Locked In with Ian Bick - Matthew Cox: Why I Snitched in Federal Prison

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

Matthew Cox is on the show to share how he made millions from mortgage fraud, ended up on the Secret Service’s most wanted list, got sentenced to 25 years in prison and how he was able to become an informant to get his sentenced reduced. Follow Ian Bick on Instagram: @ian_bick & Snapchat: ianbick Connect with Matthew Cox: www.youtube.com/@InsideTrueCrime instagram.com/insidetruecrime Buy Merch: https://lockedinbrand.com  Use code lockedin at checkout to get 20% off your order Connect with Ian Bick: https://www.ianbick.com Chapters: 00:00:00 - The Rollercoaster of Cancelled Podcast Appearances 00:04:52 - Childhood and Early Education 00:10:07 - Describing Friends and Aspirations 00:15:19 - A Fine Arts Degree and Career Crossroads 00:20:25 - Committing Fraud 00:25:21 - The Risks of Mortgage Fraud 00:30:22 - The Straw Man Scam and Getting Busted by the FBI 00:35:24 - Ethical Dilemma and Legal Consequences 00:40:40 - Creating Synthetic People for Real Estate Scams 00:46:30 - Committing Mortgage Fraud 00:51:42 - Arrested by FBI for Scamming 00:56:50 - The Arrest and Bonding Out 01:01:32 - Leaving and Taking Off on the Run 01:06:35 - Running a Scam and Going on the Run 01:11:43 - Attempting to Cash a Fraudulent Check 01:17:03 - The Shotgunning Scam 01:22:02 - The Scam and the Wanted Poster 01:27:05 - A Narrow Escape and a New Identity 01:32:25 - Renting the Townhouse 01:38:04 - Despised by the Prosecutor and Sentenced to 32 Years 01:43:31 - Facing Charges and Cooperation 01:49:01 - Misunderstandings and Stereotypes in Prison 01:54:07 - Exclusion in the Prison Yard 01:59:15 - Assistance from Frank Amadeo in reducing sentence 02:05:09 - A Suspicion and the Decision 02:09:57 - Cooperating with Law Enforcement 02:15:23 - Cooperation and Consequences 02:20:53 - A Letter from Wilson and a Warning from Ric Flair 02:25:56 - Reflections on Life and Redemption 02:31:03 - Reflecting on Personal Growth and Change 02:35:57 - Matt Cox Inside True Crime Produced by: https://www.instagram.com/shanedanahy https://www.shanedanahy.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This guy went through three different doors that he had to punch in codes to get into. You can't even use an elevator without punching in a code. Like, I'm not getting out of this place. And you haven't talked to your parents at all in years. No, but I called my mom once or twice. What does she say to you? Oh, Matthew. What are you doing?

On today's episode, we have YouTuber and podcaster Matthew Cox on the show to share his insane story of making millions from financial fraud, landing himself on the FBI and Secret Service's most wanted list, and then getting sentenced to 25 years in prison and becoming a prison snitch to get a sentence reduced. Remember, everyone, you can grab your official Locked in gear just in time for the holiday season. Use code Lockton at checkout for 20% off your order. That's Code Locked in at checkout for 20% off your order. Sit back, relax, and get get ready to lock in with Matthew Cox. Matt Cox, welcome finally to Locked in.

What is this like 11 months in the making? I mean, yeah, I've had a lot of things go wrong. Yeah. You were supposed to be our third episode. I actually have the list of questions from January when I was printing this out. I was up to like 2 a.m. that night. And then you text me at 5 a.m. saying you weren't making it. And I genuinely, I genuinely am sorry about that.

But really what, honestly, what happened, I went to Podfest. And those Podfest, you know, podcaster guys ended up getting me COVID. And so I came home and I was feeling a little bit, you know, a little bit under the weather. And I honestly, throughout the night, I was like, man, I really don't feel good. And then I woke up in the middle of the night, like 3 o'clock in the morning. I was like, I don't think I'm going to be able to do this. And so I was like, oh, man, I'm going to text this guy. He's going to lose it.

He's going to fucking, he's going to lose it. And then I texted you and you were like, That's fine. And I was like, oh, man, he must be upset. And I was like, I promise I'm going to come. I'll pay for my own ticket. I'll come. I'll this.

I'll this. You're like, that's fine. Well, you know, that was like my first, my, that would have been my third ever podcast. So I didn't know that this is normal in the industry for people to cancel and things to change. Like, I've had hundreds of cancellation since then. Yeah. But it works out for the better that, you know, you canceled because now I'm a lot better at what I do now and whatnot. I was going to say, I, I,

schedule seven podcasts a week and I get about four to have them to show up yeah three of them just you know the last minute sometimes some guys just don't they just blow you off completely it's like like I mean you and you have to think mine's much well no mine is the same people as you're dealing with like they're criminals like these aren't professionals like you've been a drug dealer your whole life you have no idea how to be how to respectfully say hey I'm going to respect your time and look this came up my mom got sick and I'm sorry I can't make it. Like people are like, I get it.

That happens. But to not say anything, that's just, bro, what are you doing? Usually when someone cancels on me, I don't have them on the show again. And some people have canceled like two or three times. Right. Just because they're bad. They'll tell me last minute. Like, if you know, like, you're not feeling good, like, not you, but like someone else will say like an hour before or just like dodge me all morning.

How are you like, you could have told me in the morning. And honestly, honestly, and I, you'll probably cut all this. honestly like I was like I'll pay for my own ticket I'll I'll I'll pay for my hotel like and it's it's not because it's like hey I want to be on your show it's because like I I totally understand like what a dick move that was I paid for your flight but I couldn't I know because you put I know you paid for the flight I'll pay for this I'll pay for that and you were like like no I'll you know we'll split the hotel well this I was like I mean okay but I'm saying I'm willing to pay for it. Like I get it because

I know that because I listen for days for days and then it was funny because then somebody said and I've had dozens of guys you gotta be on this guy Ian Bix. I'm like yeah I know I was supposed to do this supposed to do that and then somebody came back and said hey man I reached out to Egan Bick and said hey

you got to have Matt Cox or you've got to be on Matt Cox's show and you came back and you said listen I'll be on Matt Cox's show when Matt Cox comes on me he flaked on me or something And I came back and he's like, yeah, bro, he said you flaked. I said, I didn't flake. I got sick.

I had COVID. You texted me right away. Yeah, I'm like, quit telling people that I flaked on you. I had COVID. No, every week I have comments on my video. And they look like bots kind of, but I guess they're your supporters or whatever that always reach out to me. I'll get a DM or comment saying you need Matt Cox on the show.

Because you are like a staple in this whole world, you know, when people, I mean, like, you're popular on YouTube. You started out. You were like one of the original, you know, fraud guys. or whatnot that's on there that that conducts good interviews and whatnot. And you have an insane story. I mean, FBI's Most Wanted. You were on American Greed.

Like, all of this stuff. Right. It's nuts. So that's why we're here today. We can't not do the story. So, you know, take us from the top. Where are you from? Where are you born?

What's like early childhood like for you? I like to also say one more thing is that my wife watches your stuff. And she's constantly, like at least twice a week. She's like, Ian Bick had so and so on. She's like, he's really a good interviewer. And I'm like, every time she says that, I feel like what you're really saying is that he's a better interviewer than me. But anyway, so from the top, I was raised in Temple Terrace, which was basically a suburb of Tampa. So basically Tampa.

I was raised in Tampa. I had a learning disability. So I didn't go to public school. I went to a school for special kids, you know, with special needs. And that was on Davis Island, which was in Tampa. and I ended up graduating from a school called Yates Academy. It's not there anymore. And yeah, so I had dyslexia.

I was like, I think I failed the first or second grade. And then they diagnosed me with dyslexia. I got a battery of tests, the whole thing. You know, so, yeah, I had a really hard time. Like, listen, if my parents weren't paying the tuition, I don't think I had gotten a high school diploma. I read it probably a fourth grade level. Wait, you went to private school? Yeah, it was all private.

for kids with learning disability. Oh, it was just, okay. At first they tried to put me into, the public school system tried to put me into, like, their special needs classes, and I ran away a couple times. And this was when I was a kid, like I was like nine or ten years old.

And so then they just put me in a special school for just special kids. Did you have friends at all? I mean, you know, I'm kind of a loner. So did I? Yeah, I've always had one or two good friends, but that's it. Like, it's not, you know, some kids have, like,

they're friends with like 20 people. You know, my wife's daughter has like eight or nine friends. Like I always had like one best friend and maybe another person I hung out with. And that was it. Keep in mind, I went to a school that was not in my neighborhood. It's a 30 minute drive. So I don't know any of these kids. You know, you can't hang out with them outside of school.

What about siblings? Did you have any siblings? Yeah. So every part of the story is fucked up. My parents adopted two girls and a boy because my mom wasn't supposed to be able to get pregnant. And she actually went in for a hysterectomy at the age of 40. And they found out she was pregnant. Like she was actually, they like put her under.

And the doctor, you know, started to cut her open. And during the surgery, like he started, he was like, oh, my God. Did we give her a pregnancy test? And they gave her one. And they said, she's pregnant. So my mom wakes up from the hysterectomy and says, asked my dad how'd the surgery go and he says you're pregnant you know which is not the result of what a hysterectomy is supposed to be so yeah so i was born and my parents were you know much older so they're

thinking about it they're done with kids by the time you're in your 40s they've already adopted these these kids are all in there they're all 10 years older than me and i come along like not you're automatically born an outcast yeah exactly yeah exactly well and then you know the other thing is like my dad was an alcoholic, super successful guy, upper middle class, you know, like I had all of the benefits in life. But, you know, my dad was an alcoholic and he'd be, he'd be sober for six months and then he'd go on a week-long bender. He'd be sober for two years and then he'd go on a two-week bender. And he worked for state farm insurance and he was a top-selling manager, you know, top manager, all of his agents, they were super successful. He always won the trips. He made,

made a great living, you know, so back then, you know, like, they didn't let you go. Like, they put you in, they literally would put him in a drug rehab for 30 days, for 60 days, for, I mean, 60 days, like, that's insane. Like, they desperately wanted to sober this guy up because he was making him that much money. And I remember that I thought as a kid, I remember watching my dad and I just got the impression. I really realized this, that if you made money and you made other people money,

you can pretty much behave however you want. And that really was the takeaway was like you can be a belligerent prick and treat people like garbage as long as you're making everybody money. And that really sank into me, which clearly now I know is not the correct thing to think.

But as a kid, I really believed that. You know, my dad was a harsh guy. But he made a lot of people a lot of money, and he was able to treat people like garbage. How would your friends describe you? Do you think if we had like one of those two friends here today, what would they say about you at that time? You know, it's funny is one of those friends

I'm semi-friends with now, you know? Not that I have any problems with the guy. He's a good, he's a good guy. He just works a lot and, you know, there are issues there. He is kind of an alcohol problem. And he wouldn't mind me saying that because everybody knows he's got out. You know, you've had four DOIs and had to go to jail a few times. You can't, you cannot say you don't have an alcohol problem.

But, you know, it bothers me to see him drink. He likes me. Like, we talk probably every month or two. We talk. Oh, we got to go to dinner. You know, that kind of thing. you'll, you never do. And the few times, I have been to dinner with him once.

And, you know, he drank too much. Like, he got really drunk and it just upsets me to see him get drunk because he is a great guy. I mean, he likes me. He likes me. I got a buddy Trian. I grew up with his brother, Trent. Trent likes me. I mean, all these guys talked to me.

I was texting Trian yesterday. So Trian actually owns a gym in Tampa. You work out there? I don't, because it's. too far, but he hired me straight out of the halfway house. I worked the whole time was in the halfway house. I worked for him. So how would they have described you back then as a teenager? They would have been like he's smart, funny, you know, super funny. Yeah, I would say, you know, as a teenager, how do you really describe anybody? Like I wasn't, you know, I just not like you look

at someone as a teenager. Well, in your case, you're vastly different. But most people don't look at a 16, 17 year old kid and say, oh, he's, he's an entrepreneur. You know, it's more like, oh, he's funny, he's a good guy. That's about the extent of it. What about your aspirations? Did you have like a dream or a goal? Like did you want to go to college get a good job? My aspirations as a teenager was that I was hoping to be able to get a job or paint or do something with art enough to pay my bills because I was pretty certain I was probably not going to be able to make a great living maybe in sales of some sales or art. I wasn't sure.

Listen, it was a struggle just to get through high school. And it wasn't like, you know, like my father was not the kind of guy that said, you're going to be amazing when you get up. You're going to be. That was not the conversation. I was not the son my father wanted. I wasn't tall.

I wasn't athletic. I'm failing school. I can barely read. This is not, I was not the son that he thought he deserved. Yeah. So. Do you think if you didn't have that feeling, your life would have turned out differently? It probably would, but I mean, I don't like, do you look back on the things that you've done in life that went wrong and really kick yourself?

Like, I don't do that. You know, like, did I fuck up? I definitely made some bad mistakes. I made some huge mistakes. But I don't kick myself over it. I'm here. I'm not saying that, like, I don't regret them. I definitely regret them.

I always love the guys that say, you know, do you regret the things you did? man, it made me the person I am today. The person I am today is a 50-year-old guy trying to start his life over at 50, $6 million in debt. Like, and I spent 13 years in prison. Not, not a great person, you know? Yeah. But I think on the other side of the spectrum, you have a great wife.

Yeah. You have a, you like the life you live now and that came from what you went through. No, I agree. But, you know, if I could do it over again, you know, obviously I would have rather just been a middle class American. I mean, 13 years in prison. And I had it. The worst thing is I had it coming. It's not like I can say, I love the guys that, like, they're like not guilty or something. Like, I'm in prison and I should be here. Like, this is where I'm supposed to be. So, you know. So do you end up going to college? I do. I end up going to, I go to a Hillsborough Community College,

at community college, because you could pretty much take anybody if you had a high school diploma, they'll get you. So I went in and I did that for two years, got my AA, and actually excelled. Like, I did really well. It was like straight A's. I think maybe I got one B. And then I took the SATs. I don't know if they do SATs up here. Yeah, they do. Okay. I didn't take them over. Okay. Well, I took them, but I had a learning disability. And as a result of having a learning disability, I was able to take it untimed. So I got like a 1380, right? Like it was like an outrageous score. They were like, you can go anywhere. But I also had, I had, I finished the whole thing. Like I finished the whole thing and I was able to take breaks and go look things up and come back.

Like I cheated on the SATs and I got almost a 1400. So I ended up going to USF and all my classes in USF are like painting, graphic design, you know, humanities. Like, I mean, these are not serious. classes. This is a joke. You know, this is, though I get straight A's there. I do great. I graduate, but I've got a degree in fine arts, which is basically prepares me to do nothing. A bullshit college degree. It's absolutely, it might as well have been basket weaving. Like, you're not getting, nobody's looking at that degree and saying, yeah, we need this guy. So I worked, I ended up working, you know, I worked as an insurance adjuster for about a year. Then I ended up working construction jobs with my friend Travis and his dad owned a huge construction company so we would get these

kind of side jobs he didn't want to do. And so I did that for like a couple of years. And when I was about 29 years old, the chick I was dating at the time started working for a subprime company. And a subprime company is like, you know, they don't quite do conventional loans. It's not like These are like just slightly below bank loans. So she was like, you got to do this. And I was like, I can barely read. I can't balance my checkbook. Like I'm a month or two behind on my car payment.

Like I'm about to be late on our mortgage payment. And she's like, you got to do this. You'd be amazing at this. You know, all you have to do is be able to talk. And you can do that. So I went to work at this mortgage company. You know, they flew me up. They trained me for about three, four days.

And I came back and I started working. And the one thing I had was a great work ethic. Like I work 80 hours a week. I started working. And I was there all the, every moment it was open and even after it was closed, they eventually after about two weeks, they just gave me a key. I'm leaving at 10 o'clock at night. I'm getting there at 8 in the morning.

I'm leaving at 10 at night. And my first loan I went into, and I think everybody's heard this stuff, I went into my, my manager and we have to send off a package to underwriting to be looked at to make sure that this person qualifies for the loan. Well, I already know they qualify in my mind. And so she looks through the whole thing and she pulls one document out and sits it aside and closes it and puts it to the side. And I'm like, what's up with this? And she goes, your customer's bit was late 30 days on their rent.

