I Took 3 Months Off of OUMERE to Hunt the International Con Men Behind an Elite Polo Ponzi Scheme Part VI: The Leak

I Took 3 Months Off of OUMERE to Hunt the International Con Men Behind an Elite Polo Ponzi Scheme

Part V of the story can be read here

Out of the Fire

The drive from Connecticut to Florida is beautiful, but it’s long. I’ve made the trip in the past, but this time it was different. What had before been a leisurely journey home from a summer vacation was now an urgent mission to expose the truth. If I didn’t do something quick, Ciro and Michel would continue their crimes and abuse unchecked, perhaps even escalate them.

When I returned to Palm Beach after a 23-hour drive carrying a heavy box of skin care and laboratory equipment I had brought with me on the road, I was ambushed at the Oumere door by the girls who work in the Worth Avenue courtyard semi-jokingly calling me every name in the book for abandoning them there for the summer. The heavy wall of humid heat that engulfs the Florida tropics makes the area undesirable for most, so south Florida becomes a ghost town in the summer. The girls thought I would just be gone for a few weeks, which ended up turning into a few months.

As I stood there sweating, aching, red from the sun, all of my senses magnified: The long drive, the international Ponzi scheme, the heavy box, the animal abuse, the heat, the human trafficking, the chatter. All I could say over the cacophony was, “can someone just get me a cigarette?”

For the next two weeks, my routine was: make skincare, write, sell skincare, write, go home, write — and repeat. As I wrote, what I thought would be a straightforward, albeit somewhat long-form article evolved into a sprawling investigative report spanning over a hundred pages, ultimately divided into five parts. Too much had happened, too many discoveries had been made, and the story was far too complex to leave anything out.

The investigation was like cutting off the hydra’s head — every time I severed one, two more would grow in its place. I would interview one person about their experience being conned or abused by Ciro or Michel and they would always have someone else they wanted me to speak to, or someone would contact me saying that they wanted to talk about what happened to them.

I eventually had to stop interviewing people. The article was going to be the size of an encyclopedia if I wrote about everything I learned. Ciro’s crimes were mountainous and everyone in polo had a story to tell of his deceit.

I finished the drafts of all five parts sometime around late September or early October. Part 5, in particular, relied heavily on victim statements from interviews I conducted, witness testimonies, and accounts from people who had directly experienced, witnessed, or been involved in Ciro and Michel’s questionable business dealings, potential crimes, or unethical actions. The article was about the facts, its purpose was getting the truth out there responsibly, so I had to send the unpublished rough draft to select individuals to fact check before final publication.

One night, I printed out the entire manuscript and just stared at it. As I looked at the full story laid out in front of me — every lie, every betrayal, every scam spelled out in black and white — I realized I had a problem.

I had no idea how to get anyone to read it.

The Dilemma of Truth

I didn’t know anyone in the polo world of influence. Yes, I could scrape together a few email addresses of people who seemed important and send them the article, but I figured no one would care. Why would they? The polo community seemed like a disjointed entity, too indulgent and too busy admiring its own mirror image for a story about a couple of deviant con men who scammed me and hurt my horse. I thought this investigation would end up consigned to the ash bin of history: unread and unnoticed. And the con men would go on.

What a gift it was to be wrong.

A few nights later I was lying in bed and a message came in: “Hi Wendy, I read your article. Sorry you got ‘Ciro’d.’ A polo player sent to me.” Then, not long after, another message came in: “Hi Wendy, I read your article, I went through something similar.” Another polo player. I thought this was odd, how did they know?

I decided to get up and take my dog for a midnight walk and as we walked, I read messages from people all over the world. Messages of people saying their entire barn had read it, or their entire club was passing it around. Messages from polo players, patrons, customers, mistresses, club owners, managers, and everyone in between. Everyone had read the article. Everyone was sharing it. Everyone knew.

People were reaching out to me to share their own experiences, telling me they’d gone through the same thing, that they knew about Ciro, or had been victimized by him. That Michel was a sick pervert who had victimized them. The article had made its way around the world, from South America to Africa to Europe.

“He scammed me out of a $50,000 investment.”

“I was sent your article — he tried to run the same scam in my barn.”

“He ran off with the horses and dumped them at a farm and fled the state.”

“He took $30,000 from me for a horse and the horse never showed up.”

“The people in my polo club are all talking about your article.”

“Thirty people sent me your article in one day.”

Then came the message that really did it:

“You’re famous lol.”

Now, my ego was already swollen by all of sudden being Miss Popular, but the confirmation of newfound celebrity inflated it to funhouse style, grotesque and cartoonish proportions. The high was unbelievable, like that rush of doing fish scale cocaine for the first time back in high school. No, I didn’t need the flaky stuff to get me off anymore, all I needed was that glorious knowledge that Ciro and Michel had met their end, humiliated and ridiculed by the only community that could see any worth in them. And it was because I had exposed them for the human garbage that they were.

