- 2 days ago
A self-made tech millionaire leaves behind his corporate life to chase his passions in film and wine. When he teams up with a bold Napa Valley disruptor, their business relationship spirals into something far more dangerous than either man anticipates.
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00:00To live and succeed in Silicon Valley, you have to be willing to take risks.
00:14The higher the risks, the higher the reward.
00:17But also, the higher the risks, the higher the danger.
00:22Sergeant Sandra Brown, Palo Alto Police Department.
00:25I spent my career investigating major crimes in Silicon Valley.
00:28Like Imad Tawfellis.
00:31Imad was looking for his next chapter.
00:34And a lot of those guys do that.
00:35They are in the tech business, tech industry, and they make a lot of money.
00:39Robert's pitch to Imad was that he would be a partner and an investor.
00:45I would estimate the profit for the first six months was about two and a half million dollars.
00:52This seems like this was a match made in heaven.
00:55But in Silicon Valley, not everyone is who they seem to be.
01:02We have a male saying, help me, help me, that he was shot.
01:06That he was shot.
01:21Growing up, living in, and working in Silicon Valley.
01:24I basically watched quiet little Valley grow up into this conglomerate of businesses that you can't even imagine.
01:35All these major companies that didn't mean anything to us in the beginning that became huge businesses.
01:41We saw an uptick of young people coming into Silicon Valley.
01:46They wanted to make their dreams come true, make a lot of money in tech.
01:50The Bay Area, in the 40 some odd years I've lived in it, has changed a lot.
01:56I think that the influx of Silicon Valley money in many ways has forever altered the culture and the vibe of the Bay Area.
02:06It's definitely a different place.
02:09Silicon Valley attracted a lot of people from everywhere, from all over the place.
02:13All looking to pursue whatever their dreams were.
02:21This story actually starts a couple of hours south of Silicon Valley, on the central coast.
02:30Ahmad Tawfilis came from modest means.
02:33He was a son of Egyptian immigrants.
02:36His mother and his father worked so hard.
02:39They put Ahmad and his brothers in private Catholic school in Salinas.
02:46He excelled at academics.
02:50And he also joined the cross country team.
02:54Some people have said about him, he ran until he almost collapsed to the ground.
03:00That's how dedicated he was to excelling.
03:03His parents were immigrants, had sacrificed for him and for his siblings, and he cared about being reputable and honest, which was part of his ethos as a member of an immigrant family.
03:21So Ahmad graduates from high school with honors.
03:27He still comes from a modest family.
03:29There's no scholarship.
03:30There's no money.
03:31He goes to Hartnell Community College.
03:34He excels at Hartnell.
03:36I mean, does very, very well.
03:38So well that he is accepted into a master's program at Cal Poly.
03:42And with that, graduating from Cal Poly, he has a degree in business, in financing.
03:50Maude was clearly a smart guy.
03:53He was ambitious.
03:54Not in a flashy way.
03:55He was very low key and soft spoken.
03:58Just a down to earth guy.
03:59So in 1990, he's a math tutor.
04:07He's already thinking about how can I make more money.
04:12I think this is probably the first time he started thinking about, hey, I might want to go up north to this new place called Silicon Valley.
04:19In the mid-90s, we've seen huge growth in the internet.
04:25There was a lot of appetite for getting into tech and getting into the internet business.
04:31The early 1990s in Silicon Valley is exciting.
04:35It's the beginning of the dot-com boom.
04:38A lot of companies are coming in.
04:40Lots of money is coming in.
04:42And you know what?
04:43E-Mod Tafilis wanted a part of that.
04:45Silicon Valley celebrates risk-taking.
04:50There's a sort of fortune favors the bold mentality.
04:53The penalty for failure for going and trying to start a company in this valley is non-existent.
04:59There is a sense of innate optimism from the people who come here that they could make it.
05:04It's like the gold rush.
05:07The thing that impressed me about E-Mod was how principled he was.
05:12He was very calm and rational, and he knew what his goals were.
05:17He was very driven, very focused.
05:20And that's what these companies are looking for.
05:23And Mod had all that.
05:25So his first job was with Lucent Technologies.
