Simply after darkish, probably the most needed man on Reddit slipped into his secret lair: a storage locker behind a Gold’s Gymnasium in Venice, California. “I’ve received one other storage unit stuffed with merch,” Anthony Farrer instructed me as I adopted him inside. “I nonetheless have a ton of followers.”
Farrer is best often known as the Timepiece Gentleman, the flashiest on-line seller within the $75 billion luxurious watch commerce. Chiseled and steely like his hero Mark Wahlberg, whom he resembles sufficient to have earned the nickname Marky Mark in highschool, the 35-year-old Texan was carrying lengthy black shorts, a decent black T-shirt, and a handy guide a rough black TPG cap on his intently shorn head. Throughout the COVID timepiece growth, when guys wealthy on crypto and locked down throughout the pandemic have been blowing tens of millions on six-figure Rolexes and Patek Philippes, Farrer grew to become web well-known for his flex movies: personal jets, sushi feasts, and doing doughnuts in his $170,000 cherry-red Audi R8 in an Workplace Depot car parking zone (till a weary safety guard requested him to depart). Amassing tens of hundreds of followers on Instagram and YouTube, he opened up the notoriously shady world of watch gross sales, displaying viewers how he evaluated watches, made offers, and busted counterfeit sellers. “It was one thing individuals had by no means seen,” says Roman Sharf, a veteran watch seller. “He actually lifted up the curtain of this multibillion-dollar business that has by no means been proven earlier than.”
Now, inside his storage locker, Farrer confirmed me his stock of Timepiece Gentleman swag: branded hoodies (“made in the identical manufacturing unit as Balenciaga and Prada”), customized leather-based wristwatch attaches (“high-quality $1,200 briefcases”), and signature black marble watch stands (“for while you’re sitting at your desk and do not need to get scratches throughout your watch”). However stacked neatly on a far shelf have been tokens of his present, significantly much less glamorous actuality: cans of tuna fish, bars of cleaning soap, a few pillows, and a sleeping bag. The person who as soon as made headlines for renting LA’s costliest house — a downtown penthouse he rented for $90,000 a month — was now homeless. “I can not afford to maintain spending cash,” he instructed me. “So I simply sleep on the seaside.” For the previous two weeks he’d been dwelling off his stash of canned meals, showering at Gold’s, and crashing in a lifeguard stand on Venice Seaside. “I have never had sushi for 3 months,” he lamented.
Farrer was on the run. In keeping with the FBI, the Timepiece Gents financed his lavish life-style by operating a “luxurious watch Ponzi-type scheme.” Utilizing the web, the authorities mentioned, Farrer had conned his rich patrons out of tens of millions, taking their watches to promote on consignment after which utilizing the proceeds to purchase extra watches, all in a determined race to maintain forward of his collectors. A foster child from backwoods Texas, Farrer had damaged into the rarefied world of luxurious timepieces, defying its unwritten guidelines and exposing its sleaziest secrets and techniques. However within the course of, he had relied on strategies that have been doubtful at greatest and prison at worst. Small marvel that the sleuths on Reddit, who had been working for years to deliver him down, had given him a nickname befitting a rip-off artist: the Wolf of Watch Avenue.
“Folks suppose I am such a monster,” Farrer instructed me as he lowered the door of his storage unit and secured it with a lock. “However I do not need one little failure to erase every part I’ve completed.”
The subsequent day, FBI brokers stormed the locker and arrested Farrer on 11 counts of wire and mail fraud.
Farrer received his first watch across the time he pulled two butcher knives on his dad. It was 2005 and Farrer, 17, was dwelling together with his foster mother and father within the cowpoke city of Sherman, Texas. The watch, which he purchased with $120 from his paycheck at Buffalo Wild Wings, was a Fossil, with a dial that blinked blue and inexperienced. The knives, one in every hand, have been of unknown provenance.
In keeping with the police report, Farrer insisted he’d pulled the knives in self-defense after his father hit him within the face for not fixing a fence. It was, he instructed me, a response to years of recriminations and restrictions from his dad. “As an alternative of me being afraid of him, I needed him to be afraid of me for as soon as,” he mentioned. “I wasn’t truly ever going to stab any individual.” His mother and father instructed the police their son had shoved his dad first and threatened to kill him. Farrer was charged with aggravated assault with a lethal weapon, leading to one other of his many stints behind bars.