In the darkness that night I stalked through downtown Delray, no longer a victim of crime but a deranged oracle of truth, high as fuck, basking in the glow of my own righteous glory. The great polo scam article internationally acclaimed, the villains exposed, gutted and disgraced, ensnared in the black widow’s web and eaten alive.

You’re mine now.

Then as I turned onto a dark but familiar corner, a black Cadillac Escalade rolled by with the music up and windows down. Behind the wheel, a garden-variety South Florida pervert, cruising past real slow for a free peek. He stuck his face out, eyed me up and down, a total turn-off of shitty male behavior typical of the OnlyFans generation.

Normally I just ignore drive-by leerings and keep walking, but I stopped and stared at him. Blaring from his speakers was the great hip-hop banger of my dearly missed Y2K era, Overnight Celebrity. The gods of some religion must have sent this guy to play the background score that evening.

Grinning with hollow black eyes and a crooked gold tooth, the pervert prophet gave me a thumbs-up, then hit the gas as he laughed and disappeared into the night.

At first, I was offended that I wasn’t getting paid to be some midnight creep’s roadside attraction. But then, in that moment, I learned to stop worrying and love the serendipity of the coincidence.

He was right.

That psychopathic grin I had when I almost decapitated Ciro with his own mallet back in July was back: Polo united was in shambles, Ciro was exposed, Zoe, humiliated. Michel — Michel…

And then my blood ran cold.

The grin vanished, replaced by the hollow, shell-shocked thousand-yard stare of a Vietnam era war veteran. The city fell silent. The sky turned pitch black. I could feel the universe zoom in on my face, tightening the frame like that one bad acid trip from high school, as the words slipped out before I could stop them —

“Oh no. Everyone read about me fucking Michel.”

Oh shit.

For the first time on that walk, I had a humble thought. Although I’d written the article to be read, and I knew it would be eventually, the fact that an unpublished draft — my copyrighted material — was being disseminated internationally without my consent was really like the entire world had just opened my Penthouse Forum style investigative journalist diary and read the whole thing.

And there was a lot of fucking going on in that journal.

Looking back, I was probably embarrassed that everyone now knew I nailed Michel, hard, outside that barn while a horse watched, but that was an important part of the overall story.

And telling that story was the price of finally stopping evil. The necessary method to rid the world of putrid vermin, to mop the earth and send them back to hell.

I am the demon cleaner, and I have a job to do.

The Emperor’s Tailors

Just before the article’s dissemination, Ciro and Michel left Greenwich with an air of invincibility, as if everything that I had done that summer had simply vanished into the wind, never to be spoken of again. They went to Morocco with Sugar Daddy, and from what I was told, they acted like massive tools over there — fully outstaying their welcome and leaving behind the same impression they always do: that they’re assholes.

And upon their return to south Florida, Ciro and Michel carried themselves with even bigger egos and the confidence of men who believed they had won. But I was watching them. It wasn’t particularly hard; they post everything they do on Instagram.

Strangely, Ciro and Michel didn’t rebook the Santa Clara Polo Club, where they had been based before. Instead, they moved to a shared barn and field just down the road, owned by Michel’s patron. Coincidentally, it was also the site of our midnight first time back in April. It was a significant downgrade from their previous facility, a move that still doesn’t quite make sense to me.

Instead, they appeared to shift focus. The tailors needed a new kingdom to infest and a new emperor to clothe. So, they pitched the Polo United tent at a new location: Grand Champions. This was likely a strategic move. Grand Champions is a central hub in the polo world, filled with wealthy clients and plenty of opportunity to impress and recruit new patrons. If Ciro and Michel were on the hunt for a new mark, this was the perfect studio to weave their next invisible robe of lies.

“Though they could see nothing, for there was nothing to see.”

It was also during this time that I filed a lawsuit against Ciro and Michel for fraud. I told my lawyer to file immediately and serve them without delay because I knew they’d run off to Argentina.

Serving Michel was easy. In addition to public mortgage and property records for the house he owns, the Polo United registration with SunBiz in Florida, a public record, listed his home address as the company headquarters. He had also left me a thank you love note in my car once, using an old envelope with his home address and cute little hearts he wrote on it.

You’re welcome, babe.

Ciro, however, was another story. He was a vagrant, bouncing between budget motels or anywhere else that would take him. He lied to me about where he lived to hide the fact that he was living alone in a place that I imagine can only be described as a seedy rundown flophouse. On his US Polo Association registration, he’d listed an address that didn’t exist — an apparent inversion of Michel’s home address.

