Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Cia Spy On Candace Owens Charlie Kirk Foreign Interference

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Charles Finfrock, a former intelligence officer, discusses online radicalization, possible foreign influence, and the rise of political extremism connected to figures like Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk, and recent assassination attempts. ⁣ ⁣ Charles's links - ⁣ https://vcci.io⁣ https://www.instagram.com/charles.finfrock⁣ https://linktr.ee/charles.finfrock⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://www.insidetruecrimepodcast.com/apply-to-be-a-guest⁣ ⁣ Get 10% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout. ⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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yet. I have kind of a theory, which might be out there, but you're probably a perfect person to ask this. You want to mean? Well, and there's enough people that are out there talking about this and offering up different opinions and different theories and different speculative comments, happy to comment on those. Okay. You know, just from, and again, probably leading in, we're on, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Probably leading in with, you know,

someone who's been involved in conspiracies before. Right. You know, and understands what it takes to have a massive conspiracy with multiple players moving and how tough it is to keep something like that secret and to make it actually work. Yeah. I'm a little more skeptical when I think, and I think in terms of Occam's razor,

the most simple explanation is usually the most right explanation. nation. Right. And so in a lot of cases like this, to me, I look at it. And I say, well, this is probably the way it looks. It's probably not some hidden hand behind it. But. Well, and, and so here's, I'm going to, I'm going to start with the Trump thing, even though I know we're really not going to be talking about that, but you can always put this somewhere else. So here's what I was wondering about. Or at least I wanted to mention is that, what was the name of the Trump guy that that shot Trump? Trump? Trump shooter.

What's his fucking name? Isn't that crazy? Oh, yeah. No, listen, they're good. They got it. We don't even know the guy. Yeah. Thomas Crooks.

Crooks. Okay. So Thomas Crooks. So when that first came out, when all that happened, first of all, like his social media. And I don't even know how much is this true because I get all my fucking, all my information I get from TikTok. So I don't know what's true. But I can tell you how many times I've sent something to my wife and been like, whoa, like, hey, look at this just happened. And she says, she's like, that's fakeness.

That didn't happen. Then I look at, sure enough, I'll look it up. And I'm like, oh, it is fake news. So I spend a lot of time responding to things like that, saying just that, say, hey, here's the five things you need to know and how to look through something very quickly to see if it's fake news or not. But go ahead. Well, a lot of times.

You and everybody else, same way. I mean, I'm lucky in some ways because at least sometimes something will happen. And then they'll say, so-and-so was just sentenced to. And I'm like, wait a minute. The guy committed the crime two weeks ago. He wasn't sentenced to anything. Right. And in the case of Crook, what happened when it first happened, it was like immediately

I had heard that like there was almost like most of his social media had been scrubbed and all this stuff. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. But and it was like, how does he figure out all this? How did he get on the roof? How did he do all these things? And there were multiple attempts on Trump's life or they had stopped a few of them or whatever. And so what I always thought to myself was going, let's say if you went to Oswald.

Oswald, thank you. I just walked down that site not too long ago. Really? Yeah, I did. Lee Harvey? Yes. So the thing about that is where the kind of like the whole, you know, where, oh, that was a CIA operation or whatever you, all the different rumors around that. Ted Cruz's dad, but go ahead.

Okay. So all the rumors around that. But there are a lot like they are, they were tracking him or different, the FBI, certain agencies were kind of tracking him. They knew where he was. But I was always thinking to myself, like, with social media, how hard would it be to, if you said, okay, I want to find someone that maybe we could use as a Patsy or maybe, I mean, assuming that the CIA does these types of operations within the United States, which obviously,

you know, that would be whatever, against the law, they're not allowed to operate in the United States, whatever, whether they do or don't, whatever. Certainly never would do that, but go ahead. So, but if you wanted to do that, if some agency wanted to do this, and I thought, how hard would it be to, one, scrub the internet or, or, you know, go through the internet and see, who do we have that is within this age group, you know, 18 to 25, that has posted a bunch of negative, you know, things about Trump. Okay, well, now we have this many people. How many of those people do we know that have weapons or some type of shooting experience? Okay, now we have this

many. How many of those people, let's say, are, I don't know, you know, meet certain criteria or within this age group that live within close proximity to one of his, one of his speeches during the campaign speeches, you know, okay, now we have this many, how hard would it be to track that down to say, okay, we're down to 120 people now in these areas. How hard is it to swing by there and one day pick that kid up and say, hey, we want you to do something for us. We already know you're of that mindset because we've been reading your posts. We're reading everything that you've got.

You're definitely someone who is pushing an agenda of. assassination. We know that you're a shooter and you were on your on your high school shooting team because I think he was a member of some shooting team or had tried out for it several times. We know that your father owns, you know, acquit or owns, you know, weapons. We know that you're someone who's familiar with weapons. Like how hard is to find that kid, pull him over, help him get to the site, talk to him about, you know, basically indoctrinate him in some of. way that this is for the good of the country and then let that kid go and climb up on the roof, whether he actually is able to pull it off or not, you just have another shooter in the vicinity

to do that. And then he falls as a patsy. That seems like something that with the help of the NSA could be done something along those lines because, you know, you have such a wide net now to find people and sift through them and statistically come up with who meets this criteria. And then we've We never heard anything else about this. This went on for two, three weeks. There's some, like, and it just died. And I don't know, I don't really know anything. I haven't seen any documentaries.

There's really nothing out there that tells exactly what happened with this kid. Now, if you want to know about the column bind shooting, I know everything about these fucking lunatic kids, but you know nothing about this kid. Yeah. Am I, I, am I wrong? Did I miss something? Matt, there's so much to unpack there. not only is what you said possible, it's done all the time. Now, certainly not by the CIA or the NSA or anybody like that, but if we look at what's

going on right now, whether it's the Russian GRU or GU, as we now call it, Russian military intelligence, if it is the Iranians trying to use proxies and surrogates to conduct the tax in the U.S. If we look back just a few years to ISIS, to al-Qaeda, what you're describing is this online radicalization process, it is absolutely happening, absolutely happening. And how tough is it to find someone like that? Let's look back at Cambridge Analytica. I'm sure you've ran Facebook ads. You've ran ads online and marketing. You know how you can segment the market and look for. I'm looking for that 16 to 25 year old who likes this, this, this, who lives in this proximity, who has this kind

background, and these ad tech firms will deliver you exactly those people that you can communicate directly with. That's if you're really sophisticated and you've got money and you know how to use marketing data. If you don't, it's just a matter of going to these, what we would call watering holes, right, or going to these areas where people of this mindset that you're looking for tend to hang out. Be that, you know, are you looking for the gun club? Are you looking for the fringe left, the fringe right, you find your material and you go fishing in there, and then you find someone who looks like they could be a player. You reach out and have a conversation. And I would even say, you know, you were saying, well, if it's all this and their dad owns guns or whatever. For me,