05:30So how do networks get from where they are now to where you need them to be?
05:37Ah, here we are. Lucent Technologies.
05:42In the early 2000s, Ahmaud lands his dream job as a high-level finance executive with Cisco Systems.
05:54One of the most valuable companies in the world.
05:57A market cap of $500 billion.
06:00They focused on digital communications and they had customers like AT&T and Wells Fargo Bank.
06:08If you're at Cisco and you're getting stock options, you know you're going to make a lot of money.
06:14And his position as an executive put him in the right place for that.
06:18So Ahmaud's life changed after he ended up at Cisco Systems.
06:24Ahmaud, becoming more wealthy, purchases a million-dollar home in Los Gatos.
06:30Los Gatos is beautiful.
06:33There's a lot of beautiful mansions and beautiful homes.
06:37And it's home to some of our tech bros here in Silicon Valley.
06:40Such as Steve Wozniak, who becomes a neighbor of Ahmaud's.
06:49Los Gatos is in the heart of Silicon Valley.
06:52And it's where a lot of tech people live, even if they work right outside that area, just because it's such a nice community.
07:01He had a really nice place in Los Gatos.
07:04Three-bedroom ranch on a nice lot, trees. It was really pretty.
07:07His success speaks for itself. He was driven, ambitious, smart, had a good education and worked hard and used his talents in the tech business and made a lot of money.
07:21He was, by definition, very successful.
07:25He is wealthy. He's living in Los Gatos.
07:29So his tastes are a little bit different now.
07:31He's a single man. He's making good money.
07:36He wants to start going out to fine dining. He's drinking wine.
07:43He's going to all kinds of functions in Silicon Valley. He's networking. Networking is huge in Silicon Valley.
07:52He's meeting a lot of different people. He is really using his wealth to his advantage.
08:01Silicon Valley is where the money is.
08:04This is where venture capitalists dole out huge sums of money to inventors and entrepreneurs who come in there.
08:11You get to see a lot of inventors, a lot of entrepreneurs come into the region to seek their fortune.
08:19He had come to Silicon Valley, worked in finance for large companies, made some money, and he wanted to do good. He was interested in investing.
08:34Today, we think about Google, Netflix, Amazon, these companies that are so huge.
08:44Believe it or not, in the early 2000s, you could actually buy some of these large companies stock for a dollar.
08:51Back then, when they started, they were startup companies.
08:54Ahmad was in the right place at the right time when those stocks were affordable, and he was smart enough to jump on that and get involved in all that.
09:04Silicon Valley is not just where the technology is, it's where the capital is.
09:08If you're interested in investing, Silicon Valley creates opportunities for investing in a broad variety of things.
09:16Ahmad now has millions of dollars. He wanted to retire at 40. That's almost impossible for many people to retire at 40.
09:26This man knew how to make that happen, and he figured it out. He was very sharp on investments.
09:32It really seemed like Ahmad was living his American dream, and for all intents and purposes, I thought it was pretty awesome because he retired from a tech career, and he was going to get into things he enjoyed doing.
09:45Ahmad dedicated his entire life to business, and now that he's retired, he sets his sights on industries where he might be able to leave his mark.
09:55Entrepreneurs are famous for investing in many things. Some of them are very risky, and failing is part of the game. You could fail many, many times, but if you succeed once and you get your unicorn, your billion-dollar company, it makes all the failures worth it.
10:08Silicon Valley is all about money, but money can be the root of all evil. And sometimes that money and that idea about money can send people down a very dark path.
10:23You talk about money, greed, those are big motivations for murder sometimes, but I never in a million years would have dreamt that this whole thing would have turned to murder.
10:35In Silicon Valley, if you're in the right place at the right time and you have the right amount of money to invest, it'll change your life drastically.
10:50Imad was a very savvy investor. His investment skyrocketed to the point where in 2007, he was able to retire at the age of 40. He's a millionaire. He's living the life.
11:05Imad was living his version of the American dream, and he was prepared to move on to the next chapter of his life.
11:15Imad was clearly a good business person. He'd been very successful in what he had done with well-known companies.
11:25And now he was interested in investing in things that were of interest to him.
