Vault Release: CHRIS BATHUM Part 2 of 5: Hypnotist

0:00Parler tout français. Hablas español? Parle italiano?

0:31Right now at babbel.com slash wandery. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash wandery. Rules and restrictions may apply. You may have heard of the sex cult NXIVM and the famous actress who went to prison for her involvement, Alison Mack. But she's never told her side of the story, until now. People assume that I'm like this pervert. My name is Natalie Robamed, and in my new podcast, I talk to Alison to try to understand how she went from TV actor to cult member, and what she thinks of it all now. How do you feel about having been involved in bringing sexual trauma to other people? I mean, I don't even know how to answer that question.

1:10Allison, after NXIVM from CBC's Uncover, is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This episode contains disturbing content, including mention of sexual assault, illicit drug use, and explicit language. Please take care while listening. When Rose arrived at work the day after she relapsed, she wasn't sure what to believe. The day before, she had been convinced that her boss and therapist, Chris Batham, was having sex with his clients, which is unethical and illegal in the state of California. But when she had confronted Chris about it, he denied everything. Instead, he said that he was a victim of slander by this unhinged ex-investor named Cliff Brodsky.

1:53So that was a lot of mindfuckery in itself. But I am still not sure. I'm still like, what the fuck is real or not? So I go into the office at M2 to kind of, you know, talk to Batham. And I'm also extremely ashamed because if he is right, then I've betrayed him by even believing this stuff. Chris was already in the office when Rose arrived. He was laughing and joking with his second-in-command and chief operating officer, Kirsten Wallace. They were gathered around Chris's computer looking at this list of names. He was making a list of clients that he had been rumored to have had sex with, and the list was pretty long.

2:39And Kirsten Wallace, she's in on it and adding to the list, and it was like a joke. Rose, Chris, and Kirsten all looked at the list together. Chris pointed to the name of a male client on the list and said, you think I've slept with him? Even Kirsten Wallace's name was on the list. Chris turned to Kirsten and asked her, have we slept together? Kirsten laughed and said no. It was Kirsten, a woman who's with him all the time and would know for a fact. Like he would not have been able to do that stuff unless she knew. And she was laughing and saying it was all bullshit and that he would never. and then it was like, oh my God, you know, so relieved that this wasn't, you know, true.

3:24Rose knew this was not a matter of consensual sex. This was a matter of abuse, which is why she was taking it so seriously. But in the office that day, she concluded that if Chris was having sex with clients, Kirsten Wallace would know about it. And Rose believed that Kirsten, a woman, would not ignore the abuse of other women. So it must not be true. Rose was hungover. She felt awful, both physically and emotionally. She was already beating herself up for relapsing. And now she started to think that she had just falsely accused Chris of breaking the law and having sex with clients. He had given her over a year of free therapy, and then he'd offered her this job.

4:11She felt like she had repaid all of his generosity by betraying him. Fortunately, there was something that she could do to make it up to him. And in that same meeting, they were pulling up and showing me Cliff Brodsky's, you know, Facebook posts and online. I mean, all over the place. And in truth, it was so over the top and insane and comical. The delivery of it was hysterical. There were so many accusations that I myself was able to discount. I'd be like, oh, well, I know that that's not true. Chris told Rose those rumors that she'd been hearing, those were all fabricated by Cliff Brodsky. Chris said Brodsky was upset about this previous investment that hadn't paid off like he'd hoped.

5:02And now he was taking revenge by attempting to destroy CRLA. And so then it became this crusade of like, that was the next chapter. Cliff Brodsky is the bad guy and he has to be stopped. I wanted to know what Cliff was posting on Facebook. All of his old posts have since been taken down. So I asked Rose, what kind of stuff was she seeing? It was like every post that he made legitimized Batham more than it legitimized what Brodsky was trying to communicate. You know, he had said like, I'm being spiritually raped by that, you know. And then he would pose like a glamour shot next to his Maserati, like in the same, that would be like the photo for, you know, so it was just like ridiculous and funny, but also very dangerous and maddening.

5:49Chris Batham had an incredible ability to convince people of things. In less than 24 hours, he had changed Rose's mind about the credibility of the sexual assault rumors. Chris gained people's trust and kept them under his influence. But he couldn't control everyone. There was a wild card, a problem that would not go away. And his name was Cliff Brodsky. From Cast Media, this is The Opportunist. This is Season 4, Episode 2, Chris Batham, Hypnotist. I'm Hannah Smith.

6:37Subscribe to The Opportunist wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode. You can also rate the show and write us a review at Apple Podcasts. It really does help the show, so thank you so much.

