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Con Man Fools Celebs and Powerful; Leaker Fights Against "Living Unfreely"; NSA Leaker: Public Needs to Know; Third Guest Dies in Same Hotel Room; Butt Slap Lands Johnson in Jail

Aired June 10, 2013 - 14:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The rest of the money went to two California management companies that Ahmed brought in to prepare for the concerts. A series of e-mails and legitimate looking contracts followed.

TODD WEINBERG, INVESTOR: I was told that I would get a percentage of the ticket sales and the ticket sales were significant. I mean, it could be 10x return on my money.

TUCHMAN (on camera): So you thought you could have gotten $10 million for your $1 million investment?

WEINBERG: That was conceivable.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): In his e-mails Ahmed was reassuring writing, "the most important thing for me is that everything is clean and based on a relationship."

(on camera): Were you suspicious at all in the beginning?

WEINBERG: I was suspicious in the beginning and, as a result, I had a lot of various stipulations that I needed. I needed a lot of answers to my questions.

TUCHMAN: And Ahmed apparently had no problem providing them. The team met last august at this Burbank, California, restaurant.

WEINBERG: He was Prada and Gucci head to toe. He was arrogant but also he was a nice guy, but he also had a bit of an edge and arrogance to him.

TUCHMAN: Weinberg thought the meeting was impressive. One of the people he met that day was the 2011 Miss Finland who was going to promote the Bieber concerts. To further convince Weinberg, Ahmed had a conversation call with a top member of Bieber's management group. But it wasn't long before things started to unravel.

WEINBERG: We start getting kind of word from Norway from one of our contacts there I think the Justin Bieber tickets have actually gone on sale and have sold out.

TUCHMAN (on camera): And these were the tickets you were preparing to sell?

WEINBERG: Absolutely and we're thinking, that's impossible.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): There were never going to be any tickets. It was all a con job orchestrated by Waleed Ahmed. Weinberg was frantic. He calls the FBI. Ahmed had flown back to Norway where he posed for these photos and then made what would be a fateful choice. He flew back to San Francisco for one more meeting with Weinberg.

At this San Francisco restaurant Weinberg, now wired by the FBI convinced Ahmed to talk to him about the Bieber deal.

(on camera): This is where the end game began. This is the exact spot where Todd Weinberg sat with his hidden microphone looking directly into the eyes of the man who stole his million dollars.

(voice-over): Ahmed gave Weinberg a sob story, that his life was ruined, and then added he was going to start over. Not in Norway but in Pakistan.

WEINBERG: I'm thinking there's just no way I'll see this kid again. He'll be gone. My money is gone. It's over.

TUCHMAN (on camera): The FBI had made the decision, the time had come to pounce, one day after the restaurant meeting Waleed Ahmed came here to the San Francisco International Airport for a flight to Amsterdam and if he's to be believed a flight to Pakistan. But just before he boarded the plane, he was arrested by the FBI.

(voice-over): As for Ahmed's friends in high places, a spokesman says Scooter Brawn has never heard of him and never has CNN Founder Ted Turner. The former Miss Finland says she had no idea what Ahmed was up to, either. Martin Luther King III says he vaguely remembers getting his picture taken with Ahmed but does not know him.

As for Andrew Young who met Ahmed at a U.N. Foundation gathering in Norway, he says he's shocked at what became of who he believed was a rising star.

ANDREW YOUNG, FORMER U.N. AMBASSADOR: He used my contacts for things that I didn't know about nor did he ever discuss with me. The first I heard from this was when he had been arrested and his lawyer called me and told me what he had been charged with. And my first reaction was there must be some misunderstanding.

TUCHMAN: But there is no misunderstanding. Today Ahmed has traded Louie Vuiton for prison garb in Los Angeles where he is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to wire fraud and confessing to the FBI that he set up fake web sites and e-mails to pull off the elaborate Justin Bieber con. He refused to talk to CNN. Todd Weinberg, at least for now, hasn't gotten any of his money back.

WEINBERG: It's all that I've got to not get on an airplane and visit him in prison and just sit across from him and just ask, why? Why would you do this?

(END VIDEOTAPE) BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: I am furious for him. I'm sitting here, you know, asking you questions through the piece. Was his face photo shopped in the pictures? Obviously, he met all those people. He fooled them.

TUCHMAN: It's a crazy, nutty story. It proves that anybody in the world no matter how rich or successful you are can indeed be conned if you have a good con man doing it.

BALDWIN: So tomorrow, sentencing hearing.

TUCHMAN: Right. The sentencing hearing is scheduled for tomorrow morning. Todd will be there. Todd will get a chance to make a victim impact statement to Ahmed. He's furious with Ahmed, but he's glad he'll be facing him face-to-face. The government is asking for eight years in prison for Ahmed. Ahmed and his attorneys will be asking for 18 months. He pled guilty, give him 18 months.