By his personal account, Farrer was an indignant child. Indignant his mother and father have been too strict. Indignant he could not be like the favored teenagers he noticed on TV. Indignant for causes he could not clarify. At first, he poured his fury into the fitness center, getting hooked on understanding. Then his twin brother, Cameron, died in a bike crash, and one thing inside him snapped. “I needed to bury that trauma,” he recalled. “I went off the deep finish.” For years he was out and in of jail for DUIs, drunken brawls, and high-speed chases with the police.
However by way of all of it, he at all times got here house to his watches. Gathering them had develop into an obsession. “I had them for each completely different outfit, each completely different event,” he instructed me. It was an costly pastime for a poor child from the sticks. So he paid for them with one of many few employment choices he might discover as a younger ex-con. Whereas working as a dancer in a homosexual bar in Dallas, Farrer gave “erotic massages” to shoppers underneath the alias Travis Baker. Earlier than lengthy, he wasn’t simply carrying dear watches on his hard-working wrists — he found they may present him with a profitable aspect hustle. Flipping a single Breitling Superocean Heritage chronograph earned him $1,000 — greater than a number of pleased endings mixed.
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In 2018, Farrer was freshly out of jail after one other DUI. He’d missed the loss of life of his mom and the start of his son. Lifeless broke and saddled with an ankle monitor, he determined to reinvent himself within the one place the place you possibly can create a wholly new id, freed from cost: the web. All he wanted was the fitting identify for his luxurious watch enterprise — one thing distinctive, one thing memorable. “As a result of someday,” he imagined, “I’ll construct this account as much as the purpose the place somebody’s going to stroll up and name me by my Instagram deal with.” In his thoughts, he pictured what the last word luxurious watch seller would appear to be. “An eligible bachelor,” he thought. “A rich man in his penthouse house someplace.”
And with that, Anthony Farrer reworked himself into the Timepiece Gentleman.
The grey marketplace for luxurious watches has come a good distance from sleazy dudes hawking Rolexes in Occasions Sq.. Impressed by the flashy collectors they see on social media, a brand new technology of aficionados is spending billions on watches as various investments that outperform the S&P. In keeping with a current report by Boston Consulting Group, the typical value of high-end timepieces grew by 20% over the previous 5 years. And as we speak, almost one-third of all luxurious watch purchases, an estimated $22 billion price, are pre-owned. Whereas the secondhand commerce is not unlawful, it’s unregulated, which implies anybody with an Instagram account and a few fancy watch pictures can begin slinging jewellery. And that gave the impression of a hell of a chance to Anthony Farrer.
To launch his profession because the Timepiece Gentleman, Farrer boned up on the jargon of horology, from escape wheels and spring barrels to flinques and guilloches. It is a time-honored a part of watch gross sales: Consumers love to really feel they’re being initiated right into a world with its personal specialised language, the mark of a real connoisseur. Farrer additionally studied on-line programs on the watch enterprise and social-media advertising and marketing, immersing himself in gross sales strategies. Then, every night time, he would seize a black backpack stuffed stuffed with watches and head to the bar of a steakhouse in Dallas. However he wasn’t going to drink — he was nonetheless on probation, and staying sober. He was going to hustle.
It began with the patrons. The luxurious watch crowd is not simply big-name celebrities like Mark Wahlberg and Kevin Hart. It is guys who made their cash as roofers, as plumbers — individuals, Farrer realized, who “got here from nothing,” simply as he did. He gauged his targets by their drinks and their timepieces — approaching solely these swilling top-shelf booze and sporting high-end watches. Then he’d transfer in.
“I might place myself to the right-hand aspect of them, so they may see my watch,” he defined. “That was my objective. Each time I attain for my water, my watch is consistently of their means. And I’d simply wait. I’d at all times allow them to provoke. And as quickly as they provoke a dialog, then I open up for dialogue.”
