Lou Taylor (Part I): A Plantation State of Mind

Who was the mastermind behind the Britney Spears conservatorship? Ask any #FreeBritney historian, and they'll point the finger squarely in one direction: Lou Taylor.

She's been labeled "Loucifer" by Britney Spears fans, but who is the woman behind Tri Star Sports and Entertainment, really? 

In this episode, I'm taking you into the world of Lou Taylor, and the intricate web of corruption that turned her into the Evangelical CEO she is today. 

Transcript

0:20

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of your favorite celebrity deconstruction podcast, Scandal Queens. It is me, E. B, the de influencer you love or love to hate. And we're back, back, back on the road again today, biting into the nitty and gritty, digging into another rotten chunk of the Hollywood machine. Yes, last week it was all about Britney Spears. I laid out the bare bones, right? The conservatorship. We kind of covered the the what and the when. Um, but we didn't really get to the who. We didn't get into really any of the meat of the who. And that is kind of what we're talking about today. No, not the rock band. I'm talking about the who behind the conservatorship that kept Britney trapped for more than 13 years. The faces in the shadows, the orchestrators and the organizers of a system that was built to consume women like Britney Spears and really her family. That's who we're going to be focusing on today, but this isn't some general overview. It wasn't like it's not gonna be like last week where I'm just kind of skimming over the the things. No, no, today we're going deep. We're getting into the eye of the storm, right into the heart and mind of Lou Taylor, one of the chief masterminds of the Britney Spears Conservatorship. Now, you free Britney heads out there will have known this name for years, right? Um, for years, Lou Taylor, who you guys also commonly know as Lucifer, great nickname, by the way. I won't fault you guys for that. Some of you are shitty to her sons, but you have a you have a great nickname for Lou Taylor. Um, she's been one of the kind of top devils on the shit list of the free Britney movement, right? So you guys will be pretty familiar with her name. And it's not hard to see why Britney Spears fans hate her, because long before Britney Spears was imprisoned in a decades-long conservatorship, Lou Taylor was deep in bed with the Spears family and a laundry list of other controversial entertainment industry figures like Larry Rudolph, Koughkoff, Taylor Swift, the Malof family, uh, uh Irving Azov, who we've talked about briefly before, Clive Davis, and many others. Without Lou Taylor, it's arguable that a Britney Spears conservatorship doesn't happen. But Lou does not stand alone. Lou Taylor is a symptom of the corruption that has long existed in Hollywood. She's just the most recent face, the most recent mask of a much older and more deep-rooted American system. As we talk about Lou Taylor today and the men who shaped her, these kind of systems she ingrained herself within, I want you to keep the following quote in mind, okay? And this is from the 1619 project, um, which was done by the New York Times magazine. Uh, and it was a feature all about the American plantation system and slavery and how America ran it as a business and benefited from it. And the quote I want you to keep in mind as we go through this um Lou Taylor series, which is looking like it's going to be two parts, um, as we touch on the Davimos family, as we touch on Irving Azov, Ugin, um, I want you to keep this quote from the 1619 project in mind. It is a widely accepted myth that slavery was an archaic and efficient institution that died of its own accord. The plantation was a place of business and the whip an essential tool for maximizing output. As we work through this Lou Taylor series this week and next week, I want you to keep that quote in mind. And specifically, as we tell the story of Lou Taylor, the clients she's managed, uh, the people she's canoodled with, and the Britney Spears Conservatorship, I want you to ask yourself uh, has the plantation business uh really gone away? Or has it just changed shape? And where is the whip now? Before we dive into the deep end though, let's have a quick temperature check and see what is going on with your favorites in Hollywood. Number one, right off the top, I couldn't ignore this, especially considering what we talked about last week, what we have talked about in previous episodes and what we're gonna be talking about today. Uh, Britney Spears has been spotted with Kim Kardashian's hairstylist. Yeah, uh, major red flags are surrounding and sounding after Britney Spears uh has appeared in a social media post uh from Chris Appleton, who is Kim Kardashian's like personal beloved go-to hairstylist. The move has tongues wagging considering the Kardashian family's involvement with Lou Taylor, a major organizer of Britney's conservatorship, as you'll see in today's episode, mostly in next week's episode. Uh and seeing Britney with a Kardashian team member, uh, it's concerning, right? Okay, it's concerning, especially when we start getting into the meat of what we're going to be talking about today, because uh Lou Taylor is not just a manager, okay? And uh the people who work with Lou Taylor and the people who surround those people, and you know, it it's all there's no coincidences, okay? There's no coincidences. Um, so I am it's concerning. Hopefully, this is not a sign of something sinister happening to Brittany again. Um, only time will tell. One thing is for certain smart people, safe people, sound people, uh, they don't they don't consort with Kardashians. They stay far, far, far, far, far away from Kardashian. And good news, hallelujah. Thank the Lord, pass the cornbread. Uh, euphoria has finally, thankfully, been called off after three seasons. That's right, HBO announced it. Uh, it's done, it's over. Levinson's wet dream has come to an end on the low note of Sydney Sweeney posing as a pornographic instant uh infant. And, you know, the world has never been more grateful. I swear to God, it's the best news we've had in probably years. Uh, the cast are all allegedly going to be moving on to bigger and better things, like uh dating Kardashians instead of going to the Cannes Film Festival. Um, and you know, of course, launching cheap bra lines, which is such a prestigious career move that, you know, everyone with Alibaba can do these days. So I'm sure the sky is only the limit, you know, now that this show that romanticized abuse, uh, drug addiction, trafficking, and violence, all from teenagers, by the way, is now thankfully, thank God, some small mercy, some small prayer answered in the universe, uh, it's over. It's over. It's all over. Bye, Sydney. And last but not least, Caramo Brown has finally broken his silence about his queer eye exit. After the bombshell announcement that Karamo would not be returning to Netflix's relaunch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, he's further ruffled feathers by opening up about his split from the popular show at