.
[SPEAKER_03]: She does an embedded thing, and someone who is, I think quads every referred to the muscles you have to achieve.
[SPEAKER_03]: So no remorse, no sense of nutrition of any sort whatsoever.
[SPEAKER_03]: While we were here in testimony about how previously impacted the victim in this case, Mr. Walford was.
[SPEAKER_06]: Sadly, the judge in Eric Kramer's case would turn out to be a lot less stringent with Courtney Beard.
[SPEAKER_06]: Anyway, I meet up with Eric and Anna and attend several court hearings where I lay eyes on Courtney Beard for the first time.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I gotta say, she looks meek.
[SPEAKER_06]: She looks frail.
[SPEAKER_06]: And she looks innocent.
[SPEAKER_06]: She's got this whole poor little me vibe on fleek.
[SPEAKER_06]: But, as with every professional con artist, mine included, what they look like, and what they are, are two different things entirely.
[SPEAKER_06]: This is a woman who insinuates herself into Eric's life while he's recovering from a gunshot wound to the head and is mentally incapacitated.
[SPEAKER_06]: This is a woman who unabashedly moves into his house and starts stealing his money under the guise of taking care of him.
[SPEAKER_06]: She even swipes money from a memorial fund established for Erick's deceased son, Griffin.
[SPEAKER_06]: She then tries to get Erick while he's incapacitated to buy her a house a couple different times.
[SPEAKER_06]: And years later, when Eric suddenly regains his mental faculties and tells Courtney to leave, she refuses and calls 911, fabricating a story that he assaulted her.
[SPEAKER_06]: and then she goes on to convince an L.A. County judge to award her $20,000 to move out of his house and $10,000 in attorney's fees.
[SPEAKER_06]: And she tells Eric through her lawyer the only way she'll grant him a divorce from the marriage she tricked him into while he had the brain capacity of a six year old and the
[SPEAKER_06]: is if Erica agrees to give her a substantial amount of money.
[SPEAKER_06]: She's also asking for nearly $12,000 a month in Alamone from here on in.
[SPEAKER_06]: All of a sudden, this starts to feel like a shake down.
[SPEAKER_06]: I reached out to Courtney Bear to get her side of the story, and I've still not heard back.
[SPEAKER_06]: At this point, Anna Durgen convinces Eric that what he needs is an enalment, not a divorce.
[SPEAKER_06]: In legal terms, getting an enalment is kind of like hitting an undo button.
[SPEAKER_06]: It tells the court this marriage should have never happened in the first place.
[SPEAKER_06]: But Eric is reluctant.
[SPEAKER_06]: He's still not 100% there yet, mentally, at this point in July of 2018, and he tells Anna.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's going to cost me another $50,000 if I go for an an moment versus a divorce.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't want to spend the $50,000.
[SPEAKER_06]: This is frugal error coming back.
[SPEAKER_04]: Eric, this is a frugal error coming back now.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I have to, again, no one's explaining to him the way I am explaining it to him.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I said, OK, Eric.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you go for divorce, what you're telling the judge and everybody that you were okay with Courtney and all those charges that she did against your account, are you okay with that?
[SPEAKER_04]: He goes absolutely not.
[SPEAKER_04]: She stole my money.
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't know anything about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I go.
[SPEAKER_04]: So then you have to spend the $50,000.
[SPEAKER_04]: And go for a nomen, because that way, it tells the judge that you did not understand what was transpiring, which you have medical records.
[SPEAKER_04]: We all know you didn't understand.
[SPEAKER_04]: And therefore, it's, you are not authorizing those charges that Courtney stole from you.
[SPEAKER_04]: His process
[SPEAKER_04]: So then he went for the enolment because I know him.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's more about principle than anything else.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he'll spend the extra money, which he did in an up costing him to a null marriage $175,000.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, my God.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because why the judges, again, awarded Courtney, the bullshit that she was asking for,
[SPEAKER_06]: and keep in mind.