Ciro’s falsified USPA record

I had been shown an eviction notice from California indicating that Ciro and Zoe had been kicked out of their apartment there. Ciro was also sued the year prior by a different landlord in California for unpaid rent. That likely explained why he didn’t appear on any lease records. One thing I knew about Ciro was that he had nowhere to go because no one wanted him, not a landlord, not a friend, he had no one. In Greenwich, he spent hours alone every day at a grocery store called The Happiness Market. Even after it closed, he’d linger in the parking lot.

One of the many times Ciro and Zoe were evicted from their apartment for not paying their rent.

So, I figured he was following the same pattern here. I knew he liked an Argentinian café in Wellington called Cilantro’s, where all the polo players hung out. He desperately wanted to be one of them. I told my lawyer to have him served there, which he was.

Ciro’s return of service, how embarrassing.

Back in September, I told Karen, another Polo United victim, that I discovered Ciro and Michel were animal-abusing con men, and she needed to act now if she wanted her money back. She had paid $50,000 for a Polo United membership that was supposed to start on September 10th, 2024. I told her that Ciro and Michel weren’t coming back to Wellington by then, they were hanging out in Greenwich and then jetting off to Morocco with their sugar daddy. They didn’t even have a field booked for when they would eventually come back.

Karen, like just about everyone else they conned, was naive about the severity of the situation. I told her to take action immediately but instead I was brushed off. She thought if she was patient, if she “let them settle in” once they finally returned, as she stated to me, she could gently pressure them into returning her money. As if these were reasonable men running a legitimate business. If logic or fairness had anything to do with how they operated then there wouldn’t have been a massive multimillion dollar international Ponzi scheme wrapped up in human trafficking, animal abuse, securities fraud, tax evasion and sexual exploitation. But here we are.

And that was the mistake everyone made. I heard the same silly nonsense from every single person I warned about Ciro and Michel’s scams. They thought Ciro and Michel could be reasoned with, manipulated, played at their own game. That they could just “ask nicely” for their money back or “have Ciro and Michel feel bad for them” enough to give them a refund or the horse they paid for. And when I said how stupid that approach is, I got the brush off. I was often alone in my awareness that the only thing that works on criminals is a real threat — litigation, public shame, something that actually costs them.

I told her to file a lawsuit if her money wasn’t returned and I put her in contact with my lawyer. Michel promised to refund her money and never did. Like everyone else, she learned the hard way that I was right — Ciro and Michel were not going to give back that money so easily.

In October the article was leaked and then on October 28th both Ciro and Michel were served with Karen’s lawsuit — and mine.

And then they ran off to Argentina.

Who was that other rat fuck who fled like a bitch coward into Argentina’s open arms…Oh, right.

Demons Can Cite Scripture Too

It was while they were gone that I began to learn about the fallout from the leak. First, I heard that Michel received a call from Memo Gracida. I don’t know the exact contents of that conversation, or if it truly happened at all, but if it did occur, I can guess Memo wasn’t pleased about Ciro using his name to sell a stolen horse.

Then Michel claimed the owner of Grand Champions told Ciro and him to get the hell out. Albeit this banishment, if true, was only temporary as Michel was back to playing there within a few weeks.

Go team!

It was despicable that Grand Champion’s grand morality had an expiration date shorter than a carton of eggs, but I discovered something horrific about that place too in my investigation, so my expectations and respect for them couldn’t be any lower.

Michel then claimed he lost a female client he had been coaching for the U.S. Women’s Open because her mother pulled her out after reading the article. To that, I say: good on the mother. She sounds like a smart woman and a responsible parent who cares about keeping her daughter safe from an adulterous degenerate who wasted no time touching and then fucking his female student once the opportunity arose.

Michel bemoaned that the article harmed his relationship with his daughter, but he wasn’t thinking much about his family when he left them at home to go have sex with me. Or when he got a handjob from a strange woman on an airplane. Or a blowjob in the backseat of a car by a random woman while her husband watched. Or when a woman he met at a bar in New York City took him home and then hid his clothes somewhere in her apartment so he wouldn’t leave in the morning.

But the crying didn’t end there. Michel groaned that the leak hurt his ability to sell horses — which is another win. He treated those poor animals like disposable equipment, abusing them and wringing every last dollar out of them, selling sick and injured ones to his patrons for top dollar, before moving on to the next.

In September, one of my sources at Mashomack watched as Michel’s aggressive riding caused the breaking of one of his horse’s hooves during a match. Didn’t flinch as the poor animal suffered. Just got off and climbed onto another like he was switching out a mallet.

I also think Tully is dead.

Evil and cowardly men failed Tully, she deserved better.