It's called the verification of rent. Your VOR has a 30 day late on it. I was like, whoa, she's not getting alone. The chick's not getting the loan. And I was like, oh, my God. I was like, and she pulled out a thing, a whiteout and started, and she, she's, and she's, and she's, and she's. And she goes, and I go, well, what do I do? She says, if I was you, she says, I'd white it out, make a copy, stick it in the file,

underwriting will never catch it. And I was like, she said, all the documents they have to verify, they'll never catch it. I was like, that's fraud. I could go to jail. She's not going to jail. She says, the worst that happens is you might get fired. She says, that's if they catch it. And so I was like, fuck.

So, but I trusted her. And so I did it. And listen, I was behind on my car payment, everything. banked on this job like I put everything on the line to try and get to get the job and make it work and I did it and send it to underwriting and like four days later three days later they called and said approved so this was the moral crossroads that everyone kind of falls in right in their story right but this was like the middle of your life at the year in your early 30s yeah I was 30 probably 30 at that I was probably late 20 almost 29 30 yeah and you had played by the rules your whole life up until

then. Yeah, it wasn't working. Do you think if you didn't have the stress of your financial situation, you never would have made that decision? So that's funny that you just asked that because, so I do like speaking engagement. And only, that's only time somebody ever asked me stuff, something like that. So here's what happened. When I look back on it, I used to always say it was the money. Oh, it was a money. It was a money. And, oh, I need the money. But the truth is, is that once I started committing fraud and the money came and all my bills were paid, and then you get $50,000 in the bank, and then you've got $100,000 in the bank, then you've got $200,000. Why are you committing fraud still? So it wasn't, it was, and it's cliche to say it was the thrill, right? Like that's, and that is

part of it. But honestly, I would say my fear was failing and having to go, you know, back and live with my parents. We're almost halfway through the year, and a lot of people are running on empty without fully realizing it. Grow therapy helps you find care that's covered by insurance before burnout becomes the baseline. Whether it's your first time in therapy or your 50th, grow makes it easier to find a therapist who fits you, not the other way around. They connect you with thousands of independent licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability, and get started in as little as two days. And as something comes up, you can cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost.

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Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. Does that make sense? Like, it is the first time in my life, my father was proud. out of me. And that's a great feeling. You have to admit, when you were kicking ass, your dad must have been looking at you like, this, this kid's 18, 19 years old. He's making a ton of money. Like he thinks, this is insane. But, you know, so that was definitely a part of it. I was, I was, I didn't, I wanted everybody to think I was successful. It's a great feeling. When everybody looks at you like, this guy's kicking ass. And that's how I felt when I failed,

because my mistakes came from the pressure I was under after I failed. Right. And that's what causes us to make it. So I think if we hone in on those moments, it's important because that teaches others not to make those decisions in those moments. I also think that you have to have a certain criminal mindset because a lot of people wouldn't make that choice. A lot of people, you know, what you should have done, just like what you should have done is said, hey, I fucked up. Here's what's going on. Here's what happened.

I'm in a bad spot. This is what happened. Like that's what I think most people do. But that's not how, you know, that's just not how I'm built at that point. I was willing to do anything to keep it going. Did you think it was just a one-time thing? You know, I did till it worked. And I got a check for like $3,500.

And $3,500 to them was like a lot of money. That's like cleared up all my bills. And you went to jail after that. No, I'm kidding. I know you told me in the car that some people would ask you about that. That's when you went to jail? No. All right.

So you do that. You got the check. What happens next? somebody else walked in they have a w2 form that says they made like let's say 45,000 but if they made 49,000 they could get the loan so they didn't quite make enough money so I changed the two to the nine I changed a couple other corresponding you know um calculations on the w2 I make sure it looks right I go to the IRS website I calculated if this is correct this is what the number should be and I put that in and wait and boom loans closed next one boom loans closed

Boom. This person didn't have their down payment in the bank long enough. You have to have it like 90 days. Okay. So if I changed the bank statement, boom. Next person's a W-2. Next person's this. Next person's canceled checks. So I figure out how to make canceled checks. Back then, you wrote a check. It went through the bank and they had numbers on it that corresponded with the bank routing number and how much the check went through and the day and the whole thing. figured out all the numbers, put them up, made a dummy set of canceled checks for 24 months. So now every single one of my people have verified canceled checks if I need them. And I didn't just make one. Like I had them for Bank of America, for Wachovia, for SunTrust. Wachovia, I remember that.

Wachovia. The old Wells Fargo. Yeah. So I had them for all of these. Now what year is this? This is 2000. This is 2000, 2000. Yeah, about 2000.

Are people going to jail for mortgage fraud? and bank fraud and stuff at this time? Yeah, yeah. Like, what's the time period? Like, I'm also thinking I'm going to get a slap in the wrist. If you got caught. I'll get a slap in the wrist. Like, nobody's, what's the problem?

And to be honest, even when if underwriter, underwriting caught something, what you do is they'd call you up and they'd be like, listen, you know, your customer, so-and-so, we just got the file. And it turns out that W-2 is, it's fraudulent. Are you telling me that my customer, gave me a fraudulent W-2? I'm disgusted. Nobody's more shocked about this than me. Well, I'm not going to do that loan for him.

Well, yeah, not my fault. But where does that confidence come from? Because you weren't that type of kid in high school. What am I going to? Did it just a ball? Yeah, but that's a lot of confidence for a kid that was, you know, not socially bloomed out there. I'm just, it's just the natural scumbaggery of my, of me. I guess, I mean, I just, my.

my thought was get out of it. Do you think you were born with that and it evolved? I mean, I think my, listen, my father was a born salesman. He was great and he would say stuff and do stuff that was this. And it wasn't like that, but it was always he had a quick response. And I've always been, you know, I'm smart, but I just think I'm just clever. Like I always think to say the cutesy, funny little thing that gets you out of the moment. And I definitely realize that if you're funny, people,

will let you get away with a lot. So I would immediately say, like, I know that there's only two people that, three people have handled this file, the customer, me, and the processor. So, of course, I'm not going to admit it. Processors, they can talk to. The only person they can't really talk to and is not going to admit it is the customer. So you immediately say, oh, the customer gave it to me. And they would be like, yeah, well, you know, obviously we can't close this loan.

Oh, of course not. Of course. I'll call them right now. Thank you so much for noticing that. but that I went from there to another company because they got shut down and I went from that company to another company and within a month or two I'd opened my own company so I opened my own company I hire about about 12 you always have guys coming and go into roughly about 12 guys um married married got married had a son started making money started making money started

You know, these guys, I'm hiring guys. And immediately these guys are committing fraud. So you have them all committing fraud? They're all coming fraud. And they were all okay with it? Yeah, I have a, I've heard people say this before and it sounds silly. But, you know, you kind of can meet somebody and you kind of can, you feel them out and realize like who's going to be okay with committing fraud or with some type of crime or doing something a little bit in the gray area, you know. And I would hire these guys and they look, first of all, if you want to be in real estate in general,

you're usually on the, on the edge. And look, if they're saying no, you can work here and say no. You can say, oh, I'm not going to do that. I'm not interested in that. That's great. Fine. You don't have to do anything. But when suddenly you've got a $400,000 loan and you're going to get three points on it,

that's $12,000 on the back of the loan and you can charge a $4,000 broker fee up front, you're going to get $16,000 on this. loan and your customer's W-2 form doesn't quite support the loan. Almost. They're just a couple of, they're just a few percentage marks off. It's like, hey, you can tell your customer, I'm sorry, you don't qualify. You can give me the loan. I'll close it. I'll give you $500 for a finder's fee. Or you can ask me to change the document. What do you want to do? I mean, you know, You're literally the Jordan Balford of mortgage fraud. I mean, has anyone ever told you that?

Oh, I've heard that. The wolf of mortgage fraud. I've heard that. Because it started in that same setting. Yeah. So what are like the telltale signs that you can turn someone to commit fraud? Because it's a risk if you approach someone, they turn you in. People say that.

It's a risk. But what's the risk? I don't know if morally wrong and they know what you're doing, they rat you out. Okay, that's fine. So right now I call and you're, what is your, what's the, your video editor's name? Finius. Finius?

Yeah. No, I was going to say, no wonder I can't remember. That would be a great name. What is it? Shane. Shane.

So I call right now, I call the Danbury Police Department and I say, Shane's committing fraud. What's you doing? He's doing this. They can't, you know, he's closing loans and changing W-2s.

They're going to be like, okay, well. Now if you said Ian Bick, they'd be right here with a SWAT team. But he doesn't have a record. So I'm saying, what can they really do? They're strapped with how they can investigate that loan.

Do you know the name of the loan? Did it close? Like attempted frauds, not really necessarily a thing. Are they going to wire someone up? Are they going to, like, they're not going to do all that. Like if you said, hey, he's committed a fraud and he's borrowed $2 million and the banks have lost over a million and that's different. But it's, hey, he suggested I change it up W2 for him.

So my loan would go through. they'd go okay did you no okay well thanks for calling like they're not going to do anything okay so you go to these people that you think or when you're hiring them you have what like a posting out like a news posting for these people if most of it was friends are friends like real estate agents that were dealing with me would say hey i have a friend who works a bit of the mortgage company he's not happy he'd love to come over and talk to you he'd come over and talk to you whatever or he's lost several loans to your company. He couldn't do them, but he knows what you did to get my loan to go through. He wants to come work for you. Like, keep in mind, I'm, and everybody knows that I'm doing shady

stuff. There's shady stuff going on. Could this business have been successful or is a market just too oversaturated with the people that were legit? It was extremely oversaturated at the time. I think it could have, but then I would be, I would have to live off of $50,000, $60,000 a year. Compared to? Compared to living off of a couple. hundred thousand dollars a year and I you know I was just a greedy prick and I didn't want to do that you know I do give you a lot of respect for like the way you portray yourself you literally text me saying I'm a narcissist like referring to you yeah I've never met anyone that does that before

well I mean and prior to prison I would have I would have been so offended the first time I read an article about me keep mind the first time I read an article about me I'm on the run for committing fraud I was on federal probation. I read an article and they called me a con man in the article. I was disgusted. Okay, we'll get to that part. So you end up getting caught for this first fraud. Right.

And that was just a slap on the wrist, essentially. Right, exactly. What I'd done was I'd closed a few loans in my wife's name. So I would buy a house. Anybody who's flipped houses before, a lot of times you think, people think, this would be great if it worked like this. which it doesn't. If you could buy a house for $50,000, fix it up, get it to appraise for $200,000, refinance it at $200,000, pull out $100,000, pay yourself back and make money and keep the property as a rental. Wouldn't that be nice? That's not the way it works. So what happens is there's something

called seasoning. So if you buy a house, renovate it, you have to wait a year before the bank will allow you to use the new value of the house. The most they'll give you in value is with a purchase price plus whatever you renovated it for. So if you put 20,000 into it, they're going to say $70,000 is your value. You're saying, no, it's worth $150, or $200. They're like, nope, you got to wait a year. Well, I didn't want to wait a year. So what I would do is I would buy the house, renovate it, and sell it to my wife in her maiden name. But because I owned the mortgage company and own the property in my name, I couldn't sell it to my wife because that's not an arm's late transaction. So instead, I ran all those loans through a person that, a broker that used to work.

for me, but she had opened up her own brokerage business. We were good friends with her. Her name is Gretchen, with Gretchen and Pete. That was her and her husband opened this company, and my wife and I were good friends with them. So they did that for us as a favor because we're good for friends. We went on vacation, you know, we watched each other kids, went to parties together. Well, what happened was they ended up getting busted by the FBI for running a straw man scam. they wore a they, Gretchen comes to me

and says, I need $75,000 to give them my attorney to represent me. Will you please refinance my house pull out $75,000? Sure.

I use a fake appraisal or dummyed up appraisal. I use W2s, bad W2s and paystubs. She owns a mortgage company. I said she worked for like a cleaning company

or something made W2s, pay stubs, everything completely fake, which she gave me. Closed the loan, get her $75,000. She gives a $75,000 to her attorney. Her attorney says,

you need to wear a wire on this guy so you don't have to go to prison. The FBI wire her up. Her and her husband call me. They ask him, we meet. I're sure. We meet at a pizza hut, not a pizza hut. It's a pizza place. It wasn't a pizza hut.

We sit down. We're having a conversation. And she goes, she said, listen, the FBI came in. And when they came in, they took all our files. And they, my attorney said they want to know, they have a bunch of questions about you and your wife. And I went, what? Yeah, they know. Do they know we're married?

And she's like, yeah. They're asking about Kayla. I was like, oh my gosh. Well, you didn't tell them the W-2s were fake, did you? You didn't tell them, pay stubs were fake. You didn't tell them that I own the properties. You didn't tell them. I mean, bro, I just barely, like, blah.

They set you up good. Oh, my God. It was looking back, I think, wow. Like, you didn't know anything. You're an idiot. And while I was talking to them, I said, okay, okay, listen, here's what you're going to tell them. Tell them, and I start coming up with a scheme to tell the FBI. Which is another charge.

Right. And they go, and her husband, Pete, says, we can't lie to the FBI. No, she and her husband say, we can't lie to the FBI, both of them basically. And I went, what are you talking about? Like, I just did a fraudulent loan for you. You've been lying to that. You're lying right now. She, Pete stands up and says, we can't lie to the FBI. We've not, we may not have always told them the truth, but we've never lied. Now, I know that's not true. So I realize, who are you talking to? Like, I know. that's not true. And I immediately remember, I noticed both their phones are right next to me. Like all three of our cell phones are right on the table. And I'm thinking, that's an odd place

to have your phones. And I immediately just realized like, wow, like you're wired. They wired their phones? Either, I don't know where the wire was. I just remember seeing the phones thinking, hmm, something's up. You're cooked. Yeah, I'm done. So I stood up and I said, listen, bro. I said, I said, you know, Pete Gresh and I said, just tell the FBI agent to call me. Well, first what I actually said was, I looked at her and I said, wow, I hope you get something for this. And she starts crying and she goes, I don't have to go to jail. She was, Matt, I have kids. And I go, I don't have a kid. And I looked at her and I went, listen, I said, don't, tell the FBI not to come by my office. Just tell them to call me on the phone. And I left. Because when the FBI had come into their office,

They had like six employees. They all quit. So I didn't want my guys to quit. So I go back and like literally 20 minutes later, my secretary walks in and says, there's an FBI. His name was Scott Gale, she was FBI agent. Scott Gale's on the phone for you. And I was like, okay, shut the door. And she's looking at me like, holy show.

I'm like, shut the door. I get on the phone. He doesn't even pretend. He's like, Mr. Cox, I think you know why I'm calling. I mean, I'm assuming they gave me the tape. No. Anyway, he says, yeah, you need to come down. I said, absolutely, I have no problem coming down.

I said, can we do it on Tuesday? He's like, yeah, sure. I immediately get an attorney, which charged me $75,000 to plead me guilty. I plead guilty. So I said, I'll plead guilty, but you can't charge my wife. Because they really, she had signed all the fraudulent. She had, they really were kind of gunning for her and me. They wanted me to basically give them,

my brokers, and my lawyer told me you haven't been indicted yet. There's something called pretrial intervention. You heard this? With drug cases, not with drug and alcohol, not with anything like a fraud. Oh, yeah, with fraud, they definitely do it. I didn't get that. And you probably could have gotten it. But, um, no, I don't think I, I don't know. I think in Connecticut or however it worked, it was just, they, there was like a pretrial diversion type thing for, Right. For it, you had to have substance abuse. No, well, I don't like what he told me was, and I've, the guys that I've known that have gotten it, I don't think substance abuse had, they were all fraud.

Listen, one guy had committed a Ponzi scheme. They said, you got to pay back the money. He paid back the money with another Ponzi scheme. He then ran another Ponzi scheme, got busted and all of them went under. I think the U.S. attorney has to be on board, though, then. Oh, absolutely. Because they weren't on board with me. No, no. They, they, they, they, if, if, if, if, if, if the U.S. attorney doesn't like you, he doesn't like you. You're not getting it. Yeah. I wasn't getting it. But my lawyer was basically said, listen, I can get you, you know, pretrial intervention or, you know, diversion. Um, because keep in mind, there's no, no dollar loss. These are bad loans, but they were paid. And by the time I went in to plead guilty, they'd been paid off. We don't, we're already selling the house the buildings off.

