Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - BUSTING KEANU REEVES MILLION DOLLAR SCAM | FBI AGENT FRAUD STORIES
Episode Date: April 21, 2024BUSTING KEANU REEVES MILLION DOLLAR SCAM | FBI AGENT FRAUD STORIES ...
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She ends up sending $16,000 in Bitcoin to who she thought was Keanu Reeves.
50 people invest money with him, and he brings in $30 million.
There's a secret trading program among the banks of Europe where they're trading these
bank instruments to produce astronomical rates of returns.
Those investments do not exist.
I remember the ghost payroll scheme.
What was what's going on with that one?
Ghost payroll schemes are interesting because the bad guy is nearly always the payroll clerk
at a company.
And so I had one case in Hawaii where a kind of...
A company was a security guard contractor at Pearl Harbor, not so much the military base, but the tourist attraction there, where you would go see the Arizona and all that.
And so they supply all the security guards to stand there to make sure everyone's behaving themselves.
So you have the company headquarters in Honolulu, and then you have dozens and dozens of employees, you know, or maybe even a couple hundred, working a few, you know, 30 miles away at Pearl Harbor.
So those employees are basically the inventory of the company because they're billing.
them out to the, I guess the U.S. Navy at a certain, or the U.S. government at a certain
dollar amount. And so those people never went to the main office. They were reporting to work
every day. And so there was a woman named Nani Cabral, who was the payroll clerk working
in the Honolulu office there. And what she was doing is she put, I think, three or four
people on the payroll of the company who did not exist as human beings and began basically
clocking them in and out every couple days and generating paychecks or direct deposits.
for labor that never happened.
You follow that?
Yeah.
So I already have a question.
Yeah.
One, are these real, they're not, you're saying they're fake, but are they real social security numbers?
Are they like how does?
Right.
One of them was completely fictitious and didn't exist as a person.
And my understanding is that two were people who were terminated from the company
and then she created the illusion that they were rehired on their social security numbers,
but changed the direct deposit information from their paychecks to bank accounts under her control.
Okay.
So under her control, not in her name, but somebody else opened them.
I think one was a friend of hers or a sister or a family member, but the other was her 14-year-old
granddaughter.
Right.
Right.
I always kills me when somebody thinks that that's how they're like, well, I'm not going to put it in my
name.
I'm going to put it in my sisters.
Oh, because the FBI would never put that together.
Right.
You know, or I'm not going to have the credit cards mailed to my house.
I'm going to have it mailed to my cousins.
Well, when the FBI shows up and says, do you know,
this person, they're going to go, oh, that's my cousin
Jimmy, because your cousin works
at Walmart, and he's just a normal citizen
and most people's
natural responses when
they see it, when they're asked by law enforcement, is
to cooperate. So that's what they're going to do.
Do you know this guy? That's my cousin.
Yeah, that's my cousin Jimmy. Why?
So you might
as well just put it in your account. You might
as well at that point. And so the, what
happens is this. This goes on for quite a while,
I think probably over a year and where she's
enjoying these paychecks for these
fictitious ghost employees and taking that money and using it to enhance her lifestyle.
And then the company has a labor dispute with their security guards that ended up going to
the Department of Labor and being adjudicated there about whether the time spent by the security
guards getting into their and out of their uniforms was time that was on the clock or not.
The company's position is we don't have to pay the security guards to get dressed.
Right.
The security guards position was that, well, no, we're reporting to work in our civilian clothing.
We're going to the locker room there at Pearl Harbor, and we're putting on our security guard uniforms.
That should be time on the clock.
The labor, the security guards, win that fight.
And so each one of them is due a sizable paycheck as a settlement in this lawsuit.
In order to receive that paycheck, they need to actually physically come into the office and sign the legal form,
saying that this is our settlement check and receive their settlement.
check. At the end, well, at the end, after all the employees had been there, there are three
checks remaining. And those are the three checks of the ghost employees who were not able to
come in to the legal department of this company and sign off on him. And then they began
researching, who are these people? Where are these people? Right. And then the whole thing
began to unravel. So at what point were you contacted, who contacted you, and how did you go in?
Right. So the security guard company's attorneys begin to suspect that there's a ghost payroll
scheme unfolding here and that these people are not real. They contact the FBI. I get assigned
the case. And so first thing I do is began taking a look into the bank accounts that the direct
deposits are being made to. And I see that one of them is a 14 year old girl. I began pulling
bank security videos. And what we see is the car of Nani Cabral, the payroll person, pulling up every
other week on payday outside the bank and her sending her 14 year old granddaughter into the bank
to withdraw the money in cash so she could enjoy it.
So what did, first of all, I'm wondering, did she realize all this was happening and it was
going to catch up with her?
Or when you walked in the door to talk to her, was that the first she?
She had been, I think, either terminated or suspended from her job.
Oh, because they figured she was involved.
Yeah, it was important that they get her out of the company, out of their, so, you know,
the evidence could be preserved.
And then me and a brand new agent right out of the academy went to go to her house to knock
on the door to interviewer.
What'd she say?
I'm waiting for you?
She invited us into her living room because she was from Hawaii and people there
are very friendly and hospitable.
And so sat in her living room and said, listen, I wanted to talk to you about this situation
at work.
You know, there were some employees that were placed on the payroll that weren't actually
doing any work.
And I want to understand what your position was as the payroll clerk.
Did you know anything about this?
She's like, no, I didn't know anything about this.
And so then I scooted my chair around the table.
sat next to her and put my hand on her arm and said,
Nanny, we need to talk.
And I go, there's an easy way and a hard way this can happen.
And we know what occurred.
We have all the records.
We know where the money was going.
We know how this all went down.
I think it might be in your best interest to take the path of least resistance
and tell me your side of the story.
Because I don't believe that you did this because you're a bad person.
I believe you did this because you have an extraordinary need for money in your life
to support your family and kind of pay the bills.
And then she broke down immediately and gave me a fine.
full confession. You didn't pull out the surveillance photos first? I didn't need. I mean, I was able to,
I had all that in my back pocket, but before I was going to be doing a presentation of the evidence,
I just wanted to kind of express the confidence to her that we knew what happened. And while I can't
make a deal and say you're going to get less time in prison, I can explain to them that historically,
the path of least resistance will be much easier on her and her family rather than digging in her heels
in fighting this.
And that resonated with her.
So what was the total?
By the time it was over, the loss was quantified at $224,000 that she had enjoyed as paychecks
from these fictitious employees.
What was the other question I was going to say?
Is that do you ever, when you talk to him, do you ever mention like, look, you know, lying
to an FBI agent is a federal crime?
You don't typically.
I don't.
I know agents who do.
and you know I try to appeal to I'm never trying to threaten them I'm never trying to explain
but I want to just I'm trying to express confidence that we know exactly what happened but what we
don't know is why they did it right and I think with her I was saying were you doing this to party
and have fun or are you doing this to support your family right you know because one one makes you
one makes you a monster right and the other makes you someone who's just trying to support your
family and who could disagree with that so I like to steer the conversation more towards
what was your motive?
Like, we know you did it, so let's set that aside.
I'm assuming the sale there.
Yeah, yeah.
But what I want to do is understand your motivation.
And then they generally begin talking about their motivation
and the financial stresses they were experiencing.
I mean, Hawaii is very expensive, right?
And so, and that's how I often get people to confess.
I mean, and she wasn't a hard case.
I mean, she wasn't a lifelong criminal or con woman.
She was an embezzler.
Was she driving a Mercedes?
She wasn't living large.
Yeah.
I mean, her house was nice.
It was nicer than my house.
Right.
And, but, but, you know, did she have that house prior to all this?
Yeah, but I don't know what the mortgage situation was on it.
Right.
I mean, looking at how she was spending the money, it wasn't on anything that extravagant.
I mean, adding $224,000 into your family's life in Hawaii isn't, isn't a game changer.
It seems like a lot of money.
It does seem like a.
I would love to have a $24,000 windfall, but the, as a realistic matter, it wasn't, what she wasn't lighting cigars with $100 bills or anything like that.
I wonder what she was.
I wonder, you know, I often talk to the eyes who have committed financial crimes.
And a lot of times, they never have an end-the-game.
It's like, I can get this money.
And they never realize like, okay, well, wait a minute.
At some point, isn't someone going to come looking?
Well, yeah, but I'll have already got it.
I'll be gone, no, no.
Will that, you know, they don't think that far in advance most people.
Yeah, the, I started my career doing bank embezzlements.
And so the tellers and the bank managers, they're always stealing the money,
but in their mind the way they rationalizes,
they tell themselves that they're borrowing the money
and they're going to return it when their ship comes in,
whatever that means.
When they get the numbers on the lottery
and it's going to like slip that $100,000 back into the vault
and no one's going to know.
Oh, man, did you ever hear about real quick?
I'll just keep going on it.
But this is when you just mentioned the bank thing.
So in China, there was, and I want to say it was a bank of China.
I think we've talked about this before.
There were two employees at like the Bank of China, and they actually have like cash, like tons of just stacks and stacks of cash.
Right.
And one guy at one point took like a million dollars and went out and bought, and I'm sure I got the number wrong, went out and bought lottery tickets.
Mm-hmm.
And scratched them off and said, the worst thing that happened was this.
He won.
Okay.
So he ended up winning out of the alive.
lottery tickets, let's say he borrowed a million, it might have been 100,000, whatever,
let's say a million, he ended up making like 1.3 million.
And then, of course, you know, so it was a windfall, and he was able to put the money back.
So he, but it was such a small amount of money that, you know, as far as volume-wise,
nobody caught it.
But if you, he went back in and he went to the other guy that's like in charge of the vault
and basically broke down what he had done and said, let's steal like $10 million.
And so they go to...
He couldn't quit while he was ahead.
No.
And I always think that's the worst that happened was he made $300,000.
Like it worked.
So that buried him.
Had it not worked or had he not...
He could have put debt back some of it.
Maybe they would have an accounting error.
Maybe it wouldn't have been such a big deal.
But instead, they go in and they take...
And I probably have the...
But it was an outrageous amount of money.
Let's say it's $10 million.
They spent like the whole, like a three-day weekend or something
scratching off.
Like they were literally like bleeding.
They were scratching so.
many and of course they don't win no the lottery's a rip off yeah it's ridiculous it was and it
wasn't even close you know so anyway they end up very quickly people start to realize like
something's wrong here like there was this pie there were three piles now there's two and so they
end up taking off it the whole scam unravels they get caught very quickly because they still had
cash and so they're paying for things cash and you know they're going from one jurisdiction to another
they're having to show passports and whatever, travel docks that.
And so very quickly, they bought a car cash.
Very quickly they get found.
And both are them were executed.
Yeah, I was going to say, I can only imagine what the penalties are in China for white-collar
crimes.
It's, uh, execute.
I think that there was one or two security guards, because there was so much money,
they had to go to them and tell them what they were doing and to get them to look the
other way while they stuck the money out.
Those guys got like five or 10 years, hard labor or something ridiculous.
But, yeah, I couldn't imagine.
I imagine wanting to commit any kind of financial crime in like China or Saudi Arabia or any country that could result.
That takes criminal justice like crazy seriously.
So what else is going on?
Well, let's talk about the epilogue.
So Nanny Cabral, yeah, she played guilty.
And there was nowhere else for her to go.
And she got 21 months in prison.
And which was about right.
It was kind of the low end of the sentencing guidelines.
She was sort of a pathetic character more than a master criminal.
But the other thing I think that people
That's not even worth unpacking.
She'll be in a halfway house in a year.
Right.
And the comment I always get when I tell stories like this is, well, hell,
I would spend 21 months in prison for $224,000.
What they don't understand is that she's got this restitution bill
hanging over her head, right?
Because after she's done with her 21 months,
she has three years of federal probation called supervised release.
And during that window of time,
if she's earning any money,
the government's then garnishing her wages to get to pay back the victim.
Most people never pay back the victim in full.
They have this restitution hanging over their head forever.
But it's not like it's a free money.
You're not trading $221,000 or whatever for 21 months.
Well, first of all, even when the supervision is over, you still owe that money.
Yeah.
You end up with a judgment.
And then that follows you around because they'll attach your house.
Right.
And so it's like even if you said, you know what, I'm not going to pay it, I can't afford, I'm not going to pay it.
Okay, well, now you've got this judgment.
