Danny Jones Podcast - #27 - Inside The Mind of a Pathological Liar | Matthew Cox (part 3)

Episode Date: December 16, 2019

Matthew Cox joins the podcast to tell the story of a pathological liar, Marcus Schrenker. Schrenker was a notorious money manager who ran a Ponzi Scheme and then faked his own death by parachuting out of his private plane after setting it to fly out over the Gulf of Mexico which led to a multi-state, three-day manhunt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I have some props. I have props. Oh, yeah, props are great. Props are amazing. Cool. All right. What's up, Matt?

We're back. Okay. We're back with the Matt Cox. The fans love you. Everyone loves you. You're back. Thanks for coming back. This is your third time back.

Yeah. When are you going to do the other? The other one's going to come out next week. Not this week, but next week. Okay. We have a couple that are coming out. I'm backlogged on like five. podcast right now.

Oh, that's good though. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. A lot of content. We're cranking out a shitload of them, which is cool. But Matt Cox is back by popular demand. How you doing? Good, excellent.

So what are we going to talk about today? You got a book that you're about to publish, right? Right. Called bailout. Right. This is one of the stories that you wrote when you were incarcerated on a guy. What's his name? Give me the quick backstory on it.

It's Marcus Shrinker. Marcus Shrinker was, the financial crisis, in 2008, in the final financial, during the financial crisis, he was about to be indicted for securities fraud. He had a hedge fund, or not a hedge fund, he had a wealth management company where he was basically just stealing from his clients. It was a mini-ponsie scheme, very small Ponzi scheme. Well, he was about to be indicted, and they'd already raided his office. he knew it was coming. Well, he also was a pilot. So he devises this plan where he's going to take his plane up,

and he's going to call in a distress signal and say that the windshield has imploded, and he's bleeding and, you know, I'm losing consciousness, you know, a whole thing. And then he's going to jump out of the plane and let the plane fly out over the Gulf and run out of fuel and land in the car. golf. The intro to that story, so the synopsis that I read on your website, the first couple paragraphs are, they just grab you by the throat. That's like a great intro to the story, how it just starts out with him on the plane, calling in the distress call, saying that his window's broken, he's bleeding profusely, grabs the parachute. Who says profusely?

Right. In the heat of the moment like that. I'm jammed up. I'm the last thing I'm going to do is try and come off eloquent. I got issues going on. I mean, that's pretty ballsy to do something like that. To literally, to ghost ride your plane and just jump out. Listen, it was everywhere. Keep in mind, too, here's the problem. So you saw it. When you were inside, when you were locked up, you saw this on the news.

Yeah, by the time I met him, I mean, I had already... He was trying to fake his own death, right? Correct. Okay. Of course, what happens is he does call, he takes the plane up. He calls in the distress signal. he sets the autopilot, he goes out, opens up the door, jumps out with a parachute, and lands, and the plane heads towards the golf.

Unfortunately for Marcus, however comical for everyone watching, because the door opens up, there's more drag on the aircraft. So his calculation of it will go out 50 or 100 miles or 200 miles into the golf and crash was off because it burned up too much fuel because it's no longer as aerodynamic. And so it runs out of fuel about a mile or two before the Gulf and it crashes into a swampy area. And he said, remember he says, you know,

that the windshield had imploded. Well, of course, that whole plane, if you've ever seen pictures, if you go to the website and look at the story and I have the pictures of the plane, the tails ripped off, the wings are ripped off. The whole thing is, I mean, as it goes through the trees, it's just totaled windshield's still perfectly

intact. Not a scratch. Yeah, not a crack on it. And when he landed and he went through the trees, one of his testicles got ripped off. I mean, you know, that's what he said. That's what he said. But anyway, let's look.

Okay, let's start from the beginning. Right. So he, so the point is that he gets caught. So what happens is, I recall, I was already at the medium at that time. And I remember seeing it, like you had asked, I remember seeing it on CNN, in sitting there and they're talking about this guy who had taken the plane out and they were looking for him.

And I'm like, something doesn't sound right. So anyway, years later, I'm at the low and I'm writing guys' stories. I had written Ephraim Deverelli's story, the guy from Wardogues, I had written Doug Dodd's story, the guy that was in Rolling Stone. I option, or I was a part of the option for that film. So Shrinker comes to me. and he says to me, you know, hey, I understand that you write guy's stories. And I was like, you know, the family, it's so hard not to mock him the way he talks.

He's like, he's like, hi, I understand. I mean, it's, it's so over the top, dramatic. Yeah. So, you know, he does this whole, hi. Well, Matt, I just, I don't understand. How can they, it's just so pathetic. But he comes up to me and he says, I understand you write guy's stories. And I'm like, yeah, I write guy's stories.

And he's like, I have a story. I'm Marcus Schrinker and I was like oh yeah yeah Marcus I'd seen him around I had had a conversation or two with him briefly and I said okay what's up he's like well I have a story but I think I'm I remember that I should have known right then he said I should have known something was wrong because he said I think I'm finally ready to be honest about the story I thought red flag well okay and I said well what's the story because your story's basically out there right it's been told you've been on 2020 you've been on date line you've been on you've been on all these major shows.

It was covered in every newspaper around the world. I mean, there were newspapers in China that are covering. I mean, it was so sensational. Who does this? It's a movie. It's insane. Right, definitely. So he says to me, I'm like, I mean, what's new?

He's like, well, you don't understand. People don't know the truth. And I'm like, well, what's the truth? And he goes, the truth is, he said, I shouldn't be in prison at all. He said, you understand? He said, I didn't take the money. He goes, my wife pilfered all those accounts. she was the CFO of our company.

It was a large company, and I didn't know what was happening. By the time they raided the office, that's when I realized what she'd done. He said, and I didn't want her to be taken away from my children. And so I devised a scheme to try and sacrifice myself and jump out. He said, plus he said, I had like $11 million in life insurance. And if I was dead, she would get the money and my kids would be taken care of. and, you know, he said basically the whole economy was melting down at the time. So he said, I just thought I would do the right thing and try and sacrifice myself.

And, you know, and their marriage was over anyway. So he has this whole thing where he tells me this story. And, you know, look, I'm in prison. I had no way to verify anything at that moment. So talking to him, he is so sincere, so over the top sincere. You want to believe him. And I wanted to believe at that moment, I wanted to believe that, wow, this is nothing like what I what I'd heard.

Yeah. And I had seen, like, part of the episode of, I almost got away with it he had done. I'd seen, like, the last half of it. And so, you know, I knew he'd jump out of the plane. I knew all that. And so I'm like, wow, okay. So I remember that night I went and I called my literary agent and talked to him, his name was Ross.

And I said, Ross, listen, this guy, Marcus Schrenker, and he jumped out of the plane. He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I've seen, I know who you're talking about. Yeah. So he talks to me about it. And I tell him, yeah, you don't understand. His wife, she's the one that did it. And I'm telling him all this. And he's like, oh, Matt, he's lying to you.

And I went, no, no, no, you don't understand? He's like, no, no, I understand. He said, I've read everything on this guy. He said, I was fascinated by this guy. He said, I watched all the episodes of all the different stories. I've seen everything on him. He said, look, you don't have access to the internet. He's let me print out some stuff.

Four days later, I get a stack of articles. and a note from him saying, look, I'm sending you more stuff. So when I read it and I see all these things that say he's a pathological liar. Like there's several of his victims are saying, look, you can't believe a thing he says. His wife's like, look, he's a liar.

I mean, he lies all the time. And his victims are like, you know what I'm saying? This guy's a path. He's pathological. Yeah. So I go back to him and I sit down and I said, okay, well, Marcus, there's a lot of stuff. And I start talking to him.

You know, there's a lot of stuff that says that, you know, you're lying. A lot of these are lies and you lie all the time. He's like, oh, Matt, they, they, that's the newspapers. They, they lied, they lied. They lied about you, didn't they? And I went,

exaggerated, but I said, it's about 99% accurate. One or two things I'm irritated about it. Yeah. It's pretty accurate. Yeah. You know. I would have written it a little differently. Yeah.

Yeah. I would have come off a little bit nicer. So, and, and he's like, uh, well, yeah, they lied about me and this and that. And I was like, okay, okay. But as we talked, I, you know, I just, I was fascinated. After you, when you know someone's a pathological liar and they're talking to you

and you start to really, now you're analyzing everything that they say. And I kind of realized, maybe I can get what really happened out of this guy. Yeah. Maybe he's never told anybody what really happened. It's always been a blatant lie. Nobody really knows what's going on in his head. And he's never admitted to be a liar. And nobody knows why he's a liar or why he's pathological or how that developed.

So I asked Ross to send me in a bunch of materials. I had at that point, I believe I had, I believe Joy. I had an assistant on the street that was working with me. And keep in mind, too, like, all these people are doing all this for free. So, like, I had like an assistant named Joy who was simply helping me for free. Why was she doing that? She loved the idea of me being in prison, writing stories. Okay.

You'd be shocked how many things I got just by writing a letter explaining, this is, I'm in prison, I got this much time, this is what I did, this is what I'm doing now, and I need some help. Can you please do this for me? And they would, you know, I had this one time, I had a transcript I needed. It's like 50, 60 bucks for the transcript. So I write a letter to the transcriptionist, right, to the court reporter. And I say, look, you want like $60 for this transcript. And I said, I'm on a budget. I make this much money every month.

You know, I'm in prison for this long, and it might seem silly, but I write true crime stories. And I would like to get a copy of this transcript, but you want $60 for it. I don't need it right away, and I'm not using it for legal purposes. So if you could do it at your leisure, simply so that I could get some excerpts from it, it would really help me out. And I would really appreciate that. And I'm asking you, I'm not asking you to do it for free. I'm asking you to try and give me some kind of a discount.

It just helped me out here. You know, a dollar a page instead of $350 a page, something. And about a week later, I got the transcript. So keep mind, she had to get that letter, and then she had to transcribe it. It wasn't already transcribed. She then sent me the transcription with a letter that said, you know, I read your letter. I like the idea of what you're doing. I wish you the best of luck, and here's the transcript.

for free. Yeah, no charge. Good luck. I was like, whoa. Hell, yeah. I mean, that's a hell of a breath. I wrote a letter back saying, listen, I don't get a lot of breaks.

Yeah. You know, I appreciate that. That's over the top. Nice. That was, I really appreciate it. I said, yeah, I told her, you rock. Yeah. You know, so.

So what happens is Ross starts sending me in stuff on path, on pathological liars. Your literary agent. My literary agent. I also start ordering the freedom of information at. Keep mind, I tell all these guys the same thing. Okay, listen, and I had this conversation with Shrinker.

Listen, I'll write the story. I find it interesting. But you need to know up front. I'm going to order documents. I'm going to request transcripts. I'm requesting that you may have to sign some stuff. I may get called into the lieutenant's office or to SIS, and they may ask me, why are you getting documents sent to you?

And you may be called up there to devouch for me. I need to know that you'll do that. Of course, man. Of course I'll do that. It looks like that. So I said, and on top of that, I said, as the story progresses and when I'm done with it, and I give it to you, you may not be thrilled with this story. Right. I'm going to write the story the way I see it, and you don't really have any input.

You know, if I get some things that are factually wrong, I'm willing to make those alterations, but they have to be factual. Right. And if I have, if I'm getting facts in additional information that doesn't corroborate what you're saying, we have to have a discussion. We have to figure out what's going on. Absolutely, Matt. Of course, I'm not lying. I wouldn't lie. I don't lie, Matt.

I mean, it was just, it was just, oh. So I started ordering all the documents. I start writing a story. What's funny is one of the things I got was I read several reports on pathological liars. And there's not a lot of stuff. I read a book. I got a book. I got this one book in.

It was really only like one or two books. One of them, I think it was called Lies, Lies, Lies. the psychology of deception. Okay. And it talks all about pathological liars and all these studies that had been done. Yeah. There's not a lot of them. I noticed in your schnopsis there's a lot of quotes from like psychiatrists that study that kind of stuff.

Right. Some of those were taken from actual published reports or studies that I got. Like I got condensed studies sent in 10 pages, six pages. And they explain like they would take kids and they do all these things and adults and how to spot someone who's lying. sort of thing. It's virtually impossible. It talks about their brain chemistry. Yeah. And it also talks about the different types of pathological liars. Okay. So he's based on my, you know, me being a novice and not really, and I'm not a doctor or anything, but he seemed to fall into the realm of being what's called a pseudo-fantastical pathological liar, which is that he tells a consistent lie.

and he's told these lies and they're within reason. But he's told them throughout his whole life and he's built up this false persona of who he is so that he can continue to say brag and lie. And then one of the things that they talk

about pathological liars that most pathological liars, it develops when they're children. And so I'm reading this about how it develops when you're a child and he doesn't realize that I'm reading all this. Doesn't know that I'm getting these reports, doesn't know I'm reading it.