So there was no dollar loss. It's just I lied on an application. And that's really what I ended up getting charged with, wire fraud. I lied on an application to get a wire. Anyway, what happens is he said, look, the FBI feels like there's a lot of fraudulent loans going through your office. If you will go get some of the files that have fraud in them from your brokers and bring them to the FBI and go over them, I can keep you from being indicted. You won't have to be a, you won't be a felon at all. You work with the FBI on these guys and you don't end up getting in trouble because

there's no dollar loss. And I went, I'm not going to do that. I would never. You want me to rat out my friends? These are, I would never. If I knew then what I know now, I would have shown up with a dolly at the Friday meeting where all 12 guys were there. And I would have, I would have scooped up two or three.

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you don't rat on your friends, you don't, this, that was a mistake. Not in the mortgage industry. So I ended up taking a plea. I become a felon. I can't work the mortgage company anymore. I get three years paper. And I would say this. Like looking back, the right thing to have done was I should have claimed bankruptcy. I should have claimed bankruptcy. I was going through a divorce. Should have gotten divorced, claimed bankruptcy, and I should have moved in my parents' spare room and started my life over again. That would have been the right decision. You had no restitution. There was no dollar loss. So you, in a criminal perspective, got a slap on the wrist. Absolutely. Absolutely. So you had every opportunity to start over fresh. Yeah. And it was

It was absolute arrogance. Like every bad decision I have made in my life, every detrimental decision has been based on arrogance. How old were you when you took this deal? 31. So it's got to be pretty debilitating to be this much of a failure at this point. What are your parents saying to you? Oh, listen, I can't even.

Listen, the look on my father's face, just thinking about it, I mean, I'm trying to make it through this whole thing without getting, without tearing up. Like, I'm, I can't even think about it. That look of disappointment, like, what a fucking shitty feeling. Like, if I didn't, like, I would have taken prison time before getting that look. And my mother, she's crying. And, you know, it's horrible. It's a horrible situation.

Like, every, you're just a scumbag. And there's nothing I could do about it. Like, so instead of doing the right thing, what I decided. side is I'm going to start flipping houses. I'm going to start buying and selling houses, right? Like that's a legitimate thing. Legally buying and selling houses. But that's hard work, Ian.

It's hard work. And Matt Cox doesn't work hard anymore. I don't want. I really only worked hard at that time at fraud, at things I really loved. Like I wasn't passionate about doing it the right way. So in Ebor City, which is in Tampa, It's basically almost almost downtown, just north of downtown. It's a really run down area at the time.

It's still a shithole. But you could buy houses for $50,000 or $60,000 and wood frame houses. So I said, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to start renovating these houses. And I was already renovating houses on the side, right? Like I'd already probably done 10 houses myself while I own the mortgage company, just something to do. but I thought, I'm going to do this full time.

So here's the problem with that. Those houses, when you renovate them, let's you buy a house for, let's say, $50,000, and you put $30,000 in it, and maybe it appraises at $100,000. That was the max those houses were going to appraise at $100,000. And I sell it. You think, oh, you make $20,000.

You really don't, like, after carrying costs and everything. But let's say you did make $20,000 for four months worth of work is not a lot of money. Okay, I got a divorce. I owe, I got a couple thousand dollars a month in child support. My bills are another six or seven thousand. I got $8,000 a month in bills. That's not going to cover it.

You have to be doing multiple houses at the same time. And there's always a chance that the house burned down. There's a chance that all kinds of things can go wrong. So I need to try and figure out how I can buy these houses and get them to appraise higher. Well, I started seeing this chick that worked at a title company. I said, how can I record the value of the sales of these houses higher? than what I'm actually buying them at. And she explained that if you paid extra money on the dock stamps for purchases,

then the sales would show up higher in public records. So it's a transaction form. So she gave me a Hillsborough County transaction form. I bought a house for $50,000. I paid an extra $1,500,000, and instead of it showing up for a $50,000 sale, it shows up for $200,000. Here's the second problem. So one, you're creating, I started creating fraudulent,

fraudulent sales in the area to drive the value of the area up. Second problem is this. Nobody's buying a house. It was almost impossible to get somebody to buy the house for $100,000 in that area. They're definitely not buying it for $200,000. So you can do what's called a straw man scam where I get, I get Ian Bick, who has perfect credit, and say, Ian, I'm going to sell you three houses and we'll split the profit, right? But you're going to buy them for $200,000. Make a few payments, let them go into foreclosure. And you think, hey, man, I could make $100,000. I'll go ahead and I'll let my credit go to shit for $100,000. Most people would.

But I don't want to give you $100,000. Ian, I want to make the $200,000 profit. So what I decided was I needed to find people that weren't going to split it with me. and what I decided was I was going to start making synthetic people. I was going to start making people that don't really exist. And the way to do that is one, you need a social security number. So I figured out how to go to social security and get social security to issue me a social security number to children that don't exist. I then took that social security number and I ran the credit.

I didn't say it's a 10-month-old child, of course. I said it was a 33-year-old man. And because there's no profile, you then, when you pull the credit, you create a profile. And so I then applied for credit cards. They all got denied. So I got three secured credit cards, which is the minimum requirement you need to apply to get a conventional loan. So I would get three secured credit cards. I'd make the payments.

And after about six months, you have 700 credit scores. It's a very simple formula. And that's just something I learned as I own the mortgage company. I actually had a woman come in who had done this. And when I caught her, she was like, oh, okay, I'm going to leave it. I was like, no, no, no, no, no. I said, listen, I'm going to get you the loan. I want to know how you did this.

And she explained it to me. And I was like, oh, my God. She had used her son, who was like three years old. She'd used his social security number. And she'd used her old maiden name because she was getting divorced that she hadn't used. used in like 10 years and I was like wow like this is brilliant so I knew that was possible so I started doing that and I started making these fake people and you know and the people that I made their names were like and I had a guy named Brandon Green I had a guy named James Red

I had a guy named Michael White Lee Black David Silver so they were all like you know William blue like blue silver, green, red. Like it was, I thought, and I used other names too, but that's really what I thought was cute. I thought, oh, that's kind of cute. Look, I'm a jade, blue, green. Wasn't cute because it very quickly, it was, later you realize that the scam got put together very quickly as a result of me thinking I was being funny.

So anyway, what happens is now these guys, I start buying houses in these guys' names for 50, 60,000, 70,000. And I record the value at 200. 210, 205, 195. And so the whole area shoots up. And Forbes, after about a year or so, Forbes did an article, and they said that they listed the zip code in Ebor City as one of the top fastest growing zip codes in the nation. It was in the top 20.

So I'd taken this, the average median price in that area was like $100,000, $150,000. I'd driven up to like $300,000. And what happened was each one of these guys buys four or five, half, houses and refinances those houses. So he bought a house for 50, put maybe 10 in it. Refinances it at 200, 210,000, pulls out $180,000, $190,000 alone and walks away with $100,000 to $120,000. So each one of these guys is borrowing over a million dollars on five or six houses and walking away with $600,000, $700,000 in cash. And because they don't exist, I get to keep that money. So I make the payments on these houses. for four months, three months, and then I stopped paying.

And then the mortgage company starts sending letters. And after about 60 to 90 days, I would write a letter from Brandon Green's sister, who doesn't exist also, obviously. And I would say that her brother had been in a car accident. and he was currently, you know, in a coma. And the doctors say, even if he wakes up, he'll never work again. So I gave him a reason why this happened. And if they pulled their credit, they would see that everything was going into foreclosure.

So this guy owned like five houses. They're all in foreclosure. All of his credit cards went bad at the same time. And of course, I would also get personal loans. Like you'd go to Bank of America, get a loan for $15,000, go to two or three banks at the same time and get it. alone for 12,000, 15, 15. I'd run up the credit cards. I'd get new credit cards.

So each guy was worth a chunk of money. And I would also get, I would get a newspaper article that said there was like a 12 car pile up on I4 and someone was life flighted to Tampa General Hospital. And I would retype the article and I would put in Brandon Green's name. So I'd show, I'd highlight it and send the, send that article too. saying, hey, you can see my brother was in this car accident. And yeah, so they just stopped coming around. You know, they stayed, you'd get a letter six months later, but I gave them a reason.

So they don't look, they're not thinking fraud because that happens. People get into car accidents, they get divorced, they get sick, they claim bankruptcy. You know, and I've done that too. I actually went downtown one time ago or went to the bankruptcy court and got paperwork showing when you first claim bankruptcy, you fill out a form and you send it to all your creditors, letting them know, hey, here's my, here's my bankruptcy number, and I'm claiming bankruptcy, don't contact me again. You'll be contacted by the court. But they never wore. So you get, I'm trying to wrap my head around that you do this, you get this whole elaborate

system down. You have, you have everything rolling. You're making money. Right. Do you ever think in the back of your mind, hey, I got caught once. I got a slap on the wrist. If I get caught again, there's repercussions. Like, what's your mindset? What's your motivation? Like, because it's more than just money at this point. Yeah, because it's making great money at this point. Yeah, it's, it's not the money.

At this point, it's... And your parents are already disappointed with you, so I don't... Oh, my dad's... He thinks I'm pretty cool now. Oh, he... Like, now he thinks I'm pretty cool again. And because he thinks you're doing it legit. Yeah, he's thinking, this guy just...

He rebounded. You have a success story, the American dream. Right. Look at this kid. You failed. You're back. Of course. You know? But you're not thinking in the back of your mind.

He would say, like, Sam Walton claimed bankruptcy, you know, three times before he started Walmart, you know. So did you think you like that idea of the success story, even though it was fake? It was a fraud. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Did you like that the idea of having a comeback? Of course, who do you know that doesn't love the come? That's a great. That's great.

I'm living the comeback now. I like that. Me too. But I'm doing it legal. This is a second time. Well, technically this is your third time, right? Yeah, yeah. This is a third comeback.

That's got to be the last one, right? and I don't have another one in me. It just, I don't know, Ben. Like, you're just, it just, there was so much opportunity there. I know, but honestly, I did not think, you know, I just didn't think I could, keep in mind, I tried to work in the insurance industry. Remember I told you for like a year? Like, I got laid off twice.

Like, it was tough, right? I couldn't pass the aptitude tests even. You know, I, I, you know, you speak with me and you, you, you. think people talk to me and they think wow you'd be amazing at this is there a lot of paperwork involved like at that time there weren't computers there was no spell check it wasn't like it was now there were computers but there wasn't like it was now everything wasn't computerized now so the idea of me going out and getting a and what's my degree in like i might as well just have a high school diploma i might as well have a prison gED for all that for all that mattered like what am i going to do

Like I can sell cars. I can maybe do some kind of sales, but I'm not going to make this kind of money. And I genuinely felt like I had it down because I'd owned a mortgage company for at that point three to four years. So I really felt like I knew the system. And I did know the system. The banks would take the banks are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars. And they don't know they've been scammed. What a perfect scam.

I just took you for $150,000 and you don't even know you were scammed. So this time there's actual victims at stake. No, who? The banks. They're a victim. Someone's losing money. Yeah, yeah, no. The bank's a victim, absolutely.

Someone's losing money. Right, right. But I'm not going to lie to you. I slept like a baby. Like the idea that Bank of America lost $2 million, like, yeah, I'm okay. I'm not really concerned about that. You know, I borrowed $11.5 million of the course of 18 months to two years. during that scam.

The second one? Yes. So this only ran for two years, the second one? Yeah, up to that point before the FBI shows up. And how does that happen? So I start, my buddy Travis sees me making a lot of money. It always starts with one of your friends, huh? It does.

So he sees me making a lot of money and comes to me and he says, hey, you know, then he kind of knows what I'm doing, right? And so I, you know, he says, how can I, I want to get in on this. Like everybody's making money. Like the broker's making money. The praisers are making money. Everybody, it's not like if I made $100,000, it's all mine. No, no.

Hey, I appreciate that. Here's five grand. You agreed for $5 grand. You agreed for $20,000. Like, so the money's being spread around. He comes to me and says, look, I really want to get in on this whole thing. And I'm like, okay, he and a girl that I was dating wanted to get in on it. and so it was Allison and Travis.

So I set up a scam for both of them to run. Travis's scam's great. He's borrowed like he's Michael White. He was running it as Michael White. And in Orlando, he'd borrowed half a million dollars, I think, at that point. He had another couple scheduled. And so he's opened several bank account. He's pulling out money.

We've gotten about four or five hundred thousand out of the bank. Allison opens up a bank account. I mean, opens up. She opens, she buys a house, gets a house, and she leases a house and we transfer the deed into her name. That's not the point. She's got a fake ID. She's got to fake everything. She's, she's, her identity was Rosita Perez, get her into a house. We refinance the house two or three times at the same time. So we borrow whatever, 100,000, like 300,000 or something. I forget the numbers. She goes to a couple closings. The first closing she gets a check. for like a hundred grand. Second closing, they let her close, but the woman says, you don't look

like the picture. And it was her. And she changed her hair, but it was her. So in my defense, how am I supposed to have foreseen that? She made a mistake. And, you know, of course, Allison's like, it's me. Even the close, one of the closers was like, no, that's her. And she's like, no, something's not right. And she says, I'm going to let you close, but I'm not going to give you the check. Give me a couple days to make a few phone calls, see what I can find out. And she's like, okay. And she leaves, gets in the car. And she's like, oh, my God. So I'm like, yeah, we're done. We're done. And she's like, well, wait, we still have this $100,000 check. I go, it doesn't matter. This woman's going to make phone calls. This is going to fall apart. So they still gave the check?

No, no. Remember I told you she she closed another loan. Okay, with that check. So it was the same day. We're closing the same day. But when you close, doesn't, don't they give you the money right then and there? Right. But the second one where she thought something was wrong, she didn't give her the check. She said, I'm going to hold the check. But she said, I'll still let you close. Yeah, she said, you can sign the papers, but I'm not giving you the check. Give me a couple days to make some phone calls. If everything checks out, well, I know it's going to fall apart right away.

So Allison desperately wants to cash this check. So she says, let me give it to Travis. I say, no. But it's easy for me to say no, isn't it? I've got several hundred thousand in the bank. My bills are paid. I got money coming in. So I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.

And she's like, yes, yes, yes, yes. Let me at least talk to Travis. She talks to Travis. Travis goes, yeah, yeah, I deposit it in my bank. It's no big deal. So he endorses it. She endorses it. He deposits the money.

A few days later, she comes to me and says, hey, did Travis get any of the money yet? I say, I don't know. Let me call him. I call Travis. Travis says, yeah, I'm on the way of the bank right now, but tell Allison, she's not getting any money. why not? He says, well, the bank manager called me and told me to come in. He had to witness because the check was for over $100,000, he had to witness my signature. I said, no, no, no, no, that doesn't sound right. Like, I've deposited many, many, many checks over $100,000.

Never have I had, they had to witness it. Absolutely. Don't go in. Don't go to the bank. Don't go to the bank. And he says, no, bro, I'm pulling the parking lot right now. I'm fine. I said, no, no, no, the cops are waiting for you. I'm telling you right now. And he says, I'm in the parking lot right now. There's no cops here. Like they would be in police cars. Like they'd be in March cars. I'm like, no, no, no, no. He goes, you're, I remember he, I'll never forget. He goes, quit your, what do you say? You're shaking like a little girl, bro. And he said, relax. I got this. And he hangs up. He didn't have it. He walked in the bank. They arrested him. The FBI. No, just the locals. Because keep in mind, he was using a fake ID.

and how hard is it for the cops to figure out it's a fake ID? Even they have a copy of like it's not, they figured it out. So they're just waiting. They can arrest him because he's opened up a bank account in a bank using a fake ID. He fraudulently opened a bank account. Like it's over. So they arrest him.

And, you know, of course, I figured that out right away. We wait a few hours. We call. He's not answering. We eventually call his other number. They've got it. The detective answers. It says, who is this?

