I'm gonna put them in here.
And then you're gonna put everything you have in there.
All this in there.
-All which? -Everything you got on.
Heavy one today.
My heart is still brave and strong,
but my body is not the same as it was,
so this is gonna be a real challenge for me.
I have too much in my duffel bag.
When Todd and I first met, he was coming out of something.
He had a brain tumor.
Fast forward 2021,
and, unfortunately, Todd's going back into something.
Before I left to Antarctica, I got diagnosed with an aggressive cancer.
The doctors that I spoke with,
you know, they would've preferred if I'd stayed behind
and had a, uh, an operation to remove some of this stuff.
And I said to these doctors, "But I'm going to Antarctica."
"I can't have this operation."
They were like, "No, no, no. This is not a wait-and-see type of thing."
"This is… We gotta giddy-up with this business."
And I was like,
"I know, but I'm going to Antarctica."
I'm not gonna live scared of things. It's a calculated gamble.
I mean, I'll go back. I'll either be, you know, the idiot or the hero.
Or both.
Beautiful day in the mountains.
Great day to be alive.
I'm not averse to risk, and I do think I am a risk-taker.
Just like in the Pepsi deal.
John brought this thing to me.
I loved it. We figured something out together.
We're going for that Harrier Jet.
Speaking of evidence, one man is taking the Pepsi Challenge all the way to court.
John Leonard says the soft drink giant made a promise in one of their commercials
that was plane crazy.
What kid, in their wildest dreams,
could imagine being offered a million dollars by Pepsi
and would tell them, "No way, Jose"?
At least one.
We respected his decision. He said, "I want to go for broke."
But we realized that we were gonna be in a long, tough battle.
Larry had a friend in PR, a woman out in San Francisco.
Muffy.
She said, "I have this guy who's very familiar with this stuff
and understands how these games play, et cetera."
We needed a guy that was gonna go out and get shit done.
We stand before this president,
and we re-declare our independence as a nation.
If folks want to continue to hide this stuff and cover it up,
I think it's fantastic, because I'm gonna out 'em.
I've represented a lot of clients.
This isn't fuzzy math. This is fraud.
Over a billion dollars in verdicts and settlements.
-Lawyers don't normally do talk shows. -I'm not your normal lawyer.
But now, I'm in the lowest point in my life.
Breaking news. Michael Avenatti
convicted of trying to extort as much as $25 million from Nike.
Avenatti, who, you might remember, was on top of the world.
Now, a felon twice convicted.
All these people that hate me, these fucking haters are gonna be like,
"What the fuck is Avenatti being on this?"
"He always interjects himself into everything."
Michael Avenatti.
Bitch, I'm accused of crimes you can't even conceive of.
Well, I got news for ya,
24 years ago, I threw in with the kid 'cause I thought we could get the jet.
This one.
-I think you mis-poured 'em.
I think you mis-poured 'em. I'm gonna…
I'm gonna call for a do-over.
In 1997, out of the blue, I got called from a friend of mine
who I worked with in the political arena,
and then she said there's this crazy case involving this kid from Seattle
collecting Pepsi Points in order to get this Harrier Jet.
And they're not getting anywhere with Pepsi,
so they wanna know if there's something else they could do.
"Will you meet with him?"
I said, "This sounds crazy, but I'll meet with him."
I flew down to Miami. Michael flew out to Miami.
Larry has the meeting at his condo on South Beach.
You know, we go up the elevator, up, up, up, up, and we get off.
We walk into the condo and Larry's like, you know, "Ta-da,"
like a proud father.
I really like My Cousin Vinny, that character.
Schantz was like, if you added, like, 30 years to My Cousin Vinny,
but not as likeable as My Cousin Vinny.
I'm trying to think of who could play Hoffman.
You know, big ego, never shy about acting like he's the smartest guy in the room.
That kind of guy.
What's the worst movie that Al Pacino ever made?
Like, when was Al Pacino the least likable?
That would be Todd Hoffman.
I can smell horny across an ocean.
