who was going to promote the bieber concerts. to further convince weinberg, ahmed had a conversation call with a top member of bieber s management group. but it wasn t long before things started to unravel. we start getting kind of word from norway from one of our contacts there i think the justin bieber tickets have gone on sale and have sold out. reporter: and these were the tickets you were preparing to sell? absolutely. and we re thinking, that s impossible. reporter: there were never going to be any tickets. it was all a con job orchestrated by waleed ahmed. weinberg was frantic. he calls the fbi. ahmed had flown back to norway where he posed for these photos and then made what would be a fateful choice. he flew back to san francisco for one more meeting with
has never heard of him and never has cnn founder ted turner. the former miss finland says she had no idea what ahmed was up to, either. martin luther king iii says he vaguely remembers getting his picture taken with ahmed but does not the know him. as for andrew young who met him at a u.n. foundation gathering in norway, he says he s shocked at what became of who he believed was a rising star. he use mid contacts for things i didn t know about. the first i heard from this was when he had been arrested and his lawyer called me and told me what he had been charged with. and my first reaction was there must be some misunderstanding. reporter: but there is no misunderstanding. today ahmed has traded louie have i ton for prison garb. he confessed to the fbi that he set up fake websites and e-mails
it all started with the call weinberg received from a good friend in the music industry. he said that he had come across an opportunity through his group, and he runs in circles down in los angeles that are legit. reporter: weinberg was told about this young kid named ahmed. waleed claimed to have paid, according to the contracts, $4.5 million. are for the rights to five shows in scandinavia. reporter: they handle bieber. so it all started to sound real to weinberg. weinberg was asked to invest a million dollars. with $8 60,000 going to ahmed so he could secure venues. the rest went to two california management companies that ahmed brought in to prepare for the concer concerts. legitimate looking contracts followed. i was told that i would get a percentage of the ticket sales
and i know the results will be fantastic. angie s list reviews you can trust. now to the special cnn investigation. this international con man targeted celebrities in the world s most powerful and very, very soon you will find out how long he will be spending behind bars for his latest scam. it s a scam that involved, of all people, justin bieber. gary tuchman reports. reporter: to todd weinberg, a wealthy investor, a entrepreneur from northern california, 22-year-old ahmed was the picture of success. so weinberg felt very comfortable trusting the young man with his money, a lot of his money. after all, ahmed was the toast of norway where the press hailed him as an innovative genius for supposedly inventing a solar energy cover that could charge iphones. the norwegian government even put up this video of ahmed and
18 months. hey, he pled guilty, give him 18 months. the fbi says it s uncovered some e-mails ahmed sent from jail to a friend and in these e-mails he says he s done this before. once he gets out of jail he plans to do it again. and they say in the e-mails he says he s furious at the u.s. government for lock iing him up and the u.s. government will pay for this. wow. we ll find out what happens to him whether it s 18 months or eight years. gary tuchman, appreciate it very much. coming up, it is one of the biggest intelligence leaks in u.s. history. itch the authorities to wiretap anyone. edward snowden identifies himself and the surveillance program. but who is this guy? he s a 29-year-old. how do agencies like the cia and the nsa screen the people hired to do this classified work for them? un