6:57Wherever you go, whatever they get into. From chill time to everyday adventures. Protect your dog from parasites with Crudelio Cuatro. For full safety information, side effects, and warnings, visit CrudelioCuatroLabel.com. Consult your vet or call 1-888-545-5973. Ask your vet for Crudelio Cuatro and visit CuatroDog.com. In 2014, CRLA was investigated for insurance fraud. Blue Cross Blue Shield requested a meeting at CRLA to review CRLA's practices. Rose Stahl attended that meeting and took notes. And everybody's in suits. And I mean, I was just like, holy shit, it was very intimidating. There were a few times in that meeting when Rose witnessed Chris lying to the insurance investigators.

7:51She thought this was odd, but they were also small, seemingly insignificant lies, mostly about the locations where certain treatments had taken place. Rose figured it was just Chris being scattered and forgetful. It was just questions of like, where do clients have therapy sessions? Like, where did this client, and they would name a particular client and say, see their therapist, and then the person, you know, back would answer a location, and I knew it to be false. And I would just be like, that's weird. Chris was under investigation for insurance fraud. His response to this was that he asked Rose to find the personal email addresses for the Blue Cross investigators who had attended that meeting.

8:33And so I was able to, like, locate all of their personal information and addresses, phone numbers, emails, stuff like that, of everyone at that meeting. And he wrote these insane, long-winded emails to them. Chris sent these emails from an anonymous email account and did not sign his name. Was it a trolling email? Was it a threatening email? Do you remember the contents of it at all? It was so long that I didn't even finish it. I didn't read. I mean, it was like pages long of like this diatribe. And at the time, again, I knew nothing about insurance stuff. So it just all sounded like he knew what he was saying.

9:12And he was I'm sure there was weird underhanded threats in it. But I never went that far into it because it was just all just gibberish to me. Chris explained the investigation to Rose by saying, these companies don't want to pay the claims because they don't care about people struggling with substance use disorders. They were just looking for a reason, any reason, to shut down CRLA. He also pointed out that if he was committing insurance fraud, why had he not been arrested? If it's really happening, how am I not in jail? And then he would show, they just fucking paid us, which was true. And they were.

9:48They were still paying. I mean, it was millions of dollars. And they didn't want to pay. So they were fighting it and just assholes and, you know, professional jealousy. Who knows? You know, all kinds of stuff like that. Again, Chris brought the blame back to one person, Cliff Brodsky. He said Cliff might be sending moles into the company, stealing documents and then reporting CRLA to insurance companies. He was trying to get our records. You know, that's why he was sending moles into the company to give to the insurance companies or whatever. which, again, like, there was a part of me that was like, well, then what's the—who cares?

10:27Like, if we're not committing fraud, who cares, you know? But I still was very sure that we weren't committing fraud. Because in my mind, if we were, they wouldn't be paying, and he would be in jail. Rose started collecting evidence, threatening Facebook posts, emails, texts, anything she could find in order to bring a defamation lawsuit against Brodsky. The biggest question I had at this point was, who is Cliff Brodsky? And why did Chris Bathom hate him so much? Where did this feud between the two of them originate? Brodsky's name kept coming up. Everyone in the story knows who Cliff Brodsky is.

11:06Danny, a former CRLA client, had never met Cliff, but he'd definitely heard of him. I heard that he spent, I very recently heard this, that he spent$3 million trying to recoup a$600 ,000 investment he had with Bathum. While I was speaking with Kimmy, another former CRLA client, Cliff's name came up again. I came across this YouTube where the guy's name was like, Bathum sucks. And I was like, who the fuck? So I'm looking through all this guy's videos. And I have to say the guy behind it seemed kind of crazy. Was it Cliff Brodsky? Yes, it was. It was Cliff. I felt like him as a person was a little off the walls.

11:48But yeah, he was making a lot of videos about how he was scammed out of a lot of money from Chris and how there were complaints of sexual assault from other women. But yeah, I didn't take, I just, I guess I didn't take him seriously. A woman I spoke with named Rebecca Arvizu had a son who attended CRLA. Cliff's name came up in that conversation as well. All the people I knew just couldn't stand Cliff. They hated him because of his, you know, personality. And he was really aggressive when he thought that some of them were, you know, just like looking the other way. It would really frustrate him.

12:30But, you know, I would say in his defense, I mean, he was telling the truth. He was trying to make people open their eyes. Someone intricately involved with this story, who I won't name, warned me to stay away from Cliff Brodsky, saying, If you include Cliff in this podcast, it will lose all credibility. Cliff has been portrayed as unstable, evil, even as an opportunist. But other people have told an entirely different story about Cliff. They say he was trying to warn people about Chris Bathom, but no one would listen to him because of the way he spread the message. Ultimately, I needed to decide for myself.

13:09I needed to go meet Cliff Brodsky.

13:17I arrived at Cliff's Hollywood recording studio slash office in December of 2021. His assistant let me in.