As you can tell, I'm not a big Hoffman fan.
Michael was on the charge. Smart. He had an engaging personality.
But I always thought he was a slippery, sleazy guy.
Make no mistake about it, Todd was a very shrewd guy.
He was all about the dollars and the cents.
And it was always about, at the end of the day, Todd Hoffman.
I know some people that are wonderful people
and they have pathological illnesses.
And his bad side, to me, is a bad side, man.
At this point, Michael wasn't even an attorney yet,
but he was scrappy, he was aggressive,
and he was committed to taking the fight to this big corporate behemoth.
Out of all the characters in this whole thing,
the most genuine, authentic, real character
was really the only one that mattered at the end of the day,
and that was John Leonard.
John was very focused on the end goal
and he tells me the story about how he had come up with this idea,
put together an entire business plan and figured out some way to monetize it.
The kid was genuine. He wasn't a shill for some other powerful interest.
He honestly thought that he had figured out a way to get this jet.
Michael started pushing his view on how this thing should go.
Like, "take the fight to them" kind of pitch.
He was kind of like… I was gonna say balls to the wall.
I don't know if that's the best term.
A very aggressive pitch. Uh, one that was really meant to turn up the heat.
I was only 26 years old,
but I had had an entire career in political opposition research
and media relations,
all while attending law school at night.
I had what I considered to be a somewhat unique skill set.
Knowledge of the law, knowledge of the media, and very good research skills.
I can remember finding something
on three or four pretty well-known politicians,
and thinking at the time,
"You know, I wonder what steakhouse they're eating at right now
and whether they know that I've just ended their fucking political careers."
It becomes clear to me at that time
that they're highly unlikely to win this case in a court of law.
There had been a number of strategic mistakes from a litigation standpoint
that even I, as a law student,
it was apparent to me, that had been made in the case.
You had Larry Schantz. I mean, you know, nice guy, smart bankruptcy lawyer,
but has no fucking business in a case like this,
who had been outmaneuvered in the filing of the case
because they had threatened Pepsi
and Pepsi jumped 'em and filed in New York.
They were able to sue John in their backyard,
namely the southern district of New York
that Pepsi knew would be more friendly to their arguments.
We were gonna have to bring public pressure to bear on John Leonard's behalf.
You know, by way of some aggressive public relations action.
A full-court press with the media.
I told him, "We're gonna kick Pepsi's ass,
and all of their lawyers and all of their media types."
"We're gonna outplay them at their own game."
I'm still looking for the Harrier Jet and I can't find it.
No AK-47s, no other military equipment either.
He would help John coordinate all the media,
get more visibility on radio stations and television.
Of course, something he's very interested in for himself.
Prior to that, we were being very reactionary,
and so this seemed like we were gonna start fighting and go on the offensive.
He had the potential
of bringing one of the world's most powerful corporations,
with all of their ad executives, all the billions of dollars behind it…
He had the opportunity to bring those sons of bitches to their knees,
and I wanted to be right there with him.
Michael Avenatti, knowing what we know about him,
he wouldn't have been my first choice.
Uh, or third, fourth, or whatever. Not really. Uh-uh.
And the fact that he was in bed with Leonard back then
just further reinforces that this thing was preposterous.
You know what?
At that time, Michael Avenatti was Joe Smith, or anybody, you know?
He was just another person that we got introduced to.
I don't know if he's a fraud, but I think he's, uh…
I think he steps over the line a little.
That's the… I'm trying to be nice on camera.
I think he steps over the line as a human being.
I had always identified more with the Davids versus Goliaths.
I think it had a lot to do with how I grew up.
My dad had devoted his career for 31 years to a major US corporation,
working 80, 90 hours a week,
and they just cut him out at the knees.
And I'll never forget when my father, um, came home,
uh, and literally dropped to his knees and-and sobbed.
He was so devastated by that job loss.
And watching that, I said to myself,
"People like this are gonna pay."
We don't have the resources a company like Pepsi does.