Although Ciro whined about “losing 10 Polo United clients” as a result of the article, I cannot take credit for this, as much as I’d like to. In part 5, I made the prediction that their criminal behavior, lack of professionalism, and overall inability to do anything but scam people would doom Polo United, forcing Ciro and Michel to ‘pivot’ their entire operation to their biggest whale, Sugar Daddy. And this turned out to be correct.

Polo United only had about 6 “members” at its peak and Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb fucked things up in a unique way for each of us:

Karen: They stole $56,000 and got served with a lawsuit.

Andi: Conned out of $70,000 in a stolen horse investment scam.

Juan: Paid for an Argentine horse that never existed.

Miles: Handed over $5,000 for lessons that never happened. 

Sugar Daddy: We all know what they’re doing to him, even if he doesn’t.

And then, of course, there was what they did to me.

Add it all to the pile of Ciro’s lies — the article didn’t kill their polo business. There was no business to kill. Polo United was never meant to be a legitimate operation. It was deliberately set up to be fraudulent from the start, a well-polished scam draped in the prestige of the sport. The polo field was just a backdrop, a stage set for the con. And if there was any doubt about their intent, look no further than the fact that every single one of us was scammed in a unique way — a custom-tailored deception, designed to extract the most money from each target before moving on to the next.

But there was no moving on this time. The fallout wasn’t confined to the United States. The polo world is small, but with a reach beyond American borders. And as Ciro and Michel fled to Argentina, they found that the consequences had traveled with them.

While Ciro and Michel were in Argentina, they thought they’d find refuge — get a hero’s welcome with open arms in the one place they believed they could still hide. Instead, I heard that no one wanted to be seen with Ciro. I was told that Mariano Aguerre’s crew finally realized what garbage they were. When I asked what the entourage had to say about Ciro and Michel, the response was blunt: ‘Que son una mierda.”

I remember one night when Michel was at my place, we had a conversation I’ll never forget. We were lying in my bed and Michel laughed and said that Ciro had been hesitant to take my business that day in February, when I first messaged him about a lesson. Ciro was worried about potential drama between me and Peter Pan and had his reservations, but Michel said he convinced him to let me into their club.

I wonder how many times a day they regret that decision.

They say a storm is coming, I say it’s already here.

The Whores of Babylon

“I was a victim of Michel’s manipulation for many years. He confessed to me he has no guilt.” One of Michel’s victims told me one night. “He seduces women to satisfy his desires as if we are objects. He discards us and then comes back whenever he wants with lies. He is a great manipulator. His inner emptiness is so great that he cannot love anyone. He only needs to create a good and exemplary character to convince himself that he is one.”

The woman found me after she had read the article and she told me that Michel, in an effort to paint himself as the innocent victim, dismissed me as a lunatic with a word processor out for revenge. Then, because he is such a genius, he handed her the article — you know, the one with the GIANT SCREENSHOTS OF OUR TEXT MESSAGES. Giving her the evidence proving every word I said was true.

Here’s one:

I’ve had better.

“I believe everything you wrote. He told me the same story about the husband watching his wife with [Michel] having relations. I also believe the chats you posted. He told me the same thing about alternating. He can’t get that topic out of his mind. He is perverse…I think he has no emotions. He doesn’t feel.”

A statement from one of Michel’s victims.

The victim went on to tell me that Michel has no relationship with his family, which matched what a well-known figure from an established polo family told me about him, that his family disowned him for his total lack of ethics.

I believe that the familial estrangement may have happened long before my article because Michel’s duplicity didn’t start with Polo United — his moral decay had been rotting him for years. And it explained why Michel would involve himself with a loser like Ciro.

Ciro wasn’t a legit polo player. Michel was. Ciro was a nobody. Michel had a name. On paper, they had no reason to join forces, and everyone always asked me what they were doing together.

What they shared — what bound them together — was corruption. Neither had ethics, neither had shame, and both were willing to whore themselves out completely to get what they wanted.

Michel liked to pretend to me that his trips from Florida to Taqueada in California were purely about polo — play a match, get paid, head home. But nothing I saw with Michel was ever that honest.

I believe that when Michel traveled to Taqueada to join Ciro for a match, it was more than just a business trip — it was his transcontinental springboard into a polo-playing sex romp.

Or at least his attempt at one.

Taqueada members I interviewed told me he would sit with them on the sidelines and openly declare that he had to cheat on his wife — there was simply no way around it: he disliked her and resented their shotgun marriage. This pathetic recital was likely one of his grooming attempts, testing the waters to see if a member would take the bait and service him out back before he had to head on home.

But I don’t believe it was just about sex for Michel, I believe it was about conspiring with Ciro to control the Taqueada members.

