Julian Dorey Podcast - 🤣 #96 - INSIDE CRIME: Meet The FBI's Most Wanted Fraud Mastermind | Matthew Cox

Episode Date: April 21, 2022

(***TIMESTAMPS in Description below) ~ Matthew Cox is a notorious former con artist, FBI’s Most Wanted suspect, fraud expert, and criminal. While he still holds a strong expertise in fraud, Matt no longer actively practices after completing 13 years in the slammer due to his many, many crimes. Instead, he has become a prolific True Crime author and podcast host. Cox’s bibliography includes “War Dogs” subject Efraim Diveroli’s Memoir, “Once a Gun Runner.” You can subscribe to his terrific podcast (“Inside True Crime with Matt Cox”) here: https://youtube.com/c/InsideTrueCrime  ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - Intro; The story behind Matt’s first fraud; The Mom Who Was A Really Bad Criminal; Did you ever consider if this was not good person stuff? 20:17 - Matt explains the threshold of crime that lives inside everyone; Why pride was Matt’s downfall; Matt’s relationship with a father and how it molded him 31:47 - Matt graduates to bigger fraud; The Legend of Eddie LaFuente; Liar Loans 51:44 - Matt  explains how he invented fake banks; How Matt would sell clients to commit fraud; The Great Christian Mortgage Fraud; Matt’s criminal band of appraisers 1:17:43 - Gretchen, Pete, And The Diner Downfall; Taking the FBI on a date; Matt explains why he was “a gangster”; Matt recalls his ex-wife and his divorce post-downfall number 1  1:42:38 - The house flipping fraud racket begins; The client who taught Matt Social Security fraud; How Matt would trick the Social Security Administration; “Baby Becca” And The Wife That Never Was; The Reservoir Dogs Who Built Matt’s Empire; The Great Eddie LaFuente Returns; Forbes Magazine loved Matt Cox; The Tragic Car Accident Epidemic in Tampa during Real Estate Mogul Matt Cox’s Reign 2:11:23 - Matt’s 50-60 Credit Card System; That time An Ex-FBI Agent Caught Matt And Took An L; The grind that is being a full time Con Artist; How Matt spent his money 2:30:17 - An Idiot Named Travis And The Bank Sting That Ended The Empire; Matt’s emergency meeting with a Sheriff’s Deputy; Matt got massive plastic surgery to disguise himself and go on the run 2:51:08 - The Match.com Stage-5 Clinger; Matt explains the one thing above all else he knows about his mentality; The Last Supper At Olive Garden; Stage-5 Clinger rears her ugly head 3:13:52 - Matt explains how he would get a fake passport or Driver’s License; The Cheapest, Dumbest Criminal In America; How Matt set up shop in Atlanta ~ YouTube EPISODES & CLIPS: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0A-v_DL-h76F75xik8h03Q ~ Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “TRENDIFIER”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Because what are you gonna do? I said, oh, nothing. I'm leaving. So I can't go to prison. So immediately you were like, I'm on the run. Yeah. I mean, look at me, bro. I'm adorable. Can't go to prison. Have you had any of the plastic surgery yet or anything? No, I haven't been on the run yet. Oh, shit. So you did that to change your appearance while you were on the run. Of course. I mean, I know what you're thinking thinking it's hard to improve this but

what's cooking everybody if you are on youtube right now please hit that subscribe button hit that bell button hit that like button on the video and as always would love to hear from you down in the video comment section as well to everyone who has been sharing the links to these episodes with friends, thank you so much for that. As I always say, word-of-mouth marketing is the best possible thing this show could get to grow. And so I really, really appreciate all of you who have been doing your part. Let's keep that rolling. To everyone who is listening on Apple or Spotify right now, thank you for checking out the show over there. If you haven't already, be sure to hit the follow button on either one of those platforms and leave a five-star review if you have a second. That's a huge help.

And I look forward to seeing you guys again for future episodes. Now, I am joined in the bunker today by none other than Mr. Matt Cox, who is a man who really doesn't need an introduction. But if you don't know who Matt Cox is, he at one point was the most wanted con man in America and has lived a hell of a life. Obviously not always doing good stuff, but he's an unbelievable storyteller now. And he's funny as all fuck too. So I really want to give a shout out to my friend, Danny Jones down at the concrete podcast, concrete with a K it's available on all platforms for hooking this

one up. He has like 10 different podcasts with with matt they are incredibly entertaining and you'll see why when you listen to this one this guy is just he can talk to a wall it's it's amazing i was in a trance like the whole time i'm just like oh my god by the second hour i mean it was just story after story after story they're funny and they're also crazy so hope you guys enjoy i know you will that said you know what it is i'm julian dory and this is this is oneafire. it if you don't like the status quo start asking questions matt cox thanks for coming down here brother sure no problem we've been we've been talking for like two hours so obviously this is like weird start from the top like this but

i've seen your story around a bunch i had a fan reach out maybe three four months ago and say yo you should get matt cox on the show and i was like matt cox matt cox then i looked at the wikipedia page i'm like oh this guy and the story i mean your life has been insane man yeah unfortunately yeah yeah unfortunately but you know what like in a weird way you end up taking winding roads and if you take advantage of them in the right ways obviously you can end up in a place where you're doing the things you're passionate about it seems like that's kind of where you're at with the writing and even with the podcast that's where i'm at now but it was yeah definitely a long road to get there yeah and and like i said i mean like i said earlier you know it's not like it's not like something

happened to me you know it's like i brought all of it on myself so it's not like i can like i came down with cancer and you know it was you know like. Every bad thing that's ever happened to me is because I brought it on myself. I really like that approach, man. You even read the description of your podcast. I think it's like I committed all these crimes and I was guilty of every single one. 100% guilty. People appreciate the upfront and then you tell the story and it's like, oh, shit. Yeah, that's why I always like guys will start talking about like we've been talking about like how unfair the justice system is or something.

It's like I can only bitch so much about it because like I was really guilty. So, you know, how much can I really complain? You know, so – but, you know, that's – but whatever. We'll get into it. We'll get into it. So maybe we'll just start right from the top at the beginning a little bit so for people that aren't familiar with your story if they haven't already pulled up wikipedia at this point you were the mortgage fraudster pretty much is how we would describe it and you when was when did you officially go down like 2006 um yeah late

2006 basically first part 2007. Yeah. So you were what, like 35, something like that? Yeah. Okay. No, 37, 38. I was like 37, 38, 38. God, man, I don't remember.

37. Mid-30s, late 30s. When I finally got arrested, like I'd been arrested a few times times and I've been on probation a few times. But when I finally – like I was on the run and I finally got arrested. Yeah, it was late 2006 and I was 37 years old. So let's just figure out where it all started. When did you first – I mean was it in college, before college? Like what was the first soiree you had into like doing something illegal

um uh that was the first loan i ever did was was was a bank fraud you know really yeah how so well like i i you know i graduated college and i ended up after a few years i ended up as a mortgage broker you know i had a girlfriend that was a mortgage broker and she said, you got to do this. So I ended up being a mortgage broker and like, I mean, and it was bad, you know, well, you know, you, you've done finance and you, we even talked about this. Like you basically work for nothing. Well, as a mortgage broker, like there was no salary, like you're going out, you're getting clients and you're getting a loan right so how do i make money in the meantime so i basically ran up my credit cards stopped paying my car payment i mean i was i was like months behind on my bills and and i've got i'm working on three or four loans and my very

first loan i'm about to send it off and uh the the chick that i was doing the loan for had been 30 days late on her rent at one point. And so when my manager got the file, before you send it to underwriting to get approved, she went through the file. And she took one piece of paper out and set it to the side and went through everything else. And she goes, this looks great. And I'm like, well, what's up with this? She goes, well, I don't think you looked at this. She goes, your customer has a 30-day late. She goes, you're, you've got a, your customer has a 30 day late. She was 30 days late in the last 12 months,

let's say. And I was like, and that's a deal killer. It's over. She's not getting a loan. The bank's not lending you money if you're 30 days late. Right.

You can't, right. So she went, she said, so, and I was like, oh my God. And she goes,

I go, what do I do? And, and she went, well, what I would do is I would white it out. And she pulled out some white out. You remember the old one?

Yeah. And she goes, I would white it out, wait for it to dry, make a copy, let me look at it, we'll put it in the file, send it off. And I was like, well. So she told you to do it. She told me to do it, yeah. And I went, well, that's, and I said, well, what happens if they call? She goes, well, they're going to call. She goes, if they call at all, they'll just ask them if they filled it out.

They're not going to say, hey, did she have any 30-day late? She goes, they don't need to. They have the document in front of them. Holy shit. And I went, what if they catch it, though? What if they do? And she goes, I said, that's fraud. I could go to jail.

She goes, you're not going to go to jail. You might lose your job. She goes, but we'll just say that this is what they sent us. She said, they just won't do it. She says, it won't go through underwriting. Maybe you get fired. jail you might lose your job she's but jill will just say that this is what they sent us like she said you know they just won't do it she's it won't go through underwriting maybe you get fired and and i was like um she says look they're not going to catch it she says a ton of documents here they're not they don't call on everything they're not going to even if they call they're not going to catch it she said she's look nobody's looking for my truck because i used to joke around like

i'm like i'm parking in the back because they're looking for my car. Cause I used to joke around. Like I'm like, I'm parking in the back. Cause they're looking for my car. You know, like I was that broke. And she said, uh, yeah, she said, I'm the, nobody's looking for my car.

And I went, wow. So I said, give me the whiteout. And I whited it out. I went and made a copy and put it in the thing. And I sweated for like three, four days,

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And you're in. I'm good. The next guy that came in, that loan closed. The next one that came in, the guy made like $60,000, let's say. I forget the amount, but like $62,000. But if he made like $69,000, he could get the loan. So you changed it. Of course, I changed the 2 to a 9. I changed a couple other numbers to make sure it worked out right.

Did it look good when you did that? It looked perfect, bro. Like I have a degree to a nine. I changed a couple other numbers to make sure it worked out right. Did it look good when you did that? It looked perfect, bro. Like, I have a degree in fine arts. Oh, yeah. That's why Danny always makes jokes. Sorry. That's why people make jokes when they're like, well, you know, this guy's dangerous. He has a degree in fine arts.

I always say that when they're like, well, how did you figure out how to make that? I'm always like, I have a degree in fine arts. Like, at some point, I start making birth certificates so I can get social security to issue me social security numbers to children that don't exist so I can create synthetic identity. Oh, I did read that. Yeah. Right. I start doing all these things. And whenever somebody says, how'd you figure that out?

I always go, bro, I have a degree in fine arts. Like, I'm dangerous, you know? Like, so, yeah, So yeah, it looked perfect. I sent it in. Went perfectly fine. Next guy comes in. Something's off. I correct.

I start just correcting every document. And I got to a point where I was like, listen, if you walked into my place with a pulse, you were getting a loan. I was going to get you a loan. Like if guys would come in, they'd hand me forged W-2s and stuff. And this is what, like 2000, 2001, 2002? Yeah, 2000, 2001. So, well, probably 1999 at first, the later part of 1999. So then 2000.

And, you know, people would come in. I'd have customers come in and give me a fake like W-2. And I'd catch it right away. I'm making these fucking things. So I know. You knew. Yeah. And I mean, I've had them to where I've.

And what would you look for? Like when someone gave you that? You know, when you start making copies of copies, like the drum on a cheap printer, the drum, when you make a copy of a copy, any lines start to get squiggly. Like straight lines start to bend and the more you make it again it bends again next thing you know you got these wavy lines so it's

like obviously this person's that one's easy for you to get yeah very easy or you know sometimes they're not lined up correctly or they'll i've had people use font like the fonts off like this is ariel and you use like like this is like times roman or something. This isn't even close. You completely change it. Or I'd pick up the phone and I'd go, so these are your W-2s? And they're like, yeah, yeah, those are my W-2s. And I'd go. And I'd pick up the phone and I'd call the phone number. And like some woman would answer, hello?

I'd go, hey, is this AAA towing? And they'd be like, oh, yes, AAA towing. And I'd be like, is this your mom? Bro, uh, uh, uh. And I'd go, okay, is this AAA towing? And they're like, oh, yes, AAA towing. And I go, is this your mom? Bro, um, uh, uh, uh. And I go, okay, thank you. And I hang up. I say, listen, bro. You came to the right place.

Yeah. You bumped into the right guy. Like, now I understand. But then again, what's so funny about that is then I would be like, they'd be like, man, I don't want to get in trouble. Like, don't call anybody. No, no, no. You're getting a loan.

Like, the fees across the board just went up. But you're getting a loan. No, I got you. It's funny. That same guy, the AAA towing, I forget what the name of the company was. But he, and I said, he's like, well, I said, make sure your mom answers it correctly from now on. And I remember I called like two days later.

I just randomly called saying, hello. And I was like is tom there oh a triple a towing by the third time i called i said listen we're just gonna change the phone number i'm just gonna answer it myself like i have a bank i have like five or six cell phones i have back when they had uh you could get voicemail that was connected to a pager so i got like eight pagers oh i don't remember that oh no well you were a child you weren't even probably i was like five yeah so but you could get like a voicemail people would call and leave a voicemail and it paid you

they're pagers yeah so they you know so you could put any voice on there and they would you know hey so and so you know we're currently assisting other callers right now and they did so it would beep in my in my drawer and i'd pick up and i'd call and check the voicemail and then I'd call back. Hi, this is so-and-so from whatever, you know, whatever the business is. And then I'm buying. I start incorporating different corporations or I'm getting tax ID numbers from different corporations and I'm registering the phone numbers in the business directory. And I mean I'm getting, you know, as time went, I got more and more creative. I mean, I got to a point where I started making like my own banks.

Like I was making online banks. Like names, like making up names. Yeah, like Bank of Ybor or Southern Exchange Bank of Clarksville.com. Did you have a website for them? Yeah, of course. I have a website. I've got my own color, front and back color bank statements. I've got cards. I mean, I've got everything.

I got envelopes, everything. I've got a – I had a CPA that – not a CPA. She was just a bookkeeper. But she would do 1040s for me. So if you had – let's say you were a plumber and you said you made $12,000 last year, and the guy would be like, yeah, but really I make this much money. And I'd say, okay, well, you have good credit. And so I'd go take his taxes and I'd say, I need this guy to make $120,000. Right now he's making 10 or 12 or000. How did she make that happen?

She changed the W-2s. I mean, I'm sorry. She changed the 1040s. She redo two years of 1040s. She'd do an up-to-date you know, an up-to-date year-to-date profit and loss. And then I'd register, make sure the phone number was registered

in the business directory. And then they'd accept it. Back then, they they would accept that did she have a degree in fine arts too no she didn't but she was a bookkeeper and she was she used to do taxes she's doing yeah she used to um what else would yeah but it was you know it was it was yeah it was it was nuts so I mean I was doing that for a while but that's how it started so you make that first 35 though that first 3,500 yeah sweat it out for a few. That's how it started. You make that first $3,500, though, that first $3,500. You sweat it out for a few days. And then, like you said, you just started doing it on all of them after that.

Was there like a recognition once that loan went through and you saw that money hit your account that you're like, oh, I want to do that again? Where you also said like, oh, we're going to go full illegal? Or was there just full steam ahead? You see the money coming in. Let's roll. No. I mean, me you know not not that there's a black not that there's a gray area um but you know what i was doing was illegal uh so what i what i did was that that's all i was doing i was doing i would just alter like you come in and i take your documents and you're missing one thing i make that correction like that like, it's a gray area. And it's not, I'm still committing fraud.

You shouldn't have got that loan. And so what people don't realize is that if you get a $150,000 loan that you really didn't qualify for, well, I just got hit with, that's $150,000 in fraud I just committed. And you might say, well, you didn't get $150,000. It doesn't matter. I caused the bank to lend $150,000 on a house that they would not have lent. So now I just committed $150,000 mortgage fraud. And you also get to close it so you make the money.

Right. I make a commission. Yeah. And my commissions are, you know they're large you know they're if you should have got if you had gone to bank of america and been charged 1500 bucks you know i'm charging probably three to four thousand maybe five thousand dollars for the same loan and you would have gone to bank of america and you would have gotten an interest rate of whatever let's say six percent i'm charging you seven and a half you know because

i'm getting points on the back of the loan. And again, you're also doing them a favor. They know it. If I was lucky, they'd already been turned down by a couple people. Those are the people you really, really took advantage of because they're not delusional

into thinking that they have a choice. They've been turned down twice. So you know you're in a bad spot. I always hated the guys that you're like, bro, your credit sucks. You don't claim taxes. Like every, your whole situation is fucked. Don't sit here and act like you can argue with me

because I'm charging you a $4,500 broker fee. Right. That by the way, that the seller's paying. Well, yeah, but that's a part of my loan. Go to Bank of America. Go to Bank of America. Go to Bank of America with your taxes that say you made $15,000 and you want to buy a $300,000 house with the money that you have that you don't even have in the bank yet.

Five years later, they might have been able to do that. Yeah. Maybe, but not then. Not then. Not early on. I mean, it's just like you think about where mortgages are now i mean the times where we would even do that for a client and take care of putting that through bank of america because i worked at merrill it's like there are so many moving parts

to that and it can be very annoying and god you roll your eyes every time but it's like i get why i get why because you went from the wild wild west to this yeah yeah it's it yeah i was gonna say um it's funny all the procedures that they put into place now talked to a mortgage broker the other day that was like yeah yeah you can't do this anymore because of this and i immediately looked at him and i was just like yeah you can't here's how i do it and i went through i go boom boom boom boom boom it's an extra step but because of that extra step now they 100 believe it and the guy's like holy shit i was like and he was like i never even thought that right that's the problem that's the whole thing

that's why you're a normal broker and you'll never have to go to jail good for you like that's that like you're saying no no you can't do that right You can't. You used to be able to do it. This is how you can do it now. And thank God you're not even in the ballpark of being able to figure it out because the truth is you could end up in jail. Yeah. You know, which is what happened. So, I continued on doing that and- Yeah, the growth of what happened with you. Yeah, I just- That's what's wild. Well, I you yeah I just wild well I mean I just it just kept getting worse and worse then I ended up opening my own place and what year are we talking

about here I would say I open my own place in in 2000 like a within quickly within a year so did you have a did you have a wife and son at the time I was married and I just had a child. Like, we got married, you know, most of the people in my family get married because, you know, someone got pregnant. So, you know, we're Catholic. So, they get pregnant and you're like, oh, you know, I guess we're getting married. So, we got, you know, I got married to, I can't even say it. I talked to her all the time. Like, I was talking, I talked to my ex-wife all the time. She'll kill me. That's good, at least.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, we're good friends. She came to see me the whole time I was in prison. Really? Yeah, yeah. And I know her husband. And you've been divorced and everything, too. Before you went to prison, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, we were done. No, her husband's a great guy. Listen, talk about her husband. He's doing hard time,

bro. I mean, he's been married like 20 years to this chick. I'll go back to her. I'll back i would go back she tough bro tough just dug a grave there for yourself oh yeah but she was visiting you the whole time yeah but i don't know how he's hung in you know he was a marine that's what i keep equating to well you were in the military you're a marine you're a much tougher person than me so you could handle it but even him he's she's broken she broke him along i said to her one time i said he's like a beautiful stallion you've broken she's i didn't break him okay he just knows his place and i was like oh my god

god and she's like don't don't act like it did you know what i mean i don't want to jump on the bandwagon here but damn i feel like i got a full picture of that. Oh, my God. Listen, just talk about, listen, when we got divorced, I mean, just beat me down. I'm giving her everything. Just let me leave with my clothes. Did she know about this? I mean, she'll say no. I had no idea. I'm like, I think you almost convinced yourself of this at this point.

So, yeah. But, yeah, so I was married to her, and I had a son, and I would say, so I'm committing fraud. Do you think that played a role, though? That's my question. Like, do you think, because you said, I was behind on my bills, they were going to steal my car out of the back lot and repossess it. You were worried about that, and you're trying to make money on an all-commissioned job. Do you think a part of you is thinking, like, oh, I'm getting married, I have a kid on the way? Well, at that time, I wasn't getting married.

When I first started. So when it first started, that wasn't a thing yet? When it first started, was the money a, you know, was it part of it? You know, was it a factor? You know, yeah, it was a factor but i you know let's face it i i also think that part of you know honestly that that's to me that's that's justification because the truth is is is that you know i always like to say look under the right situation under the right circumstances anyone will commit a fraud or a crime anyone will commit a crime in the right

circumstances and some people say no i would never do that define crime like the like you'll break the law like jaywalk like in well stealing you'll steal in the right circumstances you say no i would never do that really because if you're living in your car with your two kids and you have no money and there's a loaf of bread on the other side of the door in a Publix. I don't know if you have Publix, in a supermarket. Not up here, but in a Publix. You're going to grab that bread because your kids live another three days on that bread. The only difference between that person and me is my threshold's lower.

So I was going under. I didn't want to move back in with my parents. My father was an asshole, you know, so I, you know, desperately did not want to put myself back in that situation. So in part, I would say it's justification. I'm trying to justify why I committed crime when most people would, they just would, they would say, you know what? I'm going to move in back with my parents. I'm just going to close legitimate loans. I'm going to put in the time and the effort, and I'm going to build a clientele base, and I'm going to do it the right way. Like, that's a good citizen. That's a good person. You know, I wasn't that person. And, you know, that's the bottom line. So when I say I needed the money,

I did need the money, but the same, you would have needed the money, probably would not have broken the law. I did. For me, my threshold was different. I desperately didn't want to disappoint my father. I didn't want to be an embarrassment. I wanted to impress him. There were all kinds of other things that were a part of that. And what it really boils down to is I made that decision based on pride. And I always say this. I tell this to the chick that I'm dating, to my girlfriend all the time. Every bad decision I've ever made was based on my pride.

Every single one of them. And I mean, listen, tell you one thing. But you didn't recognize that at the time. Of course not. This is way after. At the time, I desperately need money. This isn't until later when I wrote – I was in prison. I started writing.

I wrote a memoir. And you have to kind of do kind of – you have to start looking at yourself, self-introspective. Where you have to kind of do kind of, you know, you have to start looking at yourself, you know, self-introspective. Where you have to kind of really dig down. And I read several books on how to write memoirs. And one of them was about trying to find the things in your past, in your youth, or in your childhood that created the person that you were. And I remember thinking, well, I had a fine childhood. I had a great childhood. had a great i had a great childhood yeah i did have a great childhood compared to my celly who stole who his mother

thought he stole something from her one time when he was like seven and she took an iron and burned his hand with it he still had the burn mark like yeah i had a dream childhood compared to that guy it's a good perspective but you know but looking back you know no my father was an alcoholic you know my mom was an abler you know she my dad was a binge drinker he was belligerent he was rude talked down to everybody he was a a narcissist he was was he successful super successful really super successful yeah absolutely so he's functioning yeah in that environment and and and took a ton he was a state farm manager, worked for state farm insurance, and took people that were driving, you know, Volkswagen, beat up Volkswagen Bugs that two years later are driving $100,000 Mercedes. I mean, he's making people, turning them into great salespeople. He was a great salesman.