And I'm like, oh, Michael Gray. And they're like, you know, know how do you know so and so I'm like this is detective so and so I'm like I hang up the phone it was like we called from a pay phone like I'm terrified I end up getting him I bond him out I never forget I should have known something was wrong because his original bond was like 200,000 or like 300,000 dollars the same amount that had been withdrawn and the next day it dropped to like a thousand dollars or something like now I realize like oh wow that means something So he gets out.

Actually, I think it went to 10,000 because I only had to pay like $11,200 to get him out. So I go to his brother-in-law, I get him out. I get him an attorney, $15,000 for the attorney, no big deal. Because there's a state case at that point. And my whole thing was like, just don't mention my name. And he's like, yeah, no problem, no problem. He's talking to his attorney.

It's going to be okay. He might have to go to jail for six months to a year. Okay, cool, cool, no problem, no problem. look, I'll take care of Lott Mory. He's like, my sister's going to watch my daughter. Can you give her some money every month? Of course, of course. I'll give her money every month. And then, you know, Travis is like, bro, like I'm really hurting for money. I'm like, well, how much money do you need right now? He's like, a couple grand right now. Absolutely. Of course, of course. I'm embarrassed that you had to ask. I'm sorry. That's my fault. I apologize. You know, he comes back a week later, man, I need like

a thousand for them. Of course, here's your thousand. Two weeks later, he comes back and he says, bro, I want to start a tree trimming company. You think you could maybe give me 10 grand so I can buy a chipper. And absolutely, of course, you know, I need a truck. I'll get your truck. I can go right now. We're going to go buy a truck right now, Travis. Of course we're going to buy a truck.

I should have suggested we, I buy you a truck. Listen, he, he really did. Like I look back now, I must have given this guy, 25, between 25 and like $45,000 of the course of the next six months while he was working with a task force. To bring you down. To bring me down. And think about it. How stupid am I? This is how easy it was for him to convince them that he had a much bigger fish than him. It was simple. Hey, pull up the Hillsborough County Property Appraiser's website. Look at this guy. James Redd, he bought six houses. Look, all of them are in foreclosure. Look at this guy. This guy is William Blue. Five houses. All of them are in foreclosure. Like, what a fuck. All of them are in foreclosure. Look at this guy. This guy is William Blue. Five houses. All of them are in foreclosure. Like, what a fuck. an idiot, right? Like, I'm just a... Anyway, the point is, they let them out the next day. Oh, we,

you're good. I know you've got something. So he works with the task force. And I start getting phone calls from, well, not me, from title companies start calling me. And they start telling me, listen, we were just subpoenaed. We were just subpoenaed. Like, it's a problem. Like, they just asked for all of this guy's records, all this guy's records. But I think, still felt like, you know, I'm arrogant enough to think, oh, I'm good, though, I'm good. I never went into any of those closings. I didn't sign any paperwork. I didn't do anything, which was delusional. But anyway, the point is, is that one day I have a friend of mine who's a sheriff's deputy. He comes in and he says, can I talk to you? He came in like in his outfit and everything.

But, you know, I used to, I, he'd probably borrowed a million, two million dollars with a fraudulent loan through me. So he comes and says, can I talk to you? Yeah, what's up, man? And he says, listen, I used to date a chick in the Tampa Police Department. I was like, okay. He said she works like task force and stuff. Like, okay. He said, my name came up on an investigation. And I was like, oh, okay. And he said, the investigation is on you. The FBI, or the task force just put their findings together. And they gave it to the FBI. She came to my house. morning and told me she knows that you and I know each other she told me the FBI is going to be coming to arrest you in a couple days and for me not to talk to you on the phone or in any capacity

after that and I was like okay and he's like so I just wanted to let you know he was like what should I tell him if they talk to me I said tell him that you just signed everything I put in front of you I mean you're not a broker you don't know anything you you went to somebody and asked him to help you get a loan and they did you you didn't know I don't know so what how you said it worked like I gave them all correct stuff. Like, nobody's going to, you're not going to get into trouble. He's like, what are you going to do? I said, well, I'm, I'm leaving. I know my, the federal judge in my case is not going to be cool. Because of your past, too. I'm already on federal probation. You're on supervised federal supervisors. Yeah, I'm on, exactly. I'm on federal probation right now and I just borrowed, sorry, I just borrowed $11.5 million in a bunch of fake names. Did you report those loans or no, because they were like on your federal supervised release? No, no, because think about, they're not my name.

But what about the business you're operating? You have to report financials, right? I do. Okay. I have to give them my taxes at the end of the year. They knew what was buying houses and selling them. Okay. And most of these houses at this point, also, by the way, when I sold my mortgage company to a guy who was a CPA and he was paying me $8,000 a month.

month to help, you know, manage. So I was not an employee. I was like a consultant for that, and they allowed me to stay in the industry, which is something that typically doesn't happen, but my lawyer argued that he doesn't know how to do anything else. What are you doing? He's selling his company. He's owner, he's financing the company. They're paying him $8,000 a month. They, just to keep all of the paperwork up to date. We were FHA approved, VA approved, conventional subprime. Somebody has to handle all of those, the updates every quarter, the licensing everything. I agreed, I'll do that for 8,000 a month. You take my company over. That's what was happening. So they see money coming in. So it's not, they're not, it doesn't look odd to them.

Like, I'm very good at setting things up so that it looks legitimate. And it didn't look like you were making crazy money. Absolutely not. And these, listen, money is not my name. I have very little money in my bank account, 20,000, 30,000. Now, James, Red might have $200,000 in his account or this guy, like, I'm going to do it to banks and opening bank accounts. So I take off. So basically what happens is I decide I'm taking off. I'm leaving. I can't stay here. I'm adorable. I know what happens. I've seen, I can't go to federal prison. Okay. I saw what happened in Shawshank. I can't do it, bro. I'm never going to survive. All I know about prison is what I, is the movie. I saw the movie Shawshank Redemption. And I saw a movie called the Animal Factory. I don't know if you've ever seen the Animal Fank.

factory. Basically a little white, little soft white kid goes to fucking prison. It's not good Ian. It ain't good. I mean, he's, you know,

I just don't want to get in touch with my feminine side. You know, I really, I didn't know there was some, I didn't realize there were camps and lows and mediums and pens. I didn't know that. I thought prison's what you saw on TV. So I decide that I'm going to take off.

It was a Thursday. 4 o'clock. So I have one hour plus the next day to get as much money out of the bank as I can get. I was able to get $80,000 out of the bank. And if you've ever tried to take out cash out of a bank, like... Big ordeal. It's a huge order. Like,

you're not walking and saying, hey, I've got $200,000 in this bank account. I need $200,000 right now. That's not going to happen. I'm shocked that they never froze your accounts right then and there before. Because they just handed it to the FBI. FBI hasn't even reviewed it. So you weren't really going to get arrested in a couple days, were you? I think I was because basically when I

off. Like it was probably five or six days later, they came and they raided my office. Okay. Now, whether they knew I was gone or not, I don't know. I'm pretty sure that one of my brokers or someone involved in the whole thing contacted them and said, look, then this guy took off on the run. So anyway, I get out about 80 grand. I'm dating this chick named Rebecca Halk. And I've been dating her for about, I'm going to say a month. She says six weeks. Whatever. wasn't long enough to do what happened. She basically comes in when I'm packing my bags. Like I'm packing a couple duffel bags.

I've got like 30. At that point I probably had 30,000, 40,000 in cash. You know, people are stopping by, giving me money. She comes by and she's like, hey, what's going on? I'm like, yeah, I'm leaving. I'm leaving. Here's what's happening. I was running a scam.

It all fell apart. It all went bad. I can't go to prison. You know, and she was like, oh, my God. And so, you know, I explained what happened. And she's like, what are you going to do? I said, I mean, I'm going to go take off. I'm going to run a couple scams, get myself a few million dollars, lay low and try and reaclimate

myself into society. I mean, right? Like, that's what people do, right? And she was like, well, I want to come with you. And I went, no, you can't come with me. She's like, absolutely. I want to come with you. And so, you know, I didn't really know her.

She basically says, look, it's, you know, I'm in love with you. I want to come with you. And I shouldn't have let her come with me. But I did. And I mean, I could explain the whole, all the stuff that went through the arguments that we had over the next couple days of her begging to come with me. But, you know, in the end, I'm smart enough to know it was a problem. It was stupid. I shouldn't have let her come. I did. It was absolutely just an asinine decision on my, on my part. You guys are like Bonnie and Clyde now. You know, I mean, you know what, yeah, there was, yeah, yeah. They started calling the Bonnie and Clyde of bank fraud or something. Well, what's funny about that is, so what it really boils down to is this. this. Anybody who's been on the run knows it's terrifying. Most people do not have the ability to up and leave everything and everybody they know and go on the run. Like that is a huge,

frightening commitment on your part. But I didn't have to be alone. I could bring someone with me. And so that's why most people, they go on the run, they start calling home. They'll call their family. They'll call their friends. They'll stop back by. And like, that's how they get caught. And people are like, why didn't you just leave? Like, listen, bro, obviously you don't understand this.

It's difficult. If it's difficult for kids to up and leave and go to college and stay in college, imagine how difficult it is. Hey, you can never call anybody again, never go back home, never do any of these things. Change your identity. And you have to figure out how to scam the rest of your life to make money. Like, I was terrified. So you got rid of your cell phones, everything?

Oh, it chucked everything. Went and took my car, traded it in, bought a new car. and got, didn't even use my tag, got a temp tag because I knew I had at least 30 to 60 days because it's registered. So anybody that ran the tag would run it, it'd go back to the dealership for 30 days. So I mean, I got a paper. They were like, oh, we'll use your tag. No, you won't.

I want a brand new tag. Give me a paper tag. Like, I'm doing things that really don't make sense. Either way, got myself like an Audi A8, loaded it up, ran up all my credit cards. I remember I just paid off my student loans. It was like $30,000 I paid off. And I mean, literally, I raced to the bank, hoping the check had not gone through it.

It went through the night before. I was furious. So it was like $30,000 that I just paid off Matt Cox's student loans that I'll never need. So I load up all our stuff. Becky and I take off. We go to Atlanta, Georgia. We don't have a lot of money.

We got like $80,000. That's nothing to. It'd be difficult to survive. on 80,000, which sounds, it sounds stupid. I know people say, oh, that's supposed to, you know, unless I'm going to move into an apartment and go get a job and, you know, that just wasn't the person I was at the time. So doing the right thing never entered my mind. What I decided to do was run another scam.

So we go and we rent a house from someone, a guy named Michael Shanahan. So we rent a house and keep in mind, too, the other scams that I was running, I always wanted to have. like deniability or do it in a way that the bank wouldn't know they were scammed. There's scams that are like that, right? But now I don't care because now I know the FBI is looking for me. So I go, we rent Michael Shanahan's house, I make a fake identity in the name Michael Shanahan, I get a fake social security number in the name Michael Shanahan. I then go and I apply for a bunch of secure credit cards in Michael Shanahan's name.

I then make two satisfaction of mortgages. So take a house, let's say you own a house, you've got a mortgage on a house for $200,000 with Bank of America. When you pay that off, Bank of America mails what's called the satisfaction of mortgage down to public records to let them know, hey, this loan has been satisfied. It's one page, it's notarized, no big deal. I make one that looks like it's from Bank of America. I bring it down there and file it for Bank of America.

I do it because this guy had a first mortgage and a second mortgage. I get rid of both of them. So now I'm living in Michael Shanahan's house as Michael Shanahan. No mortgages on the house. I go and I contact three hard money lenders. You know what a hard money lender is. I get three hard money lenders. One comes by at 11 o'clock.

One comes by at one. One comes by at four. They all look at the house. They go, yeah, I'll lend you $150,000 on this house. I go, okay. I close all those loans like a week later, and I get around 400,000, you know, I walk away with about 400,000, 450,000.

You know, there's closing costs and stuff. Either way, let's say 400,000. So I get about 400,000 deposited in the bank accounts, multiple bank accounts, in stolen identities names. Because at this point, I've started stealing identities. So I'm getting, by this point, I figured out how to steal identities

order your birth certificate, your social security card. I can order, I can register to vote in your name. I get a lease in your name. I mean, it's a fake lease, but if you called, I would answer the phone. So, and then I would go to a state DMV that you've never had a driver's license in, and I'd get an ID or driver's license in your name. And then I'd go open up bank accounts in your name. So once I refinance the house, I deposit all these checks into those bank accounts.

And I start pulling money out of the bank. And so, you know, and there's multiple times that I almost got caught. Like at one point, I was getting like, you know, I was doing like the, you pull out 8,000, 3,000, 5,000, 4th. I mean, you've got eight bank accounts. Like, you're getting the money in. But it gets frustrating. You know, they don't want to give you the money right away.

They want to call. So they're calling and you have, I have this chicks in the car verifying that, yes, I wrote that check. And we're opening bank accounts in her names too. She's committing fraud too. Yeah. So we, at one point I end up going into a bank and I, I try and cash a check for like $29,000. The bank, the loan officer, well, the cashier is like, well, you know, it's a lot of money.

But it was what, you know, they call it cash banks. It's a bank that does large cash transactions. She's got some questions. I answer him. She says, let me have you talked to the manager. The manager comes over. He asks me some questions. Why are you cashing the check?

Why this? And I had all the right answers. And he goes, well, let me make some phone calls. And like, okay. And keep in mind, I'm cashing the check in the name Michael. No, Scott Cugno. The name's Scott Cove. But it's a real ID.

And I have a real, like a real bank issued visa. Like, everything I have on him is real. But the name of the cashier's check was from like the Michael Shanahan closing. So he's calling to try and figure out if this cashier. And it was, it was, the cashier's check was on that bank. So I feel pretty confident. But it had been drawn on an account that was also with the bank for the title company. So I'm sitting there. The girl I'm with is calling me every five minutes. What's going on? Why are you still in the bank? I'm like, calm down. They're checking to verify. Oh my God. Oh my God. Get out of the bank.

Get out of the bank. I'm like, I can't get out of the bank. The guy's got my driver's license and then a cashier's check for $29,000. Like I can't leave. I have to wait. Oh, my. Oh my God. Oh my God. I'm freaking out. Calm down. So wait, wait. He comes back. He asks another question. He leaves. Comes back, ask another question. He leaves. And then finally, my phone rings. And I answer the phone. And I go, hello? And this chick goes, you know, um, hi, is this Michael Shanahan? This is Kimberly from SunTrust Bank. And I'm like, yes, this is Michael Shanahan. And she says, well, we have someone here at the bank trying to cash, rather a large cashier's check that was drawn on a closing that you had. And he's like, right. She's like, just wondering if you could verify like the payee. He's like, yeah, I believe that's Scott Cugno.

The check was for 29,000. Oh, okay. Well, thank you. That's all we wanted to know. Okay. And I say, hey, Kimberly, how did you get this phone number? This is my cell number. and she goes, oh, we called the title company, and they gave us your phone number. I went, oh, okay, okay. Listen, if they'd called information, if they'd done anything else, they'd have gotten Michael Shanahan. But they didn't. So I was like, okay, thanks.

I hang up the phone. Five minutes later, the manager and some chick, probably Kimberly, walks out, counts out $29,000. I take the money. I stand up. I go to leave, and I remember he stops. He goes, he said, Mr. Cugno, and I said, yeah, he goes, I'd like to let you know, I feel very apprehensive about this transaction. I go, really?

I go, well, what is it? And he goes, I can't put my finger on it. I said, I'll come to you. It'll come to you. And I walk off. Didn't he recognize your voice at all? No, well, it was Kimberly. Yeah, but they Kimberly talked to you.

I know, but I mean, you know what I'm saying? Like, I don't know that that was even Kimberly. Oh, bad. But, I mean, I'm like, okay. And keep on, that's the only time I talked. At that point, I've got everything back. I'd have run. At that point, I would have run.

But yeah. So I leave. I get in the car. And I remember getting in the car being like, oh, my God. You're not going to believe this. So we leave. We leave with like $400,000 and change. We actually had run another scam too at the same time.

So we had some money. We'd been on vacate. By that point, by that point, this is going to sound bad. And don't judge me. By that point, I, surveying homeless people and getting their information and I'm getting driver's licenses in their names and passports how long are you on the run for three years three years yeah so I can wrap this I can wrap it up well I can

skip some stuff and wrap it up there's just three years on the run yeah when do you figure out that you're on the FBI's most wanted no well okay first of all the FBI was looking for me that wasn't that wasn't that That didn't bother me because the FBI didn't really seem to be looking that hard. Because you were a small fish in the scheme of things. You weren't like a terrorist or anything like that. That's who they're serious. That's who they're serious about, right?

