A Tale of Two Fugitives (Part I)
Updates on alleged cattle Ponzi schemer Josh Link and stock pumper "Zack Morris."
Welcome to Black Sheep, a spin‑off of my serialized memoir, SMIRK. If you’re looking for SMIRK, here’s the link to the complete book. Black Sheep is where I now follow similar themes of fraud and folly in other companies, industries, and individuals.
The movie “The Fugitive” presents a romantic image: Harrison Ford’s character was an innocent man caught in a cat-and-mouse game, using stealth to evade detection, and tirelessly searching for his wife’s real killer. Two real-life fugitives, recently charged in separate fraud cases in Texas, behaved very differently, as alleged by the government — fleeing the country, posting on social media, and taunting prosecutors from afar. One man was lured back to the US through his wife, and now sits in jail awaiting trial; the other remains at large, though not remotely secretive about his whereabouts, and maybe not as safe as he thinks.
Let’s take a closer look at what’s going on.
Love Gets Link Caught
As featured in my series A Ponzi Scheme on the Prairie and follow-up coverage, one of the men I was referring to above is Josh Link, who stands accused of running cattle investment business Agridime as a fraud. Having been investigated by regulators for years, Link was long gone, hiding out in China, when his indictment was unsealed. But he had left someone important behind: his wife, Tia. Charged as an accomplice, she ultimately played a key role in his capture.
Call transcripts filed recently with the court showed that Tia had been cooperating with the government almost since the inception of the case. Snatches of dialogue from the calls, which she placed to him in February and March 2026 with investigators listening in, revealed why: She felt abandoned, that Link was only out for himself, and that she had no choice but to handle the case however she could on her own.
“I’m scared,” she told him on Feb. 25, 2026. “Like, I need your help, and you’re not understanding that, and it doesn’t really sound like you care.”
She continued on March 5, 2026: “You do understand that you are the one that’s hiding during this and I’m having to face this by myself,” she told him. “You understand that, right…I have to move forward on my end, and you are leaving me out to dry.”
Whether it was from pure paranoia or recognition that something was “off” about Tia’s demeanor, Link wasn’t buying that there wasn’t some ulterior purpose to the calls. He repeatedly asked who else might be listening. “Thankfully, I’m not stupid,” he said on Feb. 25. “Do you know how many other people are on the phone with you?” He quizzed her about moments from their marriage, and about their dog, to test her responses; he told her he couldn’t trust her.
“You don’t even love me,” he told her on March 5. “You’re perfectly fine to go turn me in. Happily. But you can’t even say that you…,” he trailed off. “That is the weirdest thing.”
Still, her distress about struggling evidently sounded genuine enough to him to nag his conscience — or made him realize she might cooperate against him (she already was). He took her up on her offer to buy him a plane ticket home, with the idea of turning himself in and planning a defense strategy together. He arrived at LAX on March 9, 2026, and was immediately taken into custody. He now remains in a jail somewhere near Fort Worth.
Twice, Link has asked the federal court to grant him bail. Twice, he was rejected. As part of a 118-page package of evidence objecting to his second attempt in June 2026, prosecutors disclosed the call transcripts and Tia’s cooperation. They showed that investigators had called Link around the time the case was filed in early 2026, and asked him to surrender. Refusing to say where he was, he told them he would “make it impossible” for them to find him. The investigators reported that he “graphically” explained to a female agent “how she could go ‘fuck herself.’”
Prosecutors also disclosed comments he had posted on Facebook, arguing they demonstrated a posture of defiance. Days after his call with the FBI agents, he commented on an image of a wanted poster for himself on Facebook, and he posted a screed where he compared himself to assassinated right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
More screed below:
The government argued: “In summary, from 2025 to 2026, Defendant’s actions demonstrate that if released from custody he is a flight risk and release on any terms or conditions will not ensure his appearance at proceedings in this matter.” In a terse ruling of just two paragraphs, the judge agreed. Link’s attorneys have appealed the decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, but the chances of it overturning the findings are remote at best. U.S. courts rarely, if ever, give second chances to defendants who run.
“Zack Morris” Living It Up On the Lam
And then we have our other defendant in question, Edward Constantinescu. Known by his X persona “Mr. Zack Morris,” Constantinescu and a team of online compatriots are accused of encouraging hundreds of thousands of followers to buy penny stocks, then quietly exiting their positions at huge profits, leaving remaining investors to suffer losses in an inevitable crash. More colloquially, this is called a “pump and dump” scheme.
After the case was initially filed in 2022, the crew managed to get their indictment dismissed based on a questionable interpretation of a recent Supreme Court ruling; on appeal, the Fifth Circuit swiftly reinstated the case. Prosecutors have been rounding up the defendants once again to set new bail terms, but have come up short with Constantinescu. He was already in Romania (now supposedly Montenegro), posting profanity-laced comments about his escape on X and other platforms, along with prolific posting about stock trades and his workout routines.
A new filing in the case paints the situation even more clearly. In a motion filed in July 2026, the government asked the court to order Constantinescu to appear in person given his “stated intention not to return to the United States.” The prosecutors observed that the “very day” Houston court initially dismissed his indictment in May 2024, Constantinescu posted a photo on his Instagram account where “he appears to have cut his ankle monitor,” adding a caption “time to f*ck sh*t up.”
The government also pointed to repeated follow-up social media posts by Constantinescu, including a response on X to a user who noted that a public defender had been appointed for him. Constantinescu posted: “I didn’t request one lol I’m not part of the system anymore. I am never going back to that sh*thole. Keep swinging on my nuts f*gg*ts.”
In another post, Constantinescu declared he was “gone for good.”
Bizarrely, in response to the government’s motion, Constantinescu claimed he wasn’t trying to escape at all, that the government’s framing of his leaving the country was “false” and “wrong,” and that he was merely traveling lawfully. “The Government claims only that Mr. Constantinescu left the country while this case was dismissed, while he was subject to no order of this Court.”
Prosecutors further replied: “By his logic then, [Constantinescu] can evade this Court’s authority indefinitely by simply choosing not to appear. But that is not the law, and this Court is not powerless.” They are correct. Defendants can’t refuse to face active federal charges because they were briefly dismissed, and courts can always require individuals to appear in person under threat of contempt. Refusal to appear can also make you a fugitive, and legal mechanisms to apprehend you can be invoked accordingly.
The next court date is scheduled for Aug. 26, 2026. I, for one, will be very curious to see more about how this plays out.
Stay tuned for Part II, which will offer paying subscribers a more detailed look at the filings, including fuller transcripts of Tia’s calls with Link, and more about the government’s efforts to bring “Zack” to justice.