Oh, gotcha. into great sales people he was a great salesman yeah he was a great salesperson he was a great manager you know and that's how he managed me my whole life but the truth is i was a disappointment to him so i did not want to move home so this is this is very very interesting because you you said two things even before that clincher right there a couple minutes ago where you said your dad was an right just outlined why yeah happened to be a successful asshole but he was an asshole had problems but you didn't want it the the reason your pride got in the way is because you didn't want to move home because you didn't and as you just put it you didn't want to be a disappointment to them right and I'm always so curious about this because I'm

lucky like I have a great relationship with my parents they're they're great people like they're just kind of your normal good people don't there was never I'm lucky. Like I have a great relationship with my parents. They're great people. Like they're just kind of your normal good people. There was never any problems between me and them growing up. So when I talk with people who there was a relationship problem or something like that, I'm always wondering what makes you feel like you have to live up to someone who you don't like or not even don't like, who you don't respect. No, I had great – I think that's actually the opposite. I had amazing respect for my father. Really?

I did not like him. As a person, I did not like him. You know what's funny? Why did you have respect for him? He was super successful. And you know what he taught me when I was growing up? And I talk about this in the book, which is something that I never would have talked about had I not written that book. Because I never would have looked at it because I'd always denied it in myself, just never took the time to really look at it.

What he taught me was this, was that if you make enough money, you can be a complete fucking asshole to everyone. And they a and they will accept it they will they will cater to you they will enable your behavior and you can basically boss people around and be a complete dickhead to everybody and that was that was my dad he told you that no but that's what he taught me right by watching him you can you can treat women badly you can talk bad to my sisters you can talk bad to my mother you can you can talk to other men like they're practically fucking dogs even though they could beat your ass and you wanted to be able to do that yeah oh i wanted to be just like my dad definitely want to be like my dad i respected my father everybody

respected my father but the truth is as you get, you start to realize you're kind of an asshole. Like, you behave one way that you would tell me not to behave. Like, if I talked – he saw me mouthing off to my girlfriend, he'd say, hey, hey, don't talk to women like that. You know, like, what are you talking about? You talk to mom like she's a dog. You know, you talk to my sister like she's a dog. You calling my sisters you know horrors and and all kinds of names do as i say not as i do right and it's like you know so which isn't the way it works your your parents are doing drugs and telling you not to do drugs you're gonna do drugs right you know the difference is

like i don't drink i've never drank really Never drank because this guy that I idolized was a complete drunk. Like, this guy, he would be sober for three months and go on a two-week binge. This is such what a good – and you know because you've been in the corporate world. Yeah. This is what a good salesman he was. Always in, like, the top ten in the nation. Always the top – in the region, he was always the top salespeople. He has, like, 25, 26 agents.

They're always part of what they call like the millionaire club they always win the trips to to germany to you know around the world they're always winning those trips he's massive and state farm knew he had an alcohol problem they put him through rehab twice and i don't mean some bullshit 10-day rehab we're talking about 60 and 90-day rehabs. They sent us – the last time they sent our whole family to rehab. I ended up – we ended up going to Al-Anon where the whole time my dad's – You had to live at rehab? No, not live there. But he's living in a rehab for like 60 days.

And we have to – the family's going like twice a week. We're going to Al-Anon meetings. They're like, how did I end up in rehab? How did I end up having to as a kid yeah i'm like 12 years 12 13 years no jesus actually that's not true i was 17 i was 17 i remember way yeah you're not but it's like how am i my mom's like you know state farm they want us to go they it's like what are you how do i end up here because he makes he makes some money so they're right they're going to protect their asset they take them back they put them back in boom he's doing great he's kick ass he's sober for a year and a half you know bam has a relapse my mom covers it up she's telling people he's sick yeah great enabler um you know and love my dad to death, you know, it was like, oh, God, what is it where the, what is that, Pat, what was her name, where they, you protect your, God, I can't believe it,

is it Stockholm syndrome, where you, yeah, I think, yeah, one of those, yeah, it's funny, because that's exactly what i would say my mom had like she she loved him she thought he was wonderful she thought this she thought that it was just like stockholm stockholm syndrome it was just like what are you doing but then he's paying all the bills she's got brand new car every year or two they go on vacations she's living an amazing life and yeah periodically he's a complete douchebag so it was just like that for all the trade-off i mean it's that's what it is for a lot of people it's just you you have a you have a little bit of a of a

what would appear as a contradiction there that was actually good for you on the one half where it contradicted where you recognize that his alcoholism was something that i guess could potentially be genetic and you're like well i'm never gonna touch that because I never want to be like that absolutely yeah so you recognize what that made him in that environment right right being on alcohol being around the family being abusive but you didn't wreck it you didn't make the same recognition for how he treated people what he got you just saw the level the stature in society and you're and you're like well shit State Farm even paid for his rehab twice.

That's how much power he has. So I want that. They – oh, yeah. I was just – yeah, listen, bro. Like I'm borderline an asshole sober. What's alcohol going to do to me? And I saw what it did to him. I mean that's just – so, yeah, you're absolutely right.

Like I did not want to move back in there. I did not want to move in the house. I did not want to move in the house. I didn't want to hear him bossing my mom around. I didn't. I was able to have done anything to not be there. So, you know, I usually just kind of say, yeah, I needed the money and I move on. But you just had to go all in. And so that's why I usually, you know, because I tell these stories.

Like, if you tell your whole story, the audio version of my book is like 10 hours long. Yeah. You know, it's ridiculous. Your life's a movie. Right. like if you tell your whole story my the audio version of my book's like 10 hours long yeah you know it's ridiculous so your life's a movie right i condense it to the quick i needed the money i did it because people can understand that i don't go in i don't typically go into that whole thing so yeah but basically yeah didn't want to move home didn't want them i needed the money so yeah that's what i did so i committed that fraud and continue to commit fraud whenever it came up not going out of my way to do it I'm just doing it to get my commissions and these are these are at the beginning it's simpler fraud and not to like change it up here but you know heavy

fraud is when you're stealing someone's entire identity and doing something like that like in my mind when I'm thinking of it but what you were doing here was just changing W-2s, changing their data so they could get a loan. It's a gray area. Right. So you do that for like, it sounds like a year or two, then you open up your own place. Absolutely. So what happens once you get your full control? I hire like six guys, which ends up being like 10 or 12 guys.

I think I ended up like 13 or so guys at one point. Sales guys. Sales guys, yeah. Bro yeah brokers mortgage brokers yeah and they're all they're all getting their licenses everybody's licensed i'm an fha approved lender uh conventional lender uh va approved like i mean it it looks totally legit but i'd say 70 80 of those loans are complete not complete fraud they have fraud in them i hate i i gotta stop saying that i'll go completely fraud they're not completely wrong i'm gonna get to complete fraud um so you know but yeah they got some fraud in them and and and now i'm quickly man just managing all of these guys they're coming in look man i got this guy here's boom boom boom here's

the issue i'm like okay look here's what we're going to do and i go through the whole thing this this this this we're going to do this go have him get a cashier's check what's his bank okay great i got some bank statements in the back here i got these so it's sun trust or sun okay sundry okay great i'm going to redo the bank account and i print out a couple bank accounts send in the original like i know how to get around all the guidelines were you using some of the fake banks you alluded to yeah or so you were already setting that stuff up sure or what i do is i would if so i had i had bank statements for almost every bank out like so let's say you're with uh with bank of america so i had bank i had i had the the bank statements but they were they were just the bank the paperwork blank they're blank how'd you get them I I

ended up whiting out several people's and I went to Kinko's and I made them on the right paper and everything and then I trim them down because bank statements are slightly trimmed down so I don't trim them down right away because you have to run them through the copy so I then already have I already have templates of what your normal bank statements look like. You know, your car payment went through. So I go through, what's his rent payment? Okay. And I change the rent payment.

I change the car payment. I change a couple of things. I print out three bank statements. I print them out on the blank bank statements. I trim them down. I fold them up. You send in the original, and they won't call the bank. What happens is the underwriter will typically call you and say, hey, listen, you made the mistake of sending in the originals.

Well, if they have the original, why would they call the bank? Oh. Right. So I just got around that one. And if they do, they still. Did they ever. Yeah, I was going to say they had to do that sometimes. Right.

I mean, even if they do call, the guy has the. call, the guy wouldn't have the money in the bank anymore. Because by that point, I'd have told him to take the money out of the bank, put it into – so let's say the money is not coming from your bank account. Maybe the seller is giving you your down payment. So we're going to have the seller go get a cashier's check, make a copy of the cashier's check, deposit it into the bank or into the title company, have the title company write me a letter saying that they are holding the borrower's down payment in their escrow. They sent me a letter. They're going to verify, yes, we have it. I'm going to then show the cashier's check, but I'm going to put my guy's name on it.

I'm then going to show the bank statements where they had all the money in the bank, and he took it out. I'm going to show the transaction where he removed it. And now if they call and get an average, the average actually is probably there or pretty close to – So there's just nothing for them to get. Right. So everything is supporting the story, and you send it all in, plus the originals. I just got around the guideline. So – If you fuck up – I'm just thinking about this out loud because I don't – I never did this, right?

I'm not in there doing it. And I know it's like anything else. You get good at it. Things come quicker. But, like, if you fuck up one thing – And what are they going to do? They're going to call me? They're going to call me and say what?

So you were never worried about that? No, no. They would call me. What would they say? We caught you? going to call me? They're going to call me and say what? So you were never worried about that? No, no. They would call me. What would they say? We caught you? You caught me doing what? What did you catch? And they go, you know what they would say? We called the bank and the average doesn't match the same average. Or really they wouldn't because who knows how bank statements averages come out.

You know what I mean? Like the bank statements say this. Or if they said, hey, we sent these to the bank, something didn't look right. So we sent it to them and they verify that these are not the statements. Are you serious? Are you telling me that my customer gave me fake bank statements, but they were originals? I saw the originals. They, no, no, we have the originals, Mr. Cox. So what are you saying? I'm saying he made them look like originals. No, no, we have the originals, Mr. Cox. So what are you saying? I'm saying he made them look like originals. My God, he's crazy. What am I getting at?

I'm not going to say you got me. My God, are you telling me that a guy that works at a tow truck company did this? That's insane. But I'm saying if it happens multiple times. One time I could see that, maybe two times. But like if a bank's calling up Mr. Cox, the mortgage broker. That's the third customer that's done this. It sounds like I'm not going to admit it.

And what are they going to do? They're not calling the FBI. That's what I'm saying, though. You don't think some of them would hang up the phone and be like, all right, this guy's up to some shit. Call the FBI. Like I'm not worried. You're going to go to the customer. What's he going to say?

Oh, I didn't do it. Really? Because you're the one who was going to benefit. They're not going to continue. Look, first of all, they're not catching them. And the few times that I got caught, like I've been caught. I've been caught red handed. By other banks and stuff.

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And you can get $150 off your own 8 Sleep Pod Pro cover today. Supports 8 Sleep. Supports the show. Supports your health. What's better than that? They caught us for a couple million dollars in bad loans. Because one of the things I used to do was make – this really gonna be three and a half hours four hours oh yeah they one of the things I would do is I would make so when you get a canceled check you know

how they run it through and you get on the back it shows it's canceled everything I made 24 months worth of canceled check they look like they were canceled checks and so I had templates from different banks, $700, $900. This was back when rent was not $1,500, $2,000. These were in Florida. Now, how do you make one of those? I mean, you take, I would take my bank account, right? Yeah.

My bank information. And I would, the actual number, the routing number doesn't have so all the routing information on the back just has like the date and the amount that went through and then it has like a a number on it and then it has like the your account number let's say so i would get the customer to write out 24 months worth of checks for let's say $700. Right. Right. This is if we're going to say it went to their bank. Typically I had this go through another bank.

So all I have to change is the account number. Yeah. So the routing number of the bank goes through on the back. So it's, let's say $900. $900 went through on the third for, on the third and then it has a routing number that's on the back and there's some other weird numbers

and then on the front it's the bank account number so I'm changing the bank account number for Bank of America and I'm changing the upper left hand corner I'm changing your name and your address now with your fine arts degree how would you pull this off to not have it have any like look completely convincing i mean i would just cut and paste it on there and make a copy then now you're getting a copy of a cop with the bank the bank you're

borrowing from is used to getting you're faxing them over you're making a copy of it you're mailing it in so they sign it the customer signs it i've got 24 months of them. Well, I had, so now it looks like this customer paid $900 for the last 24 months and all those checks went through the bank. So they're good. And keep in mind, if they call the bank, if it's one of my banks, I'm verifying it, but they never call. That's the great thing about being the bank. You start to know they never call on this. They never on that so now you can even do it for bank of america for sun trust for whatever because i know they're not calling when they see a canceled check that's as solid as it gets right he gave us 24 months worth of canceled checks for 1200 a month he's been paying look oh okay they don't

even think fraud they go oh so yeah we're good we're good yeah and especially back then they were only looking for just there's not anything wrong right whereas today they're like everything's wrong assume it's wrong right very different psychology back then but even even now it they look perfect like they don't think anything's wrong something like that right if you did call someone answers the phone you go to the website. You call the phone. It's all legit. So I had one guy, one mortgage broker who would continually use the same checks and continually sent those checks to the same lender. Well, one of the underwriters at some point got like two of his loans at the same time.

Oh, no. And was underwriting them both basically at the same time or within a few hours. Damn it, Chad. Yeah, exactly. La Fuente eddie la fuente oh god jerk off um so she he uh so she looked at him and she went oh wow same he's looking oh wow like the names are the only things that are changed on these two right so it's the same $1,100, $1,100. The dates went through the same. Everything's identical. It's the same bank, everything.

And she went, oh, no. She goes to the owner. The owner catches it. They pull all of his files and pull like every single loan, like every one of them. Like just an idiot. Like I've got eight or nine different banks. What are you doing? He's just laziness.

It's just sloppy. I can't stand sloppy fraud. So he ends up getting, it ends up being a couple million dollars. Like it very quickly, when you're doing $150,000, $200,000 loans, it very quickly ends up being a couple. It was worth a lot more back then too.

Yeah, it's, listen, it's bad. It was bad bad and so i get a phone call first i get a phone call now this one were you worried about this one were you worried like they're gonna call somebody on this because it was so egregious uh it was egregious so i was concerned but i was ready to throw eddie lafuente under the bus so i i wasn't concerned that i had done anything so the the owner calls up um so gary gary calls me up and i had gotten a heads up from the account executive called me said well there's something going on they're pulling files i just got a phone call from one of the account one of the you know the secretaries or whoever the you know loan processor said oh my god we just pulled account, one of the, you know, the secretaries or whoever, you know, loan processor said, oh, my God, we just pulled this. You need to call Matt.

You know, there's a whole conspiracy. So they call me. I'm ready. I get the phone call. Hey, Gary, what's up? And Gary's like, so I don't know if you've heard this or not. He said, but we caught this. You know, you've got a there's a problem you know

you've got a a broker there that he's using these canceled checks and i go you a rogue broker and he goes he goes i get yeah a rogue broker i said okay yeah we'll go with that yeah i was like and he said because you don't know anything about this i said absolutely not gary and he went i'm offended by the assertion. I've been offended. I've done the offended. What are you trying? What are you saying? So he was like, yeah, well, you know, so he explains, we pulled all the files.

We did this. And Matt, this is a major issue. And I said, okay. He said, have you seen these? I said, no, I have not. And he said, listen, I've been doing this 20 years. These things are amazing. And I was like, you know, I mean, like, you know, I didn't want to say, well, you know, I have a fine arts degree.

So I said, yeah, I said, listen, bro, I haven't seen him, but I'll take a look. And he goes, okay. He said, well, look, you know, there's $2 million and we've already sold a million dollars worth of this has already been sold. There's a million dollars of bad luck. Passed off to another holder. Household bank. God. Household bank. Remember household bank? Yeah. bank remember household bank yeah so

this was the whole system hsbc yeah so he's already sold these he still has a million on his pipeline though and he goes so i've still it's still a million dollars here and i went okay and he said um and i said he said i don't know what he said matt so you know you understand it's a million dollars i said gary gary let me let me, let me – let's cut to the chase, bro. I said, if you're expecting at the end of this phone call that I'm cutting you a check for a million dollars, it's never going to happen. That's just not going to happen. So I suggest we start figuring out how we can deal with this in a way that doesn't have me cutting a check for a million dollars. And he went – and I think – really really i think it was like two million because let's face it

ethically he should have contacted household bank and said listen man we just sold you a million dollars worth of bad paper so i went um and he sat there and he goes uh no no look i i get that he said you don't know anything about this i said absolutely not and he said that brokered what's going on with him i said he's packing he was actually sitting in my office staring at me he's packing his bags right now and he was like what's eddie doing right now yeah he's just looking at me oh he's hoping not to go to jail right and i said look if we can not call the authorities or anything and you know i said that would be great and he goes no no he said listen nobody wants the fbi looking through their stuff he said what i'm i'm going to do is we're going

to we're going to go ahead and pass these off the household bank i just need you to give me your word that if any of these loans come back on me, that you'll help me get rid of the properties. Of course. What am I going to say? Nah, you're on your own. Fuck you, Gary. I'm like, of course, of course, bro. I said, I'm going to, I got you. I got you, bro. So let's face it. Here's the funny thing. It's like most people are like, oh, that's a fraudulent loan yeah but guess what fraudulent loans they perform so believe it or not they now do they perform as high as a normal mortgage probably depends on what the fraud is right but let's face it probably not but if it goes under two years later what is the chances that the third bank that now owns this is going to catch it zero yeah like it's never gonna be the difference between you writing

up you use this example earlier the difference between you and writing up like a 62 000 a year income to 69 000 a year income for a loan versus somehow getting some dude who's making 15 grand a year into a million dollar house those are two very different levels of what the fraud can affect on the final product right it's re it's reasonable like it's he can he can make that that and i'm just doing it for at this point i'm just doing it for commissions sure yeah just keep my money my place going building building the business so uh anyway he he says okay no problem he passes it off and maybe a week or two later he comes back come actually flies down and takes me and several other brokers out to lunch and And he told me he'd have to have a few drinks. He actually told me, look, I don't care what fraudulent loans come through.

As long as I don't end up getting caught, if they can go through our underwriting department and they never come back on me, he's like, man, I don't care if everything you send me is fraud. Now, how much time did this guy do in prison? No, he didn't do any time. He ended up bankrupting that company probably two years later. Did he get prosecuted at all? Did he have to go on probation? Something? No, what did he do? He just passed them through.

That's what I'm saying though. See, this is like – No, no. He's just a banker. It takes a village to burn everything down, but like you have to know he actively knew it was fraud. And again, this isn't $2. This one right here was a couple million dollars. And now the implication is – And he's still taking our stuff. He's still taking our stuff. Send us some more stuff.

Listen, the account executive was in like the next day. She was like, wow, you dodged a bullet. You killed it, man. So listen, we just came out with a new program. You know? So yeah. You know what's so funny you know the liar loans that everybody talks about liar loans oh they call them no asset no uh no no document no doc loans no documentation you know the ones where they said that was that was in the movie uh what's

it called big short yeah well that's that's yeah there were tons of those you know how many of those i've done? Almost none. Really? Why would I? I can make the W-2s and pay stubs. I can verify your employment. I can verify your bank statements.

I don't need to. I can get you the same loan with a higher LTV, lower down payment, lower interest rate, and I can jack your interest rate up higher and get more points on the back. It's to my benefit to create the documents and charge you a $7,000 or $8,000 broker fee than have you go through a liar loan program and charge you $3,000. What's really bizarre is that if you think about where the business went ahead of the housing crisis, like in those prime years, like call it 0203040506 to where yeah you had these type of loans where people just walked in oh yeah we'll give you a fucking house with a jumbo loan and all that adjustable loan because then they wouldn't be able to pay and that's what crashed all market if you had been getting into this business maybe because you said it was like 98 99 something like that if you've gotten into the business in like 0203 you probably would have never that manager probably never has to say

change that you're probably just going to get that guy alone well i was still doing loans up till late 2003 sure but i'm saying you were already deep into also changing shit and getting the big yeah the ship had sailed at that point is my point whereas if you would just come in when this wild wild west happened because and i'll actually say righteously so for most of them the mortgage brokers from 03 to 07 like none of them got prosecuted or anything or looked at because they were just using the rules that they were allowed to use at the time they were allowed to say like oh you make 40 grand a year here's your 1.5 million dollar house because they could it

wasn't it was open whereas fraud is fraud right like that's always going to be a crime right well those guys were saying some guy who was making 40 000 a year they were saying he was making 300 000 they were lying and saying he's making 300 000 and so yeah he's getting a he won't get a 95 he's getting a 90 but he's got a 750 credit score so we're going to lend him 90 or 90 90 or 95 of the loan and he's got the down payment so we're going to do it even though he can't prove is that he can actually make those payments and what was the term for that loan again you said we call them liar loans but but they call them you know like no asset or uh no verification loans or or they call them uh stated income programs they were that's that's

the i think that's the term they typically use stated income programs we just state what the income is gotcha but like the one that you were talking about with the two million in in outstanding loans that was obviously with a real bank and all that the banks that you invented though this is what's fucking with me you had websites for him you made what were some of the names for example that you would come up with I mean you know Bank of there was really only two or three it was bank of ebor was one because there's a place in tampa called ebor city so it's called bank of ebor um i think there actually is a bank of ebor now and then there was um southern exchange

bank um god i think there was one more that had some weird name um but i think we only use it a couple of times like that was towards the last few months so i i guess the question is like was it columbia bank or there is a columbia bank in tampa but we always did them so they were similar kind of close to the banks that were like there was a southern exchange bank ours was southern exchange bank of clarksville it was very small only had three locations um so that's my question like there's a database i'm thinking in back then terms i wasn't around but like i gotta assume there's a database of registered financial institutions and whatever so all someone would have to do is type in southern bank of clarksville and there's nothing

there that actually happened with the secret Service. When I got caught, they actually had done that. They subpoenaed the... Which was easy. To subpoena? No, no, I'm saying that was an easy catch for them at that point. They were like, well, let's just check it. Yeah, but they actually thought the bank existed. They were looking for funds that were missing.

They actually thought the bank existed. They didn't realize that everything was fake. It was during my debriefing when I had to tell them that the bank was fake and they were like no no it's in the registry and i was like yeah there was a southern exchange bank of clarksville or a southern exchange bank it had been sold to like bank of america or sun trust or something so the number yeah this was the number was still there and so they actually looked it up in the end of the day and i go who do you subpoena and they go well there's an address. They said, we haven't gotten anything yet. I said, you're not good.

Guess what? You're not gonna. Wow. And they said, I called the number. I was like, really? Because by the time they'd actually interviewed me, it had been months. And I was like, really? Who answered?

