Rich Cowboy Victimized by Elder Abuse

Show Transcript

Robert's Story: A Cowboy Falls Victim to Elder Abuse

[00:00:00] Bob Gatty: According to the CDC, one in 10 older adults in the US suffer from elder abuse. So since June is Elder Abuse Awareness month, we're speaking today with bestselling investigative journalist and true crime biographer Stephen g Michaud, who has written a riveting book about a tragic case involving a wealthy Texas rancher who was victimized by those who were charged with caring for him? Stay with us. 

[00:00:29] Stephen Miche is the author of Robert's Story, a Texas Cowboys Troubled Life and Horrifying Death. It's a story of rancher, Robert East, which until now was buried deep in old legal records that were discovered by Michaud.

[00:00:48] The elderly owner of a vast Texas Cattle Ranch, Robert East, was no match for the greedy lawyers, doctors, and household staff who took over his life and isolated him on his remote ranch, all to gain access to his wealth and the natural gas on his family's land. Stephen G. Michaud is an internationally recognized author, co-author, investigative reporter and editor whose decades long career includes 20 books and multiple contributions to periodicals, including Newsweek, Business Week, the New York Times, Maxim, Reader's Digest, Salon, Boy's Life, and Playboy.

[00:01:34] Michaud published works in an impressive variety of genres ranging from World War II, the Cuban Revolution, true crime and mountain climbing to Texas history and serial murder have sold over 2 million copies, two translated into 15 languages. New York Daily News named The Only Living Witness, a biography of Serial Killer Ted Bundy co-authored with Hugh Ainsworth, one of the 10 best true crime books ever written. Ted Bundy Conversations With a Killer, a compilation of Michaud and Ainsworth's Death Row Interviews with Bundy was a New York Times bestseller and a Netflix four-part series. Stephen, welcome. It's an honor to have you with us today, my friend. 

[00:02:24] Stephen Michaud: I'm glad to be here. Good to see you, Bob. 

[00:02:27] Bob Gatty: Hey, before we get into your book, can we talk a little bit about the issue of elder abuse? To what extent is this a problem in America? You've done some research on this, right? 

[00:02:38] Stephen Michaud: Yeah. Elder abuse was, not my subject when I started the book.

[00:02:43] My subject was a poor, vulnerable old man rancher being taken advantage of by thieves. And I didn't really start focusing on the elder abuse part of it until the book was published. And my readership has skewed toward baby boomers. We're all getting old now and I guess we're all looking over our shoulders.

[00:03:10] Yeah, and I, began to understand that, the question of vulnerability among older people, fears of their own safety, what they see on TV and what they read about has put a whole generation on edge. And so what I've ended up with is a A family saga wrapped around a true crime story.

[00:03:41] This is a hybrid book but it's a real, it's a real issue. The, amount of money bilked from older people in this country, it is according to some guesses, exceeds a hundred billion dollars a year. It's a lot of money. There's reason to worry about the mechanisms we have to deal with this. I'm talking now about the police and social services. Because it's A crime, if you will, that's easily hidden. You put your grandparents upstairs in the bedroom and leave them up there. Yeah. It's, hard to ferret it out. People don't talk about it.

[00:04:22] And. It's a major feature of it is the isolation of older people, not just at home, but in, in facilities for old people. You don't have to be a, nephew or a niece or, a grandchild to abuse an older person. You can be a nurse, you can be a doctor, which was the case with my guy.

[00:04:47] So it's, a, it is a widespread problem. It's, a, it's horrifying, certainly in the case of Robert. And it's, it does not receive, in my view, the kind of attention it deserves. 

[00:05:00] Bob Gatty: So what are some of the forms that this abuse takes or we talked in, in, in Robert's case, it was financial, right?

[00:05:10] But there's a lot of other forms of elder abuse that people have to deal with. Correct. 

[00:05:16] Stephen Michaud: There are, robert was abused across the spectrum of abuses. He was isolated from his family. He was not given medical care. He was not kept clean. He was lied to.

[00:05:33] He was essentially removed from the map. Okay. His, captors and they were essentially captors rewrote his will and kept the rest of his family away by saying that Robert didn't wanna see them anymore. And there was enough ill will in the family going back that it was a credible claim at least to the members of his family.