Along with his YouTube-schooled schmoozing strategies, Farrer instructed a very good story to the Texans on the bar: small-town child within the massive metropolis, flipping his solely watch after jail for a thousand bucks, now dealing to different good previous boys like himself as a method to redeem himself from his prison previous. It did not matter that he did not have a retail retailer, not to mention any stock. He had the web. Utilizing images of different individuals’s inventory, he flooded Craigslist and Instagram with timepieces he handed off as his personal. He additionally broke a taboo of the secondary watch commerce, which thrived on markups, by posting the precise retail value of every watch. Consumers favored the transparency. Earlier than lengthy, he had greater than 35,000 followers. “For a watch account, that was the equal of some sizzling chick having 3 million followers,” he boasts. “Besides I made cash.”
To jack his profile even greater, Farrer employed a videographer, Darby McVay, to observe him round and create a Timepiece Gentleman collection on YouTube. Regardless of the staggering measurement of the luxurious watch commerce, no person had thought to market its glamour and mystique. Farrer noticed a chance to commerce on his story of private restoration, take patrons behind the scenes, and create a web-based model of “Promoting Sundown” for the horological set. “I needed to go behind closed doorways,” he says.
Farrer had met McVay and his girlfriend, Liz Guilliams, a tatted-up couple who filmed native influencers and health fashions, by way of a mannequin he’d been relationship. Guilliams, who grew to become Farrer’s private assistant, thought he had a aptitude for making his geeky pastime appear cool. “He talks about it like how a sneakerhead talks about footwear,” she instructed me. “He simply breaks it down in a means that makes it cool.”
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Within the YouTube collection, the digital camera follows Farrer as he explains the methods of the commerce and luxuriates within the watch-mogul life-style — dropping $18,000 at one among Salt Bae’s eating places, zipping round Dallas in a black Lamborghini. The mixture of insider insights and luxurious dwelling proved intoxicating; earlier than lengthy, the Timepiece Gentleman channel had greater than 110,000 subscribers. And the extra consideration Farrer received, the extra he needed. “I spent 15 hours a day on social media,” he mentioned. “If I made a submit, I’d sit there for 2 hours and reply to each single remark.”
His timing, because it have been, proved impeccable. On the time, crypto fortunes have been beginning to pour into the secondary watch market, producing a wealth of recent clients. “You’ve got received younger youngsters making some huge cash,” Farrer mentioned. “And now they need to flex.” By 2021, he was pulling in $4 million a month. He promised that clients would quickly have the ability to buy his watches at a storefront in Dallas — which already had his identify frosted on the door.
However not everybody was shopping for the Timepiece Gentleman’s act. An actual-estate developer and watch collector in Dallas who goes by his Reddit nickname, Crimepiece, remembers feeling extremely suspicious of Farrer when he met him at a Starbucks to purchase a watch. “I spotted this man does not know something about watches,” Crimepiece says. “I received a extremely creepy vibe from him.”
It appeared his suspicions have been proper. On June 29, 2021, Farrer’s social-media accounts abruptly all went darkish. So did his storefront, right down to the gilt emblem that had been scraped off the door. A headline on the commerce web site Watch Gathering Way of life confirmed everybody’s fears: “The Timepiece Gentleman Appears to Have Vanished with Hundreds of thousands of {Dollars}.”
The Blackout, because it got here to be recognized amongst watch nerds on Reddit, turned out to be a publicity stunt gone unsuitable. The thought had appeared novel to Farrer: Go darkish for every week whereas working with native charities, then reopen to disclose the great work he’d completed. As an alternative, individuals thought he’d stolen their money and break up. “We knew individuals have been going to speak about it,” Farrer mentioned. “We had no thought it was going to occur so quick — or so negatively.”
One well-known watch seller who was horrified by the Blackout was Sharf, the veteran watch seller. “The intent was good,” he instructed me, “however the execution was horrible.” A quick-talking Russian with an encyclopedic thoughts for horology, Sharf had develop into one thing of a godfather to Farrer, vouching for him to skilled sellers and showing in his YouTube movies. However now he instructed his star pupil that he had violated a very powerful tenet of the gray-market watch enterprise: belief. “It is a very, very small world,” he instructed Farrer. “What one does displays unhealthy on others.”