So if you want to buy a house or you have a house,
house or you you know it does it will follow you forever it's a barnacle it's not yeah it's a bad
deal and so so when when the smarmy kids in my comments talk about like well i would do that for easy
i could do 21 months standing in my head it's not that easy it ends up being a bit of a life
sentence unless you have some kind of windfall to truly pay back the victim then can you imagine that
like suddenly you make 300 000 in government says oh no right well can i have some of it no
no you owe 250 000 you can have 50 exactly and you're paying taxes on the whole thing so we're
to take that too. It's just not worth it. Right. It's just not worth it. Anyway, so that's the
90 Cabral story. The answer for companies who want to make sure that they are not victimized
by ghost payroll schemes is to every now and then figure out a way to take attendance, to
reconcile the people getting direct deposits or paychecks or pay stubs with the people with your
labor force. This type of scheme only works in companies where there's a physical separation
between your workers and the administrative office. Right. And so in this case, I also had another
case, someone kind of bore you with the details, but it involved a parking garage where they had all
these parking garage employees and kind of people driving shuttle buses to and from the garage
in the headquarters was elsewhere. We had a guy there who's using an app-based system to log in and
out fake employees. So you see these ghost payroll schemes again and again and again, and
companies need to worry about it if they have a large employee base that's never seen by the corporate
headquarters. Do you have a mass mailing scheme? It's funny you should ask Matt Cox. I do have a
story about a mass mailing scheme this guy was named ronald maria this is another story that goes
back to hawaii and he was kind of an old school frauder uh using a um a old school way of defrauding
he i think he took a page from the kind of Nigerian defrauders he ended up buying a mailing list
and you could buy mailing lists of senior citizens who have fallen for frauds in the past you can
get these off the internet and so he had a list of like a thousand names of senior citizens who had
and had fallen for some kind of fraud here or there in the past.
And instead of emailing them, what he did is he actually wrote them all letters.
And the letter said that he was the president of the Ronald Maria Trust.
And he was a multi-billionaire.
And he had chosen this recipient of this letter to be a part of the Ronald Maria Trust,
where they would kind of become part of the trust.
He was very vague about what that meant in the initial letter.
And then all of their bills would be taken care of for the rest of their life.
lives and and so because that happens completely preposterous right and it didn't really work right so
he sends out a thousand of these one guy responds this 80-something year old guy in samamish Washington and a
response said I'd like to learn more and then they begin communicating via email and I got my hands on
the entire email chain and in the old man explained that he had been married for 50 years to the
same woman or like 60 years some astronomical amount of years
and his wife was suffering from severe Alzheimer's disease and she could and he was her caregiver
and so he was changing her diapers feeding her there was nothing that he wouldn't do to help
help his wife and rana Maria pounced on that and said that he had developed a cure for
Alzheimer's disease so just so happens what luck yeah and so the old man would have done anything
to get his wife back and latched on to this one piece of hope that it was being offered by rana Maria
And they, and Ronald Maria said, all you need to do is join the Ronald Maria trust.
The old man's like, what do I have to do?
And he goes, the first thing you need to do is put your assets into the trust and then I'll
begin paying your bills.
And so with your money.
So the old man then began liquidating his assets, sending the balances of his bank accounts
to Ronald Maria.
And the bills kept piling up.
Rona Maria wasn't paying anything.
He was just enjoying that money for himself.
And then he began having the old man get credit cards under his name and then getting
cash, then maxing out the credit cards, getting cash advances, and sending that money to
Ronald Maria. He had his Social Security direct deposits changed to Ronald Maria's bank account,
so it was being deposited in Ronald's bank account. And so basically he got this man so wrapped
around the axle, promising that he was going to save his wife that he was going out there
and having, you know, he would have his IRS tax refunds routed to Ronald Maria. And the bills
were not getting paid. He's getting letters from the bank. And everything. And everything.
everything's kind of going really poorly for him.
$682,000 this man gave Rano Maria to save his wife.
And Rana Maria just took that money and spent it like a drunken sailor.
Wow.
I learned about this case when the old man's like daughters who were like in their 40s or 50s themselves, you know, went to the house and saw the stack of unpaid bills, you know, credit cards that they didn't know dad had and began asking him questions.
he referred them to his AOL email address.
The girls start looking at it and just lost their minds.
They're like, oh, my God, dad.
And they contacted the FBI, which is how I got the case.
And so I began, and so the FBI, one thing to understand is that we generally don't work single victim frauds, you know, unless it's like a big corporation embezzlement.
But leave that aside.
For advanced fee schemes or investment frauds, the, we generally want to see multiple victims there.
figure if there's just one, if it's a dispute between one victim and one bad guy,
they can sue each other in physical court, in civil court, rather.
It's very rare that we're going to work a one victim case.
But to me, I lobbied for this case, even though it was a one victim case with the U.S. Attorney's Office,
because I felt that the behavior was so egregious.
Right, right.
And so began putting it together, looking at C.
Did Ronald Maria have any assets I could seize?
No, he was just kind of spending it on.
Furnalist stuff.
He was leasing cars and renting cars and stuff that wasn't.
He was smart about that.
There wasn't any assets I could really kind of latch on to.
He had pretty much depleted his bank account at that point.
And so I finally confronted him and had him come into the FBI office to come talk to me.
And he presented his point of view that he felt he had the ability to do this trust.
And it was more aspirational.
And I said, well, that doesn't count.
And so he ended up signing a confession there in my office.
and I mean he really tried to justify it at first he was trying to rationalize it he wasn't saying
this never happened he was saying saying well you know I do have a trust and I said well you know
where is this trust have is it something that's been filed where are the bank accounts for your
trust and he said well you know there are no bank accounts for the trust it was more notional
and it was a goofy explanation it was a goofy guy and so we you know we indicted him and then
arrested him and then and then you know he bonds out and then he ended up pleading bonds out well you
bond out because he's not a flight risk and he's not a danger to the community and those are the
only two things like a danger of the community I think I mean only the over 80 community right
I think the idea was that he was not going to be committing crimes while he's out on bond I don't think
he did and um and so then he gets sentenced uh to 41 months in prison and um and it was weird
I remember after the sentencing, like, I normally don't have, like, a hard on for my bad guys.
Right.
To me, it's just business.
Like, you know, and so, but this guy, I found him so reprehensible what he did to this old man.
Like, absolutely just gutted his life and took away his family's future and did it, like,
latching on to this man's love for his wife and the Alzheimer's thing just offended me.
And I remember, Ronald Maria was a weird guy.
He came up to me after the sentencing and wanted to shake my hand.
hand and like you know a good game and i told him just to get the hell out of there i don't want to shake
his hand and told him to leave and so that was the and then he went and served his time and i have no
idea where he is now um how old was he he was probably see i was like 40 he was probably like my age
40 42 um that i was just going to say that uh did you ever see the movie uh matchstick man
Oh man, if I did it was way back in the day
They basically
It would make phone calls to people
And they would say
This is one of the many scams that they were running
It's a great movie
They would make phone calls to people
And
Get you on the phone to buy
Like a water filter or something right
And so you'd buy it
And then they would jump in their car
And they would go to the residence
And knock on the door and say
Hey, we're with the FBI
Have you recently been contacted by
someone buying, selling water filters?
And they're like, yeah, and they're an elderly couple.
They're like, you know, but they're still only late 60s, maybe, early 70s.
And so the woman's like, well, yeah, I bought it because we win a vacation prize with it.
It comes with it.
And the filter wasn't that much.
And he's like, ma'am, you've been, you didn't, did you pay with a credit card?
And there, she's like, yeah, you know, and they're like, and we better come in.
So they come in and they explain you've been victim of a scam.
most likely they're going to take everything in your bank account.
We can stop that from happening and get your money back.
You just need to fill out this form,
which gives us access to your bank account so we can stop that from happening.
Of course, they think, well, this is FBI.
Of course, they fill out the form.
They go straight to their bank account, wipe them out.
Yeah, I've seen online version.
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Where scammers overseas, where India or Nigeria or whatever are pretending to be the FBI,
kind of re-victimizing the people who've been ripped off in that same way.
People don't realize, like, if you're a victim, you're even more likely to be re-victimized.
Yeah.
You know, you would think, oh, no, well, you're not going to hit me twice.
No, no, you're even, especially if you're saying, I'm trying to get you your money back.
Then it's even easier to get them.
Dig this.
I got a call on Saturday from a woman who believed she was in an online romantic relationship with Keanu Reeves.
And the, and she had met him online, met Keanu Reeves online.
And he immediately switched the conversation over to telegram in the communication app.
And Keanu Reeves was explaining to his new soulmate that he had been, his money had been,
His money had been locked up by the IRS.
His account had been frozen due to some misunderstanding.
But he needed some money.
So he needed some money from his new girlfriend that he would pay back as soon as he had this all sorted out.
She ends up sending $16,000 in Bitcoin to who she thought was Keanu Reeves.
And then she begins having some misgivings thinking maybe this wasn't Keanu Reeves.
It gets better.
And so then she was contacted via telegram by former FBI agent and private investigator Tom Simon out of the blue.
with my face and everything like that.
I'm not on telegram, never been on telegram.
Oh, wow.
And then this fake version of me wanted $4,000 from her to get the $16,000 back.
And she was just about ready to send the, the Bitcoin to the fake Tom Simon.
Tom Simon asked for Bitcoin?
Yeah, shocking, right?
Yeah.
And then she decided she wanted to double check it out.
She Googles me, finds my phone number and calls me on Saturday morning.
And I said, I've never spoken to you, that someone is.
pretending to be me online to steal from you and I'm going to break it to you gently.
That wasn't Keanu Reeves.
Right.
That,
I was going to say,
that reminds me of the,
that's very similar to the Tinder swindler.
Yeah.
Did you ever watch that?
It was a great documentary.
It was a great documentary.
I was,
I was in shock at how many women he was juggling and was able to convince,
but he also was all in.
Like he's picking up one,
he's using the money of one woman to wine and die in the next one and then taking
her money and like he just kept going and going he was but he was blowing all the money like once again
it's like where does this end but it was so international that he had done it forever yeah and it
wasn't catching up with him yeah amazing Netflix has been killing it lately with their true crime
documentaries they've had some amazing that i think it's the same film crew did like tinler swindler
that don't eff with cats was pretty amazing and then that latest one um american
a nightmare no american nightmare wow that was heavy yeah that was uh yeah that was uh
I was going to say there was another one that I thought was amazing was for it actually
was because it was just so over the top bizarre was bad vegan did you ever see that no no
you should see that it's one of these things where at first you're like yeah I could see that
and then it gets progressively worse and worse you're like what are you thinking like at this point
like I get it he's a Don Juan kind of guy you lend him a little money here a little there but but then it got to
the point where it was just absolutely bizarre what he was saying and it was like at this point
you had to say to yourself like this is not right something's very wrong you gotta check that out
it's super interesting and what was so interesting too is he this guy had put her into contact with
somebody who was verifying everything he said kind of like his his handler with the CIA but really
it's just him with another email yeah so but she's like yeah but you know john said john john's just
an email. It's him, you know. It was really, it was really interesting because they actually had
someone play that character in an interview. So while you're hearing his version of how he was
being emailed by her and backing up the main subjects bullshit, you think, well, the whole time
you're thinking, he exists. And then suddenly you realize he doesn't exist. They're just having
somebody play the email character. Yeah. Oh, it's great. It's a great.
That's awesome.
I got to check that out.
Like I would love to get in bed with Netflix to do a documentary with them.
Yeah.
Well, wouldn't that be nice?
Yeah, I know you probably would too.
It's just they just do such a nice job of unfolding these otherwise benign crime stories
and making just them edge on the seat entertainment.
Right.
Well, you know what happens is the way it works is like it's a production company.
Yeah.
Goes to them and pitches it.
Because trust me, Netflix has heard my name.
Yeah.
They're not interested in my story.
But anyway.
Right, yeah.
I thought it was interesting because he was.
was gone and you thought I'm just going to put so much pressure on this fucking guy. His name is
Peter Heckman. Okay. And he was a German national and he was a very, very talented music producer.
And so, you know, hadn't really made it huge yet, but like, you know, local Hawaiian artists would
hire him to produce their CDs back when that was a thing. And he was really good. But he wasn't
making a fortune doing it. And he was living on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, which is a very kind
of insular community. And he came up with an investment plan. And his story to the,
the people of kawai and there's a lot of money in kawai it's kind of a haves and have not society and
he was running with the halves and he was telling them that and he took dozens of people's money
telling them that he what he was going to be doing is getting old apple computers and mackintosh's
and refurbishing them with kind of new hard drives and upgrading everything and then reselling them
and then he could do that at a tremendous profit and he was promising people astronomical rates of return
you know double your money in 90 days type stuff and he took in 1.2 million dollars
from people on Kauai for this investment plan.
And he did pay some back,
but he was paying them back with other people's money, right?
It's a Ponzi scheme.
What we call a Ponzi scheme.
And he was also enjoying the proceeds himself
because Kauai, like all the Hawaiian islands, it's very expensive.
And so time marches on and the FBI gets the case.
It wasn't my case.
It was someone else's case at the time.
And he's indicted for this fraud.
And so he's, you know, I think he surrendered at that point.
And he was in plea negotiations.
and then he disappears into thin air.
So does he plead guilty?
He's not plead guilty.
He's during the plea negotiation process
while he's out awaiting trial.
