hello and welcome to connections we're so glad you're with us when I first started getting to know you she's like anger is my favorite emotion I'm like I don't know who I'm dealing with here we have a shocking new development in the case of former YouTube M fluenc sir Ruby Frankie and her business partner jod hilderbrand who are both in prison right now for abusing Ruby's children a disturbing new lawsuit lays out allegations of abuse coercion and control against jod company connections classroom which one ex-client says is a massive scam disguised as life coaching welcome
to sidebar presented by law on crime I'm Jesse Weber now it shouldn't be surprising that jod hilderbrand and Ruby Frankie her partner in business and her partner in crime and the abusive control of her children are facing a lawsuit connected back to connections so there were already concerns s in about Connections before Ruby and jod were arrested in Utah in 2023 but the horrific abuse that officers uncovered at Jody's home that is what really thrusts connections connections classroom into the spotlight the pair who were sentenced last year to four to 30 years in prison this
all depends upon the parole board who will eventually have to determine how long they actually spend Behind Bars this was after they pleaded guilty to aggravated child abuse they may be behind bars right now but according to this new lawsuit that we got our hands on filed by a former client Michael Tilman their alleged abusive and manipulative tactics are still wreaking havoc on clients even in their absence so what we're going to do is we're going to get into all of this everything from this lawsuit but first to make sense of what we're going to
be talking about I got to give you a quick refresher in case you don't know the ins and outs of this case so Ruby Frankie who was once famous for vlogging her family's d day to-day life on the now defunct YouTube channel8 Passengers basically saw her life fall apart we saw her fall from grace unravel dramatically in August of 2023 because behind the carefully curated images of a perfect family and their perfect family moments was a much darker reality on August 30th 2023 Ruby and jod were arrested for child abuse after authorities uncovered just the
horrific treatment that Ruby's children had endured police were tipped off when Ruby's 12-year-old son was able to escape from jod hilderbrand's house he was covered in open wounds he was begging neighbors for help he was emaciated and when authorities arrived they found that he'd been bound and tortured with remnants of duct tape still on his wrists his 10-year-old sister was also there she was found in a terrible State as well and we learned in this new lawsuit that the two youngest Frankie children they had reportedly been so isolated that they had even been kept separated
from each other in the last few weeks inside of that massive compound in December of 2023 as I mentioned Ruby reached a plea deal with prosecutors she admitted to just a range of gruesome acts of abuse against her children she did a 180 she did a complete 180 from how she first was talking about Jodi and connections if you recall she wasn't even cooperating with police she was barely even talking them in those interrogation tapes now completely different but she admitted that she forced them to perform physical labor restricted their oxygen supply subjected them to
cruel and often just bizarre punishments like making her son stand outside in the heat for hours on end or shaving her daughter's head jod also plad guilty to multiple counts of child abuse but said during her sentencing this was unbelievable that she actually loved the children and never wanted anybody to be hurt take that for what you will now in fact I will tell you in jailhouse phone calls that were later released Jody never really showed any kind of remorse at all for her criminal behavior and I don't know if I'm going to be like
some kind of example but when I get out of here I have a story to tell and I am I'm gonna try to do everything I can to protect the children because that's what's happening is that kids are being just horribly abused hey everybody this is a law and crime legal alert so recent allegations against the multi-billion doll video game industry they claim that video games are engineered for a addiction yes so the claims include trying to make sense of this magical hold that video games seem to have over people where they just can't put
the controller down every wind triggers a hit of dopamine that creates a cycle of compulsion and that disrupts daily life it harms mental health well our legal sponsors are taking on the industry that has at many times allegedly put profit over safety they're working to potentially get compensation for all of those impacted so if you are a loved one have suffered physical or mental health issues due to video games then visit VG claims.com slidebar to answer less than 10 questions and check your eligibility to file a claim now the two women's disturbing partnership started several
years ago when Ruby sought out a counselor for her eldest son Chad this was due to alleged behavioral issues from there jod also started counseling Ruby and Kevin Kevin was her husband Kevin Frankie and she was also counseling their oldest daughter Sherry but things quickly spiraled out of control when jod told Ruby that she had been having these Visions so jod actually moves into the Frankie house under the guys that Ruby would help care for her and I'll tell you what in a recent tell all book Sherie revealed that her mother and jod they might
have been in a sexual relationship during this time as well now at Jody's insistence Kevin moved out of the home isolated him from the family this was purportedly to save his marriage Kevin has said that he hadn't seen his children or wife for a year when Ruby was arrested at which point he filed for divorce and this now all brings me to the new lawsuit that we're going to talk about so there is a lot going on and we won't be able to cover everything in this one episode but I do want to give you