[00:05:59] He's almost a poster child for the abused o older American. I think the one area where perhaps he's atypical or was atypical is that he was fantastically wealthy, right? Hundreds of millions of dollars. And it proved to be no protection from the wolves when they showed up. He, he was very, rich and in fact had, he not been so rich, he might not have been the target of of their machinations. 

[00:06:32] Bob Gatty: Okay. Who were these people that, that did this to this guy? 

[00:06:37] Stephen Michaud: Number one was his foreman who he had known since he was a child who would've been raised on the ranch but was an outlaw himself. And he returned to the ranch when Robert was getting older. And was no longer able to ride. His legs had given out on him. He was confined to the house, and so it was able, he, his name was, Oscar Ozuna. And Oscar was was both a conniver and a bully, and he intimidated other people who worked on the ranch with threats, physical threats to do what he was told. The second group of conspirators were attorneys, specifically two of them who had wormed their way into Robert's good graces, I guess you'd say. And began very quietly to rewrite all his, legal and estate papers.

[00:07:40] Robert didn't read. He could read, but he never read anything. And they would simply put state, but papers, documents in front of him and he'd scribble his name on them and, move on to something else. He was, he had. He had no interest in it at all. So he was a perfect victim, absolutely a perfect victim, isolated, vulnerable and, really not able to understand what was going on around him until it was too late.

[00:08:13] Bob Gatty: So they were just I mean they just rewrote his, documents? 

[00:08:19] Stephen Michaud: Yeah, they did. They, simply tore up the old ones and rewrote them and and made that stick. At his death. All of his money went into a foundation that today is called the East Foundation. Although no member of the East family is associated with it.

[00:08:42] Bob Gatty: What, is it then, and who runs it? 

[00:08:44] Stephen Michaud: It's a, legal foundation. It's, set up and it was funded with Robert's money. At the time nobody questioned whether or not what was going on was legal. It was never really truly adjudicated. And as of right now, they have something on the order of, according to their document, 700 million dollars funded through, principally, through Robert's cattle business and of course his oil and gas. 

[00:09:19] Bob Gatty: how is this money supposed to be used? 

[00:09:21] Stephen Michaud: the claim is that they're dedicated to promoting good ranch management, good ranch stewardship, teaching ranchers and, other people how to raise cattle in the modern world on the same ranch land that you have wild animals as well. A point of explanation here, in Texas today land dedicated to deer hunting land is much more valuable, dedicated to deer hunting than it is to raising cattle- considerably more valuable.

[00:10:03] So , although they do raise cattle like most ranches in Texas now it's, essentially it, is becoming a place for hunting. That's what and, one of the shame is that Robert was vehement in his opposition to hunting on his land. He and his sister who lived on the ranch their entire lives did not believe in hunting.

[00:10:29] Bob Gatty: Okay. So the people that took over this foundation are using this money for exactly the opposite of what Robert would've wanted. 

[00:10:39] Stephen Michaud: It's not the ranch he would be running if he were alive today. 

[00:10:43] Bob Gatty: Okay. So what did they do? They, forged papers. Essentially they stole his money, right?

[00:10:51] Stephen Michaud: I don't know if he'd call it forging or not. What they did was they rewrote them and he signed them, and he signed them. He signed them. There's an appendix in the book that gives you examples of Robert's handwriting in those final years of his life, and it looks like a drunken ant walking across the page.

[00:11:13] Okay. He, yes, he did sign it. They, are on, that level. They're, certainly legal, but there's strong reason to believe that he was kept, he was not mentally competent when he signed a lot of those documents, if not all of them. 

[00:11:31] Bob Gatty: Okay. Exactly what, how did this come down?

[00:11:35] Walk, us through the Kind of the, plot of this book. Walk us through what really happened to this man. 

[00:11:45] Stephen Michaud: The book follows Robert from his boyhood in the early part of the 20th century through the development of the East family. Built a ranch near the Rio Grande.

[00:12:01] And, it thrived throughout the century until The 1940s and 1950s when through deaths and, other things the, ranch was basically down to Robert and his brother, right? His older brother who his name was, Tom. He died leaving Robert basically alone on the ranch. And he was never, there was never any question that Robert was actually capable of running the ranch.

[00:12:32] He was a great cowboy, but he was not a good cattleman. And on top of that, he was isolated. So , a ranch that had been very well run and very successfully for decades suddenly came to him and he really didn't know what he was doing besides roping, and chasing around after cattle.