And yet he is, I mean, he is the quintessential pathological lie. I mean, he falls, every category he falls into. Yeah, he nails it. Like abusive parents, being abused as a child, not wanting to be the person he is, being in a bad position. Yeah, can you give me one of the examples

in the synopsis of, like, child abuse? I think there was a couple specifics. I don't know if you can remember him right now. Well, yeah, what he said, and keep on in the book, So I have like a book that's coming out, right? So, you know, you read the synopsis. Well, in the book, I talk about a little bit more into it.

And when I say child abuse, I just mean that according to Shrinker, you know, his mother was an alcoholic. And his mother married a guy that was an alcoholic. His father was a great guy, his real father. But his mother was an alcoholic, according to him, and his stepfather was. And his stepfather used to beat him and his brothers and his mother. And at one point, he was actually hospitalized. his he had well he'd been beaten and he fought back

and he ends up beating up his stepfather and but he gets taken away and instead of going to like a juvenile facility he says they place him in a mental hospital for I don't know how long it was 30 days or 60 days or 90 I forget I have it it's in the book

so and he has to go through all these things and they don't catch the fact that he's a pathological liar because by this point remember at one point during the writing of the story I explained to him, when I first started, I said, look, you know, one of the issues is everything that's out there talks about these lies. And he, of course, you know, Matt, I don't lie.

You know, I'm not saying you lie. What I'm saying is that at one point in your life, you did lie. So I'm trying to kind of coax him into helping me out. And so I'm trying to convince him to tell me the truth. But keep in mind, too, I'm reading these reports. So I'm realizing he'll tell me the truth if he thinks it's in his best interest. Right. So I have to make, I have to explain to you that by admitting to a pathological, admitting your

pathological liar is in your best interest. Right. Right. So I explained to them that, look, it's better for you to admit that you're a pathological liar now early on. Let's get ahead of this. I never say pathological liar. I always say habitual liar that you had an issue with lying.

So let's talk about how, let's address it head on that you had an issue and that you did lie. And you don't lie now, but you did. lie at one point and and let's talk about that and why you lied and so i said that way it builds trust with the reader so if you say these things up front later on if you happen to have to say something that they don't believe or shouldn't believe they will believe you because there's no reason that you would have admitted to these other things and then lied about this yeah i think there was a part in there where he, when he was a young child, it started where he would have to lie to his friends,

where they wanted to go to his house, and he would have to make up a lie about why they couldn't go to his house, like it was being fumigated or something, but he just didn't want people to go there and see what was actually going on at his house with his stepdad and his mom. Right, right. That's the first lie. He told me, I asked him, I said, can you tell me that, can you remember the very first lie? And he said, I don't know if it's the first lie. He said, but the very first lie I can remember telling his, he said that his parents were, basically, they were arguing and about to get, he said he could tell it was about to boil over into a full-blown screaming argument

where they're throwing dishes and shit and he said, I could tell and some kids in the neighborhood showed up wanted to play like Atari or something and he was like, we can't play here because my stepfather's painting in the inside of the house so we got to go to your house and they were like, okay, and he was like, that was like the first time

I lied out of. So he was like hardwired to lie almost just because Right. Well, everybody lies. Yeah. You know, kids lie. It's funny because, you know, the statistic that I had read in a couple different things, a couple different of those studies was that men and women lie

about the same. Really? Yeah, right. So if, and I mean, on average, you tell a lie, like,

I forget it, it's ridiculous. It's like every 14 minutes in a conversation or every seven minutes, it's outrageous. Now, they're minor lies,

you know, like, like, man, that's, I love that camo, you know, what the truth is, I don't like the camo.

It's ridiculous. It looks like pajamas. And I'm not going to say that. They consider that a lie. So, you know, or, and what's so funny is that,

Men and women lie the same. But 80% of men, males lie to make themselves look better. 20% they do it to make someone else feel better. Women, 80% of the time, they lie to make someone else feel better. 20% to make themselves feel better. So it just kind of shows like what selfish prick men are. Yeah. You know?

Wow. So he just lies about everything. Yeah. So, yeah, we talk about that. and the first time he told a lie and how it developed. And then he starts just, it just, it keeps going and going to the point where he starts lying for no reason at all. These, these guys would lie.

He would do stuff. And he tells me this, by the way. He's explaining to me. He said, he just got to the point where he said, I would, I would say that like my brother, like we were going to, we were going to go to Disney World over the weekend. I tell all his friends at school. Yeah, my stepdad's going to bring the whole family to Disney World. We're leaving Friday and we're going to go all weekend.

We're going to drive down to Florida and go to Disney World. Oh, okay. Well, then on Monday, they'd say, did you go to Disney World? He'd go, no, I couldn't because my brother broke his arm. His brother goes the same school. He's walking around. With no broken arm. No broken arm.

Yeah. And then, you know what I'm saying? Why would you say that? Right. You know it's, you're very quickly going to be discovered that that's a lie. Yeah. Does it anyway. He'd do it to me.

You know, he'd do it all the time. Guys would say if you... And he just didn't, and he didn't care. People never called him out or he just was... Because it's so stupid. Or he would say, I never said that. Plus, you gotta think their defense mechanism is to get angry, typically. Right.

So, you know, like, can you imagine his wife? His wife doesn't call him on it. You know, she's 120 pounds. You know, he's 190 pounds. I mean, he's, you know, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he gets angry and he yells and screams and I'd seen him do it. He'd done it to me several times if I pushed he would be like, I don't have to

put up with this bullshit man, this is bullshit I don't have to fucking and he'd get up and walk off. I'd think okay that's it, we're not working together, it's not going to happen he's done, he's pissed at me and he's not going to cooperate. Three days later he'd go, hey Matt I was going when are we meeting again?

Like it never happened. But I realized how far to push him and how to coax him into telling me what really happened. So he starts, you know, we talk about childhood

and the different lies and how he started lying so much. You know, they're not beneficial lies necessarily. Right. They're just lies to make himself feel good. What are you good? Everybody else is doing something for the weekend.

What are you doing, Marcus? You know, oh, we're going to Disney World. You know, he's a little kid. Yeah. So it just became, there were so many lies to cover for his family or for his embarrassment

that, somehow or another becomes it starts to feel natural and it feels good to fool people you know it feels good that I've convinced you that this is what's happening or that I'm special and keep mind that follows him

throughout his whole life keep mind this guy's a pilot he ends up getting he's got a series 67 series 7 or series 63 series 7 he's got all of his licenses right all of his insurance licenses he's got everything he owns his own wealth management firm. He owns a couple planes. He's a stunt pilot. He's got an amazing looking wife. He's got,

what, three beautiful kids. He lives in a 10,000 square foot house. Why do you have to lie and tell people that you used to work for NASA and fly F-15s? Aren't you already at the top? Right. It's good enough right. You're a top shelf individual already. Yeah. He's still lying. I just can't help it. Right. I mean, so you have to know it's pathological. I mean, he just can't stop. So I keep telling the story about how we ping between me being in prison, interviewing him, and telling the story. And periodically, you know, I know what the story is because I'm getting the documents it. I'm getting stuff in from, keep in mind, everything I got, freedom of information, federal, and I hit every single state that he dealt with. So I've got documents, not just from the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Can you hold up that stack of documents so the camera can see it? Hold it up by your face. This is what Matt brought in today. Yeah, this is... Hold a sideways so we can see how thick it is. And this is a third of it. I threw twice this much out because it was repetitive. Okay.

How many times do I need victims? That's an absurd amount of paperwork. Yeah. Oh, and this is, you know, this is... It's like a huge affidavit. This is, this is... This is a sentencing memorandum, you know. These are affidavits for, this is an affidavit.

This is, I've got victim statements. I've got, what's really great is the letters from, the internal notes and emails that I have from all the different insurance agencies. Okay. Like in Texas and Indiana and where they're writing back and forth to each other, like the different agencies are writing back and forth. Oh, this guy's a fucking... To each other. He's a piece of garbage. He's a line.

Really? They're just... They're blasting him. They're like, look, he's ripping people off. He's done this. We think he's running a churning scam. We think he's running this kind of a scam. And they're going back and forth, back and forth. So all of things that he's not telling me,

nor do I think he necessarily knows all of that. So as, you know, he starts telling me how things progressed in his life. Okay. And some stuff I can verify. Some stuff I can't. Did he go to Purdue? I can verify he went to Purdue because I've got a new. newspaper articles. I don't get anything from Purdue. They didn't answer a request. They're not a

government agency. So I do get, I couldn't get anything to verify that he was actually in a mental institution as a child, but he did tell a reporter that, and I have that. So had I, had he just said it, I would have been, would have questioned whether, how much to really, how much validity it had. However, I did get a couple articles that specifically talk about how he's told this story before. So I have proof that this is something he constantly says. At least it's a consistent lie. Right. And then, you know, it goes on and on.

Then eventually he ends up working for, he graduates. He becomes a pilot. He ends up graduating Purdue University with a degree in finance and Aaron. according to him, you know, and really according to some different articles and stuff, talk about how he graduated Purdue. So then he goes to work for John Hancock, which is an insurance care, selling different products, you know, they sell like annuities, things like that. So then he ends up opening up his own firm, which was heritage wealth management. And it had a couple different names. You know, he's constantly kind of shifting the names around, but they're all

basically heritage, wealth management heritage, financial services heritage. So, anyway, so what ends up happening is I start getting the documents in that talk about the lawsuits and the different scams that he's running. And his major scam was, his main scam that he made the most money at, by the way, was the churning scam where he would convince people to invest in indexed annuities. Right. And an indexed annuities and an insurance product. Can you mind, he also, he would do stocks.

You know, he would buy stocks and sell stocks too, but he was explaining to me there's not a lot of money in stocks, you know, as a stock broker. And he's like, and nobody has like the edge. He's like, I mean, they're all pretty much the same. You know, you might make half a percent, maybe two percent. on a sale he's like okay so big deal right people aren't buying 100,000 worth of shares you know up in indiana yeah you know they're buying you know put 5,000 you know what's he getting 2% of 5 that's nothing right so he starts selling these indexed annuities because

the market had taken a crash this is like after the bubble had burst the the tech bubble had burst and so he starts selling these index annuities and what he does is he's he starts targeting pilots because he's a pilot so he can talk pilot talk to them and aeronautics and they get it and he gets it and they like him and well develop a good rapport with right and then they're giving him other pilots right well you're talk to my buddy john so he's kind of niche right so he starts telling the pilots he used to work for delta by the way and he used to work for NASA and he's also telling them he used to fly f15s um or I think it's A-10 word hogs or something like that. Yeah. In, and like, it's just, it's just ridiculous. I mean, like, during Desert Storm, he would tell people he was, he was, he was an F-15s or F-16s or something during Desert Storm. Okay, well, you were like 18.

Yeah. You would be the youngest pilot in history, you know, there's, you know, or fighter pilot. Right, right. You have to get your degree. You have to, then you have to go through all the schooling. then you have, this is no way. Lightly, 23, 24, 25 years old by the time you're flying these guys on the phone

that he's selling annuities to, they aren't doing the matter. They don't know. They don't know really how old he is. So, and what's happening is he's, so you give me $100,000, let's say you give me $20,000. Well, on the annuities, he's not making one or two percent. He's making like 15%. So you give me 10 grand, I'm making $1,500.

And most of these guys are putting, in big money. They're putting in 100,000. Because he's pitching the annuities as being a very safe product, which I guess they are, but they're not lucrative. They don't make a lot of money. They don't make, it's not a huge return. What happens is that for the first year, it would guarantee you a return of, let's say, whatever, I'll make it up the numbers, 7%. Or let's say even if it's 10%. Oh yeah, it's 10% and he would be like it's 10% guaranteed return for the first year. And after that if you're if it changes you can pull your money out we you can that's true but there's a surrender what's called a surrender fee so you pull your money out you lose 20% of you get hit yeah

right so you give me a hundred thousand dollars shrinker might make 12% he just made 12 grand you might make 10% on your over the next year but then in a year it drops down to like 1% or 0% and so suddenly they would turn around they'd say oh I want my money back. Right. Or let's take my money out of that and put it into something else. And he would say, okay, and then he pulled the money out. Well, they would hit him with a surrender fee.