Like, um, and violent criminals. Now, when I left Atlanta, the Secret Service got involved and they deal with any type of financial infrastructure in the United States, especially if it involves identity theft. So I have bank fraud, identity theft, wiring money from bank. I fall flat in their jurisdiction. So at that point, I'm on the Secret Service's most wanted list. And keep in mind, too, there have been total. There was probably 50 articles.

The St. Petersburg Times ran like over 30 articles on me. And there's all these articles coming out, left and right. So when I leave Atlanta, there's a whole series. First, when I left Tampa, a bunch of articles. When I leave Atlanta, a bunch of articles, like this guy just pulled off, just made it $400,000 and just took off. Then I go to South Carolina and in the name of a homeless person, I buy two houses, satisfy the loans in their name on the mortgages. And I borrow $1.3 million. I pull out about $500,000.

I want to say about $600,000. One day I go into a bank and I'm waiting to get, you know, to get like nothing, like $4,000, right? But they always have to go because it's like a new account. If you get over like $3,000 and it's a new account, we have to call. But I don't care if you call because I open the bank using a real driver's license issued by the DMV. Like all this is real and you're not going to be able to reach the guy that's sleeping under a bridge. So nobody's going to say, this is fraud, right? That's what, you know, that's how I feel.

So she goes in the back and all of a sudden I'm waiting and waiting. Like, it wasn't even three minutes, bro. She walks, some guy walks up behind me and boom, grabs my hand and another guy grabbed my hand. And it's two sheriff's deputies, and they handcuffed me. And they get, I was, I'd surveyed a guy who was named Gary Sullivan. And they go, Mr. Sullivan, you know, you're, you're being detained. And I was like, oh, what's going on? I mean, keep in mind, there's 20 people.

in the bank looking at me. So they take me into the manager's office. They sit me down and I go, what's going on? And they go, well, you know, Mr. Sullivan, I don't really know what's going on. We're waiting for a detective to come. And I thought FBI, right? FBI is coming because, you know, you don't really know the difference between an agent and a detective. I don't really know at that time. So a couple minutes later, this guy walks in, gray suit, late, probably early, I'm sorry, probably early 30s he walks in and he's like, hey, Mr. Sullivan. And I'm thinking, everybody's calling me Mr. Sullivan. How do you keep up with all these identities?

Well, I'm really only one person. Even though I've stolen, like I've had 27 driver's licenses in seven different states issued by the DMV. I've had over 50 stolen identities, but I'm only really one person at a time. Yeah, so it's a little bit easier. It's not like I've got a pocket full of IDs. Like if I walk in, I've got a specific wallet for that person, a phone and everything in a file folder with everything listed. So you walk in, you're like, okay, here's this, here's this, here's this, and you walk in. All right.

So they say, Mr. Sullivan. Yeah. So they've got me. They got me. I think they got me. And they think they got me. And so they say, listen, the head of Wakovia fraud department says that you're running what's called a shotgunning scam. You've borrowed a bunch of mortgages on these properties.

and I was like, okay. And he said, I said, what do you mean? What are you talking about? And he goes, you have three mortgages on this one property. And I go, is that illegal? And the guy goes, you know, I don't really know. And I thought, I'm walking out of here, bro. Like, you don't know.

Like, I know I can convince you don't know. If you're telling me up front, you don't know, I'm definitely going to convince you. This is perfectly legal. So he sits down. We called the head of Rakovius Fraud Department. Walkovia is the fraud guy knows what's happening, bro. he's he's on point he knows but he can't convince this guy that I've committed the detective because every time he says something he's like he's got three first mortgages on his properties

on this property and I went no keep on mine I've actually borrowed six mortgages on this property but only three showed up that they caught they mail them in so they don't show up at the same time sometimes they might not mail them in for a week or two so he says yeah he's got three more three first mortgages I go wait a minute I read those mortgages one one was a first mortgage. Only one and none of them said they were first mortgages. Byobarred a first mortgage from Wachovia. The other one was a second mortgage from Fieldstone and the other one was like a helock from SunTrust. And he's screaming, that's not true. That's not true. But he also knows that a mortgage doesn't say it's a first mortgage. The placement of the mortgage is what determines

it's the first mortgage. So your first mortgage could be a second mortgage if somebody else slipped in there beforehand. So I say, he goes, well, how did this happen? I said, listen, man, here's what happened. Came in, talked to Wachovia's loan officer. She said she could get me a first mortgage. I said, I need more money than that because I'm flipping houses. And the guy goes, that's right. You own another house. I said, that's right. So I said, that's right. I said, so I need, he said, I got a friend that works at Fieldstone. She can get you a second mortgage. I go, but that's not. Okay. So I go and I talk to her and that woman says, I can get you second mortgage, but I can only get you so much money on the second. But I have a friend can

get you a helock. I go, okay, great. We call her. She gets to be a helock. I said, now what makes more sense that three loan officers get together in order to get me half a million dollars on a house or some guy who works at a labor company figured out how to scam three banks out of half a million dollars. And I pull out my, I have a labor car, I have a card that says I work for labor on demand. I'm a site manager. I hand him the card and I said, which makes more sense. And he goes, he gets the phone. He goes, yeah, I don't think this guy had anything to do with this. I think, and I go, I think they got a problem with the bank. He goes, yeah, I think they have a problem at the bank. And so he's flipping out. And then he makes the biggest mistake he makes is this. He says,

it's a scam. He's using a fake ID. The first three letters or the first three numbers of the ID start with zero zero zero. But in South Carolina, their IDs start with zero zero. But he's in California. So it looks funny to him. What he looks at it and he goes, no, no, he is, I ran this guy through NCIC. It's legit. It's a legit South Carolina ID. And I go, oh, now I'm not Gary Sullivan. I go, bro, what are we doing here?

And he goes, I know, Gary, I know. The guy at Wachovie is freaking out. So he ends up saying, look, I'm going to take him downtown, fill out a police report, talk to the district attorney. I don't even know what to charge this guy with. And I say, you know, let's go. So we go downtown. I fill out a police report.

And I, um, I, I actually was in the hallway waiting for him because he wouldn't leave me in his cubicle when he talked to his lieutenant or whoever it was. He puts me in the hallway and my wanted poster is on the wall. Like there's a whole thing. And my only reason I even noticed it was the only one in color. So I'm like, you know, and whenever I tell this, people are like, why didn't you run? Like, have you ever been on a police station? Like, you don't walk in a police.

Like this guy went through three different doors that he had to punch in codes to get into. You can't even use the elevator without punching in a code. Like, I'm not getting out of this place. What does a wanted poster say? It's just two pictures, two little color pictures. And it says, you know, it says secret service, you know, wanted. And then it lists all. And that's not the only time, like, people have sold a poster and then saw me.

But you have to understand by this point, I've had a nose job. I've had my teeth done. I had what's called a mini facelift. I had two hair transplants. I've had liposuction. Like, I don't look like a different person, but I look different enough. But even with those things, you have to really hold the poster right up to somebody. Right. Especially if you don't know somebody.

Yeah. You know, if your mom came in with a no job, you would know it was her, right? If she had a bunch of surgery, you'd still know. That's my mom. And you haven't talked to your parents at all in years. No, I called my mom once or twice. What does she say to you? Oh, Matthew. What are you doing? What are you doing? So, yeah, anyway, so what I do is I take off.

He lets me leave. He walks me out. And he says, listen, do me a favor. Because we do have some questions. This is a little odd. Don't leave town. I go, bro, I own two houses here. I'm not going anywhere.

I work here. And he's like, okay. You must have felt like the biggest idiot when you finally got caught. Oh, my God. The FBI is probably like, what the fuck? They showed up a couple days later. To the, because they're catching wind. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, because they contacted them. Like, they figured it out. Somehow or they figured out within a day or so. Probably that Wakovia guy. Well, I end up going to two more banks, getting out some more money. The third bank, I go into, this woman recognized me. I know she, I know they recognize it. Like, I can see it in their face.

Like, they go for the phone. I turn around, get my car leave. The woman runs out of the bank and looks at my tag. Like, I'm like, okay, I'm freaking out now. So I jump on the interstate. I go. By this point, we were living in North Carolina, in Charlotte. that we had relocated to Houston, Texas.

So I drive, I get a, I pack up all my stuff, and I go to Houston, Texas, put all my stuff in a storage unit. Becky and I get into a massive fight. We had 600,000, keep in mind, by this point, we've gone to, we've been everywhere, right? We've been to Jamaica. Like, we've been, like, on fake passports, I've traveled to all, you know, Bermuda, Mexico, Jamaica, you know, Italy, Greece, Croatia. Like, we've traveled all over the place.

So we get into a huge argument. She's, you know, just a bad situation. She's nuts. And she gives me $100,000. She keeps half a million dollars. And, you know, and the reason for that is that, you know, we argued about it. But in the end, she was like, look, I have to live on this. money. You're going to go get in a million dollars. I'm not. I can't do what you're doing.

And I was like, okay. So I take $100,000. I go back, I travel all the way back in a U-Haul van, all the way back to Charlotte to get my car. I get my car at my parking, at the parking garage of my apartment complex. I go across the street to the Starbucks. Like I'm, I got to relocate. I got to figure something out. But I got a car. I'm kind of thinking. they probably have figured it out by now. It's been days. And by the way, on the way back from Houston, I called an FBI agent. Like I called home, spoke with one of the brokers that used to work for me, and she said, look, the secret, I'm sorry, the FBI has been here. They've questioned everybody. But she said, if I ever talked to you to have you contact her, I have her phone number.

I was like, okay, she's like, I go, why would I do that? And she goes, maybe you can turn yourself in. Maybe you'll get a couple of years. Maybe just call her. And I was like, okay, I'll call her. So I call her. That conversation doesn't go well. Like, she's possibly more arrogant than I am at the time. Like, I was cocky.

I mean, keep in mind, I just got handcuffed. I got handcuffed and taken into a bank and talked my way out of it. I'm feeling pretty good. And Kim, I, I've been, like, I'm, I've been pulled over. I've gotten traffic tickets as people. I went to traffic school as a guy one time. I've done, like, it's becoming laughable.

You know, I stole a guy's identity one time, got a driver's license and everything in his name, and then paid an attorney to have his name changed and went through the process of going through that whole thing to get everything changed over, just because I figured if I can alter his name enough and get a new social security and create a whole new identity. Anyway,

I go back. I'm in the Starbucks. I've got my car. I've got like an infinite, brand new infinity. And I get my Starbucks and two people that worked at the apartment complex that was right across the street, catty corner, like a block away, recognized me. And one of them bolts out the back and goes. And it turns out she recognizes me. Obviously, I worked there, but what I didn't realize was that these U.S. Marshals had just, they just interviewed them about me. This guy was just caught in a bank. Here's who he really is.

At that point, I'm number one on the Secret Service's Most Wanted list. I'm on the FBI's Most Wanted list. U.S. Marshal's Most Wanted List. I'm number one on the Secret Service's most wanted list. So things aren't going good. So I go and get my car, the guy from the apartment complex follows me outside.

He's standing there. I start the car. I'm checking the mirrors. I'm about to pull out. and he starts screaming, he's right here, he's right here. And I, like, I look in the mirror and there's two guys running at me. And it's funny, I always thought they were FBI, but I ordered the Freedom of Information Act, and I found out they were, they were actually marshals. But, you know, I don't know what a marshal is. You don't know what a marshal is. Like, you know, when you go through it,

you're green. I don't know who anybody is, really, who these players are. I know FBI. I know there's police and FBI, but I don't really know what a marshal does. So the U.S. marshals are chasing me down or chasing me. And I just punt. punch it and I take off, right? And I have no IDs. I now know I'm driving a car and I have a driver's license in the name of a guy that is definitely they're looking for. There's a bolo out on this guy. So I drive a mile down the street and I see three homeless guys on the side of the road outside of a homeless facility and I pull in, I jump out with my clipboard and I immediately survey him. Hey, bro. And I tell him, you know, I've got a little survey for him. I said, hey, I work for the Salvation Army. We're taking surveys. It pays $20 cash right now. We're trying to determine where we're going to place our next homeless facility. And it pays $20 cash right now. And they're like, yeah, yeah, what do you need? Oh, yeah. Take the information. 20 bucks. I drive straight to Nashville, Tennessee. I go to a place called Green Hills, which is an area.

Nashville. I go to a Kinkos. Do you remember Kinkos? No, I don't know. Kikos is like a... Wait, Kikos or? It's called Kinkos. No, I never heard of it. So it's like, you know, who bought them out? It's the UPS. UPS store. So it's like a UPS store. Okay. I go to the UPS store and I order like 50, 50, well first I go and I get a cell phone. I get a cell phone. Then I go and I open up a, what's called an HQ where they answer your phone. It's like an answering service. So they give me a number.

Then I go and I get a business card that says I work for a manufacturer funding group. I got an office number and a cell number. Get in my car, drive around Green Hills. And I see a guy putting a sign in the front yard of like a townhouse. Pull in and I say, hey, what's going on? You rent this? He goes, yeah. I said, oh, let me take a look.

I take a look. back. And he says, yeah. He says, yeah, I said, well, how much is the rent? I forget what it was like, 1400. It was nothing. And I was like, yeah, I'll rent it right now. You know, I don't really have, do you need to pull my credit? Do you need to? He's like, you look like a nice young man. I mean, I'm driving like a $60,000 sports car, clean cut. And he goes, yeah, it looks like a nice young man. He said, yeah, give me the first month's security and the first month to rent. And we're good. I said, okay, I gave it to him. Never asked for, I don't even have an ID.

I don't even have an ID. I have nothing if he asked for anything. He just gave it to him. He gave me the keys. Within a day, I've got the electric, the water hooked up. I go into the DMV. Oh, I've ordered all of those homeless guys. I got all their stuff is coming in.

I now have an address. So within a couple of days, I'm getting in their birth certificate, social security, cars, everything. I go to the local DMV. I get a driver's license in the name of his name was Joseph Marion Carter Jr. So Carter. So I've got a driver's license in Carter's name.

I immediately take that my car. I drive in this car that they're looking for. I drive all the way back to Charlotte, North Carolina. I go to long-term parking at the airport. I park the car. I get on a plane. I fly back to Nashville. I go to a CarMax.

I buy a car max. buy a car, no credit, but if you put 20% down and you've been on your job for five years, which I have, got a W-2 and a pay stub, and they immediately lend me like 20 grand on a something, Honda, whatever, an SUV of some kind or Nissan SUV, something. So I get that. So we're talking about less than a week and a half. I've got a place. I've got an established identity. I've got a driver's license. I've got a new car. I've got a car. Wasn't new. But I've got a car. But I've got a car. three months later, I'm buying houses. I start the whole process over again.

I end up borrowing three and a half million dollars in Nashville. I'm now been on the run three years. I'm dating this chick named Amanda. And everything's going good. We're building new houses. And then one day, she says, oh, my God. Oh, by the way, by the way, by the, this point, Fortune Magazine has done an article, a huge article on me. It's like seven or eight thousand words.

Bloomberg Business Week has put out two articles called Sharks in the Housing Pool. It was about me and Becky. And Becky had been caught. So they caught her in, you know, Houston, Texas. And which is, I name, that's why my name of my book is Shark in the Housing Pool based on, you know, that article. I thought it was cute. It's kind of like the Wolf of Wall Street. Anyway, the point is, I do that. I get grabbed. I'm not sorry, I do that. We find out Dateline is coming out.

And I decide I'm going to leave the United States because Dateline was a big deal. This is in 2006, late 2006. And back then, you know, there wasn't all of these streaming networks. So, you know, people watch, you know, a lot of people watch Dateline. And so that's a problem for me. I know someone will recognize me. And even if they don't, they're going to replay that episode for the next few years. So I decide I'm going to go to Australia.

Figure I go to Australia. I show up there. I get some more plastic surgery. I lose some weight. I do whatever I have to do. And we're basically refinancing properties, pulling out money. And Amanda ends up telling a friend of hers who I am. She calls a Secret Service.