I'm finding the right person. And as you said, the right person is flexible. The right person is the person who's going to do it. Do they have to do it well? Not really. Right. Well enough. Yeah, we'll have a backup. Yeah. Yeah. Well, well enough. And what does it cost me? This is the most important thing, and I think the most interesting thing about online operations, I don't have to fly somewhere. I can do all of this online. I can spot you, I can assess you, I can develop you, I can recruit you, I can train you, I can equip you with cryptocurrency, I can pay you. And whether I'm using call-of-duty first-person shooter games, or whether I'm using videos or we're doing it on, whatever, or I can have you fly out to meet me somewhere else,

and then I'm going to fly you back. Not only is this possible, this is happening all the time, all the time. You look at Russia is doing this. Russia is doing this with people in Europe, conducting sabotage and attempted sabotage in Germany, obviously in Ukraine, but other Poland, other places around in Eastern Europe. This is happening all the time. Say, I bring this up because I talk, I went on Danny Jones's podcast, and we had a whole conversation about, whatever, crook, the guy's last thing,

about him. talked with, we talked about. And, you know, of course, Danny, you know, I was like, but kind of like you said, Occam's razor. But in the end, I would say, like, I think this is possible. I said, but in the end, what I think is it's just some lone wolf kid who hates Trump. Like, that's really what I think it boils down to. And the more they looked into it, that's kind of what it was, but, or kind of, that's what it certainly appears to be. But it got me thinking like, yeah, but if you did want to do this? How could, how would a government agency or, or something or how would they go about it? And I thought it would be easy. It wouldn't be difficult at all. And like you said,

all the analytics are out there. I mean, we have on YouTube the, the, um, the back page of YouTube are, which you call the studio, you know, the studio, like I know exactly who are, what our demographic is. I know where they're watching from. I know they're, um, I know, you know, what devices they're using. We know, we know everything. The only thing we don't get, and I have no doubt that YouTube knows this, we just don't get the information, is I think this is something that YouTube, they know the information. They just don't let us know, which is income brackets. Like, we don't know what our average, what our average viewer, but you know that YouTube does because YouTube specifically will target people, if you're watching a financial, if it's a financial channel and you're producing financial

content, all the ads that YouTube places on that will all be finance related or stock. These are people that spend money and their advertisers are saying, hey, we want you, we need, this is our demographic and they need to make over $200,000. And sure enough, they'll target those. So they'd have the information. We don't, but they do. Yeah. And that's where, you know, a handful of years ago when I was looking to run Facebook ads to

start my business or one of my businesses, that's what struck me with Facebook, where you could slice it as thinly as you wanted. And they had it all, including income. And target the area. You can say, hey, I just want it in these six counties. 15 miles of this IP address or this address. Oh, yeah. I mean, the micro-targeting that you can do is incredible.

And if you look at it, intelligence services have been using this since it's been around. You go back to the 2016 election where the Russians were attempting to influence it, allegedly, whatever. But the way that they were able to use Cambridge Analytica to find the data about this into micro-target, fascinating. But let's go back to what your question was, or your theory, your hypothesis. Absolutely, nation states can use surrogates

and other places to conduct direct action operations or assassinations. The Iranian government has been doing this since the revolution. David Belfield was African-American, that the Iranians recruited back in the late 70s, early 80s to assassinate a former Iranian ambassador in Maryland. The Iranians, if you look at all the things,

threats against Trump, Bolton, Pompeo, all the senior officials after the president made the decision to kill Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian general, puts force general. The Iranians are using surrogates. Who are they using criminal groups, outlaw biker gangs, people on the margins of a society that they can get to. What's their trade? Violence, crime. What's their request of compensation? Money. If you've got someone who's willing to do violence or to commit crimes on your behalf for money, you've got everything you need. Everything else is just a matter of communications and training. And those people have the mindset to do it.

Because if you asked an accountant to do that, he'd be like, I don't care how much money you give me. Sorry. No, and look, intelligence operations are the same thing as sales, right? You've got a funnel. Yeah. For every 10 people that you may reach out to in that forum that talks garbage about the president or garbage about someone, you hit five of them,

hey, man, he really, are you ready to do something about it? No. No, of course not. Of course, I'm a keyboard warrior. I am tough guy in my mom's basement, you know. But you have a large enough, a large enough group and you funnel it down. You're going to get a few people. Well, and not to mention, I mean, that's the magic.

Yeah. Right. That's where we make the big bucks is where you take someone who has potentially that motivation, potentially that access, and you start to work on them. Right. You put that idea in their head, or you make it look like it was their idea, but you lead them to it through a series of questions and conversation and visualization, and there's a lot of tools and techniques with it.

But again, you're not off base. Right. I'm not saying that any of this stuff, you know, it can potentially sound crazy, but then you read the news articles, the Russians recruiting immigrants to Europe to conduct sabotage and to say, do this, do that. You look at basic crime. I love this, right? So you've got some – I was reading – what the hell was the guy's name –

Jeff White's book, Rents and talking about cybercrime. And one of my questions, when I'm investing cybercrime, how do they get these bank accounts open? It was awesome. He's got the answer. They contact college students. Oh, you're a Nigerian college student. You're studying here.

Hey, I'll pay you $500 to, if you go set up a bank account and, you know, we're just going to use it for a little bit and you'll make some money. Yeah. Oh, no crime. No, no issue. I'm going to make $500 for doing nothing. And, well, then a half million dollars gets run through that account. And when the cops come knocking, the last place,

go is you who set up the account for them. And they say, well, I didn't, I didn't know I was duped. I thought it was fast money. I thought it was easy money. I didn't think there's anything wrong with it. And they don't usually get in trouble. Yeah. Well, and, and, or not much. Yeah, to the extent that anyone's the bagholder, they are. Yeah. But that just, you know, it just goes to show you, you know, you can. Yeah, you can, yeah, you can, you can, you can, you can, you can convince that. I always say that in the right circumstances, anybody will commit a crime. You know what I'm saying?

It just depends on, it just depends on what, you know, getting that person in that circumstance. I would like to think that that may not be the case, but my experience would tell me that. Yeah, yeah. More often than not,

you can move people, whether you can move them all the way across the line. You know, it's funny, I used to always, oh, we may have talked about this on the first podcast, cowards, right? Ego, we can always talk to get to do whatever. because ego, you know, it was ego.

Cowards were the big, I had the biggest challenge with cowards, moving cowards, because you couldn't get them across. You couldn't get them across. They were just afraid. Yeah. But ego, forget about it. Yeah. I was just going to say every bad decision I've ever made was based on my ego.

Wait, you were a young man at one time is what you're telling me? You had a undevelop frontal cortex? It shocks me, I say. Yeah, I was going to say. Just like with the shooters, that's why I always think to myself, like one of the things you're looking for was a guy, between 18 and 25. Because that's why they make like the best soldiers too, right?

They just do what you told them to do. They don't think. So you're telling me, you want me to go into this village and execute everyone, including the women and children. Yes. I mean, that sounds like what I'm supposed to do. You ask a 45-year-old man that. He's going to be like, yeah, wait a second.

Well, let's step back. Because even I think most 18 to 25-year-olds, if you say go in and execute the village, probably not going to do it. Just experience. Probably. But they're also like there's also. So, countless examples. Well, but the corollary to that would be, of course, you're 18 to 25.

We're going to go assault the village. Yeah. Because there's resistance in there. There's people. There's targets in there. Well, you got to tell them what. You've got to tell them the right thing. You've got to get motivation.