[SPEAKER_06]: Judges need a compelling legal reason to grant an an element.
[SPEAKER_06]: You can't just get an an element by asking for one.
[SPEAKER_06]: There's actually an an element trial held where neurologist Dr. Thomas Chefsky testifies and Eric Sun Dylan, his aunt, Patrice, and his childhood friend on a Durgan testify too.
[SPEAKER_06]: Courtney Beard, on the other hand, is a no show at that trial.
[SPEAKER_06]: And the judge in this case finds, she took advantage of a mentally incapacitated air creamer to marry him in secret while stealing from him four years.
[SPEAKER_06]: And that judge grants an enelment based on Courtney's fraud and Eric's mental incapacitation.
[SPEAKER_06]: So now, in the eyes of the law, that marriage never happened.
[SPEAKER_06]: But the actual criminal case against Courtney Beard moves through the Los Angeles court system a lot slower because Courtney strategically changes attorneys seven times.
[SPEAKER_06]: and each time she gets a new attorney, the court kicks her case down the calendar, so her new attorney has time to prepare.
[SPEAKER_06]: Her fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh attorneys are all public defenders working on Courtney's case free of charge on the taxpayers bill.
[SPEAKER_06]: But eventually, after four and a
[SPEAKER_06]: and dozens of hearings and motions and continuances on June 25th, 2024, Courtney Baird suddenly decides to plead guilty to four of the 12 felony counts against her, dependent to Delta abuse, grand theft, identity theft, and forgery.
[SPEAKER_06]: Keep in mind, she steals nearly $300,000 from Eric and costs him another $400,000 in legal fees.
[SPEAKER_06]: To get that scam margin out, to get those bogus domestic violence charges against him that she made up dropped, not to mention what that horrendous conservatorship costs Eric to.
[SPEAKER_06]: But the court only recognizes $170,000 in theft.
[SPEAKER_04]: And here's the disappointing part that Eric and I spent two years creating the spreadsheet and sending it off to the detective and that obviously the detective is returning over to the DA.
[SPEAKER_04]: So there's about $300,000 worth of theft and the district attorney's office comes back with 164,000.
[SPEAKER_06]: because the deputy DA refuses to include all the money Courtney charges up at various supermarkets and pharmacies using Eric's credit cards mistakenly thinking she's buying food and supplies for Eric.
[SPEAKER_06]: When in reality she's mostly buying visa gift cards and using them like cash.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's why the DA's office never included any charge
[SPEAKER_04]: for vans, rals, whole foods, gelsons, whatever, because they couldn't prove it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, if you guys would have just asked me, you would have looked as much as I did.
[SPEAKER_04]: Every charge before,
[SPEAKER_04]: And after those food, Ralphs, vans, whatever, you would see restaurants, four or five charges for restaurants, four or five charges for restaurants before and after.
[SPEAKER_06]: There was no food being bottled at the supermarket because they would go out to eat.
[SPEAKER_04]: every single meal.
[SPEAKER_06]: So the supermarket in the CVS, those were just ways for her to get gift cards.
[SPEAKER_06]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_06]: To use that.
[SPEAKER_04]: But the DA never included that.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think there's like close to almost 30 or $40,000 worth of grocery stores.
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_06]: And to everyone's surprise, my self included, Courtney's family who covers her $670,000 bail also comes up with $170,000 cash to pay Eric Restitution.
[SPEAKER_06]: both the judge and Courtney's public defender, with mouths again in open court, exclaim they've never seen this amount of restitution paid in one fell swoop before.
[SPEAKER_06]: And they think Eric should be thrilled and grateful for it.
[SPEAKER_06]: only he's not, because Eric's out more than $700,000 at this point, and he's been through eight long years of hell because of what Courtney Bear did to him.
[SPEAKER_06]: So, $170,000 hardly makes up for it.
[SPEAKER_06]: Justice in Eric Kramer's mind seems anything, but just...