Ciro had his methods. He arranged Michel to me as a gift to keep me in the club — something Cipher later confirmed. This wasn’t just prostitution, it was strategy — a calculated operation deeply rooted in Taqueada.

A source who had watched the entire Taqueada operation unfold from the beginning told me that Ciro had a deliberate way of keeping the women tethered to the club, ensuring they stayed loyal and kept paying in. He manipulated emotions, creating the illusion of personal connections while subtly pitting certain members against one another. What should have been a professional environment centered on polo became a web of tension and competition, carefully orchestrated to keep his influence intact and scam hidden.

I noticed that Ciro and Michel put on an evolved form of the same concerted act with Jennifer in Greenwich. Michel would flirt with her on the field, Ciro would be at her home late at night. I believe I saw what looked like one weekend together in New York City, which, if true, is kind of an odd thing for a woman to do with an out-of-towner who just started teaching her daughter polo.

The fact that Ciro would use sex and exploit the frailty of women to keep clients in his club confirmed to me that he was a true-blue psychopath of generous proportions. Ciro is a homosexual, I know this because in addition to gazing lustfully at any polo-playing man with a handicap of 5 or higher, he once looked me dead in the eye and told me that “the vagina” is gross. There is nothing wrong or shameful about being gay, but when a man hides who he is for too long, something dark will emerge to take his place.

When I lived in Hollywood which is a diverse melting pot for the worst people on the planet, I would encounter a Ciro every now and again: a gay man who would have sex with women because she had something he wanted. They were a strange and rare breed of deviant psychopath, hollowed out, donning borrowed skin, predators disguised as men. And I knew one thing and one thing for sure about these types of men: they were dangerous.

“He lies every time. He takes advantage of the women in love.” Michel’s victim told me. She was clearly upset, and I was upset that Michel hurt her.

The Scream of the Butterfly

When Ciro and Michel returned from Argentina, they secured a new partnership for Polo United with the International Polo School in Wellington. With Polo United now reduced to just the two of them playing for and profiting off a team they built around Sugar Daddy, they needed to keep the farce going and money flowing.

I’d never heard of the International Polo School before, but their willingness to welcome exposed criminals into their Palm Beach Invitational was gross, greedy and pathetic.

But that’s polo. The professionals aren’t there to be ethical; they’re there to pass the ball to a rich man, stroke his ego, and cash a check. The polo schools mostly exist to keep the whole charade going.

They’re all mercenaries at the end of the day, and mercenaries play for the highest bidder.

Ciro, with his criminal accomplice and Jay Leno-in-drag lookalike, Juana Socas.

When I saw the polo community start to let Ciro and Michel slime their way back in, I felt conflicted. I had done my part — exposed the truth, laid out the evidence, made sure the world saw them for what they were. But if the people in this world were so corrupt that their outrage was just theater — temporary morality to make themselves look honorable before quietly welcoming them back in — there was nothing more I could do.

I knew something had to be done. Ciro wasn’t just a con man; he was a predator. A deviant, an animal abuser, a fraud who had spent years ruining lives and getting away with it. He was a force of great evil on this planet, destroying the earth and harming its life. He needed to be stopped.

However, there was a problem:

In this whole plan, in this entire story, I was the archangel, I was the black widow, but I was not the executioner.

“The serpent’s tooth is not in me; I do not strike to kill, only to remind.”

But maybe there was another who was. The higher force who was there with me the whole time, guiding me through this entire journey, giving me the strength, guidance and sheer will to persevere to maintain her dominion. She is the watcher of the universe, the guardian of the living, the great force of time and balance. She is Mother Nature.

And when all was done that I could do, she said to me, Step aside. I will handle this.

And she did — with one of her own children.

A horse.

A lingering question I had in my investigation was why Ciro got banned from Indio, California. I heard from multiple sources he was kicked out of there, told never to return, but no one knew why. After searching and looking and asking everyone I could, one night I finally got my answer. Ciro got kicked out of Indio because he was caught beating the horses.

Before me nothing was created, that is not eternal: and eternal I endure. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

On January 5th, Ciro was playing a match at the International Polo School when he made an illegal move, crossing the line of the ball and cutting off his own teammate. His horse threw him down. Ciro hit the ground hard and lost consciousness.

He never woke up.

The news reached me quickly. My only concern was for the horses or if anyone who actually mattered had been hurt. I relaxed once I heard everyone was fine.

When people called me — or I called them about Ciro’s collision and coma, my tone was always the same: one of repressed jubilation.

Their tone, no matter who I was speaking to, was always the same: unmoved and indifferent.

And everyone all used the same word: karma.