18 to 25 year old, I am unencumbered by experience, intelligence, caution. I am over-encumbered with testosterone. And if you're in a group of other people. Oh, forget about it. You become desensitized. It no longer becomes an individual thing. No, no. It's the group.

we're going in and we're doing this. But I think you're absolutely right. There's a reason why 18 to 22 year old men are the backbone. Young men, I'm going to air quote men, having been one of those myself, are the backbone of the military because they have the courage, they have the strength, they have the testosterone, and not the judgment experience or caution. But, you know, so this demographic, 18 to 20, I mean, throughout history,

they've been the soldiers, it even been revolutionaries. look back at the U.S. Revolution. But anyway, yeah, no, I think that is a potentially vulnerable, at-risk community that can certainly be radicalized, can be encouraged, can be directed, and sent. And I think it's an interesting question. Now, does that mean he's acting alone or acting on behalf of a foreign government? I think there's a lot of work. And I do think, we talked about it briefly a second ago, when you look at the first Trump, attempted President Trump assassination, and then the Charlie Cook, Charlie Kirk.

I have a trouble with that too. Charlie Kirk assassination. You'll look at the profile of the shooter in their online activity. And certainly at risk young men who are having some, you know, influential, influenceable, I should say. So yeah, I don't think it's crazy to ask. And a lot of people in government, a lot of people of mine that worked in the same kind of areas and the same experience that I had that had that same question.

Was there foreign influence behind these actions? Right. Was this a foreign actor who's trying to stir the pot in the U.S.? Are they anti-Christian? Are they anti-Kirc? Are they anti-President Trump? Or are they just trying to sow dissent in the U.S.? And really, could have been neither one,

but the goal is sowing that dissent in the U.S. And obviously this is potentially successful. Why do you think, because this is what, You know, I was going to say, this is what comes up on my feet all the time. Because I don't know why. I don't know why. Well, I'm watching them. But that's probably what I was just going to say, and you click on the next and the next to the next.

Yeah, yeah. What kills me is these guys go into the universities, the rallies, which I used to watch Charlie Kirkland all the time. He would go in there. And the reason I liked his was because, you know, he was so overwhelmingly polite to everybody. I mean, even if he's shockingly decimating them, he wasn't he wasn't like super brutal it was

very, like I said, he was very polite to everybody that, you know, even when he just decimated what they were saying, I don't, I couldn't, I can't see how he could have been any more polite when someone's saying something that's just completely outrageous. But a lot of those, you know, there are these

people that come and then they pick up the signs and throw them down or they tear up the signs or they steal their signs and they're they're they're throwing stuff on these guys that are sitting at a little card table who just are saying hey let's have a discussion and they walk by and they throw a fucking you know a Starbucks coffee on them or they scream at them and knock their stuff over they're just attacking them and it's like what do you I'm just wondering why why do you think and and it and it may be the algorithm it feels like the bulk of these attacks are liberals

attacking conservatives under the guise of being inclusive. We hate you. You're racist and you're uninclusive. So we hate you. We want to cancel you. We want to destroy you. We want to, we want to assassinate you. We want to hurt you.

We want you to not be able to talk while they're still preaching inclusivity and free speech. Like you're telling me I can't talk and I shouldn't be allowed on the campus. And if it was up to you, you jail. me or have me executed, but you're saying you're going to do that for free speech when all I'm trying to do is have free speech. It just seems like the left is being so, and I could be wrong. Maybe it's 50-50. If it is 50-50, I'm not seeing it. I mean. I don't recall the last time that the right burned down a city. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, I don't recall the,

you know, and again, hey, I don't know everything here. But no, you're absolutely right on the algorithm. I think you see what you click on. Yeah. But, um, and, and the controversy and the, the, the, the, the rage, but no, I'm with you. I mean, I thought, uh, I, I, I, I was aware of Charlie Kirk. I'm not going to say that I was, you know, a Charlie Kirk guy or that I was intimately involved or familiar with all of his things before the assassination. After the assassination, I found myself watching hours and hours and hours. And I was just struck by the same thing you were. This is a guy who's willing to go in the most hostile territory and sit and have a conversation. Right.

And the rhetoric brilliance of this young man to be able to have those conversations never get mad and was magnanimous and polite in ways that certainly there were some people that, I don't know if they deserve that level of politeness. Right. And it would be killed for it was shocking and tragic and that. But yeah, no, I'm with you, you know, for people who champion inclusivity and call everyone else Nazis and fascists, you know, but want to ban words and do, you know, that cancel and censor and all the things that you would attribute to. It's the same thing. Ideological fascism, but, you know, it's fine.

Yeah, I know. It's like, you know, it's the Trump thing where they're trying to say, you know, that for so long they were pushing the agenda of January 6th, right? and, and, you know, and of course the, the response is always like, what did he say? What did he say? Like, and they could never tell you what they, what he said. They could never tell you he said march on the Capitol, do this, tear up this, let's take over. He never says any of these things. It's so bad that they wanted it, they want it so bad for that to be the case that, like, the BBC

and this other company that they come, came out with these documentaries where they actually edited, and you've seen this, it's been everywhere. Obviously, it's all over the news. Of course. Where they, it was so, you, the left wants it to be like this so badly, they're willing to manipulate the truth to frame you into being the person they want you to be when in fact, you just, you know, I don't see that these guys are like that. And there are some fringe people that are just out there that it's like, you know, I used to watch Candace Owen. I mean, listen, I don't know.

She went so, you know, she went so far, I don't even want to say so far right. She didn't, she just went, she just jumped off the rails completely. Like now she's going after what she's saying that this, that is it the French president's wife is a, is, was a man. Yeah. I don't have any idea. She's doing the whole, or is she doing also jumping on? I want to feel like she's jumping on the, that it's on the, you know, jump on the, on the whole, it's all, the, the Jews are behind everything, that bandwagon.

I think that's what she's saying. I can be wrong. But there's a whole group of conservatives that I used to kind of watch. And I'd say, out of 10 of them, let's say there's three or four of them that just went. It's like, oh, wow, okay, you guys went in, you're now talking crazy. Now you guys just went nuts. I mean, I assume they're nuts. I'm looking at you thinking, well, okay, am I wrong?

Maybe they're not. You know, maybe they just figured out. I feel like Robert Downey Jr. gave some good advice to Ben Siller in a movie about this one time. I won't necessarily repeat it here, but, you know, where he was talking about his acting career and, you know, how Forrest Gump did good and other people did good, but you can't. That Robert Downing Jr. He wasn't in Forrest Gump, was he?

No, no, from Tropic Thunder. Oh, Tropic Thunder. Oh, okay. I'll let you work that one out. You know, I find that sometimes, and I'm with you, people that I listen to, Candice Owen, is a perfect example. I've enjoyed her commentary, her thought, her criticality for many years, and lately, there's just a few things that really give me pause. Yeah. And almost invalidates, which is horrible because she was always one that I said, hey, listen to Candace. Yeah, she's great.

Listen to Candice. And she just kind of got a little bit afield for me. And starting to get into things that I think are overly conspiratorized and that just don't, Don't hold water. But let me ask you. So is that, is that audience building? Is that you have to keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger to get the, to get the audience, to get the laugh, to get the attraction, to get the money? You know, I'm just wondering. Is it, I mean, I hear what you're saying, but I think, and I guess I don't think like this,

but there certainly was a time in my life where, you know, what was important was more. Yeah. You know, I was saying getting more was what was important. important, not being happy with what. And I'd like to think that these guys get to a point where it's like, okay, well, you know, Candace Owen, like, you've got to be making, you know, and I know, I personally know guys that run podcasts that are making $100,000, $200,000 a month. That's what they're pocketing after everything. And it's like, it's insane money. And they're nowhere near the reach of someone like Candice Owens. So she's got to be making, you know, let's say she's making conservatively

four or five hundred, you know, whatever, four or five million dollars a year, which is probably a conservative number for her. Like, and so if she's now making her decisions on, no, we need more. We need more views. We need more. It's like, come on, what are you doing? Like that, I, I would hate to think that that's what that's the motivation behind. It's like, you're, you're championing a movement that you believe in, then you should, Really, there's nothing wrong with wanting money. Like, I have no problem with people making money and championing something. But I would hope that you would say, hey, I need to keep pushing my, you know, my belief system here.