Secret Service watches my house for three years. days and one day I pull I drive home and boom they you know the SUVs pull up they jump out get on the ground get on the ground how'd you feel when you got caught it was bad man it was you know you ever hear these people say like I was relieved I'd been on the run to you know three years and I was just relieved it was over and I wasn't relieved at all it was horrible um probably up till that point in my life that like those three years were great like I know the right thing the right thing to say so But everybody feels good about me. Feels good about the situation.

It's just say, you know, I was under so much stress and I missed everybody. And I just, but that's not what happened at all. I liked to be on the run. I liked running scams. Were you believing in your own lies too? I mean, I don't, I'm not sure the lies. I was delusional in thinking I was never going to get caught. But like delusional in the new life you built too.

Like you're actually successful when you're not because they're writing articles. Oh, it's all fraud. Yeah. No, no. Like, never thought about it. about like that. I've never thought like was I believing the like there was no point when I didn't know when I'm saying hi my name my name's Carter like I know if my name's not Carter I know I also do know that when I heard my name said by the Secret Service agents I said the Secret Service arrested me right? Yeah. Okay. When I heard them say Matt Cox like my knees got weak bro like I hadn't heard that name and you know said really. out loud. Is Matt Cox even your real name after listening to this whole story? Because, yeah, I've gone through like 100 names sitting down with you know. This isn't even,

this is the short version. This is what the hour or two version, right? You know, if anyone searches you on YouTube and stuff, there's hours and hours. I mean, there's a 24-hour YouTube special idea. You know what's funny is like, you know, you get the guys in the comments. You know, the guys that just say, you know, just ridiculous stuff. I love the guys who are always like, you know, that's not true. This guy never went to prison or this guy's full of it. He's, you know, it's like, bro, like, do you know how many articles are out there? How many TV shows are out there?

I don't think you went to prison. Yeah, you know, but people say that. Like the things that people say in the comment section is just like, you know, do a little research, bro. Like, I get it. If you want to say some negative things about me, like, let's make it realistic. So do you go back to your original judge that you're on supervised release with? No. because so here's what happened you know the secret the secret service was genuinely interested in

prosecuting the case and at this point i've been indicted in in Tennessee in south Carolina in Georgia and Florida so I've got four different jurisdictions and they consolidated them all in Atlanta so they moved me all the way back to Atlanta to be prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney in Atlanta. And that was really probably a mistake. You know, everybody thinks their prosecutor hates them, right? And they probably don't. They probably don't think much about you. But, I mean, this woman genuinely, like, despised me. Her name was Gail McKenzie. And she really despised me. You know, and it's not like I didn't give her any ammo. Like, she's got a reason to not like me. But she wanted me to do serious prison time, you know? And the problem.

with that scenario is that I don't think that I'm innocent. Like when you, like I watched your thing, like when you went in and talked to the U.S. attorney, you in a way believe, like, I didn't, you didn't set out to commit a Ponzi scheme. It turned into a Ponzi scheme, but in your mind, you're still thinking, no, this was a mistake. I didn't really do this. this, I can explain. I can't explain. There's not, like every single aspect is, you're right. I'm doing scumbag things. I'm stealing from, from banks or individuals or whoever it is you want to say, I've never stolen from an individual, but individuals lost money. And I don't mean some guy who pays a little bit more on an inch out of interest or something. I mean like,

when I would buy someone's house and I convinced them to owner finance the house, and then I satisfy the loans on the house, and then I borrow $100,000 or $1 million on your house. The banks try and foreclose on your house. Now, those people had to make claims against the title insurance companies, and the title insurance companies paid them back. But if you're just some guy that works at Tire Kingdom, and all you did was rent out your house,

and now you have to figure out how to fill out insurance, insurance claims forms, or maybe you have to hire an attorney. Like, what did you do wrong? What you did wrong was you just crossed my path. You know, that was it. Like, you just live in your life. Like, that's a scumbag move. You know, so I do get to say, well, I never stole money from anybody, but I cost you anxiety. I cost you to have to go get an attorney. Now, everybody didn't get an attorney, but some of them did because let's face it, you don't know how to be an attorney. A lot of people can't fill out paperwork. It's difficult.

They don't understand the legalese of it. So they go and they, so you had to go spend $5,000. So out of actual victims, I owe about $30,000 to four different people. You know? Now, you know, those people didn't, they didn't lose their house. It didn't probably destroy their lives. You know, one guy's a doctor. One guy's a CPA.

One guy's actually a lawyer. You know, one guy's. So, you know, but they didn't do anything. wrong. Like they didn't have that coming. They didn't deserve that. So for me to sit here and say, well, all I ever did was steal from banks and who cares? Ah, you're still a fucking scumbag. You know, like, it's like saying, they're saying that I murdered 14 people. I only murdered 12. Like, you're still a fucking piece of shit. So, you know, what I did what I did what I did. You know, and so this woman despises me. And she hammered me every single chance.

she got and I can't get a regular lawyer because let's face it they catch you and you've got 800,000 or a million dollars and a million dollars in real estate well they sell that off immediately for pennies on the dollar and they seize all your bank accounts and they give you a public defender and in my public defenders you know um you know in her defense she had no she there was nothing she could do like going to trial is not even an option what was your first offer my first offer was 32 years. That was what my P. They were like, you're going to get the statutory max.

Well, now keep in mind, if you read the newspaper, it says, like, he was facing, one article says he's facing 54 years or something. Mine said 120 years. Right. One says 150. Exactly. It's crazy. You know, they're stacking charges.

Like, that just doesn't happen. You'd have to be Bernie Madoff. So, and, you know, my lawyer comes back and she's like, eh, listen, if you plead guilty, she's like, even if you get a trial, the most you'll get is a statutory maximum. And that's going to be 32 years. It's like 32 years. And you're how old at this point? I'm 37 years old.

I can't do 32 years. Like, so anyway, yeah, she says, she sits down and she goes, listen. She says, your only choice is to cooperate. And I'm like, okay, well, what does that mean? Like, I'd love to sit here to tell you I was a gangster. I said, man, fuck you. you line that shit up. I'll go to, hell no. What is it you want to know? So she's like, look, you know, they've already, they've already spoken with everybody. They've cooperated against you.

You know, everybody in Tampa cooperated against me. And they just want you to cooperate. Like, if you cooperate, but you're lucky because these people have been in, some have been, they've been in, there was an indictment where they named unnamed co-conspirators. So I can probably get you credit if you'll just cooperate. They already know everything. And I'm like, all right, what's up? So they come in, they interview me. The FBI flies in, they interview me for like three or four days. Secret Service flies in. They interview me for two days. Plus, there's tons of other stuff, obviously. There's other scams. There's, you know, and then of course, they want to know, like, there's a public, there's a, there's a public official. There's a guy I

bribed. I helped get him elected. I helped get him elected to be city council member. And then he becomes a county commissioner. Like, and I paid, I, I bribed him to rezone lots and stuff like that. So there's all kinds of stuff that's going on. So, you know, it takes days and days and days. And so that happens. And then they said, a dateline, a date line had just on a one hour special on me. So they're like, they want you to be interviewed by dateline. they're going to do another special. Cool. Okay, fine.

So I'm interviewed by Dateline. Horrible. Horrible interview. Like, they cut it up. Like, I just look like. Scumbach. Oh, listen. Total psychopath.

Like, there's just no, you know. I mean, it's not that I'm not psychopathic. Like, I don't have some issues. But I'm saying they didn't do me any favors. I'll tell you that. So, anyway, yeah, so that airs. And they said, here's what they said. if you're interviewed, we'll consider it substantial assistance.

Okay. And I don't know if anybody knows what substantial assistance is. Basically, you know, we'll consider it for a reduction in your sentence, right? So, okay, that's fine. So I'm interviewed. They air it. I'm about to go to sentencing. And they say, my lawyer calls them and says,

says, listen, what are you going to recommend? Mr. Cox, my PSI eventually, because I argued, was 26 years and four months. So because we had argued some of the enhancements, you know, the enhancements fucking kill you. So, you know, I got my loss down from 9.5 million to 6 million. It was a bunch of little things. So I get it down to 26 years, but I mean, I can't do 26 years, bro. So, and it's like, okay, so what are you going to, for his cooperation, what are you going to recommend? And the U.S. attorney says, we're not going to recommend anything. What do you mean? She's like, yeah, we're not going to give him.

We're not going to file a 5K1. We're not going to file one. Okay. And she's like, why? And she said, you know, like nobody was arrested. There's no arrests. He gave us information that we already have and they're still looking into it and the FBI's looking into it. But there's no arrests.

And, and yeah, but he was interviewed by Dateline. Right. I said, you said you'd consider that substantial assistance. And she goes, I did consider it substantial assistance. And it's not. So I considered it and it's not good enough. So they didn't recommend anything and you get 26 years in prison. I got 26 years and four months.

Where did they send you? They sent me to Coleman. A USP or a medium. No, so Coleman is a facility, it's a compound and it's got two pinnich entries, a medium, a low, and a camp. Where are you put? I'm put in the medium, even though I have camp points. Because of the time. The time.

If you have over 20 years to serve, you have to go to a medium. And camp would have been 10 or less. You can go, yes. Camp and then low is 10 to 20. Yes. Okay. So you go to a medium. Right.

What's that like for a middle-aged white guy there for fraud? It's not good, bro. It's not good. It's bad. It's bad. I mean, I had. And this is federal prison. Yes, federal prison.

They're stabbing guys. The guy got stabbed the first day I was there. Yeah. So, you know, these guys are stabbing each other on the yard. They're locking us down. It's a real prison, two tiers. just like you see. They close the doors.

They got, you know, two beds. They got the stainless steel toilet sink combo. Like, it's a, it's bad. Are they thinking you're a sex offender at all? No, but they are thinking that I'm a punk. A punk. Initially. What does that mean to be a punk?

They think you're gay and you're a gay guy, right? Because let's face it, I know you look at me and you think cool guy. But on the, on the, on the masculine scale out here, I'm a five. Okay. Okay. I'm not overly masculine. I don't hunt. I don't fish. I can't talk football with you. I'm fairly intellectual. In prison, I'm a two on a good day. That's if I throw some base in my voice. So it's not good. Like I get in there. I'm a thin, middle-aged white guy. You know, it's bad. I got, I got all kinds of guys coming up to me going, you need anything? No, I don't need anything. I'm good. You need some tennis shoes?

No, I don't need any tennis shoes. Let me talk to you in my room for a minute. I don't think so, bro. Like, I'm walking away from people. So did you have a hard time or not necessarily? So I didn't have a hard time initially. Because initially, I have a PSI that says I didn't cooperate. It's clean.

So you're good in their eyes. So, and what's even funnier about that is the first person I let read my PSI. He reads it, one of my, a cellie, he reads it because it takes a couple weeks to get it in. And everybody says, oh, you can't get your PSI in. I got mine mailed in twice. So I got it mailed in. He looked at it. My cellie goes, hey, man, you got your PSI?

I was like, yeah, yeah, I just got it in. And he's, I'm not thinking. And he goes, oh, let me take a look at it. Like, okay, he reads. He's like, okay, yeah, you're good. I go, what do you mean? He goes, yeah, you're solid, bro. Like, you didn't snitch on nobody.

And I went, where would it say that on the PSI? Like, I have no idea. I never read it for that purpose. Yeah, it would say it right here or here. And he's looking at it. I'm like, oh, okay. And he was like, yeah, yeah, I was just concerned that maybe you cooperated with the feds or something. And I went, no, no, I mean, I mean, I said, but I didn't get any time for it.

He's like, what do you mean? I said, well, I mean, all, everybody had already told on me. So I cooperated. I mean, obviously. And he's looking at me like, and he goes, yo, bro, that ain't good. I wouldn't be telling nobody that. I was like, yeah, but I didn't get anything. He's like, yeah, it doesn't matter.

You ain't you're supposed to talk to? It's like, oh, okay. Listen, I mean, you've been to prison. One guy knows very quickly everybody knows. But they don't, they're not sure. And how can they prove it? Because it's not on the paperwork. It's not on my paperwork.

One guy's saying it. They don't know that he's telling the truth. So probably a year in. Now, right away, I end up working, I end up teaching GED with my buddy Zach. So I'm teaching GED. And within a few months, I'm teaching the residential real estate class. So I'm teaching real estate classes and GED. So, but a year later, an article comes out in the newspaper in the front page of the St. Petersburg Times and it says,

I had been, there was a reporter was writing me letters and asking me about the politician that I interviewed, I mean, I'm sorry, that I bribed. So I'm just answering his questions. And he writes an article that says, letters from prison, you know, prisoner says, you know, mastermind, Matthew Cox, or whatever, says that he bribed this politician. And then they talk to my lawyer, my lawyer, he goes, well, when Mr. Cox was interviewed by the FBI, the first thing they wanted to know about was this politician. Like, that's not good. So I immediately got called the lieutenant's office. I don't even know what's happening. He throws the paper down and says, is that you?

And I'm like, yeah, that's me. And boom, they handcuffed me. So I get arrested inside prison, taking the shoe. I'm kept there for 45 days. And, you know, I go to SIS and they are like, Mancox, that's not good. I'm like, yeah, well, I didn't know it was going to be on the front page. And I thought I was just talking and answering questions.

And he's like, yeah, he's like, that's not good. He's like, what do you want to do? I said, well, I'm going to go back on the compound. And he went, you don't think you're going to have any problems. I was like, I don't think so. I'm like, let's face it. I mean, based on the statistics alone, I said, 90% of the fucking compound cooperated. And he goes, yeah, but 100% of them relying about it.

He said, I think you might have some problems. I said, yeah, well, this is, I'm an hour away from my mom. So I'll fucking put up with it. And I told him, I said, I can sign a strong man agreement or whatever it is. He said, we don't do that anymore. He said, okay, because they used to have something called a strong man agreement where you sign saying, I'm going to go on and I'll deal with it at my own risk. And it doesn't, you know, they don't do that.

anymore. So he goes, yeah, we don't do that anymore. He said, but I'll put you back on. And I said, okay, so he puts me back on the compound. And I've got, so out of the 30, 40 white guys on the compound, you know, there's, there's 1,800 guys there. 80% of them are black guys. 15% roughly, maybe 20% are Hispanic, maybe 30%, maybe it's 70, 30. And there's 30 white guys. which I didn't really hang out with before. You know, I'd nod to them. They were like, Aycox, what's up? So now they're not nodding anymore.

Half those guys are walking by me, and they're looking at me, and then they look down and keep walking. Second half, take me aside at some point and say, yo, bro, he's like, I read that article. I'm like, all right? I'm really waiting to get smashed, to be honest. I really thought I was going to get smashed.

But I figured if I got smashed a couple of times and didn't say anything about it, I would be able to stay. And so the guy goes, I'll be honest with you, bro. He's like, I don't give a fuck what you did. And he just walks off. And they would walk off.

Now, they're not going other way to hang out with me. But then again, most of these guys are locked up for like running a meth lab or, you know, bank robbers or something. Like, I don't have much to talk to you guys about anyway.

So, you know, I'm in my own little world teaching GED in my real estate class. And so, And nobody else is bothering me. I think at one point, probably I've been on the compound a week or two weeks, and a guy walks up to me, remember he had a goatee and he had a little skull at the end of the goatee. You know, scary looking guy, tattoos everywhere, biker guy looking guy.

And he walks up to me, he was Cox. And I go, yeah, what's up? And the shot caller for the white guys was a guy named Bubba. Yeah, Bubba. And he looks at me and he goes, Bubba wanted me to let you know. he don't want to see you on the yard anymore. I said, oh, okay. I said, right.

I said, okay, well, listen. I said, I'm going to go to dinner because it was about to be locked down. I go, I'm going to go to the rec yard. I said, if something happens, then it fucking happens. I said, because I got 20 fucking years to go. And I said, I'm not going to not go on the wreck yard or stay in the unit for 20 years. And if I get fucking smashed, I get fucking smashed. And he looks at me and he goes, man, I'll give a fuck what you do.