[SPEAKER_07]: It took hundreds of thousands of dollars and everybody had to do this hearing and that hearing and who paid for it on me.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's like, yeah, it's another scam.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a legal scam.
[SPEAKER_06]: But it's a scam.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: I agree.
[SPEAKER_06]: And then, at Courtney's sentencing hearing on August 29th, 2024, where the judge is supposed to admonish Courtney and sentence her to jail, things take a really, really weird turn.
[SPEAKER_06]: All of a sudden, the judge seems less like a judge and more like a grade school guidance counselor.
[SPEAKER_06]: Eric and Anna see this judge in action in previous hearings and they are alarmed.
[SPEAKER_07]: And so we're watching other criminals in orange jumpsuits come in and at one point I told Anna, I said, you know what?
[SPEAKER_07]: She seems like the house every kid on the block would want to go and spend the night.
[SPEAKER_07]: because she's like excusing all of these criminal acts and their history of criminal acts.
[SPEAKER_07]: As though, you know, if you promised not to do it again, we're good.
[SPEAKER_07]: And so that's Courtney Barrett's judge.
[SPEAKER_06]: Obviously, for the past eight years in my line of work, I've been to
[SPEAKER_06]: several sentence hearings, including the one against my con artist, so I know how they go.
[SPEAKER_06]: When I went to Courtney Bear's sentence hearing with you and Anna, and Patrice, it was like the twilight zone.
[SPEAKER_06]: I have never seen anything like it.
[SPEAKER_06]: And this is a guilty plea.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, no, she's guilty.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's not like, well, let's give her the benefit of the doubt.
[SPEAKER_06]: No, no, she pled guilty.
[SPEAKER_06]: So, yes, she did it.
[SPEAKER_06]: And the judge treated Courtney like it was her daughter.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like there was like a love and a concern there with the way she spoke to her and you'll do better next time.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I'm pulling for you and don't do this again.
[SPEAKER_06]: And you're the victim like she seemed to have no regard for you whatsoever.
[SPEAKER_06]: It was stunning for me to witness.
[SPEAKER_06]: And again, it's not like I'm new to this court thing.
[SPEAKER_06]: I've been to a lot of fucking hearings in a bunch of other cases.
[SPEAKER_06]: That's not how they go.
[SPEAKER_06]: The judge is usually very pissed.
[SPEAKER_06]: and the judge hands down to sentence and gives a stern warning.
[SPEAKER_06]: But I can only imagine how you were feeling.
[SPEAKER_07]: My experience, family law system, the criminal court system, the conservorship system, there's not one that works efficiently or in a way that leaves someone like me feeling, oh, what a good job you did.
[SPEAKER_07]: never, it's never happened and it never will happen.
[SPEAKER_07]: The system itself is flawed.
[SPEAKER_07]: So when Courtney Beard's lawyer says, I've never heard of a restitution payment of $177 before.
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, if you stole $300,000, $100,000 barely have.
[SPEAKER_07]: I don't care what you think is a lot.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's what was stolen.
[SPEAKER_07]: Did the judge pay any attention to that?
[SPEAKER_07]: No.
[SPEAKER_07]: Did the judge pay the attention to anything that had to do with anything criminal in this matter?
[SPEAKER_06]: No.
[SPEAKER_06]: And at this point, the truly troubling thing about Courtney Beard, in my mind, that completely escapes every criminal court official's attention that day, is the fact that she had a public defender.
[SPEAKER_04]: Public defenders are not going to be representing people that have money.
[SPEAKER_06]: That again, she should have been prosecuted, right, because clearly she lied to get a public defender, because to get a public defender you have to prove you have no resources if you have no money.
[SPEAKER_06]: So she gets a public defender, and then on the other side of her mouth, all I came up with $170,000, well then you never needed a public defender, then scams scams scams scams scam.
[SPEAKER_06]: This is a whole other fraud happening here.