11:35One of Imad's first big investments was in filmmaking.
11:40This is the movie, Jimmy Vespo, American Hero, that I directed in 2014, starring a really, really funny Persian comic named Maz Jobrani.
11:53Maz Jobrani, the star of the movie and producer, when he was trying to raise money, had a crowdfunding or an event in Silicon Valley where Imad and he met.
12:01He was interested in film, so he decided to invest in it.
12:05Imad was the principal investor. He was there on set. He's what you want an investor. He was hands-off. He let people do their thing. And he wasn't sort of, he didn't overstep.
12:14Imad is not a Hollywood guy. He's a Silicon Valley guy.
12:21But I think this was an opportunity where Imad thought, I'm going to invest money into this movie.
12:28And hope that I can get my money back.
12:31It's risky.
12:32At the Austin Film Festival, we won all these awards. It's exciting to be the cool kid at a festival.
12:43He was very excited and enthusiastic about it. That movie would never have happened without him.
12:49He was a really, really great, sweet guy.
12:51So now Imad was thinking he could invest his money into something else.
13:00His next decision would seem small.
13:05But the consequences were huge.
13:10He started thinking, I want to work smarter, not harder.
13:15So he starts to invest his money in things that are high risk, high reward.
13:24But unfortunately, every risk is not always worth taking.
13:28And Imad's going to find that out.
13:34Imad was always interested in wine.
13:39Not that he was much of a drinker per se, but he got introduced to it by some of his colleagues.
13:46Imad was attracted to wine in many ways because of the lifestyle.
13:53I think people come from Silicon Valley to the Napa Valley because it has been sold so well.
13:59It is a lifestyle.
14:01It is the romance of the wine business that people are drawn to.
14:05People have a vision in their head of a vineyard on a rolling hill with a nice little stone building where the wine is made.
14:16Imad thought it was interesting and sexy and potentially lucrative.
14:21Because that was important to him and he was prepared to move on to the next chapter of his life.
14:29Which was to make certain investments and things that were of interest to him.
14:34His dream was, like a lot of people's, to come to the wine country and start a winery and make great wine, drink great wine, eat at good restaurants and live that lavish lifestyle.
14:47Since the tech broke culture kind of began, it makes sense for somebody in Silicon Valley who's made lots of money to want to do something with that money by branching out and investing in other kinds of things.
15:00Especially conspicuous things, whether it's rockets or planes or, in this case, wine.
15:15So in July of 2011, Imad is introduced to Robert Dahl, who sold a multi-million dollar company and he moved from Minnesota to Napa.
15:24He has a company called Patio Wines.
15:28And he's quickly becoming one of the largest wine distributors in Napa Valley.
15:35Robert was very affable and friendly, seemed like a decent person, a charismatic, good-looking businessman.
15:46Robert wanted to grow the business.
15:49And Robert can convince people to give him their money and their trust, because he was full of charisma.
16:02When I met Robert, I saw Robert as an ambitious businessman who didn't buy into the Napa hype, which there's a lot of.
16:12I mean, there's a lot of egos in the wine business and most of them are concentrated in that valley.
16:16But he didn't seem to have that.
16:20Robert just wanted to make a profitable business and be in the wine business.
16:27And he had a bottling facility.
16:30So we would buy wine from other wineries and then we would blend it to the customer's desires, to the customer's taste, and bottle it.
16:38The kind of business that he was starting, well, there aren't too many of them.
16:44Certainly not in that area, and people want that bottled in Napa on the back label, and you can do that when you have that kind of facility.
16:50In 2012, we were shipping a pallet a day, direct-to-consumer, 672 bottles.
17:02That's a lot when you talk about direct-to-consumer shipping.
17:05Robert's pitch to Imad was that he would be a partner and an investor.
17:12Imad said that Robert was very impressive, and I don't think that Imad was impressed by too many people.
17:20Robert's entity, Patio Wine Company, had licensing deals with Adam Carolla, the comedian, and E40, the rapper.
17:33Famous people.
17:35And he shared that with Imad.
17:39And that helped, in Imad's mind, to solidify the legitimacy and the bona fides of Robert Dahl and the business that he had.
