The truth behind P.I. Moms scam exposed

This story was first broadcast on Feb. 18, 2012. It was updated on Nov. 17
Produced by Chuck Stevenson, Peter Shaw and Greg Fisher

In 2010, reporter Pete Crooks was invited to profile a group of San Francisco Bay-area soccer moms-turned private investigators.

"When I got this story, I knew I had something and I stayed up all night writing..." Crooks told "48 Hours" correspondent Maureen Maher. "I was invited to come out to Chris Butler's office. I walked in and the first thing I noticed was the walls of the office were covered with 8x10s of all the 1970s and 1980s detective shows that I watched growing up... 'Charlie's Angels' and 'Magnum PI'...Those are the shows I loved when I was a kid so I was kind of charmed by it. And I knew the guy wanted to be on TV."

Crooks is a senior editor for a local pop culture magazine called Diablo and a CBS News consultant. To him, the attractive, confident women were real-life "Charlie's Angels" and their boss, Chris Butler, a charismatic entrepreneur who spent 10 years as a cop -- was straight out of central casting.

"It seemed like a no-brainer that we would, that we would cover that story," said Crooks.

Chris Butler bought the agency in 2000, and turned it into what he claimed was one of the most successful private eye firms in the Bay area, investigating everything from insurance scams to cheating husbands.

When he added soccer moms as investigators, he said his business boomed. And Butler's team was getting noticed, from People magazine to morning TV shows.

The P.I. Moms also became a big story for the "Dr. Phil" show.

Video: Watch the Aug. 4, 2010, "Dr. Phil" episode

Ami Wiltz was one of the P.I. Moms.

"We were beautiful women who went out and you know...worked this male-dominated career, this job... and we were different... we were funny...exciting..." Wiltz told Maher.

Like Butler, Wiltz was also a former cop-turned professional private investigator. But she was juggling a home life with three kids, which Butler believed made her and the other moms uniquely qualified for the job.

"Being a mom...I'm able to multitask...I'm also, you know, just naturally nosey...and always trying to figure out what my kids are doing..." she explained.

On the "Dr. Phil" show, Butler talked about why he chose soccer moms:

"...they come into this field prepped for the type of work that they're gonna be encountering...they're very good listeners," he said. "...they're probably more sensitive to people lying to them."

Potentially dangerous, it wasn't a job for the fainthearted. But Butler said he had that covered.

"He said that, also, that he trained all these P.I. Moms extensively in self-defense, in investigative techniques... and firearms," said Crooks.

Besides the moms, Butler also employed attractive women to be "decoys"; women like Ryan Romano.

"I'm easy on the eyes basically... it was acting...it was my normal life..." Romano told "48 Hours."

The decoys -- also known as "operatives" -- worked alongside the P.I. Moms in standard field work, but sometimes the decoys went beyond that to do some not so standard operations. For example, a sting Butler shared with Dr. Phil McGraw where a decoy "Sharon," catches a cheating husband.

"We inserted Sharon into the hotel bar...Well sure enough, once our investigator was in the bar and he walked in, he made a beeline right for her," Butler told McGraw on his show. "Sharon is a professional and she does know what's expected of her on these cases, and that's gonna include hugging, kissing...and she knows to stand at a 90-degree angle to the camera so that if there is any kissing that's going on...we'll be able to get that."

On the show, McGraw even questioned whether Butler had gone too far with the decoy, "Sharon."

"One of the P.I. Mom operatives was in a very romantic situation with the target here," McGraw commented to Maher. "And you know, I kept sayin', 'Wow, I mean, are there boundaries to your scope of employment? Because things are getting pretty rich up on the balcony here.' I mean, that to me seemed, like, to go beyond the pale, it's like-"

"They'd overstepped their bounds?" Maher asked.

"--is this OK with you? Is it OK with your husband? Is it-- this wouldn't be OK with me. And it's, 'Well, you know, you do what you gotta do.'"

Criticisms like that didn't slow Butler down. In fact, his real-life private investigating team was about to become a reality TV show for the Lifetime cable network.

"He just was like on the rise of being this huge star in his mind... and that this was gonna be it..." said Romano.

With the reality show cameras following the moms on their investigations, Butler would need help with the caseload.

"I've always been the type of person who's always wanted to, to you know serve... to help people..." said ex-cop Carl Marino.