[SPEAKER_06]: She now qualifies for a public defender yet.
[SPEAKER_06]: She's got the 170,000 to pay restitution.
[SPEAKER_06]: Not to mention, the $670,000 bail her family covered.
[SPEAKER_06]: Shockingly, the judge didn't have an issue with this financial paradox, and her public defender salary of $271,000 a year is being paid by me and Eric and Anna, and every other tax paying citizen in Los Angeles County.
[SPEAKER_06]: FYI, I applied to get a camera in the courtroom to record the sentencing hearing and the judge denied my request.
[SPEAKER_06]: I was really upset at the time, but now I completely understand.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, if you were that judge, would you want any of what's going down today recorded?
[SPEAKER_06]: Because Courtney Beard pleads guilty and is paying $170,000 in restitution, the judge ends up sensing her to just 180 days in jail for what she did to Eric Kramer, but Courtney only serves a fraction of that time, a little over two months, and now she's out and about three as a bird.
[SPEAKER_06]: I want to point out here that I never saw any remorse on Courtney's face that day in the courtroom, and she never apologized to Eric for the hell she put him through.
[SPEAKER_06]: And get this.
[SPEAKER_06]: After the sentencing hearing, her family was overheard saying that Eric Cramer is, quote, a big loser.
[SPEAKER_06]: They don't appear to believe that Courtney Bear did anything wrong.
[SPEAKER_06]: which makes zero sense because the record shows that Courtney Beard pled guilty then went to jail for what she did and she paid Eric $170,000 in restitution.
[SPEAKER_06]: The truth of the matter is, Courtney Beard manipulated sheriff's deputies, lawyers, and judges than the entire legal and conservatorship system for years in order to steal from Eric.
[SPEAKER_06]: That's what the
[SPEAKER_07]: The whole thing was a joke, including that.
[SPEAKER_07]: So she is a fraud, a thief, a liar, a cheat.
[SPEAKER_07]: So you tell me, who is the protecting and served people who are they serving?
[SPEAKER_07]: Who are they protecting?
[SPEAKER_07]: The Con woman.
[SPEAKER_07]: At the end of that day,
[SPEAKER_07]: The only person skipping, like as though what a great life this all is was who, Courtney Bearer, because why she didn't pay a nickel.
[SPEAKER_07]: Her brother paid every cent of that recitation.
[SPEAKER_07]: She spent 60 days maybe in jail, life couldn't be better for her.
[SPEAKER_06]: Eric's anger is completely understandable.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm angry at the whole situation too.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, Eric was mentally incapacitated for years after that gunshot wound to the head, and he had the brain capacity of a child, and instead of protecting him and looking out for him, the court system, both criminal and civil, the conservatorship system and a bunch of different lawyers
[SPEAKER_06]: On an eye, catalog, they're all listening to all of these people, take advantage of you and this represent you and kind of really screw you over when you're the most vulnerable you've ever been in your life.
[SPEAKER_06]: It just seems like you're getting bounced around from scammer to scammer to scammer, all taken a piece taken advantage and sending you on your way, less for it.
[SPEAKER_07]: It wasn't just from Courtney Bear because that's what stunned the most was realizing, wow,
[SPEAKER_07]: she's nothing more than a thief in the comic, but yet it's all these other people that also taken in.
[SPEAKER_07]: I wasn't just subject to a new influence from somebody in Courtney Beard.
[SPEAKER_07]: I was subject to a new influence from whoever was in society at any given time, which included all the people we're now talking about.
[SPEAKER_07]: There's a lot more legal theft than illegal theft going on over there.
[SPEAKER_07]: Until you experience what I experienced, you need to stay in my shoes.
[SPEAKER_07]: You'll get a real feel for what this system is capable of doing.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's Thanksgiving, 2024.
[SPEAKER_06]: Eric Kramer has fully regained his mental capacity.