long last. Uh, Caromo's departure was soft launched after the press reported that he would not appear in the group's season 10 press tour. Eventually, the story was revealed that Karamo's mother had actually been on set and had overheard, I guess, Jonathan Van Ness and Tan France. And uh who else was it? Was I may have I don't know mainly those two. Mainly those two was who the complaints seemed to have been against. But Karamo's mother heard them talking shit about her son, and apparently she came to him crying and said, I thought these people were your friends, and now it's just been revealed that it the whole thing was just nasty, just toxic dynamics all over the place. According to Caramo, he was often made to feel like an outsider. He often experienced toxic dynamics with Jonathan Van Ness and France specifically. Uh Caramo himself, however, here's what here's here's where it gets it's like crazy, right? You're like, God, they just bullied this guy. They were the they were probably being racist too, they were being horrible. Uh, you find out that Caromo has also been accused of sexual harassment on the set. Um, and he says that he was completely cleared and everything was hunky dory and it was all a misunderstanding. But then the other sources on set say that no, everybody just decided to just let it go so they could just get on with work. So I don't know. It's all sounds just really, really gross. Um, and but Cromo has confirmed now that it toxic dynamics, toxic dynamics, couldn't stay there, couldn't work there. Don't really blame him. It sounds like an absolute mess. Um, I just and it it sounds just catty and nasty and narcissistic. And uh I don't want I haven't watched that show. I think I watched the first season, maybe the maybe the first two seasons, and then uh some of their personalities online just kind of red flagged me as kind of narcissistic. So I kind of was already distancing myself. So this I'm not necessarily surprised, but it's also I'm definitely never gonna go back and watch it, right? Because it just feels tainted now, I think, with all of this drama. And I'm not saying this is Caramo's fault. I'm just saying the whole thing. The whole thing, the whole thing just sounds like it's a mess. All right, it's time, it's finally here. We're gonna do it. Lou Taylor, the shadow lurking behind the scenes of the Britney Spears conservatorship. Who exactly is this nefarious figure? And how exactly did she become someone tied to some of the most powerful and insidious families and networks in Hollywood, if if not America. I mean, you know, I think, you know, having having ties to the mafia is probably pretty, pretty big. Pretty big. Um, well, the early years of Lou Taylor, there's nothing really to write home about. I would love to give you something sensational, but much like Irving Azoff, there's just not really a lot there. She was relatively unremarkable. She had a relatively unremarkable childhood, uh, despite the kind of grandiose way she positions herself and talks about herself now. Uh, Lou Taylor was born Louise M. Sawyer in upstate New York in 1965. Again, just completely unremarkable, nondescript childhood. Uh uh nothing. She was raised in Henrietta. It's an upscale quintessential suburb, uh, about 20 minutes south of downtown Rochester, New York. It's kind of upscale, right? It's like families and shopping and all that, but it is home to the Rochester Institute of Technology. Um, and there's tons of shopping. There's just tons of strip malls, lots of retail spaces. That's actually one of the complaints. If you go and look this up online, you're like, well, yeah, I know that there's a lot of retail, but look at these beautiful suburbs. And it is, it is. It's the kind of place that you would see. It looks like the background of like 16 candles, right? Or like the background in uh back to the future. Like it looks like somewhere that would be in back to the future. And that's where Lou Taylor lived. That's where she grew up. This kind of quaint picturesque little thing. And she graduated high school in 1984, right? So it's not hard to kind of see her as, you know, a Molly, she looks nothing like Molly Ringwald at all, but you can see her having this kind of more upscale Molly Ringwald childhood. She went to high school there. She graduated from Roth High School in 1984. Um, if you go and check out Mystifying on Substack, which is Melanie Carlson, which, by the way, is the main source for today's episode for this whole Lou Taylor series. Uh, she Melanie Carlson has all the dirt on everything. So please go and look up Mystifying Substack. It'll be in the link to this episode. But uh there's a she she played a lot of sports and stuff in school, but not really, again, nothing to write home about. You can go to Mystifying Substack if you want to see pictures of Lou Taylor in high school. But she graduates from Roth High School in 1984. And you would think that, you know, that's this is pretty modern, right? And this is this big ambitious woman who's ended up on this big ambitious stage managing the estate of Britney Spears and all these huge celebrities. So she must have like rushed off and gotten this like really prestigious college degree, right? No, absolutely not. Uh Lou did not go to college, which is not, I'm not not sliding at all. I'm not saying that that you have to do that to be successful. I'm not being elitist, nothing like that. I'm just saying it's surprising considering the elitist circles that she runs in. Um, it's very, very interesting that she didn't she didn't go to college. Instead, after she graduated in 1984, she seems to have just gone into Rochester and started working for one of the biggest accounting firms in New York, uh, called Arthur Anderson. You can go and look this up. It's this again, this is one of these things. There's a few people in the Free Britney movement, Melanie Carlson, again, that mystifying Substack is one of them, who has brought this point up that it's very odd that this teenage girl, 18 years old, just walks into and becomes an accountant in this major, major accounting firm because this isn't it's not like the 1950s, this is the 1980s, you know. People people have college degrees. It's very common for women to go to college and get degrees. Women are becoming doctors and things, you know. So um, it's very, very odd, but you know, somehow she gets super, super lucky and she gets this really great job at Arthur Anderson right out of school between 1984 and 1986. That Lou meets the big first big influence on her life, and that is gonna be Robert Taylor. And he is a Rochester native, he's born there, went to school there, and he's working there as an engineer. And the two meet each other sometime around 1986, and by 1989, they're married. That's it, they've sealed the deal, they know, and Louise Sawyer is now Louise Lou Taylor. The couple settle into Rochester, but not for long because in 1990, just a year after they get married, Robert's work summons him down to the far and sunny shores of South Florida. Good old Boca Bertone specifically. Do you know the place? Do you