some kind of an overarching view of what this civil action is about so this complaint was filed in Utah federal court by a man named Michael Tilman and he is referred to throughout the filing as plaintiff here's what we know about him from the lawsuit so he was married to a woman named macall Savage also known as maau wasburn because she's now married to somebody else she's referred to in the complaint as Savage and the two share a now 10-year-old daughter referred to by the initials ejt so Tillman is suing his ex-wife but he's also
suing jod hilderbrand Ruby Frankie and connections classroom LLC under us racketeering statutes and he's seeking more than $5 million in Damages racketeering by the way we've talked about this before if you've been following our Diddy coverage you know exactly what we're talking about this is a criminal Enterprise I'll expand upon that a little bit but keeping that in mind Connections in his mind is explicitly fraudulent which he says he didn't fully come to understand until the women were arrested he claims that jod had used the lore of therapy and counseling to trick people into sessions
that would eventually morph into a money-making scheme he says that his wife at the time was pulled into what he now believes is a cult by the way this is not surprising this is not unique sometimes when there are criminal charges and and parties either are convicted or plead guilty you see a lawsuit right on the the back end so what does his lawsuit say well in part his lawsuit reads quote in leading connections and her other various entities hildbrandt relied on several individuals including Frankie to recruit other members to connections and the Enterprise and
carry out her directives through connections and the Enterprise defendants purport to offer valuable marital self-improvement in group session counseling classes workshops and digital and written materials in exchange for lucrative fees through the Enterprise Hill debrand and other members of the Enterprise including defendants prey on individuals in vulnerable positions who are seeking legitimate Mental Health Services and indoctrinate members into the Enterprise instructing her Associates to perpetuate child abuse child torture and psychological abuse on any individual in their lives not deemed to be in what hild debrand has coined truth I.E aligning with h de Brandt's will
under the guise of providing help to those in need connections fraudulent services are intended to bring individuals under the Enterprises financial and psychological control entice victims to spend money on fraudulently advertised Services which perpetuate and promote child abuse and other illegal acts encourage psychological abuse and ultimately break families all while financially enriching the defendants and further perpetuating the Enterprise now we have talked about racketeering we've talked about the RICO statute before especially in connection ction with the young thug trial out in Atlanta and the again the ongoing case against Shawn Diddy comes in New York
those were criminal cases but you see it very similar with respect to a lawsuit under the racketeering Statute in those cases though prosecutors need to prove that a group of people committed illegal acts in furtherance of this criminal Enterprise this is again a civil case so the bar is is lower it's usually by preponderance of the evidence not Beyond A Reasonable Doubt but you know is it more likely than not that this happened but Tillman is claiming that connections is the criminal Enterprise and the other defendants are doing whatever they can to support it there
are these underlying criminal acts the lawsuit goes on the horrific nature of the Enterprise was meticulously described by Frankie at her criminal aggravated child abuse sentencing hearing and that's when Ruby talked about how since she'd been separated from jod she was starting to see the light she was starting to see clear and realized that what she had been doing was wrong for the past four years I've chosen to follow counsel and guidance that has led me into a dark delusion my distorted version of reality went largely unchecked as I would isolate from anyone who challenged
me I was led to believe that this world was an evil Place filled with cops who control hospitals that injure government agencies that brainwash church leaders who lie in lust husbands who refuse to protect and children who need abused my choice to believe and behave this paranoia culminated into criminal activity for which I stand before you today ready to take accountability okay so how was Tilman himself impacted right what's the harm that he suffered why is he suing well he is the one who filed this lawsuit which means the actions of connections has to have
had some direct and severe impact upon him and the further we get into this suit really the worse it gets because Tillman's complaint says during their marriage Savage sought hilderbrandt for routine counseling shortly thereafter Savage eagerly accepted hilderbrandt as her guide and joined the Enterprise Savage and hilderbrandt immediately identified plff as an individual in Distortion upon whom they needed to inflict severe psychological abuse to be brought into truth Savage masterfully implemented the Enterprise's dark teachings to physically abuse and endanger the minor child of Savage and plff and destroy plain's life so according to tman to
this day his ex-wife is still a devoted father of connections and refuses to acknowledge that Ruby and Jody's arrests and subsequent guilty pleas are signs of any wrongdoing and that is really unsettling that's a really unsettling allegation because you heard particularly from Ruby denounced jod and her teachings in open court according to him that didn't change Savage's views on anything and by the way he's alleging criminal conduct here we do not know if he is cooperating with police in any fashion whether anyone is under criminal investigation this is a civil suit sometimes you see a