17:48If people of this influence are going to do business with Robert, Imad's in good shape.
17:58When I worked for Patio Wine Company, we had a couple celebrity clients that we made product for.
18:05It started with Adam Carolla, because I was a fan.
18:11I listened to his podcast every day, and he would talk about this cocktail that he made.
18:15He called it Mangria.
18:16When did this idea come around that you were going to invest in and be part of the liquor business, so to speak?
18:23I, as a goof, made myself something called Mangria at home, just because I was kind of screwing around.
18:30So, I emailed his manager.
18:36I had a listener up north, and he was in the business of making this stuff.
18:42And I said, you guys talk about this on the podcast. I can make it. I can produce this for you on a commercial level, and you can sell it and make money.
18:53And I sent him samples, and they said, okay, this is great. Let's do it.
18:56And 100 days after that, we were bottling the product.
19:01Mangria.
19:03Adam Carolla's signature cocktail.
19:07Enjoy over ice.
19:08It was going really well.
19:09We had a sales guy working for the winery at the time who said, hey, I know a rapper who would be interested in doing this, too.
19:21And I made samples sort of based on the same model that we used for Carolla, and Euphoria liked the samples, and we started producing wine for him.
19:31We were bottling tens of thousands of cases of product for just these two, which, you know, impressed Imad.
19:45We were shipping around five to six truckloads of wine a month.
19:52I would estimate the profit for the first six months was about $2.5 million.
19:58So Imad finally comes to the decision that he's ready to invest in Robert Dahl's patio wines to the tune of $1.2 million.
20:12This payment's going to come into two parts of the $1.2 million.
20:16The first one is $400,000, which he's going to wire into Robert Dahl's bank account.
20:20As collateral, Imad's going to take 97% of patio wines' assets.
20:27Imad, being this financial person, looks at this deal and says, this is very fair.
20:33I'm investing in one of the largest wine distributors in the valley.
20:37You want to talk about perfect.
20:42Robert Dahl is looking for someone to invest in his business.
20:46And Imad's looking for something to invest in, and he loves wine.
20:51This seems like this was a match made in heaven.
20:55And in a lot of ways, business partnerships can be like romantic relationships.
20:59Communication is key, and trust is foundational.
21:08But growing up living and working in Silicon Valley, I got to be honest with you, not everyone is who they seem to be.
21:14Imad, making his money in Silicon Valley, was very successful.
21:25And he meets Robert Dahl, who's involved in the winemaking business in Napa Valley.
21:31Robert Dahl's looking for seed money for his latest wine venture.
21:36And Imad wants to invest in the wine business, so these two guys are perfect for each other, it appears.
21:41I think Imad was looking for something to do.
21:45I think he was looking for his next chapter.
21:48I think he wanted to be involved with the culture of the wine business.
21:53And if you want to be in the wine business, there's not a better place to be in the U.S. than in Napa.
22:04So Robert gave Imad something called a private placement memorandum.
22:08The document said that Robert would repay the investment with interest.
22:15The interest rate that Robert had agreed to pay was 20%.
22:21A lot of people would see 20% interest as a red flag.
22:27But Imad doesn't see it that way.
22:32He sees this as an opportunity he has to take.
22:36Imad, of course, was living in Silicon Valley, and Robert was in Napa.
22:46And so Imad was not their day-to-day.
22:50And the deal basically was, Robert's running the show, but he's going to consult with Imad on major decisions.
22:56An investor like Imad adds value not just in the cash that he can bring, but in his skills.
23:02When Imad invested, Patio Wine Company was making a lot of money with Adam Carolla and E40.
23:09But Robert, he wasn't interested in that.
23:13He was never interested in having somebody else's name on a bottle of wine he was making.
23:17That's not what he wanted.
23:19He wanted to be somebody in the Napa Valley.
23:21So Robert decided, Im opening a winery in Yontville called Dahl Vineyards.
23:32I think Dahl Vineyards was entirely ego-driven.
23:36Welcome to Dahl Vineyards in lovely Yontville, California.
23:40This month's wine club shipment includes our 2012 Reserve Pinot Noir from Rush River.
23:45And our 2013 Chardonnay from Yontville. Enjoy.