[00:12:53] And lacking business acumen and lacking much knowledge of the greater world. He rarely left the ranch. He was a an inviting target, plus the fact in the middle of it all they found gas, natural gas on his ranch, right? The original well Was for a time the most productive gas well in the world.

[00:13:17] And he was cashing checks in excess of 12 million dollars a month for quite a while. He got quite wealthy. Yeah, I should say so. So he never had any concept of what that really meant. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:13:33] Bob Gatty: Okay. What happened to Robert? First of all, when did this all happen? What was the timeframe of the 10 years?

[00:13:41] Stephen Michaud: Robert was born in the early the 19 hundreds. Yeah. He died in 2007 at age 87. Okay. And About, about the middle of the 1980s, his health began to fade. He had spent his whole life on horseback. So he had bad arthritis problems. He had all kinds of infirmities.

[00:14:05] While he was able to ride while he was able to get around. This is a, by the way, to give you an idea of the scale, is a 250,000 acre ranch. He was through the force of his loyalty, he was able to run the place. But as his health gave out and his legs gave out he had to hire Oscar who Put Robert in, bed and ran the ranch as he pleased began stealing from the ranch.

[00:14:37] Began forging began forging documents. Began writing checks. And Robert had no way of knowing what he was doing. And neither did anybody else. Likewise the attorneys with whom this Oscar worked over a period of several years one by one rewrote the documents, the ownership documents.

[00:15:07] So that by the time Robert died, he had been completely disinherited, if you will from his own ranch. 

[00:15:15] Bob Gatty: Wow. So was a criminal case ever brought, was anybody ever charged with any of this stuff? 

[00:15:23] Stephen Michaud: No. 

[00:15:23] Nobody has no, there's never been any adjudication of any of this. No charges were ever filed.

[00:15:29] There was talk towards the end of his life about filing a an adult abuse case, as a matter of fact. But it never came to pass. Nobody has ever been called to question about what happened legally. 

[00:15:45] Bob Gatty: Okay. Now you wrote this book, what, last year, right? 

[00:15:50] Stephen Michaud: It published it last autumn.

[00:15:52] Bob Gatty: Yeah, last la last fall. Has there been any response, reaction from any of the people involved? 

[00:16:01] Stephen Michaud: I've heard nothing at all. Not a sound. There's been There's been a how do I, characterize this? The, book is, selling very well in Texas and a lot of people who knew the East family Knew Robert were completely unaware of what had occurred.

[00:16:24] They, believed that he had died naturally of old age, and then none of the things, none of the harm that came to him, the abuse was known. So there's been a degree of amazement and, outrage among these people that this poor guy went through all this and it was all done essentially in secret.

[00:16:47] Bob Gatty: So how did this guy how did he die? I read that it was a tragic, that it was an awful death. But what was it, what happened to him? 

[00:16:59] Stephen Michaud: He essentially wasted away . I think he weighed 120 pounds on his last visit to the hospital. Okay. And he had heart arrhythmias.

[00:17:09] He had a, number of chronic illnesses. And he finally was reunited with his nephew and his family about a week before he died. At home in his bed. 

[00:17:25] Bob Gatty: Wow. Wow. That's sad story. Now you mentioned before something about protecting elderly people from such actions. What needs to be done to provide better protection for people in these kinds of situations? Obviously, this was an extreme case. This guy was extremely wealthy, far wealthier, probably, than most people would ever dream of being. But nevertheless he fell victim to this. Many, other people who are not so fortunate to have so much wealth, still are victimized in one way or another either financially or sexually, what can be done to provide better protection for people in these kinds of situations? 

[00:18:15] Stephen Michaud: Nobody has, yet consulted me on solving the broader questions of adult abuse and I don't want to portray myself as an expert. But I can tell you what, from my experience, the key to addressing this issue is isolation.

[00:18:37] It's the one thing that almost every one of these cases shares, that the person, that the target, if you will, is removed from the public view, from the family view. They're sent upstairs or they're sent downstairs, they're, essentially forgotten. And if, you can devise a way where, say for instance An agency of the government would have people routinely visit older people and actually see them and talk to them and, gauge how they're doing, I think would, go a long way.