"How did you end up meeting Chris Butler?" Maher asked Marino.

"I'd actually seen his ad on Craigslist," he replied.

Marino spent 17 years as a deputy in upstate New York. Butler's ad seemed like a terrific opportunity for Marino, who had recently moved to San Francisco.

"...They were looking to hire decoys for -- I think he termed it as 'the most successful private investigative company in the Bay area,'" he said.

But when Marino interviewed for the job, he learned it wasn't a typical "P.I. agency."

"It was kind of a strange interview..." he told Maher. "They asked a lot of strange questions."

"Like what?" she asked.

"You know... do you drink alcohol? ...How comfortable I was with nudity?" Marino explained. "...and they were telling me the reason they're asking those questions was because in decoy situations you might possibly have to drink shots...and possibly get naked in a hot tub...with whoever the person is..."

Marino didn't seem to mind and with his law enforcement experience, it was a perfect fit. Butler hired him.

"It was kind of the type of work that I'd always imagined PIs doing..." he said.

"A little on the fringe?" Maher asked.

"Always on the fringe," Marino replied.

For a place operating on the fringe, there were plenty of real cops coming and going, including Norm Wielsch, the commander of the Contra Costa County Narcotics Task Force. Wielsch and Butler had worked together and were friends.

"He would show me how, how well he was doing, he would tell me how well he was doing...he was...he had a beautiful car, he had a great lifestyle... at least it appeared so," said Wielsch.

With those real cops hanging around, Butler's employees didn't challenge him on some of his questionable operations... like the ones that came to be called "dirty DUIs," which set up husbands in the middle of bitter divorces.

"I was hired by Chris Butler...to be a decoy to attend a party in hopes to get the target to do something illegal...to see if I could see if he was involved in any illegal stuff, including drugs...and just to be a pretty face... I mean, who's gonna say no to a pretty girl?" said Ryan Romano.

The trap: Send in a pretty girl or "decoy," as Butler called them, to come onto the husband, get him liquored up - and then suggest they drive somewhere to have fun. Just as the husband would pull out onto the street, a cop, who had been called by Butler, would pull over the husband for driving under the influence.

Romano says Butler paid her to drink and flirt with those "targets."

"It was like dangling candy in front of a baby," she explained. "It's hard to say no to a lot of things in life... and when you have alcohol in the picture and you impair their judgment...it makes it even harder..."

The arrests of the men caught in Butler's stings would then be used in court proceedings, which would clearly put the soon-to-be ex-wives in a much better bargaining position.

"...There was something not right in the fact that he probably got high off of doing all this... like, he found a thrill," said Romano.

With the reality show now in production and the national media exposure, Chris Butler's dreams of stardom appeared to be just a red carpet stroll away. But what no one knew was that dream was about to turn into a nightmare.

"I was floored... the amount of stuff that he was doing was just unbelievable!" said Romano.

For P.I. Mom Ami Wiltz, the new reality show was going to be a huge break for her and the others.

"We're so excited about the show. I'm telling them all about it...and this is a great opportunity," she said. "It was a great idea... you had these women who had various backgrounds, but would all come together and work these cases...and follow people go into stores and get covert video."

"Was it fun?" Maher asked.

"Very much," Wiltz replied.

"Sexy?"

"Yes, very!"

Video: A day in the life of a P.I. Mom

To help get publicity for the new show, reporter Pete Crooks was invited along on a P.I. Mom stakeout in one of the mom's minivans.

"I started to go out to the van... and Charmagne said, 'I gotta be mommy here... Everybody has used the bathroom? We're all ready to get in the car now?'" Crooks recalled.

The moms who were taking part on the ride-along were some of the same ones who appeared on the "Dr. Phil" show: Denise and Charmagne.

"Alright... so you guys get in the car... everybody gets their juice box and their backpack...and they've all done a potty run before they take off...and what happens next?" Maher asked Crooks.

"...so we get in position...and we're looking for a white Mercedes..." he replied.

With Crooks in tow, the P.I. Moms were hot on the trail of a man whose older, wealthier wife-to-be suspected him of cheating.

"We start following the car and we stayed right behind him," said Crooks.

Crooks even got into the action when he spotted the wayward fiancé picking up a sexier, younger woman.

"A voluptuous, mid-20s siren with long brunette hair...her right arm is tattooed from shoulder to wrist..." he said.