He'd buy some other product with it, some stocks or whatever they wanted to do. And then they would go, wait a second, shrinker. They took 20% of my money. They only cut me a check back for, you know, whatever, 88,000 instead of the 110,000. Yeah. And he would say, you know, I don't know, that's strange. That is weird. Keep in mind, too, he's got the money.

He's making up documents. Even if you figure it out eventually, and typically what he would do also is he would convince them not to pull the money out initially. He'd say, look, it's a bad quarter. Let's wait till next quarter. So now it's been a year and change. So a year and so three months later, he might get you to go again. Hey, look, it's going to change. It's going to go up.

We need to stick with this. So now it's been 18 months. Then he pulls it out. They hit you with the surrender with the fee. Now all the documents you sign. you signed were 18 months ago. And when you say, hey, man, they hit me with 20%. He says, well, yeah, I told you about the surrender fee.

Or he says, that's crazy. Yeah, I can't believe they did that. I'm going to take care of this. And he writes them and says, look, I'm talking to them. I have a meeting not next week but the week after. I'm going to get to the bottom of this. He spins them and spins them and spins them and spins them and spins them. Months go by.

you know maybe he wears them down maybe they get frustrated they go away but he's got all the documents where they signed saying they understood there was a surrender fee and i remember convincing him what you were going to say i was going to say no did he like just hide that and all the paperwork and he never saw it or was it even in there to begin with oh yeah it's in there it was in there these are documents that came from the from the insurance company and what happens if it's like the apple terms of service when you sign when you when you scroll through all that shit and hit accept. Right. Nobody reads it all.

Nobody's reading it. Right. And I remember, I explained to him, you know, he was saying, I was saying, did you just disclose the surrender fee? I don't understand why. And he'd say, you know, well, I mean, you know, Matt, those, there's those documents are, and I remember thinking he's about to lie to me. I want to catch him before he lies to me.

And so I, I remember saying, listen, man, I mean, I get it. I get what, I get it because I own a mortgage company. You know how many people I've disclosed to it? You know how many times I would put the documents? down and I would just run through the disclosures and I'd say, you know, this is for the insurance and such and such. This is stating this is stating this is stating this. Pre-payment penalty. This is stating the prepayment penalty is only 1% of the, you know, of the of your payment. This is stating this. This is stating that you're going to carry. So I said, I'd just go. I said, what did you do? I said, because I would do that.

And guys would just sign and sign and say, I'd be like, I'd flip it over and I'd say sign here. I've got my hand over the document now. You can't read this. I'm going, you know what I'm saying? I've got my hand. I'm going, sign here, sign here, sign here. here. Check my watch. So you sign real quick because I just told you what it is. Right. Even if you said, look, do you want to sit here for 45 minutes and read these?

They would go, uh, no, I'll just sign. Right, exactly. So he would disclose and he wouldn't disclose the surrender fee, but they would sign. Right. And it's in there. 18 months later, if they really start to bitch and moan and some, some lawyer shows up or somebody says anything, he can always say, you signed it. Right.

I did disclose this. I don't ever remember you. Well, I mean, I trust me, I always. always disclosed properly. Sure. And you don't remember because it was 18 months ago. Right. You were happy with the 10%.

You weren't going to pull out your money. We had a, you had a bad couple of quarters. Now you're trying to pull out. And now suddenly you conveniently don't remember that I disclosed it. Come on, man. So what can they do? So he's doing this over and over again. And he's getting people, getting more and more of these guys.

And then Delta ends up like closing or something. One of these big companies closes, Delta or Eastern. I forget which one is they closed. And so all these pilots get their pensions. And so now he's getting guys that have $900,000. Oh, shit. Because they're cutting them with checks. Like, look, we're not running your pension fund anymore.

Here's your $200,000. Go do something with it. So now he's getting this money and putting it into these things. He ends up. And then, of course, these people have families. So they're talking about what great investments this guy is running. He ends up selling one guy is. 70. There's a guy, a pilot's father who I think is 70 years old. He sells him a 15 year annuity.

So that means the first year was like 10% return. Shrinker, because it was such a long annuity, shrinker gets like 18% return. The guy put in a million dollars. That's $180,000. Right. Shrinker. Right. Shrinker gets 180. He signs. He's happy for about a year. Then it changes. Keep me The guy's 70. For him to get his money back and have earned anything, it's a 15-year annuity. He has to wait 15 years. Right.

So he's 85 then? He's 80. Yeah, he's 85. He's lucky to make it to 85 probably. What are the chances he's 85? Right. He's going to make it. I mean, he had one guy that I think he was like 80.

And so he would have had to have been like 95. I actually have like in the book, I actually go over all of them. I have some of the letters. I scale down the letters, obviously, because they're just outrageous. Some of the letters that he's writing. Some of these people are writing these angry, furious letters back, and he's writing back these ridiculous responses. Really?

So this is going back and forth, back and forth. Eventually, though, he ends up getting this one group of investors, and they're not having it. I'm like he can't convince them to just get frustrated and go away. They file reports within. Everybody complains with everybody to the point where eventually all of these different states start investigating Shrinker and they start calling him in and having him answer questions and start telling him either you surrender your insurance license or we're going to file criminal charges. So this group, explain this group again. This was a group of his customers.

Right. I call them the client group. Right. And it was made up of the... How are they all associated with each other? They were all pilots. They were all pilots. So one, it's like one guy's a pilot, his brother's a pilot. One guy is like a Delta or Eastern pilot.

He's his brother's a pilot. And then he knew other pilots. And then he was in charge of investing his parents' money. He gives them like a little over, I think it was 900,000 or a slight little over a million. It's around a million. Okay. He gives that money to shrinker. I mean, shrinker's just, he's just nonstop.

He's just pulling money. Yeah. So it's, you know, of course, shrinkers, by. By this point, he's a stunt pilot. So he's flying around the country, around the world, really, doing a stunt shows. And he's a special... Why is he doing that? It's just like a hobby?

Right. These, you know, they have poor impulse control. There's a pathological liar. They have poor impulse control. So they tend to be thrill-seeking. Okay. And so he's a pilot. Being a pilot's not good enough.

Yeah. I got to be a stunt pilot. Yeah. You know, which like it's not crazy enough to just be a pilot, which to me is I wouldn't, I just, it seems like an immense responsibility and things could go wrong and I just don't trust myself. Right. That's not good enough. I need to do loop-de-lose. Yeah, fucking flips and shit.

Right. I mean, he crashes his plane. You know, and I talk about how he crashes his plane. He ends up hurting his back. He ends up getting hooked on opiates. In the stunt shows or something? He did a stunt show in like the Bahamas, right? Right, right, right.

He's landing gear clipped the water. Yeah. And it did like a death roll and he crushed his spine. Right. Fuck. Yeah. Yeah, it's rough. And then he got addicted to, what was it?

Oxyco. Oxy. Listen, and the only reason I believe that is because when they caught him, I have a list of everything that was, everything that was inventoried when they caught him, and they had a prescription of oxycodone and extra scripts in other people's names. So, oh yeah, well, like, he had a script in his brother's name.

Okay. So, and he had them in his name. So that followed suit with what he was telling me already. So I felt good about that. You know, there are certain things you start going, I don't know. Right, right. This sounds kind of contrived, this little story about how,

man, I was hooked on oxies, so, you know, I wasn't thinking right. It's like, it could be an excuse, but then you find evidence and you go. You connect the dots. I'm going to run with that. Yeah. That's, I feel confident about that. So, but like, I remember this is one of the things we talk about, or I talked about was when he starts getting sued by all these insurance companies and I'm writing the book in prison and I'm meeting with him and I'm going there. So go, so go back.

There's a group of people that are that are filing complaints against him. Right. With the insurance companies. And he's somehow licensed. with all these insurance companies around the country? Around the country, yeah, yeah. And they're revoking his licenses back to back to back. He's literally getting shut down by every insurance company.

Yeah. Okay. I mean, it's, uh, these, they really, he's going out of business, basically. I mean, they jam him up. Like, he's never saw it coming. And he's not in prison at that time yet? No, because they're, they're, they're trying to wrap it up quick. So if you're an insurance, you know, investigate or something, you're like, look, I just

don't want this guy selling insurance anymore. Right. Just give us your license back. Get out of our state. Don't sell anything else in our state. And he's complying. He's just like, okay, whatever. I just don't want to be involved.

I don't want to be charged with anything. He doesn't want to get charged. He's not admitting anything. He's just saying, well, I wouldn't do this. But I understand what you're saying. I'll just give up the license. It doesn't matter. I never sell anything in this state.

If he was innocent, he probably would fight back. Right. Well, what happens is once one of them, one or two of the states do it, they start notifying each other, different states. Now they're all talking. Now they're all talking. Now they're talking. And so,

it's okay, you lost your license in Texas? Right. And you lost it in Indiana. And here's their report. Oh, hell no. You're not selling in Georgia.

Right. You're not selling in Florida. Uh-uh. So they start, they start, he starts getting these letters like within a week or two, just bam, bam.

And then the insurance companies he's all signed up with, they start canceling his abilities. They start sending him letters saying, you know, you're no longer a licensed agent, don't sell our products, don't advertise our products, just bam, bam, bam,

Within a month, he shut down completely. He packs his shit up and leaves Atlanta. Because he'd moved to Atlanta. He moves back to Indiana. So, yeah, he's, and he's done. At this point, he's married with kids, right? Oh, yeah. Married to.

So what about his family? I mean, he's got a wife named Michelle. Do they know what's going on? Or is he hiding it from? What I read was, that, well, first of all, he's not the kind of person that's going to admit to anything. Right. So he's probably lying to them about that.

He's never going to bring you into his confidence because he's trying to present a persona that he's... Like everything's all right? I'm a super successful person. Right. I'm Superman. I mean, I'm just amazing. I'm a pilot. And keep in mind, remember, I'm not just a pilot.

He's telling people, I used to work for NASA. Well, he really was a stunt pilot, though. At least that's good enough, isn't it? Right, right. So I'm a stunt pilot. Nope. Yeah, he also has to say he worked for NASA. Keep in mind, I've got guys coming up to me.

I remember that. I think I put it in the synopsis where I was, guys started to realize I'm writing Shrinker's story. Some of the guys that you're in locked up with. Locked up with. Right. Now keep in mind, too. At the time, while this is happening, I'm actually eating lunch with a couple of con men. Two other guys that are locked up for being con men.

And so we're talking and he's, there are. all saying how's the story going. I'm like, you know, he's lying about this. They're like, look, you got to do this. So we're like, they're helping you. They're helping me figure out how to manipulate him into telling me what happened. And they're like, well, you know, it's, you know, why don't you just confront him? And I'm like, I can't. Here's what. Here's what he's doing. If I do that, he gets angry, he leaves. He, I explain about the pathological liar, about his defense mechanism, about, you know, so, so they're helping me kind of coax the truth out of him. But eventually I'm also eating with guys that work out with him that hang out with him.

I remember I ate lunch one time with this guy. The guy I call him a cocaine cowboy. His name is Mike Hudson. And so Mike goes, oh, so you're writing a, he's like 60-something years old. He's mass, big guy. He goes, he goes, so I, so you're writing shrinker story, huh? And I went, yeah, yeah, I am. And he goes, man, he said, and he said, well, so what's that?

Like I said, well, you know, jumps out of the plane, did all that. And he goes, I'm not telling him. He's a pathological liar. just like, you know, yeah, well, you know, I'm just, just a big case. And he goes, yeah, he's a, he's a shit he did in Afghanistan alone is worth writing about. You're like, what the fuck? What? What did he do in Afghanistan?

Well, he flew eight, ten warthogs. I forget exactly what he told me. Yeah. I have it written down because I took notes because, I mean, like, immediately went back and wrote down. Right. You know, I have all these, I have all the notes. So I have like, I immediately like go back to my, the unit, like, right now. Yeah, yeah.

So he was like, he flew 120 sorties. He took out 40 armored car personnel and Russian T-80 tanks, you know, single-handedly. And I'm going, when did he do this? When he was in the Air Force or the Army or whatever in the military? And I look at it, I was like, I mean, I just started laughing. I actually think I blew like Coke out of my nose or something. I was like a laugh so I go, are you serious? And he goes, yeah, he didn't tell you that.