remember the place? You know, there was a what was his name again? This guy. There was this guy that used to hang out down there for years and years and years and do a lot of really shady stuff. And he had this thing with this president. Oh, Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein's old stomping grounds. Well, yes, Lou Taylor and her husband moved down in 1990 to South Florida to Boca Raton. And this is where Lou's life is going to take another big turn. Because yes, marriage to Robert Taylor is a huge, big first step, which you will see really starting to play out around 2000. But here in 1990, other than becoming her husband, her life is about to take another big turn, perhaps definitely the biggest turn in her professional career. Because after the newlyweds moved to South Florida, Robert starts his job as an engineer. And Lou, who ha still needs this, she's got like a sense of purpose. She was just working at this big flashy accounting firm, you know, like what she's suddenly down in South Florida by herself, and you've got all these movers and shakers and people with money. And it's not hard to see Lou kind of missing a sense of purpose or missing something to kind of meet with this ambition that she clearly has. So while Robert is out at work during the day, she sets about trying to find a job for herself. And wouldn't you know it? She comes across an ad in the local paper for a business manager. The advert has been published by very, very bless her lucky stars, Davy Mos Advisors, a South Florida talent management sports management firm led by John Davimos, the son of Dick Davy Moss, which is going to be such a fun name to say over and over again because we're going to have to talk about it. Um, Davimos Advisors, along which is kind of like this there's Davimos management and Davy Moss financial, and it's all of these things, essentially under the Davy Moss family, headed by Dick and Orjon and other brothers, just like nine siblings or something like that. But Davy Mos Advisors, they're basically very well established in South Florida because Dick Dabby Mos, the head, he's super, super rich, super, super, super well known, was able to like buy himself a seat on the stock exchange. Like just crazy, crazy stuff, right? Crazy. And it just so happens that Lou Taylor comes across their advert for a business manager. Just when she was looking to make a change in the new warmer climbs of Boca Breton. And Lou wouldn't only get the change that she was looking for, she would get a blueprint and a Roledex that she would write off right into the Britney Spears conservatorship sunset. Now, here's the thing. We're gonna have to take a little sidestep down context alley for a second. Because the thing about Lou Taylor, as much as she has been painted by many as um um, as Melanie Carlson says, as this kind of like devious mastermind, uh, Lou Taylor is not. She is not creative, she is not a mastermind. She is literally someone who has just copied things that people have been doing in Hollywood in the entertainment industry for literal decades. Um, she's kind of mashed them together and then added a little bit of cult peppering on top of it. Okay, that's all she's really done. But for you to understand that, you need the context of these people that Lou Taylor is now going to embed herself in in the 1990s. That of course starts with the Davy Mamma, right? So we talked about just a second ago, Davy Moss advisors put an ad in the paper. Lou Taylor answers it. She wants to be their business manager, they're gonna hire. Wow, what a family to pick because Davy Ms. Do they have a history? So the Davy Mos family made their money off of Richard, Dick Davy Moss. Dick Davy Mos was a big wig. He made so much money that he was able to buy himself a seat on like the executive board of the Wall Street stock exchange, like big freaking money, big money, huge. Um, and guess how he made that money? Guess, guess, guess, guess? Yes, correct. Marketing scams, marketing scams, yeah. Davy Mos was a name synonymous with junk goods. He and his partners, he had all these partners, and they would come up with all these basically fraud goods, fake goods, scammy goods, junk goods, and they would sell them. They would advertise them in magazines and in papers and on the radio, and people could write in, send checks, order these things like miracle soil or this miracle house cleaner or this this miracle pocket abacus and all this weird little junk stuff. It's basically wish before wish. Um, and people would get it, and they would have sent their money off to get this thing, and they would get it, and it was absolute crap. It was absolute junk. The wish, literally wish. So it was an absolute scam, scam after scam after scam, and they got away with it for years and years and years. But eventually, the federal trade commission sent a cease and desist to Davy Mos and his partners. They said, You gotta you gotta knock it off. It was 1955, it was published. You can go and look this up. There's you can go look up old newspapers if that's your thing, and you'll see these things. But the federal trade commission is like, you gotta stop prodding people, you gotta stop selling junk, right? In 1955. And Dick was basically like, Yeah, I don't care. So he and his partners keep selling stuff, keep selling stuff. The Federal Trade Commission is like, right, we're really gonna have to come down on you. You can't be selling, like advertising these things on other people's networks when it's crap. Like, you're you're not allowed to do that on other people's networks. So, what do you think Dick and his partners did? Like, I should have like a like a Jeopardy countdown or a I probably can't use that, but I'll I'll let you guess. 321. That's right. Dick and his partners bought the biggest radio network in the world. Yeah, yeah. Because they were getting in trouble for advertising their fraud goods on other people's networks. Dick and his partner said, We're gonna go and buy the mutual broadcasting system. We're just gonna buy the whole thing. And they did, and they made Dick Davimos president of the largest radio network in the world. And then, do you know what he did? He started advertising his fraud, his crappy goods on his own network. Because what are they gonna do? He can do whatever he wants on his own network. He paid for it, he's president of it, he's got the owning shares. All of his partners agree with doing it because they're also selling junk, promoting junk on the network. Unbelievable. And it's kind of this early shade of like control the network, control the net, control the story, control the narrative, like that whole kind of thing. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. They got right in through the back door, right in through the back door. What's really interesting about this, this is kind of a side note, is while he was slinging all this junk, uh, Dick Dabymos also started selling top 18 hits. They would sell little phonographic records of top 18 hits. Essentially, you remember uh if you're an old crusty millennial like me, uh, now that's what I call music. Uh, he basically, Dick Davymos and this other guy, Smith, basically invented that. So you can thank them for those compilation CDs of hits that you like in the night came all the way from the 1950s. Absolutely nothing new under the sun. But Dick Davimos made so much off of buying that radio network and slinging his fake goods that in the 1980s he was able to move down to South Florida as this big fat cat uh and open up a sports management company. He was gonna manage the biggest athletes in the world and he was gonna do it from South Florida, and he he did, seemingly. Uh, Davy Moss sports management was the baby of Dick Dabimos, this baby, but uh he also he also had his son John Davy Moss, who is gonna be the one who hires Lou, was also closely involved. Now, here's what is so freaking important. This blew my mind when I heard this for the first time. When I read this for the first time, I had to I had to like reread it eight times and then go and look this up because I was like, this cannot be true. This is why the Davy Moss connection, there's a lot of stuff, right? They Lou's gonna work for them, but this story I think kind of sets the ball rolling for what's gonna become the Lou Taylor model that we see used in the Britney Spears conservative ship. So in 1986, Dick Davymos, who is old as hell by this point, right, he was running. Scams and had nine children in the 50s. Okay. So in the 80s, he's he's old. He dies in 95. He's old. So in 1986, Dick Dabby Mose with his new Dabby Moss sports management takes on a new talent, and it's big news at the time. And this new talent is 14-year-old Kelly Horford, who is a six-foot, five-inch tall Dominican teenage boy who got scooped right out of a very grim living situation. He came from a very big city. Uh, to me, it's a big city. I think they said it was like 78,000 people in the Dominican Republic. And his family was very, very poor. And he and his brother got spotted. Okay. And they basically got scooped out and promised they were gonna have this American dream. But get how twisted this is. Okay. This this blew my mind. Blew my mind. So Kelly Horford and his brother Tito get discovered in 1986, and people are coming after him immediately. Because you got these giant teenagers, they're like, Yeah, let's get them in basketball, A S A P. Dick Dabymos, old Dick Dabimos, scammy Dick Dabymos, being a rich guy with a lot of connections. He basically scoops up Kelly Horford, essentially buys him. He essentially buys him. Okay. He buys him. He goes to the family, says, Here's some money. I'll give you a whole bunch of more money and I'll make your kid a star, but you have to give him to me. Not only do you have to like let me take him, you have to give me legal guardianship. This old man paid for legal guardianship of this kid. He paid for the child. He paid for a 14-year-old child, brought him to Boca Ratone, and put him in a prestigious private Catholic prep school and said he was getting him ready to be the biggest star in the world. Uh, it didn't happen. It did not happen. And they're the the Horford brothers ended up having quite a lot of issues. Uh, and their family was never given what they were promised. Surprise, surprise, surprise. But, you know, imagine that a businessman taking legal guardianship over a child and then carrying them off to another country, Boca Ratone, Florida, specifically, promising their family money, food, medicine, and a future and all the American citizenship they can one day swallow. What does that sound like? What does that kind of feel like? Oh my god. I found an interview with Kelly's brother. There's basically very little record of Kelly. It's crazy. He he went on and played for FIU, which is not great. That's not great. Um, not great. And then that's it. His nephew is now a very famous basketball player, but you know, God knows what happened to Kelly. He was 14-year-old, given to an old man and taken to Boca Braton, God knows, you know. But I found an interview with Tito, um, or sorry, rather, with the family, with uh Tito and Kelly's half-brother. And this is what he said about when Tito specifically was brought over, which again, it's it's gonna be pretty much the same experience. We were offered a supply of beef, food, medicine, and money if Tito went to Louisiana State, Tony Balthazar said. I was offered a job in Houston if Tito went to Houston, but as you can see, and then he kind of holds his hands out, it's an awful story. Tito would make it to the NBA, but Kelly would quickly fade from the public eye after a brief basketball career with Florida Atlantic University. Was it Florida Atlantic or Florida International? I think it's Florida International. Um, either way, his childhood was sold to Dick Dabimos and it was for nothing because nothing ever came of it. And it sounds like he probably went through a lot of suffering and definitely didn't have his family, right? So uh it all was ultimately useless, though. As the Dabimos family were beginning to find their feet in a new machine, I guess it kind of paid off because what they were setting off and through a chain reaction was an exploitation machine, not unlike the slave plantations of the old south. And you guys just cannot convince me otherwise on that. Oh, but wait, because we're not done with the weird, gross, creepy context that you need to really understand the Davy Mos family and what Lou Taylor was crawling into bed with, okay? Because after the failure of Kelly Horford, John Davy Moss, one of Dick's sons and the head of Davy Moss Financial and Davimos Advisors, was determined to make the talent management game work for the family name. He was like, we are not gonna fail. That kid was a flop, I'm not gonna flop. And he he got his big chance in 1988 when the boxer Michael Moore came into his life. Now, Michael Moore was one of the biggest boxing talents like in the late 80s, 90s, probably ever, like literally ever. He was like one of the big heavyweight scaries, okay? But he didn't just pop out of the clouds overnight. He was a sports talent that had been hammered into an athlete by the legendary boxing trainer Emmanuel Stewart. Now, Stewart had coached some of the biggest names in boxing. You can go and look them up if you want. I am so incredibly horrifically grossed out and simultaneously bored by boxing that I was not gonna go look it up. But everywhere you look up Emmanuel, they're like, he's the biggest boxing talent ever. He coached this guy and this guy and this guy and this guy and this guy. So if you want to know who these guys are, you can go and look that up. But basically, big shit, okay? Big time, big time. So Stewart had coached some of the biggest names in boxing, and the case was no different with Michael Moore, though the relationship between Stewart and Moore was much, much different than it had been with most of other, but I think basically all of Stewart's other clients, because there was a very strong long-term, literal father and son dynamic. Um, because Moore, so Moore had grown up poor in Pennsylvania, Michael Moore, the boxer. He was one of five