But not at the expense of destroying the, I'd say the bulk of the people that listen to her. I'll bet you 70, 80% when she went off the rails and started talking about, like, what do I, what do I care? What would I care even if the French president's wife was born a man? I don't care about France. You know, they're, oh, they're doing this, they're doing that. I mean, the only reason I would care about what's going on in France or in England is my fear is it spills over here, that someday it hits our borders. And it's already hitting our borders. But that's the only thing.

I could care less about some of the insane stuff that she's now talking about. It's like, stop. You know, I wonder if this is, and that makes a lot of sense. And I wonder if this is an example of what we just talked about. I'm begging you that, please tell me it's not about money. Like, if I would hate, that's why. I was trying to get to. Well, I don't know what's worse.

I would rather it be about money because then it would make sense. Yeah, you could kind of understand it. I could see where someone was coming from. What I'm afraid of is it's just like what we talked about, spilling out into the real world. We engage with what motivates us and what gets us going. And then social media and the algorithms give us more, whether it supports our far view or enrages us because it's supporting someone else's far view. And then that echo chamber comes around us. And then as we start to get more extreme, as we start to get more hardened in our positions,

the reasonable people around us go away. Right. And you just collect up more people, more people that support this extreme view of whatever you're having. I mean, that would be the only other thing that would make sense to me if it's not about the money. And again, I hate to say it was about the money, but man, that would at least make it make sense. Otherwise, are you being surrounded from an information perspective and from an influence perspective by people that are just hardening because you're driving away the moderates. And then that becomes your echo chamber. And that's all you hear. That that, you know,

confirmation bias of, I am right. Look, the five people that are around me say the, say, you know, these people do control the world. Yeah. You know, that, that's scary. That's scary. And I think what you were just describing, I think is absolutely true. Back to back to social media. I always joke, you know, if you like something, now you're just going to see more and more of it. Well, does that mean more and more of it exists? Absolutely not. It's the old reticular activating system that once you think about something in your mind,

your mind tends to work in a way that you see more of it. You buy a Volkswagen, now of a sudden, all you sees Volkswagen's on the street. Yeah, it was the red car. 100%. A hundred percent. Riticular activating system is that little part in your brain that runs your subconscious.

It's the reason why goal setting and visualization and all that's so successful, because when you can see it, your mind actually pursues it in ways, the opportunities were always there. You didn't see it. I think it's the same way when we start to engage with social media,

when we start to develop our political opinions, once those seeds are planted, you just start to see more and more and more. And to the extent that you're excluding other people and getting another view, that's why I love to talk to people from different ends of the political spectrum. Surprises the heck out of people,

because I've got, you know, I've got views. But I love to hear people that have articulate, strong, educated, informed views of the other side because it helps me think through. It doesn't necessarily always change my opinion. It makes me rethink about things, but I love that. I love it. And I think it keeps one balanced. And at least you can, you know, understand where the other side's coming from.

So if we talk about this echo chamber, we talk about this radicalization, it looks like, probably that's one thing that the shooter, the attempted assassin of President Trump and the assassin of Charlie Kirk had in common, spending time in online forum, spending time in areas where they could be externally radicalized. are self-radicalized by reading more, by bringing in more information from online, from particular areas where they're not getting that variance of opinion. So that, that to me, sounds like that's something. Now, if we look at, you know, one of the other shooters we were talking about allegedly, although, oh, you know, I was going to say earlier, we should probably

say allegedly about all these guys, right, because justice has a chance to do its thing, but we all know. I feel pretty sure. I'm pretty confident. Yeah, very confident. I'm willing to risk the lawsuit. Well, I'm willing to say that. you know, did they do it, yes. Are they going to be guilty or innocent? That's prosecution. That's law. We'll see how, we'll see how that shakes out. But did these dudes, did Luigi shoot the CEO of United Healthcare? Absolutely. Did Tyler Robinson shoot Charlie Kirk? Absolutely. The rest is up to, you know, the rest is justice. Yeah. So guilty or innocent are in terms of law, not of biblical significance. So the one piece that the outlier here, and it's interesting,

There's streams and there's pieces and parts that touch in between all these killers. The other killer we talked about to is Brian Coburger, not a political assassination, but was the person who had pled guilty now to murdering the four students or the four young people at Idaho University a handful of years ago. But there is interesting threads that run between and touch all of these cases. So if we look at the shooter, the attempted assassin up in Pennsylvania of President Trump was involved in online communities that were similar to some of the same communities that Tyler Robinson, the shooter of Charlie Kirk was. This was related to potentially questions about sexuality, potentially questions about

gender identification, gender dysmorphia, all those things. And then, and I don't know much about this community, but the furry community, you know, Matt, you're probably an expert at the furry community, right? You know what's the funny is I'll see them out. Like I don't know if you, do you ever notice them? I, only on Halloween. No, I like, I'm, listen, I'm like, I'm in the airport and I'm looking and I'm like, oh, wow, like the person's got the little ears. And they, like, they're dressed up.

It's like, you're almost, your borderline dressed up as like a cat right now in public. and wearing like flip flops but like slippers like a night slippers or whatever you call those and and and you know your your your your pajama bottoms and you're in public like this is in airport this is in malls this is walking down the street and I'm just like if that's not a mental illness I mean I don't know what is like it's got to be so so for me each is own right if that's what if that's what does it for you knock yourself out and if someone else doing that doesn't for you bothering me. I don't care. Knock yourself out, man, to each his own.

Now, here's the interesting thing, and we talk about this as you're looking at people to radicalize. Let's go back to what we were talking about before. Can you radicalize someone? What am I looking for? I'm looking for outliers. Yeah. I'm looking for people that take social convention and are willing to color outside the lines a little bit. And so

if you're willing to challenge that much social convention by identifying as a cat or you know, whatever, is that possible that I can take that raw material of someone who's willing to color outside the lines, for whatever reason, and turn that into something else? Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, why do you think that? Because they're not following the standard? I'll give you a perfect example. I've got someone who works for me,

who's an absolute rule follower. Right? She's awesome. She's incredible, but boy, if there's a rule, she's going to follow it. And for whatever reason, I didn't grow up with that gene. Yeah. Right. If there's a crosswalk. My first thought was do-gooder. Sorry.

Right, right, right. Those damn do-gooders. So listen, for me, and it was perfect, right? So for me, if there's a crosswalk, she's going to walk up to the corner and cross at a 90-degree angle on the crosswalk, probably when the light turns green for her to cross. If it's me, I'm walking across the road. If there's no traffic there. As long as I don't get by a car. I'm walking across the road.

We're good, right? And I don't even think twice about it. Yeah. I'll give you another. one I was traveling with the same young lady and they announced on the airline, you know, put the tag on your bag. And when you do, write your name on it and your destination and all. I haven't done that in, I don't know, 20 years.