I said, and he goes, I've left several messages. I said, I haven't paid for it in months. And so he actually took the phone out and called it and went, like it. And I said, yeah, I told you I haven't paid in months. He's like, I can't believe it. I've been leaving messages. We subpoenaed them. Like they weren't returning their calls.

And they thought it's because, well, it's because we're the Secret Service and they don't want to deal with us. Like he's like, sometimes people just ignore the calls if they get called from the FBI and the institutions just won't answer. They won't return. They're like, well, we don't have to return their call unless we get subpoenaed. So we subpoenaed them. This is such a foreign concept to me because I can't – knowing the rules that I had to know, like I can't even imagine something like this getting 24 hours through without someone sounding the alarm on it. But like inventing a fake bank, you just had – you would change the names a little bit and then boom, you have an answering service, you're done. And now you get to say that, I guess you were using them to say like, oh, money came through

here that never did. And then you'd tie it somehow to real banks. Or you had a down payment. So you have an- When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.

Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Actual down, like your down payment when you have put down, let's say 10% on your house, you can't just say, oh, I have the money in the bank. They go, okay, well, we need it. And it has to have been there for 60 to 90 days, depending on the program. Right. Well, these people don't have their money. Like usually my people were buying a house and the seller was giving them their down payment to get the loan to get them to so they can qualify for the loan so i can get my price if i'm selling you the house for three hundred thousand dollars and these people don't quite have fifteen thousand dollars

to put down they've got ten well the seller will sometimes give them five just so they can qualify get the whole three hundred now instead of getting three hundred do that the seller will sometimes give them five just so they can qualify get the whole 300 now instead of getting 300 do that the seller of the house would give money to the person buying it for their down payment yeah i'm totally illegal yeah but then how do they even get it then it's like a handshake deal like you're gonna give me that back i guess well no you what i would always have them do is just put it directly into the um company, into their escrow account. Or you just get the cashier's check. You bring it the day of closing.

So they get a cashier's check from – the remitter would be from the borrower. But keep in mind, they can go back to their bank and put it in their bank. So they get – or even if they put their own name on it, it doesn't matter. Change it. Just for people trying to follow out there. Long story short is the money technically never leaves the seller. They just make it look like they're right. They're not depositing the money in the bank account. Let's say they go get money orders, blank money orders. You can get five, you get $5,000 in blank money orders. And then you send me the copies of the money or just make copies of them, send them to me and I fill them out from my customer but you're now when I make copies and send them to

the bank to the bank they think there's 5,000 and money orders that were taken that my customer had even though they're still blank money orders they don't get the real money orders I guess that the the only open question there that I still am not sure about is the fact that you're representing the buyer right like you're the mortgage no I right? Like you're the mortgage broker. Are you representing both? I'm representing the buyer. Okay. So then the seller, you're just the guy representing the buyer and you would just be able to convince the seller like, oh, hi, I represent client X who's buying your home. You're going to do this and they would just do it?

Well, typically the real estate agent was involved, but even if there was no real estate agent involved and I have a conversation with you, you believe it. You can talk to – Yeah, they wouldn't know, right? Well, first of all, they – first of all, it's one of two things. Either I'm telling you, listen, this is what I'm going to do. He doesn't have the money. Boom, boom, boom.

Here's how we can qualify for the loan. This is what I need you to do. You're either going to do it or you're not going to do it. This is how it goes through. Here's why. I explain it. Like my sales technique for anybody isn't bullshitting you. It's laying out.

It's educating you on how it's going to work. And that way you, like if I was selling cars, I'm not going to do the high pressure. I'm not going to hype. You need this. I'm going to say, look, this is the reason this is the best car for you. And I am going to explain why. You're either going to accept that explanation or go somewhere else. That's it. Like, I'm not going to hype. There's no pressure. I'm not pressuring the sales groups. Yeah. The seller. Here's what

he can get this much money. He's got this. He's got this. We need $5,000 from you. Well, that means that I'm not going to make $300,000. I'm going to make $295,000. That's right. If you want, we can jack up the sales price by $5,000 and we'll cover that down payment but now you have to come up with $5,000 and an extra $100 you're basically being transparent by not being transparent

but making it seem like you're transparent at the end of the day here's what I'm not doing I'm not telling them oh by the way this is complete 100% fraud. Yeah. But they know. They know.

You think they would know every time, like the seller. If they said to me, hey, listen, man, like, I think this is fraud. But you know what almost never happened? They almost never said, hey, this is fraud. Almost never. That's what I'm saying. I think a lot of people kind of goes above, because these are numbers. You're switching things around.

There's a lot of people who are just like okay all right sounds good so like the people who did say oh this is fraud what'd you say to them then okay i'm gonna give you an example right now yeah let's do it all right so i had hello sir i'd like to sell my house well no i i actually okay well okay so this was something where i didn't even ask the person i'm gonna be a real example where the guy found out the whole thing was fraud. He found out that this woman – The seller. He found out that the woman buying his house did not work where she said – where I said she worked.

He actually got – Oh, so you've changed her job. I changed her job. So, because she had had like multiple jobs and she was currently working at like Walmart, you know, and didn't make enough money to qualify. So, I said she worked at this other company and she'd been there five years I gave him w-2s and pay subs okay fine that's a done deal I've already verified it he's upset because that he feels like the title company's charging too much so he calls down there and starts arguing about how much money they're charging. During the course of that, somehow or another, the title person ends up telling him they have already received the package.

None of it's going to change. This is the way it is. And ends up mentioning that, oh, one of the reasons the fees were so high, she was going through a non, she was going through a non-conforming, getting a non-conforming loan. She wasn't getting a loan through like Bank of America. She's getting it through a subprime company. And he's like, why are these fees so high? Because we had him paying the fees.

Well, and she explains why. Because of this, because of this, because of this. He had to pay the fees? I made him pay the fee. Like you've already agreed to pay up to $5,000 in closing fees. You know, she doesn't have the closing costs, but i raised up the purchase price to cover it like we're really just incorporating it in so he agreed to it he agreed to it it was just it's you said up to five thousand so if it's it's five thousand and he's up and for some reason he thinks he's gonna call and talk

them down it's gonna save him some money why he's coming out no matter what like what are you doing yeah you already signed that he's a jerk off yeah so while i'm while i'm committing fraud so jerk offs here so yeah yeah absolutely so i he calls up and during she goes well you know look he she this she did somehow or another she ends up saying she works here she you know she i don't know she works here and he's like what are you talking about she works at walmart no no she works here. No, she works here. I actually went to Walmart and when she signed the contract, I know I've talked to her. Somebody talks about she's been there for like, you know, eight months or something. And she said, no, she's been here for five years.

You know, no, can't be. She just moved to the area. Like as it started to unravel, he's realizing like everything's got to be. What do you mean she just moved to the area from Brooklyn? You know, what are you talking about? She's been here five years. She's been paying at the same place. She's lived at that do you mean she just moved to the area from brooklyn you know what are you talking about she's been here five years she's been paying at the same place she's lived at that no she just moved she her lease is up in three months or two months and you know he's he she's like okay she's realizing this is fraud she reads off what's being said she knows it's fraud he

knows it's fraud she calls the the title she the title person ends up calling the uh the bank and tells them this is what this guy's saying, something's not right, that whole loan's done. He calls up and tells me, look. I got you. What? This is a seller. Yeah. He calls up and says, listen, man. So, he comes to where I'm at. He comes to my office, tries to talk to me on the phone about it. I say, like, I'm not talking to you on the phone. Come to my office. He comes to my office, and he preached being a good Christian.

He was a big guy. Like, he was flipping these houses, and she's a good Christian, and he's bringing all this up. Like, the first time I talked to him, he was telling me about being a good Christian. And he comes to my office. Bringing God into fraud. Well, he comes into the conference room, and we're talking. He's like, yeah, they told me this, they told me that. And then I said, right, right, right. Bringing God is fraud. First of all, I said, it has nothing to do with you. I said, do you want to sell the house or not? Well, I don't know how comfortable I feel about this. And I went, well, I said, I understand what's happening here. I said,

you want to sell that? I do want to sell the house. I said, okay, well, can't you do this? She starts giving me all these ideas. And I'm like, listen, bro, this chick, she was evicted here. She was here. She was here. I've done this. I've done this. I've done all these things to get the loan to go through. You believe she can make the payments, don't you?

Yes. You want to help her? Yes. She goes to your church? Yes. And I said, okay. I said, so you're saying you want her to get the house. I'm telling you this is the only way to get it.

Well, I don't know how comfortable I feel about that. And I said, right, but you're saying you wanted to get the house. I'm telling you this is the only way to get it. Well, I don't know how comfortable I feel about that. And I said, right, but you're also flipping houses, and this is what you want to do primarily, right? Because you're trying to kind of transition from another job. He's flipping houses. You want to help get good Christians into your houses, right? And he goes, right. He said, well, yeah, I think that's the right thing to do. I said, okay, let me explain something.

You hit him with religion for this. Oh, he's hit me with religion. I know, but that's what I'm saying. You brought it right back around. Of course. Oh, not just that. Not just that. I said, listen, and he goes, I need to think about this.

I said, okay, I want you to think about this. I said, but while you're thinking about that, I said, I want you to think about this. I said, one time there's a guy in a, I said, one time there's a small town that's flooding, and there's a guy in the flood. I said, and as the town is flooding, he's standing in the church. I said, and the Coast Guard comes by, or I'm sorry, the Marines come by, and they say, hey, jump in the back of this truck. Jump in the back of the truck, the pickup truck, we're going to save you. And he says, no, no, God's going to save me. I said, then the water keeps raising. I said, he has to climb up on the top of the roof. I said, and the water raises,

and a boat comes by, and it says, hey, they go, jump in the boat, jump in the boat. He goes, no, no, God's going to save me. I said, then, I said, it keeps going. He climbs all the way up to the top of the steeple and he's holding onto the cross. I said, and there's a helicopter comes. They lower a basket and they say, get in the basket. He says, no, no, God's going to save me.

I said, and finally, the water keeps raising and he drowns. And when he gets up to heaven, he says, God, why didn't you save me? And God says, I sent a truck, I sent a boat, and I sent a helicopter. What did you want me to do? What did you expect? I said, what I'm telling you is I am your truck, I am your boat, and I am your helicopter. I go, if you want this loan to close next week, I said, this is how we do it. I said, otherwise, put your house back on the market. He looked at you and said, amen. And he looked at me and he said,

well, if this is the only way, I said, it's the only way. And he goes, all right. And he got up and he walked off. And a week later it closed. It is amazing. It is amazing the decisions people make in a bind. And especially when you put like dollars and cents into it and they start – you know how people get about money.

They start thinking about their cash flows. They start thinking about, well, if I can't do this, then I won't be able to do that. And it all comes back to their personal life, what they want to buy. It comes back to their family, everything. And then boom, a guy like that walks in there preaching about God and everything and trying to help out a good Christian. Walks out convincing himself that like, oh, I did the right thing because I'm helping a good Christian, when in reality, he just went along with the whole show. Yeah, yeah. Hey, listen, God bless him.

So listen, so I mean it wasn't difficult for me to explain to the people this is how it works. This is the way it works. And I go – and that's the big thing is the takeaway close. This is the way it is. That's the way it is. way it is that's the way it is take it or leave it take it or leave it yeah that's it and it's like and it's like no I'm not gonna do it great I understand great so I call up I tell her to find another house I send another investor her way I do this I do that he goes off listen honestly 50 of the time that guy calls me back in a couple days listen I've thought about it if we can get this thing to go through right because you know what he has to do is put out back on the

market he has to wait 30 days to find a buyer then that person needs 30 days to close up 60 days that's multiple more payments right you know so um you know that's that much more time for kids to throw windows to the through the vacant house that's in the neighborhood you know listen it's it's all bad uh you know houses don't do well if they're not lived in you know the ac has to be run the water has to be you know maintain the water pressure there's there's all kinds of things it just doesn't the houses don't do well empty you were in a high even you know with lower price houses we're always talking money here right even if you're buying a bad neighborhood you're spending high five figures six figures on it right so you're in the perfect neighborhood, you're spending high five figures, six figures on it.

So you're in the perfect spot to be able to do this because you're talking about big chunks of people's quote-unquote potential liquidity. You're talking about assets that to use as you just described right there have to be upkept. There's time value of money out the ass literally every day, but call it every month. So you have people in a situation where they're constantly forced to think about runways here. And then you just say, well, you can sit on the runway for two hours or your flight can take off now. And if this were something where it's lower cost, a regular product or something like that. It never works because people aren't desperate. They aren't, they're not as concerned about the hit to them personally, but because it's, it's this level of finance, you basically always have them in some kind of corner right when you start. Right. I, yeah. Well, listen, and that's on every aspect of a loan, of the loan process at that time. At that time, you were – as a broker, I was allowed to order the appraisals.

Do you know how many times I had – we would get one – maybe we'd have – so I've got 12 guys, let's say, doing four to six loans a month at $150,000, let's say, on average per loan. Which now those houses are $300,000 or something. In Florida, up here those houses are a million dollars. Florida or the north. The numbers people are like, where do you buy a house? I'll get that in the comments. Where do you buy a house for $150,000?

In Tampa, Florida, any where city. 25 years ago or 20 years ago. But if you're an appraiser and you're making $400, let's say you're making $400 and you're doing 20 loans for, you're doing 20 appraisals for me, you and one other guy, that's $8,000 a month. Do you know how much money you have into your $400? You have maybe a few hours of work and you're making 400 bucks per appraisal. You're making $8,000 for very

little money. It's just software. Like there's no, it's driving out to the house, taking some photographs, coming back and spending an hour or two, punching in some stuff, printing it out. I mean, you're making 400 bucks. You're doing a couple of those a day. You're making $8,000 on my company every month. So when I meet you out at a house and you walk around and you say, listen, Matt, there's a lot of deferred maintenance here. Like there's a problem here in the roof and there's here. Right, I know, but that's going to be fixed. So do me a favor.

Don't put that on the appraisal. And he goes, yeah, Matt, I don't – geez, I don't know. I'm like, bro, come on. What are you doing? I told you I'm going to fix it. You trust that I'm going to fix it? Let's go ahead. And they go, okay.

Like that – If you don't do it, I'll find someone else. Well, it starts slow. You know, it's like the, where you throw a, is it, you throw a, I forget if they say it's a caterpillar or a frog, you throw a frog, you know, in a hot pan, he'll jump out immediately. If you put them in a room temperature pan and you slowly turn up the heat, he'll just sit there and boil to death. So, you know, I don't ever throw them in the hot pan, you know? So, what I did was I would say, you know, I'd't ever throw them in the hot pan, you know? So what I did was I would say, you know, I'd get them a little here, a little there. And before you know it, you're going

in and you're saying, look, I need you to say this is a four unit building. And they're like, it's a five unit building. Cause if in, in, in real estate, if it's over five units, it's commercial, it's a commercial loan. We didn't do commercial loans. And the problem with this, it's one building I'm thinking about is that commercial loans there were no other commercial properties in the area to compare it to so you can't get a loan on it why because there's no other comparables so i had this one house that was an issue for this borrower um and i said look i need you to say that the house is this apartment building is four units and the realtor real estate agent was like i'm sorry the appraiser was like yeah but it's five units i was like no it's it's four units and he's like

i don't know matt i mean i looked up on the mls it says five units oh we already had that on the record right and it says it's it's selling for a hundred thousand dollars you're telling me you want me to bring it in at let let's say, $250,000. You're right. I'm having it taken down. They're removing the listing, and we're putting the listing back up at $250,000 as a four unit. So you can reference that.

And we're saying that it's been completely remodeled, which explains why it went from a five unit to a four unit. I said, so I need you to take the pictures, take the best pictures. And he goes, what am I supposed to say about the other unit? I said, what are you talking? Are you talking about the tool shed? You're talking about the shed? I go, because that efficiency is just a shed. That's just a, that's like a work room where they keep the lawnmower and everything. He goes, what about the fifth meter? I go, the fifth meter is what runs that. That's the house meter. It runs all the electrical outside and it runs the sprinkler system. And he goes, what sprinkler system?

I said, I think you should throw a sprinkler system in there that's being run by the house meter. What are you talking about? I said, plus the surveillance cameras. And he goes, you know, he's like, and I'm like, listen, bro. Why do you do that? Work with me. And he said, yeah, I just don't feel comfortable doing that. I said, I totally understand.

Go back to my office and every one of my brokers, I walk and I go, who has anything with Steve, whatever his name was? I do. I do. Give me them. We're canceling all of them. We start cancel, cancel. He just starts, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

He gets like seven or eight cancellations and then a couple other ones say hey don't worry about doing this one two days later or a day later i get a phone call says i'm gonna go out to that place and open the things for that four unit and i go okay i said and he said um can i get those uh those appraisals back of course of course they're all coming over right now i'm sorry about the glitch no no no problem Matt you it's gonna be all right though right absolutely you can trust me absolutely and then they do it and the loan goes through and the people make the payments and it never came

back on him I've had him go into houses that were gutted gutted and he just didn't I mean there's nothing in the house he's putting pictures of other houses in. Oh, my God. Because at this point, he's 8,000. Plus, he's got a few other accounts. So this guy's – so if you're making $12,000 a month and 8,000 is gone, do you know how long it takes to build up that – those types of clients where they're sending you 20 appraisals? That's a lot of appraisals. So, you know, so you – so i had a lot of the ability to do that and one of the things i was doing was i was buying houses like we could talk about this all day but we're never going to get through my appraisal we're never get through to my my story like this

is like the beginning of my story this is just how i became a scumbag so what ended up happening was I ended up going to – I ended up buying houses. So I would buy a house in my name. Okay. Right? So if I buy a house in my name and I sell it to you – What year are we in now? 2001. Okay.

So if I buy a house and I sell it to you, I can't do the loan. It's – like through my mortgage company, It's not an arm's length transaction. So I would buy a house and I'd renovate it. I get an appraisal and then I'd sell it to my wife in her maiden name. She never took my name as my married name. I never would let her. She's like, oh, no, I'm going to be, you know, Gayla Cox. And I was like, no, you're not. No. Why? Because there's something called seasoning, where if you buy a house for, let's say, $50,000 and you fix it up for $50,000, and now it's worth $200,000, right? Because I know $50,000 and $50,000, you only make $100,000, but the reason it was so low was because it's in such a bad shape. So I've got $50,000 to purchase, $50,000 in the renovation, but now it's appraising at $200,000. You think, oh, you can refinance that house based off of $200,000. That's what it's worth now. You can't. You have to wait a year.

Banks, they say it's seasoned. You have to wait for seasoning. But if you put a maiden name on that. But if I sell it to you, you get around seasoning because you're buying the house from me and your bank isn't refinancing it. They're doing a purchase. Purchase is different from refi. buying the house from me and your bank isn't refinancing it they're doing a purchase purchase is different from refi so i would buy a house for 50 fix it up sell it to her for 250 300 000 whatever for like apartment buildings and we were doing this to acquire apartment buildings i think

in one year we acquired 54 apartment buildings and she but she would use her real first name it's all real it's her her first name, her maiden name. And no one figured that out? Do you mean a bank in California? I guess. Yeah, that's true. They don't know that I'm married to this person. And keep in mind, I'm not doing the loan.

I'm just a seller. So I took those loans, and those loans, she would get a loan from a broker that used to work for me named Gretchen Zayas. So Gretchen and Pete Zayas, they owned a mortgage company. And so my ex-wife is getting loans from them to buy houses from me. No big deal. We're making the payments. I mean, it's all fraud, but we're making the payments. So she's buying them from me and we're making $50,000 or $100,000 on every purchase. So that's how we're making them. And we're renting them out and we're keeping them. Or we're selling them, reselling them know or we're selling them reselling them again but we shouldn't she shouldn't have been able to obtain the loan so it's fraud you know to me it's not a big deal

it was to the fbi so what ended up happening was gretchen and pete got busted they were running a straw man scam where they were having people buy houses and then letting them go into foreclosure it's called a straw man it's a kind of a person that make them money well because they get to write the loan they get to do the loan and then of course they also get to um if the houses but they weren't purchasing the houses but basically they had investors who were buying houses for like 400 000 but they knew they could appraise them at six or seven hundred thousand and so they would charge the investor like twenty and thirty thousand dollars for the just for the loan the guy would buy the house make a few payments let him go into foreclosure that's what he was supposed

to do instead he bought then someone has to cover got it right you get paid out you you basically make money on collecting from the first few loans and then the default is not on you right it's on it's on the person who bought it. But let's face it, if you're going to make, if I told you, look, I need you to sign for these four houses, you're going to make $300,000. Those houses are going to go into foreclosure. You're going to have three foreclosures on your record, but you're going to get $300,000. Will you do it? 99% of the people watching would be like, you're going to give me $300,000 and there's going to be three houses that are going to foreclose. And so basically I have three foreclosures on my credit and I can turn around and claim bankruptcy.

Yes, I'll do it. You give me $300,000 right now, I'll claim bankruptcy. Got it. So the people who you would convince to do this, how did you find buyers? You just went around to people like, hey, you want to take a loan and make some money and then no no no no i was taught you asked me what a you had asked me what a a straw man scam was yeah and i said these people were running a straw man scam that pete and pete and gretchen were running a straw man scam that's how they got in trouble they were doing the loans for a guy that was out going out finding people to buy houses from him. So that guy would find them.

Right, right. They weren't part of that. They would then get the loans. Now, the loans were fake. They were frauding up the loans. They were making W-2s and pay, so to make sure this guy could get the loans. And what happened was they didn't even end up making the first payment. So there was a first payment default.

So they were just stupid. You have to make a few payments. But instead, there's what's called a first payment default, right? So they were just stupid. They had to make a few payments. But instead, there's what's called a first payment default. Well, if you're Bank of America and you lent this guy $800,000 and he looks perfect on paper and then he never makes a payment.

You're like, this sums up. You're going to look into it. Yeah. So they got looked into. Of course they got looked into and then they contacted the FBI because now nobody's paying them back. They're all just

ignoring them like it's okay like oh we can do this and and they now know it's fraud they look into it w-2s are fake all these things that we had cleared initially once we looked into it like like they weren't that good you know what i'm saying so they ended up and and the way Gretchen would do fraud is like she would go and try and get somebody to kind of convince somebody to cover this or cover that. Like she wasn't a document person. Like she wasn't handling all that herself. So when things – they start to get phone calls from the FBI, they unravel immediately. People give up immediately. So they come into her office and they raid her when they raid her office

um she had come to me and said look my office or she came to me and said look the fbi's asking questions i didn't know she her office had been raided she just came to me and said look i uh you know they're asking questions we need to hire an attorney i said okay she says can you do me a favor and refinance my house and she said i can't do it here by myself. And I said, no problem, because we're friends. And you had been – I just want to make sure I understood this. You had been doing this business with her now too. She had – right, remember? Because you had been writing the loans.