children. His mother was working just constantly, constantly, constantly to provide for her kids, to do everything she could for them. And he was apparently a kid. All sources, when you go to look up his childhood, they're like, he had so much energy. He just had a crazy amount of energy. He was just running around all the time. So Moore's grandfather, who just lived not far away, lived like right across the river or something, right across the creek or something like it's Pennsylvania. I don't know. Um, he basically takes in Michael and he gets him into boxing because granddad was a boxer. He had been like a golden glove, you know, winner, or something like that. So he gets little Michael into boxing. And same time, he's making him do yard work. He's getting him into like manual labor, just trying to just trying to burn through that energy and pick up the slack um for the mother who can't be there, right? More quickly became a football star in high school because he's channeling all that physical energy. He's very strong, he enjoys it, he really enjoys leaning in, getting really physical, but he retains a passion for boxing throughout it all. And that gets spotted by Emmanuel Stewart when Michael is 16. 16. Of course it is, right? Of course it is. So at 16, guess what happens? Michael Moore gets handed over to Emmanuel Stewart. He moves in, this 16-year-old moves in with this old boxing coach, uh, starts training and boxing with this coach full time. He's still going to school, he's still playing football, but it's it's like all about the boxing. Pays off because Michael Moore quickly becomes a huge name, huge name, not just in the region, but in the country. He like goes from this gym where he's training and gets this reputation of like as a teenager, beating the hell out of fully grown, trained, expert adult men. Like adult men are scared of teenage Michael Moore because he's so brutal at boxing. And Stuart's like, yeah, we're doing this. And he rides it right up to the top. He arranges major prize fights and Moore starts building a name. They start making a lot of money. And it's around this time, 1988, that John Davy Mos sees Michael Moore. He sees this name, he sees this kid winning a lot of money. And here we go. This this grossed me out. This was like after the Kelly thing, I was like, it doesn't get worse. And then you read the literal language of this of what happened next, it's insane. So 1988, John Davimos notices Michael Moore and he decides, I'm gonna get in on that. So he becomes Michael Moore's business manager. And oh my god, I just can't even believe we're saying this in 2026 and that this happened in the 80s. Like, I'm alive when this is happening, at you know, at this point, like when most of this is happening. So he becomes Moore's business manager, and he he does it by he he approaches not Michael Moore. That's who you think he would approach, right? You would think John David Mose, he sees this boxer who's making all this money. You think he would approach the boxer? No, nope, no. He goes to Emmanuel Stewart, the trainer who is managing Michael Moore, and he, and I quote, acquires the rights to Michael Moore. He purchases basically equity in a human being in a partnership with Emmanuel Stewart. They are literally doing a business deal with each other over a human being like they are bartering over a slave on the auction block. That is the only thing that I can see. I don't know how anyone can see anything else, but that's all I can see. Davy Mose pays Emmanuel Stewart $250,000 for a right to a third of Michael Moore. Like I it gives him a third of basically everything Michael Moore wins in any fights going forward. It's considered an investment, it's considered a purchase of rights. This human being is considered equity. I I when you go and look up what a slave is, it's really hard for me to understand like what the difference is, you know. But you know that it's uh uh it was legal and cool in America, and it seemed to pay off because Moore goes on to win so many fights that his managers stun soon had to start paying competitors. This is true. You can go and look this up, Michael Moore. I think he talks about it himself in a documentary, but essentially he was winning so many fights and beating the hell out of so many people that they had to start paying his opponents, they had to make an agreement beforehand that they would give the loser some of the prize winnings to make up for the fact that they were gonna get their ass kicked by Michael Moore. It's just really unbelievably crazy story, unbelievably gross, unbelievably corrupt. And wouldn't you know it? This is right around the time that Lou Taylor comes into the picture. So, do you see a pattern starting to form here, a cycle of taking total access over person, of commodifying them, objectifying them? Do you see that? Am I the only person? I'm hopefully not just the crazy person who sees this. Um, because what I see is them seeing human beings as a specific dollar amount to maximize profit on. And when you know it, that's the point at which Lou Taylor re-enters the story. So if you'll remember when we last saw Lou Taylor, she had just moved to South Florida, Boca Raton specifically, with her husband, Robert Taylor, who was working as an engineer. It was 1990. Lou, with time to fill on her hands and lots of big dreams, starts looking for jobs. And she comes across the ad for business manager with all the guys we just talked about, Davy Moss advisors. Lou takes the job, even though, according to her, if you can go and she'll she still talk about this to this day. She's very proud of Bragg. She brags about this. She says, I had no idea what a business manager was. I just wanted the job. So she she she just she just did it. So, you know, you want to talk about luck. Lou joined the Davy Mos management firm just as John Davy Moss was stepping up to really take over from his aging father, who was gonna die, you know, just a few years later. John Davy Moss was two years into his relationship with Michael Moore and looking to expand into the music industry. Lou Taylor, as it turns out, was the perfect fit for that and was just the motivated kind of quote unquote business manager that he needed to make that kind of expansion happen. And Lou, basically, the minute she signed on, she was put in the trenches right away. Soon after entering the Davy Moss management family, the team was hit with controversy in 1991 when Michael Moore was arrested after breaking a police officer's jaw in an altercation. It was the ultimate PR nightmare, but Davy Mos worked hard to bury the story and continue Moore's cycle of prize-winning fights. In 1992, Davy Mos expanded beyond the bonds of sports management when they started settling their aims on the music industry stars. Davy Moss had an easy in with Uptown Records, which is this is crazy. You're gonna have to you have to recall some things now, you're gonna have to pay attention. Um, Davy Mos gets in right there in the early 90s with Uptown Records, which is one of the kind of like little um offsets of MCA. Okay. And Uptown Records is