“Ciro was always afraid of the horses.” — Cipher

Over champagne a night or two later at a swanky Delray restaurant, my date asked me if I was going to go to the hospital to look at Ciro, and I asked him if he thought I should. Should I go look at evil, disarmed, lost in purgatory, suffering its last breath in eternal darkness. He paused and said no, that he thought I was better than that.

And although I disagreed that I was above petty torments, I agreed that going to a hospital to see a patient for reasons other than compassion would be a low thing to do. Frankly, it would be the sort of thing big pieces of shit like Ciro, Zoe, or Michel would do. So, I didn’t go.

But I didn’t need to go. Someone else I knew visited the hospital and told me what happened. When he entered the ICU where Ciro was kept, he noticed an overwhelming, vile, and putrid smell. He was confused because Ciro wasn’t in a negligent state — he looked clean and maintained. He asked the nurse what the smell was coming from Ciro, and the nurse confirmed it was necrosis. Tissue decay. Cell death.

Ciro’s brain was rotting.

The Law of Consequences

GoFundZoe

Most people I spoke to after the incident said they found out about what happened from Zoe Cookson — Ciro’s long-time accomplice, financial frontwoman, and possible sham-marriage wife. And every single one of them said the same thing:

They didn’t believe her.

Zoe and Ciro spent years conning people, so when she suddenly went on a worldwide pseudo-sympathy campaign, claiming Ciro was in a coma and how “devastating” it was, everyone called the hospital themselves to confirm he was actually there and not just on the run again, dodging the hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of dollars in debt he owed to his victims.

It was strange that Zoe would reach out to people with no urgent connection to Ciro to inform them of his coma, unless she had an ulterior motive, which I believe she did. She likely contacted those Ciro owed money to as a way of passively attempting to absolve debt repayment and maybe to get something else.

A few days later I was notified by one of my sources of a Gofundme page newly set up to panhandle funds for Ciro. At first, the organizer was an unknown woman named Danielle Smith. Then suddenly the name changed to someone familiar: Zoe Cookson.

At first the Gofundme’s organizer was a mystery woman named Danielle Smith, which then changed to the familiar, Zoe Cookson.

Messages over the ensuing days piled up, asking me if it was another sham, another shameless money grab, the final con of an ersatz Bonnie and Clyde. That even in [near] death Ciro is still scamming people.

I didn’t know if it was an outright scam, but what I did know was that the proposed use of the funds was suspicious and riddled with contradictions. In private, Zoe was telling creditors that Ciro was unlikely to recover. Michel was also heard telling people that Ciro had no brain function. And yet, in the Gofundme, Zoe painted a picture of a fallen polo hero, fighting for his life, kicking his legs, squeezing hands, responding to voices — all he needed was a million dollars to make a full recovery.

The problem was, even Zoe couldn’t keep her lies straight. Just four hours after launching the GoFundMe, Zoe posted an update on CaringBridge, a website for publicly posting updates of ill people, laying it on real thick. Zoe described how she was by Ciro’s side, playing The Sound of Music for him, how he was “tired” after being taken off the ventilator, and how they shared a “little video call” with his brother.

It was sappy. Cheesy. It made me want to puke. The same woman who claimed Ciro was in a coma and jumped to tell people it “didn’t look good”, now wanted everyone to believe he was lucid enough to FaceTime, listen to show tunes, convey tiredness and bask in the warmth of her bedside devotion.

When I saw it, I only had one thought: That manipulative bitch.

Prove it, Zoe.

I believe Zoe posted this CaringBridge update because she realized her charity scam money grab would never get that big million-dollar payout and needed a melodramatic sob story for big time guilt-money acceleration. Sugar Daddy donated $5,000 and Jennifer, Ciro’s almost cash cow in Greenwich, donated a massive $200. But she gave her thoughts and prayers, which I’m sure Zoe found to be just as good as cash.

But then, just as quickly as she played the role of doting caretaker, Zoe disappeared. Within days, she was on a flight back to England, leaving behind the illusion that she would be keeping vigil over Ciro and updating the generous donors about his recovery. She never posted another update.

Instagram story posted on Zoe’s Instagram just days after claiming she was in Florida. The setting of this photo does not appear to be Florida.

And that raises the real question — what exactly was she doing there in the first place? She claimed his insurance covered his hospital bills, so why raise money specifically for rehabilitation, something not realistic for a coma patient?

Zoe ran off to England over a year ago under suspicious circumstances. When Taqueada collapsed, Ciro fled to Florida, while Zoe suddenly relocated to England, claiming she had to care for her father. She and Ciro publicly stated they had broken up, yet she continued handling all the financials for Polo United from behind a screen, which is odd for an ex “girlfriend” to do, but not for someone with legally shared finances. Nor is it odd for the owner (CEO) of Taqueada, to whom money is actively being funneled, to do.