23:51So after Imad makes the initial $400,000 investment in patio wines,
23:57Robert tells Imad that he needs the rest of the money in cash.
24:02Imad's first investment of $400,000 with Robert Dahl was repaid per the terms of the agreement.
24:11And so Imad decided to honor Robert's request.
24:15And he invested another $800,000 in cash.
24:24It seemed like an odd way to invest in a wine company.
24:30To put $800,000 in cash into a red duffel bag.
24:34Drive up from Los Gatos in Silicon Valley to the winery and hand him this cash.
24:44It sounds like something out of a movie.
24:47When I found out that he brought him $800,000 in cash, I was a little suspect about even where Imad came up with $800,000 in cash.
24:58It's hard to come up with that kind of cash even if you have that in your bank or your stocks or whatever.
25:03It's hard to go to a bank and say, hey, I need 800 grand in hundreds or whatever.
25:07So, yeah, I was shocked.
25:10So, where that came from, who knows.
25:16After Imad had brought him $800,000 in cash, Robert Dahl was going to pay Imad back for his investment $40,000 a month.
25:25And in the beginning, he does.
25:27But after a while, two months went by and Imad hadn't gotten paid.
25:32Imad feels very betrayed by this.
25:34He put his trust in Robert Dahl.
25:38And now, Robert's playing him for a fool.
25:45So Imad decides, I need to get an attorney.
25:51In 2013, I got a phone call from Imad.
25:56He explained his predicament.
25:59I discovered that Robert had canceled Patio Wine Company.
26:10After we had discovered the information, Imad found Don King, who's a retired FBI agent, to investigate Robert.
26:17Imad called me on the phone and told me that he was in litigation with a business partner.
26:25And he wanted me to do a background on this individual.
26:29And then he told me the name of the person, Robert Dahl.
26:32And I immediately knew who Robert Dahl was because I'd already done a background investigation on him for another company.
26:40He had several lawsuits actually pending in Napa.
26:44He had a lot of liens and judgments against him.
26:47He had been a convicted felon in Minnesota.
26:50He had done jail time.
26:53The money that Imad had invested with him was not being used for their wine investment.
27:01That money was being used for the new winery that he had opened, Dahl Vineyards.
27:07So it was clear that Robert was not owning up to his end of the partnership.
27:12Don King discovers that Imad is not the only person that's not getting paid.
27:19Robert Dahl is not paying for the lease of the vineyard that he's working on.
27:23He's not paid for the grapes that he's supposed to harvest.
27:26And he's created an entire list of enemies in the Napa Valley.
27:30I think there were several people that he wasn't paying or that he had taken money from.
27:35I remember having a conversation with Robert and saying, you know, for us to be wildly profitable, you only have to make two people happy.
27:44These two celebrities who are selling this product, if you just keep them happy, they will sell a lot of wine.
27:52We will make a lot of money.
27:54That's not what was happening in Robert's brain.
27:56As far as he was concerned, the only person that should be making money was him.
28:01And he wanted to keep it all for himself.
28:03They weren't getting paid the profit that they were owed to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
28:10It was an ugly situation.
28:13When we filed the lawsuit in Napa to protect Imad's interests,
28:21we ultimately were able to get an order that effectively shut down the winery.
28:28All of this was really part of a strategy to have Robert come back to the table, do what he said he would do to see if there was some way to restore the relationship.
28:44Afterwards, Robert Dahl calls Imad and says, look, I need you to come out and look at some things at the winery.
28:54I want to do a face-to-face meeting.
28:58A lot of people tell Imad not to go.
29:02Probably not a good idea.
29:04But he goes anyway.
29:06With all of this going on, Imad's becoming very angry.
29:11Imad was, you know, a quiet guy.
29:17But he was desperate.
29:19Desperate people do desperate things.
29:21And he became more and more desperate as the time went on.
29:25Robert owed a lot of money to a lot of people, but he had a beef with a lot more.
29:38There were a lot of people that just plain didn't like him, didn't trust him, didn't want to do business with him, didn't want him around.
29:44The problem, I think, that Imad had with Robert Dahl is that Robert Dahl mistook kindness for weakness.