We can't launch a $50 million ad campaign
why John Leonard should be given a Harrier Jet.
So we have to rely predominantly on free media,
meaning the press just running with the story
and talking about John's cause for free.
-Hello? -The phone starts ringing.
-Hi, John. -Well, you know, it's--
KPLK.
-Hi. -We're so fascinated by this.
As soon as we heard it we wanted you on.
On the phone, the guy who's got the points and wants the plane.
Radio stations from every market.
John Leonard is on the line. Hello, John?
I wanted to re-package, reignite it.
because they had not seized on the David versus Goliath theme.
I wanted to utilize John,
who was incredibly genuine and very likeable.
I was like, "I'm happy to talk."
This right here, this was Leonard v. PepsiCo world headquarters.
This is where it was all happening.
It was John, a telephone, and calls just coming in non-stop.
You're not gonna give up until you get the jet?
I mean, what do I have to lose?
I had on the radio and I heard my son,
and I go, "Huh? What?"
"John, you still there?"
Huh? You know?
I mean, it was just like, I mean, hours of this shit, you know.
As this thing started to become public knowledge,
television crews started showing up.
Different television stations, different networks.
He's gonna be on the TV screen.
A Lynnwood man is suing Pepsi-Cola for a military jet
that he says the company owes him.
We wanted to convince people that Pepsi, in the interest of profits,
was disregarding people like John Leonard.
A college student says his dreams of a Harrier Jet have been grounded.
When the story broke, it was very intense,
and I'd go downstairs,
"John, there's somebody…"
"There's a reporter out and he's out standing by the door."
They would say, "Can we talk to you on the five o'clock news?"
or, "On the morning show?"
What Pepsi didn't count on was this college student,
whose thick binder is filled with his plans to win the Harrier.
He was doing talk shows and… At home.
People say, "Didn't you want a T-shirt?"
I said, "When there's a Harrier out there for seven million Pepsi Points,
why not aim your sets, or aim your sights a little higher?"
He did all these interviews and he was fantastic.
I mean, he was so genuine.
What?
If you win the Harrier Jet, what are you gonna do with it?
You're at the top of the list for a ride.
Then, actually…
This was literally right on the heels
of when cable news became a 24-hour cycle.
The enterprising business student who took the Pepsi Challenge.
There was this appetite for content.
If he's right, he has a real jet fighter in the can.
When Pepsi delivers, here's the place for it.
I went on Extra, the CBS morning show.
The original was seven million
and they changed it after I collected the points.
I pick up the phone. "Hi, this is Dan, Dan Rather. So I said, "Oh, okay."
The ultimate Pepsi Challenge.
Putting your foot in your mouth while you have your tongue in your cheek.
He was the Pepsi poster boy.
I want the prize I-I'm entitled to, and, uh, I love Pepsi stuff. You know?
Sounds like I'm putting a PR spin on, but it's the truth.
I think these guys are shitting their pants.
"Are we gonna owe this kid this Harrier Jet?"
Hang on, we're going to get Pepsi's reaction to this.
We're going to ask Jon Harris of Pepsi-Cola.
Hi, Jody. Hi, Ervin. Millions of people saw the spot and laughed,
and Mr. Leonard hired a stable of lawyers and business advisors,
and pardon the pun, it just doesn't fly with us.
Someone who's taking advantage of the legal system
doesn't really typify the Pepsi generation.
Pepsi's spokesman, Jon Harris, said Leonard plainly missed the point.
Mr. Leonard and his people see this as a money-making venture,
and we've said it before, this just doesn't fly with us.
Their spokesman, Jon Harris, got on. You know, "These guys are not genuine."
"They, right away, sued us."
That's not an accurate statement.
Mr. Leonard saw the spot,
hired business advisors and lawyers and decided to take legal action.
When I found out that there was a law firm involved--
Tomorrow, we gotta get this done. Can we do it?
-Yeah. -Do it.
It became pretty clear that this was another attempt
to squeeze money out of a big company.
So you knew that the people behind it had one motivation.