He's like, that's what Bubba told me to tell you. So I told you. And he just walks off. Okay. So I go, go to eat. And that night, my cousin,

my buddy, Zach, another buddy of ours, John Gordon, another, like, and two of my cousins, who was also in the prison,

my cousin, who was like cousin-law, but two of his buddies. We all walk the track. Baba comes out with his group of buddies. They're saying stuff. They're looking at us, but they never approach me.

one other time I had a guy Bubba went up and talked to a guy that I was standing in line with and told him hey you know that guy that you're talking to he didn't even call me a snitch which was really polite to be honest Bubba was really very polite to me he didn't say a snitch he said hey I want you to know that guy you're standing with as a confidential informer and if you ever need the white guys

the solid white guys help he said he is you ain't going to get it if I see you talking to that guy anymore and he goes okay Bubba and he walked about 10 feet 10 people back and stood in line And then later in the unity came up to me. He was like, hey man, I'm sorry I had to do that, but this is what Bubba said. And I was like, that's fine. I can't believe his name is Bubba.

So you got 26 years. If you were in prison for 26 years, you'd still be there now. I'd be there till my, with good time, my outdate was 2030. How did you get out early? Well, you know, you're not going to believe this, Ian, but I'm. Smart or resourceful? I was going to say devious, but I'm going to go, I like resourceful. That's so much more polite.

And I knew, and I knew you'd be polite about this. So what happened was this. I was locked up with a guy. First of all, I was contacted by American Greed. There was a TV show called American Greed. There was like Dateline. They sensationalized crime cases, right? They contacted me.

They contacted the U.S. attorney. The U.S. attorney and my attorney, they talked, and they asked me to be interviewed by American Greed. And they said, the U.S. attorney said, we will consider this substantial assistance. And I got a letter that said, we will consider it substantial assistance. Great.

So I was interviewed by American Greed, and they ran it. And after a couple of months, my lawyer went to the U.S. attorney and said, hey, listen, he did the American Greed. They ran it. When are you going to bring them back to be resentenced? And the U.S. attorney said,

it's just not enough. I mean, we considered it, but it's just not enough. And so then I was contacted by a school that teaches continuing education courses for mortgage brokers. All mortgage brokers have to take nine continuing credit courses a year. Three hours of that course is on ethics and fraud. Well, I was contacted by one of the schools. They asked me if I would write an ethics and fraud course for them based on my case. I did. The U.S. they drove, they drove to the,

or went to Atlanta. They talked to the U.S. attorney. My attorney was there. The U.S. attorney agreed to reduce my sentence if I write the course. I wrote the course. They used the course. My attorney goes back to the U.S. attorney and she says, it's just not enough. So at that point, and I know you know this term, you know what a 2255 is. Yeah. Okay. At that point, I go and I talk to a guy named Frank Amadeo. Frank Amadeo is, he's an attorney. He's a disbarred attorney that was locked up in federal prison with me. Frank Amadeo is a rapid cycling bipolar with features of schizophrenia. And he embezzled nearly $200 million. This is the simplest way to put it of the U.S. government's funds, money that was supposed to go to the U.S. government, he stole about $200 million

from them. He used that money to, one, try and buy used F-15s, start several, private military groups and try and take over the Congo. He backed a coup in the Congo. There's a documentary called Nine Days in the Congo. Listen, amazing guy. Brilliant. So he's basically, Frank Amadeo as a result of the biotolar condition and the features in the schizophrenia believes that God is telling him he is preordained to be

emperor of the world. I know you think that's a little odd. but he's brilliant. And he, look, and he has these fits of delusional behavior. And I wasn't going to talk to him at all, but he's walking guys out the gate. You understand he's taking on guys' cases and he's getting 10 years knocked off, five years knocked off, eight years knocked out. And if you've been in federal prison, you know that just doesn't happen.

For every 3,500 2255s that are filed, one person gets relief. I go to Frank, I talk to Frank, I tell him what happened, and he says, that's ridiculous. I'm not going to let that happen. I'm going to take care of this. He actually said, this infuriates me. When my legions march on Washington, I am going to burn the Constitution, and the president will kneel at my feet. And he sat there and he went, and he breathed a few times, and then he went, okay, I'm going to need your sentencing transcripts. I'm going to need a copy of the, he starts naming off all the things he needs. He files a 2255,

and he convinces the government to file a reduction in my case. And I go back to court, and I get seven years knocked off my sentence. So that brings you to 20. That brings me 19 and a half, but roughly, because it wasn't exactly seven. So it's 19.5. So I get back to prison. And I, you know, you're not going to believe this. I still don't want to do 19 and a half years. I know, most people would feel like, you should have kicked back, bro. Like, you were good. You got seven years knocked off your sentence. You're good. But now you had to be devious. Well, I'm, I like to push the envelope. And there was a guy from South Carolina who had run a $57 million Ponzi scheme. He had built pension funds and churches out of $57 million. And you can look him up. His name is

Ron Wilson. I actually liked Ron Wilson. Not enough, though. I don't know that I'd like anybody other than my mother enough. I'm fond of my wife. So here's what happened. Ron Wilson was in the, was in the middle of cooperating in his case against his co-defendants. He'd been locked up. I want to say a year, maybe a little bit more, about a year. Let's say a year.

I get back. And when I get back, you have to understand everybody on the compound knows. And by the way, by this point, I did three years at the medium, but by this point, I'm at the low. So I get back, everybody at the low knows Cox just went to court and got seven years knocked off his sentence. Frank did his 2255. But they also pretty much know why, you know? So, but they know why. But what they really kind of know is that Cox wrote an ethics course.

Cox was interviewed by Dateline an American greed. And they reduced his sentence. So that's kind of reasonable. It's odd, but it's reasonable. So Wilson knows the truth. Wilson knows because I had known Wilson prior to leaving. So I get back. We're walking on the compound, which we did.

He liked me. And so we're walking around and he says, yeah, they're not going to. He's waiting for these people to be indicted, right, and get his sentence reduction. And I'm like, right, right. And he goes, and he's like, yeah, they're not going to give me anything. And I said, why do you say that? And he goes, oh, they think I hid Ponzi scheme money. And I'm like, okay, well, you didn't hide Ponzi scheme money, so don't worry about it.

You know, they'd have to prove that. They'd have to show the judge. Look, we're not going to give this guy anything because of this. And he's like, yeah, you don't understand. I'm like, okay. So he says it again, two weeks later. he says it again two weeks later and then one day i'm like bro why do you keep saying that and now his wife which he was getting divorced from his wife she had found out that he had a mistress for like

two or three years so he's like my wife's gonna he said okay he said he goes can i trust you and i went probably not and he goes and he goes i did put away some money and i went okay i said well Does anybody know where the money is? And he goes, I gave my wife, it's around $150,000. And my brother's got like $30,000 that he's holding for me. It's not a lot of money. And I was like, okay. I said, well, they're not going to tell the authorities that.

He goes, well, he said, my wife knows that I was having an affair. And she's furious. And my fear is she's going to tell them just to make sure I don't get a reduction. Because he had 19 and a half years. And he's like, I'm like, okay. I'm like, well, she would, yeah, I don't think she's going to do that. that and he's like, yeah, I think she is. And he said, and my brother, listen, my brother's good, he's a good Christian guy. They even ask him anything he's going to tell him. And I'm like, okay.

I'm like, well, I doubt, I doubt that that's going to happen, hope it doesn't happen, don't worry about it. I wouldn't worry myself about it. Just keep doing what you're doing. And he's like, right, right. So we walk. And it's funny because I, I laid in bed that night and I thought, is that enough? Like, they didn't want to give me a sentence reduction for doing everything that I had done. And if I, if I tell them about this guy, they're going to be like, we've already given you enough. So even if they were to do anything, first of all, they're not going to give him any more time. He's already got 19 and a half years. He's got to die in prison. He's 65 years old, 66 years old. He's going to, it's over.

So that's one thing. And the second thing is like, these people aren't going to admit that they're holding money for him. So, and even if all that happened, they're not going to give you anything. It's no money. It's not even $200,000. They're not going to give you anything. And I was like, yeah, yeah, it's not worth it. So I had written, at that point, I had written a memoir.

I was in the middle of writing other guys' stories at that point. I was optioning, getting options. I was optioning people's life rights. I got some guys in Rolling Stone magazine. So this is my life now. I'm writing stories, right? So I don't say anything. But my lawyer was supposed to have sent me my sentencing.

transcripts and she never did. So I call her on the phone and this is literally fucking a month later, month and a half later. And I'm disappointed to myself. By the way, like I'd love to sit here and tell you that, um, you know, I waited that month and a half because I wasn't going to do it. I'm actually disappointed that I didn't call immediately. I should have called immediately. I should feel bad about Fuck, no, I should have cut that dude's fucking throat. Listen, I don't believe in the street code. I've seen too many people that have just lied about it. When I was in the medium, I changed two guys' paperwork, by the way, two guys' PSIs,

because I had access to a computer and a printer because I was a GED tutor. I actually changed two or three pages on their PSIs and stuck them in there because they were being pressured because they were Spanish guys. And one was half Puerto Rican and half Mexican. And the Mexicans, they were all giving him a hard time. And he didn't want to get his PSI. He had it. They would have killed them.

He said, well, I don't think they would have killed him. I think they would have given him a hard time. Maybe they stab them. Maybe they make him leave the compound. I don't know. I didn't fall into that group. I didn't get bothered. So, but, you know, these guys were serious about it, right?

Like, I felt like, like, I was a non-combatant in a war zone. Yeah. Like, I keep my head down. I walk away. I don't bother anybody. I do my little job. I come back. And I'm a smart white guy. So these guys are bringing me paperwork to read their, they don't even know when their lawyers write them a letter or the government responds to a motion. They don't know what it means. They can barely read it. I can at least read it and tell them this is what's happening. So they need, I'm Google.

They need Google. So what ends up happening is, so I end up changing a couple guys' paperwork. You know what happened as soon as I changed their paperwork? Within a week, I walked in. One guy's paperwork I changed, the Puerto Rican guy, I walk in and I hear him talking to three of the other guys saying, well, that motherfucker better show his paperwork. He ain't straight. If he ain't straight, he can't stay on this fucking compound.

And I catch his eye and he looks at me and he looks down at the ground. And I thought, you piece of shit, now you're doing what they were doing. like you couldn't you couldn't just keep your fucking mouth shut statistically 90 some odd percent of people cooperate but if you asked all 1800 guys on that compound not one of them fucking snitched so 90% of you guys are bullshit and you're lying

so when you ended up turning in this information what happens well what happened was I called my attorney and I said hey I've been seeing my I need my I need my transcripts and she's like oh yeah I know. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, sorry. She said, hey, she was anything going on in there? I remember thinking, like, like what? Like, you know, you've talked to your attorney. They don't want to talk to you. And I was like, like, what? And she's, I don't know, anything happening? And I thought in the middle of my case, you didn't want to talk to me. And I was like, I don't know. I said, you know what? Something did happen. Something happened about a month ago. Listen to this. I tell her what Wilson says. She says, hold on a second. Pulls him up. She says, oh, wow, this is a bad guy. We're all bad guy. We're all bad guys. And she's like, yeah, let me make a phone call. Let me see.

And I said, I don't think they're going to do anything for me. But yeah, call. And she was, okay. A week later, a guard CEO comes to me. Cox, come here. And I'm like, and you know, you don't talk to the CEOs, right? So I'm like, yeah, what's up? And he just kind of, he looks around.

He's like, you got to go to SIS as soon as the next move comes. I'm like, okay. So I go to SIS's office at the next move. You know, and they have moves at the lows and mediums. So I go to SIS, I walk in, Lieutenant says, sit down, all right, he sits down, he goes, hold on. I go, well, what's going on?

He says, just shut up. You know, they're not polite to you. So he dials the phone. Here, you got to talk to this guy. I pick up the phone on, hello, and the guy goes, hey, my name is, oh, Agent Tom Griffin. And the other guy was Scott Gale.

The other FBI, this was a secret service. His name was Tom Griffin. And he goes, this is Tom Griffin. I'm like, okay, he's like, I'm a secret service. He said, I understand you know where Ron Wilson hid Ponzi scheme. money. I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, listen, I need something in writing. I go, no, I promise you'll

get something. I said, you don't have authority to promise me nothing. I want a letter from the U.S. attorney saying they promised that if they recover any money or there's any indictments, you will reduce my sentence. And he goes, okay, I'll get you the letter. So we swap emails. We get emails, you know, we get on the core link system, we swap emails. And eventually he gets me this letter. And what it said was if anybody's indicted or a substantial amount of money is recovered, either or they would recommend me for a sentence introduction. It's about the best I'm going to get, right? Like they can still say, well, we thought about it.

So anyway, so I tell him this is what he told me. But I don't think the wife's going to give you the money and I don't think this and I don't think that. And I was like, anyway, this goes on for months. And then one day Wilson comes to me and he says, oh, I just talked to my lawyer. I'm like, okay, he said, you're not going to believe this. He's like, they question my wife and my brother. I'm like, okay. And he goes, you know, of course, I'm acting like, golly, gee whiz.

What happened? That's crazy. And I'm like, right, right? He's like, yeah, he said, yeah, my wife told nothing, nothing. And I thought, fuck. He goes, yeah, nothing. And then the next day she came in and she gave him $350,000 and gold bullion and and, you know, a bunch of gold and silver and stuff.

He said, yeah, and I said, I thought she only had like 100 or 150. He's like, ah, she had more than that. I didn't tell you that what the number was. I didn't think I could trust you. Like, oh, yeah, okay. And then he says, and then my brother comes in right after her. He gives them 150,000. I'm like, oh, my God.

He's like, yeah, they got half a million dollars from me. I'm like, oh, my gosh. He's like, I don't know. I don't know what to do. I think they're going to reindite me. And I'm like, no, I don't think they'll reindite me. I hope they'll re-indite you, but I don't think they will. And so sure enough, a couple weeks later, they re-indict Wilson.

And they give them more time. They give him six more months. That's it. Yeah. And when he got six more months, by the way, he found out. Listen, I'm going to tell you something else, Ian, just because I know the haters in the comment. Listen, right now, my wife's shaking her head like, don't. do it, don't do it. Let me tell you, here's what happened. When Wilson first came to me,

now you know there's different levels of cooperation. See, this is the thing. This is the difference between me and all the other guys that are bullshitting, the guys that say stuff like, I had to fight every day and stop it, stop it, you're open about snitching on someone. I give a shit, fuck that. So, like, it's like, at some point I had to go, I had to weigh the respect of my fellow scumbag criminals or 12 years off of my sin. 12 years of freedom, the respect of a bunch of criminals. And I said, yeah, I'm going with 12 years of freedom, bro. I got to go with 12 years of freedom. And, you know, and I hear these guys, I hear these guys, they love to make the leave in the comments, you know, snitches get stitches. But there's been nothing but upside for me. I got no

stitches. It's, uh, it's an interesting topic. because it poses the question for the average person that finds himself. But at the same time, you put yourself there. I agree. And I feel bad. You know, it wasn't your first time at that. Of course not. Of course not.

But then at the other end, you probably shouldn't have been at a medium as someone that did. You didn't, you know, it's such a complicated subject. Well, listen to even more complicated. So there's different levels of cooperation. Yeah. So you can get a certain amount, like some cooperation, ends up being this. Like the guy gets arrested and he says, I got something for you. I'll tell you something to the to the DEA or FBI or whatever. And they're like, right, what is it? My buddy,

my buddy Tommy, he's running a meth lab. And they go, okay, okay. And that's it. You go to the, you go and you never hear anything else about it. And maybe they end up looking at Tommy and maybe Tommy gets arrested. Okay. Yeah. Maybe. If Tommy gets arrested, you might get some time off your sentence. Probably not. And then there are the guys that actively wear like a wire. Like they go, okay, look, we're going to let you out. We're going to wire you up. And we're going to have you make several buys from Tommy. Okay. That guy's got about a pretty good chance of getting his sentence cut. Do you know who has a hundred percent chance to get in his sentence cut? the guy that

the guy that says Tommy did something and Tommy goes to trial and the guy cooperate. He gets on the stand and he testifies. Tommy did this. Tommy did this. Tommy did that. That guy has about a 99.9% chance he is going

to get his sentence reduced. But you know this was this guy was like an innocent bystandard in that in a way for you, your situation. Like it's not like he provoked you. Like, I think there's a difference if, like, someone was, like, threatening you in prison and you had to play your cards to get them out of there. This was someone that looked at you as, like, a friend. A friend.