But here's what is working against him. The FBI says it's uncovered some e-mails that Ahmed sent from jail to a friend and in these e- mails they says he's done this before. Once he gets out of jail he plans to do it again. And they say in the e-mails he says he's furious at the U.S. government for locking him up and the U.S. government will pay for this.

BALDWIN: Wow. We'll find out what happens to him whether it's 18 months or eight years. Gary Tuchman, thank you. Great investigation, appreciate it very much.

Coming up, it is one of the biggest intelligence leaks in U.S. history.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

EDWARD SNOWDEN, LEAKED DETAILS OF U.S. SURVEILLANCE: I sit in my desk certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Edward Snowden identifies himself as the man who exposed tip top secret details of the surveillance program. But who is this guy? He's a 29-year-old. How do agencies like the CIA and the NSA screen the people hired to do this classified work for them?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Mild mannered, soft spoken, this man has rocked the U.S. government and maybe your trust in it. His name is Edward Snowden and "The Guardian" newspaper says he is the ex-computer tech who leaked the document that showed the U.S. government is not only spying on your phone calls, but tracking the online communications among foreigners.

Snowden knows just how much he has put himself on the line here because he is now on the run, last seen in Hongkong in a hotel room. He gave this interview to "The Guardian," shows his face, the whole deal, about why he outed the actions of the NSA, the National Security Agency. Here he was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

EDWARD SNOWDEN, LEAKED DETAILS OF U.S. SURVEILLANCE: The NSA specifically targets the communications of everyone. It ingests by default. It collects them in its system and it filters them, analyzes them and measures them and it stores them for periods of time simply because that's the easiest, most efficient, and most valuable way to achieve these ends.

So while they may be intending to target someone associated with a foreign government or someone they suspect of terrorism, they are collecting your communications to do so. Any analyst at any time can target anyone, any selector anywhere. Where those communications will be picked up depends on the range of networks and the authorities that that analyst is empowered with.

Not all analysts have the ability to target everything. But I sitting at my desk certainly have the authority to wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even a president if I had a perm e-mail.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Here is a little bit more on Snowden. This is from "The Guardian." He is a high school dropout, never finished community college. He's a former Army and former NSA security guard, and he used his tech skills for the CIA, which he left in 2009. His last job was working with government contractor, Booz Allen Hilton at the NSA in Hawaii.

And one final detail, he is 29 years old, a millennial, a generation known for its independence, its questioning of authority when it turned out to two human behavior experts, former Secret Service agent and interrogator, Evyenia Poumpouras, and psychologist Wendy Walsh. So Ladies, welcome.

Wendy, let me just begin with you because you think of Bradley Mannings of the world and the Wikileaks case who is also young, both millennials here and obviously this is not a reflection on this generation but it's interesting. What's your reaction to that?

WENDY WALSH, PSYCHOLOGIST: Well, I think it is a reflection on this generation and a very interesting reflection because in some ways he falls into what statistical probability would say millenniums do and in some ways he is a little different. In one sense, these guys are digital natives and millenniums are born from, what, like the late '80s into the 2000s.

So they tend to be digital natives. They tend to fiercely want to protect sort of freedom of the internet and they believe the internet itself can be self-regulating. But it's interesting here that he's concerned about privacy and about government intervention. Every kid today has to read 1984 in high school and I'm wondering how much of his ideas come from this thinking. BALDWIN: As a profiler, if you are the NSA and you're hiring someone fluent in this sort of technology, 20-something, who will have high- level access to classified information, what are you looking for in a person?

EVYENIA POUMPOURAS, FORMER SECRET SERVICE AGENT: Well, there's two different ways to look at this. If you are directly employed for the NSA as a government employee, there is one basically filtration hiring process that you follow and it's a much more involved process. From my understanding he is contracted to work for the NSA, and that's a different process. Yes, they do a background search on these individuals and at times they do submit them to a polygraph, but the background is not as extensive as if you were directly employed by the government agency itself.

BALDWIN: What about there was a report that the NSA deliberately hires introverted people, I'm curious in terms of just behaviors. What does one tend to look for?

POUMPOURAS: Well, I think with this particular individual, they looked at his skill set, and he had a very savvy, advanced fluency in technology. That's what their key thing is and they're monitoring conversations. They're assessing the technology that's going back and forth between e-mail and phone conversations and a lot of that you have to be focused and be able to focus on your job. You're not really interacting with human beings. You're essentially behind a computer and listening to communication at all times.

BALDWIN: Wendy, when he talks about this, when you listen to this entire interview, he had a great job. He was living in Hawaii making something like $200,000, had a girlfriend, you know, and felt, as he sort of said, so compelled to get this information out there, which was better for the American public. How do you read that?

WELSH: Well, his belief system was all about freedom and protecting people. You know, it's actually wrong to say he doesn't have a high school diploma. He eventually earned a GED apparently at community college. And he actually is a veteran. He fought in the Iraq war and joined the military because he said he wanted to free oppressed people. But then he felt his commanding officers were all about killing Arabs, quoting "The Guardian" here.