[SPEAKER_06]: He's making a toast at his dining room table now, surrounded by his family and friends.
[SPEAKER_07]: It really has to be the shape of your dinner.
[SPEAKER_07]: And that I have to, I've never, sent this to people.
[SPEAKER_07]: And I'm going to let you know that
[SPEAKER_06]: Eric still carries the guilt for the effect his decades-long battle with Depression had on everyone around him, culminating with his suicide attempt that gunshot to the head.
[SPEAKER_06]: An Eric not only survives that life-threatening wound, but he goes on to survive getting victimized by Courtney Beard.
[SPEAKER_06]: and the L.A. County court system, and all those lawyers who were also conned by Courtney, and then put their hands in Eric's pocket and cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars as a result of believing all her lies.
[SPEAKER_06]: But then, in a truly remarkable turn of events, after his suicide attempt in August of 2015, Eric never suffers from depression ever again.
[SPEAKER_07]: It was kind of like a weird, weird cure, right?
[SPEAKER_07]: It was like the joke that you went one way to look at it.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: And there actually might be some science to back up that theory.
[SPEAKER_06]: So, I don't know, maybe there is something to that.
[SPEAKER_06]: Dr. Mark Kerner is the head of next surgeon at Northwich Hospital, who performs emergency surgery on Eric Kramer that night and saves his life.
[SPEAKER_06]: What's amazing is, since he put a gun to his head and pull the trigger and the recovery, he has not had a single bow or episode of Depression.
[SPEAKER_06]: Right, like, did the gunshot cure him in a sense?
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, it's interesting, but there are parts of his frontal lobe now missing, right, or injured that were injured that have now somewhat healed, but yeah, so I mean, that's impulse control, that's some memory stuff that could be even maybe related to for the reason that 70 years ago, they thought frontal lobotomies were a good idea.
[SPEAKER_05]: you know that they were using that to treat depression, schizophrenia, certain psychiatric illnesses that we didn't have medications for, maybe there was something to that.
[SPEAKER_06]: Listen, I am in no way advocating shooting yourself in the head to cure anything, because 99 out of 100 times you'll probably die instantly.
[SPEAKER_06]: This was just one of those
[SPEAKER_06]: And the other, unforeseen, wonderful thing that happened is Eric and Anna fell in love.
[SPEAKER_06]: How amazing is that?
[SPEAKER_06]: You've known her your whole life, she's always been a friend, at what point did you two fall in love?
[SPEAKER_06]: The beauty of that part of that story that you're asking is I don't know.
[SPEAKER_06]: I really don't know.
[SPEAKER_06]: You don't know when the moment was, but at some point you fell in love with her, at some point you fell in love with him.
[SPEAKER_06]: COVID.
[SPEAKER_06]: Was it COVID?
[SPEAKER_04]: You got to think COVID for something.
[SPEAKER_06]: And that was after Courtney had been charged.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, everything.
[SPEAKER_04]: We were working together, you know.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's got, it's almost like an office romance, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: You were working together on this case.
[SPEAKER_06]: Right.
[SPEAKER_06]: Trying to get out from under it, trying to get justice.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: I think the
[SPEAKER_07]: To me, a better way to answer your question as to when on an iPhone for each other was it was more during that time, whenever that time was.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm out of most of the fog I was in, and just in being around her having on and beyond display.
[SPEAKER_07]: of everything that makes up Ana.
[SPEAKER_07]: She's quite a force.
[SPEAKER_07]: She, well, in so many ways, that I think the full force of Ana's character and who she is as a person was on display over time, so many times.
[SPEAKER_07]: That, to me, it was like, what are you doing?
[SPEAKER_07]: Why are you not pursuing her?
[SPEAKER_06]: Eric and Anna have now morphed into the ultimate scam fighting power couple, and they're taking what they've learned over the past 10 years about battling depression, about the insanity of conservatorships, and the insanity of the civil and criminal courts, and they're working to change the system.