That was a mistake. I know. It was a huge mistake. Definitely, because criminals are going to be criminals to each other. Right. Like, the idea. It's tough. Here's the way I look at it.

If you're doing scumbag shit and then someone does some scumbag shit to you, like, honestly, like, you can't really, you can't be mad. He was in the middle of cooperating against people too. So, like, that's why I like this channel and platform because I'm not one of those people that are portrayed on social media that are like, fuck the snitches, you're fucking gets shanked, this and that. Like, I'm not that person, you know? My opinion on this is that you don't snitch on someone that's close to you. Like, in my situation, like, my business partner, my best friend turned on me. to save himself and I think that's wrong you know it's just like it's just I would never do that to him that was my best friend I looked at him as a brother and I saved him from prosecution for months you know

and then he flipped on me your thing is just it's it's it's just like it's its own I don't think I understand it's a new level of low so let me go ahead and hit rock bottom so here's the rock bottom part when Wilson came to me and he goes you're not going to believe this I got re-indicted I was like you're kidding me he's like yeah he goes what do you think I should do? And I go, you should go to trial. Because I thought if he went to trial, they'll have to bring me as a witness. And there's no way they won't reduce my sentence if I'm, if I testify against him. And listen, he, he was like, ah, do you think? And I was like, absolutely, bro. You need to drag these people through the mud. You need to work with trying to get the best deal you can.

You need to. And he's like, yeah, I'm going to talk to my lawyer about it. I said, yeah, Absolutely. Absolutely. So anyway, he takes a plea. But you got fucking jerk. You got the ducked. Well, what happened was we went, we went back and we said, hey, what's going on? And the government, you're not going to believe this. The government lied. The government said, we don't even know what Mr. Cox is talking about. We don't know that he's cooperated against anyone. Yeah. So we filed a 2255. Their response was, we don't know anything about this. So we then send the email that shows that they said they would reduce my sense. sentence. And so then basically the judge denies my 2255s, but he says, he waives my certificate of eligible. There's a whole bunch of stuff that he does that basically tells the government, I think this guy has a case. I can't hear it. The appellate court can. They can't let me win at the appellate court level. So they immediately come by and they file a 22, they file a rule 35 motion.

We file one to stop it. Frank comes in and files a motion to stop it. And we negotiate back and forth for the next six months until they agree to reduce my sentence by, it's three levels. At that point, it comes to five years. And you get out at how many years do you end up doing? Just shy of 13 years. I always say 13 because you don't always say 12 years and you're nine months. You do know how to overcome things. I'm extremely devious when necessary. And what's so funny is like the Wilson thing Like I genuinely It just fell in my lap

And I and I It's not like I was going out there Even looking Did he ever find out it was you? Oh of course he did First he wrote a letter back to his old sally Saying I got my discovery Cox was emailing the FBI

And he had he said he told him all kinds of stuff And I was like holy shit He sent it to a guy they called Rick Flair You know everybody's got a nickname So Rick Flair was like 60-something years old. But he looked at it. He looked like Frick Flair. And I'd had two or three people come up to me and say,

Hey, Cox, do you have anything to do with the Wilson thing? And I go, what? I'm like, ah, I don't know what you're talking about. They're like, okay. And they're walking away. They're not really, you know. So I have one guy come up to me and go, hey, bro, I don't, Matt, I don't care. I want out of prison.

I don't want to be around these guys. I'm done. But Rick Flair has a letter from Wilson that he's showing everybody. says you got him re-indicted. I went, really? Okay. And he goes, just letting you know. He said, I don't give a shit. I was like, I got it.

So I go up to Rick Flare and I said, hey, Rick, what's going on? He's like, hey, Docs, what's going on? He looks uncomfortable. And I go, what's going on? He said, I sat there. I said, hey, listen, your wife lives around here, didn't? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, no. She bought a house down the street.

She bought a house, yeah, to be here. I said, right, right? You got a few more years, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I said, I understand, I understand. I said, so I said, here's what's going on, Rick. I said, people are coming up to me and telling me that you're showing a letter from Wilson says that I got him re-indicted.

So I'm assuming you're trying to get me moved from the compound. Or maybe you're just trying to get me hurt. Is that it? He's like, I said, let me sum this up. Now, this is actually not true at this point because at this point, I've only got like a year to go. Oh, and Wilson's been long gone. Wilson's gone. I've been my sentence is in the, well, actually my sentence is in the process of being reduced.

So it's rough, but I know I'm out of here in a year or so. And so I remember I looked at him. I said, listen, I said, let me explain. I said, one more fucking person comes up and tells me that you've shown them this letter. I said, you're going to get transferred to FDC Baghdad. Do you understand? I said, I shit you not. I said, your wife might be able to come see you every couple months.

I said, I don't know what you're going to do about the grandkids. I said, but I promise you this. I said, I said, you're right. I'm a fucking snitch and I'm going to walk right into the fucking lieutenant's office. And I'm going to explain the situation. I said, and here's the other thing. If you're thinking they're going to move me, they won't. I said, because I'm currently cooperating with the FBI in Tampa and they have a hold on me here.

Now, that wasn't true, but he doesn't know that. And I said, they have a hold on me here. I said, so you're going to get transferred. And he goes, nobody else is going to see the letter. I said, okay, thanks. You did your whole sentence at this medium? No, no, is it the medium for three years? At this point, I'm at the low. Okay, you went to the low, and he was there, and they sent the letter.

So here's the other thing that happened. Wilson, so then, after I get my sentence reduced, a guy, a black guy gets off the bus. You know when they get off the bus, they have the bus clothes? Yeah. So he's got the bus clothes. He comes, and even there's 2,000 people at the low. So he comes, and he's in the cube across from me. So he's at the cube across from me

And he goes And he's sitting there And it's about to be count And he just got off the bus He just got in He just got out of R&D And he's standing there And he looks at me

And he goes Hey man you know a guy named Matt Cox Oh my God There's 2,000 people On the compound Probably at that At the low 150 200 white guys

And I'm like yeah And he goes I got to talk to him He said and I went Yeah And I pull up my idea And I go I'm Matt Cox He goes, okay.

He goes, oh, okay. Because I got a message for you from Ron Wilson. Man, listen, heat shot up through my body. I thought, oh, man. Like, everybody already knows I cooperated at this point. But, you know, I'm like, I don't know what this guy's capable of. And I look at him and I went, okay. I said, well, what's the message?

And he goes, you know, I threw some more base in my voice. I was like, all right, what's the message? You know, I act like I'm a little tough guy. Because I'm thinking, I don't know what he's going to do. So he said, And he looks around and he goes, he said to tell you, he hopes you get what he, he said, he said he got six months. His sentence was, he's just been sentenced. He got like six months.

He goes, and he hopes you get as much time off as you can. He understands what you did. He'd have done the same thing. And he wants you to know that he's at peace. He found Jesus. And I looked at the guy and went, okay, okay. And I just, you know, it was a weird, you know what I'm saying?

Weird. And I'm sitting there and he goes, the guy goes, I said, is this going to be a problem? Like, am I going to have to hear that you're walking, run around, telling everybody that? He goes, listen, bro. He said, I got, I think, I don't know what he got like six years or something like that. I got six years. He said, I've been locked up a year. He said, but I ain't going to be here very long if you know what I mean.

I said, I do know what you mean. He goes, all right. That guy was gone like three months later. What year do you end up getting out? I would say it was, yeah, it was 2019. It was the first part of 2019. Yeah, first part of 2000. So basically, I got out of the halfway house July of 2019.

And what year did you start going on social media? It took me like almost like a year and a half to two years. I only went on because I did that Danny Jones, you know, the concrete. I wanted to start, you know, optioning and, you know, selling guys' life stories, right? Like I'd written a bunch of guys' true crime stories. And I'd already optioned a few. So I wanted to, I thought maybe I could do a true crime podcast. not like this, but like a heavily edited true crime podcast about the stories that I'd written

and just about prison and really about crime and prison and how the whole thing, because you know, there's a whole other thing about me being in prison writing these guys' stories. So that's what I wanted to do. So I ended up going on this guy, Danny Jones podcast. It was called Concrete. It's now called Danny Jones podcast. So I went on Danny Jones and that video, I just told my story over the course of about two hours. And it just blew up.

Like it got like, it's gotten like a couple million views. And then I went on Patrick Bet David and I did Vlad. You're on Patrick Bet David's thing? Yeah. Was that before he was as big as he was now? He had over, at that point he had over a million subscribers. He was well over a million. Do you still talk to him?

No, I don't, I don't. I mean, we were never. Like, I talked to his people and I like, you meet him when you walk in. Just like, just like this super like nice guy, really cool guy. Like, I liked him. He was very funny. And if I had to say one negative thing about him, I would say that, you know, he's like six foot six. He's like a giant.

And I'm five, six. He's huge. He's huge. And when I walked in, he was standing on like a platform where they shot the pie. And I walk in, he stayed on the platform. So I was like, oh, my God. This guy's a giant. But he was really nice.

Like after the whole thing we talked and everything, just a nice guy, exactly the same person that you see. on social media. So what's your motivation behind your channel? Like is there a positive message behind it? No, no, there's no positive. And you're open about that? Well, I mean, here's the thing like, I know everybody's like, you know, oh, I want to talk to people about redemption, about, you know, look, I like true crime stories.

I'm interested in true crime stories. I think you hear the true crime stories. These guys went to prison and like, kind of like what you're doing now, right? Like, am I overtly trying to show stories of redemption? No, I'm not pushing that. I'm not pushing anything. It's like, hey, what happened? How did you get into crime?

What were the things that you did? And what are you doing now? It's the same thing, but I see a lot of guys who push the whole, the positive message and this and that. If that happens, that's great. And I've got lots of people in the comment section and, you know, subscribers. and they're constantly doing the whole thing where they say, you know, bro, your story's so inspiring and you inspire me and you. Inspire what the fraud people.

That's what I'm saying. Like, I don't understand. Like they're like, well, I think what they're saying is like, look, you went to prison, you got out of prison, you started your life over, you're doing the right thing, and that's inspiring. But I don't ever try and be inspiring. I never tried to be inspiring. I never tried to say inspiring things. I'm not, I'm just, I like true crime stories.

I like entertainment. I like to be entertained. I went to prison and you hear amazing stories in prison. You have kids? I have a son. Yeah. What would you say to your son? Like what message if you had to sit him down after everything you've been through?

What would you say to him? I mean, he's actually like this amazingly smart, good kid. Like I don't say anything. Thank God I wasn't in his life. You know, I was gone almost as I left when he was like three. But if you had to give him a message? No, I mean, I would, it would be the same thing. It's the same thing that, you know, I have guys that call me and like they want to be mentored.

They want to talk to me on the phone for 30 minutes or some 22-year-old kid who doesn't know what he's doing in life. It's like, find something you love doing, turn that into a career. It's the same thing that everybody says, but like, I don't have anything special. Like, it's, it's find something you love doing and, you know, make that your career, you know, be humble, be appreciative. I was never humble or appreciative, ever. If I hadn't had, if I hadn't have been such a jerk off, I'd have never got myself in this position. And I got, I totally got myself here. Like I, I wish I could say that, you know, oh, well, Ian talked me into it.

Ian did this. Well, if it wasn't for Ian, well, it wasn't for Ian. I was Ian. I'm the one that did it. It was me. I'm the one that talked these people into doing things. So, you know, it's like, and I wasn't appreciative. I wasn't appreciative of what I had.

I wasn't humble. I wanted a nicer car, I wanted this, I wanted everybody to think I was cool, and you know, you get out of prison and my expectations of life have been lowered. So now it's down to I want to be able to turn the channel when I want to turn the channel. I want to be able to watch YouTube and flip channels and read what I want to read and go to bed and go to bed and I want to be able to eat what I want to do, what I want to eat, and, you know, like be appreciative of the small things because let's face it, I had millions of dollars. Millions of dollars, I thought I had a bunch of friends. I didn't have a bunch of friends. Those people weren't my friends. They have better friends now with nothing that I had when I had everything.

Those people didn't care about me. Have you ever done therapy? No, I couldn't. I couldn't afford the amount of therapy that I probably. Do you ever want to try it? I mean, the therapy I did was court ordered. Did you ever have to go to it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, me too. I'd go. But were you stubborn or did you open up? I was stubborn initially. Did you do the group therapy? Because I had one-on-one. It was one-on-one. Yeah, yeah.

They tried to put me in them one-on-one. They did. But you have to meet with the therapist first. And when I met with her, she was like, how are you doing? What's your plan? I said, I'm going to bust my ass for the next year and see if I can put something together.

And she said, well, what happens after a year? So you mean like if after a year I'm riding the bus and I'm living in someone's bare room and I can barely pay my bills. She goes, yeah, I said, I'm going to commit a massive, massive fraud, and I'm going to leave the United States because that's where I fucked up last time.

And she went, okay. Do you think you're a good person? Probably not. But now. Right now, like right now, do you think you're genuinely a good person or trying to be a good person? I think I'm probably trying to be a good. My wife would tell you I'm a good person.

My friends would all tell you I'm a good person. but I'm constantly having to stop myself from doing things and thinking things and stopping myself and saying, that's not the right thing to do. Like I know what the, when you're in my mind, I don't think normal people are like this. Normal people I don't think have to stop themselves from doing the wrong thing and make an effort to do the right thing. and I think that's something I, to this day, I kind of struggle with. My initial reaction is to do what comes immediately to my mind. You know, it's that instinctive, take it.

And then it's like, no, wait a minute, that's going to go bad. And that's not the right thing to do. Do you think the field you're in gives you like a little bit, like some dangerous thoughts? Because you hear some of these guys' stories and you're like, ooh, I could do this better. Oh, I constantly. I hear him and I'm like, oh man, what you need to do is get a fake ID. What you need to do is do this. What he should have done was this.

But I mean, I stop myself and I go, you know, like how, like I have it. It's so good out here. How long were you locked up? Three years. Yeah, bro. Three years is enough. It's enough to know when you walk out that door and you're able to, oh, like, I have like my cell phone, like it's a little box of magic.

Right. I can watch anything. I can find anything. You can make money on this thing. It's insane. It can entertain me for hours. I mean, and you don't know that till it's taken away. And you don't know any of those things of everything that we take for granted in life.

Go to prison for three years. You get out and you're like, I'm willing to work 80 hours a week. I'm willing to learn how to edit videos and do this and do that. I'm going to do the best my ability. I'm going to do this. And I'm going to do that. I'm going to do this. you know and I'm not going to get myself into a position where I do something stupid and I have to regret it again

and maybe that's a lesson in your story yeah that's probably I think you have a shell on you like I don't know like I think like you have a like you have a persona to you but when you get past your shell like there's more to you like I think you want to do good going forward I think you want to well I think what's funny is I have lots of people that will tell me I'm like bro you're always helping me you never ask for anything in return you always this you're on that But I always feel like they're not asking me for anything, you know, like, okay, so it's going to take me an hour to help do your video, or it's going to take me this. It's like you're not asking me for anything. Like, to me, that's nothing. That's just some time, and I have the time.

So I don't feel like you're going out of your way to do anything, or you're asking me for advice, like, which is probably a huge mistake. But I typically say what I think, okay, well, what would a father say? And I tell them what I think they probably should hear and probably won't get them into trouble. Listen, I told you the amount of people that have called me that are currently. running scams or are in trouble or, you know, or people are being indicted. People are this, people are that. And they're like, what should I do? I'm like, yeah, bro, you're going to be a bad spot. Like you need to, they never want to hear what you should do. There's always like, oh, like, I'm going to tell them a special lie to say. And it's like, it's not going to happen.

Like, you're in some shit. You need to do this and this and this and this. And they're like, oh, I don't want to do any of that. I'm like, yeah, me neither. Matt, thanks for coming on the show today. Where could people find you at? And we'll put in the description, too. Yeah, it's, it's Matt Cox's inside true crime, you know, And all the platforms are called it, you know, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. They're all like Matt Cox inside true crime. Cool. Well, thanks again for coming on the show.

Now, I got nothing to shoot back at you now because you did the show. I can talk for another three hours. I don't know. I'm a talker.