And he didn't feel that's why he was there. He was there to free people. So I think it's about his personal ideology about freedom and whether this is part of what all millenniums think, we don't know. They are starting to think more globally than nationally and governments don't like that. If there are big populations of young people who think of themselves as world citizens rather than citizens of a particular country, they're harder to control.

BALDWIN: Evyenia, final question, to you when Wendy talks about this personal ideology, basically they're looking for a smart guy with a pretty stellar tool set in terms of technology. But is that something you can even interview for? Can you look for that as a possible red flag? POUMPOURAS: You can if it exists prior to the hiring process when you are starting to filter that person, but it can, and I do agree with her it can form and happen over the years while you're doing your job. Perhaps you have some type of moral conflict with what you are being asked to do which in this case it seems it happened and you develop these internal feelings and then you make that determination of how you want to handle it. And this is the path he chose to take to respond with his moral conflict.

BALDWIN: Wendy Walsh and Evyenia Poumpouras, thank you both very much. I want to let you know, tonight at 6:00 Eastern Time, much more on this story as CNN's special "Traitor or Hero: Inside the NSA Leak." Watch for that here on CNN.

Meantime, hear story out of North Carolina, this woman and her son found in this hotel room, the mother unconscious, this little child dead. Police there aren't saying exactly what happened here, but the hotel room is the same room where two people were found dead just a couple months ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the same room where we did have two individuals found deceased back in April. However, at this time there's nothing to indicate they are connected.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: We will have much more on the mysterious circumstances surrounding these deaths next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: An 11-year-old boy is found dead in a hotel room, his mother unconscious. This is the very same hotel room where an elderly couple was found dead in April. Michelle Boudin from CNN affiliate, WCNC has the story from North Carolina.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MICHELLE BOUDIN, WCNC REPORTER (voice-over): For the second time in as many months, police cruisers, fire trucks, and ambulances surrounded the Best Western Hotel in Boone. This time Rock Hill, 11- year-old Jeffrey Williams was found dead and his mom, Jeanne Williams, unconscious. They were in Boone to pick his sister up from camp and when they didn't show up family sent police to check their room.

SGT. SHANE ROBBINS, BOONE, NORTH CAROLINA POLICE: This is the same room where we did have two individuals found deceased back in April.

BOUDIN: That was last night and today, Boone Police tell us they don't know what's going on, but in a news release say, quote, "We've been able to determine there is no danger to the public." We spoke with Jeffrey Williams' uncle, Darryl. He told us Jeanne Williams is doing better, that she just came out of a medically induced coma, but isn't sure what happened to her and doesn't know her son has died. He also told us, quote, he was killed by the hotel and the problem is we don't know what it was.

ROBBINS: Fire and hazmat teams along with police investigators are investigating the incident trying to figure out what happened.

BOUDIN: Police tell us they're doing testing but still have no answers. Darryl Williams said the hardest part not knowing what happened.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Michelle Boudin reporting from our affiliate WCNC. Coming up, NFL star Chad Johnson showing up for court for a plea deal ends up getting 30 days in jail because of a little something he did in the courtroom that the judge was not too happy about. What did he do? We'll tell you next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: OK, in a game of football, you see it all the time, you know, the old friendly slap on the rear as in that a boy, nice play, in a courtroom, not so much.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do have any questions? Special condition of your probation is that you submit --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Former NFL wide receiver Chad Johnson found that out the hard way. He and his lawyer about to strike a plea deal that would have kept him out of jail despite violating probation from a previous domestic violence charge and that is when he playfully slapped his lawyer on the back side. The judge not amused.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is there something funny about what's going on here today?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, Ma'am.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But the whole courtroom laughed because you just slapped your attorney. I don't think anything is funny about it. This isn't a joke.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I didn't do it as a joke.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody in the courtroom was laughing. I'm not accepting these plea negotiations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: The judge sentenced Johnson to 30 days in jail prompting this tweet. Quote, "Love me through the good and the bad because I'm gone. Love you regardless. See you in 30." Coming up, he carried out his rampage dressed in black armed for war. Now we're learning much more about what led this suspect to a college campus to kill.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: A NASCAR driver is making it his personal mission to help find a cure for cystic fibrosis. This is today's "Impact Your World."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DENNY HAMLIN, NASCAR DRIVER: Hi, I'm Denny Hamlin. We can make an impact on finding the cure for cystic fibrosis. It is a respiratory disease that affects breathing, the lungs don't function the way they should and eventually you'll need a lung transplant. My first experience with someone with cystic fibrosis was my cousin.

I never understood why he had to take so much medicine every single day until I got older and then I realize d that he had a disease that there was no cure for. We started the foundation doing different events, started a short track showdown.

And really have just grown the foundation over the last few years and contributed to cystic fibrosis as well as a lot of children's hospitals in the Richmond area. We hope that CF is something that people recognize as cystic fibrosis, but eventually we hope it means cure found. Join the movement, impact your world at cnn.com/impact.

(END VIDEO CLIP)