I said, I mean, Mike, I said he was, he was never in the military. He goes, what do you mean? Why would he say that? I said, it's a pathological liar, bro. He lies about everything. And he's like, what? So we start talking. He's like, that piece of shit.

And he goes, what about NASA? Did he work for NASA? What about NASA? It worked for NASA? And he wasn't the only person. But I've had like, I've had like five or six guys tell me, you know, hey man, you got to put that shit in about NASA. What? So that was one of his favorite ones.

That was, yeah, that's kind of, he builds a fantasy life. Right. That he can continue to go back to. And I even asked him at one point, I said, listen, I said, these things that you're telling people. You know, like I had quotes. So he, he knew that you knew that he did not work for now. and all this stuff, right? He knew, like, you and him had come clean on that. Yeah, he wouldn't tell me that. Right. He would tell me that, well, yeah, I said that, but I said it only because,

only to pilots, or I only said it to this person, or I only said it because this person did this, and I wanted them to think that, you know, we were in it together or whatever, to impress them. At the same point, you couldn't actually confront him by, like, why are you telling everybody this? Because then he would, like, throw up his defense mechanisms and. Right, he would. So I would, a little bit. You know, well, I don't understand. And he kind of explained, trying to explain it away. And I remember when I asked him about Michelle, his wife.

And I said, Marcus, clearly she knows that these things are happening. Did she, did she ever confront you or say anything? And he said, he was only once that I can recall. He said, we only had one civil conversation about it. He said, we were getting to arguments and she'd scream at me and yell at me. It was always her fault. Right. not the fact that you're a lie and piece of garbage.

So he says, one time they had had dinner, and he had talked about, he'd bullshitted about flying jets or F-15s or something to some of their friends. And then on the way home, Michelle said to him, why do you do that? Why do you tell those stories? She's like, basically, she's like, why do you lie? You do it all the time.

And he was like, I mean. Shocked. Yeah, he's shocked. that she called him out on it? Right. Because he said we never, it just, it wasn't that kind of relationship. It's like an unspoken thing? Well, she was an enabler.

You know, she's enabling him to behave this way. Because she's enjoying the lifestyle and everything that comes with it. Right, so why would she fucking expose him? She's got nice vehicles. She's trading in her car every year. She's getting a brand new car. My husband's a stunt pilot. He's a pilot.

We've got a one or two million dollar aircraft. We can go anywhere anytime. We live in a 10,000 square foot house. worth two or three million dollars. I mean, she's, she's doing well. Yeah. And do I, does, and Shrinker's a good looking guy. So the fact that he's also a liar, he looks good in the family photo.

Right. And she's more concerned about the kids. Yeah. Her job, according to her transcript I read of hers, was she's like, I don't deal with the business. I deal with the family. And my job is raising my three children. I don't focus on what he's doing over here. But he told me at one point she actually said to him, you know, why are you doing this?

And he says, you know. This is, are you going back to the car ride home? Yeah, they're riding on the way home. From dinner. Yeah, from dinner. And she says, or he says, he goes, I didn't know what to say. He said, I basically just told her, well, what does it matter? Whatever I'm doing, we're doing well, it's working.

Whatever I'm doing is working. So don't worry about it. And she goes, yeah, but those aren't clients. You're not lying to clients. These are my friends. Right, to get anything out of it. Right. We're just at dinner and you're just fucking lying. And keep in mind, her friend.

Like it's sport. Right. He just couldn't help but exaggerate and fool these people into believing that he's a, you know, a fighter pilot. Yeah. So he said it just didn't go anywhere and he was like, you know, I didn't know what the, you know, I didn't know how to answer and I didn't know what to say. And he said, but that's pretty much the only time we ever really had a civil conversation. everything else was screaming matches he said so he said you don't really get anything

that way that way and of course he always takes off for screams or hollards and she basically just enables him anyway she just puts up with it so yeah so when everything went wrong because of the client group and they start hammering away at him and they've shut him down in all these different states and he's now he's really in trouble

and keep in mind we're in the middle of financial crisis at this point he, he's being sued by all these companies. So now these companies are coming out saying, the insurance companies? The insurance companies are now saying, we want our $1.5 million that we paid you back. We want our $2.3 million that we paid you back.

We want, so those numbers alone, we want half a million dollars back. Those numbers alone let you know how lucrative this was. I mean, he's got $10 million worth of just lawsuits coming at him, left. Right. And I remember, when I went to him and I said to him,

Marcus will tell me about the lawsuits. You remember reading this? Oh, yeah. So I remember exactly where I, I think I even put, at least I know in the book I put exactly where it was. I was, and we were actually in front of vocational tech, or Votech, which is a building in the prison. And we were there in front of the building.

I remember coming up to him and saying, look, we got to talk about these lawsuits. Yeah. Matt, what lawsuits? Keep mine, I know. Right. I already know this is. coming. Because the stories he's telling me is all about kind of more about Michelle.

And so I know we're leading up to where Michelle stole all the money, not him. Right. So he's admitting some stuff, but he's really trying to paint her as bad as he can. Well, I go up to him with a pile of paper like this. I mean, literally it was bigger than this. So I go up to him and I say, listen, Marcus, man, we got to talk about the lawsuits because, and he goes, what lawsuits? And I go, the lawsuits that you were being sued. Why would you say that? I went, well, Marcus, I read in the newspaper, Matt, they lied. That's not true.

So you've never been sued? No, of course not. Has heritage wealth management ever been sued? Any of the heritage companies been sued? No, any of the companies you've been, you've owned? No, of course not. Have you ever been sued on me half of the company? No.

Matt, I would think I would not. know if I'd been sued. And he does this whole thing. And I go, okay. I go, here's, here's AG life insurance company out of Texas. They sued you for $1.5 million. What? He's, where did you get this?

And I go, wait a minute, I got, I ordered the Freedom of Information Act. They sent it to me. Yeah. And he goes, I don't, I, I've never. And I go, do you remember this? Because I said you sign for it. And he's like, I, um, okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was sued here.

I was sued here. Yes, you're right. Now I remember. Yes. I was sued this one time. So you've never been sued any other times? Madam, no, this is it. So there's no other lawsuits I'm going to come up with.

Yeah. No, of course not. Okay. Mutual life insurance company sued you for $2.3 million. He goes, now, I never should have been sued here. I shouldn't have been sued. You said you were sued at all. Five minutes ago you said you were never sued.

He would never sued. And he goes, I said, now you're telling me there's no more lawsuits. I mean, he's, okay, Matt, now I understand why you're confused because it's my fault. Now it's a misunderstanding. He is, now I understand why you're confused. He said, I'm confused because you're lying to me. No, no. He said, Matt, what happened?

He said, what's going on is, is that Heritage Wealth Management, they were sued. I said, no, they were sued. You were sued on behalf of the company and you were sued as a private. person. You were, cross the board. They're suing you. You're done.

Every way. Every which way. Yeah. And he's like, and he literally went. And I said, Marcus, I mean, I start pulling out different lawsuits. This one and this one. And he goes, Matt, I, because I, Matt, I don't understand what this is coming from. I mean, I owned a large wealth management company.

Of course we were sued. We were sued all the time. It would be strange if we weren't sued. And I mean, it was just like, fucking. bizarre. Right. Wow. Who? And , every time I've talked to him, guys are like, well, why didn't you confront him like there and say, you know, you, oh, you just said, it doesn't work. Right. He's just going to shut down. He shuts down. He gets angry. He screams. He hollers.

So instead, you just skate over that. Just let's just go. We can gloss right over that. You just let him know that you know. Right. So you say, okay, okay, well, that makes sense. You were sued all the time. That makes sense. So what happened in this lawsuit? Is this the one where the guy Mr. Reese, you got the annuity and we start talking Yeah, that's So we start talking about

Now he, he's done I painted him into a corner Now he just just tells me what happened You could see it in his face, bro. When I would show up for these meetings Towards the end When everything was unraveling I'd just beating the hell out of it.

He was just, he'd look up and be like You could see, when I would pull out some paperwork And like, okay, so listen, I got this something. something in the mail here from the Texas Department of Insurance. And you could see him go, Oh, fuck. Oh, my God.

He's got to be miserable for him. Please tell me he didn't get the. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want him to stop working with me either. So, you know, I would give him a little here, a little there, and coax him a little bit. And then eventually, and I'd convince him that what he, that we were kindred spirits, right? Like, you don't have to lie to me. Right.

You lie to these other suckers. Right. Tell him about the stuff that you did To make him feel like you guys have Right, I would tell him I did this one time I did this, I'm gonna make up shit I did this one time

Oh my God, that was fuck, what an idiot And he would get excited listening to me And he has to one up me, right? He can't say we're both pilots He's got to say I work for NASA Yeah, yeah So I'm saying yeah This and one time I did this with this client

This with this client And he would go, he'd be like Oh, that's nothing One time I had a client sign this And he had no idea One time he says Hey I had clients sometimes They never signed anything

and I just took the money out of their account and I'd be like, oh, okay, I'd go So that's what happened with the, you know, with the Johnsons, right? And he'd go, well, and he'd realize, fuck! Yeah, he'd fucked himself. Right.

Because I got this document right here and he'd be like, oh, God, I'd pull it out and he'd go. Yeah, see, what? Yeah. And he'd tell me what happened. So, you know, it was just, it was just straight insanity, bro. Wow.

The guy's just nuts. Wow. So eventually he gets shut down completely and he shifts to, I just want to tell this one story about where he shifts it to a Ponzi scheme. The whole economy is collapsed. Nobody, money's just non-existent. Nobody's lending anybody, anything. What year is this?

2008, I would say. Late 2008, early. I think it was 2008, 2008. Yeah, 2008. when everything was just shut off. Right. So, because he jumps out of the plane

in like 2009, beginning of 2009. So everything's just shut off in 2008. He shifts, because he can't do the annuity scam anymore, is what's called a churning scam. Yeah,

the insurance company shut him down. Right. So what he's doing now is he switches to running a, oh gosh, it's a, it's a 4X scam. So he runs,

basically it's a, Hansi scam. And the Forex, he uses Forex to say he's trading currencies. So I'm going to trade currencies. I'm trading the euro against the dollar because the euro was actually going up at that point. Yeah. So he starts going to different investors and saying, look, I've got this currency, you know, fund that I'm, you know, where I'm betting against, you know, betting against the dollar or betting against the euro or betting for the year, whatever, however they do it. And people are giving them money 50,000 here, 100,000 here, 20,000 here. He's not investing it.

Yeah. He's just paying his bills. Right. You know, the Lexus payments do. My $10,000 a month, house payments do. Yeah. I mean, he's just paying his bills. What's so funny is I have the document that comes in where they would show where the government's like, look, $60,000 check.

$15,000 went here, $5,000 went here, $4,000 went here. 10,000 went here. And literally he deposited it on a Monday and by Friday the whole thing is drained. It's gone. Yeah. Just paying his personal bills. Personal bills.

So you can't even say, well, I did trade some of the money or I meant to, there's no fund. There's no fund. You're just stealing. Yeah. So, and he's lying to everybody to get him to steal. But I remember this, this is the one story.

And I can't remember the name of it, the woman that at some points, keep mind he's got, he has control over. your money. So at some point, sometimes he would need money. He would just take the money. He'd just write himself a check out of your account for 10 grand. And maybe a month later, he put it back when some more money came in. So this one woman checks her account one day and realizes that like 10 grand's missing. And so she calls him up and says, Marcus, I just checked our fidelity account and $10,000 is gone. And he says,

it is. He is, you know what? Oh, yeah, yeah. He said, I invested that in the currency, in the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, you know, it's a four-x fund. And she, and she said, he, he said, oh, your husband, whatever to the name is Mark. Oh, yeah, I talked to Mark. Mark okay to it. She said, oh, he never said anything to me. Keep in keep mind what he just said. Mark said it was okay. Right. He knows she's going to call Mark.

Right, obviously she's going to say something. They're husband. Yeah. So he says, oh, yeah, Mark authorized it. She goes, oh, okay, I'm so sorry. She hangs up the phone. He sits back and waits because he knows she's calling back. Right.

She calls back and she says, I just talked to Mark and he said he did not absolutely tell you that he could do that. And he goes, what? Hold on a second. Let me put you on. Let me talk to my secretary. Puts her on hold, kicks back, waits, wonders where they're going to send him to prison, you know. will Michelle bring the kids to see me that kind of stuff

waits a little bit gets back on the phone and says listen I just talked to my secretary I had given her a list of investors that I wanted her to contact to get authority to put money into the euro fund she checked off the different names that she called and left messages for

I thought that meant that those people had okayed the investment so that was my mistake and I apologize and he said I'm so sorry I'm going to go ahead and I will put the money back in the account, you know, by tomorrow you'll have the money or whatever.