headed by Andre Harrell, who was appointed by dun dun dun, Irving Azoff, Robert Kardashian's real good buddy, you know. Remember that? The guy with all the mafia ties that we talked about in previous episodes. Um Davy Mose gets into bed with Uptown Records, and that's that's that's that's who they're tied to. Just before Irving Azoff left MCA in 1989, or is it 1990? I think it was 1999, 1989, 1990. It's one of those. He handpicks this Andre Harrell guy to head up Uptown Records. It's like the last thing he does before he leaves MCA. Now, Uptown Records in the early 90s was specifically, well, not specifically, they had some other stuff, but they they they had this big focus on capturing what like the quote unquote black market. That's that's what they talked about. They wanted to get black artists in and corner black people and get black people's money and get them listening to whatever music they wanted to give to them, right? It's a it's very, very dodgy when you start looking at it and Clive Davis, that mother anyway. Anyway, Uptown Records did this through a cascade of popular artists, and one of those artists was Mary J. Blige, whose first album, What's the 411, was being recorded by Uptown. And wouldn't you know it? When that album came out in 1992, um, the liner notes of Mary's first album, uh, it thanks Davy Moss Financial. Davy Mos, thank you so much for helping me and making sure that I could make this record. And then years later in the Get Real podcast, Lou Taylor confirms that, oh, they were definitely involved because Lou Taylor in the Get Real podcast, I think it's from 2017, she tells a funny little story about how she was literally sitting in the studio while Mary was recording that album. Okay, so we've got Lou Taylor, who is barely two years into working with Davy Moss, in the recording studio with Mary J. Blige while she's recording her first album. Wow. Wow. Um, Updown with distant ties to Irving Azoff wasn't the only musical frontier that Davy Moss and Lou Taylor were conquering, however, because the team was also in bed with Giant Records, a label started by Irving Azoff after he was forced out of MCA because of his constant mafia scandals and allegations of mismanagement. Now, Giant Records, again, headed by Robert Kardashian's best buddy Irving Azoff, would be the label, and this is so crazy. They're the label that launches Brian Wilson's album in 1998 while he's under a conservatorship, which is so much like Britney Spears. You can hear more about that on the bonus mini sode over on Patreon if you really want to know about Brian Wilson's conservatorship. Very, very eerie. And Irving Azoff was a big, big, big fan. Um, the Dabby Most expansion into music, it's working. So they're in there, they're working with Giant Records, their names are being put on all kinds of albums, they're working with Uptown Records, and Lou Taylor is in the center of it all. She's she's right there in the center of it all. She says it herself. She's in there with Mary J. Blige, she's a part of this. Then in 1993, attention shifts because Michael Moore, without a doubt, the biggest star that Davy Mos had at the time, was arrested again for a violent altercation that takes place in a restaurant. And this the story blew up. All right, as those things do. I'm a millennial Mike Tyson stories where every other week spreads through the press like absolute wildfire. It's a big hit. Uh, and it ends up pretty much ripping out the pockets of Davy Moss at this point, the like the official Dabby Mos management group. And coincidentally, so right around this time, Dabby Mos says, okay, there's too many scandals now. We're defunct. But wouldn't you know it? Conveniently, never you fear, 1993. Lou Taylor opens up her own management business. Very convenient, isn't it? Isn't it? Lots of scandal around Michael Moore and Dabimos goes, oh no, we got to close too much scandal. But then Lou Taylor at the same time opens her business and takes all the Dabby Most clients. And wouldn't you know the name of this business? TriStar. Yep, this is the first iteration of TriStar. TriStar, which would go on to, you know, manage Britney Spears. Unbelievable. The twisted web we weak. And that's how by 1994, Lou was representing Michael Moore herself, basically standing in as John Davy Moss, standing at the head of her own little company, representing all of these stars and representing, representing Moore, like at the pinnacle of his career, right? Because 1994, this is the biggest fight of his career. It's a prize-winning fight against the heavyweight legend Evander Holyfield, the Evander Holyfield. It's a big, it's a big deal, right? It's one of those, one of those fights. Moore would end up winning the fight despite endless controversies surrounding him. Because that same year, 1994, as Lou is taking over, managing his career, I'm sure you still have the Dabby most people in the background. Um, Moore was also being sued by his ex-wife for a domestic dispute because he, like so many of these boxers, seem to do, uh, like to lay his hands on his wife. So, you know, uh, don't anyone think I'm just painting him as a complete victim here because he's a very volatile personality, which Lou seems to have really helped kind of cover up and, you know, keep him out of trouble. But it's this is kind of like the pinnacle of 1994. He wins that fight against Evander Holyfield. And wouldn't you know it? Lou got an estimated 33% of his winnings. There was something I was reading that said that he, Michael Moore, the best he ever took home from his winnings was like $100,000, or that was the average of what he would take home, which is a huge amount of money. It's a life amount, life-changing amount of money for a lot of people. But when you consider that some of these prizes, it's like a $10 million, $50 million prize, and he's taking home $50,000 or $100,000. Uh, something doesn't seem right about that split since he's the actual athlete who's in the ring taking the hit. And I think at this point, it's probably we could probably note some what I think is some other important and interesting context, which really kind of paints the character of who is going to later be involved in the Britney Spears conservatorship because Lou Taylor, she still to this day, said, you know, like if you get anything out of her about the conservatorship, it's very much we thought we were doing the right thing. We always did the best that we could. We were always doing the right thing for Britney, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think if you actually look at this little boxing thing and the fact that she starts her career with this kind of talent management, and boxing of all places really, really adds uh a certain flavor to it because there's context to that. Because boxing, I don't know if you guys knew this. I had to go and look this up because this kind of blew my mind. So boxing is considered to be basically the most corrupt corner of the sports industry. There's basically like no regulation. There's, there's, there's basically like nothing. There has there has been endless