However for Farrer, there was no such factor as unhealthy press. “A bunch of sellers received mad, however I do not care about them,” he instructed me. “The entire world knew who we have been after that. Everybody within the watch business had now heard of our identify.” Fueled by the eye, he started to see himself as the largest identify in luxurious watches. “It positively boosted his ego to a harmful level,” recalled McVay, the videographer. To show others the methods of the commerce — and to generate a brand new income — Farrer started providing teaching programs on-line. “He was just like the unhealthy boy of the watch business,” mentioned Guilliams.
Using excessive on the notoriety from the Blackout, Farrer determined to maneuver his watch enterprise to probably the most dazzling market of all: the celebrity-filled world of Los Angeles. In Dallas, it was robust to promote a look ahead to $100,000. In LA, patrons routinely shelled out six figures for a single timepiece. “It appeared like cash was limitless out right here,” Farrer mentioned. Plus, the sushi was to die for. “I’ll Nobu Malibu for lunch to promote a watch,” he recalled. “I am making 10 grand, after which we’re driving over to Santa Monica proper by the seaside, promote one other watch, have one other sushi some other place.” He rented what was billed as the most costly house on the town, a 19,000-square-foot, two-level penthouse full with a rock-climbing wall, three bars, and a panoramic view of the town — the fantasy house he’d at all times imagined the Timepiece Gentleman dwelling in. He instructed an area real-estate journal that he deliberate to place one million {dollars} into the place so as to add a spa, a sauna, and 4 out of doors lounges, every boasting a unique panorama. “A purveyor of luxurious items is bringing Texas-sized ambitions to Downtown Los Angeles,” the journal effused.
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However to these inside Farrer’s world, his ambitions — and numbers — did not add up. “You do not get Ferraris and Lamborghinis promoting watches with these slim, slim margins,” Crimepiece instructed me. These round Farrer tried to warn him that his luxurious life-style was unsustainable. “Everybody instructed him it was silly,” McVay recalled. However Farrer mentioned he had obtained a million-dollar infusion from an nameless investor, who featured prominently — by way of a Darth Vader-sounding voice changer — in varied Timepiece Gentleman movies. Farrer raised tens of millions extra by promoting his private assortment of watches, and he deliberate to hire out the penthouse for events.
However then his previous caught up with him. Ever for the reason that Blackout, Farrer watchers on Reddit had been digging into his private historical past, on the lookout for filth on the person they derisively referred to as Coach, for his hammy coaching movies. In March 2022, on the morning of his thirty fourth birthday, Farrer woke to a screenshot on Reddit of his shirtless advert from his rentmasseur.com days. There he was as Travis Baker, promoting “Sensual and Erotic massages,” flaunting his washboard abs and a plate of brisket strategically shielding his groin. The Redditor’s caption: “I am Speechless.”
For Farrer, nevertheless, shock shortly gave method to reduction. “It was nearly like this weight lifted off my shoulder,” he instructed me. “The largest secret I had in my life is out.” Earlier than the Reddit submit, Guilliams mentioned, Farrer at all times appeared like a “robotic,” a top quality he himself admits to. “I am excellent at suppressing emotion,” he mentioned. However after the therapeutic massage advert hit the web, his vulnerability made him appear extra human. “If any of y’all like do not need to be right here,” he instructed his staff, “if y’all don’t need be my good friend due to it, I completely perceive.” As an alternative, Guilliams and McVay caught by his aspect. Together with others on the staff, they lived and labored in a sprawling home within the Hollywood Hills that Farrer was renting for $50,000 a month.
Late one night time, as Guilliams was preparing for mattress, she noticed one thing that terrified her. “I used to be bare and placing lotion on, watching TV with my again to the window,” she recalled, when she noticed somebody standing within the backyard and looking out up at her. “There’s somebody exterior!” she screamed. When she and Farrer raced exterior, they discovered the again gate open.