As the P.I. Moms spied, the cheating couple got cozy.

"The suspect and the mystery date walk into a jewelry shop," Crooks continued. "...they come out with a couple of gift bags... arm in arm... I believe there's a kiss."

Crooks says he couldn't believe how much luck the P.I. Moms were having.

"They got out of their car, they stop right in front of our van to kiss and Denise captured that all on video," he said. "There was something happening... a new twist every half hour."

Maher asked Crooks, "Did you think, 'Man, I am just a lucky, lucky reporter?'"

"A little bit! Yeah," he replied.

As the mini-van followed the couple to the Napa Valley, Chris Butler sent in a backup team: Carl Marino and his wife, who was also working for Butler that day.

"It was gonna be the first introduction of us to the media... is what Chris' big story was," said Marino.

"Why did you need to be introduced to the media?" Maher asked.

"Chris wanted us to be the real life 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith,'" he replied.

As in Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

As Crooks watched, Carl and his wife, Ilona, worked their way into the sting by striking up a flirtatious conversation with the cheating fiancé and his mistress at a winery... all the while texting the salacious details to the P.I. Moms back in the minivan.

"'They just invited us back to their hotel' is the third text... and so this went from 'nice to meet you' to 'let's swing' in five minutes! You know..." said Crooks.

"Did you say, 'This is unbelievable?'" Maher asked.

"It was!" Crooks replied. "It was unbelievable and I was just sort of saying like, 'What's gonna happen next?'"

As outrageous as that stakeout was, nothing could have prepared Pete Crooks for what was about to happen next. Just before he was about to go to print, Crooks received an email that would blow up his entire story -- or at least, what he thought was the story.

"The first Monday back in the office after New Year's weekend this email that comes from a character named Ronald Rutherford...[that reads] 'don't run that story,'" said Crooks.

Rutherford's email said "it would be a mistake to publish the article" because the ride-along with the P.I. Moms was fake.

"So I called Chris Butler at his office... and he answered in this kind of cool voice. 'Hey Pete... what's going on?' ...I said, 'You know, I got this email that said the ride-along was staged'... and his voice just like peaked out. 'What? That is bull crap,' Crooks said mimicking Butler. "It the only time I saw him spike like that..."

The emails from Rutherford kept coming.

"I got an email at 3 a.m. ...That was the entire itinerary of the ride along..." said Crooks.

"This is basically an interoffice email setting up the entire shoot itinerary...location etcetera..." noted Maher.

"... sent the day before the ride-along," added Crooks.

"That's pretty damning."

"Yeah, and the attachment is a Google Earth map...of the Holiday Inn Express with little notes on it... Mercedes parks here, couple walks through the hotel.....gets into silver Honda Civic parked here, can drive away without being seen..." said Crooks.

Unbeknownst to Crooks, the Butler ride-along had been an enormous fake.

Ryan Romano, the decoy, played the sexy girlfriend.

"My role in the ride-along was to be the mistress or to be the girlfriend that the fiancé was cheating on his fiancé with," she explained.

And that fiancé, according to Romano, was also an actor hired by Chris Butler.

"I talked to Chris...about Diablo magazine was gonna do a ride-along and obviously he could not use a real client...that no one was gonna put their life out there in a magazine and admit that they have a cheating husband or that their marriage was a failure," Romano continued. "...So he asked me to be the mistress to go along with them."

An elaborate, over-the-top setup designed to get Chris Butler and his new reality show a huge splash of publicity.

"I never thought anyone would find out the truth...that this whole thing was fake," Romano said. "So at the moment it was fun... It was easy money. I got to go to lunch...and go wine tasting -- a great day!"

Maher asked Marino, "Did you not say at this point, 'I'm not real comfortable with...this guy thinks he's doing a real story.'"

"I wasn't really comfortable the whole time," he replied, "but again... this is Chris Butler's show...he's done it a hundred times already...no ones ever figured it out. ...and ultimately it's to get more business...the business that he's hired me to run."

For Chris Butler, it may have been business as usual. But Pete Crooks was about to learn that his fake ride-along was just the tip of the iceberg.

That's because his mysterious source, Rutherford, was about to reveal a set of darker and far more dangerous secrets.

Now that his P.I. Mom reality show for Lifetime Television was in full production, Chris Butler appeared to be on the fast track to reality TV stardom.