But again, he has an attorney who's trying to like,
federal defender who's trying to negotiate the plea for him.
And then Heckman just disappears into thin air.
No one knows where he is.
I don't think they got his passport.
And so time march is on.
I get to Hawaii.
I'm assigned the case,
but not the case to investigate the fraud that had been done
by someone smarter and better looking.
My job was to find Heckman.
And so I used some pretty sophisticated investigative techniques.
And I began Googling Peter Heckman.
And I found that he was on the Indonesian island of Bali, living quite comfortably, producing local music artists with his record label.
The problem is Indonesia is one of those countries that does not have an extradition treaty with the U.S.
Right.
Was he a U.S.
He said he was German.
It's a German national, living legally in the U.S.
But now he's in Boston.
So doesn't that even make it harder?
It makes it completely harder.
We're stymied.
He could literally sit on the beach with his middle finger raised toward Hawaii.
And there's nothing we could do about it because the Indonesian government was not going to serve him up to us.
Okay.
So I come up with a scheme.
My first scheme was I was going to, I did an undercover operation where I told him that I had a band named Frenzy that I wanted him to produce.
It was my son's.
band allegedly and I wanted him to produce their record because I heard heard one of his records that
he had done for a Filipino rock band and I really liked the sound and so I'm communicating with him
via email and undercover capacity and he's like yeah come on out to Bali I'm like you know what I told
him we worked on the on the island of Saipan do you know much about Saipan no Saipan is in the northern
Marianas Islands but they have an extra distance treaty right it's about a three-hour flight from
Guam, you don't know this, but Saipan is a U.S. territory. We invaded the German, the Japanese had
invaded it and taken it during World War II, and then we took it back. And so the northern
Marianas Islands is a U.S. territory, but most people don't know that. And I was counting on the
idea that Heckman would not know that. Right. Most people don't know that. Right. But in my assumption
was that Heckman wouldn't know that either. So what I did was I told Heckman that, uh,
that we'd be happy to fly him to Bali, I'm sorry, from Bali to Saipan
and pay for all his expenses while he's there in exchange for recording this band.
And so he agreed.
And so I paid for a round-trip plane ticket using FBI money.
And I flew to Saipan, and I'm standing there at the airport, and he never showed.
He stood us up.
Did you find out why?
Did he just drop?
He had an excuse.
He said he was having heart palpitation.
and went to the hospital, but he didn't show.
And so I came back, I flew all the way to Saipan.
It was like an eight-hour flight and then flew all the way back to Honolulu with my tail between my legs because I was flying back without Heckman.
Did you try and get him again?
Like, are you feeling better?
I looked like a jerk to my, hold on.
I looked like a jerk to my, and the conversation just sort of.
And so at one point I told him, so when Kanye West was on, um,
was in Hawaii recording his album, 808s and heartbreaks at the time.
And so I got back to him and said, hey, listen, this is crazy.
But my college roommate, I'm still in my undercover capacity.
My college roommate is Kanye West manager.
And he said that Kanye would be willing to be on a track with Frenzy, the band.
So if you could come back to Saipan, Kanye is willing to fly out there to do a track.
This is going to be a big deal for you.
It's going to be a big deal for me.
And it didn't go anywhere.
Okay. And bottom of mind, is the whole thing kind of fizzled out.
Do you feel like he knew? He felt like...
I thought he probably did, but he's playing his role as like the honest guy.
He had changed his name to Hans Heckman at the time, but it was still Peter Heckman.
And so the... And so I... The whole thing kind of went away, but it was seething inside me.
I was thinking, oh, my God, I'm so angry. One, that he made me look like a monkey with my colleagues.
And two, you know, that he burned me for a plane ticket.
And so I thought, you know what?
Why not just do what I do?
And I began contacting the musical artists on his record label.
And most of whom were Balinese and Indonesian kind of folk groups, basically sending them
articles that, hey, this guy that you are associated with is a con artist.
And he's ripped people off and he's a fugitive from the law of hiding.
Do you want to be associated with him?
And then there's a local TV station that I have a good relationship with in Hawaii called
Hawaii News Network.
It's like their local TV.
It's the CBS and the NBC affiliate in Hawaii.
And I contacted a reporter and I began doing stories on the news about this fugitive that we're looking for who's in Indonesia.
We know exactly where he is and we're trying to get him back.
And so it became this big thing and it kind of went viral on YouTube, the stories of me ranting and raving like a lunatic about this con artist hiding in Indonesia and how dare he steal from the people.
And who are these musical artists who are doing business with this guy?
And so after about a week of that, I send him an email asking him, hey, have you had enough?
Right.
And he's like, yeah, I have had enough.
What can we do to resolve this?
And so I put him in touch with an FBI agent who was at the embassy in Jakarta.
And they flew together voluntarily and met me in Honolulu when he surrendered himself to me.
Okay.
And so he didn't come in handcuffs because we couldn't arrest him in Indonesia.
obviously once he arrived in Honolulu he was under arrest but at that point he came back
voluntarily he was tired of being a fugitive he was tired of kind of living looking over his shoulder
waiting for the next shoe to drop i had rolled a grenade into his very comfortable life as a music
producer his record like his artists are pissed off at him because of me he's all now you know
for that window of time if you googled him or anything about him or the bands that he worked with
he was associated with this fraud and running and so that amount of pressure
he thought he would take the path of least resistance, put this behind him, go back to Germany,
which is probably where he wanted to be to begin with, and begin rebuilding his life.
Right.
So we're in the car.
We're driving to the FBI office from the airport.
You know, he arrived at like five in the morning on a red eye.
And he asked if he can stop and have a cigarette.
I was like, yeah.
And so we pull over on the side of the road in the highway in Hawaii.
And he's like leaning against the roof of my car, smoking a cigarette.
And I said, I got to ask you.
when you got that email from us saying that we wanted you to go to Saipan to produce this record,
did you know it was us?
I guess, yeah, I knew it was you all right.
So I wasn't fooling anybody.
And so, so Heckman, again, nicest guy in the world talking to him.
I mean, I think it was one of those Ponzi schemes that just sort of got out of hand.
And I'm certainly not rationalizing his behavior.
I mean, he took $1.2 million from innocent people who will never see that money back because he was deported back.
to Germany after he did his time and he got 44 months in prison and then got sent back to
Germany and so I don't think anybody got their restitution money, but I finally got my man
as a result of just putting kind of like using the media and social media to put pressure
on him to just surrender and put this behind him. But my understanding is that he's still alive
and well in probably producing music and he's a very talented guy and I suspect he's learned
his lesson from this this crazy few years of his life that he was on the run from the FBI.
And I wish I'm nothing but the best.
Yeah, you would hope so, right?
I was going to say, have you ever had anybody where they went back to their, you know,
country of origin and they wouldn't release them back to the United States?
Like, I didn't have a whole lot of that.
I mean, I think, I suspect that some of my, I still had some outstanding fugitives when I retired
and I don't know where they are.
But without me identifying where they are, it's difficult to make that ask of the government.
I mean, we could certainly ask their home governments.
But most people, most foreign governments are not super excited about sending their citizens to the U.S. to face trial unless it's something that truly shocks the conscience, like a triple homicide or something like that.
So it only, an extradition only really works if there's a third party government.
If, you know, if a German guy is hiding in Indonesia, the Indonesians aren't looking to, you know, but then you have to have the treaty in place.
We just didn't have a treaty with Indonesia at the time.
shoot, there was a guy
named Scott Pritcher
and I forget his girlfriend's
name was like Nova or something.
They were robbing banks and they went
to South Africa
and at that time the U.S.
didn't have a treaty with South Africa
and I watched a documentary on it
and I actually knew a guy that had been locked up
with Pritcher because of course he ended up
in federal prison and he
the FBI went to South Africa
hung out where they
it turns out that she was working
Nova was working at a bar
as a waitress. He's day trading
at their little condo.
Some guy
one day went into
the post office and had just come back from South Africa
and was like, that was my waitress.
Went onto the website and saw pictures of her,
went to the FBI and said,
this is the waitress. Look, here's the website
for the bar I hung out with
when I was there for two weeks. That's her.
So they send two FBI agents.
They watch her for three or four days.
Somehow another, they got her prince.
They made sure it was her.
And they followed her back to the condo.
And then they said they contacted the local law enforcement.
They said, at that time, they didn't have an extradition.
And they just told them, we're in this area.
Two of our citizens, bank robbers, convicted bank robbers, are here.
We're going to grab them and we're taking them to the airport.
Could you please notify anyone in the area?
You know, and they said, grab them.
And they grabbed them and took them to the airport, put them on a plane and flew them back.
Yeah.
Because, you know, they were like they, so that's why sometimes the cooperation with South Africans goes above and beyond.
Right.
We've really kind of generated good relations with them, law enforcement to law enforcement.
And, you know, we're anytime they want the FBI to come out and do training on interview, interrogation, you know, like forensic science stuff, the FBI hops on a plane to do that.
So if you're trying to hide out in South Africa, that's probably.
the bad country to do it yeah i was how on somalia instead we're not going to get as much cooperation
there um oh man i knew a guy had a had a somali story that's out of this world but um
uh i was going to say um yeah like south africa i was like talking about like telling Putin not to
show up for the this whatever it was conference or something like don't show up we're supposed
to arrest you we're going to have to arrest you now they're asking permission like from the
you know whatever the international court like can we not arrest him like we which is amazing
because you would think that they would just say, look, we're just not going to arrest.
Like if they didn't, you know, we don't want to be involved in this.
We don't want to get into a war with Russia or that Putin would say, okay, I'm not going to go if you guys are going to.
But yeah, that's becoming a whole.
So they're very much a law and order, you know, state, I guess, or country.
Sorry.
Yeah.
You have another Kauai story.
What's up with that?
All right.
This guy was James Lull.
He was the Bernie Madoff of Kau is what the local media tagged him at.
Nice.
And he's a mortgage guy.
And so.
Come back.
Right. And so he was basically offering, he was offering people investments in bridge loans, basically saying that for people who needed a high interest loan for 90 days to get them through the closing to when they, their real mortgage closes. He was offering. And so that was the product that he was telling people, but he was taking third party investors to allegedly fund those bridge loans. But promising them, again, astronomical rates of return with low risk. And that's always the red flag, isn't it, Matt? The idea that you're going to be able to make.
investment and get super high returns coupled with low risk. There's just no such thing in the
real world, right? Because the more risky, the higher the return, you know what I'm saying? A lower
risk than the lower return. So to think, oh, I'm going to have low risk and high return, well,
then it's a fraud. Exactly. You could go to Las Vegas and bet red or black on the roulette table
and double your money. But the risk of you losing all that money is 50%. Or more than 50%.
But anyway, but people don't get that. And they certainly didn't get that in Kauai. And so 50 people
invest money with him and he brings in $30 million.
Yeah, that's a lot of money. Right. And so
Americans, was he making the bridge loans? No. Well, there was, I mean, there was some bridge
loans happening, but not enough to sustain this. And so he's paying people back again with
their, with other people's money. It was pretty much, it just became a Ponzi scheme after a while.
The, but with, as with all Ponzi schemes, he's taking a sizable portion of the money for
himself. And he had two weird collections that we ended up seizing that he was spending a fortune on.
I didn't know that either of these two things were collector things.
One, he collected meteorites.
Have you ever heard of this?
Meteorites that fall from space, you know, these rocks are collector's items.
People want these things from outer space.
And there's a whole secondary market where people are buying and selling meteorites.
And he was spending thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on meteorites.
He had a weird collection.
I only know that because I've read a couple articles about this kid that was collecting them.
because I guess they have like plutonium or so.
They have something like uranium or something.
Or they're radioactive and he was building like a reactor in his garage.
It was a real thing, like a genius kid.
And the other one was there was a meteor that was supposed to be worth X amount of dollars.
And it was a part of a huge fraud.
But yeah, that's the only reason I know about it.
I wouldn't even think you could find a meteor.
But these guys go around with metal detectors in like the desert and they'll find them.
Yeah.
But evidently there's this whole secondary collector's market.
I mean, maybe if you go on eBay, you can type in meteorites and buy a meteorite.
But this guy had a massive collection of meteorites that the government ended up seizing.
I'm not sure what the government did with the meteorites.
He also had a weird collection of pool cues, you know, billiard cues.
I know that's the thing too.
Yeah, like diamond-encrusted ones and like some of these pool cues were so expensive.
I had no idea that was a thing, right?
I suck at pool.
But when I play pool, I'm generally just grabbing one of the house cues and using it.
And it's all like twisted and curled and covered in like blue chalk.
But he had these beautiful, pristine pool cues.
that he was collecting.
I was going to say, what's the, um, the, is it the color of money with Tom Cruise or something
like that?
Yeah, yeah, sure.
He had a, I want to say it was a balabushka.
I think he said, I think it was called a balaboo.