13:28Cliff is in his mid-50s. He's tall, with dark hair, and a big smile. He's not exactly the boogeyman I expected. He's really friendly and welcoming, if not a little odd. The very first thing Cliff did when I arrived was play me a song on the piano unprompted. Here we have Hannah. Look at me, I'm as helpless as a kitten up a tree.

13:55The entire time I was there, Cliff's assistant didn't leave my side, except for once, to go make Cliff a cup of tea. I got the sense that she was there to witness the interview, but I wasn't sure why. Before Cliff was Chris Bathom's nemesis, he was a musician and music producer. I used to be broke musician, and then one day I was not broke musician. Cliff said he'd always had money problems. Then suddenly, that all changed. And so here I am, finally, I get my big break, and oh my God, now I have infinity money. And we were just blowing money like, great,$30 million here. Cliff's assistant jumped in here and stopped him from going any further with this story.

14:40I came to strongly suspect that his assistant was there in order to make sure Cliff didn't say the wrong thing to me. And apparently he got dangerously close to doing just that. Cliff backtracked and said the details of his past aren't important. What's important is that in 2011, his financial luck changed again. In a follow-up conversation we had, he put it like this. I had this kind of epic life, and it all crashed. See, it crashed in June of 2011, and I had to move back to L.A. Broke again, just broke, broke, joke, broke. Homeless in a Maserati, and you can use that as one of my comic stand-up bits.

15:20And I had to start all over again. For as much as Cliff talks about money, he's strangely coy about his supposed financial windfall. But this is what I heard from other people. Cliff Brodsky was in a relationship with an extremely wealthy woman. When the relationship ended, he signed a contract that bans him from ever publicly saying her name. And if he breaks that agreement, he has to pay her$10 ,000. And Cliff will not confirm or comment on this, which kind of makes me think it's true, because Cliff is not reticent to comment on anything. For instance... All those lawyers were shady, and they were all saw bloody water, like, here comes Cliff.

16:01I call it the Jethro syndrome. I'm making fun of me right now. It's like, you know, country guy, no street smarts, no business skills, gets a windfall, and comes into town like the Beverly Hillbillies. Hey, Grandpa, let's put on... And everyone and their brother shows up. Hey, Cliff, I can dig you a hole. How much? And that's what it was like. It's this type of hyperbole, this fanciful language that makes Cliff seem sort of unreliable. His stories sound too outlandish to be true. And yet, surprisingly, a lot of them are. So in 2011, Cliff was Maserati broke, as he calls it. And it was at this point in August when he met Chris Batham.

16:44Before Chris Batham ran Community Recovery Los Angeles, or CRLA, he had an entirely different rehab that was just getting off the ground. It was called Walking Miracles, and he was looking for an investor. Cliff was intrigued by the opportunity. He wanted to invest his money, and being a sober person, he liked the idea of investing in a company that was helping people do just that. So he went to visit Walking Miracles to check it out. And it's in Koreatown in a four-story building at the Kipling Hotel on 3rd Street. And it's just like a random kind of low-income spot. And I go in there, and he's rented out two floors.

17:23He's already got like 20 people on bunk beds, and they got a chef. He's an ex-Vagos chef, but the food was pretty good, above-average food. Chris had ties to the Vagos Motorcycle Club, which has a reputation for being a gang. Their members have been connected to money laundering, drug trafficking, and violent crime. Chris Batham employed members and ex-members of Vagos to do odd jobs like cook prospective investors' meals. Brodsky said the whole thing seemed legitimate and that Chris Batham himself came off as this hard-working, down-to-earth Midwestern guy. Early 50s, you know, family guy, wife and kids, aw shucks, gee golly, willikers from the Midwest.

18:06Just seems like a totally normal, kind of like soccer mom, soccer dad type seemingly. like just the smoothest, like kind of soft-spoken and no hype, no pressure, just kind of like, yeah, well, we're just trying to help the kids out and, you know, working seven days a week, 16-hour days to try to make it work. Chris Batham told Cliff that he wanted to revolutionize the rehab industry. He gave Cliff his business plan. It stated that he had already received a$300 ,000 investment and he needed$700 ,000 more. Walking Miracles had 15 clients at the time, but Chris hoped to be able to accommodate up to 64.

18:43Cliff had his attorney review the contract, and after several weeks, he agreed to invest$250 ,000 into Walking Miracles. A few weeks later, he added an additional$250 ,000. This was September of 2011. I sent the$250 ,000 in. Two weeks later, I'm like, you know what? This is so great. Let me double down. I'll give you 10%. I'll be at 10%. Cliff told me that his contract stated that he would receive monthly investment returns of$8 ,000. At first, Cliff felt really good about his investment in Walking Miracles. I mean, everyone was just loving it. And people were getting better and then gave the seed money.