[00:19:18] A considerable number of elderly people who are abused are from poor families. And the, reason there, Is a bit more obvious because they have limited resources and old people consume them. They don't produce things anymore. And so they, get shunted aside.

[00:19:39] The American family is not quite as cohesive as it once was. So there's all manners of ways you can isolate an old person. You can put 'em into a facility where they're not particularly well taken care of or you can just ignore them at home. They don't meet you on equal footing.

[00:20:00] They're infirm. Often they've lost some of their mental acuity. And they don't really have natural champions, if you will. We, and I'm not damning American society, but we do tend to warehouse them, and so they have a kind of natural vulnerability that only intensifies the older they get.

[00:20:29] Bob Gatty: There's a center. It's called the National Center on Elder Abuse. And if, you go online, you guys, if you're interested in learning more about what can be done in each individual state, if you go to N C E A.acl.gov. Click on that. There's a whole listing of state resources by state that are available in cases where you might suspect elder abuse is taking place.

[00:21:05] So I highly recommend that you take a look at that. If you know of anyone who just might be a victim of this sort of activity that Steven has written about. In the case of Robert East. So I just wanna bring that to your attention. You've written about outlaws and criminals, Stephen, from Ted Bundy to a rogue trappist monk named Brother Leo. How does Robert's story fit into your true crime bookshelf? 

[00:21:37] Stephen Michaud: I think, as I said earlier, it's this is a true crime inside a family saga. It is a double decker.

[00:21:45] But because much of the book is taken up with watching the East family going from a bunch of immigrants from Illinois to becoming one of the premier ranching families in Texas, well known and, well respected family and the usual adventures that you associate with raising cattle out in the middle of nowhere.

[00:22:10] It's, got all of that. Right in the center of it is this figure, this Robert, who he's been described as a man child, and to the extent I think that was accurate, Robert wasn't very smart. Robert wasn't very smooth. Robert really only wanted to ride horses and chase skirts.

[00:22:37] And he was good at both of those things. His favorite food was beef jerky. 

[00:22:44] And he, Robert, lived this, Spartan existence.

[00:22:50] He's, he was rich as creases, but he would wear his jeans until they practically fell off him. Wow. His he, never went anywhere. I did not ever find any evidence that Robert had ever left Texas. Wow. There is there's some reason to believe that he would visit on occasion brothels on the other side of the Rio Grande.

[00:23:17] But that was or he would, have girls in so to speak. But that was it. He was just, and he was an original, out in the middle of, tough as nails cowboy and with a real, limited palette. And he spoke Spanish more than he did English and his va carros like that, right?

[00:23:41] But if you've ever heard Spanish spoken with a Texas accent, It's a bit of a treat, 

[00:23:49] He was a one of a kind creature and he was also ornery as hell. Yeah. And quick to take offense. He's not a naturally sympathetic person.

[00:24:06] You see what I mean? And 

[00:24:07] Bob Gatty: yeah. How did you find out about this story? How did you find out about it? 

[00:24:12] Stephen Michaud: A friend of mine who knew the East family, who had actually helped me in, an earlier book about The Monk, right? My okay. Another of my mayor do well subjects said you've got he practically demanded that I move to Texas and write the book.

[00:24:30] And and with, some hesitancy I took on the case cuz it, it is really complex. It's five years writing this book digging through all of these damn documents and yeah. Running down people who did not want to talk to me. The usual things that journalists do to make themselves so popular with everybody and and, but once I got into it, I didn't feel like I was some kind of, a champion to bring Robert's story to life and all the rest of it.

[00:25:03] I just, I'm just a, I'm just a journalist, right? 

[00:25:06] Bob Gatty: You were just working on a story, right? Yeah. 

[00:25:08] Stephen Michaud: Yeah, exactly. That's what we do. And Uhhuh and of course we often get ourselves in trouble for doing that. Yeah, true too. But Robert seems so, the case seems so egregious to me, and I, held these documents in my hands and I, knew I have videotapes of Robert in the last couple years of his life, and he was not a well man, he was not he didn't really know what was going on around him.

[00:25:39] And he had no champions. He had nobody on the ground there saying, leave Robert alone. Take care of Robert. Except, and this is what makes this story even more wonderful from my perspective as the, one hero is a Mexican kid who was working on the ranch who had been brought over. He was illegal.