Like, is that a balabushka or whatever?
He was like, oh my God, this is worth like $10,000 or something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So there's these subcultures out there that have collectors items that I was thoroughly unfamiliar
with, but that's how he was spending his money.
So he, again, pleads out pretty easily.
Like, you know, there was no, like, fight among him.
He, you know, he, the FBI gets the case.
It was not my original case to investigate, but, um, but it became my case when someone transferred
out and I transferred him.
And so he pleads guilty and goes to Washington State, somewhere near Topeka to, um, well,
can I ask how it fell apart?
It falls apart because all Ponzi schemes fall apart because you can't bring in enough money
to sustain the payments to all the previous people.
And you're actually not doing any income producing activity to get people paid back.
They were, you know, there were, if there were any bridge loans, there were hardly
any bridge loans. And so like all pyramid schemes, it collapses under its own weight. And then the
victim start calling the FBI saying, help, help, I've been robbed. Okay. So somebody contacted the
FBI and said, hey, always. This guy's not even returning emails. I worked hundreds of Ponzi schemes
over the course of my career. And the cases nearly always originate from a victim complaining, right?
They're never complaining as they're getting their returns. But once the guy stops paying and
begins offering them excuses about the stock market in the EU or some financial collapse that they
never heard about. Then they begin getting suspicious and called the FBI.
Okay. So FBI gets the case, works up the case, pretty simple as far as these things go.
He pleads guilty. Obviously, Kawhi is no longer a comfortable place for him to be because of all
the victims there. He goes and he's chilling out in like Topeka, Washington, awaiting
sentencing. So sentencing day happens. I show up to the courtroom, you know, my little suit.
The AUSA is next to me at the council table. And the galsals.
Valerie is filled with people who had flown in to Honolulu from Kauai, his victims, looking to make their victim impact statements to the judge, basically asking for James Lull's head on a spike.
But James isn't there?
The defense attorney's there.
The judge...
Stop.
Do you know how fast you were going?
I'm going to have to write you a ticket to my new movie, The Naked Gun.
Buy your tickets now.
I get a free Tilly Dog.
Chilly Dog, not included.
The Naked Gun. Tickets on sale now.
August 1st.
up.
It's defense attorneys.
Exactly.
James Lowell is nowhere to be found.
And so, you know, we'll recess, come back in a half hour.
You know, he's flying in from Washington State, et cetera.
Recess, come back in a half hour, no James Lowell.
No one can get a hold of this guy.
And so the judge issues a bench warrant and basically looks at me and says, Agent Simon,
this is yours now.
You've got to find the guy.
So he had pled guilty.
What was the pre-sentence report recommendation?
foundation. I don't know. It was pretty high. I mean, it had to be in the, you know, probably
10 year range, right thing for a 30 million dollar loss. Yeah, because I'm just wondering like,
why didn't he want to show up? He must have looked at the 10 years and said, I just can't do
this. But to me, now you're getting even more time because they're going to catch you. So that
10 years, that's going to go up. Right. Right. Exactly. And so, and so I immediately,
so the judge recesses, it's my problem now. There's a bench warrant for him. I immediately walk
over to the defense attorney and I say, you got to help me with this.
I do not want your guy to be shot by some cop who sees him and sees he's an FBI fugitive.
And I go, because we're going to be blasting this thing all over the media.
This is going to be a big story, no matter what I do.
We need to figure this out together so he could safely surrender and not get hurt.
Okay.
And the defense attorney is like, I don't know what to tell you.
I just do not know where he is.
I spoke to him yesterday.
And I go, okay.
And so I call you as probation.
I ask for the points of contact from his,
a probation because they're supposed to be keeping an eye on him.
Right. I knew he had family here and there. I knew he had some friends here and there.
I'm at my desk, like, working the phone, sending leads for FBI agents all around America
to basically fan out and catch this guy. The news is putting, the TV news are putting together
their stories for the 5 and 6 p.m. broadcast. And then my phone rings. It's a military police
officer at some military base near Tacoma, Washington. And he said that that morning at 7 a.m., someone
had driven an SUV off a cliff and it fell on a public road and it fell down into land that
was technically the military's land in this valley and they went down there and they
got into the vehicle there's a dead guy in the car and he's got James Lull's identification
on him and all these court documents on the passenger seat indicating a federal case involving
James Lull and I was like all right and so I basically call everybody call off
the dogs. I thought, you know what? We got to make sure it's him. Right. And so I send some new
agent from Seattle to go down to Tacoma to go to the morgue to roll his fingerprints. And it was
James Lill. Oh, okay. He decided to kill himself the day before his sentencing rather than actually
face the music. I don't, you know, I, I kind of get that, you know, because people are so
concerned about prison. Yeah. But do you think that's a fair concern for a white color guy? No.
Yeah, not for a white collar guy.
So look, if you're a white collar guy and they send you to a pen, you're a victim.
Like, I'm not prepared to go to a pin.
You can't send me to a pen.
Like, I'm not going to do well.
You know, I've talked to guys that have been in pins.
And about 90% of them say, you'd actually be okay.
You know what I'm saying?
As long as you, you might get pushed around.
You might have a couple guys trying extort you.
You might even have to pay extortion money.
Not to be clear.
I want to make sure what pen.
Do you mean state penitentiary?
Or do you mean like a maximum security federal?
Like a federal penit.
Really? It's still rough there, huh? Yeah. Oh, it's state, it's even worse. Yeah. But, but, but, but almost never, unless you were to go to trial and have violence or a weapon of some kind in your case, or is a white collar guy going to end up in a, in a pin? So he was a nonviolent person who had, no, no, no criminal record. He's going to go to, first of all, it depends on what, what region they're in, right? Or district, what district they're in. Because like here in, like the, like the 11th.
circuit almost everybody if it's let's say you come in with camp points okay so your
security levels like under super low under yeah five or 10 and you're supposed to go to a camp
they still don't send you to a camp they send you to a low and then six months later once you
haven't been a problem and they've checked you out they're like ah this guy's not a problem
they send you to a camp or maybe you go to a low and you're over you got a couple shots you're
telling me what the difference is in lifestyle between the minimum security
prison that you're kind of being assessed at in the work camp itself?
I mean, a low is it's open bay, which means basically it's bung, it's, you've got like, you know,
the guys in there call them cells, but they're literally like cubicles. And you'll have maybe
two or three beds in each cubicle. There's no door. You've got a little locker. And it's
basically mostly nonviolent guys. I mean, violence happened. Congressmen. Yeah, yeah. Or low level
drug dealers or even bank robbers who maybe didn't use a gun. Or they're,
they've worked their way down from a medium because in a medium a medium is exactly what you think a prison is you know it's two tiers the door slammed they can feed you through the slot in the door you've got a toilet and sink they can lock you up in there and you'll you can keep you there for six months to a year and you don't have to leave right unless you need a medical attention you can live in this little cell you've got a bathroom a toilet a sink water you know as long as they're feeding you you you can stay there permanently yeah so
But it's very much what people see in a prison.
So, you know, and all of them have rec yards where they'll let you out and go to the
wreckyard, that sort of thing.
And then, of course, pins are like a medium, only much more violent, much more violent
criminals, much or more longer sentences.
There's more gang activity.
So if this guy goes to a low, it's a bunch of guys that are very much like him.
Even if they're drug addicts, they're like him.
Like maybe they don't have the education, but man, they don't want any problems, you know?
They either work their way down from a pen to a medium to a low, and they just, hey, you know, I don't want any problems.
This is a, nobody's trying to stab me.
I get to, I get to read books.
I get to eat.
I get to walk in the rec yard because in a pen, they're locked down six or eight months out of the year.
Wow.
So it's almost always open here.
And then a low, of course, there's no fence.
You're almost on your own.
You can mow the yard.
Practice your golf swing.
Exactly.
You've got a lot of stuff you can do.
There's lots of stuff you can do.
So, but for that guy, I don't know what.
I know in California, if you're, if you have camp points, you go straight to a camp.
Most jurisdictions, if you have camp points, they send you straight to a camp.
This guy had no criminal history.
And he, but Hawaii also doesn't have its own federal prison.
We just have like an MCC.
Oh, that sucks.
And so, but most people go east coast, west coast.
A lot of, at the time, a lot of people going to Nellis Air Force Base, which had a camp.
And you get to work, like, I mean, it sounds like horrible.
like when you to a guy who obviously is stealing money and he thinks he doesn't want to work yeah but
look once you get locked up your expectations of what life has to offer lowers so after three to six
months to work a job is almost like a little taste of freedom so i get to go to work 30 40 hours a week
i have a purpose i go there i get to earn a little bit of money my family doesn't have to send me
so much money maybe i can make two hundred dollars a month or 150 or something i can buy commissary
I have some place to go every day
I have some friends
By that point you've got friends
You get to read a good book series
You know in the middle of the Twilight series
Or whatever not that's a good book series
But might want to take that out
You know so whatever
You get to Game of Thrones
You know you get in
And suddenly on the street
That wouldn't be enough entertainment
But in prison
You'd be shocked how many times
Just reading a good series of books
I was enthralled
To get back to my unit
To get back to the unit
So I could lay down and just read the book
for the next time.
How can we even lights go off and out?
Oh, God, an hour.
Like, that was exciting.
Now, if you said, Matt, you get to read this book for an hour.
Dumb question, just because I'm a book nerd.
Had you been a reader before?
Never?
No.
Since you've been out, have you continued reading recreationally for fun?
Really?
Because it's so, it's, you know, first of all, entertainment is so easy.
And two, I work 60 hours a week.
Right.
You know, really 60 to 70 hours a week.
If you asked my wife, she'd tell you I work 80 hours a week.
But I work 60, 70 hours a week.
And I initially, when I got out, most of what I was doing was writing.
But now it's this.
It's scheduling.
It's writing.
I've had other things to do.
But during that period of time, you know, I was, you know, a ferocious reader.
And I loved it.
So, you know, and I don't read well, you know.
But in my head, I read better than I read out loud.
Yeah.
And I got better and better and better at it.
And it was thrilling.
And I knew there was an issue one time when I was so irritated.
about read i was reading this book and i got i was so into it there were multiple times i
i was so angry at the chick that in the book i had to close the book and walk around myself a few
minutes like i can't oh if i've i was fictional woman fictional woman and i was like i can't believe
she did that i can't believe he's putting up with this and i was like oh no no let me and this is a
she's a CIA agent he's a military guy like you remember what the book was yeah yeah i do it was
upcountry by nelson de mill yeah he's great yeah and and and and then i remember too at some
point this paper this book's like 500 pages yeah I remember when it got close and there was only
maybe 50 pages left I started feeling sad because it was going to be over soon I mean it was that
good of a book that's the best endorsement of all right like I would have never on the street but
but that guy you know to take your life you would have gone to prison for 10 years which sounds
like an eternity but you would have met some amazing people yeah you would have had listen all
my friendships now are all based guys I met from prison um you would have met some amazing
people, you would have hopefully gotten in touch with the issues that you have and said,
hey, you know what?
I don't want to come back here.
Yeah.
And I need to start living my life in a different way, or I will come back here.
Right.
And, you know, hopefully he would have gone through that.
And he probably would have been there six months and started saying, you know what,
this isn't that bad.
And I'm going to be okay.
And I'm going to get through this.
And once I'm through it, I'll look back on this time and say, hey, I deserve that.
I needed that.
I'm going to be a different person.
I think Hollywood doesn't do people in his position.
any favors by presenting prison as just this gladiator factory right yeah shaw shank the animal
factory like every prison thing is they got some soft guy walking into a pin who somebody hands
him a knife and says you're going to need this what you're talking about i cheats on my taxes
i got three years i got to be a shot caller now like you know we're going to need you to lead
the white boys me is there somebody else yeah yeah so i think that i mean again i never knew
James because he wasn't I didn't do the original investigation I just sort of owned it
while he just kind of shepherded it through the criminal justice system and you know the
my 20-minute fugitive investigation and but but I had no way a will toward him and I wish
he had made different choices in his life for the sake of his family and his own future but I
guess that idea was just too horrible for him to contemplate and he drove off a cliff
American Greed did an episode on that oh okay on that case was my first episode of American
Greed. And then American Greed began coming back doing an annual episode with me. And I thought,
man, I am really hot shit. And then I thought, well, wait, the production company is in Chicago.