[SPEAKER_07]: So here's the system that works.
[SPEAKER_07]: Get yourself an honor, Durga.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, if everyone had an honor, Durga, and by the other side, the world would be a much better place for sure.
[SPEAKER_06]: But, Eric and Anna are planning to change state laws that govern conservatorships and raise awareness about the perils of the system that exists today, especially when it comes to the mentally incapacitated.
[SPEAKER_07]: You've got lawyers here that don't understand and they need medical assistance in how to view these cases, which clearly needs to be interjected into the system.
[SPEAKER_07]: You shouldn't be allowed to be a conservator.
[SPEAKER_07]: You have to go, you have to pass a certain number of courses in a certain number of subjects to get a high school degree, but the system doesn't make.
[SPEAKER_07]: But they don't have a formula for whatever conservatorship loaded in America has to do on an eye, in some time, are going to be standing in front of Congress people, with this transcript.
[SPEAKER_06]: From the court appointed conservatorship attorneys deposition, say, get your acting
[SPEAKER_06]: Eric is also spending his time traveling all over the country, giving talks about the warning signs of depression and how early intervention can save people's lives.
[SPEAKER_07]: Regarding my suicide exam, I had not said a day to kill myself.
[SPEAKER_07]: But after intense weeks of planning, the only task left to do was pull the trigger.
[SPEAKER_06]: The story of Eric Kramer is an over yet, not by a long shot.
[SPEAKER_06]: He plans to spend the rest of his life helping people who are in a really dark place and are contemplating suicide make a different choice.
[SPEAKER_06]: In the right mind, who's going to plan their own eggs in?
[SPEAKER_07]: Nobody.
[SPEAKER_07]: Of all strategy would be long before there's ever a thing called anxiety or depression or isolation in your life.
[SPEAKER_07]: There's a proactive approach to go seek those that you feel comfortable with, sharing things about yourself with, and that also they take an active interest in ensuring that you feel okay.
[SPEAKER_07]: And if they notice you're not potentially, they'll reach out to you first.
[SPEAKER_07]: long before there's everything that you have in place.
[SPEAKER_07]: I don't think there's a way you can explain the circumstances or the mindset that propels you down that tube for lack of a better word because there's you wouldn't plan it if you didn't write mine.
[SPEAKER_07]: You wouldn't think how do I do this on the other side of that fortunately is today.
[SPEAKER_07]: where I think I can help at least tell other people not just my story but what I would and now do differently.
[SPEAKER_06]: The Eric Kramer and Anna Durgan story is a reminder to us all that you got a fight, and you have to be persistent, and you have to push back, especially when you're dealing with a con artist and a system of sheriff's deputies and lawyers and judges who are all falling for the con.
[SPEAKER_04]: And you have to just get everything in writing and
[SPEAKER_04]: document things and provide it to the authorities.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you don't care enough to contact them every single week and be a, you know, a thorn on their side, they're not going to care about your case.
[SPEAKER_06]: The onus is 100% on the victim, but nobody tells the victim that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: You think by just reporting it that that it's they're going to investigate?
[SPEAKER_04]: No, you got to make sure they're investigating.
[SPEAKER_06]: If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 right now and speak with a counselor for free.
[SPEAKER_06]: If you're enjoying the quarterback in the Con artist, click that share button right now and text it to your friends and family.
[SPEAKER_06]: And if you can, leave us a five-star review.
[SPEAKER_06]: The quarterback in the Con artist is produced, written, and hosted by me, Jonathan Walton, for Jonathan Walton Media.
[SPEAKER_06]: Executive producers, Eric Kramer, and Anna Durgen.
[SPEAKER_06]: Audio engineering by Justin Longerbeam,
[SPEAKER_06]: legal counsel provided by Ken Sterling from Sterling Media Law.
[SPEAKER_06]: We've got a lot of incredible stories in the works that Jonathan won't meet you, so make sure you subscribe and keep an ear out.