Just a few nights later, as Guilliams was watching TV in mattress with McVay, they heard Farrer screaming: “Assist me! Get up!” They discovered him shaking in his underwear, his fingers and ft zip-tied. He instructed them he’d been woken by 4 males in black, pointing weapons at him and demanding his watches. Farrer wasn’t very safe about his stock: Reasonably than locking his assortment in a secure at night time, he typically stored his watches on show by his mattress. “I identical to taking a look at them,” he instructed me. Even after Guilliams noticed the stranger within the backyard, Farrer stored $2.5 million price of watches in a briefcase behind his mattress, subsequent to his elliptical machine. But the thieves, miraculously, solely made off with a single backpack that contained some $30,000 in watches and money.
The theft, by Farrer’s requirements, turned out to be good for enterprise. The man who’d simply gotten beneficial press for renting the town’s priciest penthouse was now on native TV, sporting a Timepiece Gentleman hat as he recounted the dramatic break-in. The intruders have been by no means caught. Wanting again, Guilliams wonders whether or not the entire thing was one more publicity stunt, fueled by Farrer’s bottomless want for consideration. “He needed to be seen out right here so unhealthy,” she mentioned.
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The theft turned out to be the least of the Timepiece Gents’s issues. Not lengthy after the incident, Farrer tried to unload his $300,000 Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, a blinding white-gold chronograph frosted with a purple dial. Farrer had listed it for $330,000, relying on making his normal 10% revenue on the sale. However now, he found, he could not break even. He ended up taking a $100,000 hit on it as an alternative. “That is once I realized we’re in deep shit,” he recalled.
By April 2022, the luxury-watch bubble — inflated by the weird mixture of COVID and crypto — abruptly burst. “It needed to pop someday,” Farrer mentioned. “I did not suppose it might be then.” Farrer had been operating a consignment enterprise, reselling watches for shoppers and taking a fee of 5%. However with the market plunging by 20%, Farrer started to panic. The day his probation ended on his DUI cost, he tossed away his ankle monitor and commenced to drink once more.
Guilliams had by no means seen the particular person she calls “Drunk Anthony,” and the monster was “completely obnoxious,” she mentioned. “He will get this look and you may simply inform tonight’s going be a foul night time.” The extra vodkas he downed, the more cash he blew on sports activities automobiles, Vegas playing, and high-priced intercourse employees. “I’d begin consuming and begin spending and spending and spending,” he mentioned. And he was funding it, he admits, in a means that sounds awfully near the definition of a Ponzi scheme. “My flaw was I used to be double-dipping,” he instructed me. “Reasonably than me pay you again instantly, I’d take that cash and go purchase extra stock after which attempt to promote that stock actually fast so I might truly make some cash after which pay you out.” In different phrases, he’d promote your look ahead to you — however good luck getting your a refund anytime quickly.
As Farrer continued to submit his sushi-loving, Lamborghini-driving movies on-line, the shoppers he was stiffing started to boil over. Wesley Stokes, who owned a plumbing firm in South Carolina, had $2 million price of watches on consignment with Farrer when the funds abruptly stopped. “He was going to promote them and he was going to maintain a little bit fee ultimately,” Stokes mentioned, however as an alternative “he just about offered a whole lot of them and by no means paid me.” Stokes despatched an armored automotive to Farrer’s workplace to get the money, however got here away empty-handed. “He nonetheless owes me one million,” Stokes instructed me.
I have been an entire fucking degenerate. I received a little bit style of success and the celebrities, and I believed that might by no means finish.
Bob Schober, who owns a roofing firm in Scottsdale, Arizona, had been a loyal Timepiece Gentleman buyer since seeing Farrer promote Cleveland Browns cornerback Joe Haden a Richard Mille watch. “I believed this dude was legit fully,” Schober recalled. “You could not have satisfied me in any other case at first.” However after the theft, the market crash, and Farrer’s incessant posturing on social media, Schober grew suspicious concerning the consignments the Timepiece Gentleman was holding for him. “He is received 200 grand price of my watches,” Schober mentioned, “and I am listening to that he’s not paying individuals cash that he owes.”
Final July, after Schober realized his watches have been now not listed on the TPG web site, he referred to as Farrer to confront him. Farrer, who had not too long ago stayed at Schober’s house after delivering a watch, thought-about him a good friend. So he drunkenly confessed.