She's – she'd been doing – she'd been brokering all the loans for my wife at the time. And she used to work for me. Okay. So you got a piece. Huh? You were getting a piece so she got a piece huh you were getting a piece of something no i'm not getting a piece of anything i'm selling my properties i'm buying selling them to my ex-wife so we are acquiring we're pulling money out of the property and we're acquiring rental properties the problem is when she got busted she starts working with the fbi and not initially initially she just went to get an attorney so she came to me and asked me matt will you refinance my house which really didn't have any equity in it um she

and she said can you refinance my house i have to pay my attorney like 75 grand i said sure i can i can get that done like i can take care of that for you so i get an appraiser to jack up the appraisal i she makes she makes she gives me fake w-2s and pay subs so she she made those talking to the fbi yeah she gave those to me and keep in mind i'm now doing a loan for her and you knew that you knew the fbi was talking with her i knew she'd been busted i knew she'd been busted but she's a friend of mine we we went to each other we went to parties together we went on vacation together we went to her well no we don't know that i don't know that she's talking to them she's just trying to negotiate a deal like she's not cooperating but you didn't assume that

no i didn't because our lights would have been up like oh i had seen the godfather you don't cooperate we're gangsters bro so we're not i know she's not gonna give me up so i refinance her house i get her 75 grand she goes out and she hires an attorney she gives him 75 000 and the first thing he says is you need to wear a wire and get this guy who just refinanced your house and you need you need to cooperate with them and um and i can get you no jail time like if you cooperate with them and get this guy because she's telling she now goes to the FBI and she goes this guy everybody in his office is committing fraud and I can get him to cooperate because I just did half a million dollars worth of loans for him and his ex-wife or and his wife my wife so she offered you up on a platter right

for them so she called me who were you gonna cooperate on oh she thought I would cooperate on my entire staff. They're all committing fraud. So she contacts me and says, hey, listen, oh, my God, Matt, the FBI raided my office. What? What? She's like, yeah, I can't believe it. This was a few days ago.

And now they're asking all kinds of questions. Look, can I meet you? And I go, yeah, yeah, yeah, meet me. Meet me at the pizza place down the street. So we go and we meet. This is what, 2002? This is 2001. This is 2001.

Yeah, bro, that's why I was saying, we got to get moving. Like, I know you're curious. But if you don't want to fly me up here again, my girlfriend said I have to be back tonight. She didn't trust me. We'll get to it. Keep going. You're doing great. So what she says is, this may be your longest one ever if you keep this up.

So here's what happens. So here's what happens. I go and I meet Gretchen and Pete. So I meet them and we're eating pizza and we're sitting there. Turns out the FBI officer was sitting right there. So I say, you know, what's going on? She goes, okay, here's what's happening. They're this, they're this. pizza and uh we're sitting there turns out the fbi was officer was sitting right right there so i said you know what's going on she goes okay here's what's happening they're they this they this and they're asking all kinds of questions about kayla which is my ex-wife which was my

wife at the time and i went you know um because all the loans had been done in her name right not mine so i'm not really in trouble she might be in in trouble. She's in trouble. And I went, oh my God. You didn't tell them the W-2s were fake, did you? You didn't tell them the pay stubs were fake. You didn't tell them that I own the property. You didn't tell them you know me. You didn't tell them that we didn't have the money. You didn't tell them that it was a...

There's three guys in a van outside going, jackpot! God, I mean, I just... And as I'm sitting there i'm going and i said okay wait let's think about this i said you need to tell them that you never met her she called you on the phone that the documents were faxed in or mailed in and so i'm trying to come up telling her how to do it i'm telling her how to get how to get to a point i could and i said once you do that you you could say, I never met her. So you can't testify that you ever met her.

Everything was over the phone. And that way, I'll have Kayla not answer their questions. I won't answer their questions. They're not going to indict us if you're saying, I got everything over the phone. I never met these people. I can't testify that I met these people. So at that point, the whole thing should just go away. Because the truth is, they really need to talk to people they need people to cooperate sure yeah

that's how they build the case right so i'm and i know that they're not going to be able to get anything from her employer because i'm her employer they're not going to get it like all these are cell phones and stuff like there's a whole thing i can just you're giving them the whole plan you got everything so as i'm going through the whole thing her um she says matt we can't lie to the fbi and i look at her and i go what are you talking about you're lying to him now she's how i go you just gave me i go i just refinanced your house with fake w-2s and pay stubs the whole thing's fake and her husband stands up pete stands up and he goes we've never lied to the fbi we may not have told them everything but we never lied

and i looked at him like the fuck are you doing bro exactly and i'm like like who are you telling this to like i know that's not true like i like who are you saying this for like what you're saying right now i know is a lie so you're not saying it for my benefit so i write your spine just go cold immediately i think oh wow and i realized like both their cell phones are like right here, you know, like everything is right next to me. And I'm like, oh my God. They got me. And I look at her and I go, wow, I hope you're going to get something for this. And she starts crying. She was mad. I, I have a daughter and I go, I don't have a son. And she goes, and I said, look, tell the FBI not to come into my office. me on the phone i'll come

down and talk to him and she goes okay because when the fbi came in her office i would have leaned in and pulled her shirt and gone like that and said it right in the mic yeah well i'm not that cocky so um so she um um because when the fbi raided office, everybody quit. She had like five or six people working there. They all quit. Yeah, but they didn't. So I knew my guys will all quit. I don't want them walking in here. So I leave.

Oh, you were still thinking about saving the business. I'm still thinking I can get around this somehow. So I go in, the FBI called, like literally we're talking about 30 minutes later. I get a phone call. My secretary walks in. She goes, scott gale from the fbi is on the phone and i and she looked at me and i go okay i go leave and shut the door

don't say a thing and she goes okay i close i answer the phone i go hey what's up he goes i need you to come down he said i think you know what this is about i said yes i do i said okay i can come down on uh tuesday and this was like a thursday or something and he's like um okay i guess so th guess so Tuesday will be fine oh he took that what can he do he really can't do anything I'm not indicted and what does he have on me yet not much

I mean he has you going through the entire plot on tape yeah but this isn't the local cops they don't arrest you right away they indict you they get a whole case they come and grab you after you're just done yeah but they can turn around because they change the indictments obviously after they do it they'll update that all day but they can turn that around right away just to get it done they do that a lot i mean i'm i'm just telling you what happened gotcha i get it all right so on your end it

didn't happen yeah that's what you're right so i said i can come out i want to give myself some time i gotta get a lawyer so i don't tell them that i just say yeah i'll come down uh but listen man i'm booked like i can't come down you know tomorrow i can't come down monday like you know can we do it tuesday yeah tuesday morning yeah yeah no problem hang up the phone so i end up going to a bunch of attorneys um you know all of them are like oh yeah yeah you're done like that i mean i know i know you know like they all know the fbi officer they know the u.s attorney they're like yeah yeah i called them before you came here yeah uh you uh apparently you have the way there's two people that wore wire on you um you and like they know the whole thing

they're like they had that yeah they're like you're done they're like based on what they have what they just told me they have on you you're done so i end up getting an attorney 75 grand same thing 75 grand that's the going rate um i give him 75 000 and he says listen i can keep you from getting indicted now how much i'm just curious side note how much money do you have in the bank at this point you've been doing it for a few years like are you a wealthy man the problem is the problem is i've got probably a couple million dollars worth of real estate. And I probably have access to maybe, you know, whatever, $100,000, you know, but a lot of it's just in real, it's just now it's tied up in real estate. Because you're making these deals.

Yeah. So, I mean, I'm flipping two properties. So, what do you do? You borrow, sometimes you borrow from hard money guys, but you're also, you get to a point where you're like, I'll just use my own money to renovate it. Like you can borrow from the hard money guys it was just that much more interest so it's like you know you you know it's out there but i got 75 grand i give him 75 grand so i give him the 75 grand and he says i can keep you from getting indicted oh now he can keep you from getting indicted no he could before he said it give me 75 saying you're fucked no they're saying you're you're guilty and they have you but i can keep you from being indicted here's what you do do explain okay so i give him

the 75 grand he goes here's what you're going to do you haven't been indicted yet your wife hasn't been indicted i can one he well first first it was how close are you with your wife and i was like why he's like you can go in and just testify against your wife. They'll indict her. You cannot be indicted. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to do that. Yeah. So, he says, okay, I can keep both of you from being indicted if you cooperate.

I go, but not against my wife. He's like, right. You go get the most egregious, fraudulent files from some of your brokers that work for you because they're under the impression that you're running a mill that's kicking out bad mortgages. I go, okay. And he said, so go grab some of the most egregious loans from three or four of your brokers. You bring those to the FBI. You explain that they're fraudulent. You might have to wear a wire and they'll indict them. It's called pret pre-trial and pre-trial intervention he said you pay back any money you agree to pay back any money that these lenders have have lost here's the thing they had like four loans right that might that but two two or three of those

loans we'd already sold keep on this is they had another right so so it's like there's no money no money was lost remember i wasn't doing it to rip the banks off i was just trying to get around seasoning i'm just flipping properties i'm running a mortgage company i flip properties on this like so i'm thinking i only got one more property and i'm gonna have that sold within a month so there'll be nothing for i don't owe anything and these aren't the most agreed again this is the lower part of this this isn't real This is not the really really agreed stuff. Oh no, that's

later. That comes out of this is what happens. Okay. So what ends up happening is I said, I say look, you know, I'm not going to do that. And he's like, what do you mean? I said, I'm not going to cooperate. I'm not going to wear a wire. I'm not going to do the same thing that Gretchen and Pete just did to me. I'm going to do to them. And he's

like, well, if you don't want to go to prison. And I went, he's like, Matt, you need to think about your family. You need to think about it. I said, well, how is it that they can send me to prison when there's no dollar loss? Like nobody's lost any money. And I explained to him that some of these loans don't even exist. And I'm currently in the process of selling the fourth loan, the fourth property. So there will be, he's like, oh, no, they feel like there's half a million dollars.

Who knows what Gretchen and Pete said was lost? Like who knows? They may have said, this guy's on a huge case. But the truth is I'm saying I've lost no money. He's like, well, there's potential loss. I said, okay. And I remember he had the book, the federal sentencing guidelines. And I read through it and I said, yeah, there's potential loss. I said, okay. And I remember he had the book, the federal sentencing guidelines. And I read through it and I said, yeah, but look, potential loss is if there

was potential loss. And I explained to him how I was doing it. And as a result of that, there had no time did they ever lend more money than was covered by the actual property. So let's say a property is worth $300,000 and the bank lends $250,000. Was there potential loss there? They can always sell the property. Now, if the property was worth $100,000 and I borrowed $200,000, there was $100,000 in potential loss. And I said, that's not what happened. I bought the properties, renovated the properties, so they were worth $200,000 when she bought them for $200,000. And she put down 20%, which was, of course, went straight to me. So that's not a big deal.

So she's borrowing, let's say, $160,000. She's borrowing $160,000 on a $200,000 property. There's no potential loss there. And he's like, well, if the FBI agrees with that assessment, he said, then you're right. I can probably get you probation. So I said, right. So I'm not in a position where I need to. He's like, well, you're going to end up a felon and you're going to can probably get you probation so i said right so i'm not in a position where i need to he's like well you're going to end up a felon and you're going to lose your business i'm

like well then that's what has to happen but i'm not going to do that wow you went right to that right i was a gangster now let me let me tell you something right now is so if this is on right now that was the biggest mistake ever if that had now, if I knew then what I know now, I would have taken a dolly. I would have gone into our Friday morning meeting. I would have taken a dolly and I would have loaded up every file cabinet into a back of a pickup truck and I would have given up every single broker and I would have walked out of the office and said, get an attorney, do the right thing. And I'd have cut every single one of their said, get an attorney, do the right thing. And I'd have cut every single one of their throats to have not gotten indicted.

Because now I know better. But then I'd seen The Godfather and I'd grown up on that whole don't snitch mentality. Don't tell on everybody. Why would you snitch on them? The street code. Snitch on them because they would just snitch on them the street code snitch on them because they would just snitch on you if because they all roll over on me and everybody rolls over on everybody and every gangster out there like there for every one guy out there that for every john gaudy that John Gotti that didn't talk, there's a thousand, two thousand, three thousand that did talk.

So, John Gotti, oh, John Gotti's a gangster. John Gotti died in prison. Do you see what I mean? Like, I'm sorry, but no, I'm not going to die in prison. Like, my loyalty should have been to my wife and my child. That should have been my loyalty should have been to my wife and my child. That should have been my loyalty. And those people that were committing fraud were criminals, and they didn't deserve my loyalty. And you also – but you're also doing it too.

So you're like – Absolutely. So I wouldn't deserve theirs if she were on the other foot, you're saying. You know what Gretchen and Pete did? The right thing. I don't hate Gretchen and Pete. I'd say I'd have dinner with them to this day. As a matter of fact, several of the people that cooperated on my case, I talked to all the time.

I talked to Allison Arnold all the time. I've talked to Becky Houck. I've talked to Eric Tamargo. I've talked to all the people that cooperated against me. Totally cool. They did the right thing. Wow. I remember somebody –

Yeah, you have a really interesting view on – you have a very 30,000-foot-in-the-air view on this. Because after that much time, you realize, like, what are you – do you know how many guys I know that did the right thing, right? Like they honored the code and they didn't tell on these two guys and they went to prison. And then when those two guys got popped, they told on this guy and this guy ended up getting another 12 years. So you could have not done, you got 10 years, you could have gotten five if you told on these guys, you didn't. So you're sitting in prison doing 10 years. They then get busted. They cooperate against you. You get another 12. Now they get 12. Now you're doing 22 years. Those two guys within four or five years are back out of prison.

And they're everybody's guilty. Right. You thought, oh, I need to be loyal to who? A couple of scumbags living off of society? Like, nobody owes me loyalty. Nobody. You're a criminal. You don't have nothing coming. Now, that's different. To me, that's different than me not knowing anything. Like, if you were an innocent person, for me to cooperate against you, you know, well, that's fucked up. This guy didn't do anything.

That's different. Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm just saying in general. And, you know everybody be like oh this guy's a snitch and this guy's this man fuck you you go do the fucking time so you know i don't tell you how to do your job at at walmart don't tell me how to be a gangster so anyway so you know had some way to put it had things been different i probably would have kept

the mortgage company so and you know i would have obviously had to get some more brokers. So what ends up happening is I say, no, I'll take the – I'll just take the plea. So I take the plea. I plead. And the FBI, of course, they come back and they go, damn, there is no dollar loss. And Cox will not cooperate against these people. And I said, I will take the three years, but you don't get to indict my wife three-year probation right not even prison right so I get three years probation what did that consist of like that probation was service stuff like

that compared to my probation now that was such a cakewalk like what do you have to do back then I mean it's probation you have to do? Back then? I mean, it was probation. You have to fill out a monthly report saying, I've been good. I haven't been arrested. Yeah, I owed $1,000 fine, $1,000 fine, which I paid. What else did I do? They came by my house a couple of times, say hi. They didn't bother me at all. Like, that was it.

It was a joke. The probation was a joke wow um compared to the probation i have um have now right my probation now was the highest custody level or highest for citizen rate it was i had to for the first year i had to go once once a week i had to spend an hour with a psychiatrist i had to take a program i had to pee pee in a cup a couple times. My probation officer was all over me. I'm showing them my bank statements every month. I'm filling out financial reports. I mean, they were all over me. Of course, the problem, the reason, and for good reason, because while I was on probation for that three years, as soon as I got probation, right, like the judge was like, look, you're getting three years probation.

You're getting a slap on the wrist. But, you know, you can't run your mortgage company anymore. So you're a convicted felon. You're a convicted felon. I can't be a mortgage broker. I can't own this company.

And, and of course the FBI knows that there's fraud. These guys are committing fraud, but I won't help get to them. So they're saying to me, you can't run that place anymore. So I end up selling it to a guy who's a CPA, a friend of mine who's a CPA. His name was Dave Walker.

And he paid me like $8,000 a month to help him like manage, you know. Back door kind of, a little bit. Well, no, I wasn't running it. You weren't running it, but I'm saying like at least you know um back door kind of a little bit well no i wasn't running it you weren't running it but i'm saying like at least you still had well he didn't have income yeah but yeah he didn't have the money to pay me so he can't give me it's worth at least half a million dollars he can't pay me that and he also he's got leverage on you because you know you gotta unload it yeah yeah exactly so you know he did me a favor so really so he he's paying me and i needed the income and while while he was paying me and maintaining you know my lifestyle you know i'm in the process of getting a divorce so i lose

everything during the divorce did you so you after you got arrested you and your wife were just done yeah we were we were done general, she got pregnant. You know, she got pregnant, we got married. We didn't really know each other that well. She very much wanted a guy that I'm not. You know, the guy she's with right now is- The Marine. The Marine.

Well, he's an ex-Marine now. He is very much the guy she wanted. You know, he's six foot tall. He's in, you know, although I'm in good shape, you know, he's in amazing shape. He's a macho guy. He's a tough guy. He's a family man. He's a guy that goes to work and works 50, 60 hours a week. He dotes on her. He's everything that I'm not. You know, he's like, he's perfect for her. And I'm not that person, you know. What person are you?

I mean, you know, I cut up a lot and I goof around. I goof off and I'm silly. And although she finds that to be funny, you know. Not as a husband. Yeah. And I'm not the guy that I don't teach, you know, little league and I'm not going to go to the games and I don't really know sports and I'm not a macho guy. You know, and at that time, and I wasn't a good husband. I didn't want to be married. I'm

sleeping around. I'm having sex with different, you know, chicks that are coming in, you know, the office I'm meeting. I'm, you know, I i'm and you know and whether she ever caught me red-handed or not women sense that they know that yeah i've known every time every chick's ever cheated on me before i felt it even when i couldn't tell i felt it and may have been a month later when she said look i met somebody i'm like yeah i'm thinking yeah five weeks ago i knew yeah i've oh i felt it like you know and so when women do that, and she did that all the time, and I'm saying, doing the typical guy thing, you know, you're crazy. You're nuts. That's nuts. Truth is, I'm thinking, Jesus Christ, what did I do?

It's just intuition. Yeah. So, you know, just being a scumbag, you know, I'm being 29, about 30, what, like 29, 30 years old, and I'm being, you know, just a a – I guess by that point I'm like 31 years old, and I got a bunch of money. I got a dozen people saying, Matt, Matt, hey, can you help me, Matt? Hey, can you look at this, Matt? Matt, man, I'm calling the shots. I've got a ton of money. I've got a great car.

I'm in decent shape. And even after all this shit, you still have the real estate. You paid a $1,000 fine and $75,000 seventy five thousand to a lawyer right you're okay I'm okay so but the problem is I don't really have that much of an income like I mean I lost everything and this guy supplements a little bit of a little bit of it but I'm spending a lot of money I have to buy another house I have to renovate that house I might start buying Reynolds real estate again she got all paying child support but a couple thousand a month in child support. For a kid that was like, he was like this tall.

I mean, there's just no way he doesn't need that much. I've been in the house. I know. But I mean, it was a lot. So anyway, what happens is. If you are looking to search the web privately and not have all these websites track you when you leave, check out my friends over at Privato VPN. Privato is the VPN company that gives you full privacy while not losing you any speed. And it allows you to use the product on up to 10 different devices at a time. You got a laptop, you got a tablet, you got a phone, whatever,

you can use it everywhere at all times. So hit that link in my description for Privato and you will go to my landing page with the company and you will see a plan there for $4.99 a month it's the same one i use you're gonna love it so check it out i basically tell my buddy you know is dave who bought the mortgage company i say listen man i'm gonna go ahead and let's start like a development company let's start flipping properties or something like well and he's like okay well where are we gonna get the money from i was like um so i've been thinking about this. I said, so what I'm thinking is I'm thinking about flipping properties. And he goes, okay, I go to get the money. He's like, all right, well, how much is that? I'm like, well, the problem with flipping properties in those areas

is one, it's the clients, people that buy in that Ybor City area. It's a low income area. So people that are buying these houses for 150 or 100 to 150,000, or let's say they're buying for 100. So people that are buying these houses for $100,000 in this area don't typically aren't good borrowers. They have problems, like they'll quit their job. They've had four jobs in two years

or three three five jobs whatever it's gonna be hard to clear loans yeah so it's getting them the mortgages i'm like so basically you know you don't have to basically commit fraud he's like all right so he understood what i was already you know who i was he was already a shy guy he's always been a shot but you want right you didn't even think twice you just went right back to that oh yeah yeah yeah that's what we're gonna have to do yeah yeah that's just went right back to that. Oh, yeah. That's what we're going to have to do. Yeah, yeah. That's just the way. Yeah, that's how it is.

Did you think because you were now removed from it that that meant you weren't going to have any problem getting away with it? No, I thought I had a foolproof plan. Oh. I got a foolproof plan. And what was that? Well, eliminating all of these people that – so my plan was create a fraud where you're committing fraud where nobody knows a fraud's been committed. So fix the last time. Yeah, fix the last time.

Do everything yourself and basically create a situation where basically everything's fraudulent and even the banks don't know they've been defrauded. So what I did was – and you've got nobody to tell on you, really, nobody. So what do you do is like – so if you're flipping properties, there's multiple problems. One problem is the borrower, right? So I can't – if you use a straw man, like you get somebody with good credit to buy five houses and let them go into foreclosure. You saw what happened with Gretchen. Yeah. So you can't rely on them.

And on top of that, they want something for it. So you got to give them a chunk of money. And I thought, yeah, well, how do we do that? How do you cut out the middleman? Right. So what you do is you create your own borrowers. And what I did was I'd already figured out how to create synthetic identities. I'd met a woman. I'd met a woman who had gotten divorced.

Her credit was ruined during the divorce. Is this Hauk? No, no. Not yet. No, this is just a borrower. Came in one day. Oh, simple. Yeah, this was a year before.

A borrower had come in, and she gave me W-2s and pay stubs and she had perfect credit. I pulled her credit. But then when I looked at the W-2s and pay stubs, I happened to notice that the Social Security number is different than what she gave me. Just happened to notice it. And I was like, what the fuck? So we call her and I say, look, here's a discrepancy. I said, I looked at your credit. You've got whatever, three, four years worth of credit. And I was like, here's a discrepancy. I said, I looked at your credit. You've got whatever, three, four years worth of credit.

And I was like, this is a discrepancy though. And then your W-2s and pay stuff. And she thought she was like, oh my gosh. I was like, no, no, we're going to get you the loan. I'm going to change this. But I want to know how did you get, whose credit? Tell me how to do this. How did you do this?

And she said, okay, well, it was kind of an accident. She said, I was married five years ago, got a divorce. During the divorce, I got evicted because my husband wasn't helping pay. I had a son. She said, and all my credit cards went bad. So, and I was behind my electric, everything. I said, okay.