Make some money out of it.
They say you're trying to shake them down for money.
They really made a clear offer, and now I'm the bad guy and I-I don't know why.
People were going, "Ambulance chaser,
trying to take advantage of somebody."
Look, I hate to even say we're not ambulance chasers
because that almost dignifies their statement.
The McDonald's hot coffee incident continually came up.
An 81-year-old woman has been awarded $2.9 million,
claiming their coffee was too hot.
There was, like, this negative connotation with being opportunistic,
and I don't think that's true.
John, look what we got you. Aviator glasses.
Hey!
Thank you.
You know what? That was clearly a joke.
We didn't mean to give these to you.
I talked to family and friends, and everybody,
from the most conservative person to the least conservative person,
everybody was like, "Good for you, man. Go get it."
There are cases where, clearly, a corporation is doing wrong
or mis-repping themselves to advantage themselves.
I just don't think that this commercial ever rose to that, even remotely.
This ad, at the least, was misleading.
They know what they're doing.
It's attainable, but it's out of people's reach.
But it is attainable, but it's kind of close enough.
We're gonna mess around with this.
There was no offer in the catalog. The jet does not appear in the catalog.
You don't see seven million points in the catalog.
This is, like, wasting our time.
I think people took the ad seriously,
and my feeling was that this is how ad agencies manipulate young kids.
Kids are going through the aisle and there's the Coke and Pepsi.
Little kid's, "Mom, get the Pepsi, I wanna win the Harrier Jet."
I raised two kids of my own, and from age five,
they would've known that Harrier Jet wasn't a real offer.
The kid in the Harrier Jet, he's a kid. And there's kids throughout this ad.
It's all geared towards kids,
and it was designed to entice kids to convince their parents to buy Pepsi.
John was the Pepsi kid.
Though a lot of people thought it was crazy, I believed in it.
This Pepsi generation that they're trying to sell to you is me.
I'm just bumping around, fumbling around.
On the other side, you have one of the world's largest corporations.
Any time that you go after any large, corporate behemoth,
you know, you're gonna be absolutely out-manned, out-resourced
and it's gonna be an uphill battle.
Pepsi influenced different outlets that I was trying to tell the story on.
I'd gone through this vetting process to go on the David Letterman show.
It seemed like it was a done deal,
and, right at the last minute,
the producer that I'd been working with throughout this whole process called me up
and said it was off.
-Pepsi is one of their big sponsors.
They did everything in their power to drag it out and beat us, and, you know,
somebody bigger than you has an advantage.
Then, lo and behold, out of the blue,
the spokesperson for the Pentagon, Kenneth Bacon,
was asked whether a civilian could actually own a Harrier Jet.
According to what I've read, the Pepsi ad wasn't the real thing,
and, uh, there's a, uh--
The Pentagon fires off a round in the Pepsi Harrier Jet saga.
Pentagon officials say the Harrier Jet has not been demilitarized,
so it can't be sold to the public.
I immediately thought, "Okay, this was pre-packaged."
I know Pepsi has lots of power,
and whether this is true or not…
Oh, my gosh.
One time, John was climbing Mount Everest
and he ran out of oxygen out of his tank,
just, like, 500 feet from the top.
And, to this day,
I think somebody messed around with his oxygen tank.
I… I mean, I wouldn't put it past 'em.
Sh.
Can you get sued for libel?
So based on all the different media contacts, I was well known.
It wasn't hard to find me, it wasn't hard to find my phone number.
One day, my phone rings and it's this guy.
He said he was an arms dealer or aircraft broker.
He starts telling me about how he can get Harrier Jets into the country,
and does clandestine things with them.
And it's this guy, Victor Miller, from Tulsa, Oklahoma.
-Victor Miller. -Victor Miller.
And Victor tells me this story that he had been hired
by Pepsi's advertising agency's insurance company
to find and acquire a Harrier Jet,
and that he'd received $250,000
for the right of first refusal on this Harrier Jet
that he had in his possession.