“I’ll simply inform everybody straight up I am $5 million in debt,” he instructed Schober over the cellphone. “I have been an entire fucking degenerate. I received a little bit style of success and the celebrities, and I believed that might by no means finish. For the previous few years that is how I’ve lived my life — that it might by no means finish, that I used to be means too good at what I did. I used to be means too well-known, means too widespread. I used to be the chief of all this within the business — and I let that every one form of tank me.” He additionally claimed was “too sensible” to get robbed, which fueled Schober’s suspicions that the house break-in had been staged.
However this time, no matter reduction Farrer felt from coming clear did not final lengthy. Schober had been secretly recording the decision, and he posted all 18 minutes of it on TikTok, together with a warning to anybody else who did enterprise with the Timepiece Gentleman. Then he went to the police.
Reasonably than responding with contrition and providing to make issues proper, Farrer felt betrayed by Schober. “The entire motive I instructed him was as a result of I used to be so confused about it,” he instructed me. “It was consuming at me alive to the purpose I used to be consuming each night time, not understanding, consuming like shit, not liking who I used to be changing into. I noticed it as a darkish gap. And I needed somebody I might inform it to for as soon as, so I am not holding it inside anymore, but additionally give me recommendation.” When he speed-dialed Schober, although, he found his quantity had been blocked.
Ever since Farrer was a younger foster child in Texas, he’d been on the run: from his father, from the legislation, and largely from himself. The few occasions the reality about his life had come out, he had felt unburdened, solely to fuck every part up once more. Final August, he determined to return as clear as no matter model of himself he had in his head would enable. Sitting in entrance of his glossy white kitchen cupboards, an empty paper towel roll in a stand, Farrer taped what he captioned his “Rock Backside” video for YouTube. For 14 minutes he described his addictions, his $5 million debt, his lies. All he ever needed, he mentioned, was to be widespread like these he envied on TV and the web, and that had led to his all-consuming obsession with what he referred to as “this flex life-style.”
“I did not need individuals pondering I used to be a failure,” he mentioned, choking again tears. “I did not need individuals pondering I used to be a fraud, a pretend. I’ve gotten accustomed to this life-style — and getting that sort of consideration, it ruined me.”
The night time earlier than the FBI arrested him in his storage locker, Farrer instructed me he wasn’t responsible of something greater than being in debt. “It isn’t a Ponzi scheme,” he insisted as we headed exterior. “A Ponzi scheme is while you knowingly dupe Peter to pay Paul. I by no means did that.”
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The FBI disagreed. After interviewing 20 of Farrer’s shoppers, together with Schober and Stokes, federal brokers arrested him on suspicion of wire and mail fraud — costs that would ship him to federal jail for as much as 20 years. He’s presently being held, with out bail, in a federal jail in downtown Los Angeles, the town he got here to beat. He has pleaded not responsible to the costs; his trial is scheduled for October 22.
On the night time earlier than he was busted, as we walked previous Gold’s Gymnasium, Farrer spoke optimistically about paying his clients again — beginning with promoting his Ducati, which was parked close by. After I requested how assured he felt about making good on the $5 million, he did not hesitate. “200 p.c,” he mentioned. “The one means I am not going to do it’s if I die. Even when I am going to jail, I am going to get out, and I am going to begin the place I left off.”
Down alongside the Venice Boardwalk, we handed different homeless individuals scouting spots for the night. Farrer had packed a knife, simply in case. He hoped to spend the night time in a close-by lifeguard stand. “I really like being by the water,” he mentioned, gazing over the darkened seaside. “It is a serenity like nothing else.” As we watched the waves on his final night time as a free man, he instructed me he had already storyboarded his subsequent YouTube collection: his comeback. “Should you’re used to watching this man who used to drive a Ferrari or a Lambo or a G-Wagen, and ate at good eating places and lived in the most effective locations, however now he is sleeping within the filth,” he mentioned, “it is leisure.”
David Kushner is a daily contributor to Enterprise Insider. His new e book is “Simple to Study, Tough to Grasp: Pong, Atari, and the Daybreak of the Video Sport.”