She said, so what I did was, because we got divorced, I started using my maiden name. I said, all right. So my name's changed. Just like you did with your wife. Right. did was because we got divorced I started using my maiden name I said all right she was so my name's changed just like you did with your wife right well she said she says the second thing I did was I went to go get another apartment but I knew that I owed what for water and electric and so my friend told me you should use your son's social security number I know a girl who's done that before she was so I used my maiden name,

which I hadn't used in 10 or 12 years. She goes, I used my maiden name and my son's social security number and my date of birth. So now she goes, and I pulled the credit. When they pulled my credit, they pulled it on the new apartment complex, which the new address wasn't associated with the old credit. The new credit, the new social security number wasn't associated with the old credit and the name wasn't associated the only thing that was the same was her first name and her date of birth but they couldn't see that the SS number was for a child you can see that the social security number has been issued within the last five years so that would be a child well it you would be shocked how many times you pull someone's credit report and it says fraud alert and you just ignore it. The reason you ignore it is, you know, my name is Matthew Cox, but I'm also Matt Cox and I'm also Matthew Cox with one T and not two.

And sometimes I'm Bevan Cox and sometimes I'm Matt B Cox. Every single one of those is a different name in the system. And it says fraud alert, alias, alias. So the fact that the Social Security card said that it's been issued in the last five years – keep in mind her son at the time probably was – let's say he was nine. So it may not have even said that. I've gone into banks, given them – So five years is kind of – I've gone in with Social Security numbers that have been issued a month ago, two months ago. And they've been like, gee, that's weird.

Says it was issued within like the last year. And I'm like, really? I'm like, they're like, yeah. I'm 40. I'm like, really? They're like, yeah. And then I go, that's strange. Oh, I had my W-2 from two years ago.

Same social. And they go, that is weird. Oh, well. They just keep going. So what happened is she did that and she goes so what happened was once i got in the new apartment i started getting pre-approved credit cards so i filled out one of the credit cards she said i got it she said then maybe a couple months later or six months or a few years later i ended up getting like a year later or something she goes i ended up getting a pre-approved auto loan.

She goes, so I went in and I got a new car under the new SOCH. She goes, I knew that I, she knew that all these pre-approvals were with the new SOCH because it was a new address. And she knew it was a new address. Nobody at the old one had it because she just walked away. And she knew the only place she had gone to was she had applied for water and electric. So she knew they'd sold their her information and got the pre-approvals filled them out got them now she's she said so i realized i'd created like a whole new identity and i was like definitely getting you alone i wanted to give her a discount

um so what i did was i she just told you all this because she thought like you had her dead to rights or something and she was trying to let you she was yeah right and we got her alone so what ended up happening was first i tried it with a bunch of you know keep in mind i have tons of 1040s that are in the file cabinets with kids social security security numbers on them because people use their children for a tax deduction i have three kids tax deduction here's their socios great so i've gots. Also, we get kids with social security disability. I've got their social security numbers. So I go and I start pulling kids that are five years old, seven years old, and pulling their credit but making up different names. So what happened, first I pulled one, and it came up, and I said, of course, I'm saying the kid's like 32 years old.

32 years old, this and this, and it comes up, and it says, and, you says, and of course it says there's no credit profile found. So I was like, okay, I don't like that. That means they couldn't find anything. And I thought they couldn't find anything because it's the first time they've heard of them. So then I went and the next guy, I take the information and I go and I apply online for several credit cards. First, they get denied, of course. But then when I go and I pull this credit directly from the credit bureaus, now it says all the information's correct because they've heard of him 20 minutes earlier. They've now heard of him, and they have three inquiries from three different credit card companies. So they know this person exists. And so when I pull it, they're like, yeah, yeah, there's a credit profile. He doesn't have any credit, but he does does exist even though he doesn't exist like I

used a different name so now if you're the one on the other end saying are we going to give you the loan or not you get to make the call right well I'm not doing that what I decide to do is I decide to start make now I understand how to make a fake credit profile so eventually what happens is I go into social security and I explain all this in my in the book like it's it's it's more I really explain what I did was. What's the name of your book for people out there? Shark in the housing pool and there's audio version. You can get it on Amazon. Yeah, Amazon. It's out there. So, what ends up happening is, and I explain a little bit more in detail, but the bottom line is what I do is I end up calling Social Security over and over and over again until I eventually figure out that if you have a kid that's under the age of 12 and you don't need to bring your child.

Because if you have like a three-year-old and you call up and say he doesn't have a social security number because they'll say, well, is he born in a hospital? Yeah, how would that happen? Well, a midwife. So if your child was born with a midwife, then the pediatrician should have issued a social security number, but they don't always do it. So what happens is I made several calls until I finally – I just kept changing the scenario until finally somebody said, you know, you have to bring in your son. And I was like, well, my son is in Brazil with his mother. And they were like, well, she goes, well, shoot, I'm sorry. If the child's more than 12 months old, you have to bring him in.

Hang up the phone, call back. I must have called 10 times. I call back, hey, my son, he's 10 months old. He's this, he's this in brazil uh born with midwife uh blah blah blah it doesn't have a social care number and they go oh okay well then you need to come in we don't need your son to come just you need to come in with a shot record with his birth certificate and a shot record boom so i make a birth certificate how easy is that to make fine arts degree um it's not It's not that difficult.

I mean, you need an embossed seal that says, like, you know, Hillsborough County Vital Statistic Records and that sort of thing. You need those things, which I figured out how to get. How did you get them? Well, I mean, I altered the name because they won't – if you go to these places that print them, they won't give them to you because they say, no, no, that's a government body. We can't make it. Right. So I altered the name. Instead of saying like Office of Vital Statistics, I said like Department of Virtual Records.

And instead of like the state of – I put like incorporated in the state of Florida. And so I just altered the names a little bit and that way when you then i would say i would chip off parts of the letters and then i would take 220 grit sandpaper and do it over and over and over to wear them down and that way when i do the embossment you still can see kind of what it says it looks like the stamp and they really just feel it so there was also things like there so they wouldn't notice the text differences when you handed it to them no they don't they don't they can't see it it's in it's emboss like so they wouldn't notice the text differences when you handed it to them they can't see it, it's embossed

so they'd have to really even if they did, they couldn't really read it usually if you, you'd notice if you handed documents usually they'd grab it and they'd go, okay they'd just feel it and then the other thing, it had to be on that copy, you know

void if copied paper so I had to be on that copy, you know, void if copied paper. So I had to order like a huge ream of that paper. So I get this huge ream of that paper. Where did you learn that? Like obviously you have a fine arts degree so you could pull it off. But where did you learn like this is what they look for, this is how it's done? Because it's not like you did that job. Well, I just had to make – I just had to get my birth certificate and look at it and say how do I make something that's it just like this just intuitive here's the seal here's this i need paper like this

how do i get that i go online i actually called a bunch of places i did they said we don't sell it individually you have to buy a whole you have to buy like 300 sheets done you know so anyway i end up getting make these things yeah i make them I go into the social security and I say, hey, my – Ten-month-old in Brazil with the midwife mom. Yeah. It was a girl. It's funny because the first time I did it, I had a girl that I did it with. And I said, look, I need a social security number.

And I knew they were going to raise the question, where's the mom? Like what if they asked me where the mother is? Like, I go through things. I don't know if you do this. I tend to have conversations. If I know I'm having a conversation with you, I tend to have it over and over and over again. I come up with all the rebuttals. Like, my girlfriend can't win an argument because by the time we actually sit down to have the argument,

I've had it like 80 times. I have every rebuttal. She's done. True salesman. Yeah. You just go over and over and over. If they say this, I say this. If they say this, I say this. Well, times. I have every rebuttal. She's done. True salesman. Yeah. You just go over and over and over. If they say this, I say this. If they say this, I say this.

Why would you have done that? Okay, well, here's why I did that. And she'd just go over and over and over. And so I walked in. She said, okay, well, what do you mean she's never had a social security number? I said, yeah. Her name was Rebecca, the first name of my child, my 10-month-old child. And I said, yeah, she's never, she never had a social security number issued.

And she goes, that's strange. I said, yeah, well, she was born with a midwife. And so then she goes, okay. She goes, where's the mother? And if for some reason at the last second, I thought Rebecca doesn't sound like a baby's name. And so at the last second, I thought, as she was talking, I thought,

because she said it right away. And my first, you know, it was like, where's the mother? And I was like, fuck, Becca, you know, baby. I thought, my sister used to call their babies when she was pregnant, like baby T, because their last name was talented. So they'd give baby T. And I thought, so I was like, yeah, you know, I said, I don't know, baby Becca and I haven't seen her in months. And I hope she's in a drug rehab somewhere, but maybe she's on the street. I really just don't know. And as soon as I said, I go, baby Becca and I haven't seen her in months.

I thought, baby Becca, where'd you get baby becca and i went i started to laugh and i went like that and and i was like um she thought you were crying she thought i was crying and i sat there and i was thinking to myself get a hold of yourself what are you doing and i was like um i'm sorry i'm sorry she's no i'm sorry i'm sorry she said i i have to ask and i said no no i'm i'm i'm sorry go ahead and like, no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. She said, I have to ask. And I said, no, no, I'm sorry. Go ahead. And she goes, no, it's fine. It's fine.

She goes, hold on. She goes, oh, you're right. She never has had a social security number issued. Huh. Okay, hold on. She goes in the back because she said, I have to go get somebody. And I thought, oh, shit. Like, who's she getting?

A cop? Like, they have a sheriff. You've been to the DMV. This was social security. I didn't know. So a guy comes back and he goes, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. What happened? And I told him.

He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, that happens. We give a couple of these a month. It happens sometimes. And he goes like this. You go to screen five here. She's like, yeah, just click this. Boom. Oh, you got the address?

Yeah, okay. Well, yeah, yeah. And you're just sitting there like. I'm like, oh, my God. You're not going to really give me a social. And they issue me a social security number they they mail it 10 days later there will be one randomly generated and mailed to you in a week or so later bam it comes and so i turn around i immediately go online get three secured

credit cards i'm right back in the dmv like a couple days late i'm sorry dmv the social security card number uh social security administration right back like right away another one another one no different one another one another one you can go in the same one like two days in a row that would be very dumb but there's always seems to be somebody every time i would call it's always somebody else yeah so the point is is i you know i come back bam come back bam bam bam i'm getting them left and right and i'm and every time you get them you open up the cards open up the cards the part that i i you might have cut off on'm and every time you get them you open up the cards open up the cards the part that i i you might have cut off on this a little bit ago but you'd open them up and then

you'd have to build some sort of credit too because when you had checked it you'd seen that it at least showed up but there was no credit score i would first apply for a couple credit cards and get denied but that creates a credit profile so now the credit bureau that's all you need yeah well now they've heard of you. So now they're like, okay, I don't want to apply for Bank of America credit card or secured credit card when they've never, nobody, this guy's never had his credit pulled. Right. Because the first thing he'll say is no record found. I don't want that to happen.

No profile found. I don't want them to think, oh, no, you don't even exist. I want them to at least say, oh, yeah, the information's there. He just has no credit. So that's all you had to do. That's all I had to do. Okay, no, you don't even exist. I want them to at least say, oh, yeah, the information's there. He just has no credit. So that's all you had to do. That's all I had to do. Okay. So I get a secure credit card. I get three secure credit cards.

I start making the payments. I do that because I know that I'm going to get denied, but at least it creates the profile. Yes. But I'm still not going to get a credit card. So then I just say, hey, I'll apply for a secured credit card because I'll give them the $500. So I say, hey, secure credit card? And they go, yeah, we'll give you a secured one. So I, Hey, secure credit card. And they go, yeah, we'll give you a secured one.

You're going to give us 500 bucks. Here's your 500 bucks. You know, and I get capital one and I get first premier bank and I get bank of America. And I, I started getting all these different ones. And you start putting payments on there, make the payments,

keep it below 30%. What kind of, what kind of payments, like your own personal bullshit at the store? I combine gas. Like you think if you've got you got 10 or 12 people with three credit cards a piece you've got there you know and i've got plenty of money i've got money i don't i'm not using them for credit i'm just building credit profiles exactly so i start naming the guys like the first couple guys were real names like alan Duncan, Joel Colon.

But then I saw the movie Reservoir Dogs. Oh, no. So I start naming – Not Mr. Pink. No. I did Michael White. I did William Blue. I did James Red.

I did Brandon Green. I did – what else did i have lee black um so i had you know black white red green blue you're very influenced by movies i can tell i love movies yeah so loves uh loves catch me if you can so uh yeah so it was um you know i always say this so like i thought it was so clever you know but but when you're in front of the judge you know he doesn't think it's clever that you named your all of your fake people red blue green things it's crazy he thinks you're a psychopath yeah you know like what are you doing is it a joke i think at that point once you're doing something like that i mean to say nothing of where this started with one manager

being like oh we'll wipe that out all the way to this point obviously i mean the the ship has sailed you are down the slope here and i'm just trying to have fun that's what i mean now it gets to a point it's like you're taunting at that point that's what they hate yeah yeah um and it's funny because when this first happened like i would have told you i wasn't taunting i wasn't you know but now yeah it's it's like i said it's ego so what happens is the the second problem with flipping houses right is that you have to buy the house cheap and you have to fix it up well i got around that because my fake people my synthetic identities they don't care if the inside of the house is done they don't care if the water's running in the electric what what all all i need now is i need an appraisal

so you have the appraisers which doesn't even matter by the way so because ultimately i end up just ordering the appraisal software, and I just start doing my own appraisals. That's later, but at this point I have people doing appraisals. You know who used to do a bunch of appraisals for me? Eddie LaFuente, the same guy, same broker. Yeah, he became an appraiser. Oh, my God.

So he started doing it. He came to me and said, yeah. And I said, okay, well. Eddie the appraiser now. Got something for you. You're going to be good at this, Eddie. And so I would go in. We wouldn't do anything to the houses.

I mean, some of these houses, you'd clean up the whole yard and put everything that you got out of the yard inside the house. You know what I'm saying? Or you just gut the house, like just all the garbage and shit. You'd turn this around on the weekend. Right. You'd clean it turn this around on the weekend. Right. You clean it all up, trim the tree. So we would have the yard. We'd had a guy that would mow the yard, and we'd trim the trees, and we'd have somebody that paints the outside and cleans it up.

So it took some good pictures. Eddie takes pictures of the house and does the appraisal. Well, here's the thing. The other issue is – so we don't have to worry about fixing up the houses as much. I don't spend $30,000 fixing up the houses. much. I don't spend 30 grand fixing up the houses. I can spend five, maybe 10. And it's quick. It's quick.

The other issue renovating houses is that if you buy a house for $50,000, the problem is, let's say in that area, it's going to appraise at maybe $100,000, maybe $110,000. So it's the appraisals. Like I can't, my guys, my synthetic identities, they're not going to live there and they don't care that they're okay with paying 200, $250,000 on a house. They're okay with that. So that's another great thing about making your own people. So what I do is, but how can I get them appraised that high? The other houses in the area are selling for 75,000, maybe $105,000, maybe $95,000. So the way appraisals are done is they say, hey, I'm selling this house for $200,000. Well, if the other houses in the area are selling for $100,000, the appraiser says, I'm sorry,

the most I can get you is $100,000. So what you need is you need other comparable sales. So I buy these houses for $50,000 and I was dating a chick that worked for a lawyer's title at the time. And I convinced her to basically tell me how to record the sales at a much higher price. So I buy something for $50,000. How can I get it to show up for $200,000? And she explained, okay, you fill out this, you do do this and you pay these extra doc stamps you pay a little bit of extra taxes and they'll record it at 200 000 as a sale at 200 000. so so lee black comes in and he buys a house here for 40 and records it at 210. he buys one here and he records it at 190. he buys one here 190 uh and how over what kind of time period are

we talking within a few months all of these guys are buying houses and record within a few months i've i've taken um forbes magazine said that after i've been in that area that that zip code was one of the fastest growing zip codes in the nation. It was one of the top 20 fastest growing zip codes in the nation. And you really weren't worried about this popping up on data? It's fine. It's fine. So now here's the great thing.

Now Lee Black owns – I'm surprised you didn't have Quentin Tarantino buying the house. Lee Black owns this property. He owns over a million dollars worth of properties right he's worth they're they're his his five properties that he bought are worth they're all worth 200 250 000 he ain't gonna be paying well he's gonna make some payment he's gonna make some but then he's gonna stop listen lee had an accident, and that's what you're laughing about that, but that's what happens. What I do is now he owns these properties.

And what I do is I have him refinance the property. He bought it for two. He got around seasoning. Remember seasoning? Yeah. So he bought it for 200,000. He needs to refinance it. We go in.

He's got perfect credit. He's got 700 credit scores. He's been on his job for five years. He's got refinance it. We go in. He's got perfect credit. He's got 700 credit scores. He's been on his job for five years. He's got all the money. He's got plenty of money in his bank account. They're not even checking his bank account because it's not even a purchase. But they still want to see it for reserves, make sure he has good money. Oh, he does.

Yeah. They don't even call. If it's for reserves, they don't even make a call. Like, oh, it looks good. Yeah, it looks good. Oh, he's got a lot of money. Yeah, he's doing well. So what ends up happening when the tragedy strikes right so he goes and he refinances the house and he gets they

lend him 180 000 on a house that he's got 50 000 in maybe 60 so he just made 120 i just made 120 000 so you get 120 000 and um so once he gets the 120 on one house, he does it on another one, another one, another one, right? So you borrow about a million dollars in each one of these guys' names. You make about six or $700,000 for each person is worth about 700,000. And then they make a few payments and then you stop paying well that you i i then i would then i would stop paying and then first of all what happened is you start getting a few you know you get the you get the late payments you get the late it's late it's late then it's hey you're sick you're two months behind then you get a few phone calls which you know to his cell phone

oh he had a cell phone too he had a cell phone and and the office they call the office um and so they call the office they leave call the office. And so they call the office, they leave a message sometimes. But and they call the cell phone. Did you set up like fake? I had like a dozen, like half a dozen to a dozen cell phones on my credenza. And so even the office numbers were cell phones technically? Oh, no, the office phones were, you ever heard of HQ? No.

It's their virtual offices. So there's real offices. Like you can get packages delivered there, but you have a secretary and she'll transfer. But the secretary, I don't know her, but you pay and they charge you per minute. And so you pay like 50 bucks a month or 100 bucks a month. And they answer the phone and they say, hi, you know, they say. Mr. Black's office. No, no, no, no.

He works for them. It's Express Tax Services. No, no, no. No, he works for them. It's Express Tax Services. Express Tax Services, how may I help you? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm calling for Lee Black. I'm sorry. Mr. Black isn't in the office right now. I can take a message.

He's never here. I can transfer you to his cell phone if you'd like, or I can take a message. Oh, you can just leave a message. And they leave a message. And then, you know, maybe they call or they page him, you know, back when you had pagers or they, you know, whatever. Either way, I know he's got a phone call and I call him back when you had pagers or they – whatever. Either way, I know he's got a phone call, and I call him back and say, hey, this is Lee. What's going on?

Who's this? Oh, it was always you calling back. It was almost always me, yeah. Do you have a different voice on each of these lines? No, that's not calling the same guy. I know, but I'm just saying, like, you never know if, like, the same bank or same whoever is going to be calling up Mr. Pink one day and then Mr. Black. But I do know. Oh, because you set him up yeah that's true so uh that was a brain fart so what what happens is usually i'm not nobody's calling back typically nobody's calling

back because what happens is after about three months i would print an article out of the newspaper i would cut i cut an article out of the the Tampa Times where there was like a 12 car pile up and somebody was life flighted, you know, to the hospital. And I retyped the whole thing and I put in the name of my person, of my synthetic identity. Then I print it out on newsprint, cut it out, lay it on a piece of paper, print it again. Now make a copy of that. So it looks like I cut it out of the newspaper. Then I fold it up and I write a letter from his sister saying, look, Lee was in a 12-card pileup. He was life flighted. And I highlight the name.

You can see in the paper where he was life flighted. Life flighted to the hospital. He's in a coma. The doctors say that he may never come out of the coma. If he survives at all, he'll may never come out of the coma if he serves i survives at all he'll certainly never work again so by all means just go ahead and take the house back i'm so sorry for the problem and therefore practically foreclosing anyway but i want to give them a reason i don't want to look too much into it i want them to have a reason if you give them a reason they typically go away and

that's what would happen they just stop so forbes said that this was like the fastest growing town or whatever county it also became the fastest growing like a car wreck tragedy town in america the deaths were insane it was i mean listen investing in city under my reign was was detrimental to to your health as a synthetic identity. These guys didn't live prosperous, long lives. So they would go under. They go under. And of course –

You made your money. Yeah, and I've got it. And I did this to the tune of – it's like $11.5 million. So what happened – and listen, I got caught multiple times. I got caught by a south star bank one time and what'd they do um they called the the broker and said that we know that the guy's name was um uh this was a real person that i started which was uh i mean it was a synthetic identity but i used a different name i used the name alan duncan i'm going to say alan duncan i may have been joel

columbus anyway i think it was alan duncan so it was alan duncan um you know the other thing too by the way is like the credit cards that we would i would get to i would get a ton of credit i'd always end up getting like 50 to 80 000 with the credit cards like like bank like i had countrywide down countrywide and bank of america's they were two separate entities then but they both did the same thing as soon as you bought something so, so if they thought you put down $15,000, almost immediately you got a pre-approval for $15,000. So you don't notice this as a regular person, but if you're doing five and six and seven of these with this one company, you start noticing, oh, this is what's happening. So this down payment or this equity or whatever, I'm getting – now I'm getting all these cards. They think there's $20,000 worth of equity in this house because of the refi.

It's worth this much. He refinanced. There's $30,000 or $40,000 in equity. They just gave me – they automatically gave me a $20,000 card. Perfect. Like we got to stick with them. That's an extra $20,000. Anyway, one time I got a – the broker came over and said, hey, listen, this is an issue.

