Bored With The Law
An update on our story of a convicted California attorney who has been suspended in the District of Columbia
Sara King Tells Her Own Story for the First Time in Her Own Words
Listeners Can Subscribe to The Binge to Listen To The Full Series Today
New York, NY – November 1, 2024
Sony Music Entertainment today premiered Lady Mafia, a podcast that explores the world of Orange County, CA high powered lawyer Sara King, who was accused of scamming investors out of $10 million before her story was splashed across the headlines. Lady Mafia invites listeners to hear Sara’s story directly from her for the very first time. New episodes available weekly. Subscribers to The Binge can listen to all six episodes, all at once today.
The “Female Bernie Madoff.” The “Anna Delvey of the OC.” Slot Whisperer. Lady Mafia. Sara King is a woman of many monikers. But who is she really? Veteran reporter Michele McPhee figures out what really happened, detailing her rise and impossible fall in this riveting behind-the-scenes look at a master of deception. Sara is a glorified loan shark swimming in the murky waters of fast money and shady deals in Orange County. We speak to a man she swindled and the lawyer who ultimately ended her gambling spree. Sara says the world has it wrong and she’s no con artist. McPhee, for her part, doesn’t think it’s that simple. After more than a year of reporting, McPhee gets to the heart of why Sara did what she did and gets Sara to finally level with her.
“When Sara pulled me into this project, I was immediately enthralled with the question about how a lawyer who lived in a stunning Newport Beach home with her first husband, a woman who had it all, was so inexplicably drawn to the underbelly of the O.C.,” said host, Michele McPhee. “I wanted to figure out why an educated woman, the child of business owners, chose to surround herself with a slew of shady characters and become a hard money lender. To this girl from Boston who covered the New York City Mafia’s five families for a decade, it sounded a lot like legalized loansharking. Buckle up folks. This woman’s life is a thrill ride.”
Lady Mafia is written and produced by Odelia Rubin and Jonathan Hirsch. Catherine Saint Louis is the story editor. The podcast is executive produced by Shara Morris and Jonathan Hirsch.
Listeners can subscribe to Lady Mafia on The Binge, as well as all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. For more information on Lady Mafia and all other Sony Podcast shows, follow @SonyPodcasts on X/Twitter and Instagram.
The Daily Mail had a detailed story on the podcast with a host of photographs
During the podcast King revealed she had become bored with life as a lawyer and was seeking something that would be more lucrative.
‘I was looking for a way out of law. Law was so miserable. I hate being a lawyer, it makes no money whatsoever so let me invest. I need to make money,’ she said on the podcast.
This, she claimed, is why she launched her company King Family Lending in 2018 – which is when her elaborate scheming began.
Federal officials said she had used this company to recruit investors to fund business loans between January 2022 and 2023, and would use her looks and charm to hobnob with celebrities as a way to inspire trust.
She promised to repay these loans, plus interest, and assured investors that any defaults would be covered by selling off collateral, which included yachts, luxury cars and watches.
But the business was a sham. Court documents stated that in reality, King did not fund any loans and she did not own any assets.
Lawyers also said that most of the vehicles King claimed were collateral were in fact cars she took pictures of while in Las Vegas or at a luxury rental car store.
She then used the victims’ money to fund her wild lifestyle and gambled so much she even became known as the ‘Slot Whisperer’.
But eventually the house of cards began to crumble and she claimed she even resorted to cutting off her own family in an attempt to hide her antics.
She was sued by LDR International after being accused of borrowing $10.2 million over 97 loans by pledging expensive watches and high-end luxury automobiles.
Former friends then came forward to say they were swindled too.
King ultimately admitted to causing five investors to lose more than $8 million, and said she had withdrawn approximately $132,156 of investor money to purchase a Porsche Taycan electric sports car.
As part of a plea deal she agreed to pay restitution of at least $8,785,045 – but is yet to be put behind bars after her original January sentencing was postponed.
In the meantime, King revealed that she is laying low, with no shopping or gambling.
She said she is currently sharing a cramped studio apartment with her parents, grandmother and three dogs in Irvine, California – and joked that she takes ‘Prozac’ to get through it.
Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com, podcast host McPhee said King ‘became a willing patsy and wasn’t embarrassed at all.’
‘She wanted to embrace organized crime life rather than the fact that she was a super lawyer at one point,’ she added.
After her escapades were made public, King was dubbed ‘the female Bernie Madoff’ and the ‘Anna Delvey of the OC’.
But according to McPhee, she despises the latter comparison.
‘Anna Delvey, in her words, was a fake and she wasn’t a fake as she actually did pull off a lot of accomplishments. She did pass the bar, she did become a lawyer, she did buy these two commercial buildings,’ McPhee explained.
On the podcast, King continued to boast about her luxury lifestyle, regaling listeners with tales of staying in a $6,000 a night private villa for free – where staff even put a sign on her door that read ‘The King.’
‘The real amenity of being in a villa is the butler service. I started with champagne for breakfast. The white butlers would come in and feed my dog,’ she continued.
‘The bathtub was like an infinity pool that would pour over. You don’t know where it is going but it is beautiful’.
Yet despite this, McPhee still believes King got an ‘unfair shake’.
‘She was ravaged in the headlines all over the world and wanted everyone to know what really happened, and is willing to risk her freedom for that,’ she said.
‘I think she just got in over her head and spiraled into a world of addiction and become attracted to danger,’ McPhee added.
‘She was more than a subject matter. It became a friendship and I met her family. I felt empathy for her and wanted to help her,’ she continued.
But McPhee admitted that King has struggled to show remorse and ‘grapples with her own truth’.
‘She never ever said she wasn’t guilty until the last episode. I think she made a lot of excuses and I don’t think she necessarily embraced the damage.’
McPhee, who spent a decade covering New York’s five Mafia families, added that King ‘is the most unlikely criminal that I have come across in a long time.’
Yet many others have absolutely no sympathy for King.
Her estranged husband Kamran Pahlavi, who is the grandson of Iran’s Princess Ashraf, the late twin sister of the country’s last shah, branded her as ‘sick’.
He ‘fled to Morocco’ and filed for divorce in late December 2023, citing irreconcilable differences, with the couple separating after just nine months together.
In an email read out on the podcast, Pahlavi, who had introduced King to a childhood friend who she went on to scam out of millions, said ‘the shock of discovering the catastrophic situation still remains a trauma to this day’.
Many of her friends who lost huge sums of money also remain furious.
Marie Casillas Berger, 32, a former assistant, who worked for King in 2020 alleged that her boss stole $5,000 from her during a ‘work trip’ to Las Vegas before ‘ghosting’ her when she returned to California.
Berger said King instructed her to use her personal card for company expenses and was never repaid. One of the charges was a $3,000 first class plane ticket to Hawaii.
‘She has no empathy for anybody,’ Berger said. ‘She doesn’t care who she hurts or what happens in the process, as long as she has her Saint Laurent clothing and her money to gamble.’
Friends claimed King also had political ambitions. In 2017, she donated $29,000 to Republican candidates. King also appeared in a picture with former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, former VP Mike Pence and former Senator Ted Cruz and Rand Paul.
Beverly Hills attorney Ronald Richards, who represents LDR International, told DailyMail.com that he does not completely understand why the initial January sentencing was postponed.
‘We are hoping that the judge imposes a sentence consistent with the sentencing guidelines and orders restitution.’
He added: ‘We are just hopeful that Ms. King recognizes that she hurt a lot of people with her conduct and that hopefully she will start figuring out a way to make restitution that will be ordered by the court’.
Silicon Valley.com reported on the criminal case
A Newport Beach attorney pleaded guilty Monday, July 24, to swindling investors out of more than $8 million to finance a lavish lifestyle of jewelry, cars, gambling, and a six-month stay at a luxurious Las Vegas resort.
Sara Jacqueline King, 39, who operates King Family Lending LLC and is a partner in the King Reuben law firm, faces a maximum of 20 years in prison for wire fraud and 10 years for money laundering at sentencing, which is scheduled for Jan. 8 in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana.
(Mike Frisch)