Category: Interesting

In this video, Carter Banks (BigBankz) walks through a house about to be torn down:

Finding this one wasn’t hard. Early on was a giveaway that this property is in or near Colts Neck, NJ:

Also, aerial photography gave an aerial fingerprint to search for, especially a driveway that circles around a large tree:

Then some Googling on the back story quickly turned up a story of a July 2018 standoff following a domestic dispute involving James C. Furiato. A James Furiato, with an age that corresponds to this person, seems to be tangling with the law in other instances, such as criminal trespass in Nov. 2015 and defiant trespass while homeless in Feb. 2022. Given this record, a 2018 standoff is not surprising.

Digging a little more deeply on the raid, we uncover the address of this walkthrough (note: while the house’s legal street number appears to be 350, 208 also shows up in some places, and Google Maps puts both addresses on the same property) :

Now for the back story, it’s considerably different than what Carter claims.

This house was occupied by John and Marie Furiato. Marie is whose medical records you see at one point:

As Marie died in 2015, John continued occupying the house as a widower in 2018.

John and Marie got use of the house thanks to the trust of Marion Huber, who died in 2001. The trust donated the property to the New Jersey Conservation Foundation in 2006 under stipulation that a 2000 agreement be honored that allows John and Marie to occupy the house indefinitely, under certain conditions, like paying taxes, keeping it up, it being their primary residence, and more.

However, an August 2018 lawsuit filed by the foundation against John dished out some dirt (MON-C-000118-18). The suit alleges multiple violations of the 2000 agreement:

• John stopped paying property taxes in 2017.
• In the July 2018 police altercation, James had a “mental breakdown”. “[N]umerous canister [sic] of tear gas” were used to get James out, causing damage that went unrepaired.
• John was hospitalized on the day of the police incident. It defined James as a “squatter”, which suggests John’s hospitalization is associated with a condition that would make him unable to return to the property. (Recall that John’s wife, the other party to the agreement, had already died by 2018.)
• The home is “dilapidated and is otherwise in complete disrepair”.

It is also apparent that by August 2018, the month after the incident, boards appeared on the second-floor windows:

In September 2018, the judge terminated John’s interest in the property, and the court gave James specific dates to retrieve property.

Per a Monmouth County press release, the foundation reached an agreement with Monmouth County in 2019 to donate the property for the purpose of building a park; this transfer was transacted in 2020.

The transfer stipulates that the house will be torn down.

Carter uses false information or wild theories to concoct the video title and to craft his narrative:

• “Abandoned”: Nope. The occupants were ejected from the property due to violations of a longstanding agreement, then it was intentionally kept vacant while it is being prepared for a new property use.
• “Drug Dealers”: No evidence of drug dealing or addiction was presented. Yes, an addictive pain killer was shown in one area, and many pill bottles were on top of a dresser in John’s bedroom. But if you look closely, you can see a variety of dates on the labels, and they generally seem to go back to before Marie’s death. Those two facts, plus the nerve stimulator, plus the medical records suggest that Marie may have been suffering from a painful condition, such as cancer. If so, these drugs would have been cancer treatments or palliative care. John probably just held on to the bottles.
• “Mansion”: While a large house, it is far too small to be called a mansion.
• “arrested for felonies … aggravated assault”: Between the court case and news article cited above, we had a mental-health breakdown, police characterized the surrender as “peaceful”, and no charges were filed as of the arrest. (I don’t know how to reconcile “peaceful” with the use of tear gas, but that’s what the cops said, per the news article.)

Carter’s habit of conveying false information did him a disservice. This was an unusual walkthrough: It had a legitimately interesting backstory! That could have stood on its own. Instead, Carter once again crafts a distorted narrative to sell a walkthrough of left-behind junk in a house about to be ripped down.

In this video, Carter Banks walks through a mostly empty house:

This one wasn’t too hard to spot. He correctly conveyed it was in north Florida.

The main useful hints were in exterior images. At 0:19, you see that a row of fairly consistent houses is right across a striped, two-lane road:

At 0:06, we can see it’s on a long beach with three-story, multi-tenancy buildings just a few lots down, and in the very end of the view, a distance down a long and every-so-slightly-curved beach, are some taller structures:

At 0:15, we see that to the left and right of the home are a red and white roofs:

And at multiple points in the video, you can construct that the the roof will have a center section where it’s front-to-back depth is not as lenghty as the side sections.