federal investigations. If you go and just like look up investigations into the International Boxing Federation, it's absolutely insane. You can't even you can't even get through it all. Like it the whole industry is notoriously opaque and impossible to wade through, and it is built that way, right? So it's it's a it's a it's a scummy pond, right? And Lou just crawled right into that scummy pond and just seemed to fit right in. I mean, the International Boxing Federation, when she got involved again, do you remember how we talked about how Robert Kardashian decided to get into the music industry? Just as it was being revealed that the whole music industry was being run by the mob, and yet he somehow seemed to really thrive and do well. And just everything he did made tons of money as it was revealed. The mob was running this industry he was a part of. There's a very similar thing with boxing, okay? Because just as Lou Taylor was getting in and started getting involved with Michael Moore, and she's doing really well, and she's doing so well that she becomes his business manager by 1994. In the 1990s, the the IBF was going through multiple scandals, multiple scandals. They had been exposed for bribery, like straight up bribery, right throughout the 1990s. In 1993, they ended up being hit with a federal investigation, not just like some police and some lawyers, the federal fucking government had to get involved and they ended up like having permanent commissions and changing rules. And they had there was like Muhammad Ali's law or something that they put into place for racketeering and financial exploitation. Okay. This is like a known, corrupt, disgusting industry. Boxers, today, right now, as we sit here living and breathing, boxers pay more in fees to their managers than any other athletes out there. I mean, they pay out so much money. It's estimated that boxers on average pay out 33% of their winnings to their teams. And that's like managers, agents, promoters. And like we said, talking about Michael Moore, sometimes it's even their opponents. They have to pay their opponents just to box them. So you can compare that. You're like, well, 33%. Like, yeah, that's fine. No, come compare that to the NFL and the MBA, okay, who they have governing bodies, which the the boxing does not have a governing body. The NFL and the NBA have percentage caps on what like managers and things can take from the earnings and the percentage. Percentage caps respectively sit at 4% for the NFL and 3% for the NBA. So they they they don't allow it, you know, unlike boxing, which again is it's you know, it's got nothing. No one's overseeing that. It's just the boxers. The boxers themselves have voiced like how corrupt it is over and over and over again. No one seems to listen to them. People still keep going to boxing matches, uh, which we're talking about like the big leagues here. We're talking about major matches. I'm not talking about your local boxers or if you like to box, I'm talking about, you know, if you're a boxer, you know, you know, you know. But we had like Terrence Crawford, he came out and straight up said, like the whole industry is just promotional monopolies and all the matches, it's like subjective officiating, which makes things really, really dangerous for people. And there's the organized crime aspect that you have to think about as well, as like again, just like Robert Kardashian getting into the music industry, boxing. Okay, boxing doesn't have a central government, like I said, it doesn't have a central governing body like the NFL or FIFA does, right? No big, really centralized, we're overseeing shit body. And because of that, it is specifically the boxing industry, specifically vulnerable to manipulation by organized crime because fights literally just consist of two athletes and the judges. That's it. Everything else that happens, everything else that's paid for, organized, put into place by the people who have money to pay and organize and put that into place. Whoever's got the money to do it, that's who does it. And guess who does that in boxing nine times out of 10? Fucking organized crime. Okay, organized crime. So it's interesting that Lou Taylor found her feet so naturally and so successfully in such an industry. And to me personally, it's interesting that while she was finding her feet in this industry, she also suddenly finds herself through Uptown and Giant Records and their relationship with Davy Mose, who she's working with, in the vicinity of all people, Irving Azoff, who Lou Taylor would later claim was a mentor. She refers to him as like a mentor as a guiding light. Like for you guys who have listened to the Irving Azov Mini Sode, it's the way he looked at Geffen, at David Geffen. Um, for those who don't remember, just a little brief thing, Irving Azoff again, head of MCA when it was exposed for being tied to the mafia, specifically the Gambino family. Okay. And you can go back and listen to my Irving Azoff Minnesota, or you can go back and listen to the Kardashians. Um, it's interesting to me that Lou found herself in this group of people and just thrived. She just thrived. And in the context of who she pretends to be, as we'll see in the next episode, this like super religious, I'm a godly woman, I'm a submissive wife, and I run my business like God would run a business. Really? Then why are you working in a mob industry? You know what I mean? It just it paints a different picture of who Lou Taylor kind of pretends to be. And I think it's very, very important. The reason I've spent so much of this episode like trying to really highlight these people like Irving Aesoff and Davy Mos is because what do I always say? What do I always say? Birds of a feather will freaking flock together. But Lou wasn't at the end of her yellow brick road quite yet, right? Because co-leaders, plantation owners, after all, they need a little, they need a little je ne sais quoi, right? Like a criminal network and some really oily, greasy, gross, grubby mentors with some gross, greedy, grubby ties and Kardashian connections. That's not really enough. If you're really gonna perfect your grift, you need a little extra spice. Oh, it's a lot to take in, isn't it? We are already waist deep into this podcast and we haven't even heard hide or tail of Britney Spears. And that's because what we're seeing here, what this whole episode has been, is the building of a pattern is the first block set in the foundation of a big machine. It's it's 100% Lou Taylor. I'm I want you to see who Lou Taylor is and who she associates with, but I also want you to start to see this big machine. We started with the Kardashians, who are a little piece of it. Now we're moving into the core of the machine, the people who design it, who set it, who run it, right? These are the foundations. If Lou Taylor's history doesn't sound significant, that's by design, okay? Because the truth is what you see here, what you hear here is the development of a villain in a court of villains, a true and actual student of corruption. This is Lou learning how to flex her wings, okay, behind