"That's all he talked about, was the show, the show, the show. And the moms...he was ready to be a star," said P.I. Mom Ami Wiltz.

But while Chris Butler was basking in the reality TV spotlight, the bizarre string of emails from the mysterious Ronald Rutherford continued.

"I-- became beyond fascinated, obsessed, with trying to figure out the equation of who knew what and who was continuing to lie, and -- and what was the motivation of Rutherford to tell me this," Crooks told Maureen Maher.

But Rutherford still had one more secret to reveal about Butler... and it was a bombshell.

"Rutherford says that -- Chris Butler is attempting to sell-- narcotics that have been seized by the Contra Costa County Narcotics Enforcement Team, CNET," said Crooks.

Rutherford was now alleging a far more serious situation: That Butler was a drug dealer and his old friend, Norm Wielsch, one of the county's top drug cops, was the supplier.

"Butler is conspiring with Norm Wielsch -- the highest ranking narcotics enforcement officer in the area -- to take those drugs and put 'em back on the streets and sell them," said Crooks.

"He's the cop who has seen what it does out on the street," noted Maher.

"He's the guy that sent somebody to jail for selling the drugs in the first place," said Crooks.

Crooks says Rutherford sent him a photo of the marijuana he'd been asked to sell by Butler. Now, Rutherford was looking for a way out.

"He's not a drug dealer. He doesn't-- want to-- go any further with this. But he doesn't know who to go to because you can't go to the top drug cop in the county," Crooks explained.

"Did you feel like Rutherford was afraid for his life?" Maher asked.

"I got the feeling that Rutherford was backed into a pretty dangerous corner with some pretty bad guys," he replied.

Crooks was able to connect Rutherford with a contact at the California Department of Justice.

"It's a pretty unbelievable position to be in," Maher commented to Crooks.

"Yeah. It was really, really weird, and really stressful," he said. "Rutherford's safety could be in jeopardy, and that it would be -- because of the ball that I got rolling."

After some tense moments, Rutherford was finally meeting with the right people.

"I got an e-mail from Rutherford that said, 'Finally made contact from the D.A.'" said Crooks.

Rutherford not only told them about the alleged drug sales, but other potential illegal activities Butler was running - like those "dirty DUIs."

"Within a day or two after that," Crooks continued, "Rutherford had met with the Department of Justice and kind of gave them the full download, and the investigation began."

The California DOJ asked Rutherford to start secretly taping Chris Butler and Norm Wielsch. Butler was oblivious He was feeling the pressure from the reality show; there was friction and cases were falling through.

"First of all, there weren't a whole lot of real cases coming in. Second of all, the real cases that did come in, the people didn't want their dirty laundry aired on a reality TV show," said Crooks.

When Butler's P.I. agency got a missing teen case to solve, Marino thought it was good news.

"A father came to hire us to find his missing daughter. She was a 15-year-old girl who had been missing for just over two months," Marino told Maher.

"Did the parents think she was kidnapped?"

"No," Marino replied. "It was-- it was very obvious that she'd run away."

Marino tracked the teen to the home of her boyfriend. He confirmed with the boyfriend's mother that the girl was safe and texted the good news to Chris Butler.

"He writes back, 'Wow, that's -- that's amazing. Don't actually go find her, though,'" Marino said. "Cause he wants to wait until there is Lifetime cameras to film that, which-"

"That's disgusting," said Maher.

"It-- it-- and it really is."

Butler didn't let on to the P.I. Moms that Marino had already solved the case. Instead, he had his P.I. Moms work their own investigation.

"And he would rather have success with the show than success with the case?" Maher asked Marino.

"Well, he wants both," he replied. "He wants success with the case, but the show involved. And I'm not a P.I. Mom. I'm not part of the show."

And when the P.I. Moms did get involved, they tracked the woman who was hiding the missing girl to a Safeway parking lot. With the Lifetime cameras rolling for the reality show, they ambushed her.

"...they were-- literally over the top of her accusing her of everything," said Marino.

Marino says Butler got physical, and grabbed the woman.

"You know, there was a lot of yelling. There was a lot of arguing. It was just wild," said Wiltz.

Said Marino, "I'm lookin' at Chris Butler and I go up to him and I'm like, 'What are you doing? What's going -' and I can see he's lost control of the situation."