Right. But moreover, I saw her doing it. I was like, what are you doing? She's like, what they said to do. I was like, and? They told you to jump off a bridge. Right, exactly. But I guess my point to this is it's fascinating how some people are predisposed through

nature or nurture to be rule followers. And some people, I presume you're, I will include you as a fellow traveler, are not pretty supposed to be rule followers. We'll follow the rules that make sense. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It doesn't. Yeah. Don't walk out traffic. I genuinely feel, or I certainly used to feel very, I was positive that there were just some rules that just didn't apply to me. That's for, that's for the squares. They can follow those rules. But that same person you were describing is also the person gets straight A's in school. Wildly successful. Right, right.

Pays all their taxes. Correct. Great. Great. Great. Right. Right. But, you know, but it's funny because it's always the guys that that get seized and almost get kicked out of college or maybe don't come.

You know, those are the guys that end up, you know, they end up opening companies and being successful in a different, in a different way. In a different way. You can kind of figure that out. Like, during high school, you can kind of figure that out. You're like, okay, this guy, he's either going to prison or he's going to prison or he's going to be a CEO. This group of people, they're all going to go into W2 jobs and they're going to have pensions. They're going to have 401ks. They're going to retire at 62 years old. They're going to own their own home. They're going to have one kid or two kids. They're going to get

married. You know, that's what's so funny to is that, but that's really who's running the country. Well, I was just going to say, that's middle class. And that's who's running shit. I don't know about you, but probably nine times out of ten, I'd say, I wish I was more like that, because that looks like a much better life than the guy who's like, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to do this thing that no one's done or I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to I've heard me say this a thousand times. I wish to God I'd been just a middle class guy, raising two kids, teaching, teaching soccer or little league. I wish that had been my life. What a great life that would have been. It didn't work out for me.

No, absolutely not. All right. So let's go back. though, because this is really interesting. So for me, we talked about, I was an intelligence officer. I was a case officer, right? My job was to convince people to commit espionage. If you were a rule follower? The mind was to convince people to commit crime. Right.

Same, same, same, same, same, same, same. Different circumstances. Yeah. I mean, I was, we were, we talked about before. Did your guys get a pension? I didn't get a problem. I didn't get, well, yeah, you know, I mean, if you're doing it right, if you're doing it right. But rule follower, that's just a different thing.

I would use an authority technique. And you can still get a rule follower to do fun stuff. You just got to convince them that the rules are different for them and that you're pulling by a different set of rules. Anyway, but the non-rule follower, the unconventional person, the person who's already stepping outside of the lines, you can work with. You can certainly work with.

And so I don't know. I think this is where it gets into the real gray area. as we talked about before, ISIS used to radicalize people. Now, is this someone is already on the path, and they get in front of that path, and they take them down this branch that turns into a terrorist attack? Or is this someone who hadn't even left the train station yet?

Right, okay. And now I say, hey, the train station's right over there. Let's go on a ride. Yeah. What really, what do you like? What turns you on? Oh, well, you know, I just, it's unfair. Life's unfair.

You're damn right. it's unfair. And then you give them, you know why. Yeah, of course. If it was only, if it was only for these guys, it'd be a lot fair. But, you know, the, and the biggest thing for me, I just wish we could find someone who would do something about it. Yeah. Got to make some changes. Right. Someone who, you know, has the courage, really to act. It's not for everybody. I mean, that's probably why it's so hard, you know, but there's that one in a thousand people who change the world because they have the courage to act. One in a million maybe. But it's really hard to find those guys. I don't know. Where do you think we can,

find a guy like that. Would it be you? Weird. It would not be me. And you're saying that you feel like these forums that these guys are kind of sharing. This is what's going on in those forums. Look, ever since we were in a locker room and we're all convincing the one kid, hey, man, you should do this. Go, yeah, do this. Just like you talked about earlier, the gang influence and all that. Next thing you know, you're, you know, if you're in one circumstance, you're robbing a store if you're in another circumstance, you're egg in a house or you're, hey, maybe if it's positive, you're calling that girl that you were, you know, you're too afraid to call. But the internet forums just make that even more.

The outrageous things that you can say and the things, conversation you can have, even in terms of, is this just a fantasy conversation? Are we playing a first person shooter game conversation? You know, I can talk in what I would consider operationally relevant terms in a lot of different forums. Oh man, we're in Final Fantasy here. Wouldn't it be cool to kill the king? Right. Right? If it wasn't

for this Star Wars, you know, wouldn't you want to kill Darth Maul when he was a kid? Wouldn't that be great? Yeah, certainly. If I had the chance to do that, I would. He's a Nazi. He's a fascist. Man, if you could go back in time and kill Hitler when he was young, wouldn't that be

a thing? Yeah, of course. And you start to intellectually get people over these hurdles. Yeah. And again, I'm not saying this happened or didn't happen, but in my mind, I can see easily a pathway to this. And whether that is someone playing the puppet master behind the scenes to guide this, or whether this, what organically happens in these forums where guys get together and well, this, and then this, and next thing, you know, someone takes that seriously. I mean, how many times you had a conversation with someone and they go and do something

and you're like, we were being serious, we're just messing around. Right, right. Well, especially in the kind of mob mentality, you start to lose your individual will when you're surrounded by a group of people that are all hell bent on this one thing. You suddenly, how many experiments have there been where they have 12 people in a room and then there's a ding, they have the new person come in the room and sit down like they're waiting for the doctor? They come in and then they sit there and then every time there's. There's a, like a ding. Everybody stands up, and the one guy is sitting there going, the hell's going on? And then, of course, they all sit back down.

And then a couple minutes later, ding, they all stand up. And then before long, by the third or fourth ding, the guy that has no fucking clue what's going on, start standing up with everybody else. Then those people slowly move out of the room over the next 10 minutes. And now every time the ding's going on, he's the only one left that's still standing up and new people are coming in. And now they're all standing. It's that kind of like, why do you follow that rule? Well, that's what everybody else was doing and you get indoctrined to it. And now I'm standing.

And if you said, why are you standing? And it's like, that's what you do when the bell goes all. Like I don't. And there's so many experiences or, sorry, experiments like that or what are they? Do they call them experiments or they call them something else? Whatever, they, they, where they get the group of people and do those types of things. And it's funny, I was thinking about there's. And some of these things are just, it's ridiculous, but people will follow.

My favorite one is Zach, my buddy Zach, who's got the guys where he was a member of the, this is a prison thing where he was a member of the Florida car. And he said, so it's kind of like a gang, right? So you kind of in federal prison, you're not really like, I'm with the blacks and I'm with the war. You're with the Spanish guys. Or you're with this gang or that gang. They call them cars. So it's more broken into, you're with the. Florida car like well I'm from Florida so you kind of do hang out with your guys so he said he was

with the Florida car and he said so we're one day he said like the guy the shot caller calls everybody and this is in a this was in a pen calls all the guys together into his room and he's like I get in there Zach's there for fraud by the way he's harmless harmless he goes in there and these guys are passing out knives and the main guy's like yeah man the guy from DC. The DC car disrespected us. Tomorrow at 12, we're going out during lunch. We're all going to go out and we're

going to meet on the rec yard. And this guy's hyping everybody up. Yeah, fuck those dudes. We're going to show them they can't treat us any kind of way. He's it. And he's like, there's like eight or nine guys in a cell. And we're all like, yeah, man, fuck them, yeah. He's like, and these guys are amped up. We're ready to go.