If we could show, actually, that he had had a Harrier Jet,
then that completely destroys the argument
that the reason they couldn't make good by John Leonard
was because the Pentagon and the Department of Defense
says that a civilian can't own a Harrier Jet.
I asked him to send me some sort of proof,
and so he faxes me a wire transfer sheet.
It had the insurance company logo on it,
it had "right of first refusal for Harrier Jet,"
and then it had "250k." It looked legit to me.
So I had a lot of interest in how Victor got the jet.
And he had this fanciful story.
Essentially, how he smuggled in this Harrier Jet
through some offshore transactions,
and there was a bunch of shenanigans.
Then, lo and behold, he ended up with it.
He tried to paint himself as this kind of James Bond kind of guy
that you'd read about in some Tom Clancy novel.
I can imagine this crazy action movie in my head.
To me, you know, sometimes I hear something, and I get a bead on it,
and the bead on that one was this is a bunch of bullshit.
I remember saying to John, "I'm not getting involved with these guys."
"We're going that way."
"I don't know who they are, who they represent."
"For all I know, they represent Pepsi
and they're trying to suck us into something."
But these are John's decisions, you know?
And I'm not gonna stop them.
And that's when I said to John,
"Don't take your eye off the ball with these characters."
"I don't know who they are and I'm not getting involved."
Hey, is there a secret knock?
I decided that Michael and I would go down,
meet with Victor, and check out his Harrier.
-What's up? How are you, man? -What's going on?
Things aren't really going anywhere, and I was like, "What do I have to lose?"
We flew in late
and then we go to that meeting the next day on the tarmac.
Yeah.
I'm not smart enough to be nervous.
We walk in and, on an excitement level between one and ten,
he's, like, on a 97.
I mean, this guy is like the… This is the biggest moment of his life.
And he starts telling us about how he specialized
in finding rare and unique aircrafts.
I was starting to get kinda excited about it.
What if there's some there there?
It's possible that, in light of the lawsuit,
if Pepsi didn't have the availability of a jet,
they were gonna go looking for one.
So I was like, "All right, show us the jet."
But when we pressed him, he couldn't bring anything forward.
And instead of the Harrier Jet…
Ta-da! Like… Like this unveiling of this shrimp platter, right?
Voilà.
Like he'd rolled out, like, the red carpet for us.
You know, it looked like a three-day-old platter from, like, a Quick Stop.
We're not talking, like, Gulf shrimp,
like, Mediterranean shrimp flown in from fucking Sardinia.
We're talking about, like, you know--
Out of a tin can, throw in with some cocktail sauce on a plastic platter.
Like small shrimp.
I thought what Victor wanted was… I mean, he's not stupid.
He understood that if John Leonard became a sufficient threat to Pepsi,
Pepsi was gonna either have to pay John Leonard tens of millions of dollars,
the value of a Harrier Jet,
or deliver a jet.
And he came to believe that he could impress John
and then broker the deal between the two parties,
and in the process, put a couple of million dollars in his pocket.
To me, the idea of someone at Pepsi or BBDO out shopping for a Harrier Jet
was so inconceivable, and still is,
that I can't put any credence in that.
No Harrier Jet, bad shrimp. Victor Miller was a bust.
Hoffman, who was supposed to be paying the expenses for our efforts,
balked at paying for both John and I to have separate hotel rooms.
For Michael, it was so below him
that he would have to share a room with a client.
We're not staying at the Ritz Carlton or the Four Seasons.
If we could stay at a Marriott, it was, like, a great moment.
I mean, it was just like… It just put him in such a bad spot.
Like just uttering, "MF'er."
Right. I was asking Hoffman, "Why the fuck can't we have two rooms?"
And for me, I'm like, "I'm in a great hotel room with this guy that's cool."
Hell, going to the Motel 6 was a splurge, you know?
When you're sharing a hotel room with somebody,
you got two twin beds in the room.
You know, you spend a lot of time together.
After we get in the car,
we miss our flight because of thunderstorms, et cetera.