criminal allegation levied in a civil suit but remember stature limitations issues different burdens of proof got to keep it separate okay going back to the filing plff pleaded multiple times with Savage to discontinue Savage's implementation of hilderbrand's methodology with Savage and plaintiff's minor child Savage refused Savage continues to engage in criminal and torous behavior against her minor daughter and plaintiff and Tillman claims that once his then wife started having sessions with jod she wanted to pull him into the mix too so this again is very reminiscent of Kevin Frankie and Ruby Frankie quote upon information
and belief again that means at this stage of the litigation once it progresses I'll have more evidence to prove this but hildt and Savage conspired to create the appearance of marital problems with plaintiff that did not exist to recruit plff to the Enterprise and induce him to spend money on connections services and products during the course of their marriage Savage spent approximately $5,000 of marital funds on Services through connections and within a year of meeting jod again very eerily reminiscent of Kevin Frankie Tillman says his ex-wife kicked him out in May of 2016 at the
direction of hilderbrand savage demanded that the couple separate at this time Savage also unilaterally and unlawfully dictated plaintiff's visitation with ejt who at the time was around 18 months old so according to Tilman he was getting two hours of parent time every other day with his then one one-year-old daughter and he says that eventually changed to 6 hours every Saturday and he also says that Savage demanded he pay for more connections classes or she would divorce him so after a period where he didn't see his daughter for weeks and Savage was ignoring him he filed
for divorce now again you could say how could he do this how could he let it happen it's very hard to judge people's relationships and particularly in this community with this going on it might not be so simple if jod hilderbrand is as persuasive as we heard from Kevin Frankie and Ruby Frankie he might have thought that this was for the good of his marriage now Tillman says jod was teaching his ex-wife that she must abuse their daughter in order to teach her or help her come into the light he started documenting this girl's injuries
which over time included a laceration down her entire hamstring large bruises on her thighs and hips cuts on her chin and neck even a bruise around her eye and why he didn't do anything you might be asking well Tillman claims that Savage had an excuse every time saying that ejt had hurt herself when she was unsupervised allegations again very eerily reminiscent of the Frankie situation the abuse is good for the kids kind of thing now there were also times that ejt would video call her father with evidence of an injury but Savage would allegedly refuse
to take her to the hospital he also said that he learned later from his daughter that Savage would threaten her or tell her to lie about what happened now the complaint reads Savage remains a devoted Protege of hildbrandt and staunchly refuses to reject the hildbrandt methodology of abuse torture and pain even after hild debrand and Frankie's arrest brought the barbaric nature of the Enterprise's fraudulent services to light according to tman each defendant has engaged in a pattern of wire fraud and therefore a pattern of racketeering activity collectively defendants have engaged in thousands of instances of
federal wire fraud and by the way when attorneys refer to wire fraud they're talking about not only money that moves across state lines as part of a fraud but also the perpetuation of that fraud using things like social media Pages podcasts mail DVD sets and more the complaint even says from May 22nd 2023 through August 30th 2023 the time in which hilderbrandt and Frankie admitted to this secret torture and abuse of children at hilderbrand's Mansion they broadcast at least 75 Interstate wire Communications in the form of podcasts and social media post from hild De Brand's
compound Tillman accuses hild de Brandt of hundreds of Acts of federal wire fraud dating as far back as 2008 and he believes Ruby committed just short of 300 acts of federal wire fraud during her time with jod again nothing to indicate that they're under criminal investigation for this but this is quite the allegation so to recap Tilman says that this alleged criminal Enterprise known as connections is directly responsible for causing his divorce which subsequently led to contentious custody proceedings Tillman says he spent more than $100,000 in legal fees just since 2022 and says that ejt
has needed more than $2,000 worth of medical care and on top of all that around the time that Savage joined up with connections Tillman claims he'd been accepted to several prestigious law schools but because of everything going on with his personal life he says he's yet to be able to go back to school that he's lost job opportunities because of Savage and Jody's actions that's really important when you talk about a civil case what did you lose what were your lost opportunities lost wages so tman is asking for at least $5 million in what's known
as exemplary or punitive damages at least this could go well beyond and again this is Damages that are awarded to punish a defendant for outrageous conduct on top of the actual money that tman may have lost and he's also asking for an injunction to be filed preventing jod Hill de brand from selling off any of her assets until the civil case is settled so ultimately if he is wed if he does win that judgment can be awarded against him and she has a way to pay it off but he's also going after you know connections
and there might be some money there we'll continue to follow this we'll continue to break this one down for you but that's all we have for you right now here on sidebar everybody thank you so much for joining us and as always please subscribe on YouTube Apple podcast Spotify wherever you should get your podcasts I'm Jesse Weber I'll speak to you next time [Music]