Police were called to break up the melee. For Lifetime, it was the last straw according to Marino, who says Chris Butler had failed to deliver everything he promised. Soon after, the reality show shutdown production.

"At that moment, I knew that I was done," Wiltz said. "Because I-- I just couldn't work for someone who would sabotage their own cases."

The news was about to get far worse for Chris Butler. While the reality cameras had been turned off, the mysterious Rutherford had turned on a tiny undercover camera hidden in his key chain. It captures an astonishing scene: Butler and his cop buddy Norm Wielsch making a drug deal.

Watch the undercover video

They count out nearly $10,000and carefully divide it in two before Butler goes for the drugs.

"OK let me get you the burrito," Butler was recorded saying.

The burrito is a tightly wrapped package of crystal meth which Butler weighs, then hands over to Rutherford, who continues to play along.

"The very next day, Butler and Welch are arrested," Crooks said. "And, you know, it's the lead story on the news that night."

News report: Tonight the head of the Contra Costa County Narcotics Task Force is behind bars accused of dealing drugs... both men are in Contra Costa Jail accused of selling narcotics.

"I actually got a phone call from one of the moms and she said, 'Are you sitting down? I have something to tell you, Chris was arrested today,'" Wiltz said. "That's really out there, you know that's bad."

Chris Butler along with Norm Wielsch, was arrested and later charged with multiple federal drug charges. Plus, Butler and another cop were also charged for their alleged roles in those "dirty DUI" scams.

Now the man who once loved busting bad guys in front of the cameras was out on bail, hiding in shame.

But one question remained unanswered. Who was the mysterious Rutherford - the man who brought Chris Butler down?

For weeks, writer Pete Crooks received dozens of emails from the mysterious Rutherford alleging Chris Butler was a fraud and a drug dealer. Who is Ronald Rutherford?

"I'm Ronald Rutherford," Carol Marino told Maureen Maher.

That's right. Carl Marino was Rutherford.

Chris Butler's No. 2 man -- the director of operations for the agency- had exposed the dark side of Butler's operation.

"Did you suspect it was Carl?" Maureen Maher asked Pete Crooks.

"When I got the initial email from Ronald Rutherford... no I didn't," he replied.

"Are you curious about the motivation of Rutherford?"

"Absolutely..."

In his old life as a cop, Marino says he spent his entire career fighting drugs. He says turning in Butler and Wielsch was simply the right thing to do.

"I'd like to say it was the good person in me," Marino said. "It definitely had a lot to do with the cop in me.

"Literally it was that day when I first saw those drugs that I knew I was gonna do something about it. I had no idea what it was, how I was gonna do it, when I was gonna do it. But knowing where those drugs came from, I knew something had to be done."

"I want to know-- were you-- terrified wearing a wire?" Maher asked Marino.

"Oh, yeah," he replied.

"I mean -- you're not just dealing with a guy who's-- an incredible scam artist who's scheming constantly. Now you're dealing with, allegedly, a drug dealer, who's allegedly got the head of Narcotics on his side. I-- there's not-- a lot of safe places to run outside of that."

"Well, I think that the scariest part about it is I'm filming -- the master of stings," Marino said. "Kinda the same way that he would do it."

"Is it too dramatic to ask if you were afraid for your life?"

"If those guys had found out what I was doing...there was no doubt in my mind that they would have killed me,' said Marino.

Video: Marino on working undercover

That's why, as Rutherford, he confided in Pete Crooks who put him in touch with the California Department of Justice.

"Did you feel like Rutherford was disseminating the information because it was the right thing to do or because he was afraid he was gonna get sucked into it... or he was trapped?" Maher asked Crooks.

"Both," he replied. "He said straight up in that first email-'I'm not a drug dealer' and I'm not gonna sell the drugs for Chris...But I can't tell him 'no I'm not interested in doing that' because he trusted him enough to let him in on the big secret... and Norm and Chris were scary guys, you know, to be in that position...so my feeling was that Rutherford was doing something very brave and doing the right thing."

But why would Chris Butler allegedly get involved in selling drugs? In a lengthy statement obtained by "48 Hours," Butler puts the blame squarely on his old pal, the boss of the county narcotics task force, Norm Wielsch.

Butler itemizes more than 20 crimes that he says Wielsch forced him to commit. For example:

"Wielsch instructed me to sell this marijuana for $1500 per half pound bag."