These guys get to fly to Hawaii in the winter to film an episode with me every year. And so maybe
it's not me. Maybe it's, maybe it's Hawaii. Some incentive. Yeah. I was going to say I, so when I was
locked up, I probably had one, two, three, probably had four FBI agents come and see.
me right one was a woman uh she was super cool they actually seeking assistance on related
investigations yeah well for what yes well yes and no some of them were unrelated some were related
where they hadn't in that one was like a politician that they were actually investigating for fraud
but they also knew that i had bribed him okay they'd never charged him in my case but they wanted to
charge him but was so funny about that was that every time and the guys would show up and you know
no you know no offense to FBI agents but you know this is very typical you know
good looking 5 foot 10 in good shape you know what I'm saying like they you guys all look the
same yeah sorry central casting right yeah exact same haircut um you know just different age groups
like and so they but they all said the same thing which I always thought was weird they all
said they go so um and this was funny the first time this out I was in the medium
so they realized when they're coming in like this is a this is a prison yeah kachunk yeah
yeah it's serious yeah and they sat down and one of the first questions they were like so um
what's it like in here yeah and all of them set all of them ass and i was like you know and i always
thought that was weird i was like well wouldn't you know but then i thought about i was like
why would they know no we were hope the fbi agents including myself are hopelessly naive about
what prison life is like because after sentencing we're kind of done yeah the guy goes away
we have to fill out the form
about how many months
they're going away for
but it's not like they send us
Christmas cards
it's not like we go visit
and talk old times
and I've been in dozens of prisons
and I was probably that guy
saying what's it like in here
because most of the FBI's
conception of what prison life is like
unless you're working prison crimes
is from Hollywood
so we're working with those same
kind of stereotypes
and being able to sit down
and talk to a prisoner
inside the prison
who's kind of nice and cool
and conversant
you're able to kind of ask the questions
that you've always wondered
Yeah. Yeah, definitely they all had that that exact same experience or frame of mind or whatever because they all said the exact same.
They were always all the same.
Like, I have no idea.
And I was like, well, you're like, by the second guy, I was like,
this second guy to ask me that.
And he was like, well, I have no idea.
Like, once you guys are sentenced, like, I don't know what happens.
Yeah.
And they're like, and honestly, like, you're not a gang member and you're in a prison
that's filled with gang members.
And I was like, well, yeah, but I teach the real estate class and I teach GED.
And I'm, I always used to say, you know, I'm like being a non-enemy combatant in a war zone.
They just trying to get your blood on my, you know,
any blood on me and stay mind my own business and you can legally add value to the lives of the
other prisoners you're not going to be a target right and also i'm the guy that they would come to
i was basically like google they'd come to me and say Cox Cox oh i got a question for you how many
how many states are there or they say is Puerto Rico a state and i go Puerto Rico is not a state
it's a territory what's a difference or you know we'd have those what kind of fruit is in an apple
yeah exactly so they would ask question or their legal work you know hey I got this about two weeks ago
I don't know what it says and you know legal work if you don't know
legalese. Even if you do, it's still
difficult. These guys are reading urban novels.
And so, you know, I'm looking at what sounds to me like your buddy
got resentenced and they knocked three years off his sentence and they
have to notify you because you have the same charges. So I'm pretty sure
you have to get the sent that too, but you have to apply for it.
So just like that, the guy's like, what? I could get time off. I'm like, well, yeah,
let me ask somebody out. You go ask somebody who does legal work, come back and say,
yeah, I've paid this guy $50 in commissary. He'll
file the paperwork that you have the exact same charges as your co-defendant they have to reduce it
like he won something in court yeah this guy's ready to just do his 12 years and is now he just
got three years knocked off so so yeah I definitely had value um uh but yeah I always thought to
myself like with white collar guys they when when someone's like oh I want to talk to you I don't
want I always felt like I know part of their apprehension is how much time they're going to get
and do I have to go to prison
and I'll never survive prison
that's the first thing you think
but if they actually
and there are guys out there
there's guys like I have a buddy named
he took the ARDAP program
in federal prison
everybody calls them
Ardap Dan
his name's Dan Wise
so there's Dan Wise
and there's a few guys
that do this
I don't know the other guys
but you know
they do prison consulting
that's what they call it
and then they think Walt Pavlo does that
Walt thank you exactly
Walt's perfect
so the thing is like
it's so
worth it to have that phone call
with one of those guys? To put your mind
at ease, right? Walt would
alleviate. Or even for the FBI,
for an FBI, if you talk to somebody
and the guy's like, you know, no, no, no, so let me
hold on. And you had somebody else come in
or even if you showed him a video of some
guy saying, look, this is what my case was. This is what
I was scared of. This is what happened. And I'm going to tell you
exactly what it really is like.
Then I think, and you came back five
minutes later, I think that they would probably be like,
well, now I'm not
so concerned about going to prison.
It's really, especially a camp or a low is really just like a shitty, a shitty summer camp with guards.
Yeah.
You know, you get to work, you get to walk the yard, you get to, there's so much stuff to do.
Listen, you know how that has the biggest budget in prison?
The rec center.
Really?
Oh, there are tennis courts.
Like the basketball courts are also tennis courts.
You have a net, you can spread and put it in there.
And these guys play tennis.
tennis rackets. You can learn to play the guitar. You can learn to play. They have tons of
instruments. They have bands. I've heard some amazing bands. Can you lift weights? Are there,
weight racks? Because that's always a controversy. That's always the scene in the prison, right?
The guy's bench pressing, you know, 350 and all that. Not in federal prison because these guys
are, they'll be monsters. You know, if you could work out, if your full-time job was working out
60 hours a week, you'd be a monster. Yeah. The corrections officers aren't looking for that.
Yeah, they're not looking for that. Not that anybody puts up a
a fight. But if they did, it would be, it would be bad. Because some of these guys are just
genetic freaks. But you could do body weight exercises, right? There's nothing stopping you
from doing all the push-ups and sit-ups that you want. They'll still, listen, there are guys that
that have special bags. They'll make bags with handles on them, and then they'll hide them in
the dirt, and then they fill them up with sand. Like a go-ruck sandbag. They know exactly
what it is. They're like, okay, that's a 25, that's a 35, that's a 15. You're like, do your curls,
do your shoulder presses, do your rows. Yeah. Guys will sit on each other.
shoulders they'll do they'll do um squats they'll do pull-ups they'll do it's it's they're very
imaginative yeah so yeah there's guys that are listen i knew there was an 80-year-old black guy that would
jump up on the uh pull-up bar and he would knock out 30 or 40 full pull-ups behind the head
boom boom and i'm saying he's 80 he's 80 there was like a 60-year-old guy that i'm telling
you he were in a half a marathon almost every day prison probably saved their lives
Oh, and a lot of guys, well, and not just, I mean, from a health and fitness perspective, you know.
Health and fitness for sure, but then there are other people that you'll meet, you know, if the guy's honest, you know, and a lot of these guys aren't, they never get honest. They'll never get honest with themselves. But there's so many people that I would meet that were drug acts, most of their lives. And this was the first time they were clean for five years. And they would say, bro, I'd be dead right now. Yeah. Like, you know, my wife is that, that's exactly. She says, oh, prison saved my life. She's one, would have never got clean.
She's like in two, I would have never gone to ARDAP.
She's like,
Ardap changed every, her perspective of drugs and how her life could be led.
So it's an actual successful program that changes people's lives.
Listen, I've said this numerous times.
I don't think you should be released from prison until you pass ARDAP,
whether you are on drugs or not because it's not.
Are your viewers familiar with what ARDAP is?
Yeah, it's a, I've talked about a lot, but not necessarily.
like it's a residential drug abuse program where they actually take you and you go into a special unit and it's in a nine month extremely invasive kind of like a a meeting and any meetings every day type of thing all the time okay so it's group yeah you have groups you have different types of groups you have activities you have a sponsor yeah you have a big brother yeah um at you and and also you're you're constantly there are you're assigned drug treatment specialist so you're you're
You're in a group that's got a specific multiple drug treatment specialist, and there's a psychiatrist that has like a PhD that runs each program.
Everyone's run by a psychiatrist.
Yeah.
You're a psychologist.
I'm not sure which one they are.
But they all have like PhDs.
And it's so funny too because, like, they're just smart.
They've seen a thousand guys like you.
They've seen a thousand like you would walk in.
I walked in and sat down and I'm telling me this.
This chick stripped me down completely and knew every single, within a three or four minutes.
She's like, so is one of your parents an alcoholic?
And I was like, you know, it's like, and she's like, well, because you have a certain personality type.
And typically that happens from kids that grow up in an alcoholic family.
I'm assuming you have, she's like, well, I think she said, she was, I actually, I mean, I know you have multiple siblings.
I've read your PSI, but it doesn't specifically talk about which one of your,
your parents is an alcoholic she's i'm assuming it's alcohol she's or maybe drugs and i was just
like she's good jesus oh and then once i said that then it was a whole no it's like she they
categorized you so quickly you realize like wow she had done her 10 000 hours and knew this
stuff intuitively she's seen a thousand me yeah thousand listen she was so good and every
every time i walked into her office i walked out in tears every time right and it was so bad i
started having a, I'm going to say, a Pavlonian response when I would hear my name.
Cox, please come to the doctor's office.
I would start welling up as I walked there.
I thought, I thought this is.
You knew it was going to get deep.
This is horrible.
This is horrible.
She was that amazing.
And I think that people, it changed people's life.
Now, I think some people reenter and maybe it doesn't stick.
But it does have a good, the recidivism rate for people that go into ARDAP and don't come back is better than people.
that don't go into ARNAT.
And it really has nothing to do with drugs
because I don't have a drug problem.
Right.
I went in because I wanted to stay at the complex.
So they put a hole on you.
So I checked in.
So you went through the drug treatment program
without a drug addiction?
Well, no, no.
Of course, when I did my PSI,
I said I had a drug addiction.
But I've actually never done any drugs.
I've actually never drank alcohol.
Never drink alcohol, smoke.
I'm aghast by this.
So, oh, it's total manipulation.
So when I was in,
And when I was in being held by the U.S. Marshals for like a year before I was sentenced,
just before the PSI guy, the probation officer, shows up to do your pre-sentence report,
which is a report that's done by a probation officer to recommend,
to give a recommendation to the judge on what your sentence should be.
Yeah, they basically recreate the FBI's investigation themselves to explain to the judge
all the extenuating circumstances and the victim's impact and all that.
Right, right, exactly.
Like what enhancement should apply, that sort of thing.
so they're doing the math for the judge on the sentencing guidelines calculations yes but they come and
they talk to you first you know they ask you questions so um by the time i knew it was coming
other inmates had said okay well cox your PSI the guy from the PSI is what they were calling him
he's going to show up do you have a drug problem and i was like no why and i said his and they were
like well you need to find one I go what do you mean they said because if you say you have a drug
program a drug problem and the PSI guy recommends to the judge that you get the drug program
you'll get the drug program and I go well I don't have a drug I don't know anything about drugs
they're like okay well and I remember the guy goes you're an opiate guy I think you're an
opiate guy and because I was like I've never drank I've never smoked and so he I got a little
two hour lesson on opiates on what it was like not just how much they cost the names of them
how I got started and the goal here is for you to get a better prison designation in
into a residential drug treatment program,
which is going to be easier time?
No, you get a year off if you complete the program.
I see.
So what they're saying is, look, if you get 10 years
and you get Ardap, that's a year off.
And you get more halfway house.
So you get more halfway house.
And you get to stay in the Ardap unit.
The Ardap unit is nice.
Like it's quiet, it's quiet, it's clean,
everybody's polite, nobody's getting into fights.
Right, they're dealing with their personal demons,
not looking to hassle anyone else.
And they're trying to get a year off.
Yeah.
What a huge benefit.
Like I have to be on my best behavior because I want to get a year off.
So if that guy mouse off to me, it's like, you got that, bro.
We have created a crazy incentive structure for people like you to game the system.
Right.
So, well, see, I never got the year off, though.
Oh.
Because by the time I had my sentence reduced twice.
By the time I got my sentence, my second reduction, I had whatever, a year to go, let's say, a year and change.
and had I gotten through the nine months
I would have gotten a year off
I would have gone I would have just
I wouldn't have had enough time to get halfway house
I would have gotten like a month or two halfway house
and with Art app you have to have four months halfway house
so they wouldn't have given me the year off
they'd have reduced it by four months
I would have gotten like eight months off
so and really I only wanted to go in
to stay at the prison
because my mother was an hour away
and they were trying to move
move me to a camp and I was like I don't want to go to a camp I want to stay here my mom lives down
the street closest camp if I go to it at all is a four and a half mile that's Miami four hours
she'll never make it she's in a wheelchair right and so so I entered the drug program which I had
the judge recommended it I entered the drug program stayed there for seven months went through all
the phases and then as soon as I was close to getting to so they put a hold on you so they
can't move me. I'm in the drug program. I need to understand this, Matt. During this window of
time as you're going through this drug counseling, are they asking you like, tell me about the
euphoria you felt when you use terribly. That's what I'm saying. It's nothing about drugs. There's
almost nothing about drugs. It's all about criminal thinking. It's really, look, to get it past
Congress, you've got to call it something, right? You can't call it. So it's like a therapy.
Yeah, you can't call it behavior modification program. Right. They call it a drug program.