They're calling about Alan Duncan. And I had done a loan where some of the money went to the guy that was helping run the development company because we're building new houses also. We're taking a lot of the money and buying new lots. We had like 100 lots, 100 vacant lots. We're building new so they got one of the other guys that's helping me his name's rudy rudy didn't mail the payment in first payment like you're getting this much money this is for this is do me a favor i'm juggling 40 payments here 30 payments my own stuff his stuff your stuff like it so can you make the payments on this i'll give you the money just make the payments yeah no problem like you take this you take this identity over so he takes the identity over he's gonna make a few payments come to me in a couple months when

we stop paying and you know i'll we'll do the thing okay so what happens is he never made the first payment and so she comes and she says look there was a first payment default they've looked into it they're saying this guy doesn't exist i'm like holy so we drive to the office i look through the file and it's you know it's detrimental like this is one of the ones where like the money went straight from the title company directly into our own accounts like it was there was no even attempt to hide the money trail where usually i would deposit into their own accounts and we would then redirect the money to our other accounts and you know so at least it went to their account like this money didn't even go to their account it would like to straight to us so like we had checks directly checks issued to us he was just detrimental right so anyway i call up and i

took all up the guy and i'm like but they are it's they're on in their infancy of the investigation so i call up and i say, I call the bank. And I said, hey, this is Alan Duncan. I need to talk to whoever the president of the bank was or whatever, because that was when we called the account executive and she had said, this is what they're doing right now. The account executive was like, spies. So they told us this. So I call up and I said, I need to talk to this guy. And it's like, the president of the bank or the lawyer, whoever it was. And they were like, oh, I'm sorry. He's talking to the president of the bank right now. They're having a meeting. Okay, problem. okay problem i said i understand that but they want to talk to me trust me the meetings i think the meeting is about me i have assured you you need to interrupt them she

says i'll try hold on she goes i should just tell them my name so they walk in and i'm like a minute later they're like i come on speakerphone mr duncan been looking for you yeah how you doing i'm like pretty good they're like well that's that's it's odd that you're doing well since you don't really exist i'm like really i said that is strange i said what can i do for you. Yeah, you know, and I'm like, pretty good. They're like, well, that's, that's, it's odd that you're doing well, since you don't really exist. I'm like, really? I said, that is strange. I said, what can I do for you guys? I understand that there's a first payment default. I said, I'm putting the payment in the mail right now. I apologize. Plus I can put the second payment that no, no, no, we're way past that. Way past that. You're gonna love this. So, because you were asking before, this is so – this is a good example of this.

They said, you know, we've been looking into your file since yesterday, and we've called here. We've called this bank. You don't even have a bank account there. Like they're like – I forget what – Oh, they did the homework. Yeah. Like you this. They start going into you this isn't right, this isn't right.

And I'm like, you know, I've never been happy with SunTrust Bank. I'm not surprised that they said there's no account. I mean, what am I going to see? You know, it's like, it's a refi, so I didn't even go through the trouble. Like, even this, I'm getting sloppy. So, they just bury me. Everything. This.

And I'm like, kind of like, joking about it. Like, okay, all right. And they're like, you know oh by the way they had the head of fraud department which was a former fbi agent there oh they have the president of the bank it was a small they said it was a bank but it was really like a lender yeah i'm sure they probably had a bank branch but they had they had that covered right and some guy and they had um the lawyer and i'm like look you know this is this is it this is it uh i i you know this is what i said this is this isn't that big it uh i i you know this is what ha i

said this is this isn't that big of a deal let me let me do this let me do that i said how about i just pay you the money back you know or pay the payments and they're like no no no we're way past that like i'm hoping to try and get them to just sell the loan and they're like we're way past that they're like um listen uh we're you know we're conducting our investigation at some point we're going to give it to the fbi and they they said you know i don't know if you know this but our our head of security is former a former fbi agent he's like yeah i'm here he's like you're gonna end up you're gonna end up in a i think he kept saying like an eight by eight cell when this is done and i was like okay okay i said listen you guys i said so they were really all over me and i said you know

and i started you didn't shit yourself. No, because I was, I kept thinking I'd been in this position a few times before. Similar positions. This one was pretty, this was pretty blatant. Like I knew I was kind of fucked. I mean, I'm not saying I'm not scared. I'm scared. But I sat there and I kept thinking, why are they not concerned about the money?

Like, it doesn't make sense that I'm offering to give them the money. Like they haven't said, no, you need to refinance it. Like, I got caught one time and I refinanced. It was with Washington Mutual. Let me refinance

like three or four loans that they caught was fraud. They let me refinance it. They even took a loss. Do you know what a short pay is? They took short pays. They took less than they were owed you know what a short pay is? They took short pays. They took less than they were owed. What's a short pay?

It's when you pay them back less than you're owed. They actually took short pays on the loans just to get them off their books. So I was like – And didn't report anything, obviously. No, no. Wow. They were three – I think three or four owner-occupied properties. So you can't owner-occupy four dwellings.

We closed them all on the same day, and several of them ended up at the same bank because they were different credit lines for different – these correspondent lenders. Mr. Pink, Mr. Green, Mr. Black. No, no. This was a real person. This was actually a real estate agent. Anyway, my point is I'm talking to these guys, and at some point I realized there's an issue. These guys aren't afraid so i was like you know you guys don't seem concerned about getting your money back and they went oh we'll get our money back when we sell the property how much you worry about that and i thought oh they think that their 150 or,000 or $160,000 loan is attached to a house worth $200,000.

Oh, they forgot. And I went, oh, okay, okay. I said, that's – and now I understand. Have you guys ever looked inside? Yeah, what I said was, I said, listen, do you understand? I said, here's the problem. I said, do you have the appraisal there? Because think about it.

Now I have to explain to them why. Like I can't – how am I going to – I can't scare them. They truly – they have an appraisal there because think about now i have to explain to him why like i can't what am i how am i gonna i can't scare him they truly they have an appraisal and they even have what's called a drive-by appraisal i'm just surprised with an ex-fbi agent in the room you still have this confidence you think what do you mean first of all they don't really know who they're talking to but secondly i'm terrified i'm not saying i'm not terrified but it's funny because you're saying the same kind of stuff that the broker and Rudy were saying. Aren't you concerned?

Aren't you? Like when I was saying I was going to call like, oh, my God. What's the alternative? Yeah, you got nothing. I'm either about to get fucked up. And listen, I can tell you right now. I'm on federal probation. Yeah, you're fucked.

Like I'm not. This isn't going to end well for me. I have to. Trying to fix it doesn't hurt me. So the psychology is I'm in deep. I'm already done. I'm on the turn. I'm going to see the river.

Yes. So I said, look, here's the problem, guys. I said, open the appraisal. They opened the appraisal. Okay. I said, look at comp number one. Okay, comp number one is owned by a guy named James Redd. All right.

Sold for this much money. Right. Comp number two is owned by a guy named James Red. All right? Sold for this much money. Right. Comp number two is owned by a guy named Brandon Green. Now, keep in mind, you don't really know this. Like, they have to look this up. They're like, okay. Comp number three is owned by, you know, a guy named Lee Black. They're looking at it.

Right? All right. Well, what are you getting at? Red, green, black. And they go, you're these people? And I was like, green, black. I sit and they go, are you're these people? And I was like, Oh my, they go, Oh my God. I said, they said, well, we're still going to get there. I said, no, no, no. Let me explain what I've done. I purchased those properties for 40 and $50,000 a piece. I record the value of those properties by paying the additional doc stamps on the loans. So they appraised, they showed up at 210, 190, 197.

And your property came in at 190. You lent me this much money on a refinance. This is what you owe. But the truth is, I said, your property is worth $40,000. And of course they believe me because red, green, black, they're like, well, this can't be. And they go, how is this possible? We did a desktop review. Their own appraiser drove by and took pictures from the curb.

Said, right, the inside of the house is gutted. It's trashed. I said, but it passed all of your procedures because those sales really are there. And that's really what a desktop review or a drive-by review is. Yeah. They also have something called desktop reviews. And they were like, oh, my God. Oh, my God.

I said, you're about to lose $100,000. I said, there's no fraud. On each of these, right? Well, it's just one property. Okay. They don't own the other ones. Got it. They're just sales in the area. And so the guy goes, so they put the phone down.

They put me on hold for a little bit. I listened to some music. They come back and they said, do you still have the money? I said, I can get you the money. And they said, all right, if you can give us the money back, we assure you we will not turn you in. We will not say anything. If you promise that that and you will never do another loan through our bank. I said, absolutely.

I said, I think it'd be very it'd be stupid for me to do it. You'd easily detect it. And listen, their fiduciary responsibility is to that corporation or the owners or investors of the corporation. So what do they do? They send they send over the broker a payoff. I go get a cashier's check, and I send it to them, and they take it. Boom, it's done. Never again issue.

I got another one of those two, which is 10 times better than that story. All right, let's hear it. Well, no, it's in the – I'm still – I haven't even gone on the run, bro. I'm waiting for the run because I'm thinking when you started telling the story, I'm like, all right, this is going to be the one where he goes on the run. Oh, no, no. But you got out of it. Yeah, bro. This goes on and on.

This is just one of multiple – I told you I'd get caught many times. But I just keep paying them off or doing this or fixing that or fixing that. And none of these people got in trouble. No. They knew all about it. No. I mean they knew about it, but it's not like they're covering up a murder. They also actively participated.

It's not a murder, but it's still like, that's active participation at that point. They knew it. They had it caught. There was a phone call. Everyone in there who needs to be in there hears it. You pay it off. Oh, don't worry. We'll look the other way.

Well, yeah. And I kept going. So, you know, that same person, actually, I think I person right then because if one they had he had a first payment default and i did we went and i ran up his credit cards and uh dumped him i think he had four yeah four or five loans we stopped paying on all the loans and then same thing gave him the thing then gave him the the article about the pile up a few months later, and that guy was gone. Did the same thing with Joel Colon, did the same thing with Lee Black, did the same thing with where they buy five or six houses, you get almost a million dollars in loans, you pull out six, $700,000, you make some payments, you let it go. So you're saying you got rid of that guy at other

banks too? Yeah, we stopped paying on everything because I can't borrow any more money in his name because he has a first payment. He has the very first loan. He's got the mortgage showing up with a 30-day late. He never made the first payment. Right. Now, granted, it gets paid off, but it doesn't matter. It's 30 days on his credit.

His credit just went straight down. Right, so you just get rid of him. Get rid of him. I got guys waiting in the wings. So, yeah. So, that happened. And I guess I can – to cut to going on – when I went on the run. Yeah. So, what ends up happening is I had a girlfriend that I was dating named Allison. And Allison was basically getting a divorce.

And you have to think, too. Like, anybody, like, you know, I dated this one chick who, you know, she wants to flip properties. I help her flip properties. Like, I'm ready to, you know, like, I'm doing a lot. But my full-time job, essentially, is just fraud at this point. Managing all these guys, getting credit cards, creating new identities. How many hours a week are you putting in um you know when you love what you do you know you never work a day in your life yeah i feel i felt like i felt like i wasn't working at all like it's like let's try this you know oh that worked that's great so but i don't i mean

i'd say 50 60 hours a week you know i mean i'm the kind of guy that you know you that worked that's great so but i don't i mean i'd say 50 60 hours a week you know i mean i'm the kind of guy that you know you can call me at 11 o'clock at night you're gonna answer i'm gonna answer the phone yeah what's up hey listen i'm at a bar i got a guy he wants to buy a triplex he's this yeah does he own a mortgage have a mortgage now okay what's his credit score i mean i'm immediately going into qualifying him boom boom boom okay here's what you do and you were making a lot of money i mean were you spending the money around a lot? Yeah, I mean, I'm going on trips to Norway, to England. I'm going to Mexico.

I'm going to, I mean, I've got a couple of cars. You know, I got a truck, you know, but not like a shitty truck. You know, I got a nice truck. I got a nice, I'm driving an Audi. I'm driving, you know, I've got a house. I'm living in a triplex where i've got two apartments underneath me a four-car garage and a one i'm living in one bedroom upstairs that of course i designed myself and it's 2200 square feet it's a one 2200 square foot one bedroom so it's a nice place yeah it's a nice place hardwood floors you

know i'm dating this chick i'm you know do you feel successful do you feel fulfilled feel great yeah i mean i'm a little terrified but i'm taking a lot of xanax i had helps you sleep at night i've taken paxil which is like an anti-anxiety drug and um so you know it's like a mood like a stabilizer so i'm i'm i'm handling the uh you know, there were panic attacks. But, you know, overall, it was good times. Was your dad proud of you? He thought I was. Are you kidding me? He thought I was a huge success.

Like, wow. Like, you know, you had that one little hiccup with that mortgage thing that you had done. But in his mind, it's like you just, you had filled out some, you were trying to get around something. It was some paperwork. It was a paperwork thing that you shouldn't have done.'s not it wow so he just kind of shrugged he shrugged it off because think about it i never convicted felon shrugged it off yeah shrugged um you know keep in mind like my brother worked for me at the time um so my brother i remember did he ever get in trouble no no he wasn't doing anything fraudulent but like my brother who was

constantly asking my dad for money stopped doing that like when he came to work for me doing little odds and ends like changing door and i still have a bunch of apartments so i have like apartments to manage so you gave him some got it right little like and he's charging me ridiculous stuff ridiculous fuck it i'm gonna go fuck it's my brother i remember my dad said to me one time he said so your brother's still he must be doing a lot of work right and i went i said um yeah he works when he wants to work and he and i i said why i said yeah why why do you say that he's like you don't ask me for money anymore he didn't ask me for money in like a year making a lot yeah listen one christmas i bought my uh

brother uh uh harley davidson um my brother had sold his harley his Harley Davidson to get the down payment for his house, right? For the house that he had lived in with his wife and kids. And then like – so when I started making money for Christmas one year, I bought him a Harley Davidson, pulled it up right in front of my parents at night. And we had all gone over there to eat dinner. And then when everybody's opening their presents, he opens up his presents and he's got there's the harley davidson shirt t-shirt and a key like on a key chain with the key and he looks at it and everybody's staring at him because they all know he's like he just looks at the thing he thinks it's just a key chain there's a key to it there's a key and he's like oh thanks matt thanks and and you're gonna use it no and and and uh but it was

there was other stuff in it like Harley Davidson book and he loves Harley Davidson and my like my uh my sister-in-law looks at him and goes Mark keep looking and he goes what you just keep looking he flips it over and there's there's a registry you know or not registration there's the title and he looks at and he goes what is this he's holding the key and the richard looks and he goes and everybody's staring at him there's like 20 people there like his kids everything and he goes no he looks over at me and i was like i was like we were playing secret santa too like i'm like your secret like i remember when we all got our $50 gifts in a harley exactly i

walked around i was like who's got mark give me that i'm like i got something for him and so yeah he gets up and he goes no and i walk over and yeah check this out we open the door and boom there's his harley right there oh my god he jumps on the harley no helmet you didn't need a you added the helmet law back then jumped on the har the Harley. Starts it up. I mean, brrrah! Backs it up and takes off. It's pouring rain. My mom goes, if he hurts himself. And I go, I'm sure he'll be fine.

I'm sure he'll be fine. I'm thinking, jeez. He drove that thing like, I'm terrified. I mean, it's pouring rain. And he took off. And you thought, okay, he's going to come back in a minute. It's caught in the sun. Like 30 minutes later, he comes back drenched he's like fucking awesome man i can't believe i'm like yeah i'm thinking

jeez look it's like yeah it was it was cool that was a cool thing you know so family affair full bit yeah so we're buying i'm buying and selling houses we're doing stuff every day things going great um and this chick i was dating came to me one day so i have a buddy named travis so travis is a friend of mine that i've known he's one of those guys you've known i've known since i'm 12 13 years old right and like you know he's not doing well you know i'm doing great he's not doing well um and you know listen you know he drinks he smokes he's got adorable adorable little daughter. And so I'm always kind of helping him a little here, a little there.

He's asking for $500 here, $200 here, no big deal. I'm going to pay you back next week. And he gives you $100 and $300 and then you just say, don't worry about it, bro. You know, so he at one point comes to me and says, I gotta make some money. Like, I don't know, can we flip some properties? But, you know, and the truth is, yeah, could we flip properties? Sure, but like, it's like,

like, I don't need you to flip properties. I'm not really flipping properties. So I'm gonna make up this situation so you can make money. So I'm gonna make more work for myself so that you can make a little bit of money. Like, I'd rather just give you the money. You're just causing me more of a headache. make money so I'm gonna make more work for myself so that you can make a little bit of money like I'd rather just give you the money you're just causing me more more of a headache so he's like bro what do you what are you doing like you're doing some something up like I mean

you got this going on I see these properties like what's going on and I said oh well here's what I'm doing so I kind of explained yeah and he says can I do something like that like you've been doing this for like a year or so. You're fucking balling. You guys are over a year and change, like probably whatever. I don't know how long it would have been. Over a year, though. Not two years, though.

It's about a year and a half. So actually, you know what? It may have been coming up on two years. So what he ends up doing is he says, can I do something like that? And I said, yeah, we could do something like that. So if you want, if you're willing to go in the bank and you're willing – you want to run the whole thing, and yeah, we can do it because I can't keep doing this here. I need to find someplace else like Orlando or something to do it. So he goes to Orlando. He buys a house in the name Michael White, and he borrows –

More colors. Yeah. We borrow three mortgages on the property i then my the girl i was dating and i wasn't really dating i was sleeping with her right because i'm dating another girl but we're just sleeping to get together so she asked me to do some she's a mortgage broker i have her do this over here now she'd done a couple of the loans so she knew that people were fake so that went over there there. So now we got the – or over in Clearwater. So she's doing one in Clearwater.

He's doing one here. In Orlando. In Orlando. So they have to go in the bank. So I make a fake ID for her because they have to actually physically go in the bank here. Physical. Physical fake ID. Real idea.

Real fake ID. Real ID. Yeah. But her name was Rosita Perez in the thing, right? But this is a chick who's got like blondish brown hair. Is this Hauk? No. No, you're still not there.

No, I'm getting there. Okay. This is why I take off on the run. So what ends up happening is, I'll speed it up. So what ends up happening is she ends up, her ID that she had, I said, go get you. She goes, I don't look like a Rosita Perez. And I said, go get your hair dyed black and curly. She goes, okay.

So she gets it dyed black and curly, and I take – we take the photo of her, and I make the ID. So before she does the closing, and she borrows like $300,000 or $400,000. Before she does the closing, she changes her hair back. Oh, no. And she was like, well, it's still me. The picture is me. I'm like, yeah, it is you, but I don't know. And she's like, no, it's me. They're not going to... She goes in the first one,

closes, no problem. She gets like $190,000 or something. I forget the exact amount. The next one she goes and it's the same thing. But when she goes into the next one, they say, this doesn't look like you. And she goes, that's me. And the woman, and she's like, it's me. She's like, look at the picture.

And she's like, yeah, this doesn't look like you. Calls in somebody else. They're like, she kind of looks like her. And she's like, that's me. It is her picture. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I didn't it did i thought it but that's what happened so what they did was they say look they close they have her sign they say we're gonna make some phone calls before we give you the check and she's like okay and so she comes out gets a micro she's like oh

my god like she looks white pale white she's like oh my god we're fine this is what just happened i'm like oh fuck that's done she's like okay well we have the other checks i was like no no no no no that we're done and she's like no we we can get the others i said absolutely not she says look let me give the other check to travis in orlando he can deposit in his bank account when it clears we'll get i said no this whole thing is about to unravel We're never going back to that house that whole thing is done. You're just Wow, so I mean we're never going back there. Well, I'm you know her phone that's gone You know that we're just throwing everything out like but now you're on it. Huh? Now you're gonna be wanted They don't know it's me. They know it's her. I know I know but she is that's what I'm saying

like she lives if you see the picture, like, it's a shitty picture this big. Like, I don't want it or not. That's not going to end up on the news. Like, they didn't give her the money. And I'm saying, if we don't cash the check, the money's still there. And they might just be like, fuck it. Well, nobody lost any money. Yeah.

Who lost any money? Who wants the headache? Right. like fuck it well nobody lost any money yeah who lost any money who wants the headache right we had rented a house and i transferred the deed taking the deed out of the owner's name and put it into rosita perez's name so she's refinancing now so you know nobody's lost anything even the owner got like a chunk of money up front um he got like like seven or eight thousand up front and he can just transfer the title back because she doesn't even exist like they're going to figure this out so it i think that's going to be fine and um she just keeps going on and on no no no no no and i go she's at least let me talk to travis so i go and we talk to travis go to my buddy travis and travis goes i think it'll be fine and i'm like

i think it's a bad idea and he goes give me the check it'll be fine so he takes it and she signs the back of it deposit in the name of you know michael white but he deposits it a couple days go by he gets a phone call from michael white gets a phone call from the bank and says look i didn't witness you signing the back of the check he's why i signed it and he's yeah but it's over a hundred thousand dollars i have to witness it that's our bank policy he goes okay i'll come out. So he drives to Orlando. And I call him, happen to call him and say, hey, what's going on with the check?

And he goes, yeah, I got a phone call. They want me to come. And they said they couldn't deposit the check into my account because I didn't sign it. Now, keep in mind, I've deposited many checks into my account from other people where I've signed the name James Redd. Deposited the order. Nobody's ever said that to me. So you know something's up. Something's wrong.

Don't go in the bank. He says, oh, you're shaking like a little girl. Like, I'm like, listen, bro, I'm not fucking around. Don't go in the bank. Don't go in the bank. He's like, I'm already here. What? He's like, I'm already here.

I'm walking in right now. So you're not already there. You're walking in. Like, I'm like, look, there's going to be, there's going to be, cops are waiting for you. He goes, bro, I'm in the parking lot right now so you're not already there you're walking in like i'm like look there's gonna be there's gonna be cops are waiting for you he's bro i'm in the parking lot right now there's no cops well they're not gonna flood it with sheriff deputies with cruisers walks in says ah you're you're scared calm down how you know would you get so scared you know laughing uh click so you found your fredo corleone I called no I call him 20 minutes later nobody answers no I'm an hour later nobody answers 30 minutes later nobody nobody nobody nobody I'm calling

the I'm calling his cell phone so then Travis works for the United States of America now well so then then I go to um then I go and I go to a price self I go to a pay phone. They used to have these things called pay phones. Oh, I remember pay phones. And you could put quarters in them. Yeah. So we drive and we go to a pay phone and we call Michael White's cell phone. And a very official sounding voice answers, hello, who's this?

This is Agent Breslin. Yeah. This is Lee Black. I'm answers hello who's this this is agent breslin yeah this is lee black i'm like who's this and and this is this is you know this is officer so and so with the you know i'm like all right that's it he's done he's done he's done he's burned he's arrested he's done and now you're burned well i i can't find him being arrested. So the next day, I get a phone call. He says, look, I get the, you know, he just calls like, hey, what's up? I'm like, what's up? He's like, look, I was arrested. I need you to call my brother-in-law.

Get him to get me out of jail. Okay. So I go to him. I said, look, man, here's some money. Bail him out. His bail is this much. What I should have known was this. When he was first arrested, his bail was like $300,000, which is basically what he had borrowed. And then the next day, it had dropped to like 10 grand.

Well, if you know anything, first they're saying, you know. So now it's like whatever the deal was. A little too suspect. The deal was yeah yeah it was like oh you're never getting out of here too oh you're cooperating okay can you come up a thousand dollars yes okay drop it to ten thousand so i give them the money um they get him out of jail he gets out of jail he comes to me he says look um i told them that i'd pay him the money back i told him this i told him that can you get me a money back. I told him this, I told him that.

Can you get me a lawyer? I said, yeah, I can get you a lawyer. I get him a lawyer in Orlando. Were you worried he was wired up? No, I wasn't worried he was wired up. I remember when he came in, I was like, bro, man. I said, how are you doing, bro? I said, man, come here.