"Wielsch instructed me to sell the Oxycontin for $25-$40 per pill."

Norm Wielsch is accepting some responsibility.

"I feel horrible that I did this... anybody that knows me would know that it's not me... and I want to admit to what I've done... and I just want people to know that I'm very truly sorry," he told Maher.

"Forget the P.I. Moms... forget "Dr. Phil", People, all that other stuff... Putting drugs back on the street...that's really, really hard to swallow," said Maher.

"It really is, for me too...it's really difficult for me to look at that shame every day-I did it," he said.

Wielsch, who's out on bail, says he'd been ill for several years and became easy prey for Butler when a debilitating nerve disorder, disfiguring his feet, threatened to end his career.

"I made these decisions on my own...and I don't want to make it that I'm blaming anybody," Wielsch said, "but inside my heart I do feel like I've been manipulated and that I've been used."

Something Wielsch's attorney Michael Cardoza says Butler is very capable of.

"... is he guilty of manipulating every single one of these people? The P.I. Moms? Carl Marino? Norm? Is he guilty of puppeteering this entire situation?" Maher asked Cardoza.

"I think he really is guilty of that... if there were such a crime," he replied. "He did manipulate everyone from the get go. Chris Butler's a very intelligent man... He understands people... he understands how to use people...he understands how to groom people and to bring them along slowly... 'what will you do here for me? Will you do this? All right...you'll do that...will you do this now? Well, if you'll do that then let's take the big step into crime...will you get some marijuana for me?' And that's what Norm stepped into..."

Asked if he thinks Chris Butler is a dangerous man, Norm Wielsch told Maher, "No, I don't think a dangerous man."

"... but a man who can talk a cop -- a good cop -- into committing crimes, and he can puppeteer all these other people into lying and manipulating. Is that a dangerous man?" Maher asked Cardoza.

"I think it makes him a sociopath," he replied. "...you have Butler out there dealing with the television show, fooling the producers of that, fooling the people who we spoke to, People magazine, fooling Peter Crooks at Diablo magazine...fooling Dr. Phil... going on the "Today" show and fooling them...a lot of people were manipulated by him."

For P.I. Mom Ami Wiltz, she feels nothing but betrayal - and says she knew nothing about the alleged drug deals.

"It was humiliating to find out he was doing these things right under our noses," Wiltz said. "I guess I just wish he would have fired me or told me go, instead of dragging me into this. Fortunately I didn't know he was a criminal so I was not involved in anything illegal."

Believe it or not, there's still one more outrageous chapter to Chris Butler's dark story.

From an ex-cop with a successful private investigation business, to allegations of "dirty DUIs" and drug deals, it appeared it couldn't get much worse for Chris Butler. But there was one more dark chapter in this twisted tale.

"My name's Meagan Bernabe. I was hired to work as a private investigator for Chris Butler and to write a book about my experiences," she told "48 Hours."

When aspiring author Megan Bernabe took the job at Butler and Associates, she said she had no clue what she was signing up for. When she was assigned to work as a decoy, she had to kiss targets to help in Butler's stings.

"By manipulating us, and by breaking us down, emotionally and psychologically, Chris was able to push us to do things-- little by little, that crossed that moral boundary," Bernabe said. "Until suddenly, we were doing things that we said we would never do."

And she was totally unprepared for what Butler told her about next about an unusual case he was working on with his old cop buddy, Norm Wielsch.

"Chris Butler told me that he was running a massage parlor for Norm Wielsch," said Bernabe.

A massage parlor that was allegedly a front for prostitution. Bernabe says Chris Butler showed her the operation and claimed he was gathering evidence for Wielsch in an undercover police sting.

"The story was that the women who worked there was communicating with Norm...and telling him who these men were who were frequenting the massage parlor... and that way Norm supposedly would have evidence on them...and be able to go out and find the other massage parlors through them-it was all very convoluted and not believable..." explained Bernabe.

Video: A day in the life of a decoy

Prosecutors weren't buying it either. They added charges related to running an illicit massage parlor and extortion to the long list both Butler and Wielsch faced.

So how did it come to this spectacular fall from grace?

"How does somebody go beyond that con man status and move into more dangerous territory and convince people to do really dangerous, illegal behavior?" Maher asked McGraw.

"You know...a lot of times you'll see these people with a narcissistic or psychopathic personality...they are often very good and very persuasive at what they do. And they basically have no fear," he said. "And their use and abuse of other people is based on a complete lack of empathy."