He said, plus your returns. He was, which is $1,800. And she goes, $1,800. He was, yeah. He was, well, I mean, it's been in there for a month, almost a month. She said, you made $1,800 with $10,000 in less than a month. He goes, yeah, well, you know, the euro's going up. You watch the news.

Yeah. And she goes, well, Mark, if it's making that much money, leave it. leave it. He's like, are you sure? And she's like, yeah, absolutely, yeah. Fine. So he gets to keep the money. He says she showed up like two or three weeks later and gave him a check for like 20 grand or 30 grand. Put it in there. Additional. Oh, by the way, put this in the Euro fund. Yeah. Why me? Oh, my God. I remember that's the one where he told me, I don't know if I have it in the synopsis, the one you read on the website, but I have it in the book where he said, he goes, I remember at the time, he goes, I didn't even need the money. But I took it anyway.

He said, you know, I mean, he said, I mean. You're going to turn down to check. Yeah, he said, you know, I didn't need it at the time. But, you know, at that point, he said it was, you know, it was all the money was coming. So at this point, he was on a slippery slope and he knew it wasn't going to end well. So he was just. Oh, yeah. He's, he's.

And what happens right about this time is Bernie, Bernie Madoff hits. Yeah. And I remember he said the phones just start ringing. People are like, where are my, where's my money? Where are the investments? Where are this? We want proof of this. I want proof of this.

I mean, so he's in a bad spot. Right. At this point, he's also sleeping with this girl named Michelle. Wait, what was her name? Kelly. Kelly Baker. He's sleeping with this girl named Kelly Baker. So he's got, he's has an affair with this poor chick that works at the airport.

I mean, she's, this guy's six foot tall, good looking, has a plane. Went to NASA. He used to work at NASA. I mean, this guy's amazing. He was in the Air Force when he was 12 or whatever he's fucking told her. You know, he looks like he's filthy, rich. He's buying her presence. I mean, she doesn't have a prayer.

So he sweeps her off her feet. And she knows he's married. She's seen as kids, you know. But he puts her into her own apartment. He buys her a new car. His wife finds out about it. Jesus. She flips out.

What else happens? But that's when he's telling me about her, that's when we were talking about her in prison, and one day he comes up to me, and he doesn't realize that one of the things that the literary agent had sent in was a picture of Kelly Baker. So I have a picture of Kelly Baker.

This is the girl he's having an affair with. Girl he's having an affair with. And we talk about her. Yeah. You know, we talk about her. I'm trying to think if I have the picture. Oh, man, that'd be great. I know I have the picture in here.

Oh, nice. Is that it? This is Kelly Baker. Let me see. So she's cute. She's a good-looking girl, right? Yeah, definitely. Right?

Yeah. So keep in prison, you're not allowed to have, like, dirty pictures, and you don't have no access to the internet. You don't have anything like that. Well, what these guys do is they get, they'll get pictures like are semi-nude pictures, like some girl in a thong, looking back at you. You can see the side of her breast Can't know, no nipple, but you can see You know, it's like, this is close to being naked.

Yeah. She's naked. You just can't certain things. And so they'll order like 10 of them. And they'll have them sent in. And they'll let them in because the mail room, the women in the mail room would be like, oh, yeah, you can't see a nipple. Yeah.

Okay, he can have these. And they'll give them. And then the guys will sell them. Yeah. Well, one of the guys that sells him was a guy named Mark Boynkin. So he would get in I mean he's getting in 50 or 100 pictures every single week and he's selling them for books of stamps Or $3 or $3 or $3 or $4 because there's no currency so you pay like four bucks for a For a picture yeah well keep in mind that picture there's like he got like 20 or 30 of a man

Whatever he got in 5 10 20 I don't know but I know that like my sely had one yeah and the guy across from us has one Yeah so I've been staring at this one picture of this girl with brown hair who's next to a pedestal sink looking back at you in a thong. It's a semi-professional photo. I mean, it's, you know, it's candid semi, but it's over the top amazing looking this chick.

You can tell there's lighting and shit. Oh, yeah, yeah, right, right. But it looks like it's like some guy caught his girlfriend from behind, but you can tell she's too perfect. Everything's too perfect. So I've been watching this, seeing this photo for a month or so, at least.

And so. And somebody's cell. Yeah, of course. There's multiples. Right. There's multiple copies of it. Multiple copies. So one day, Shrinker shows up, and we've been talking about Kelly.

One day, I show up for one of our interviews, and he walks up and he goes, Matt, Matt. He goes, you're not going to believe this. He was, Kelly found out that I'm getting out of prison soon. And I went, really? And he goes, yeah, he goes, she mailed me a letter. He goes, and look, she sent me this photo. And he shows me the photo of the girl. And you instantly know.

And I get the photo and I'm like, this motherfucker. Come on, man, bro. I was just thinking, wow, you are delusional. You know? And I just go, oh, wow, that's amazing. And he takes it and he goes, does like this to me, right? He goes, that's Paloma Picasso,

whatever, the scent, whatever. Perfume. Yeah. Did you mind, there's no cologne or on the commissary. So what guys will do is they'll go through books and you get the samples. And guys will rub it on there. rub it on. So he must have rub Paloma Picasso on the picture. And then waves it to me. He goes, he says, that's her scent. That's Paloma Picasso.

I bought her that. He goes, I took this photo. So now, he goes, we were in Florida at some hotel and I took this photo. And I was like, wow. And he goes, he goes, can you believe they let this through the mail room? I went, no, no, I can't believe it. You don't call him out on it? No, because, I mean, what's he got? I need, we need. We need. to finish this story. Right, right. It's not the right time for that. Right. And, you know, it was so over that. It's like, and he wouldn't have mattered. He would have spun it. He would have been like, are you saying that she's a, that she's, she mailed me someone else's

picture? No, or she would have said, she's a profession, or that she's, she's got these on the internet or she's selling these photos that I took? You know, he would say something crazy. Yeah. And it's like, what are you going to say? When someone's so willing to be blatant about the lie, there's nothing I can say. So I just went, okay, okay, it was so pathetic. too. So I'm like, oh, okay. So let's go ahead and talk. And we keep going.

But so at this point, he, the whole scheme's falling apart. Yeah. When Bernie Madoff happens, everybody's calling and wanting money. They want their money out. Yeah. Because they're, you know,

they haven't gotten any statements or the statements they got don't look right. You know, now they're, everybody's weird. Everyone's scared. People start to pull money out. He didn't have the money.

Money's just gone. So one of the guys comes up to him One of his brokers comes up to him and says Hey look I got somebody who wants some money out of this They said they've got like whatever 20 grand in the Euro fund do we have a Euro fund And he goes and shrinkers fucked up on pills And he's drunk

And he goes the money's gone He's like okay well where is it? He's like it's gone He's like well I understand he says it's gone There's no fund It's just gone I spent it And the guy's like, oh, wow. And he realizes, of course, he already has to know he's a liar. You can't spend much time with the guy without knowing.

So he goes and he calls the Indiana Securities and Exchange Commission, calls them, tells them what happened, tells them what's going on, what he thinks is going on. Within days, they raid the office. He knows there's a raid. He finds out there's a raid. He and Kelly have actually flown down to Florida. And they're in Florida.

And Michelle knows that he's got this girlfriend. She's already... She's already... They've had these fights. She kicked him out of the house. He's living with Kelly. So he's down in Florida. The raid happens.

He flies back after the raid. And he knows they're going to indict me soon. They just raided the office. They just took all our computers. It's... I'm done. With the same time, his stepfather dies. He goes to the funeral.

And at the funeral, he sees... Michelle, they're there together. And he tells, he says, he says, now she doesn't say this, but his version is that they were at the gravesite and he tells her, look, I'm going to, I'm going to fake my own death. And I'm going to jump out of the plane.

And I'm going to fake my death. And you're going to get the insurance money. Which, by the way, the idea that he could get an $11 million policy, you understand? People don't realize about insurance. is like if you if if if if dany said hey look i want to get a million dollar life insurance policy on me okay you have to qualify for that yeah you don't just go in and buy a buy the policy and say hey how much is it oh okay it's a hundred and fifty dollars a month and okay cool sign me up no no

it has to go through underwriting you have to justify it to the underwriter they have to go well i don't understand this guy this guy works at tire kingdom right right he ain't worth that I'm not giving him a million-dollar life insurance. Even if you can pay for it, there's no justification for the million-dollar policy, and it's weird. So they don't do it. There's a risk factor there.

There's some actuary that's calculated, who deserves it, who doesn't? The entire kingdom doesn't get a million-dollar policy. He's making $25,000 a year. You have to be somebody who's making a couple, like $150,000 a year. So he says $11 million. You're a stunt pilot.

Yeah. You're hooked on oxies. You're not passing any of these texts. Yeah. You know, when I got an insurance policy, which was only like $100,000, $200,000, one of the things they asked was like, have you ever skydived?

Have you ever this? And all these questions, like if you'd said, yes, I skydived, they were going to be like, yeah. Yeah. Well, you're done. See you later. Right. Yeah.

Do you race cars? You know, oh, yeah, I race cars on the weekend. Yeah, okay, well, we're not giving you a fucking policy. Right, right, right. You know, maybe not for, we may not give you one, but not for that amount. Right. This guy's a fucking stump pile.

He's getting an $11 million policy. Come on. Please, yeah. But he says, he said that's what happened. So, and he said it before. He said it on, I had multiple sources where this is what happened. So I wrote down, this is what happened. Even though I tell the reader, I don't believe it.

Is there any way to prove that he got that policy? No, and I asked him over and over again to, let's write a letter. Let's find out about the policy. I like to verify the policy. He's like, Matt, there's plenty of articles about the policy. Yeah, I don't doubt that you've been lying about the policy. Right, no shit. But that's not enough.

So I have to, I explain in the thing that we had this discussion about the policy, and I personally don't believe it, but it is what he said. So he tells her that, and she believes him. That's what he says. Okay. And so, you know, so he then goes and he says he gets like 50 pounds of precious metals, like gold, silver, that sort of thing, that he still has. Now, here's the thing. You're broke. You're going under. But you've got 50 pounds of gold that's worth like a million dollars or half a million dollars or whatever it was worth at that time. So he goes and gets this money. He then drives all the way to like Alabama, drops off a motorcycle and comes back within like 24 hours. Like he drives all the way there all night, rents a storage unit, drops off the bike, comes all the way back. Takes the plane.

and flies like he's going to visit his father, his real father, not the stepfather, his real father, he flies the plane, and as he's flying the plane, he calls in the distress signal. And he says, you know, my windshield has imploded. Ah, the plane's going down. And he's flying south from where?

From Indiana. From Indiana. Okay, he's flying towards the Gulf of Mexico. man, it's snowing, it's cold. Oh, he says he's hitting turbulence. There's no turbulence. I mean, he's like, I'm hitting turbulence on this, because I've read the reports.

And, you know, the guys were like, it was a clear night and it was cold. There's no turbulence. You know, turbulence is, you know, where like hot pockets and stuff. Yeah. Turbulance comes from, I think mainly from the heat from the ground. Right.

Comes up, especially during the day. When you're flying over the ground, it's really hot out. The heat shoots up. Yeah, so there's a different thing. and the air pressure or thickness or something. I don't know, but the point is they were saying, there's no turbulence. So he's saying he's hitting turbulence.

And the windshield implodes. Man, those windshields don't implode. So windshield implodes, but you know, you've got a pilot in danger. And so he sets the autopilot, got his parachute on, goes, he opens up the door, and because it's a pressurized plane,

it blasts him out of the door. Before that, didn't you? Did you say he chewed up a handful of oxies? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He says he, of course, he also, you know, he says he drank a bunch of, he's been drinking beer. He takes a bunch of oxies. He crushes them up and swallows the oxies. And he, um, he opens the door and it blows open and it shoots him out of the plane.

And as he's blown out of the plane, he hits the door and it catches something. One of the core, it catches something on the plane. and it yanks him around and he slams into the side of the plane so now he's being dragged by the plane the plane's going up and down because of the air because of the drag it's trying to regain altitude and so it's going up and down and the wind is banging him against the side of the of the so he's caught his his strap is caught on the on the door or something right and it's smashing him against the side of the plane right and so his parachute opens Oh, fuck. But the wind, the velocity is so, you know, it's so fast or whatever, the pressure they're moving. It immediately shreds it. Bam. So it's not like it does it and stops the plane or yanks him.