Zoe is the CEO of Taqueada

And now, after all that time away, she just happened to reappear in the U.S. two weeks after Ciro’s incident, only to vanish again after setting up and getting money from a dubious and parasitic fundraiser.

What was her real reason for coming back, and what was she running from this time?

“Earth and sky fled from His presence, and there was no place for them.” — Revelation 20:11

Later, Zoe quietly altered the GoFundMe description to include covering travel expenses for Ciro’s family — an apparent bait-and- switch, and possibly a violation of the platform’s terms of service. Donors had been led to believe their money was going toward Ciro’s rehabilitation, not footing the bill for alleged airfare and accommodations. I don’t believe anyone from Ciro’s family ever actually came to the hospital.

And then there was the conveniently vague promise that any “unused funds” would be donated to traumatic brain injury charities — charities that, unsurprisingly, she never bothered to name.

The entire campaign reeked of shameless opportunism, with Zoe dangling just enough sentimentality to reel people in while keeping the actual destination of the money as secretive as possible.

Zoe first claimed the funds were strictly for Ciro’s rehabilitation. Then after thousands of dollars were donated, she altered the purpose of the funds to include travel and accommodations for Ciro’s family.

Zoe also conveniently omitted Ciro’s grim prognosis from the GoFundMe but had no problem sharing it with those he owed money to.

She kept it “private” by telling everyone — except the donors.

The Vultures are Circling

I had been watching the Gofundme donations for weeks when I noticed the total had dropped by $5,000. My first thought: Sugar Daddy. His was the largest and most obvious contribution — while others gave a few bucks, he put in a sizable $5,000. When I saw the missing funds, I checked the donor list. His name was gone. So was his Instagram post promoting the fundraiser.

I thought about what I uncovered and published in Part 2 — a lien Sugar Daddy placed on Ciro in July, right around the time Ciro was running phase 1 of the Polo United horse investment scam. This was Ciro and Michel’s way of stealing money by pretending to buy Argentine horses with a cash advance, only for them to pocket the money and never make with the horses. Ciro got his money for this venture from Andi and Sugar Daddy. Me and Miles didn’t fall for that shit.

When Ciro went to Argentina he indicated on Instagram that he was purchasing multiple horses for Sugar Daddy. Later, I was told that these horses may have belonged to the same family who, back in July, he tried to sell me the Ghost Horse from. And when their horses left Argentina, its rumored that they hadn’t been fully paid for.

When I went back online in February 2025 to check the records, I found two new liens filed by Sugar Daddy in California, securing a legal claim over all of Ciro’s present and future personal property as collateral for an outstanding debt.

I then reached out to a source who claimed that the family may still be seeking payment from Sugar Daddy, which might have caused an argument between the two parties. If true, he likely assumed he had paid in full after handing the money to Ciro, who just pocketed it.

I believe that another argument may have occurred between Sugar Daddy and Zoe Cookson who were both picking over the remaining meat on Ciro’s bones before he dies and everything is gone. Zoe was likely funneling the Gofundme money directly into her personal account for her own use and Sugar Daddy may have felt entitled to funds going into Polo United. His retraction of his donation may have had something to do with that ongoing tug of war.

When I continued my search, I found something even more revealing. On February 13, 2025, Sugar Daddy — operating through his company, York RE Capital Partners, LLC — filed a lawsuit in Westchester County, New York, against both Ciro Desenzani and Michel Dorignac, seeking at least $375,000 in damages.

The lawsuit alleges conversion, breach of contract, and fraud, and includes sworn claims that Ciro and Michel intentionally misrepresented Polo United’s financial condition to induce Sugar Daddy into investing.

York RE Capital vs. Dorignac and Desenzani

Specifically, the complaint accuses them of furnishing fraudulent financial statements, inventing phantom accounts receivable, inflating the value of Polo United’s assets (including horses), and then misusing investor funds for personal debts, rent, and unauthorized purposes.

Fraud.

These allegations bear a striking resemblance to Ciro’s prior misconduct in California involving Taqueada Polo, where investor money was also funneled away from business use — under Zoe Cookson’s direction — and allegedly diverted into offshore accounts and personal expenses.

At first, I thought that Sugar Daddy wised up, realized he had been had by two common criminals and wanted to go after them, until I looked at the affidavits of service.

Ciro had been in a coma at St. Mary’s Hospital in West Palm Beach since January 5, 2025, and Michel had been actively playing polo with Sugar Daddy — his teammate and employer — in Florida for months leading up to and even after the lawsuit was filed. Despite this, when Sugar Daddy filed his February 13th lawsuit in Westchester County, New York, he initially attempted to serve both Ciro and Michel at their old, temporary summer addresses in upstate New York, where we had stayed only during the Greenwich polo season.