[00:26:00] Okay. And they put him in charge of Robert, of taking care of Robert, of Washington and dressing him and, he instantly got what was going on. Okay. And he worried because he said if, this is found out, I'll get blamed for it. Okay. So what he did was start audio recording everything that happened around him with his cell phone. Okay. And because he was a quote, nothing, right? Yeah. Didn't speak any English, people just ignored him. So I have recordings of all the, everybody talking about what they're going to do and it's partially my reporting and partially my transcriptions of these, conversations. How did you find this guy? He emerged slowly from the he's not the sort of person, you can understand this, who does a lot to draw attention to himself. Okay, sure. He's illegal.

[00:26:59] Yeah. He's smart, yeah. He finally produced the tapes and we worked very, hard to transcribe them because they're, some of it's in English, some of it's in border Spanish they're, but it's, there's a scene in the book where one of the attorneys has Robert on his death bed and he's looking over down over on him trying to get him to sign one more document. And Robert, with every last, almost his last breath, is saying no to him. And the guy in the end says, okay, then we'll pray. And that's the end of the scene. Okay. Yeah, that that's my, this is my favorite character in the book.

[00:27:41] Bob Gatty: Okay. Yeah. So what is the this, it's a hell of a job to write a, saga like this. All the research you said it took you five years. Yeah. What's the challenge? You, had to talk to dozens of people that you had to chase down and 

[00:28:02] Stephen Michaud: Yep. I have, I don't speak Spanish. Yeah, how about that?

[00:28:07] Bob Gatty: Yeah. There's a start, right? Yeah. Right there, right? Yeah. 

[00:28:10] Stephen Michaud: After Bueno I'm toast. And, then that I'm a Yankee. And object of, fear and loathing. 

[00:28:20] Bob Gatty: But you live in Texas, right? 

[00:28:22] Stephen Michaud: Yeah. Yeah. My children were born in Texas, so they're Texans, but I remember in one of my earlier stories in Texas, I've written a lot about Texas.

[00:28:32] I was writing about about wildcatters and this group of them referred to me as the spindle shanked frog from New York. 

[00:28:45] Bob Gatty: Are you from New York originally?

[00:28:47] Stephen Michaud: I was working in New York for news at the time. But my children are proud Texans, but I, can't I, can't claim it.

[00:28:56] So that was a problem. I and I knew that after a while I should not be driving alone at night, anywhere down there. 

[00:29:05] Bob Gatty: Okay. Why, what was going on? 

[00:29:08] Stephen Michaud: They still settle scores abruptly down there from time to time. As you down, down, 

[00:29:14] Bob Gatty: you say, down there, down where 

[00:29:17] Stephen Michaud: East it's generally called South Texas.

[00:29:21] It's the Rio Grande North up towards San Antonio Corpus Christi. That part, it's a, okay. It's a vast cattle growing region. And with, no surface water, no permanent surface water, and no running water. So it's it's, not for sissies down there, I'll tell you that.

[00:29:43] Yeah, but I didn't come, I didn't come to, wine and moan about how hard my life is.

[00:29:49] Bob Gatty: I'm fascinated with the process of researching and, getting this, book together. I've done a little of that myself, and that's, no, that's no easy thing. Did you have, anybody coming after you pissed off, you were doing it threats, anything like that?

[00:30:11] Stephen Michaud: No. I There were people who did not want to talk to me. Yeah. And and they, finally did because I'm so damn persuasive. 

[00:30:22] Bob Gatty: Yeah. I was gonna say, what'd you do to get 'em to talk to you? 

[00:30:25] Stephen Michaud: They they resisted me. In part just because I was not one of them. And That's Right.

[00:30:33] Right's. A very closed society. Yeah. That's, 

[00:30:36] Bob Gatty: but you seem like such a nice guy. I don't know why they wouldn't want to talk to you. 

[00:30:41] Stephen Michaud: Yeah, don't let my secret out. But it was difficult. I was helped immeasurably by the fact that Robert's nephew Mike who is a rancher himself was determined, has been determined for a long, time to get this story told. And he had run into lots of blow back in the community, largely because people couldn't believe that what he was saying was true. What happened to Robert boggles the mind if you think about it and how it was able to, go on for so, long and, he was so completely relievedof every last thing that he had, and then, and and died an ignoble death. And, yet there he is as, as, rich as you can imagine, is the pieces don't fit together well. 

