What if you could invest in a simple water vending machine for $8,500 and watch the profits roll in every month? That’s the promise Ryan Wear made to thousands of investors through his company, Water Station Management LLC. On paper, it looked like the perfect passive income stream. In reality, it was one of the boldest frauds in recent memory.

In this first part of a two-episode Behind the Scams investigation, we uncover how Wear built a Ponzi scheme out of phantom machines, fake serial numbers, and inflated revenue reports. Early investors were promised ownership of cutting-edge “WST-700” water machines, but many of those machines didn’t exist. Some were even sold multiple times, while others were nothing more than ordinary snack machines dressed up as high-tech assets.

The Water Station scam didn’t just hurt casual investors. Many victims were military veterans searching for safe, reliable ways to grow their savings. Instead, their money was siphoned into a house of cards that eventually collapsed under its own lies.

This is a true story ripped straight from a federal indictment out of the Southern District of New York. In Part One, we set the stage for how the scheme began and why it spread so quickly. In Part Two, we’ll follow the money even deeper, as insider conflicts and shady bond deals push this fraud into uncharted territory.