He's like, I mean, I'm being told how to take my knife and wrap, you know, wrap the gauze around my hand so it doesn't slip out if there's blood. He's like, I'm, what am I doing here? Like what? He's like, okay, he's like, I'm ready to go. We're ready to go. He said, and they get them all amped up. And he said, just before we're about to leave with our weapons, Zach says, yo, um, why are we going to war? And the guy goes, man, because, you know, uh, one of the guys in the DC car, man, you know, he, he,

he disrespected my boy. And he goes, He goes, your boy. Yeah, man, my boy. He was, you mean, you mean the punk? That's what you call it like a gay guy. He's like, you mean the punk that you used to, because he used to be a celly, like used to be your celly that you, like your boyfriend. He's like, yeah, man, he tried him.

He tried him. Like he's making moves on my boy. So we're going to show. Yeah, yeah. And Zach went. Yeah, man. I, uh, because I don't, um, because I don't want to go to war over a punk. he says it sounds like a you problem like i'm not and he goes and he's like he's like he hands he's

like i'm not doing that bro like i'm not going to end up with a life sentence because some guy is is flirting with your boyfriend and he's like hands the guy another guy a knife back and and then everybody's like yeah and suddenly everybody was like yo bro yeah that's fucked up i didn't know that was and so when he gets out there like guys are coming up to him the rest of the day going yo man i'm fucking glad you said something i didn't even think to myself what i if i had known it was that. I wouldn't have been all jacked up about doing it. And one guy happened, if Zach hadn't mentioned that, these guys who have, they don't have any clue what they're doing. They're going to go out and get into a fight because somebody flirted with your boyfriend. Yeah. Do you see them saying? Like,

how insane is it? And that's a very small little thing in a prison of nine guys on a forum with thousands of people. It's like a massive think tank. Yeah. And how easy would it be to convince somebody to do something. Well, you know, it's fascinating. And it's, you raise a great issue. And this conveys whether it's group crime, whether it's group think, whether it's group anything else, how fragile a group's control over someone is, how easy it is to establish. We're going to do this, man, we're going to this, chiv this dude, this, how you do it? Everyone's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, it makes perfect sense. But how fragile. And I, so we've talked before. I, I, my company investigates a lot of scams and frauds. Right. And so we help respond when people fall victim to romance scams and how

they will fall under the spell of this romance scammer. Right. You know, I promise you, Matt, that beautiful woman that is the person of your dreams. In Ukraine, who's 22 years old, she's definitely interested in a 56 year old man. Yeah. That's, that's, that's, it just makes sense, right? Look at me. Forget about it. Forget about it. I believe that. Yeah, of course. Let's get her over here to I am a 10 on the internet. Does she need some money? Well, no, of course, to get the ticket to come over here. Of course.

I'm ready to send the money. Obviously. Can I send it to a Western Union? No, only if you know, you know what's better, even better than that is you've got to send it via cryptocurrency. You've got to send it via Bitcoin. Yeah, you got to be an ATM. No, forget about it.

Now, Western Union, there's like trails. Crypto do it. But here's the thing. So as I tell people, and we do this for insider threat as well, when you're being targeted from the outside and someone is telling you to do something, whether It's hey, I'm the CEO, I'm in a conference, and go get, you know, I need to give gift cards to the people at the conference. Go do it. Go do it now. I'll pay you back later. I can't talk on the phone because I'm in this conference. You can convince someone for long periods of time or short periods of time. You can put them under a spell.

The best thing, the easiest thing, that's also when it's the most fragile, when you can break it, if you get that outside influence. That's why they want you to do it right away. Don't get off the phone with me. And that is, once you're living, now, whether that's the thousand person, 4chan forum you're in, whether it's this echo chamber that you're in, whether it's a Discord channel, whether it's Reddit, whether it's a chat channel on a video game, as long as you're within that realm, that spell can continue. And that's why it's so, you know, people ask, well, how do you break the spell of radicalization or how do you break this? If you get it early enough, you do just what your guy did. Hey, who are we going to ship this guy over?

your guy, somebody disrespect to your guy's boyfriend, it's easy to break the spell if you get it early. But if you don't, the perfect example, your guy, Zach, would have been in prison for life. You know what the situation there was? He wasn't of the mindset the rest of the guys were because he was a fraud guy and really shouldn't have been in the pen to begin with. If there wasn't another Zach, you're right.

That's exactly what would have happened. And with those guys, in those forums, they have the numbers. They can get down to that core ground. group and they can get rid of those guys that are going to question. Yep. Right? So they get those people that aren't questioning. They're 100%.

And you know what also what's super, what in my mind would be super appealing to someone that's already of that mindset is that it gives you a purpose in life. And things are so good. People don't realize that. But things are so good out here, most people become radicalized because they don't really have a purpose in life. and when you're single and you're a 22-year-old kid that is single and you're making your bills barely and life maybe it's not everything's good for everybody else and you suddenly are given a greater

purpose you're ready to jump on board I mean who doesn't want a purpose you know with the right purpose you'll you'll put up with anything you'll do anything for that if you think you're fighting for a just cause and you have a purpose because without that and that was brought to you by the United States Marine Corps. But you're saying, otherwise you're just some loser working for fucking McDonald's. Like,

you feel horrible about yourself. Well, listen, and young men these days, particularly I feel like are at risk because of the core of who we are

and what we are and we've been told now for successive periods of time that everything you know to be true about yourself is wrong. Yeah. It's toxic.

Yeah, you're a horrible person. You're 22 years old, 23 years old, you're a horrible. Everything that you were genetically deterred. to be is wrong. Why is it young men generally who are conducting these attacks? What is it that

leads them to this path of self or group radicalization? What are the common threads? I think it's fascinating. But more importantly, I think the other thing, you have kids? I have a son. Okay. And I have a stepdaughter, and now it's stepson. What is he? A stepson-in-law or something like that? What I guess it'd be a step Like 19, 20 Yeah, son and all, step son-in-law Yeah, it's upsetting Yeah, that's not a great situation

So, so, and soon to be Step, is it, what is this kid that now I'm like a grand son, I'm gonna be like a grandfather to Like a step grand, listen, it's, Grandmaster Flash, I mean, you know, it's good, All train wrecks, all train wrecks. Listen, we're all train wrecks in our own way, you know. You know, train running fast on a track is just a wreck

It hasn't happened yet, right? You know, it's, life's tough. I sound, I'm sounding more and more like my father every fucking day that I'm living, every day I live with these two, these two kids, every day I'm my fucking, put your fucking shirt on. Why are you walking around without a shirt? Put your shoes on. Yeah, I don't care for inside.

Put your shoes on. Well, you know, some people like him by the front door. No, I don't. It's silly. It's silly. We don't have white carpet. And this is how I'm acting. I'm like, fuck on my father.

Exactly. I'm yelling at people for no reason. Everything's upsetting me. Why have we got four fucking half-drink bottles of fucking water when you've been the only one home all day? And when I left, there were no half-drinking. Why are you getting bottles of water, drinking half, putting it down? Are we collecting half bottles of water?

Sorry, go ahead. Does every light in the fucking house have to be on? I just went upstairs. You're watching this program. I know you've been watching it. The light, the fan, and the, and the light on your bed is on. Because I'm paying the electric bill. That's what.