It just immediately shreds. So now you've got nothing but shreds. You got nothing but these, they call risers or something, but the strings are just. So he's thinking, you know, he's freezing. Yeah. And so he's like at, whatever it is, 18,000. and 20,000 feet. The plane's going up and down,

up and down, and it's banging him against the side of the airplane. Yeah, Fusel Watch, right? So it's banging him against the side. And eventually, the strap pops and he falls. With, he's, keep in mind, he's got, he says he's got 50 pounds

of gold strapped to his ankle. So the gold's dragging him down. The risers are above him. He's plummeting towards earth. the plane disappears. I mean, it's over. Oh, by the way, and this is true too. Air Force or the, the, what is it?

The, um, whatever, the tower, whoever it is, the air traffic controller, yeah. They scramble two F-15s or F-16. They take off immediately. Yeah, they, because this is after 9-11. So they, they come out of Florida, I think. Or is it Texas? I think it's Texas. I think it was Texas.

Yeah. So they come out and they go after the plane. They're talking about shooting down the plane. Yeah. Plus they have to signal all the commercial airlines about this. Right. Oh, they have to reroute air traffic. Everything.

Everything. And at the point in your story where you're saying that he gets sucked out of the plane and starts getting banged against the side of the airplane, did he mention that the oxies were like? kicking in at that point so he was like it wasn't bad oh yeah yeah that's like he's like he's like he's like he's like he's like you know that this is how i'm going to die yeah and i realized this wasn't a part of my plan he was you know but on the upside the the oxies were kicking him so it wasn't that bad so what was there was a silver lining yeah was the with the motorcycle what was it was that

as a getaway car was he playing and grabbed in the bike keep in mind he was flying along the same path so he knew I've got to jump at this point and get close to that bike. Right, that way I'll land here. He says Kelly was waiting for him. She was going to drive him. I've never seen anything by his word that Kelly

was what was in on the plan. Right. But he says she was there in her little vehicle, whatever. Okay, so he's plummeting through the air, towards the earth with 50 pounds of gold strapped to his ankle. Yes. Then what? He shoots through the tree line. So there's the trees. He says

he's coming down at a slight angle. Not sure how that's possible. On a non-windy cold night, he's coming down an angle. So he comes down and he shoots through the tree line. When he shoots through the tree line, the risers get caught in the trees. So they don't stop him, but they yank up on him

and they slow him down. When they yank up on him, the straps from the parachute yank up into him and one of the straps severs his testicle. Fuck. That's what he says. That's what he says, right? So he hits the water and he passes out. He says that there's some kind of a device in the vest that blows up and keeps his head above water.

And he says that he was anchored to the ground by the gold. So he says when he wakes up, he's freezing. It's freezing cold. He's freezing and barely feel his fingers or anything. But he manages to get his knife out and he cuts away the gold. The gold and the parachute and he gets to the He ends up getting to the shore Starts a fire and everything

Doesn't even realize he's so fucked up on oxies Doesn't even realize that his nuts Ripped off been ripped off He ends up making it to a A kangaroo gas station Yeah And he goes into the He goes into the

Bathroom and looks in the mirror and realize he tells me. He goes, oh, he said, my face had scratches all over it. Keep in mind that I get, I've got a mug shot of him that was taken three days later. There's no scratches. Not a scratch. No scratches. I mean, it's just scratches everywhere, bloods everywhere. He says when he goes to take off his, taking off his stuff, and he said there was a pain in between his legs. He said he pulls his pants down, a check. He said, and that's when he realizes that his nuts, missing.

Fuck. Just gone. The oxes are wearing off. The oxies are wearing off. Yeah, he's in pain. He's doing it. He's wishing he had one fucking more in his pocket. He, uh, but that's when, that's when, in the story.

So I remember at that point I had written that up and I was in the middle of writing the whole thing and the next day I end up with the con man with, uh, at lunch at lunch, uh, with this guy, um, they called him, uh, his name is Andrew Levinson. And I'm sitting there with Andrew. with Andrew and this other guy and he goes he goes okay well they're like wait a second he lost a nut I'm like that's what he says and they're like bro so okay look they said so you're they're they go what happened in the nut yeah I'm like well I don't know they're like did the fish eat out like like I don't think that it's even true what the fish didn't eat it I don't know what happened

I don't even think this is true right and they're like and and they're like how how elaborate is this lie? And I go, it's pretty elaborate. He told me he has to take, like, um, he has to take testosterone, injections, uh, he's got low, low tea. I mean, I said he's, I mean, he's, it's pretty, I said, yeah, he went into a whole thing on it. And the one guy goes, well, you know, you want to be, so you want to write true crime when you're, when you get out of prison, right? And I'm like, yeah. And he goes, you, you, you want to be like a, like a reporter. Yeah. Yeah. He goes, what I mean, you're going to have to take him in to the bathroom and tell them to go in the bathroom and

prove it. Pulls not out. Let's say, take a look. Tell them to spread it out like a batwing and see if this thing, where is this little fella? Is it there if it's missing? I'm like, I'm not going there, right? I'm doing that. So,

but yeah, he the guy's just insane. So he, listen, by this point, oh, so the airplane, by the way, like you got the F-15 circling the airplane because they can't, they can't, they can't go slow enough. They have to go too

really fast. Yeah. So they're circling the plane like this. They're going by and slowing down and going by it and they can see there's nobody in the plane. Yeah. This is before it's crashed. Before it's crashed. They can see the doors unlocked. So it's headed out

over the Gulf. Well, then it loses altitude. It runs out of gas. Because of the drag, it doesn't go out and make it over the golf 50 miles or 100 miles like he had calculated. It loses it's burned off all of its fuel early. It loses altitude,

crashes into like a swampy area. The wings get ripped off, the tail gets ripped off, this thing is shredded. I mean, it's nothing but a haul. And when the police get there, they track it down, the one thing that is not destroyed

is the window that he had said, the windshield that he had said had imploded. Right, which is the reason for the whole crash in the first place. Parachutes missing. They find a campground. They find like a guide to K-O-A campgrounds, which is where he ultimately ends up going and they find him there. Yeah.

I mean, he's just a trail of evidence. Wow. Just pure stupidity. Yeah. And he's not stupid. He's just got some issues. Yeah. So.

That's putting it lightly. Yeah. He's thinking it's going to go out, hit the water and sink. Sink. And then when it hits the water, the windshield will get blown out. Yeah. So, yeah, it doesn't happen. They realize right away,

there's something's not right. So they're searching for him. They start looking for them. It hits CNN. It hits every place. He ends up, picks up his motorcycle. He says Kelly's there.

He tells Kelly to kick rocks. Like, you know, like what happens is he says that Kelly, when he gets in her truck and she's ready to take off, he says, she goes, where's the gold? And he goes, I had to cut it loose.

And she's like, whoa, so you don't have the million dollars in gold or 1.5 million or whatever it's worth? You don't have it? And he's like, no, I was drowning me. I had to cut it loose. And she's like. It's ironic. Yeah, he's like, I mean, she's like, yeah, I'm done. We're, we're good.

I got to go. Later nerd. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, I mean, if you want to go, do you think you want to go? do you and she's like yeah yeah i'm going and she takes off i've never seen anything to corroborate that that she was ever involved in any way but so anyway he gets on his motorcycle he takes off he goes to the campgrounds and uh tried to tell me he was trying to drive to the uh to the accident

site to turn himself in or tell him but he's so cold he had to turn he to go and uh he went ahead and he had his camping gear so he had to go ahead and just pulled into this camp round and so he stays there and the next day overnight he realizes he he's the next morning he sees the stuff on the on the media uh that they're covering it and that he's they're looking for him they found the plane when he knows he's straight he knows he's fucked yeah it's over i'm done so he starts thinking i remember he told me this and everything i had read about narcissists pathological liars, the whole thing is that they don't kill themselves. You see what I mean?

Their ego won't let them kill themselves. Right, right. He's just not going to be able to do that. Yeah. He tells me, I remember he tells me, that's when I started, I was in the tent and I started thinking about suicide. And I went, you were thinking about committing suicide? And he goes, no, no, not committing suicide.

I started thinking about suicide and started thinking about suicide and thinking. and that... Attempting. Right. If I, if people thought I had tried to commit suicide, they would have sympathy for me. And I might get a lighter prison sentence. Or maybe be able to go to like some kind of a hospital or something. Right.

So he's now trying to fake a suicide. In place of the accident. Yes. Yeah. To make it look like it was a failed suicide. Right. Like, yeah, he did jump out. Yeah, because he knows that's over.

can't. There's nothing I can do about that. But I can make it seem like it was, you know, I was having a mental breakdown or something. I tried to commit suicide. So he actually does cut himself. And I've seen, like I've read the reports and stuff in the newspaper about how he tried to kill himself. Now, I don't know much about scar tissue. But I can tell you right now, I've had worse paper cut scars. Yeah. I mean, I've got scars like on my fingers like, you know, where I can see where they actually stitched it up. This guy has a barely visible scar. He told me he cut his, he told me he cut it so deep like it cut the tendons.

And it's just complete bullshit. I mean, you cut it, there was blood. That's there pictures of the tent where he's like covered in blood? Yeah, but he's covered himself in blood. Right. He cuts himself good, okay? It's a decent cut. And he does bleed, but it's not cutting into the tendons.

Yeah, not kill yourself cut. Yeah, it's not like there's no coming back. I'm going to be dead an hour. Not what happened. It just bled a lot. Yeah. And so he smears blood all over the place. First thing he does is he sends a letter to a guy he knows, who's a reporter,

that he knows constantly checks his email. And he's assuming that this guy will immediately notify the authorities, which he does. And that they'll track him back. to the campground and show up. So he's got this whole thing put in motion. I'm going to cut my wrist. They'll show up here with an hour or two. It'll look like I was trying to commit suicide.

They'll save me, and I'll have at least be able to say that I was having a mental breakdown of some type. So he cuts himself, smears blood all over the place, waits for the police. He told me this whole thing about a helicopter coming down and this whole thing.

Nothing, none of it happened. Like he told me this whole thing, about how the cyber, they had like the cyber police tracked him back. It was a whole Hollywood bullshit. The cyber police, you know, pinged, uh, started pinging satellites to track down the, that's not what happened.

And first of all, they couldn't track it down anyway. Right. Like they did try and figure out where the email had been sent from. And all they got was a K-O-A router. But they, they used the same routers, apparently for all of them.

So they couldn't figure out which K-O-A he was at. Yeah. And they're everywhere. Right, right. So all we know is it came from a K-O-A router. Yeah. We don't know which one. So he said, no, no, they knew exactly which one.

They were headed there. That's not what happened. What happened was you didn't pay your bill. And when the campground owner showed up to say, hey, are you leaving or are you paying your bill? Shrinker had rubbed blood all over the front of the... Right, so they call the cops. So they see the blood. Like, oh, fuck.

And they're like, oh, this isn't good. Something's up. They call the cops. And the cops are like, okay, well, what does the guy look like? He was driving a motorcycle? and he's this tall, don't go near him, we know who it is. The U.S. Marshals are looking for him.

He's this escape, or he's this pilot guy that jumped out of the plane. They show up, they surround the tent, they go in, they grab him, they drag him out, they handcuff them, and they throw them on a helicopter, and they fly them in, and, you know, shrinkers, like, and they saved my life. Your life wasn't in that much danger.

Yeah. Yeah. And so then, of course, he says, oh, I was trying to commit suicide. I was trying, but he wasn't trying to commit suicide. That's one of those things that the newspapers, because it's such a dicey thing, nobody wants to say it was faked,

or he was trying to fake it. So if you read the newspapers, newspapers all say, you know, he was trying to commit suicide. Yeah. That's not what he told me. Told me he wasn't trying to commit it. He was just trying to make it look like suicide. So he gets grabbed there.

Now he's locked up. He ends up pleading guilty. He's got no choice. he gets 20 years in the state of Indiana for securities fraud. In Indiana, you get 20 years, but 10 of it's suspended. So he's got a 20-year sentence, 10 years suspended. So now he's got 10-year suspended sentence. What does that mean suspended?

It means that we're going to give you 20 years, but we're going to suspend 10 of it, provided you complete the 10 years. And you don't get in trouble. Right, no problems. No problems because let's say he commits another crime, well, then they can give him the other 10. Like give him the other 10, yeah. Right.