And I gave him a hug. And he goes, oh, you. No, there's nothing there. He goes, oh, you motherfucker. I said, no, I was just saying, oh you mother fucker i said no i'm just saying how you doing been here before yeah and he looked at he's like i would never bro he's like look i told him i'd pay him the money back i told him that they said they said they thought i was working with somebody else i told him that um i wasn't you know okay okay okay so i get him a lawyer i think the lawyer was not much 15 grand you got him a cheapy

well it was it wasn't it wasn't federal it was just local okay so gave him like 15 grand and then i remember he kept coming by like hey i can't do this anymore i'm like yeah i get it and he goes so um and he was like look my lawyer's saying that i probably won't even go to jail like i can probably just pay the money back because most of the money was still in the bank. He was going and getting out like $8,000, $5,000. Oh, so they hadn't even gotten that. He had only gotten out maybe $50,000. So he was like, look, like the one, you know. But the big problem was it was linked to the other person.

Remember the check he deposited was connected to another fraud. The one that Anita whatever. Yes, which also no money was gone. So very little money had been taken out of the account but did she so she did take those two mortgages that got through took them out but she didn't cash the checks so there's no money gone right maybe 50 or 80 grand but you know he's saying look if I can just agree to pay that back. I said, no problem, no problem. He's like, okay. And so, you know, he, anyway, he, so here's what's funny about him. He kept coming in like, hey man, my fucking, you know,

my electric, this, how much is it? Of course, of course, of course. Here's a grand, let's round up. You know, hey, I'd really like to start like a tree trimming business. Oh no, I started businesses now? Of course, I'm like, of course, bro, of course. He's like, you know, I can get really like to start like a tree trimming business oh no i started businesses now of course i'm like of course bro of course he's like you know i can get a truck for this much for this i bought him a truck got him a dodge uh ram something got in the truck hey i

really need one of those the chipper thing how much are those i can get one for about about five five to ten grand or i found one for eight. Of course, of course, eight grand. I'm embarrassed that you had to ask me. I should have offered. So, I mean, it's just one. I probably gave him over the course of a couple months, two, three months, probably 25 grand. Jesus Christ.

Look, I'm paying. I'm ready to pay anything. That doesn't include the 15. Keep it away from you. Just don't. Fuck me. Don't talk about me. Don't mention my name. would will smith put it uh

you keep my name out your mouth so so yeah um that was good that was good so uh that by the way that's like a in prison that's a common term yeah that whole thing um so that was the first time i ever heard it was tell him keep keep my name out of his mouth. So, uh, yeah. So what happens is, uh, um, one day, um, um, you know, he's telling me he's deferring the whole thing. He's putting it all off. He's, he's going to be good.

He doesn't think he'll have to go to jail. He thinks he's going to be okay. He's, he continually says, like like i told them that i didn't know who that girl was but i know that there's no way they believe that she took out mortgages you're taking out mortgage like i know it's all bullshit like i i kind of but i i don't you know i'm just hoping hoping you know that he's not cooperating against me um but what ended up happening was of course like that night like the next, he had explained to them, like, look, this isn't even a big fraud. I can give you a massive fraud.

Like I have a daughter. I can give you this massive fraud. It's this guy and a bunch of other people that are working with him. And they were like, well, how can you prove this? He said, pull up Hillsborough County website, the tax appraiser's website. Okay. Look up the name James Redd. There's five houses. Look up the name James Redd. Boom.

There's five houses. Look up the name Lee Black. Okay. There's five houses. Boom. Look up the name James, you know, yeah, Brandon Green. Five houses. I would love to see their faces.

They're like, he's like, they're like, oh my God. He's like, it's about, at this point, it's, he's like, I don't know, like 11 million, I think he's borrowed, maybe 11 and a half. I don't know. And they're just like, so he's like it's about at this point it's he's like i don't know like 11 million i think he's borrowed maybe 11 and a half i don't know and they're just like so he's like a short period of time yeah it's over like 10 million dollars and they're like you know and by the way you have to understand that like james redd it's like bought them and then like within three to six months foreclosure foreclosure foreclosure so then they so it's not like it's like oh these are these are name colored names that colored names that i'm looking up no no james red foreclosure foreclosure foreclosure like all bought within a month or two of each other all then all foreclosed you know lee black five of them all foreclosed this guy all foreclosed this guy all foreclosed

like these are just and these these right here are right now. These ones right here, they haven't gone in foreclosure. But when he buys two more houses, they'll all go into foreclosure. So they're like, holy shit. So they launched this huge investigation. There's a task force put together between – I want to say Coral Springs, but I don't know the name of the county. Somewhere in Clearwater. I don't know where Coral Springs is.

Whatever. Somewhere in clearwater i don't know where coral springs whatever somewhere in clearwater clearwater hillsborough county um orlando whatever the county is in orlando those counties they put together a task force run by the florida department of law enforcement they come in they're researching they're doing everything they put a whole thing together they start ordering and i knew something was wrong because within a week two three weeks prior to that i start getting people are calling me from like people that i'd met that liked me are calling me and saying listen i'm not i was told not to say anything but we were just served um search warrants oh so they're giving you heads yeah or not search warrant. I'm sorry, subpoenas. We have to provide all loans that are from this person. But you like provide all for James Red, you know, and we know you did the loans for them. And so I don't I know some of those loans closed at your old company. So I just thought I'd mention it. They also want us to pull your loans. So I'm thinking maybe they think you're connected to this guy. I don't know.

But it seemed weird. Oh, hey, Matt, they just had us pull a bunch of these loans with your loans that you had done in your name and this guy and this guy and this guy. So I'm realizing, not good. So, yeah, so I know it's kind of coming down. And then I start getting phone calls or people around me start calling me up saying, hey, bro, I just got a phone call from a guy named Jeff Testerman with the St. Petersburg Times. And they were bought out by the Tampa. Oh, now the media's on it. Now it's like the Tampa Times, I think, or Tampa Tribune.

Tampa Times. But it was the St. Pete Times then. They go with the St. Pete Times. And I'm like, I'm just thinking, oh, my God. So he's asking, and I'm like, well, what did he ask? What did he ask? Well, he asked if I ever met this guy named, you know, James Redd, Brandon Green, you know, Joel Colon. He starts naming off all these different people.

And I'm like, okay, well, that has nothing to do with me. No, no, he asked if I knew you, and if I knew that you were currently on probation for wire fraud, which that's what they charged me with, and I was like, it's so bad. Like, my judge is not going to be cool with this. So, your judge is not going to be cool with this. So, I just was like, oh, my God. And so, I'm still kind of not knowing what to do, waiting and waiting.

And, you know, I'm throwing away some documents, I can tell you that. But I'm kind of waiting and waiting. And all of a sudden, one day, at like, whatever, three or four o'clock, I have a buddy who's a sheriff's. who's a sheriff's deputy who we'd done probably a million dollars, maybe more, in loans for him. And he comes up to me and he goes, hey, Matt. He comes to my office. He goes, Matt, can I talk to you? And I go, yeah, what's up? I walk out there, and he's in his outfit.

And he goes, yeah, what's up? And he said, listen, I used to date this chick on the Tampa PD. Okay. He goes, so she was on a task force recently. I said, okay. He said, my name came up. And I went, really? And he goes, yeah.

He said, because she said it was an association with a property that I guess that you had sold me. It was in your name or your ex-wife's name or whatever. I was like, okay. And I said, he said, well, they just handed over the task force to the FBI. sold me that was in your name or your ex-wife's name or whatever i was like okay oh and i said he said well they just handed over the task force to the fbi yesterday she came to buy my house in the morning at like six in the morning and told me not to talk to you anymore and i was like okay because i said why he goes because the task force was on you. He said, apparently, you know, somebody in Orlando, he said that was arrested and they've been cooperating with this task force. Travis.

Fucking Travis. Motherfucker. You know, but once again, he's got a little daughter. He can't go to jail. And I was like, okay, okay. And he said, yeah. So they gave it to the FBI. I'm just letting you know. He's like, I don't know what to do. He goes, what are you going to do? And I said, and he said, what do you think I should do? I said, nothing.

Just when they come to you and they talk to you, tell them that I did all the loans. Like you came to me, you filled out the paperwork, and I arranged your loans. Like you don't know anything. You're not a mortgage broker. How are you supposed to know? He's like, yeah, but I got money back. Like I'm going to loans, closing on a loan. I said, right. It was a construction loan. You bought the house. You got a check for 40,000 to repair the house. He's like, yeah, but that's not really how it's done. I said, you don't know that Steve, you're a sheriff's deputy. How the fuck would you know that you

were covering you covering for your boy right i was i was like just blame it on me i said it's fine you are not a mortgage broker i'm the one who did the loans you know and he goes okay okay okay which he was going to do it anyway but and he was like okay okay he's what are you going to do i said oh nothing i'm leaving so i can't go to prison. So immediately you were like, I'm on the run. Yeah. I mean, look at me, bro. I'm adorable. Can't go to prison. Have you had any of the plastic surgery yet or anything? No.

I haven't been on the run yet. Oh, shit. So you did that to change your appearance while you were on the run. Of course. I mean, I know what you're thinking. It's hard to improve this. But yeah. Yeah.

I mean, at this point, I've got a receding hair hairline my nose is the surgeon described it as bulbous um you know i had you know i had a little bit of fat you know it was a little chubby my face was thicker you know so yeah when i went on the run i had you know i had a nose job i had had two hair grafts, hair transplants, whatever you want. They call them hair grafts, but two transplants. I had a nose job. I had what's called a mini facelift. I had liposuction.

And docs didn't ask any questions? No. Why would they not ask questions? Yeah, they just want to make the money. They don't give a shit. I'm trying to improve myself. Everybody's about that. And did you do it under your real name?

No, no. I had different surgeries under different names, but they don't know that. So you get it under your real name no no i had different surgeries under different names but they don't know that right so so you get off the phone with the sheriff's deputy no no he was in person he didn't tell you he knows by this point they're probably watching listening to myself so he leaves and now you're like i gotta make a run he leaves and i have no money come on we have money We have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. All tied up in the. No, no. It's in the bank.

But do I hang out and try and remove the money or do I leave? Like, I don't know when. He says they're coming to arrest you. Like, they're going to arrest you soon. Think about it. He's had a task force named after you. Yeah. Andy just told me, too.

He's like, you're on federal probation. Like, they don't really need a reason they can just come arrest me they don't need a reason they don't they don't have to go through a huge process to get a warrant they can just come say violated put them in you are as fucked as fuck right i could anytime my probation officer shows up i'm done anytime so i decide this is a Thursday at like 4 o'clock. 2004, 2003? Oh, 2003. Okay. December 2003.

So, and I'm like – God, this happened over like four years. Oh, this went on. Yeah, this went on for a while. But I'm saying like this is how fast – that's fast to get to like this point. All this shit happened. Like you went from that first whiteout to this. I've left a ton of stuff out. So, yeah.

So, what ends up happening is – what ends up happening is I go and I write a bunch of checks to people and say, go cash this, go cash this, go cash – so, I get like 80 grand out in like a day. And I remember I'd been dating this chick for like a month and a half and they hadn't frozen any of these accounts no damn no um and and so i i i go to they think they have time like they don't think i know this any of this so i go and as i'm packing my bags i was supposed to go on a date on friday night with this chick and like i'm not answering her calls, nothing. She just shows up. And she's like, what's going on? And, you know, I've been dating her like six weeks. And she says, what's happening?

She can see I'm packing. And I've got like cash as a little stack. I got like a little stack of cash. I'm about to get arrested. I'm leaving. No, I'm not about to get arrested. I'm about to leave. I'm avoiding it.

So she says, I tell her, I just blatantly just this is what happened and she's like holy shit and she's like oh my god but but I think we're like I'm in love with you I'm like oh I'm like yeah I understand but I'm probably gonna do some time that's great yeah not now i listen kudos to you but i yeah um so she says uh well i'm coming with you obviously and that's by the way that's rebecca i was gonna say we're finally at the house becky and i'm like no you can't come with me you have a son she just moved here like she had a kid oh yeah she had like a 13 i think it was 13 or 14 and i went you've got a son and she's like no you don't understand she said i can't stay here i want to come with you she said you don't understand why i'm even here and i was just like i haven't told you a bunch of stuff and i go what haven't you told me like we we got five minutes we gotta

make this quick so i listen when she came in, the door went beep beep. And I remember thinking, would they knock? Like, because I was, you know, I'm in like my bedroom, right? Yeah. And I hear beep beep. And I thought, would the FBI knock? Like, did they just walk in? And she walked around the corner.

I was like, whew. Thank God. So, she says, you don't understand. She said, I'm only, she worked at the dog track. She goes, oh, the dog racing track. Yeah. Damn. But she had only been in Florida for like two months.

I met her on like Match.com. So she'd been here two months, met me, boom, chaos. In love with you. Totally in love. Six weeks. So she ends up saying, yeah. So I said, well, what do you mean? She goes, you don't understand.

She said, basically, her husband, her ex-husband had basically raised her son. And she said, I got my son. You know, I basically, you know, he's got a new wife, new kids, everything. She said, I convinced him to let me bring my son down here. Okay. She said, I came down here because i was working for a lawyer and that lawyer predominantly did work for the gaming industry in nevada and uh reno nevada reno nevada yeah yeah that's it you know nevada i think that's how they say no no i'm sorry in a las vegas nevada fuck well it could have been either because reno is a big spot for the for the gambling as well

right no i'm thinking but it was it was but it was Vegas because we went to Vegas. So it was in Nevada. So she said in Reno. I mean, Reno, sorry, in Vegas. So she said she worked – the guy predominantly worked for them. And she said, he sent me down here to work for one of his clients because she had been embezzling money from him to pay for her gambling habits and he didn't turn her into the police when he found out because she was sleeping with him and he was married oh she was so leverage baby instead he he said I'm gonna give you some money I'm sending you

to work I talked to that my client he's going to hire you at the dog track down there you're going down there yeah just to get her out of the hole like get her like get her away get her away from him and he owed her she owed him a ton of money she claimed bankruptcy a few times she'd been divorced like three times and she'll keep her yeah and she's like my son has been has been picked up twice for breaking curfew in two months. He's smoking pot. She said, and she smoked pot all the time. So she's like, I've caught him smoking pot a bunch of times.

She said, he's failing school. She goes, so actually I'm about, I was going to send him back to live with his father, you know, at the end of the school year. But she said, he's going back now for christmas she goes i'm just going to stick him on on the plane now and he just needs to go back and live with him now anyway i can't handle him it's too much and i'm like it doesn't matter we don't know each other and she's like it doesn't matter i i think i love you and even and i go look this is never going to become love for me it's just not not going to, it's not going to happen. And she goes, I don't care. She said, you need somebody. It's easier with somebody else. Right. And I went, I mean, yeah, I don't

need somebody else, but it's easier if you have somebody else to make phone calls for you or answer phones, you know, it's not always you trying to verify stuff. So yeah, but still, and you know, and she's like, look, I don't care if this doesn't even work out. You can find somebody else. I'll find somebody else. She said, well, we're partners in this. And I was like, you know, and obviously I should have said no. But, you know, at that point, I'm leaving everybody behind. And, you know, it was bad enough I'm leaving everybody, but I didn't have to be alone.

And most people don't realize, most people basically, well, there are guys that will get 10 years and turn themselves into prison. Think about it. They can't even imagine the concept of just leaving, going somewhere else, starting over. Like that's foreign. Most people are born and raised in the same town and die in the same – born, raised, and die in the same town. So I was concerned. So I let her – I said, okay, you can come with me. So we run up my credit cards. We spend a bunch of money, buy as much stuff as we can. I get it.

I trade in my Audi, get another Audi with a temp tag and we pack it up and we leave Tampa and we leave. I wrote a letter, wrote a letter to my mother and father telling them that I was leaving and what happened. And then I was about to be arrested and I was leaving. And I wrote a letter to my ex-wife also. And then I mailed those letters as I left town and I left town. See, I think about this a lot because, first of all, I don't think you know how you'd handle a situation like this until you're in it. That goes without saying. But it's like you can so fast be like in survival mode.

They're like, I got to get the fuck out of here. There's no way I'm going to jail. Like you said, I'm never going to last in prison or whatever. So I guess I just got to start over. And yeah, in your case, you've made an expert life out of creating fraudulent identities. So I guess you're like, all right, I'll just invent a new person. But is there any moment, like a sober moment? I don't know if you're like taking a piss or like just staring out on the deck when you get to the first place where you're like, this is crazy.

This is a house of cards. It's going to come down at some point. Because again, like you didn't think it was going to come down in the first place. And the reason you're on the run is because it did right um but i mean just you know the problem with the answer is to me it's very clear why and i don't know if it's a full answer but to me you know being somebody who's extremely arrogant is that the the answer is you know arrogance you know i i just didn't think i'd get caught i just thought i was smarter than them better than them i could beat them um and that you know going to prison wasn't something i was playing i was going to do and i

wasn't going to do it and it's just it just to, you know, it's just arrogance and pride and just, you know, all those things. I mean, you know, looking back on it, like all I could think about was, you know, was leaving and not being – not having to be – I felt like I would rather leave and have my, you know, friends and family have this guy just disappeared. Like they had no idea how much money I left. In their mind, he left with millions, you know, and that was really the thing. Like he disappeared with tons of money and like that was like what was going around. Like this guy went to a desert island like he's he took off and i thought that's a great way to leave it like he disappeared with all the money and i'll never be caught because i figured i can get fake ids i can get you know not even fake ids i mean they're they're just i can go in the dmv and

get you know a driver's license and i've had like over 25 driver's licenses. And you're just going to find a way to make money again. Yeah, yeah. You're confident. Right. I'm going to go out, steal a bunch of money, and I that money, I can buy $10 million in rental properties and I can just live off of collecting rent for the rest of my life. You thought that was going to be enough? I still thought that was – I was still – it was just naive.

I don't want to say stupid because I just thought I could start over somewhere else. What did you think about like leaving your kid behind? I mean, yeah, that was, you know, the thing is, is like during our divorce, right? Like his mom had said a bunch of, you know, really like nasty things. You know, you're getting divorced. And so people, you know, the worst comes things, you know, you're, you're getting divorced. And so people, you know, it's the worst comes out of people. Right. But I'm, I'm never been one of those people that gets into a fight with somebody and says horrible things or threatens them or whatever. Uh, you know, but she had, she had been like, you know, like, it didn't matter that I was taking this charge. Didn't matter that she wasn't getting charged. That that was part,

I made sure she wasn't getting charged. And we're in the middle of like a divorce. And, you know, and her, during the divorce, you know, some of the things that she had said was basically like, you're going to end up in prison and I'm never going to bring your son to come see you. And I this, and I, and I'll never this, I'll never drag my son down to some prison to see you know and she was being mean and nasty and so my justification for leaving him was that I'm gonna end up in prison and I won't get this I'll be out of his life anyway yeah she's never gonna bring

him to see me and especially when the child support payments stopped coming in, you know, so like this is this kid's gone It's over like so for me to go to prison and be on the prison phone begging her to bring my son and she won't Do it like that's ridiculous and you didn't because things are happening so fast at this point it's not like you've had any time to sit there and Live in that you understand that no and here's the gravity of it like becky put her son on on an air on a plane like becky yeah i wasn't yeah yeah she put her son on a plane and you know going back to see the uh you know the father and she didn't have that's the thing though she didn't have to no no and you you were in a position as you just laid out that i felt i had to i didn't have to

but i felt i did i you legitimately felt like you had to right i justified it to myself you know i mean the truth is you know that the whole decision was just selfish and stupid and and it's funny because it's like most people when they're in that situation or in a situation like they always think they know what they're going to do. You know, like I'm not going to tell on anybody. Like, well, yeah, me and my buddies are doing this and this and this, but I'm not going to say anything because of this and because I'm not that kind of guy. I'm not this. They have this illusion. Until you are.

This delusion. Then they get caught and they're sitting in a room with their two kids and their wife. And she's crying and begging and saying, how are we going to survive while you do 10 years? And you're going and you're doing this because your friend, you don't want to tell on your friend, Tom, who you've known two years. I mean, like, you know what I'm saying? Like, she, you know, it just doesn't make sense because guess what? The moment they talk to Tom, he's going to roll on you. And even if Tom doesn't, Tom's not like the whole Omarta thing. Like Tom's supposed to help take care of your wife. He's supposed to send you money. He's supposed to take care of your family. He's supposed to help take care of your wife he's supposed to send you money he's supposed to take care of your family Tom's not going to do that

so your justification is based on just strictly pride so the point is you know did you ever see the movie Alive who's in it oh god I forget his name

but it was about the soccer team that gets caught in the um they crash land in like the alps or the alps or something i haven't seen that so they crash land and they're starving and it takes them weeks before finally somebody says like we're gonna starve to death here and it's snowing we don't have the strength to get out we're dying we're starving i'm going to eat one of the pilots like the dead people that are dead that died in the crash like we're going to start eating this is a true story oh absolutely um so it takes them weeks and weeks before they come to the conclusion we're going to start eating the bodies and we're going to eat the bodies and we're gonna eat the bodies and get our strength up

and try and hike out of here. People start dying, you know, and some of these guys, one or two guys just die. They won't do it. They just starve to death. But very quickly, almost everybody eats. Now here's the thing. The one thing I know about myself is that the moment that my stomach starts rumbling, I'm eating that fucking pilot.

I'm a survivor. And I'm going to survive no matter what. So if it's between you and me, you're done. I'm cutting your head clean fucking off your body if I get the chance that's just the way it is I can tell myself I wouldn't do that I wouldn't I don't go fuck I'm I'm not going down for you if it's you or me if I get if I'm getting 30 years and I could spread that around I'm spreading around and that's just the way it is. And, you know, I don't, here's the thing.

I really, you know, obviously I have regrets, but I had to try. Like, I don't mind failing. Once you were there. I was in a situation I had to try. Like, I don't mind failing. I mind not trying. And I had to try because what I didn't want to do was get arrested, go to prison, get out with nothing a few years later.

And, you know, everybody's given up on me and I'm starting over with nothing. And I thought I would rather try and make the getaway and do a little bit more time. Like I'm not realizing how much time I'm facing, by the way. I have no idea how much time. I don't. But you never called a lawyer or anything. No, I did call a lawyer. I actually did call my lawyer. He's telling me lawyer he's telling me he's telling me cooperate against come in cooperate

against everybody and i think he said you're probably still going to end up with five or ten you probably end up with five or ten years and i'm just thinking i'm not doing five or ten years and cooperating i'm still thinking don't cooperate on anybody you, I didn't have the same mindset then. Like, I'm still thinking I'm not cooperating. You know, not realizing what a foolish decision that is. Thinking I'm a gangster. I'm as soft as fucking cotton. So, you know, the idea that I'm a gangster and I'm going to go to fucking prison and none of these people were going to support me or my son or come see me or do anything. None of them.