It didn’t take much time to find it:

As usual, Carter gets his facts wrong. Let’s review his claims:

• The property is worth $6.6 million dollars: FAKE. The Walton County Appraiser’s market value for the house and land is $4.7 million, which seems generous given that it had a $3.7 million sale in 2017 and is in poor shape.
• Damaged in a 2014 storm: FAKE. He mentioned it was a tropical storm, so that implies a warm season storm with a deluge of rain and wind. The only major 2014 storm for this area was completely different, a January 2014 ice storm.
• Two lawyers lived there: TRUE. Yes, a lawyer couple from Birmingham resided there previously.
• The lawyer couple abandoned the house after the (phony) 2014 storm: FAKE. They sold it in 2017, and it was likely an ordinary sale. In a closet, you see a hanger with a cleaners name on it. It is not coincidental that this hanger is from a company in Birmingham. Also, a former owner’s name is on a mug. Finally, Google Maps Street View historic imagery suggests the house fell into disuse after 2017. The confluence of these facts suggests the home has not been used since its 2017 sale. The new (as of 2017) owners live in Kansas. I suspect that the new owners purchased the property mainly as an investment or for future use; they own two other properties in the same county under the same name.
• The lawyer couple died shortly after the (phony) 2014 storm: FAKE. The husband’s obituary says he died in October 2023. The wife appears to be enjoying a quiet life.
• The house is a mansion: FAKE. It’s only 3,764 square feet. That’s thousands of square feet less than a mansion.
• The house will be ripped down: POSSIBLY TRUE. It is true that signs in front of the house, which date back to at least August 2023, suggest major work will commence. Supporting the teardown hypothesis is the mold and interior damage, that a door facing the gulf was left open, that the house is in poor repair, and that the house is 40 years old.

Once again, Carter misrepresents the truth, dressing up what is simply a walkthrough of something super ordinary: a couple sold a house, moved out all the belongings they cared about, and an investor sat on it for a few years.

In this video, Carter Banks (Bigbankz) walks through a house:

At around 9:32, he shows a desk. On the bottom right side is a NRA membership card:

It belongs to Wayne Hamer. I had to look at several frames before settling on that last name.

Let’s search obituaries on this name. Hmm, the second link refers to a guy from Clio, North Carolina. That obituary is erroneous. The town is in South Carolina.

Exploring that town, it took little time to find the house:

That was easy!

The house’s property record shows it was transferred to his daughter about two years after Wayne died. His daughter’s obituary indicates she passed in 2022. Various online records, plus that the property record indicates the home was owner-occupied, suggest she might have resided at that home until her passing. That would explain the general reasonable condition and why a good deal of recent merchandise is visible.

The walkthrough is likely what is left behind after the daughter’s life. Part of that includes artifacts she curated from her parents’ life.

Sometimes I give commentary on where Carter got things wrong. They are mainly in the title. This home has nothing to do with Stranger Things, and the family did not disappear. He also got various minor facts wrong in his narrative, but that may just be his attempt to throw us off.

The true story of this home is likely simple. With a property value of under $100,000 and in a rural area, I doubt it’s economically feasible to fix it up. The materials inside are probably because the inheritors of the daughter’s estate may be using the house for storage or they may not value the materials.

In this video, Carter Banks (BigBankz) makes up another tall tale while he walks through mostly worthless leftovers of a deceased, elderly lady:

I found it! This one was harder.

First, I checked the story line, that some kidnapped girl was chained up in the basement of a house in Georgia. Such a story would be explosive, well covered. No story can be found!

Wait a second, why Georgia? Several of Carter’s videos are from Georgia, and he said it’s in the “deep south”. Also, some materials in the house suggest Atlanta area.

My first clue was this bread bag:

It identifies Publix Bakery 615. Store 615 is in Suwanee (map). While not terribly far from the house, it ended up being a red herring. There are several closer Publix stores. All it did is provide a hint that the house may be in the greater Atlanta area.

The clue most helpful to narrow down the location is this:

I could see a 680 that may be the end of a ZIP code and a 90 that may end a phone number. The top appears to be a name that ends in “ng’s” and of a company that is a “cleaners & alterations”. A little searching turned up Young’s Cleaning & Alterations in Winder, GA. The phone number and ZIP code match!