So beyond your best behavior. So they also, in Indiana, according to Shrinker, and I think this is basically true because I saw what the newspaper said. You got like 20 years, 10 years to spend in the whole thing. So you got the 10 years. You only do like 50% of your time for a nonviolent crime. And now you're down to five years. Right.

Well, if you earn a degree while in, incarcerated in the state of Indiana, they knock off like two years. So he gets another degree. All he does is he transfers all of his credits to Oakland City College, and he takes some environmental class, and he gets a degree in environmental studies. And so he ends up getting another degree, and they knock off like another two or three years. So he ends up doing like two years. A couple years, yeah.

A couple years. Then he immediately goes to the first. feds, well in the feds, he got like 50 months, 51 months right around there. You do 85% of your time. So he got there, he does 85% of his

time, he got a year halfway house, which is amazing. This guy got a year halfway, I got nine months. But while he's there, that's when he meets me. And it comes to me and says, look, will you write my story? I shouldn't be here. It was all

my wife. It was all Michelle. did it. Michelle's the one that ran the Ponzi scheme. Michelle's the one that took all that money. Michelle's the one that was doing all the books. I didn't know that she wasn't investing that money. Keep in mind the he doesn't, he didn't mind admitting

well he did mind it but I convinced him to tell me about the churning scheme with the insurance company because he wasn't charged criminally for that. He was charged criminally for the Ponzi scheme. So he's trying to blame that on Michelle.

And, you know, of course, I looked at all the victim statements. All the victims are like, I handed a check to Marcus. I talked to Marcus on the phone. Nobody's saying, Michelle. You know, I did that Marcus, Marcus, Marcus. Now, Michelle was at one point, there was an issue because she had taken out a whole bunch of money in cash within a few days. But that was because she was divorcing him. Right.

So she knows she's in the process of divorcing him. she's taking cash out of the bank because she's about to divorce him. He tried to equate that to it was all part of her plan. It's part of her divorce plan. Not her. Not her running a Ponzi scheme. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it's just...

Wow. So it's the story's, you know, outrage. And what's so funny is so when I'm done with the story, I bring him the manuscript. So, you know, well, anyway, I have this manuscript, right? I bring him the manuscript. This is after I've written it. The whole time he thinks...

How long was this whole process? Four months. Okay. So, because keep in mind, too, like, most writers will tell you, oh, it takes... So it's probably four or five months. Most writers tell you, it takes about a year to write a book. Well, yeah, but that's because you have a wife and kids. Mm-hmm.

And you have friends. Right, you're not locked up 24-7. Yeah, you're not locked up. Right. So if I get this stuff, you know, I'm spending... couple months. I'm working 18 hours a day. Yeah. You know, this is, and to me, this is total entertainment. Oh yeah. So passing the time quick. Right. And there's nothing else to distract me. You're immersed in it. Yeah. Right. There's nothing to distract me. There's no internet. There's no,

hey, I'm going to go watch my favorite program with 150 other guys trying to watch four TVs, screaming and hollering. I don't even want to go in that room. Yeah. You know, it's, no, no. I'm not playing softball. You know, because these are the things that the guys do. I don't want to learn how to play the guitar. And so I knock it out. I bring it to him. I give him the book and he reads it. And he's like three days later. He comes to me one day and I go, hey, Marcus, did you read the book yet? He's like, yeah, I did. I'm going to talk to you later. This is at like lunch. I know he's going to be furious. He's fucking mad. He's going to be furious. And I can see it in his face. He's, he didn't know what to fucking do.

So later that night I come to him and I say, hey, do you got the, you know, the book. Did you make any notes? notes, did you jot anything down? How do you feel about it? Anything. And he's like, you said I was a pathological liar. You made me sound like a criminal. You didn't say anything about Michelle. I don't, I, Matt, I can't let this get out.

And I went, Marcus, what are you talking about? I told you, I mean, you told me those stories. You're the one that you told, that's what you told me. I know, but you were supposed to be writing a story about, How Michelle, I'm saying, yeah, but Michelle didn't. Michelle didn't steal the money. Michelle wasn't culpable. Michelle wasn't involved in your crime.

Even if Michelle knew and she was vicariously culpable in some way, which I don't think so. She may have known, but knowing doesn't constitute being a participant in the crime. Right. So, you know, no. And I'm like, so this is what I wrote. I told you you may not be happy, but, you know, you're, mark. Mark? You said I was a liar. Oh, you're just delusional.

So I say, okay, I'm like, well, man, listen, you know, if there's any, do you see that he's like, it's all wrong. It's all, it's not true. It's not, it's all wrong. And I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, bro. If I've made some mistakes as far as the accuracy, like if there are factual things that need to be changed by all means, Marcus, please tell me, I will change those. What? Man, he just, he just, he's just flipped out. He's just, no, absolutely not.

So what you do? I mean, I take the book, said, well, then, oh, well, bro. I said, I said, don't buy a copy. Yeah, I said, well, you want me to tell you? So I said, well, I mean, he's like, I said, well, I mean, look, he said, I'm not going to help you get this published. I want to, well, Marcus, I said, I don't really need you to help me get it published. I'll get it published. Right.

So he goes, and he looks at me, he goes, man, you're just some guy. He was leaving. I'm staying. Yeah. I still had a ton of time left at that point. So he goes, man, you're just some guy in prison. He says, nobody's going to publish anything that you write. And I go, well, I'll e-publish.

And he goes, when? When you get out in 20 years or whatever? I was like, and he just looks at me and scoffs and walks off. And I was like, fuck, this motherfucker. And he's right. He was right, because I did, I did send it out. I did try to get it published. But I was in prison.

If you're some fucking publisher and you get a letter from some prisoner, or you don't even open it. Right. So I got out and, and I decided, you know what I'm going to do? First thing I did was I put, I had written a synopsis. So I've got like a, it's like a 90,000 word, roughly 90,000 word book. It's about 300 pages. So I've got a book that I'd written.

So I turned, I condense it and I turn it into a synopsis of, which is about 9,000 or 10,000 words. And I place that, that story on my, on my website. Keep in mind, Shrinker had been out has been out for years now. Five, six years, four years, five, six years, something like that. Yeah, probably like five years. So about four years, whatever. So he's been out about four years, let's say. So I get out and I put it on the website.

I got a bunch of stories on the website. Yeah. Well, at some point, recently, one, it's on the website, and two, I was in the process of, publishing his book, putting together his book, and I was gonna publish his book, right? So I'm in the process of doing that, putting it together, I think, okay, I'll put it up on,

you know, on Amazon. So while I'm in the process, he happens to come across the website. Somebody tells him about the website and that his synopsis of his story, he doesn't know that, he just, he just finds the synopsis. So he finds, this is, this is, this is, in uh what this is well this one it this is october 20th of this year of this year this is a few weeks ago a couple weeks ago so a couple weeks ago first thing he does when he sees the when he sees it is

he goes to inside true crime which is you know my website and he goes to inside true crime and he writes a letter to them he doesn't realize that i i'm inside true crime that's that's you that's my website it's going straight to you right yeah he writes uh dear inside true crime my name is marcus shrinker and I was just notified you published a story authored by Matt Cox. I was approached by Matt Cox at Coleman Prison and declined speaking with him about my story. The story you have published is completely fictional

and totally made up. Also, you have used copyrighted photos in the publication that do not fall under fair use. I own the rights to the cover photo and it was only licensed to one entity. I would expect you will do the right thing by removing the article. Thank you. Marcus Schrenker.

So he sends that to Inside True Crime. All right. Now, that was just specifically about the cover of the... Well, no, it's about everything. Well, a cover in the story. Saying that the story's fake, but the only really claim he has is a copyright claim because it doesn't matter.

You wrote the story... Well, he's also saying that I made up the story. It's all complete fiction. Okay. That's what he's saying. So he doesn't realize it went to me. But even if it was fiction, you can still keep a fictional story on your website. There's nothing wrong with that, right?

No, but I'm saying it's true. And it is true. I mean, I have all the evidence. Okay. You know, so he, then I sent him an email back saying, Marcus, nice try. But I have all the true links printouts, because the printouts when you print documents in prison,

they have your name and your reg number on them. So I have those with it. is information on. Okay. So I have all the true links pronounce, wherein you chronicle numerous stories to me. Also, I have all of the original documents you provided me. I also have handwritten notes from you, which you provided me.

In addition to the above, all of the photographs contained on the website are in the public domain. The law states that any and all websites are allowed to use photographs from other websites to populate additional websites. You know, I'm not using those photographs to sell anything. You're not monetizing. Not monetizing in a way. So I put, I'd love to see the licensing agreement for the photos of you and Michelle.

That's the cover one. Of you and Michelle, however, I doubt you possess it. Nice try, Marcus. However, you and I both know you participated in the writing of the story. With that said, what's up, bro? I have been in contact with multiple people doing documentaries. doing documentaries as well as several magazines and podcasters. I've told all of them, I doubt you would be willing to speak with them on camera.

However, if you'd like, I'd certainly like to arrange it. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the above subjects. You know, please feel free to contact me. And I give him my patron number. So I send that back. So he sends me this back. How long did it take him to reply? Oh, like a day, the next day.

I'd love to see his face when you read that email. Matter of fact, he sends it back. on October 20th. So like that morning, that morning, he sends me the one. I respond. Same day.

Same day. This is going, Bing, Bing, Bing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he sends this one back. It's pretty long, but I won't read the whole. It's, uh,

Mr. Cox, your story is salacious, untrue and harassing. It is junk. I'm glad that he was very professional about the whole thing. It is gross, absurd, served an honest life of public service.

I don't know how the fuck that is. Okay, you are obviously a very sick man and quite dangerous. Oh, get it. Okay, stating that my parents abused me publicly is an insult to them and certainly malicious in every way. You are also casting the blame of my crimes on other people. Did I ever do that? Did I ever say that his crimes were? No.

Never. I never won. No, I remember. No, never. On other people, you have basically created a fictional story, and clearly the DO Department of Justice has not been properly supervising you. We will be in contact. We. I don't know who we is.

Because if it was from his lawyer, if he and his lawyer, his lawyer would have written. Right, he would have written. Right. We will be in contact with the Department of Justice tomorrow and of course your probation officer. I'm also going to print the story out and send it to your judge and let him or her know what you are doing with your life. Those pictures are licensed to ABC, not you, of which is a crime. Give me a fucking break. Okay.

On top of the other things you are doing, we will be sending the A.B.C., not you will be sending the A DMC violation, blah, blah, blah, but you just... Yeah, yeah, DMCA. Violation notice to your provider. I just cannot understand how you... How your probation department is allowing you to do this kind of malicious work, stealing pictures and harassing people. If you have been stealing from the Federal Department or Federal Bureau of Prisons,

then that needs to be reported as well. never spoken. I have never spoken to you about my life, given you notes, provided notes, and when you asked me to do a story, I declined. I told you very clearly I was not interested in your route of life. Okay. This is not an honorable life, Mr. Cox. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Then he says something down here about victimizing, I'm victimizing retired school teachers. Because, okay, because what he's saying is that his mother and his real mother and his real father are both stool teachers. Oh, okay. He's saying I'm victimizing it.

One, his real father I'd never even talk about. In the book, I talk about it, but I only say good things. Right. He told me his stepfather was abusive. He told me his mother was a drunk. So he goes on and on. Finally, do not contact me further, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Yeah.

So the next, so like a couple days. later, October 23rd. I'm thinking, no big deal. Fuck him. He's not going to do anything. He can't do anything. I'd have done everything right. I have documents. I know exactly. I'm good. I get an email from my probation officer, which already I feel doesn't like me. So, I mean, not that you're supposed to be warm and fuzzy with your probation officer, you know, but, you know, it would be nice.

Of course it would. That's what you hope for. Right. You hope for. But apparently I'm difficult. So the last time I was on federal probation, I stole $11.5 million. Right, so they're not feeling it. She's made it aware that's not going to happen. She's let me know very clearly that ain't happening again. Right, not on her watch.

Yeah, not on her watch. So, okay, she says, good morning. Be prepared to have a conversation between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. today regarding a complaint I received from someone you spent time in prison with. This is your current probation officer. This is my probation officer. Right. Like last week. Yeah, this was October 23rd.