You know, they weren't worth, you know, holding my tongue. So I end up, you know, Becky, like, you know, I go through it quickly. I actually got everybody together and we had dinner. Sorry, we had dinner. I actually got and told everybody the FBI is coming to arrest me. You guys are going to – I'm leaving. I i mean where'd you do the dinner olive garden like where are you doing this god i want to know where did i do it i don't know you know i mean becky was even there like i remember rudy one of the guys had stopped me in the in the bathroom was like this shit going with you like you don't even know this chick and i'm like i mean i told him i said well it's my bonnie

i said listen bro yeah that's how she ended up being i said listen bro he's like i mean i can't believe that i said listen bro i said this chick is a thieving adulteress um who's claimed bankruptcy multiple times i'm like she's perfect yeah she's embezzled money. She's sleeping with married guys. She's a thief. I'm like, these are great attributes. At this point, she's a gangster. I'm ready for her to come. I'm like, look, when I thought she was this cute little secretary, it's like, you can't. Absolutely not.

But the more she talked about who she was, I was like, oh, actually, you're going to fit into the plan perfect. So I'm like, no, she's good. I'm good with her she's gonna be fine and he's like jesus bro you're really gonna leave i said yeah he said oh i'm staying i'm gonna fight i was like you're gonna fight you're 100 guilty and you're gonna stay here and fight i said yeah i'm not gonna do it bro so i we pack all our stuff get in the and pack the – we got some money and we've got computers. Did you change the plates? No, I have a temp tag. I traded my Audi in. I had an Audi Quattro, TD Quattro.

We traded in on like an Audi A8, I think. And it's like the four-door one. It's got like 390 or 400 horsepower. Someone's like, shh. It's like ridiculous. And it's like $100,000 back then. I don't know what they are now so we we pack it pack it full of stuff run up all my credit cards and um get as much stuff as we needed or as we could get in the car and we leave we just drive out of the i mail a couple letters off i mail those letters off i told you and we leave um and

that was you know like she it's funny too I should have known she was crazy because like we got into a huge fight like as soon we hadn't even left Tampa yet we had to do a huge screaming match where she was screaming and turned red and I was like and I was I even turned around I even remember getting off the interstate turning around and started to head back she immediately went into crying begging pleading I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm just freaking out i did it please please please don't draw me off please please please and i turn around and keep going and go back and did you know where you were going like where the first stop was um yeah i kind of assumed uh atlanta georgia and why was that i have no idea you just

landed on atlanta i just figured atlanta um i don't know i kind of figured it was i don't know i just figured i'd go there we'd go there and regroup um did you already have the whole plastic surgery thing in your head like you wanted like you were going to do that yeah i kind of figured eventually um that i would do that but you did money first well we had 80 grand yeah yeah you get a lot for 80 grand. But there's other things too. You got to get a place to live. You got to figure out your next moves. Yeah, yeah.

No, I need money. I mean I knew as soon as I left, I knew I was committing fraud. I knew I was going to go and steal a few million dollars at the minimum and try and start over. Did you want to do it the same way? No. Well, yeah. Well, I altered the scam like the other scam was meant to be kind of like non-detectable and it basically or indetectable whatever undetectable go with it yeah so yeah um

but now that the like you know the handcuffs are off you know the restraints are off so now it's like okay well now i don't care if they figure out the scam so why am i'm not going to do the same thing now now what I'm going to do is I'm just going to be blatant about it. I'm just going to, I'm going to straight just refinance like the same house, like five, six times in a row

and just pull out like a million dollars or whatever it is. And then just change the identity again. Yeah, change the identity again and go somewhere else. Do it again, do it again, do it again until I have enough money that I feel like, okay, I'm good.

Wow. So that was my plan. And of course I need a new, I need like, okay, I'm good. Wow. So, you know, that was my plan. And of course I need a new, I need a driver's license issued by the DMV. I need, I can't, I can't make fake people anymore. Like I can't get a ticket. You know, that's the problem is that like, I can't drive around the rest of my life thinking I won't get pulled over and have my, you know, and have to provide my license to somebody. Like that's, that's always the idiot who thinks, oh, I'm going to start over

and like, yeah, but what if you get caught by the cops speeding or something? Oh, well, I just won't speed. What if you get into an accident? I'm just going to have to be real careful. You're an idiot. Why don't you just go to jail? Like you're just, you're just putting off the inevitable. Like I'm not that guy. I can get a guy. I can get passports. I can get driver's licenses and not fake passports. I can get a real passport issued to me from the State Department. I can go into the local DMV and get it. How do you get that?

What, a passport? Yeah. Well, you start with an ID. You got to get a real person. Well, you don't really because I've actually gotten – I've actually gotten – made synthetic identities and gotten IDs in their name. So I start getting – I immediately go to Atlanta, and then we go to Alabama, and I get a driver's license. Like, Becky and I both get driver's licenses like in Alabama. And how did you do that?

Well, I already had somebody's information. Like I had an account executive named Scott Cugno who when the subpoenas started showing up, you know, I basically, he had come in one day, we were doing his loan. He had bad credit and fucked up. So he came in one day, we were doing his loan. He had bad credit and fucked up. So he came in one day and we had an application on him. But I was only missing a few things that I would need to take it, steal his identity. And so I just kind of said, you know, so Cugno, I was like, I go, what is that? Is that, you know, is that English?

Or he's not, it's actually Irish. I said, oh, you're, are your parents from Ireland? You know, my parents were here and here. My dad, this, my dad, that. I said, oh, were you born here? And I said oh you're you are you your parents from Ireland you know my parents were here and here my dad this my dad that I said were you born here and I said you where you're born I see here and he's like yeah I was born in Hillsborough County I said oh I said and that's is it your dad or your mom oh it's my it's my dad I go what's your dad's I said okay so yeah yeah I said what's your mom what's your mom uh what is she he's like oh her name is like what's her you know maiden name oh it's this okay and i said well what so now i know what county you're born in i know your mother's maiden name um you know i um i already i already know his date of birth i know his social security number

i know his full name and at this point oh three oh four oh five you can do some damage on the internet too with this well well no i can't but what i can do is i can order your birth certificate with that information i can get your social security with that information i can register to vote with that information i can get your just by knowing the names and stuff i know his name his social security number his date of birth um his mother's maiden name and where he was born i can order his birth certificate i know where he's born and i know his mother's maiden name you can do that now i can get yours um i can get your social his social security number i can do it now like wow i can order it because when i order the social security form you fill

out the uh ss5 is it ss4 ss5 when you fill out the application and one of the things that asks you for is a copy of like let's say they want you to send your, either your driver's license, or if you want your original, they want an original driver's license, passport, military ID, your school ID, or your employer ID. How hard is it to make an employer ID? A piece of laminate and a paper, piece of paper and a photo, doesn't even have to be you. It anybody so i would make a take a photo of just somebody and i would put it on there and i would oh man i never even told you about this one this one thing that happened what's here um no no i mean i this is back before i left this was when i actually had to have a guy go into a bank or go into a closing as as james red red bro that was hilarious so um so you

made an id for him i made an id for him james red for james red hilarious it um so but yeah so what i what you do for the driver's license so then i once i've got i can make a employer id i mail it with the application for your social security number which is completely filled out because i have all the information i mail it to the social for your social security number, which is completely filled out because I have all the information. I mail it to the social security. They have an original, they get the original document, which is your employer ID, and they mail it back because that's one of the five things that they're willing to accept, an original of. So you mail them your ID, they mail it back. Then I just need a copy of a driver's license to get your birth certificate. So I make a copy of this person's with their get your birth certificate so I make a copy of this person's

with their date of birth, their full name which matches the your birth certificate and you pay the $20 fee for a certified copy they mail it to you, now I've got your social now I've got this, I go online, I can register to vote as you or I can order your high school transcripts because how hard is it for you

to tell me what your high school oh I went to such and such, oh okay okay people just answer they just give you the information especially scott he knew me i think when people are answering any question that isn't what is your social security number which you actually were in a job where you already had it right but i already had it any other question people are like oh there's nothing they can do with that yeah like that's the thought well and but first all, people don't think fraud. Listen, so the thing is, remember James Red? Yeah. So James Red, when he was buying properties or refinancing the properties, he bought like five of them.

So this one woman named Mary at, I think it was like Paradise Title or Island Title. She had, somebody had told her something was wrong. So she actually calls the broker and says, listen, because what I'd been doing to do the closings was I would just show up at the title company and say, hey, my client, Lee Black, he's at work right now. He's in a meeting. He can't make it. Can I just bring him the package, have him sign it, bring it back? And we closed so many loans.

They go, sure, Mr. Cox, no problem. Hey, make sure you get a copy of his driver's license. No problem. So I'd make a copy of a driver's license, you know, you know, and then I'd make a copy, put it on there, sign his name, bring it back. Hey, here it is. They'd look. They'd be okay. Boom.

They'd notarize everything. Bam, bam, bam. They trust me. They see I have a driver's license. And then they hand me the checks. I deposit the checks into various accounts because the checks, keep in mind the checks are refis. So I say, hey, by the way, I give them a list of what checks to make to who. He owes this company this much, this construction company this much, this person this much, this person.

And he needs a check for this. I deposit. He's got a bank account. So I opened a bank in his name, bank account in his name. So I deposit that. All of them clear the money's good so one time she figured out something's wrong she'd done a couple of loans so remember i told you how somebody cleaned all the properties for us yes okay that guy's name was eric tamargo

like the like and doing the outside the lawn he trimmed the trees and then you took garbage away and then he trimmed the trees and stuff and i knew he had been married to one of the account executives for like a Citibank. So what ends up happening is, so I see him every once in a while. So one of the things I would do is when I would make the IDs, I would make, I'd put a picture of somebody I knew as the person only because like one, it's never going to catch up with them. They didn't

really show up and two i thought you know if i know the person like maybe if i ever need them to do something i can go to them um and so some of them were like people that i knew had criminal records that were renting from me or this person here that i knew was kind of sleazy that you had something on them in a way. Well, that I knew they would be susceptible to money and they needed money. So Eric Tamargo had been arrested several times on drug charges and domestic violence. And one of the things I was doing was, the other thing was, the reason I would recognize you is I know who you are and I can get your picture because you've been arrested and it's on the Hillsborough County arrest website. So I'd gotten his picture and used can get your picture because you've been arrested. And it's on the Hillsborough County website, arrest website.

So I'd gotten his picture and used it. And he was James Redd. So his picture was on the James Redd driver's license. So this chick, Mary, calls up and says, hey, this guy's got to show up next time. Something's wrong. I've never seen this guy. I've got a bunch of loans here that I've never seen these people. I've been notarizing things.

I need him to show up. And she called. So the broker comes over. Her name's Kelly. She's like,. I need them to show up. And she called. So the broker comes over. Her name's Kelly. She's like, yeah, she knows something's up. She knows something up. She goes, so I'm going to switch title companies. We'll go with these guys. They'll probably, they'll let us pick up the thing or the file and close it. Just like Mary was. I go, nah, I said, she said, or you'll have to make an ID and you go in. I was like, I don't want to do that. I said, I'm just going to get somebody to do it. I said, I'll have to make an id and you go in i was like i don't want to do that i said i'm

just going to get somebody to do it i said i'll have somebody show up and she's like you sure i said yeah so i call eric and i go eric can you come over sure he comes to the office we go in the conference room and i say eric you know all these properties are clean and yeah yeah why is everything okay yeah everything's fine so here's what i've been doing i start explaining what i've been doing he's like i go then i refinance them and this and this. He goes, holy shit. That's brilliant. I said, yeah. I said, it is brilliant.

I said, but here's what I'm – I said, here's the problem, Eric. This woman's called and she needs somebody to show up. She needs somebody to show up and sign. Are you going to step up? And he goes, no. He said, whoa, no, bro. I can't do that. I said, why? He said, because you said you've been using like scumbags that have been arrested photos. Are you going to step up? Flopped Amy around. You remember that? He's like, he jumps up. He goes, you motherfucker. And I go, oh, calm down. Calm down, Eric.

I said, listen, the only reason I used it, the only reason I used your ID or your picture was because I knew if it came to this point, you were the only person I knew that had the balls to pull this off. Oh, you turned it on him. And you know what he did? He went, fuck yeah, dude. You're right. You're right.

And I'm like, that didn't just work. So he says to me. Play to the pride. Play to the pride. Oh, my God. Right. So he looks at me and he says, he goes, I'm not doing this for nothing, bro. And I went, no, I understand.

I understand. And he goes, you're making a lot of money. I said, well, keep in mind, Eric, a lot of that money is going right back into the Toad's properties. Like, you're charging us to clean the trees and trim the trees and mow the yards every week and all that garbage like a lot of that money goes right back in there he's like yeah still and i went he's like you're in a lot of trouble i said i know bro well we'll work something out yeah what's it what's it how much how much like i hate to be the guy that always says it first says i'm first so So I'm like, how much? How much? And he goes, I'm going to want 500 bucks.

You do know, he's seen me tell this story before. Like, he's watched it before. Oh, no. So, and I went. 500 bucks. Oh, it's worse. It gets worse. And so, I have him go get, I take his ID, his real ID.

I stand, and I change it to be a fake ID to match close to. I actually turn it into like a driver's license. So, it doesn't, it's a different picture, slightly different picture, but it's still him. Yeah. Same information, everything. So, I make it. And the day of the closing, we go in there. I haven't practiced the signature and everything, which is a joke.

So we go in there. We're sitting in the lobby. And Mary comes walking out. And she goes, Mr. Cox, I don't know why you're here. She goes, I specifically told Kelly if Eric or she goes, if James Redd doesn't show up, she said, I'm not closing the loan. And Eric stands up and he goes, I'm James Redd. And she goes – and she goes, hold on a second. She goes back, grabs the file, comes back, pulls out the photo she has of his driver's license, which I knew she would.

And she goes, holy shit. I'm sorry sorry Mr. Red I um you could tell in her mind she's like he didn't exist like I was told

so and so told me like somebody like there's like somebody told me to stop doing the loans you know somebody that knew her or something

that had heard or gotten around like she's like I'm sorry Mr. Red yeah come on in do you want something to drink so he goes in

they sit down she hadn't printed really printed anything up she hadn't done shit takes like 20 minutes Sorry, Mr. Rick. Yeah, come on in. Do you want something to drink? So he goes in. They sit down. She hadn't really printed anything up. She hadn't done shit. Takes like 20 minutes, 30 minutes. She finally gets everything together. She comes back. He signs.

Perfect. Do you have your driver's license? Right here. Boom. She makes a copy. She's like, damn. Makes a copy. Everything great.

Hands a bunch of checks. And I take the checks and I take the checks he sees he sees the check she said well what do I do with this the construction trick I said oh no no I got that I got that I got to get up like that he's watching the checks and I mean there must have been 80 grand and he's sitting there going I'm getting a $500 a month a ship so I mean it's twenty thousand seventeen thousand five thousand twenty seven thousand there's all these little tiny checks you know and paid $500 for the shit. So, I mean, it's $20,000, $17,000, $5,000, $27,000. Like, there's all these little tiny checks, you know, going all over the place. So, we get back.

We get in the car. Sit down, and I count out $500. It's like, oh, no, bro. There's a lot of fucking checks. Price went up. A lot of checks. I said, no. I said, bro, you said a lot of it.

I go, Eric, a lot of that money is going back. We're doing new construction. We're doing this. Like, come on, bro. It's just what you said, $500. And he's like, yeah, all right, all right. So a week later, I call him up and I go, well, I asked him to come in the office. And he comes in the office.

I said, hey, listen, we got another loan. Thousand this time. That's exactly what he said. He said, I ain't doing it for 500 bucks. I seen all them checks. I said, a lot of that money goes back in the properties. And he goes, no, no. He said, I said't doing it for 500 bucks. I've seen all them checks. I said, a lot of that money goes back in the properties. And he goes, no, no. He said, I said, well, how much?

He goes, and you know what I was thinking in my mind? I was thinking if he says more than like $15,000, I'll just do it myself. Like I'm willing to pay up to 10 to 15. Like I'll just do it myself if he asks for more than that. I'm willing to pay $10,000, $15,000 for every closing. You would have to change everything though to do it myself if he asks for more than that. I'm willing to pay $10,000, $15,000 for every closing. But you would have to change everything though to do it yourself. Well, we'd have to go to another title company and I'd have to make an ID with my – but it would be my picture. Right.

You know? So you could pull it off. Huh? You could pull it off if you had to. I could pull it off. Like I don't know every title company in Tampa. Right. You know, they don't know me, but I don't – still, I don't want my picture on a fucking thing.

I just didn't want it on there. But this guy says $1,000. He looks at me and he goes yeah he goes yeah so i mean i could get a lot of trouble for this i get a lot of trouble i said i know i know okay he goes yeah i want a thousand bucks and i mean i literally was just like it's really expensive are you serious a thousand dollars bro it's five minutes it's five minutes and he's like no i mean i literally argued with him like fuck you i'll never forget this and i'm like i'm ready to give you 10 grand in cash right now and i'm arguing so he's like no no and he holds he holds firm and i'm like damn bro like oh you got to do it first no no yeah i'll go i'll sign first i know that i'll sign first

and then you i'm you're good for you i know you're good for it clearly no no yeah i'll go i'll sign first i know that i'll sign first and then you i'm you're good for you i know you're good for it clearly i'm good for it you're about to sign something to make me 90 grand of course i'm good for the thousand dollars but yeah so um that was just one of the listen bro i got like stupid shit like that all the time and so you started doing this on the road now without people's permission just same concept just hoping you'd never have to send him in there yeah this time i we we go to we go to atlanta and we we get like i order all of scott cugno's real documents in and then he had a criminal record right no no he didn't he was the account he was the executive account yeah and he had nothing on him no so where'd you get his picture i don't need his picture because I went into the DMV.

You were right. I'm not on the run now. I can see my picture. Who the fuck cares? I go to Alabama. I go into the DMV. Here's my birth certificate. Here's my social security card. Here's my lease agreement. I make a fake lease agreement because you have

to live in that town. But the lease agreement went to a U box so here's my lease agreement here's my like here here's my my credit card for let's say um you know like you get a credit card uh a statement like here's my credit card statement is that oh we can't use that okay what about like uh what about like i'm giving them stuff that like i have a ton of doc i'll order a ton of documents in that have that name on it even though and i'm giving it to them even though i know they can't use it here's my bank statement they're like oh no i can't use that okay well no no they this is all i don't know i need it wait do you have this like well i got my do you have a voter's registration no no so then i start ordering

voter's registration but for that one i had a lease agreement and i go no and i go um i just moved here like would you have your lease agreement oh no i have my lease agreement oh that's all we need that's fine oh okay thanks yeah i'm always oh gosh thank god so yeah they give it i give it to them they go okay we'll sit over there we'll call your name in a minute and they call my name and i go up and they look at the documents they go okay yeah stand over there you know it's this much money stand at the red line and they you know so they're like stop that no um so they they take we take a picture and I walk out and I remember you know what's so funny about it I remember the first time Becky got a driver's license in somebody else's name um I remember we walked out and she you know what she kept doing this is I understood what she was saying

she's looking and she goes God this looks so real and I go it is real like it's from the no but I mean like it really looks like you know what I'm saying I'm like it's real she's like I know but it's like like it looks like

like it's genuine like it's a real it is a real idea because you know what i mean and i kind of do it's it's it's surreal what she really knows it's surreal i have a fucking someone else this isn't i just became a new person it's my picture with somebody else it's like i'm i can go to a cop he can run this this is me my picture is going to show up yeah so yeah like um the way we got like we first we started to get the ids we started um i just ran ads like i ran ads the newspaper um in like tampa and miami and even back in tampa yeah well well the ads were you know good

credit bad credit no or good credit bad, no problem, free applications, loan homes, sorry, home loans available, call now, you know, free applications. And then people would call, and then I'd take their information. You know, I'd take all their information. They'd give you all kinds of stuff. And I'd just ask them. In the very back, there's a series of questions on an application, a mortgage application or loan application. And it's like, you know, what's this? You know, have you ever had a house foreclosed on? You ever been defaulted on a government loan? You currently owe back taxes. Have you ever claimed bankruptcy? Have you? So

you start, and just as i would go down the list i would say you know what what you know have you ever had a are you a u.s citizen were you born in the united states um have you ever had a u.s passport have you ever had a u.s passport what county were you born in uh what's your mother's maiden name and you know and what i mean it's like i get to the down towards the end and i'm like it's just not gonna answer this you know, and I mean, it's like I get to the down towards the end and I'm like, it's just not going to answer this. You know, and they just, but they've been answering questions for three pages. Yeah. Like, they just give it all up and you go, okay, thank you.

I've got everything I need from you. And so now you're just getting people left and right. Right. And you have all these potential identities to use. Right. And so one of the things I did was I got information for her. And so I have information for her so she can now go in and she can get a driver's license. So now we can go get a house and we go and we get a house. And I'm not afraid to borrow heavily as the owner of the house.

And you're off to the races. Yeah. So I kind of knew this after I booked you, and I was thinking about this a couple days ago because I spent some time with Danny a couple weeks back, and we were talking about it. I was pretty sure we weren't going to fit this in in a podcast, so if I had booked this later,

I would have done it where we had a full day and we could do the full two-parter, but we've been talking for, it's been over three hours so i i know we'll probably cut it here what i would like to be able to get to with you and i'll have to have you back is run through now the full like second half of your story which is how you got caught going to prison everything that happened there because you hinted at this early but your trajectory of when you started to have the self-realization later as to what you had done and the arrogance that goes with that and how you psychologically got out of control. To me, when we talked about that on the phone and when you've hinted at it even a little

bit today, it's so, so interesting because it's almost like you have to get kicked in the balls sometimes in life and the hardest way to figure out like oh here were the error in my ways here's why but i appreciate the fact that after doing all this and the thrill of it and all the things that came with it all the good shit like you're able to look back and be like oh no this was so fucked up and yeah i was guilty of all that and here's exactly why so i think people really appreciate that transparency and i thought this was a really good first sit down and there's i mean shit if you want to know how to be a fraud listen to this this episode I think people really appreciate that transparency. And I thought this was a really good first sit down. And there's, I mean, shit, if you want to know how to be a fraud, listen to this episode today. Holy shit.

Listen, it's just like being on the run. I mean, I've been handcuffed in banks. I've talked my way out of banks. I'll go over all that. It's shocking. We're going to talk about that next time. And also, like you wrote, you ended up becoming a writer in prison. There's a whole bunch there.

You wrote stories. I've optioned several stories. Yeah. You wrote for the War Dogs guy. Yeah. From Dave Rowley. Got some documentaries coming out based on, or that are the stories I wrote in prison. They're turning them into documentaries, three-part series.

Like, I got a bunch of stuff. Yeah. You have a really, you've really turned this some in some positive ways, which is pretty cool It seems that way doesn't it? It always sounds good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well listen, thank you Thank you for running through this today I'm gonna listen to like this a couple times just because there were so many details like this is very intricate But we'll have you back down here. I'll figure out when we're gonna do that. But uh, Good spot to leave it for now. All right

Cool. Thanks, thanks matt sure everyone else you know what it is give it a thought get back to me peace