29:52And that was a grave mistake that Robert made.
29:58A lot of the homicides that we investigate are based on money, especially in Silicon Valley.
30:05To live and succeed in Silicon Valley, you have to be willing to take risks.
30:10The higher the risk, the higher the reward.
30:14But also, the higher the risk, the higher the danger.
30:18When Imad handed Robert Dahl $800,000 in cash, he took a gamble.
30:26He made a bet that he could trust Robert Dahl.
30:29And now, he stood to lose a considerable amount of his fortune.
30:36But Imad isn't someone who's going to back down.
30:40We have a male saying, help me, help me, that he was shot.
30:44Be advised the subject saying that he has been shot again twice now.
30:51A betrayal like this can feel personal.
30:54After working with Robert Dahl for about two years, two months went by and Imad hadn't gotten paid.
31:09Imad is just completely stressed out.
31:11He had no idea his money wasn't going towards patio wines.
31:17It's not working as business partners any longer.
31:21They're going to have to work out a deal.
31:23So, Robert Dahl calls Imad and says, look, we're getting really close.
31:28I need you to come out and look at some things at the winery.
31:31So, can you meet me?
31:32I want to do a face-to-face meeting.
31:35I was talking to Imad and he said, I've been texting with Robert and we've been talking on the phone occasionally and I really think he wants to negotiate in good faith and resolve this.
31:52What I told him at that point was, no.
32:00Robert has no interest in resolving this in an amicable way.
32:07Robert's lawyer said he would like you and Imad to go meet him at the winery.
32:14I told Imad, I don't think it's a good idea.
32:17I don't want to go to the winery.
32:18If Robert's lawyers aren't there, I shouldn't be there.
32:21I don't see why you'd want to go there.
32:24But, that's, that's your call.
32:28Imad said, I need to get my life back.
32:38So, Imad did go to the winery.
32:40We had arranged to have a dial-in at the winery, myself and Robert's two lawyers.
32:55Imad gets there a few minutes early.
32:58Normally when Robert would greet Imad, it was always sort of a bro hug or a handshake.
33:04And it wasn't like that at all.
33:07He was glowering, he had a very dour expression.
33:10So, we, we get on the phone.
33:13Robert starts the meeting, which was also somewhat unusual.
33:17And he said, I don't give a what the lawyers agreed to.
33:22And essentially said that he would pay 50% of our agreed number instead of the other.
33:32So, Robert's lawyers, to their credit, said, David, we need to go offline and talk to our client.
33:39Imad called me up and he said he was going to go back in and talk to Robert.
33:44And he would contact me when we're ready to get going.
33:49A long time passed, several minutes, and it made no sense.
33:55I just had this weird vibe and this weird feeling.
33:59So, I tried to call Imad several times and I left several voicemails and I didn't get a call back.
34:06So, when Imad comes back into the barn, Robert Dahl has another contract.
34:15Imad looks at this contract, he says, I'm not signing this, I've never even seen this before.
34:20The settlement agreement that Robert had drafted basically would have had Imad confess this whole thing was a ruse,
34:28to destroy Robert's good reputation in Napa, that Imad wasn't owed any money,
34:35and that he regrets all the pain that he's caused to Robert Dahl,
34:39which Robert obviously knew wasn't going to be signed.
34:42So, Imad, he looks up and Robert Dahl has pulled out a gun and he's pointing it at Imad saying,
34:48you're going to sign this contract, you're signing this contract.
34:50All of a sudden, I get an email about shots being fired at this address.
35:01At this point, Imad's running for his life.
35:04When Imad comes back into the barn, he looks up and Robert Dahl has pulled out a gun,
35:22and he's pointing it at Imad saying, you're going to sign this contract, you're signing this contract.
35:27Imad's calling 911 saying, I've been shot by Robert Dahl, he's shooting at me again.
35:33We have a male saying, help me, help me, that he was shot.
35:38Be advised the subject saying that he has been shot again twice now.
35:44Robert is in the truck chasing Imad.
35:49He was taking shots at him as he was running through the vineyard.
35:52Robert starts chasing him down, waving his gun out of the window.
35:58Imad was running and talking on the phone to 911.