This makes no logical sense — Sugar Daddy had been physically present with Michel in Florida nearly every week, and he was well aware that Ciro was in a Florida hospital in a coma. Why, then, would he direct service to New York?

And when the service obviously failed, he then attempted to serve the comatose Ciro at an old address in Wellington, FL where it was known he was not located.

Eventually they served Ciro in the hospital.

Ciro served on March 3rd while being in a coma since January 5th

Even more bizarre is the fact that, despite filing a lawsuit against Michel on February 13, 2025 — accusing him of serious crimes like fraud, conversion, and embezzlement — and serving Michel officially on March 1, 2025 Sugar Daddy continues to play alongside him on the polo field. Not something I would do with someone I am suing for fraud.

Not only has Michel remained a featured pro on Sugar Daddy’s York RE Capital Polo team, but Sugar Daddy has gone so far as to use Polo United’s branding in his team’s marketing materials.

Michel is still playing for York RE Capital despite the lawsuit. Juana Socas, the former Polo United accomplice now is appearing with York RE Capital.

If Michel defrauded him, why would Sugar Daddy still entrust him with his horses, his team, and his brand image? These aren’t minor accusations — I think they might be felonies. And yet their professional relationship appears completely undisturbed.

It feels off. In my opinion, the lawsuit looks more like a chess move than a genuine pursuit of justice — I question if it is possibly a strategic filing to get ahead of other creditors, distance himself from legal fallout, or gain control of Polo United’s assets while Ciro remains incapacitated. I question the legality of this maneuver. These are my concerns, and whatever the case may be, the contradiction between the courtroom and the polo field is suspicious.

And the fact that this is all done while Ciro lies in a coma, alone in darkness is disgusting. Michel is the weak rat that led the vulture to dying prey so he wouldn’t be eaten first.

The Court Jester

On February 11, 2025, Avery Chapman, the lawyer for Polo United, Ciro and Michel in both mine and Karen’s lawsuits, told the courts Ciro was dead. He filed a suggestion of death to the courts in both cases, claiming Ciro had “passed away.” Oddly, he filed motions to withdraw as Ciro’s counsel which were dated February 5, 2025 but not filed until February 10. My lawyer notified me, and I wasted no time spreading the news.

Avery Chapman, an officer of the court, filed the above Suggestion of Death and Motion to Withdraw.

But then I got a message from a source: Ciro’s not dead, he’s still in the hospital.

I was adamant. Don’t believe everything you hear from polo gossip, I said. He’s dead. End of story. End of HIS story. It had been filed in an official court statement.

Then I thought about it.

If I needed a good lawyer, Avery Chapman wouldn’t be my choice. In my opinion, even Michel — who once asked me if people lived on Mars — has better judgment. I have seen Avery’s “style” of “litigation” and the type of people he represents and, in my opinion, Benito Mussolini may have had more career ethics than this guy. But I would think that even the worst attorney on the planet wouldn’t file a death notice with the court that turned out to be false.

Or so I thought.

Back in November, a few days after Karen and I filed our lawsuits, Avery was seen on the polo field with Ciro and Michel. Based on the context, it appeared to me that this was a Polo United-furnished match for his own team, Chapman Law Polo. I have no direct evidence of this, only the photos, and this is purely my opinion.

Go Team!

I met Avery once, back in April, when we played a match together — him on Polo United’s team, me on the opposing side. Ciro and Michel liked to claim they lost business because of my article, but from the photos, it seems like at least one customer stuck around.

In part 5, I addressed what I interpreted as Avery’s strange role in their operations. I wrote about how he drafted and issued NDAs to Ciro’s victims in California, which, in my view, discouraged them from warning others in Florida. That silence, I believe, made it easier for Ciro and Michel to set up the fraudulent Polo United and continue their operations unchecked. Avery is also the registered agent for Polo United since July 1, 2024.

Polo United Articles of Organization

When Avery’s motion to dismiss both Karen’s lawsuit and mine were denied on January 29th and February 5th, both judges ordered him to finally file an actual response — something that should have been done back in November. Instead, it was delayed for months through a series of delay tactics: constant extensions, seemingly baseless motions, and what seemed to me to be any excuse to drag it out or shut it down.

No response to the lawsuits were submitted in February, but on February 11th, just two days before Sugar Daddy’s questionable lawsuit was filed, Avery filed a Suggestion of Death with the court, claiming Ciro had “passed away”, along with a request for a 60-day abatement and a motion to withdraw as his counsel.

I had my suspicions. In my experience, anyone involved in Ciro’s business should not be trusted.

I called the hospital.

Ciro was still there. Still in a coma. Still alive.

That’s not what Avery said.

Next time, Part 7: Into the Night

Related profile: Zoe Cookson