This was two weeks ago, less than two weeks ago. Yeah. Yeah, about two weeks ago. Yeah. So, yeah, because it was a Wednesday. Yeah. So then she put, or then I put, it needs to be closer to one because I have a conference call with my lawyer and opposing counsel. This is for the wardog's lawsuit.

So I explained to her, look, it's got to be closer to what. I have at two o'clock. Right. So she put, actually, report to my office tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. Wow, she's flexing on you. Yeah, you ain't going to tell her what time you're coming in. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, she's like, look, you're, you're forgetting who's in control here, Mr. Cox.

You're not busy. You're coming here. So then I put, no problem. I'll see you at 10 tomorrow because, you know, I'm terrified over her. Yeah. So the next day I go in and I see her and I go to her, and as soon as I walk in, after having to go through the metal detector and all this other stuff. So I go in there and I say, hey, what's up?

And I walk in and she goes, have a seat. And she sits down and she goes, so I received a complaint. I said, right. I said, she said, you know what this is about? I said, yes, it's from Marcus Shrinker. And I pull out the, I said, she says, how do you know that? And I said, oh, he sent this to my website. And I said, you know, I have a website.

And she says, yeah, I know, I've been to the website. And I said, oh, okay, so did you read the story? She said, I read the story. She said, and several people in this office have read the story. Very serious. And I'm thinking, so what part of this is violation of your probation? I don't understand. Well, because what I gathered, she wouldn't show me what the complaint was.

Even though I feel I have a right to know under the Freedom of Information Act, I would have to file the Freedom of Information Act. And I'm not positive that I could still get it because some departments are exempt. And she could easily not, she could easily say it's still under review. Whatever, they didn't have to give him. Right. But based on what she said to me, she said, have you ever been up to, she goes, do you know where Marcus Schroinker lives? And I went, no.

I said, but I think he lives in Pace, Pace, Florida, which is up by the panhandle. And she goes, how do you know that? Why do you say that? I went, well, because I said, the email that he sent me has the name of the company I think he works for. And it's like a landscaping type company, like probably has something to do with the environmental studies that he got his group. Something like that. I said, so it said it, and I looked that up on the internet, and it's up there near Pace. I said, and I have analytics on my website.

So I know that after I received this, I checked the website, and there was, somebody from Pace, Florida has been on the website. Yeah. And I said, so that's Shrinker. Right. And I goes, that's how I know. She goes, have you ever driven up there? And I went, also his father lives in the general area, too. Remember?

He was flying. Ooh, sorry. He was flying from Indiana to Florida, which is, that's why he had to go through Alabama. He was going to see his father, which lived in that area. So I said, so I assume that's where he lives. And she goes, but you don't know his address? I said, no. She was, have you ever driven up there to see him?

I said, no. She said, have you ever driven him up there and seen his parents? So that made me think, okay, that's weird. Why would you think? So I think in the complaint he must have said. That you were harassing him. harassing it because he says harassing. So I think he was trying, probably to her, he probably said like I've been harassing them.

I've driven up there and harassed him. So I went, no, that's not true. And she goes, okay, she goes, well, you've been pretty good about notifying me when you leave the jurisdiction. You've gotten permission. I go, yeah, I said, I'm not going to do that. That's one of those things is stupid. If you just tell them, you just tell them, they'll let you go.

Yeah. It's reasonable. You can't say, hey, I need to go up to, I need to fly out to Texas because I'm bringing in some, you know, bringing in 15,000. keys of cocaine, you can't tell on that. But if it's a reasonable, you know, you're going to a funeral. They're going to let you go. So I go, okay. And she goes, yeah, okay.

She said, well, what is, well, you know, she goes, what's all this? I go, oh, okay, I said, well. So I pull out the thing, I said, you read the letters, right? And I show her the letters. And we read them. And she goes, okay, okay. I said, do you see where it says he never? She goes, did he participate the story?

And I went, yeah, he did. And I said, so, I said, let me explain this to you. And I show her this. I said, this is a letter. This is something I printed out on Core Links. And I show her, see how my name, my reg numbers here in my name? She was right. I said, anything you print out in the Bureau of Prisons, this is what it looks like.

It has all your information up top. It has all this. Where it's from, what it is, everything. I said, this is something I print out. And I show her, look, every page has it. Every single page. She goes, okay. She goes, yeah, I see that.

I understand that. I said, okay, cool. So I show her, I said, so first of all, remember how he specifically said, we didn't work together? And she was right. I said, these are all the notes that I took. while I was, and I show that. I said, which I said, let's face it. I said, you see

all these notes, right? She goes, right. I said, I couldn't have come up with this by last night. Right. And she goes, okay, I agree. I said, you see how old it is. She goes right, okay, okay. I said, right, right. I said, right, right. I said, okay, right here. This is a printout from him with his name and information on it. I said, right here, it says, Matt, here is drafts 1.3 Of the outline.

I'd be curious to get your thoughts on this. I said, and then he goes on to tell me a whole story. that he typed up gave to me. And she looked, you should see, her face was like, let me see that. She's like, huh. And she goes, okay, so this is, I said, no, no, no, no. No.

Right here, chapter 1.1, draft two. I was, I said, here, see all the hand, all the notes that he made? She goes, yeah, okay. I said, this one. Matt, I can't believe I'm writing this. While at Purdue, I fell in love with a cheerleader named Terry. I said, he tells me all about this. And he typed this up.

He typed this up. He typed it up, printed it out, and gave it to me. And that says his name on it, that he printed it? Of course, got right name, reg, everything. Marcus Schrenker. Yeah. And what's great is that he, it's not like, he addressed it to me. Holy shit.

That's what's even funnier. He puts your name in it so he knows it's sending it to you. Because when I got them and I was like, well, I'm going to show her this. When I remember I pulled it out and I looked at it, I was like, oh, my God. He addressed it to me. And it says, I can't believe I'm telling you this. Wow. Same one.

another one. Matt. It is beautiful. Matt. Here's the write-up from the old mill experience. Remember how he hides, oh, you didn't read the book. He hides under the table and his mother's drinking and she's screaming and her. And remember how he says that I'm saying that I'm smearing his mother's image and everything. Yeah, yeah, all that. Okay. I had learned by that time that they, both in them, because he also talks about his stepfather being drunk, right? By that time, by the time they got to their third drink, the monster in them came out. Then he put, my mother had between one and two or less than a wonderful, loving person.

The problem is being the alcoholic she was, that was a rare moment when she was that sober person. So it goes on and on, talk about how his mother, the school teacher, elementary school teacher, how she was a drunk and she was. So you showed all this to your probation officer. Right. What did that end up? Look, so I keep going. I keep going and going. Yeah.

At some point, I mean, I'm like maybe 30, 40 pages into it. I'm like this and then remember this story? You read this thing. This story. And she's like, Mr.

Cox, she's, we're not going through this whole thing. She's like, so she realizes, look, all right. You're right. You know,

like she can tell the guy's a fucking liar. Right. So she knows. So that's the end of that. Yeah. So I say, so she goes, okay,

so what's going on? I said, hey, he's a fucking lying piece of garbage. Wow. So she's like, okay. So what's,

What's comical to me is the only thing about it was that I thought to myself, the issue I have is that the ABC thing, like, is that photo licensed? At one point, I know it was licensed by... Can you show us that on there? Right, the Associated Press. This was a photograph that had come out from Shrinker. Okay. This is a...

It was like a glamour shop that had been done by a Lexus dealer. Okay, yeah, they wanted to use him for like an ad or something. Right, he and his wife and the plane and they have their Lexus. because they bought just tons of Lexuses. Apparently, he thought that was like an awesome car. So, you know, I knew it had been at one point it was copyrighted by the Associated Press. So there's very possible that it had been licensed. That may be possible.

I don't think that Shrinker owned it. He never owned it. But somebody might. Somebody might, and it may have been, it may have been licensed to them. So I thought, you know, it's public domain, is it, isn't it? I could track down and figure it out. But even if I found out that that was true, well, then you know ABC News is going to be like, okay, yeah, you can use it, but we want you to pay us.

Yeah. So I'm like, fuck that. I'm not going to pay you. I'm not paying anybody for that picture. So I figured, okay, well, you know what I know is public domain? Mugshots. Yeah. So instead, I redesigned the book cover with his face with his mugshot on it.

Yeah, which I'm sure he loves even more. So, you know, my whole thing to shrinker is you could have had the GQ nice, pretty picture on it with the pretty wife and the nice clean plane. Instead, you get in the mug shop. This is what you get. This is what you get. It's public records. Wow. I think that's better personally. Oh, listen, and I have two more. I have one, another one that's

kind of like this, and then I have one where he looks like a serial killer. Shaved head, he's kind of bloated, in fact, he's terrifying looking. So I've got two other covers that are coming. So these are the books that will be put out with the different colors. Okay. So how long until these are published and able to

be purchased? Well, and I say it's literally a click now. So by the time... Oh, so you can buy them right now. Well, no, I haven't done it yet because I wanted to do this with you. Right. So I'll give you the link and you can put the link down and people can buy the book. Okay. The links right below. You want to buy this motherfucker? Buy it right now. Definitely. And I've got quotes from like I got quotes from Associated Press from, you know, it's yeah, listen bro, it's it's some good shit. Right. It's well documented. It's fucking fascinating. I'll tell you, I mean, it's definitely fascinating. What I love is that he's not. He's not. He's, Now currently still doesn't want the story out.

Yeah. And it's trying to get me thrown back in jail. Yeah. Yeah. And then writes these letters that are clearly lies. See, this is like two weeks ago. You're still lying. Yeah.

Right. Still. We should try and get him on a conference call or something. Oh, my God. Wouldn't that be great? Yeah. That would be a me. That would be, because, you know, and you'd be able to hear the whole, you know,

you can watch him. Like, there's like a date line or 2020 interview with him. Yeah. You know how I kind of mock him a little bit? if you watch that video, you completely see him going, well, now, wait a minute. Like, they, they, um, confront him where they're like, okay, so you took the plane out and you, you got blown out of the plane and right, right, you were so dazed. And he's like, you know, and so you're, you're thrown out of the plane.

They're like, she's like, right, right, right. You've been flying for several hours. Right, right, right. She was, and you, you just happened to land right where you had. parked a bike or stored a bike the night before and he goes you know I know how it looks

but it really was just random it's just like so right it's a coincidence just a coincidence please I mean just it's like are you serious did you really think you were going to pull the wool over these people's eyes

and he's still trying to play it off right still trying to do it still trying to do it well that's amazing the book I mean this is another one these things were like man it'd be a great fucking movie. It would be a great movie. Just like War Dogs, that would be a phenomenal movie.

Like I said, when I was reading the synopsis, the first paragraph, I was picturing the film. I was literally watching a movie. And the whole conflict between he and I convincing him to tell what really happened. And the parallel

story of just the psychology of a pathological liar. Yeah. Yeah, it was just as fascinating as his crime story. Yeah, he's, it's bizarre. It's bizarre. And And honestly, had I not read all those, the studies and the books, and I mean, I would have been super frustrated. But I was so, I was so enamored with just him being this. It's like, you're talking to somebody that you just completely, I'm just like everything I'm reading is you.

Oh my God, you do that. Oh, my God. So I completely know what I'm up against. And it was just bizarre to hear him say stuff that I'm like, oh, my God, what do you mean? Yeah. Oh, my God. He did the same things. There was just no benefit to it.

It was amazing. Same thing here. I mean, clearly he's got a benefit. He's trying to get me shut down completely. Right. So now the book comes out. And, you know, you, you, it's just going to get worse. The more you, the more you squeeze, you know, the more slips through your fingers.

Right. But yeah, it would be great if you called them up and said, hey, so we just read your book. And we were going, what book? Yeah. Marcus, if you see this podcast. Just leave a comment below. I'm sure it'll get upvoted enough. We'll have to communicate and get you on here.

One more thing is I've talked to a reporter for Forbes that I'm supposed to talk to about writing an article about me and Shrinker and writing the book about Shrinker. So hopefully if that comes out by the time this comes out, you could put that link too. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I'll definitely mention the podcast to him. Cool.

Yeah, that's awesome. That'd be pretty cool. Very cool. We'll see what happens. Well, cool, man. That was super fascinating. Thanks again for coming on and sharing another story. Hopefully we can do it again soon.

Yeah. Because I love it. I know everyone else loves it. Well, hopefully this gets a bunch of life. I don't get the... Stop reading the comments. I got to stop reading those comments. Some of them are good.

Most of them are good. But everyone's wild there. Awesome, man. Well, thank you again. Yeah. Appreciate it, man.