But you get in there, we barely talked about drugs. But you're not doing that, that NA thing where you're
telling the story about how you hit bottom with your drug use.
They might,
guys might mention that,
maybe periodically, like when I was on drugs,
but usually they do it as a crutch.
The truth is, you're just a criminal.
You have a criminal issue.
You have criminal issues.
You're going, you're using drugs as a crutch,
but the truth is you have a,
you have other issues.
And so they're really focusing on that.
Yeah.
And how to think more rationally.
Okay.
Because most criminals have a,
a gut reaction they go with.
And they don't think
through, if I jump on this guy, am I going to get thrown in the shoe? Am I going to be able to see
my family? Is that going to add time to my sentence? And does he deserve that? What he's really
saying is this. And you kind of... So this has true rehabilitative value. You step or to
depart from this alleged drug addiction. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Everyone should have to do this.
That's what I'm saying. Everybody should go, but you would have to give everybody an incentive
because these guys don't want to change. You don't think you want to change. Why would I want to
change? I love me. Yeah, because psychotherapy's work. You have to do their work. And then you go in there
and you see six-foot-tall guys who have been in a gang for 15 years,
guys have been in and out-of-state prison their whole life,
crying like small children and just sobbing about what their mother said to them
when they were 12 years old or what their father or mother did to one another
or did to them, you know, being sold for, you know, drugs by their parents
or whatever the case.
Nightmares.
Nightmare scenario.
And so, you know, it helps you.
And a lot of guys would be like, oh, I'm, I faked my way through that program.
And you're just, because I would, you see the guys outside when they pass.
See them outside on the compound.
And you'd hear them talk to their buddies, man, I faked my way through that.
And I'm sitting there thinking, bro, you didn't fake that crying session.
That's for damn sure.
Yeah.
Like you, even if you said I faked my way through it, it was all bullshit.
The fuck it was.
Like, you learned something.
I learned a lot about me.
And just people in.
general. So I went through it for like seven months and then I dropped out. And then three months
later, my counselor comes to me and says, Cox, we're moving you to the camp. I'm going to move
you to the camp. And I went, whoa, what are you talking about? I said, I'm going to a halfway
house. I'm, you're supposed to be putting me in for halfway house. I said, I got, I got less
than a year to go. And he's like, um, he said, yeah, I know, but they're really trying to get us to
get people to a camp. And you shouldn't be here. And I went, no, I said, listen, bro. I said,
um, you can't do that. I said, uh, does the camp have a drug program? They're like,
Well, I mean, I don't know, but I said, well, you can't do it.
I said, I'm always going back to ARDAP next week.
And he's like, what are you talking about?
I said, yeah, I already put the pipework in.
They're filling it out.
Dr. Smith says, she's put me into ARDAP again.
I said, bro, I can't leave.
I got problems.
And listen, it was, I only, I really sold it.
I sold it to such an extent.
I almost started laughing.
Yeah.
Because it was so overboard.
And then.
I got the shakes, Doc.
Yeah, I was like, I can't go out like this.
I mean, I can't.
I said, I can't behave like this on the street.
I'll, I'll be right back in here.
I've got issues.
And he looked, I said, I didn't realize it until I got out of Ardap.
But I just, you know what I'm saying?
I have problems.
And I got to go back.
And he, I said, I'm already putting the paperwork.
He's like, oh, I didn't know that.
I mean, you should have told me that.
I mean, yeah, definitely.
No, no, okay, I'll hold off.
I'll hold off.
I'll hold off.
We'll see what Dr. Smith, when you're going to go in.
It's fine.
I'll hold off.
Listen, immediately on the computer.
Dr. Smith, I reavit.
Within two weeks, I was back in there.
Like back dating me.
I went through there.
Listen, they changed my date.
Like I went all the way through
They changed my date
And then as soon as my date changed
The hold was on there
I immediately said
I dropped out again
Dr. Smith was just like
She's like
Cucks you're almost done
What are you doing?
And I told her
This is horrible
Because the second time I had almost
I was almost going to get
Not even going to get
I was going to get like two months off my sentence
Because two months plus the four months
And I said doctor I said
Listen let's face it
Let's be honest
I said I'm only getting two months off
She's yeah but you're going to complete the program
I said right
I said, yeah, but let's face it.
I said, there's a good chance I'm coming back here.
I said, I'll be at 50-something years old.
I said, I'm going to need that year at that time.
She goes, don't, Cox, don't say that.
You're not coming.
What are you doing?
And I was like, I started alive.
I was just joking.
Come on, let me out.
I got to go.
So I got out, and I ended up getting like seven months halfway house.
That's good.
I left within a few months.
I was gone.
But, yeah, it's an amazing.
That's an amazing program.
Yeah.
I think maybe the moral to this story is that if someone does find themselves in a bad
situation that that especially in federal prison especially for a white collar crime it's not
worth offing yourself because every agent i know who works white collar crime has one or more
stories of defendants who decided to commit suicide rather than do the time and it's just a poor
risk reward type thing yeah i've like i said i've always thought it's like if or even to talk
to the agents and say look explain to these guys you're probably going to go like you can't
guarantee it but you're probably going to go to a camp or a low and i'm
I'm telling you it is not a bad it's not a horrible place you don't want to be there of
course you don't want to be away from your family the point is you will survive that that sentence
easily survive that sentence and if you're smart you can you can maybe re-evaluate yourself
and maybe even set yourself up for a second act yeah exactly like killing yourself is just just
it's just not worth it especially when you get there you realize two three weeks two
three months in you're like I was thinking about killing myself right
What the fuck?
Like, this is fine.
I'll be out of here in two years.
This is nothing.
But I understand that too, because I was terrified.
That's really a good reason why I took off on the run.
I was scared.
I'd seen Shawshank Redemption and Animal Factor.
I've seen these shows that I was just like, oh, man, I can't, I can't do that.
I'll never survive that.
What a joke.
Should have stayed in Tampa.
Yeah.
Do you have anything?
Have you ever worked undercover in the white collar?
Yeah, quite a bit.
So a lot of people don't understand this that very few agents actually ever go undercover.
There's a giant screening process for FBI agents where you apply to go to the undercover school.
So it's not mandatory and it's certainly not for everyone.
And then they send you to this like really, really difficult undercover school for a couple weeks.
And it's the hardest training I ever had.
I mean, like you're going through a lot of classroom stuff, a lot of behavioral science stuff.
People are failing out all the time and going back.
And there's no shame in that because undercover works not for everyone, right?
Why?
I mean, what, I don't understand what, like, what's so?
Well, not everybody's a good liar.
Okay.
And, I mean, we're hiring, we're hiring FBI agents for the exact opposite skill set, right?
We have honesty, you know, you know, in these honest people who don't tell lies and are just filled with, like, integrity.
And then you have kind of the, the more like, um, you need to be a scoundrel.
The more scoundrelly guys who are applying to go to undercover school and some of them are better than others.
And so when you fail out...
Do they want to go?
Like, do most agents want to do that?
They're like, eh, I mean, it's a popular school.
There's more agents who apply for it than there are seats at the undercover school.
But it's not, but it's, most agents just aren't interested in going undercover.
Most agents really like who they are and don't want to be someone else, even for a small window of time.
And so, but I, it was fun at times.
At times it was like, you know, really terrifying.
And so, but so I got the undercover.
school. It was a miserable school, but you walk away kind of confident that you can handle
yourself. Right. And so, and also just, let's call it what it is. Demographically, I'm not
going to be Tom the crack dealer. Right. I'm going to be Tom, like the banker guy, Tom, the
rich investor guy. And so that was the role I really found myself falling into is in the world of
investment fraud, which is kind of what I enjoyed the most. There's really nothing better than getting
the sales pitch from the bad guy to the victim.
But we couldn't capture that in a normal case because the victims are hearing the sales
pitch and then they're making an investment and then they're perfectly happy with that
investment.
And then the investment falls apart.
The investment's a fraud.
And then they want to tell us all about that.
But what really matters to me as the investigator is what were the lies you were told
before you invested that separated you from your money?
The investors always want to tell me the story about how the,
the lies they were told and the excuses that were provided when they weren't getting paid back.
But that's a secondary issue. The fraud happens when fraud is theft by deception, right?
And so when they're being lied to on the front end. And so the way I solved that problem
in my cases and other people's cases is undercover work. What happens is before the entire thing
falls apart, you pose in an undercover capacity as a wealthy potential investor to record the
sales pitch being given to you
by the con artist. Okay.
It makes sense? Yeah. And so
I'm not, and so
let's talk about a specific case here in
Florida, woman named Lori Nadeemis.
She was offering an investment program
in standby letters of credit,
medium term notes, and
in bank guarantees. Anytime
someone tries to offer you an investment in
SBLCs, European bank guarantees, or
medium term notes, grab your wallet, grab your
purse and run the other way because those
investments do not exist.
It's not like stocks and bonds.
They're just fictitious investment vehicles that there's a subculture of people,
mostly on the Internet, who believe these things are real,
believe there's a secret trading program among the banks of Europe where they're trading
these bank instruments to produce astronomical rates of return.
Are these sovereign citizens?
Not necessarily.
You're going to double your money.
But it's that, I think it tends to attract that type of, you know, iconoclastic thinking.
And so Lori was one of those.
And she was doing quite well at that.
She had a giant mansion in Bradenton, Florida that she was leasing.
But it was a biggest house I've ever seen in my life.
And she had ripped off five people for about $9.75 million.
And there's no investment vehicle whatsoever for her to put this money into.
And so, and she was claiming all this.
Straight in her bank account and just paying her bills.
Spending it.
Yeah.
And I mean, I think she was sending some money to bank accounts and kind of investment brokers involved in the same scheme.
and Lichtenstein and stuff like that and she's bouncing here between here she really kind of presented
herself to her victims as being a financial high roller and she was living the lifestyle of a financial
high roller and so but the problem is imagine if we didn't but none of us had we never had the
investment pitch to any of these people recorded and you can imagine that if we indicted her for
this what's her defense going to be her defense is going to be I never told these people that they
could double their money in 90 days that's crazy no one has ever heard of investment where you can
get 10 times your money in a year and the victims are lying because they made a bad investment
and they want their money back that's going to be the defense argument but if we can lock her in
and get her get her sales pitch recorded by an undercover FBI agent or a cooperating witness
then she has nowhere to go so so is she having them sign documents um there's some documentation
I think for the documents don't lay that they don't lay out the they're going to make five
Right. What's on paper is usually very different than the sales pitch you're getting. And the documents are written in such dense legalese that even if you knew a lot about this stuff, they're hard to parse. Right. That's right. So the idea was presented that I would be Tom Peters, a very wealthy but very stupid guy who just inherited a lot of money from his dead daddy. And so that was the role I was playing. And so I was introduced by a cooperating witness who knew Lori and was cooperating with the,
FBI to get himself onto some trouble. And so we, so he introduces me, said that like my dad was
his dad's doctor and we became family friends and that Tom Peters, me was super loaded. And so I went
undercover and, and, and got the sales pitch from Lori again and again and again. She's bringing
business partners on. She's promising me these amazing returns. The problem with that approach is that
You got to get past the likely defense of her saying, I thought that this investment program was real.
I was dealing with people in Europe who were telling me all these things.
So what you need to do is the undercover is ask them questions that they're going to give you answers that are demonstrably true or false.
Right.
And so I said, so my line to her was, hey, listen, I like to, I like a chef who eats his own food.
Have you invested in these things yourself?
And she's like, yeah.
And I go, can you tell me how the investment has performed for you?
She said, I'm a billionaire.
I'm a billionaire several times over.
And I go, I just want to make sure we're abundantly clear because this is a lot of my money.
And I want to make sure it's okay that, and I don't want to be the first man on the moon here,
that you have invested your own money in this program and received actual cash investment returns back.
And she's like, absolutely, I am a billionaire.
And so at that point, we have robbed from her the ability to bring up the affirmative defense later that she believed this.
investment program was real because she's telling me something that's just not true.
Right.
Right.
And so time marches on and she gets indicted and obviously I never make an investment,
right?
That we're not taking your tax dollars and giving it to the con.
But some people think we do.
Some people think we make these investments.
Then we follow the money through the financial system.
No, that's stupid.
All we want to do is get the sales pitch recorded.
We can follow the money from the other victims and find out what happened to them.
but we want to get the sales pitch down because that's the key to the fraud.
That's the lie that separates the victims from their money.
Right.
And so.
So, can I ask a question?
Yeah, yeah, please.
So did she, you're saying you had a cooperating witness or sorry, someone who was
cooperating to get out of whatever he was involved in was his cooperation.
Was he connected to her and he knew.
He knew her and was involved in another deal with her that had nothing to do with this investment.
So he got jammed up and he said, hey, I know about a scam that's going on.
So the other question is, did she realize that she was being investigated?
Like the people that had lost the money, were they already complaining?