[00:31:44] Bob Gatty: So this, money that was in his estate, It was, it's now in this foundation, you said? Yeah And, the foundation is being used to support hunting on this property? 

[00:32:02] Stephen Michaud: The foundation was set up soon after the time of Robert's death. And there was little or no hunting that went on for quite a while. It was Incidental hunting. 

[00:32:18] But, they have now opened the ranch. They're, at, they're actually adding hunting lodges and it's gonna be a deer hunting mecca. Robert raised enormous white-tailed deer. I'm not exactly sure what the secret was, except that they were so damn far out in the middle of nowhere that they were allowed to grow into these, monstrous huge, deer.

[00:32:44] They're f the area's famous for its oversized deer. Roberts ranch is at the epicenter of it, and they're now going to be hunting deer there. Robert would, allow the occasional deer to be taken as he explained it, to buy corn and other stuff for the other deer.

[00:33:05] But you know people would come to hunt on his ranch and he would charge them $10,000 a bullet. So if you shot and missed, too bad. Yeah. And, but this it it's, a mecca. It's a hunting mecca. It's a 

[00:33:25] Bob Gatty: these people are getting rich. Yeah. Not, only did they get rich by stealing this guy's money, but now they're getting rich by turning this thing into a hunting resort. Yeah, So it is not a, it is not a working ranch anymore. With cattle 

[00:33:42] Stephen Michaud: they raise cattle, 

[00:33:43] They have programs for children and, the rest of it, and it's stated purpose is to improve stewardship of the land and also to raise wild and domestic animals on the same land.

[00:33:57] Okay. That's how they describe themselves. 

[00:34:00] Bob Gatty: Okay. Now, the books that you've, written some 20 books. Are they all based on on fact 

[00:34:09] Stephen Michaud: yes you, accusing me of being a fabulous 

[00:34:14] Bob Gatty: No no, They're not novels. 

[00:34:17] Stephen Michaud: No. Yeah, no, I've, no, I've, no, I've been accused of that, but I write nonfiction. Okay. 

[00:34:26] Bob Gatty: All right. All let's see. Is there anything else we need to talk about in terms of the, book, the Robert Story, elder Abuse, any of that? Anything? We, I think 

[00:34:37] Stephen Michaud: I would say just about the project is that the combination of this big canvas, wild west stuff. And then nitty gritty true crime was an interesting challenge because I had a, some days I put my Stetson on, and some days I got off my six shooter. 

[00:34:58] Bob Gatty: You put your Stetson on. Why don't you have your Stetson on right now?

[00:35:03] Oh man. All right. 

[00:35:05] Stephen Michaud: Yeah, and it's also as I've said, I was a stranger in a strange land. It I it wasn't too easy or difficult for me to figure out that I wasn't raised around there 

[00:35:18] Bob Gatty: who, published this book? 

[00:35:19] Stephen Michaud: Actually I published it, it's, i, a publishing company called the the Coyote Press, coyote Publishing.

[00:35:30] In part because when I took the project to New York I couldn't find an editor who could appreciate what I had. And so I was I, ran into what a lot of writers in Texas and other parts of the country run into is that Oh, it is a regional book. Okay. Yeah. So, I said, screw it. I'll, publish it myself. 

[00:35:53] Bob Gatty: So you set up your own publishing company? 

[00:35:57] Stephen Michaud: I didn't buy presses and, you did not, and and hand print anything. It is the Coyote Press, Coyote Publishing. 

[00:36:07] Bob Gatty: Okay. Yeah. Does Coyote Publishing publish anybody else's books besides yours?

[00:36:13] Stephen Michaud: No, we're very exclusive. 

[00:36:16] Bob Gatty: Okay. In other words, if I wrote a book, you wouldn't publish it, huh? 

[00:36:20] Stephen Michaud: Let's, talk about your finances and we'll see what we got. 

[00:36:24] Bob Gatty: Oh, I see. There you go. Since there aren't any finances, we don't have 

[00:36:29] anything. 

[00:36:29] Stephen Michaud: Well there then you must be a writer. 

[00:36:32] Bob Gatty: That exactly right.

[00:36:34] Oh man. Exactly right. Yeah. All Is there anything else we need to talk about? 

[00:36:40] Stephen Michaud: No. I promise not to complain about anything, so we're done.