Now I needed to seek additional clues. This aerial shot helped the most:

I put arrows on interesting features. The top row of arrows shows buildings near the house. The second arrow in that row is the house. The bottom-right arrow, which points to the right, shows a power line. That, plus the face of white house and its driveway, led me to believe that a road is just outside the foreground.

If you zoom in on the white patterns on top right, you see this:

Not too far in the background is a small development.

Altogether, this suggests that the house may be in an area that’s not that rural.

Two more super important clues:

• Two pictures back, look at the shadows. That view is likely from the evening, so the sun is likely mostly to the west. The house therefore faces east.
• In outdoor scenes, you can hear constant drone of a freeway. Because the freeway does not appear in the above shot, the home is likely not far south of a major freeway.

Now I can fan out from Winder, GA, looking just south of major freeways for homes that fit the pattern.

As I was browsing, I saw a house with an interesting driveway. I compared it to the screenshot, then looked to its right, and there it is:

Piecing together its history is trickier than usual. What I found is it used to be the residence of Eloise H. Graham. She likely died before May 2018 as that is when her property was transferred to Ebenezer Baptist Church, likely as a bequest. Some information suggests a Robert Graham lived there previously and that he died in 2000 at around 80 years old. Given what it is in the house and the garage, Eloise probably survived Robert and lived there with others.

Given the weeds that showed in the driveway by June 2019, I think the house became vacant under church ownership:

The church sold it to one investor in March 2020, then that investor sold to another investor in April 2022.

On the “middle of nowhere” claim: False! It’s in the middle of a fairly developed area.

On Carter’s story of a chained-up, kidnapped girl in the basement: not only is there no media coverage of this incredible allegation, several video commenters mentioned that they did not see any place where someone could be chained up. That’s because there was no kidnapping! It is likely that all we’re looking at is a walkthrough of unwanted debris left behind after Eloise passed and her family vacated the home in 2018.

In this video, Carter Banks (Bigbankz) tours a large home and its property:

I was able to locate it through the story line.

Carter shared a story of a plumber who was accused of murdering someone with two bullets through his head and stuffing him in the trunk in 1998. Well, guess what? A 2003 New York Post article reveals a murder matching this circumstance really happened, and the suspect was Alex Figliolia, Jr. A later NYP article that same year links Alex, Jr. with Alex, Sr. in overcharging MTA by around $10 million. The second NYP article mentions that Alex, Sr. has a 9,500 square foot Holmdel mansion. Both NYP articles allege both Figliolias have mafia connections.

While Alex, Jr. was never charged with the murder, the New York Times later reported that Alex, Jr. and his dad and mom later pled guilty to crimes related to theft from the MTA.

Carter also shared that a recent tax evasion arrest was part of the narrative. Well, guess what? Alex, Jr. was arrested and indicted on tax evasion in December 2023.

Through minimal searching, I located Alex, Sr.’s Holmdel home:

A match!

The property record (search on 105 Middletown in the Holmdel township) indicates Alex, Sr. and his wife have owned the place since 2000. It also indicates foreclosure proceedings started in 2016 and again in 2023. Zillow shows it to be in pre-foreclosure status. Realtor.com has impressive, 2019 photos of an apparent real-estate listing.

Carter again appears to be weaving a false narrative to sell a walk-through of an empty home. Keep in mind that Alex, Sr. is the homeowner, and Carter did not make a case that Alex, Jr., who was 50 as of his December 2023 indictment, resides in this house. Let’s review:

• Alleged murder: FALSE. The murder allegation detailed in the New York Post was associated with Alex, Jr.
• Previous owner was arrested on tax evasion charge: FALSE. The current owner has owned the property since 2000. It is the owner’s son who arrested on the tax-evasion charge.
• The house will be torn down: UNLIKELY. Carter gave no clear reason why the house would be torn down. It appears to be in pre-foreclosure and still owned by Alex, Sr. It’s unlikely that a drastic change like this would be allowed given a pending foreclosure. I suspect we’re seeing a paused renovation with the minimum necessary upkeep to minimize property degradation. It is for sure not abandoned as the power is still on. The presence of a dumpster in the driveway is curious, and I am not sure what it speaks to my theory.
• Mafia boss: FALSE. The deepest mob connection is where the New York Times alleged a vague connection. That is light years from “mafia boss”.
• $8.8 million value: FALSE. This is a tremendous exaggeration. Monmouth County pegs the property’s value at $3.6 million. Realtor.com says $3.3 million. Zillow says $3.4 million. All are less than half of Carter’s alleged value.