So I tell him,
"I'm gonna drive you to St. Louis. We're gonna fly out of St. Louis,"
which is where I grew up.
And so we road-trip it.
Michael and I end up in, like, some Planes, Trains and Automobiles moment
-Go! -On this cross-country adventure.
You were John Candy and I was Steve Martin.
You got '90s rock playing on the radio, I'm assuming.
Either '90s or '80s. There might've been some '80s mixed in there.
You know, maybe a little 38 Special.
And it was the two of us on this little adventure.
Michael and I, we'd become buddies.
For the better part of a year or more,
Leonard and I, we spent a lot of time together.
Road tripping around the country for various aspects of this.
I think that John and I bonded
not just because we both wanted to make sure that he got the jet
and wanted to see that happen,
but also because, in some ways, we were similar.
You know, we were within a few years of each other in age.
He was trying to get someplace, even though he was ahead of me.
I was trying to get someplace.
You know, I… I'd like to think that he admired me
and the fact that I didn't give a shit. I was willing to go up against anybody.
John maybe got intoxicated by--
He didn't maybe get intoxicated.
He was over-intoxicated.
I still had my life and I was a business person.
I was going about my life.
John flew back out to Washington
and was probably still an assistant guide and doing his thing,
and when any major things would come up, we'd speak on the telephone.
You know, we'd keep the ball rolling,
but things were not happening in real time.
And I was getting to the point where it… it didn't feel good.
It didn't feel like if we just kept doing the same old, same old,
we are gonna come out on the right side.
I determined that we had to jumpstart this thing again.
And we really had to make a push in the court of public opinion.
So I called upon my skill set
that I'd used in connection with opposition research,
and really kind of did an opposition research project on Pepsi,
as if I was gonna run a campaign against Pepsi.
The key was trying to find something that Pepsi would not want people talking about
under any circumstances.
It was definitely a change of gears.
It was a totally different approach.
I don't have a great education. I don't have a college education.
Look up "blackmail," and I would say it fits that category.
You tell them, "If you don't do this, we do this."
"What we're doing is gonna hurt your reputation."
Well, I'm not in that game. That's not the game I'm in.
It's like, have you ever tried to push two magnets together?
And though they're the same thing, they're at odds with each other?
And, at times, that's really what it felt like.
Somebody wants to do that stuff, they do that stuff.
That wasn't the game from the beginning
and it wasn't gonna be the game till the very end.
John believed, as I believed, that this thing was gonna go off the cliff
and there wasn't gonna be anything left unless my strategy was followed.
I don't like that shit at all and I don't want to touch it,
'cause you touch shit, you smell like shit,
and I don't want to smell like shit, so good luck.
I spent probably a couple of hundred hours
just digging into Pepsi and their past promotional scandals.
This was largely before the internet was widespread,
so it wasn't like you could just type it into Google.
The first thing I learned was that they had run the same promotion in Canada,
with one huge difference.
There was a disclaimer at the end of the ad
relating to the unavailability of the Harrier Jet.
Why would Pepsi run an ad in Canada with a disclaimer,
but then when it came time to run it in the bigger market of the United States,
why would they remove that disclaimer?
Canadians are playing it safe?
We love our friends to the north.
As soon as I found out that they had placed the disclaimer in Canada,
I was convinced this was no accident.
I was convinced that if you ultimately got to the people
that actually put this thing together,
if you could ever get 'em to talk,
that they would actually tell you the truth.
"Yeah, we wanted people to believe that they could get the jet."
The second critical thing I learned when I started researching was,
I discovered that Pepsi had a history of problems with promotions gone awry.
With the most prominent one being this scandal in the Philippines.
Numbers Fever.
If it's advertised on TV, surely it's true.
They scammed us.
There were some riots.
People died.
We realized that is no ordinary marketing fiasco.
The more and more I dig into it,
the more and more I come to believe it was a weak spot.
This was gonna stick it to 'em in their backyard.
We were gonna bring Pepsi to their knees
and do right by this kid.