The desire for stardom with his P.I. Moms reality show and his insatiable appetite for publicity may have contributed to Butler's demise.

"If they feel-- an adrenaline rush from being on the 'Today' show or being in some big article in the newspaper or a magazine, that ego rush drowns everything else out and their ability to predict the consequences of their actions, their ability to see, 'Wow, there could be a real downside here,' never makes the radar screen for them," explained Dr. Phil McGraw.

McGraw says he had no idea when Butler appeared on his show that he was anything but a private eye with the unique idea of employing soccer moms to do some snooping.

"At some point-- someone must have come to you...to inform you that Chris Butler was a con man," Maher commented. "What was your reaction?"

"Well, I didn't really have a strong reaction because I didn't know him that well," McGraw replied. "...our focus was on the women because they were what we were interested in. ...I just think sometimes greed takes over and common sense goes out the window."

Just what was fake and what was real about Butler's P.I. Moms operation depends on who you talk to. Carl Marino says it was a little bit of both.

"We were working on real cases that-- had fake elements to it. We were working on fake cases that had...real elements to it, where some people knew they were fake, but other people thought they were real," Marino said.

But according to P.I. Mom Ami Wiltz, who now runs owns her own P.I. agency in the Bay area, if Butler was manipulating cases to beef up the reality show, she was not in on it.

"And did you work any cases that were specifically for the show?" Maher asked.

"Yes, I did," Wiltz replied.

"And were those legitimate cases?"

"To my knowledge they were. I was never told otherwise," Wiltz said. "No one ever told me that they were fake. To my knowledge even today, those were real cases that we were working."

"And if you believe -- or you're discovering now that these cases were all setups, how do you feel about Chris putting you in that position?"

"Well, I -- I mean it's over and done with," Wiltz replied. "It is shocking to me that you're telling me this."

Meagan Bernabe thinks it's not unreasonable to believe that the P.I. Moms really were in the dark about what Butler was up to

"It is very possible that people who worked at the office didn't know anything about what Chris was up to. He let people in on things as he chose. And if he didn't choose to let you in on what he was doing, then you would have no way of knowing," she said.

A private investigator connected to a police corruptions scandal cut a deal.

Facing seven felony charges, a lot of damning evidence, and a possible life sentence, Chris Butler decided to take a plea deal. And on May 4, 2012, he appeared in court to plead guilty to crimes ranging from extortion to robbery to conspiracy to deal drugs.

Butler agreed to cooperate fully with prosecutors, which could include testifying against Norm Wielsch when he goes on trial.

Wielsch, who also faces a possible life sentence, tried but failed to make his own deal with prosecutors. He denies any involvement with the massage parlor scheme -- but continues to apologize for stealing drugs.

"I feel so bad and horrible about the citizens of California paying me to do a job, and I violated their trust. I mean, I've always told my guys that I was training that integrity is the only thing you got in life when it comes down to it. And my integrity's gone," Wielsch told Maher.

Not everyone is buying Wielsch's story -- especially the man that helped bring him to justice.

"This is the guy that would go into schools and tell children, 'You have to stay off marijuana 'cause it leads to crystal meth.' And this is the guy that's takin' those same drugs and puttin' 'em back on the street," Marino said. "He's the ultimate hypocrite. ...He's the dirtiest of dirty cops there are."

Carl Marino will likely play a large role in the legal proceedings against both Wielsch. He is still having a tough time dealing with everything that's happened.

"I'd be lying if I said I don't have nightmares about it sometimes and dream about it quite frequently and I still sleep with the loaded Glock that I got from the TV show underneath my bed," he told Maher.

The story that reporter Pete Crooks finally wrote for Diablo magazine was very different from the one he set out to do.

Read Crooks' article, "The Setup"

"Chris Butler's universe is like a snow globe that you can peek into and it's -- fascinating inside. What was very strange and a bit scary was to realize...that I wasn't looking at the snow globe; I was inside the snow globe. I was in his universe, at his invitation," Crooks said. "And -- everybody that gets sucked into his universe, I think, has a bit of their soul taken with it."

Chris Butler was sentenced to eight years in prison. But he could be released a year early in April 2019. He would be 58 years old.

Norm Wielsch is scheduled to go on trial in January 2013.