Listen, this kid the other day, he turned on the shower and he went into his room and started playing a video game and told me. And when I said, are you taking a show? I'll wait for it to get warm. What? Wait, it's fucking warm. He's been 10. He's playing a video game. What are you doing?

What? Oh, yeah. No, bro. He's just a couple of minutes. And he walked in. And I'm like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. Yeah.

Well, now it all would all make sense, right? Okay, so we've established that you've got some fatherly tendencies in you. Yeah. All right. So let's go back. Tyler Robinson, shooter of Charlie Kirk. Yes. Right.

I'd love to get into the specifics of all the forensics and all the technical investigation and all that stuff. And one of the things I spend a lot of time thinking about is big data and how big data can be used. Back to your original point to find someone who's done something. But the funny part for me, ever heard of a lop by any chance a lop no little old person so this is a very technical intelligence term right that in the age of satellites and persistent internet monitoring and facial recognition and all the DNA tech all this fancy technology the biggest risk almost always to our operations were from a lot little old person who did anything anything else to do besides sit around and

just say well that's weird that guy shouldn't be there let me call somebody about it like Are you sure, Betty? Should you just be, you know, turn on Judge Wobner and go back to your tea. Let me do my thing here. So in the age of all of this advanced technology, and I think we would have gotten there with Tyler Robinson had he not turned himself in, but why did he turn himself in? His, I thought his father turned him in.

So it was his mother and his father that looked at the pictures and said, that's Tyler. And then the first. father that confronted him. And, and, okay, so why am I, why am I going down that path about how to break that spell, right? So this was a kid who had, you know, long discourse on, on text or whatever signal, whatever messaging platform he was using with his partner at the time to talk about all of this. But it was the father that was able to, and the family that was able to break this spell to get him to ultimately, through the help of some clergy, to turn himself in.

I say that in that, you know, breaking the spell of these kind of things is getting someone out of that bubble that they're in where they're being radicalized or they're being convinced or they're being whatever to sort of see, oh, this isn't right, like Zach and the Shiv. Yeah. Right. And the reason why I asked you if you were dad, you know, first, my message to folks out there, how do we prevent or how do we help derail people that are following down this path? Talk to them.

engage them, break that bubble, get it out of there. That's the biggest one. That's kind of where I was going with that. But then as we start talking about it, one of the things I always think about, could you imagine being that kid's son or being that kid's dad? And seeing that video pop up and say, here's the shooter. You have that conversation at home. I just lost my son.

Yeah. It just lost my son. It's over. What would you do? I mean, unfortunately, I would do the exact same thing. I don't see that he had a choice. I mean, my son's either. He may get killed.

like turning him in was probably the most humane thing but then I think about this kid's life in fucking prison too it's going to be bad well I'm not gonna fuck it I'm not hiding him they said death penalty right up front right but yeah I mean it killed in a law enforcement engagement yeah what do you like I can't justify I just can't justify my my son just fucking you know just murder so you just murder like they're to talk about extreme premeditation oh yeah like he's got to be thinking like I didn't I didn't raise you like and he came in mind too at some point. He got away.

Yeah. It was a conservative household. It went completely and it went completely off the rails for the kid. And what I was going to say is as far as talking to him, here's the interesting thing about that is that. So I don't know if you know about there's a, of course there's many scams, but I'm sure you know about this scam where they call and they tell you that you owe money to, let's say, let's say whatever it is. Let's say it's the IRS. And then they convinced the person that there's going to be a warrant for their arrest unless they send the money right away. and they say, well, can I send you the money?

And they tell them go to like Walmart and buy the cards and then take the cards and they give them the numbers on the cards and they're able to drain the money on the cards, right? But a lot of times, almost exclusively, they tell the person like, do not get off the phone. Do not talk to the person at the counter. Do not tell anybody about this. Now, most of the time that at some point the person realizes like, this isn't right. This is strange. But the, and maybe they lose that person.

But their real fear is that if they actually mention something to the teller or they mention something to the clerk, if they mention it, they know that that person's outside that loop you're talking about outside that kind of that group, that person's on the outside and that person's going to say, wait a second, ma'am, the IRS wouldn't ask you to do this. Who are you on the phone with that? Those tellers would say something. That clerk would most likely go, you're doing what? Oh, no, no, no. This is a scam. This is a scam. So they want to keep you from anybody that could talk to you out of it or at least bring some reason to you. And that's that, okay, 100%. And that's that break the bubble. And again, you know, one of the techniques of manipulation like this is keep this just between us. Other people just wouldn't understand.

Yeah. Right. That's why this makes so much sense, right? Because it makes complete sense, right? Of course it makes sense. Look, we get it. Nobody else does. So let's just keep it between ourselves.

Yeah, that's a mistake. Well, it depends on if you're the... It depends on what your role. Yeah. I call that a technique. No, 100%. We talk about that with insider threat or with scam protection or prevention or any of that. You know, cybersecurity, we talk a lot about that.

If something's happening, if you're going to click on something, if you're going to change somebody's payroll information based on a request, if you're going to change accounts payable information based on an email from someone that's new, stop and ask somebody else. just by just by stopping for that hot second asking somebody else you'll get different perspective on it then it'll be that well no this doesn't make sense they wouldn't do it like this you're right they wouldn't do it like this just like you said but you got to stop and ask and so i just wonder you know all the way back okay so i'm being radicalized in a forum or i'm being you know i've got people that are in my head telling me something's right it sounds right it makes sense their math makes sense. One plus seven equals

fire truck. It makes perfect sense because I've got a hundred other people telling me that's the case. But if I just had that relationship with my dad or if I had that relationship with my best friend or with someone outside of this, one plus seven equals fire truck. No, no, it doesn't it's eight.

Yeah. Oh. Yeah, you're right. All right. But just fascinating how easy, you know, that there's a potential off-ramp. Yeah. For this. But yeah, that's, sorry. Now, I'm Now I'm being a little bit of your, I'm all around because this conversation has got me just

thinking about so many things, but as his dad, I couldn't imagine. I was just thinking, while you were talking, I was thinking this, but you should mention that the dad thing and I was just thinking this poor fucking guy. I feel horrible for his dad. Because his dad's got to be going like, should I have done something different? Should I have said something different? Should I have? What could I have done?

What could I, you know, this? But I watched a long, whatever, like a long time like. graph the other day that just literally showed up, I think, like yesterday or something. It was, and it was amazing. It broke down a person's relationships or a person's time. Sorry, like their time. How much time they spent with their family, their friends, their coworkers. It just broke down different things, right?

You know, television, social media, blah, blah, blah. And, of course, when it starts off, because this is in the last, let's say, 50,000. years. So they showed this little graph. It was a bar graph at different colors. It was nice. It was easy to follow. So but I'm looking at it and so 50 years ago like for social media wasn't even on there. It's like zero, right? There's no real social media. Yeah. I think we read the newspapers. Yeah. Well, I was like Bubba the Love Sponge what we talked about it where talk radio was was like social. That was like your, the closest form of social media would be talk radio where you could call in and yeah. So it was like zero. But then over the years, you watch the graph where it was like how much time people spent with their friends was

probably one of the biggest. And there was like friends and it was coworkers and it was family. And the grass slowly... I have to imagine church was in there somewhere. Somewhere, I'm sure. Religion of some type. Yeah. So, and it slowly, or the last 50 years, listen, social media didn't just slightly be to it. It is over well. It is that, that, it's this big. Everything else is like, like, minor, compared to how much time. time people spend on social media. It, in the last five, ten years, it went.