19:24And all of a sudden they could buy fax machines and they bought a new van. And people were getting paid and they got a new breath worker. And everyone got new shoes and sneakers. And it was all like coming together. And it was like this crazy guy, Cliff, finessed it all. So after you invest the money, I want to hear like what happened from there? You know, when was the first red flag? When did you first think something might be off? On October 15th, my first check did not bounce. Okay. Wow. A month later, after giving him a half a million dollars, my first check was good. Okay. Then on November 4th, my$8 ,000 dividend check bounced.

20:04And what did you think at that time? I've just given a half a million dollars to Charles Manson's demon best friend. You ever been punching the stomach really hard and getting knocked out and choked to death? It was like that. I knew it. I'm like, I just gave that motherfucker half a million dollars, and I should be the last person on the boat for this to happen to.

20:30After my first conversation with Cliff, I wanted to know more about Walking Miracles. I felt as if Walking Miracles might become this key to understanding Chris Batham and what would later happen at CRLA. My search led me to Thomas Hedlund. He goes by Tom. I've been a marriage family therapist in California for 42 years, and I'm an addictions and recovery specialist. Tom is well-known and respected in the field of treatment and recovery. And in August of 2011, he became the clinical director at Walking Miracles. He said the company was kind of a mess. They were putting three or four people in a room.

21:11They had former clients running the place clinically and administratively, handing out medications. Tom saw Walking Miracles as a challenge and an opportunity. he would turn the place around and make it successful. He hired the best and brightest in the industry and created a robust curriculum. We had some people who were doing just absolutely astonishing work. You know, cutting-edge, non-traditional treatment. So that was the real draw for me, was that there's a chance to do something brand new in the treatment field. Tom insists that there's no reason why Walking Miracles should not have succeeded.

21:53They had a great staff, great program. They had plans to take over all four floors of the Kipling Hotel eventually. But no matter how hard he worked, there were always problems. Just a lot of chaos. There were a lot of rumors. There was no money. So people were already not being paid, which became a chronic problem. There was a money problem at Walking Miracles, as in there seemed to be no money, even after Cliff's investment. Tom started to think that the problems were coming directly from Chris Bathom. When Tom was hired, he had insisted that Chris also hire a chief financial officer. Tom didn't trust Chris to handle the finances.

22:36Chris consistently was undermining the CFO and, you know, writing checks out of another checkbook. So the CFO never had control of the money. One night, I actually sat down with the CFO maybe two to three months into this. I said, you and I need to have a talk about what's going on here. And he didn't even want to talk in the building. We went out and got in his car and drove around in the neighborhood. The CFO of the company was afraid to talk to Tom, the clinical director of the company, in the offices of the company because he worried that Chris Bathom had bugged the building. This is indicative of how chaotic Walking Miracles felt.

23:17By December of 2011, fewer and fewer staff members were getting paid, and many had stopped showing up for work. I spoke with a former employee of Walking Miracles named Michael Brian Baker. Michael led individual and group therapeutic breathing sessions using pranayama breathing techniques. He was supposed to be paid$6 ,000 a month. I had a baby on the way when I was at Walking Miracles. And, you know, one check bounce, two check bounce, three check bounce, four, five, six, seven check bounce. And then check systems coming down on me and me having challenges with my bank because now I'm being investigated for fraud by my bank because he's bouncing checks to me.

24:05Chris always said there was money coming in any day in the form of insurance checks. But near the end of 2011, he asked Cliff Brodsky for more money, a loan for$150 ,000, which would keep them afloat until the insurance checks came in. Cliff paid the loan, which means he had now paid Chris$650 ,000 in total. Cliff Brodsky invested a lot of the money on the strength of my integrity and reputation in the recovery field. And I told Cliff, do not give him another penny. You know, don't give him another penny. Tom used the word chaos a lot when speaking about Chris Bathom. For a few months, Tom lived with Chris, his wife Michelle, and their four kids.

24:47Tom had relocated to L.A. to take the job at Walking Miracles, and Chris offered his spare bedroom while Tom looked for housing. The house was usually a wreck, you know, like they would pay to have a housekeeper come in once a week, and I would not want to have been that housekeeper because, I mean, there was just stuff scattered absolutely everywhere. Yeah, it's interesting that his home was chaotic because that's definitely one of the words that comes up again and again as I talk to people about Chris Bathom is that he like harnessed a sense of chaos. He was a firm believer in chaos theory, number one, and he could exploit chaos is I think what happened.

25:29He knew how to manipulate it. And what did that look like, exploiting chaos? He literally would thrive on chaos and he'd do things to create it, you know, interject it into a situation. And then he was able, because he was the one doing the manipulation, he was able to exploit that. Chaos theory. It's something that Chris spoke about. In fact, he talked about it when he was a guest on that radio program, The Quick Fix with Bradley Quick. Chaos theory is the attempt to describe how patterns work in nature and to find their consistencies and self-similarities. For instance, they discovered in the 1960s that the cotton markets in England always had the same ups and downs.