Dude Who Just Wanted to be a Rock Star Rips of Banks for $11 Million

If this story hasn’t been optioned for a movie yet, it should be. It’s so weird that someone need to document it somehow.

Lights Over Paris is (was?) a band out of Orange County that featured a lead singer who went by the name Robb “TaLLLL” University.  Try as they might, they were going nowhere.  That’s when Robb–real name: Rob Mawhinney–came up with a plan.

He whipped up some false financial statements that purported to show that he was worth about $8 million. The documents were good, too–so good that he managed to secure lines of credit worth $11 million. He told the banks that the money would be use to expand his music empire.

In truth, Rob had about $10,000 in assets.

The money quickly disappeared. Exotic vacations.  A tour bus shaped like an airplane. Well-financed tours for the band.  And he kept it up more than three years.

But all good scams come to an end.  Mawhinney has been sentenced to seven years in prison on multiple counts of fraud.  All that’s left are remnents of his music career, including this Lights Over Paris video for a song called (and no one could make this up) “I’m Not a Gangsta.”

(Via Greggory and Radio.com)