this opaque, weird system that's kind of legal, kind of not, which is just the this is that's just the backbone of everything in America, especially in that Hollywood machine. This is the real Lou Taylor taking shape, okay. What we're talking about now. This is the manipulator learning how to fine-tune her craft, how to mask and hide, how to take over like a virus from the inside out. And that's exactly what Lou Taylor becomes: a virus, a lurker who leaks into the fringes around other more talented, skilled, creative people. The only thing she can do is breed and multiply and destroy until there's nothing left. You remember that quote that I gave you at the beginning of this episode? Did you hold on to it? Did you write it down? You know, the one like the one about the plantation and the it being a place of business and the whip being a means of increasing productivity? You know, that whole quote from the 1619 project? Well, we're only about halfway through, but you know, how are you feeling about that quote now? Thinking about, you know, Michael Moore being purchased as equity from the man who raised him from the time he was 16? Does that now that you that now that you know that story, does that does that make that quote sit a little bit differently with you? No? No? Okay, so what do you think of that quote now that you know about 14-year-old Kelly Horford being given to a what 70-something-year-old man? Um, being given total legal control over him, um, a 14-year-old from another country, all on the promise of being famous. No factual evidence, just like I have a lot of money. I promise I'll do this, give me your child. Um, knowing that story now, does that does that quote from the top of the episode sit any differently with you? Um, about the plantation being a means of business and the whip being the means of productivity? No? No? No? Okay, maybe, maybe it's just me. Maybe it's just me. But I do wonder, as we're having this story, especially uh like you'll see in the next episode, Boca Breton, Boca Bratone, Boca Bretone, man. How many other similar stories have we heard uh of talents, you know, super talented people, singers, musicians, artists, beautiful people, beauties, extreme beauties, uh being lured down to South Florida, Boca Bretone, especially, uh, with a promise of getting rich and becoming a celebrity. Maybe it's maybe I maybe it's just a familiar trope to me because I've sat and read the Epstein files over weeks and weeks and weeks. I spent when, you know, when they were originally out, uh, you know, so for me in in this Epstonian age, it's just it's just it's just a little um Lou Taylor being in Boca Breton, being tied to a family in Boca Breton who's buying children. I don't know about it. It's uh doesn't sit right with me. Sits really, really wrong with me. But while you and I see these stories as cautionary tales, as proof that the system is wicked and evil and corrupt, you know, you and I hear that Kelly Horford, 14-year-old being purchased by an old man, and we go, oh my God. Uh Lou Taylor did not. She did not, oh my God. She uh Lou Taylor said, Give me that. And she took these stories as blueprints. And what we've seen in this first episode is her getting exposure, her getting handed her first her first foundational copies, um, little pieces of a puzzle that she's eventually gonna pack down into the ultimate uh American entertainment plantation system, a system that would become as inescapable and as financially productive as the uh the old South systems that I keep pointing the finger at. Because I I'm sorry, I keep it just, I mean, you're purchasing humans as equity. That's literally slavery. I, you know, um, yeah, and that's that's um, that's where we're gonna start our next episode with Lou Taylor perfecting her message and her program and closing the trap not only around Britney Spears, but two other major clients uh who basically gave up their entire lives and were crushed beneath Lou Taylor's wheels. Uh, and it's not the only one. If you're on Patreon this week, you've also got the bonus mini sode, the Brian Wilson Conservatorship. And wow, you want to talk about eerie echoes of the Britney Spears? It it makes sense. Lou Taylor is not a creative, she is not a genius, she's not a mastermind. She just copied the playbook that was already set down for her. So I hope you'll be here next week for the conclusion of Lou Taylor and her mad descent into fundamental evangelicalism uh and the conservatorship of Britney Spears, because we're going to go into it 100% how it happened. Uh, you are going to see Lou Taylor for the cult leader that Melanie Carlson coined her as, and then I 100% agree with Melanie Carlson. Uh, when you look at Lou Taylor, you are looking at a cult leader. And when you look at the Hollywood machine, you are looking at a giant plantation machine that's run by people in a cult, in a cult. And it's it's really our job to deconstruct that. We you do not want to be a part of this cult. You don't want to be a part of any cult. I I promise you. Being free is scary, being independent is scary, having your own mind is scary, but it's better than being trapped. Okay, so that's what we will get up to in the next episode. But for this week, that is gonna be it. That's gonna be, I think, a good natural stopping place for us because it's it's gonna get it's gonna get intense in the next episode. So I hope you're starting to see the patterns emerging and hopefully the Britney Spears conservatorship is starting to make a little more sense to you. If you want even more deep dives on Britney Spears, Lou Taylor, the Kardashians, and all the rest of Hollywood's most corrupt, go ahead and join me on Patreon. I post weekly deep dives, bonus episodes, and you get full episodes of Scandal Queens before anybody else. So if you want even more twisted Hollywood, head over to patreon.com slash scandal queen. Want a more scientific, psychological look at the human animal? Then head over to the real ebjohnson.substack.com where I put my NLPMP and psych diplomas to good use on essays, articles, and guides all about narcissism, family relationships, and why the world is the way it is. For everything else, make sure you're following me on all the socials at the real e b Johnson, literally on everything you can think of, YouTube. I mean, I think even am I still on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, all the good stuff. You know, you know what it is at TheRail EB Johnson. And if you loved this episode, please think about leaving me a five-star review on Apple and Spotify. It just helps the other D influencers find me, and it's the cheapest and easiest way to piss off your local Swifty. For everyone else, thank you again for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode and you'll join me again next week for the mind-boggling, infuriating conclusion of Lou Taylor. I'm so grateful to you all for being here. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It means the absolute world to me. So until next time, keep your secrets closed and your receipts closer. Stay scandalous, queens. Bye bye.