They had, some of them had complained to the FBI.
And that's how we also knew about her from that and the cooperating witness who told us about it.
So the FBI is getting information from both ends, but she does not, she knows that her investors want their money back.
And she's getting pressure from them to get their money back because they haven't received any of these promised returns.
And she's doing what a lot of these investment defrauders do and say,
why don't we you you're worth tens of millions of dollars now from that hundred thousand dollar
investment you made why don't we roll it over do it again and so they're always offering to
roll your money over into like the next next tranche of the investment for 90 days 120 180 days
and so there's no gains like it's just it's just a website that says right make this much money
there's no there's no version of this where she's cutting any of them a check yeah because there's
no investment and she's already pissed their money away on on her extravagant lifestyle right so um yeah
So she ends up getting indicted and arrested.
And then she gets her discovery and sees that this Tom Peters guy is, in fact, Tom Simon, you know, FBI agent.
And during the course of this, while it's awaiting trial, I retire.
Okay.
I go and I retire.
I become a private investigator here in Florida.
I kind of go on with my life.
And then I had a client in Dubai and I was doing a lot of work out there.
And I get a call while I'm in Dubai from an FBI agent in Tampa, which is one's investigating the case in Bradenton.
And they, and they say, hey, that, remember the Lori and Adema?
She's going to trial.
That's a mistake.
We needed to come back in like two weeks.
I was like, I'm in the middle of a client engagement here in Dubai.
I was making some amazing money on this gig.
That's a long plane flight too.
And they're like, well, and I was like, you really need me?
There's no version of me like zooming in my testimony.
They go, no, we need you.
And I was like, oh, man.
And so, and so I, at great expense to me, I have to, I have to cancel the client engagement,
fly back to Dubai.
I said, what happens?
They go, if you want, we could contact the embassy and they can enlist the UAE authorities to subpoena you at your hotel room in Dubai.
I'm like, we don't need to do that.
I was with you guys for 26 years.
I'm not being a hard ass here.
I just want to make sure this trial is happening because trials get kicked all the time.
And so I fly back from Dubai all the way to Florida and then like a couple days before jury selection.
when I'm supposed to testify, they call me and say that the trial's been postponed.
And the trial got postponed like three more times.
And then eventually she just pled guilty.
And she ended up getting sentenced to nine years in prison.
Nine years for nine point.
9.75 million bucks.
Yeah.
And so.
There'll be people in the comment section and say, I do nine years.
Right, right, right, right.
Right.
But nine years is a lot of years when you're like a 50 year old lady.
I mean, that's like, that's prime time.
Yeah.
Well, she could get the drug program.
Right.
Halfway house.
Sometimes she might do four, five.
Exactly.
What's so funny is that the agents used to talk about what like a cantankerous woman she was
and how she was just like mean and bitter and angry to every person in the government that she had any contact with.
But when she was on the phone to me as a prospective investor in my undercover capacity,
she could not have been nicer and more flirty and just and kind and sweet.
And she was the kind of person that I wanted to cut a check to.
Right. I was going to say it's funny how often like these guys will get pissed off at the agents and the U.S. attorneys that like I've talked to and they're like, they're, oh, you know, they this and then they're calling them names and they're this and they're that. And it's like, you, you, you did steal four million dollars though, right? Or you did, you know what I'm saying? And they just, they don't want to, they don't want to talk about that. They don't want to accept. You know, that's like I said, those are those people that.
They're like victims and they shouldn't be in jail.
And it's like, you stole $4 million.
They could have given me probation?
No, you got $4 million.
You got to go to prison.
So I could see how she's, you know, mean and vicious because I see tons of people like that.
But then in the scam capacity, she's super sweet.
Yeah, the amount of work I had to do on that case after I retired going through the transcripts of my conversations with her and like editing them, listening, going through the Microsoft Word document, listening to the conversation where there's just a lot of back and forth and.
Ross talk and editing that document.
I probably spent nearly 40 hours unpaid editing my own undercover recordings there when
I was retired.
But, you know, I mean, that's the deal.
And so time has marched on.
I haven't been an agent now for three years.
And so I think all my cases have sort of cycled through the system.
So I don't think the FBI is going to be calling me, telling me to drop everything and
come to court anymore.
Shoot.
I mean, the Ponzi scheme thing, it, well, she wasn't even a Ponzi scheme.
She's just a thief.
She's not paying anybody back.
Exactly, exactly.
And so this myth of these, this was one of my kind of niches in the FBI that I really liked because it was so interesting.
There was the story that kind of floats around the con man community internationally that after World War II, the Marshall Plan came into effect to rebuild Europe.
And that the story is, and this is complete nonsense, is that in order to fund that, the top 50 or top 100 banks in Europe created a bank guarantee in medium term.
note trading program where they would trade these notes with each other in such rapidity,
it would create profits that was used to fund the rebuilding of Europe.
This is the story that they tell each other.
And they tell each other like they read this in a history book.
And this secret program among the top 50 and top 100 banks in Europe still exists.
And that if you know the right people, you can get in on it where you can get 10 or 50 times
your investment money in a very short window of time.
And people fall for this all the time.
and they take money from investors.
And so when I began working human intelligence work
and getting informants together,
I was basically finding people
who were marketing these things.
Sometimes they were true believers
and they believed these programs are real
and sometimes they were just con artists.
And I was telling them that you're going to be in a lot of trouble
if you continue this.
But what I want is your Rolodex.
I want to know all the people
that you're in contact with in this world
marketing these platform trading programs,
trading standby letters of credit
and medium term notes
and all these fictitious
investment vehicles.
And then I would basically farm out FBI agents to take a look into these people and either
deprogram them and tell them this is a fraud.
And if they continue with this, they're going to be getting a lot of trouble.
And or to investigate them, take a look into them, run the suspicious activity reports
through FinCEM and see are they bringing in just a ton of money from investors for one
of these programs.
So this, we call them platform trading programs, was kind of my life's work at the
FBI to try to stamp these things out. I did a very poor job of putting out the forest fire,
but I put a lot of people in prison in these crimes. I was going to say it's hard when it's so
overwhelming and you've got the internet spreading it. Nobody's going to stop it. Yeah, but one thing
we developed, there was an agent named John Coffin in Tampa who was a brilliant agent and he came
up with the coffin letter. It was basically a letter to these people that you sent certified mail
laying out that these things are fraudulent and they don't exist and they're fictitious and just
sending it to the bad guys and then you just put it into a file that they received notification
that these things are fraudulent. What that does is that that steals from them the ability
to say that they were true believers down the real. Yeah. Right. Their consciousness of guilt
has been established by the fact that they received notification from the FBI that these programs
don't exist. And so that did wonders for kind of making cases because a lot of the people we were
busting for these things, we would search the files and see that three years ago they received a
coffin letter telling them that these were fictitious trading programs.
the um you know like the uh um the sovereign citizen guys that believe so it's funny because the guys
that always make the the money are the guys teaching you how to be a sovereign city like they
have a course they have seminars they have um those guys break up the actual sovereign citizen guys
that put it into place and stop paying taxes or think that the government doesn't have any
say so over them they can be their own citizen and your rules don't apply they always end up in
prison. That's how I got to know the agent who put you in prison, Agent Peacock. She and I partnered up
to work a couple sovereign citizen cases. Did we talk about this before? You said you knew her?
Yeah. She was, listen, she was super professional. She's great. All great agent.
Very polite, very nice. No matter what she thought of me, she was just very polite and nice and just
like, this is how this works. This is how it's going. Right. So we had a couple sovereign citizen
cases where they were producing fake treasury checks, right? They had, and that fake, I basically
the IRS returns and then
kind of depositing those and then
basically selling them to people
like you know I can get you checks from the IRS
and you know filled with all the sovereign citizen
nonsense and they're in but
creating fake US Treasury documents
is a US Treasury crime and so the FBI
and the US Treasury Department me
and Agent Peacock teamed up to put some of these people
in prison and the cool thing
is that they always defend themselves at
the trial which never goes well
if we're giving criminals advice today
on your show that it always
seems like a much better idea than it is yeah I always um guy used to joke with this guy that he
said that the guys that he was going to testify against were sovereign citizens yeah and he said oh yeah
the first thing they do is they fire their lawyer they they start talking about the fringe on the
flag and how this is a exactly a naval court or whatever a maritime maritime court or what and I was like
he's like you know they'll tell them like the judge will be like hey stop talking stop talking and I was
like and I said you understand when you go in there to testify they're going to have
have like a, one of those black belts around it with a shock collar and then a gag ball.
I said, they're going to be going the whole time.
And every once in a while the judge is going to hit him and make him shut up.
And he was like, no.
I said, yeah.
It was, I will say, though, it's easy to get a sovereign citizen to confess to you because they,
he believes it.
They believe it.
And so, so, you know, I'd be like, I would sit there and listen to them talking about
how like, it depends on the number of syllables in this, in the U.S. Constitution line.
And, you know, I'm happy to hear and listen to that.
At the end of the day, I go, okay, well, so because of all that, that's why you produce these checks from the U.S. Treasury Department.
It's like, yes, I had permission because I named myself a U.S. Treasury because I'm a trustee.
And it was just like, bab-da-bab-da-ba.
But I mean, I don't care at that point what your rationale is, right?
You just told me you broke the law.
You just, all I care about is that you told me that you produced U.S. treasury checks for whatever reason
and began kind of like selling those for pennies on the dollar to your people who then tried to deposit them in the bank accounts.
And so we'll handle it in court whether you have a legal rationale for this, which is all just like gobbledygook.
It's like they're hearing voices and their fillings.
But without the Internet, same thing with my little prime bank guarantee program in the platform trading program.
These bad ideas have this ability to spread virally among dumb dumps.
What about, you know, another one, another thing that they always say, this always kills me is that,
see how your name is spelled in all capitals.
That's because, you know, that's, oh, stop, you know.
But I was going to say the other one that spreads everywhere is the CPNs.
You know, CPN?
The fake social security number?
Yes, yes.
I got a case on, right now I'm working.
Oh, really?
Because they will do the whole, you know, oh, no, I went and I bought this from like a government website.
Excuse me for credit repair.
The scam is this, that you've screwed up your credit.
You want to get a loan, but your social security number is like radioactive because your credit's so bad.
So they're going to get you a CPN, which is what a credit protection number, credit something?
There's two different ones.
Yeah, it's something like we're a credit repair service.
But all they're really doing you is giving you some poor bastard social security number or making up a list of numbers for you to do.
And now you're basically stealing someone's identity to get this car loan.
Yeah, it's either a social security number that has that has been issued but no one's using, which means it's probably someone under 18 or it's just a number that hasn't been issued yet.
Right.
Like it will be still.
So it's basically a child social security number or will be a child social security number.
None of which is issued by the government.
Right.
And so like some guy in the back of his panel van who's giving you a social security number that you're paying for,
basically he's using a random number generator.
And it doesn't repair your credit.
And certainly doesn't give you the right because that may either now or in the future be owned by someone else.
And now you're just ruining someone else's credit.
So I did a whole video on this.
And there were so many people in the comment section saying that, you know, that's not true.
and this and that and they're going on on and I'm explaining to them no it is true and I said look
let me put it this way they're no because you know like Kanye West or if you're a famous person
you have to use these because their identities get stolen they get tracked so they they issue them to
them and the government issues them stop it so this then then what happens is I'm like okay let's say
that's true you're not doing it to avoid being tracked by the by the paparazzi you're going in to
get a car loan and where it says social security number you're putting social that you're putting
your cp in right the truth is they ask for your social security number and you give them anything
other than your social security number you've committed fraud loan fraud absolutely yeah like that's
over so so you can stop with your little no you don't i got right because the lender has a right to
assess your credit worthiness right before they give you their money to go buy a car and they can and the
the means by which we have decided as a nation to assess someone's creditworthiness,
we're tracking that via the Social Security number.
So by merely making up another number, it doesn't give you a new start on life.
All you're doing is lying to the lender about your creditworthiness.
Yeah.
Yeah, I love those guys.
Okay.
How do you feel?
You feel good right now about this?
About the episode?
Yeah.
Pure brilliance.
We're going to win awards.
This is a, oh, my God.
talking about. I'm amazing. We got to dress a like to the YouTube awards after this episode airs.
You were, I saw, I think you put these up on your Instagram. You were on another, on a podcast
recently. What was that? Because it was shot really well. I've been on a bunch of podcast.
After I did your first episode, the floodgates opened from a lot of other really well-produced
podcast. Not as well-produced as yours, but good podcasts. And the fact that Colby's sitting
right there means nothing. Yeah. Colby did a beautiful job making us
look great, even though we were dressed alike. And so I received some, some offers to be on other
shows, and I always do my due diligence and make sure that there are shows that, one, have a
decent audience, and two are well-produced. And I like these face-to-face conversations. I'm not
really good on the Zoom call shows. And so, you know, I did the Reed Marin show, which was really
good. And I know he's a fan of yours as well. I did a show called Thinking Bigger with Tim Faley.
