340. The Shocking Murder of Fahim Saleh

Murder With My Husband

This episode of Murder With My Husband details the tragic 2020 murder of Fahim Saleh, a brilliant and selfless tech entrepreneur who built successful rideshare and gig economy platforms for

Key takeaways

• Fahim Saleh built early social media platforms as a teen, earned his first Google paycheck at $500, and generated ~$2 million annually from PrankDial.com before launching Poteau and Goketa rideshare apps in developing nations.
• Former assistant Tyrese Haspiel embezzled approximately $400,000 from Saleh using fake PayPal accounts and corporate entities, but was allowed to resign with a payment plan instead of facing charges.

Main topics

• Fahim Saleh's entrepreneurial background and tech ventures
• The brutal murder and crime scene discovery

Notable quotes

"As a CEO, the best thing to do is have thinkers on the team, not employees, but partners who are co-sharing your vision and success."

Conclusion

The episode highlights the stark contrast between Saleh's generous legacy and Haspiel's calculated

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) You're listening to an Ono Media podcast. Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And Speaker 1 (0:08) I'm Garrett Moreland. And Speaker 2 (0:09) he's the husband. And I'm the Speaker 1 (0:10) husband. Hello. I feel like I haven't recorded for a while. I don't know why. Wait, Speaker 2 (0:15) before you get into your 10 seconds, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has come in to see us at the Bagel Shop, but also there have been quite a few people who have gifted us things or made us things that have come in and given them to us at the Bagel Shop. And it's such a like surreal thing. And so I just, I wanted to make sure to like, not all of you guys leave a way for me to contact you. If you have, thank you so much for just being so thoughtful and for caring. And it is a really unique and like. Speaker 2 (0:56) To have strangers to us. who take the time out of their day to like show us that they care and so i just want i just want to say thank you yeah Speaker 1 (1:08) we don't have a peel box but if you do have something that you want to give us and you come into the bagel shop um if i'm not there the employees know to take it and put put it to the side so it's actually been pretty fun because we've gotten quite a few things so awesome Speaker 2 (1:27) Also some Speaker 1 (1:28) really cool stuff. Not going to lie. Speaker 2 (1:29) Yeah. From the very beginning, I've saved like all the projects or art things or even just letters that we've gotten. And I have them all in a box and I like to just keep them. So it's just, it's just surreal and it's cool. And I just love you guys. And I just want to say that we are really grateful and thank you. Speaker 1 (1:48) Thank you. Speaker 2 (1:49) What do you got for your 10 seconds? Speaker 1 (1:51) Honestly, I don't have too much. For my 10 seconds, because we have just been getting ready for this baby. Why Speaker 2 (2:00) don't you tell them the baby prep that you worked on that just all got here today? Speaker 1 (2:04) What got here today? Speaker 2 (2:06) All the research you did and what you got. Speaker 1 (2:08) Oh, just like the baby cameras and the nanites. I Speaker 2 (2:12) asked Garrett because he's a lot better at the technology. So I've been, you know, ordering the diapers for me and the baby. The owlets, Speaker 1 (2:22) the nannets, the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I Speaker 2 (2:24) had Garrett do all the research and try to figure out what to get as far as like systems go. So. Speaker 1 (2:30) No, it's been good. We've just been prepping for baby. We're getting ready for baby. Baby's coming soon. We're going to have a baby. We've just been working. Yeah. We've just been kind of getting ready for her, huh? Speaker 2 (2:41) Yeah. Last night I was like, I'm a little scared. And Garrett was like, why? And I was like. Because we have to take her home after. Speaker 1 (2:50) Yeah, it's true. Can't have her and be like, all right, I mean, I guess we could. Well, Speaker 2 (2:55) because in my head, it's like, okay, I just got to get through this first trimester. Okay, I just got to get through this pregnancy. Okay, I just got to get through delivery. And Speaker 1 (3:02) now it's like, oh, shoot, I have to deliver this baby and then take her home. Speaker 2 (3:06) And then the hard part actually starts. You know what I mean? That's a little scary. That ride home with a baby in the car seat. I'm Speaker 1 (3:13) going to freaking put her in a carrier and just start making bagels. She has to get Speaker 2 (3:19) her license. Speaker 1 (3:20) Oh, her food handler's license? Yeah. They're not going to care. Oh, Speaker 2 (3:25) she's smart. She'll have your brain. She can just wing it. It's Speaker 1 (3:27) going to be fun. We're excited. So that's my 10 seconds. We've just been getting ready for, did I say her name? Speaker 2 (3:33) No. Speaker 1 (3:33) We do get that question a lot. We do have a name. We're just not going to announce it until she's here. Speaker 2 (3:41) Or maybe never. Speaker 1 (3:42) Okay. We're going to tell you what the name is, but we're just not going to announce Speaker 2 (3:46) it. Speaker 1 (3:46) Her name's Speaker 2 (3:46) Baby. Speaker 1 (3:47) Until she's here. We just don't want... too many unnecessary opinions until she's here Speaker 2 (3:53) even after she's here it's Speaker 1 (3:56) true honestly 99 percent of you are amazing and we love you so much but then we somehow have sometimes have this one percent of people who feel like they need to tell us what to do which i get that's fine but i just know we're gonna tell we're gonna tell everyone what her name is and then we're gonna have like a couple thousand people that are like oh Speaker 2 (4:12) my gosh it is the dumbest i Speaker 1 (4:14) don't care So anyways, we're just waiting to say her name. We have about four weeks left and everyone will know her name. We're really, really excited. We're excited to share it with you guys. Speaker 2 (4:25) Which they shouldn't say it's a dumb name because it's a family name. So anytime you look at a baby and you say... Speaker 1 (4:32) Fine, it's Garrett. Speaker 2 (4:33) Her name is Garrett. Speaker 1 (4:35) We should just name her Garrett. Speaker 2 (4:36) Every time you look at a baby and you think, what a dumb name or you look at a parent, why would they name that? Sometimes names really have meaning. Sometimes they're not just like... The parents thought it was cute. Speaker 1 (4:47) Yeah. And even if it's the parents thought it was Speaker 2 (4:50) cute. Garrett's a Speaker 1 (4:50) family name. King Garrett. Speaker 1 (4:54) True. You're funny. Okay. That's all we got. We're going to hop into this week's case. Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting. Seriously. We love you all. Thank you for saying hi to us. Thank you for following, liking, subscribing, all of that. Let's do it. Speaker 2 (5:11) Our sources for this episode are CNN.com, businessinsider.com, pix11.com, theindependent.com, BuzzFeed News, Forbes, ABC7.com. NewYorkPost.com, ManhattanDA.org, BBC.com, People.com, TBSNews.com, New York Homicide Season 3, Episode 20. And as always, our case sources are always listed in our episode notes if you ever want to check them out. When Speaker 1 (5:39) we think Speaker 2 (5:39) about extreme wealth and Speaker 1 (5:42) success Speaker 2 (5:42) in this country, America, we usually think about the people who climbed the ladder to the top. After all, some of the world's biggest companies are synonymous with their founders. Steve Jobs and Apple, Elon Musk and Tesla, Richard Branson and Virgin. But getting to that level of success comes at a cost. It is hard to build an empire without stepping on a few necks along the way, without putting your own interests above that of others. But I think about... what the world would look like if success didn't have to come with that level of selfishness and greed? What if everyone used their ambition to lift people up instead? Well, that is how I actually came across the story of Fahim Saleh. In 2020, Fahim was a young entrepreneur living in Manhattan. His goal was to use his technologies to help create more opportunities in developing countries. Fahim was described as one of those selfless entrepreneurs who really was looking out for others and those who worked for him. But unfortunately, that kindness and generosity he showed was also the thing that ended up sealing his fate. So let me start by introducing you to Fahim because What he accomplished in his 33 years of life is truly something to be proud of. Fahim was actually born in Saudi Arabia, but both of his parents were from Bangladesh. His father worked in computer sciences, and they moved around a lot when Fahim and his two sisters were young. But eventually, as a family, they all actually landed. in Rochester, New York, in the United States. Now, around the time Fahim was in middle school, this was the late 90s, he became very interested in computer programming. And just being in middle school, he decides to build his first website on the World Wide Web. And it is called SoleilFamily.com. It was a little AOL site that his dad would have people click on at parties. Speaker 1 (8:05) AOL. Did you use? No, you were too young. You never used AIM, did you? No. Do you know what AIM is? Yes. Love AIM. Speaker 2 (8:13) So this was just an AOL site that his dad would have people click on at parties so he could get his view count up, coming to a grand total of a dozen or so visitors. Speaker 1 (8:25) It Speaker 2 (8:25) was tiny, but it sparked something even bigger in the teenage Fahim. Fahim's favorite thing to do on a weekend night was actually sit in his pajamas at home just creating new websites. It's the 90s. He is loving it. When he was 15, he went on to build actually an early social media type platform called teenhangout.com. It was a blogging forum where his friends and classmates could go on and just post their thoughts. And he actually learned how to monetize it all the way back then. He was making $3 a month. Speaker 1 (9:03) But Speaker 2 (9:04) by high school, his website collection was growing. He created AimDude.com and MSNDolls.com, among others, that offered online avatars for people's chat profiles, which was a pretty big deal at a time when AOL Messenger and other chat tools were becoming a pretty big part of teen culture. Now, Fahim said his parents didn't really get it at first, and it did get him in trouble sometimes, claiming, quote, I would stay up super late and would be worried my dad would catch me. He thought it would hinder my schoolwork, which it didn't. Speaker 1 (9:43) It's actually so true. I feel like all parents thought, like, if you were talking on AIM all night. The Speaker 2 (9:51) World Wide Web. Yeah. Speaker 1 (9:52) They're like, what are you doing? Like, I don't know. It's