36:02Out to the end of the vineyard where he collapsed.
36:10The police arrive at the vineyard.
36:13They can see Robert get out of his black SUV.
36:18They see Imad on the ground and they see Robert execute Imad.
36:22Two shots.
36:27Killed him, murdered him right there on the street.
36:34This chase ensued immediately.
36:40Went up a very mountainous road all the way almost to the top.
36:43Then turned off on a street called Wall Road.
36:51When they find the SUV which has run into a grove of trees.
36:55They run up, guns drawn, they get up, they're trying to call the driver out.
36:59When they get there they find out that Robert Dahl has committed suicide.
37:06He shot and killed himself.
37:09It was shocking to know that somebody in the wine business murdered a business associate.
37:17Back at the tasting room investigators find black gloves, duct tape, zip ties and bleach.
37:26It's essentially a murder kit.
37:29My thought at the time, which is only cemented over the years, is that this was a planned ambush.
37:38That there's no question that Robert had intended to shoot and kill Imad.
37:43You never have Clorox in a winery. It's not good for the wine.
37:48Here you've got Clorox bleach there in the winery.
37:52It looked like it was premeditated.
37:56I do believe those things were there specifically to get rid of the body.
38:03The police had found, among other things, a hit list with several names on it.
38:08Myself included, but not limited to me.
38:10Robert had a lot of pretty bad intentions.
38:15Had I been there, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation.
38:18I mean, it's horrible.
38:20I think about this every day.
38:22It's unfortunate because when you stand back and look at this picture,
38:27is it worth it to murder a business partner over $1.2 million?
38:36It's hard to say why things like this happened except that Robert was a sociopath.
38:44One of the lessons that, in my mind, was kind of highlighted by this is that if something seems too good to be true, like getting a 20% return on your money from a business that's just starting, it probably is too good to be true.
39:05What surprised me about this story is how poorly vetted his investment was in Mr. Dahl.
39:12It seems like that guy had a history before coming to California of investments gone astray.
39:18It wasn't the fact that Tafilis invested in it that surprised me.
39:24It was the fact that you would invest $800,000 without properly vetting the individual who you're entrusting this money to.
39:32It was definitely striking.
39:33Like, if you're not a millionaire, it would be almost unheard of.
39:39But if you have money to burn, it seems kind of more reasonable.
39:43It is a common story in Silicon Valley.
39:46For every company that becomes a huge success, there are many others that we just don't hear about.
39:51The only time we hear about failures is when they fail spectacularly, when you see massive fraud or when people go to jail.
39:57But that's just kind of the nature of being in a highly competitive, very high-risk arena, which Silicon Valley famously is.
40:09So, John, in your relationship with Imad, you noticed that he was really involved in wine, right?
40:15Did he ever mention Robert Dahl?
40:18You know, he may have.
40:19And at that time, I would have just sort of assumed it was this guy, a business partner he was working with.
40:24So, after you read the articles and got the information, that name never came back to your mind that he spoke about this guy earlier?
40:31Yeah.
40:34Imad was a really straight shooter. He was a good guy.
40:38It hurt. It's sad.
40:40This guy who brought a lot to life.
40:43Yeah.
40:44That should be alive.
40:46Absolutely should be alive.
40:48Seems like Imad was living the American dream.
40:50He came from the Silicon Valley.
40:51He was successful in the tech industry, retired at 40, had amassed a small fortune, and I'm sure just wanted the dream of owning a winery and drinking good wine in the Napa Valley.
41:08Very tragic that Imad met this end when he was just trying to live a dream, trying to create a dream.
41:20It's wonderful to be upon you.
41:24You're welcome with that.
41:25Don't tell me if you're a husband of the nights of your friends, running your way in the Napa Valley.
41:29VeryCareings.
41:31Oh, that's a sister girl.
41:35Jala Manorah.
41:37You're welcome with that,が the service to you.
41:39Yeah, I'm sure Henry.
41:40Which kalau anyway, if you want a 4 hace, that there's only ones in one hour out of eight years.
41:45Ron Wh不管 theorr of tomorrow.
41:46That has happened for years.
41:47Isn't tough.
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