I feel terrible. I'm forgetting his name.
Thinking Bigger is the name of the show.
Did that show, and that was shot real well.
And he's also a huge fan.
Where are those located?
Marin is in D.C.
Faley is based in Los Angeles, but he happened to be doing a week's worth of
the show is in Atlanta.
And so I went to Atlanta to film that with him.
And I've done a couple episodes of Surviving the Survivor.
It's more of a daily live true crime show, STS.
Surviving the Survivor.
It's real popular.
Sounds like
What is the guy that
Shoot, I can't believe I can't remember his name now either
Anyway, there was a guy
I think it was called the Survivors
Survivors Group or something like that day
Surviving the Survivors like a daily
Kind of rip from the headlines
Kind of show talking about the hot true crime case
Of the week with sort of a
kind of Brady Bunch looking panel of experts
And so I've done a couple episodes of that
And I think he's based here in Florida
But yeah
So, but anyway, so your show has catapulted me to, to great heights in the, as a YouTube true crime guest.
And I'm just so honored to be here with you.
Oh, my God.
Well, all right.
I'm good.
Other than I was going to mention one other show that was a scam show.
It was maybe ridiculous.
But you might want to watch it.
It's actually got, and I'll never be able to say his name right, he's like a Puerto Rican guy, Rob, or somebody.
Anyway, he's from New York.
And, oh, gosh, the name of, well, I know the name of the, was called Empire.
Okay.
So it was, he was a drug dealer, and there's a, there's a con man and his girlfriend.
The girlfriend goes to college.
I don't even know how this ended up being, or she hangs out of the college.
And she ends up picking up or picking friends that have money, that are connected to money somehow.
I don't know how that exactly works.
but she basically brings then they would have a party the con man has a party and she lures all
these people with their boyfriends or husbands or something to the party so there's a party with a
bunch of guys that have money okay and what he acts like he's a big time stockbroker and he kind of
goes around and he's rented a penthouse and everything so he basically schmoozes with all these
guys that have money well just so happened that the one girl in the show her boyfriend is a drug
dealer. Okay. So he goes there, talks to the guy. He zeroes in, the con man zeroes in on him,
realizing, because I remember they have a scene where the girlfriend's like, why, you know, why,
how much do you think he's worth? And he's like, I think he's probably worth a few million. He
was, and it's going to be all cash. He goes, that's because he's a drug dealer. Yeah. So they kind of
start focusing on him. And at some point, they're just going, having fun, you know, paying for skiing trips
and hanging out. Eventually, the drug dealer says, look, if I gave you some money, what could
I get in return? He's like, well, I mean, it depends. It's all, there are different transactions,
different buyouts. He goes, and it's not short, man. He's not like you're going to give it to me
on Monday. You get it back Friday. He's like, it'll take three, four, or five, maybe six
months. Yeah. So the guy ends up giving him, let's say it's four or five hundred thousand.
And he comes to him like in cash. He's like, what are you doing? He's like, you can't give me
this isn't cash that he knows he wants it
and he's like well you want me to take it back he's like no figure it out
I know a guy yeah gives him half a million dollars and then three months later he
calls him tells him to come to the office so it comes to the office but it's like an
HQ right it's like a fake but he goes up it looks legit I've rented many of these
you go up there's a receptionist it looks like a law firm practically you walk up like a big
law firm it's a shared office space it's shared office space right so you go in
and she's got a check for him
she hands him a check
he's supposed to have lunch that day with him
so he shows up with like the check
he's like hey I got the check
such and that she's like what am I going to do with this
he's like oh put in your bank
he's like how am I going to do that
he's like I can get you a bank account
I can try and get it in cash
you have to give me a few weeks and he goes
he said he's like man I made a ton of money
here I mean I made what have you made
$250,000 by giving you half a million
I got $750,000 he goes
and he says look he says
can we and he says can we roll it over
that's the trick right and he goes
he's like um the problem is the deal i'm working on is structured differently than the last one
he's like well what what do you mean he's like you'd have to put in more money this isn't it you're
better off just take this let's just give me a week or two i can get to cash he's like no no no
i want the other one i want the other one so he says you'd have to put in another two and a half
million dollars and he's like i can get two and a half million he's how much time do i have he's
like i'm i need it pretty quick like two three weeks he goes
goes to his other drug dealer
people and then he goes to his source
and he borrows the money
and he brings like two and a half million
in cash to the guy. Of course they take
it. Boom, they're gone. Two, three
weeks later he goes
he's calling nothing, nothing, nothing
no return phone calls. No, but then
it's just the phone's off.
Then he goes to his house. There's a real estate
realtor showing his condo.
Then he goes to the office and they're
like, he's like, I need to talk to so and so and they're like
who? I don't know.
I mean, has he rented here before?
Yeah, I was out in that conference room.
It was three months ago.
No, she's remember.
And she's like, oh, yeah, yeah.
No, he was just rented the conference room that day.
And he's looking at him.
Now he's realizing what's happening.
I've had so many scams of those shared office spaces.
Create the illusion of wealth and infrastructure.
Oh, it's so legitimate.
Yeah.
It's, I was going to say, the psychology behind some of these con artists.
Now, that one, obviously, that's a movie.
It's based on, I'm sure, you know, a real, real life events.
You ever see the movie The Spanish Prisoner?
It's a good kind of.
It's Steve Martin in it, actually, in a serious role.
It's written by David Mamet, the Chicago playwright.
I got to get that.
Yeah, it's a great movie.
You'd like it.
It has a scene very similar to that in it.
I have another one.
I have one more.
So there was a guy named Ron Wilson.
He had a $57 million Ponsies.
The FBI said it was like over $100 million, but that's because he, that was fake gain.
So really, 57 million a loss.
I remember he used to tell me.
he would have these big he would get financial planners so he his Ponzi scheme he actually ran legitimately
a legitimate um gold or yeah i think it was called uh atlantic bullion golden bullion or precious metals
whatever he traded precious metals okay and he'd done it for 10 years and keep on a lot of these guys
will actually come and they'll just buy precious metals like they'll buy 30,000 dollars of silver so
his specialty was to trade in silver and he had a way to do
do it and everything. So he did it for like 10 years. And after 10 years, he did it for 15 years
and then he did it for another 10, but it was straight Ponzi scheme. Yeah. But what he would do is
he would take financial advisors and he'd bring them with their clients to seminars. And he would
explain he would pitch his thing. Yeah. And the big thing with him was he was super arrogant.
And I remember he used to say all the time that guys would come to him and they'd say, well, you
know, I'm going to give you this $200,000.
How do I know?
And he'd say, you know, that this is going to work.
And then he's, you don't.
You don't.
You just have to trust me.
And they go, well, I'm not sure that's good enough.
I don't really know you.
He's like, okay, well, I don't need the money.
Yeah.
You got to be willing to let them walk, make them come to you.
Yeah.
And he was big on that.
He's like, look, you came here.
You came to the seminar.
Your financial guy came to the seminar.
He has other clients that have made money.
He's like, if that's not good enough, like,
I don't know what is.
He's like, look, if you want, I'll just give you, you can buy $200,000 in silver.
I'll just give you the silver.
Like, no, I want to buy it on margin.
Obviously, he's like, right, well, I trade that in my name, in my company's name.
We've been here 25 years.
Right.
And he's like, if that's not enough, I don't know what is.
And I'm fine.
It was nice meeting you.
And I'll pay for lunch.
And they would, no, no, no, it's fine.
It's fine.
Boom.
They give them the money.
That's the whole trick, right?
You want to create a sense of exclusivity.
That was Bernie Madoff's trick, right?
Bernie Madoff, you had to be, you had to know somebody or be kind of a big deal or a high roller.
So Bernie Madoff would be willing to take your money in.
And so once you create that level of demand among people, their rational thought goes out the window.
I was going to say, it's funny too, Bernie Madoff wouldn't have a conversation with.
If you were supposedly like a financial advisor or really, if you knew anything, he would, I don't talk to financial advisor.
I don't talk.
He'd walk away from you.
Of course.
Because they, if they looked into it at all, they'd start to go, this is really, you're
returns or the house of cards collapses once an expert begins looking under the hood yeah yeah um yeah i was
gonna say but burning made off also his the the he seems so legit for so long even when people did
bring it up it's amazing he got away with it as long for as many people that did try and blow the whistle
yeah that's shocking uh at the end of the day was his son who blew the whistle yeah well after he
realized this whole thing's collapsing you know what i'm saying it's not like you figure no i agree right
But the son was the first person to walk into the FBI office and say, I think we have an issue.
Yeah.
Yeah, I've had a, I actually wrote a story about a guy the same thing.
He, when he realized that it was a Ponzi, he was involved in Ponzi.
These guys had brought him in to help raise money.
So when it collapsed.
First one in the door gets the deal.
It would be on the government bus than under the government bus.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
Well, he didn't realize it was a Ponzi.
He's saying, I didn't realize it was a Ponzi.
And that's why as soon as it found out, he went straight to the FBI and said, this is a Ponzi scheme.
It's a wise choice.
Well, yeah, the problem was.
that everybody had, he had personally raised 17 million.
So all the victims were like, he said this.
Okay, he still have that personal issue with the victims, right?
Yeah, so now, yeah, so now he ends up getting indicted.
And then he goes to trial saying, oh, I didn't know anything.
Well, guess what?
The other two guys involved get on the stand and say he did know.
Yeah.
He's doing 17 years.
Wow.
Last time you were here, so you wanted to clear this up.
I got a bone to pick with you, Matthew Cox.
All right.
So let's get this.
So last time I was here, my first time on the show, we were both wearing nearly
identical black t-shirts.
Which was your fault?
Well, let's get, let's talk about that.
Okay, because the, uh, because I got dragged in the comments for it, like I'm some kind
of like gay, single white female stalker or whatever.
I don't know what it was.
And then on a couple episodes later, you made some references to it and, uh, as if this
was my idea.
I decided to dress like you some, like I'm some kind of Matt Cox tribute band.
Right.
Right.
So, so, so, which of course I remember quite differently, but we have different memories.
That happens.
My question to your audience, even though.
they're your fans and not mine is who are you going to believe? A former FBI special agent
or a con artist who's done time. I feel like my guys believe me. I think so too. So let's take
a look at the evidence, ladies and gentlemen, to the jury. I'll give you a copy.
Okay. Here's the text messages we shared when you booked me for the show. I'm the guy in the
blue. You're the guy in the gray. Why don't I read the blue part and you can read the gray part?
I said, do you have a preferred attire or color you'd like me to wear? I really enjoy the way you
shoot your podcast and want to make it as visually pleasing for your audience as possible.
And what did you say, Matt?
I put, that's funny because I had a guest wear a black t-shirt the other day.
I wore a black t-shirt also.
So people in the comments were asking if we had arranged it.
And then I put, you're the first person to ask.
You can wear whatever you feel comfortable in.
But if you would like to wear a black t-shirt or a black shirt,
I have about 10 of them
and I'm sure I can match to yours
and we'll both be wearing black
that would be kind of cool
listen I remember this vastly different
I remember you think I'm doctoring documents
I'm vastly different conversation in my mind
and then I put but it's totally up to you
I'm a guest here right so you want me
to dress like you if that makes your show better
I'm happy to do that I just don't want your audience to think
that I was somehow stalking you or dressing like you for
Halloween. So anyway, I put, oh my God, I put, oh, you know, you said, I said, yeah, sounds good.
We can look like we're in a doo-op group or something. I'm making fun of you at that point for asking
me to dress like you, Matt. I didn't realize that at all. So I put also, typically, uh, I always wear
T-shirts. So it would be a black T-shirt. Boy, I got specific, didn't I? I am getting directions
from the host of a wildly popular true crime podcast about what to wear. And I just complied.
So then, so then when people started asking, bro, in the comments, they were asking like,
bro, what did you guys arrange this?
I said, I didn't arrange this.
He arranged this.
Right, right.
Yeah, exactly.
Then you're making it seem like you had this weirdo on your show who wanted to dress like you.
I don't know what these FBI guys are.
They don't know what's going through this guy said.
This is the part of our conversation where you apologize to me for dragging me.
I apologize.
I miss, I misunderstood.
All right.
I miss remember that conversation.
You sure did.
Because you were the first person to ever even ask.
And so I was like, huh?
I was like, you know what?
Yeah, I'll wear a black.
You can wear a black.
Everyone should ask, this is a wildly popular YouTube show,
and your guests should want to put their best foot forward
to make your show as pleasing as possible to the viewers.
I agree, but most people show up in t-shirts with like emblems or logos and unshaved.
At least today you're wearing black and I'm wearing blue,
so maybe we can put this issue to rest and be friends again.
Yeah, that's fine.
All right.
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