It's overwhelming with how much time. How can you, I always loved it. Did you ever see the movie True Lies? Oh, yeah. What was his, oh gosh, what's his name? Henry Tasker. Yeah, but he wouldn't know. What's Roseanne Barr's?

Tom Arnold. He's so great. Yeah. That's probably his best role ever. Because he always plays Tom Arnold. But in that movie, it's so funny when he finds out that, that, Casker's daughter is stealing from him. And he's like, oh, we taught her better than that.

She shouldn't be stealing from you. He was, yeah, but you and Helen, you're not her parents anymore. You're not, you have no influence. She's watching, you know, the 30 seconds or the 30 minutes a day that you spend her doesn't compete with how much time she spends with Madonna, Axel, he starts naming off. He's like, that's who her influence. Those are her parents. He's probably saving money to pay for an abortion.

No, not Dana. Dana. But, you know, like, how much, think about it, how much time do you spend, if your kid goes to high school, how much time a day do you? I think it's something like 12 minutes a day or 15 minutes a day. The average parent spends with their child, while they're in the house in high school. Yeah. So what is it when they're 19 or 20 or 22 and they're in college, in some liberal college

who's telling them what a horrible person they are and how horrible society is? And then you just need a little bit of an influence from a couple of these forums with some guy telling them, hey, you know what? Probably should take some, take one of these, a couple of these guys out. If some patriots stood up and took out a couple of these conservatives, we could really make some changes. That's what, so. Yeah. That's what's happening. No, and it's sobering to think.

In my mind immediately goes to how do you, recognizing that's the reality, the engagement level of social media compared to parents, compared to school, compared to, compared to church, right? I mean, forget about. They're not even close. It's not even, you know, so how do you capture that in video games? I don't know where video games come in on that or where YouTube comes in on that if we call that social media. Well, the first-pressure shooter games probably, one, it's partial training, and two, it's

probably desensitization, right? Oh, yeah, desensitization, yes. I throw an extra D in there somewhere, but whatever. It's fine. I know it's big D. It's bad. Yeah. No, well, you know.

Well, I feel like the social media and the confirmation bias of seeing the same thing over and over is probably more damaging and convincing than video. Yeah, then video. Well, I mean, if nothing else, like you said, it just confirms what people are already. You're seeing like this is, there is no separation from reality. Like, this is the real world. This is what's really going on. You know what I mean? I like the quote, the Mao quote, which I've also heard it, people saying it.

of Stalin, but I think it was Mao. I've seen more Mao, where it's true political, or true political change comes from the end of a barrel. That's, yeah. I think that might have actually been linen. Was it linen? Yeah, political change comes from the barrel of a gun, unless it was Mao. Mao probably used it.

I heard it Mao, and then later, years later, I saw the same quote, but it was like Stalin or linen or who, and I was like, I heard it was Mao, but whatever. Probably Trump. Yeah. No, there was a book written. I can't remember the author's name, and that frustrates me, but it was called On Killing. It was written by a West Point instructor that talked about how, in various wars over time,

how few soldiers actually fired their weapons. Same thing with police officers. Yep, going back and how, you know, but now up to the Gulf War, first Gulf War, and now in our recent conflicts, we are really good. Almost everybody's firing their weapons. And that's not by accident, right? That's because we've learned how to train them. We've learned how to desensitize them through interactive, first-person shooter-type simulations and things like that.

We've gotten so much better at that. Well, that is the same thing that our kids are playing. Now I'm right there. Hey, look, man, me and my son, when we hang out, what are we doing? We plan a call duty. Okay. And that's what we're doing. And I wish it wasn't the case.

Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. But I don't know. Now as I think about it, is that any different than when we were kids? you'd pick up a stick and be like, ah, look, pow, pow, pow. Yeah. Because we're boys.

Yeah, we do sword fight. We used to sword fight all the time. Yeah, I've got a sword, I've got a gun, you have a stick. It's a bazooka. I was to say, I heard a statistic. I watch a ton of stuff on World War II documentaries where... You're at the age where you either have to grill meat now

or become a World War II buff. I don't know if you know that. 56, I think, is the official Mendoza line there now. No, well, I... But it sounds like... It's been... Don't go for World War II. years. I've been pretty hard on it for four years.

Love it. But I don't, I'm not grilling steak. Really, to be honest. Because you're World War II guys. It's one or the other. It's bonnery. I am grilling. I know, I've eaten. Are you sponsored by Omaha? I mean, you know who, who did that with Jess. Because Jess, my wife is really the man of the house. Yeah. Like, she's got, she's a marine mechanic. So she'll change, she changes our oil. She changes, like, she's rebuilding my entire, I have a Toyota truck. She's from Detroit? She's, no, she's from Okachobie. Okay. So it was. You know, Roca Chobie?

I think I've heard of it in a song once or twice. Yeah, it's a rough spot. But yeah, she's a tomboy. She's an extreme tomboy. So I was going to say that I heard that, and I don't think this is obviously this can't possibly be the case now. Of course, you would know if it was now. But in World War II, the bombers that they said that 50% of the bombers were dropping

their bombs prior to getting to their targets and turning around and coming back in World War II. I don't know if you ever heard that statistic. I hadn't. That's insane. But to me, it kind of goes back to what you were saying in a way. It goes back to where probably in World War II how many people are actually shooting their weapons during that, you know, like they're probably making sure that, hey, let's make sure we're shooting at the right guy.

Like they're, they don't want to make a mistake. They're probably, maybe they're more concerned at that time. And then I think over the last, you know, I want to say, I almost said 50 years. Is that ridiculous? Almost 100 years. So whatever, 80 years, right? So over the course of that, that time, you know, with with the games, with being desensitized, with, you know, glorifying, you know, violence or whatever, or glorifying war, that now, like you said,

Now they're getting better at it. They're shooting more. They're more willing to shoot more. So I could see that. And I'm sure when they're dropping those bombs now, we know when they're being dropped and what they're hit and everything else. Where before they're just indiscriminately dropping them.

So they can say, yep, we hit our tire. They just want to come home. And they're just, you know, maybe they're not feeling good about dropping bombs from a plane that we don't really know who these people are hitting. Right. But still, they're all still young, 22-year-old kids that are in airplanes, even back then.

Mm-hmm. horrible so spoken like a true guy who doesn't grill meat that's uh it's good it's world war two buff i know it's i'm saying so i'm watch tv uh my wife's got it she's good jess has it uh she'll tell me when it's time to eat uh listen we got like we listen and also from okechobe like we just got a puppy with a pit bull we got a pit bull i'm telling you bro this chick she's fucking she's been one arm sleeved out and tats You know, I mean, she, listen, I wasn't joking when I said the man in the house. Like, I mean, it's, it's serious, you know, the landlord comes over and, you know, it's, hey, what needs to be done?

Well, you know, we're doing it. I'm like, I don't know what's happening. I think, Jess, you must, you mean, need to talk to. But plumber comes. I'm like, you got to talk to my wife. I don't know why you're here. I really feel like that, whatever that comedian is where he answers the door and the guy's like, oh, we're here to do the roof. Okay, I, okay.

I don't know who you are. I just cut the checks. I don't do... You want to talk to my wife. Yeah, that's why you're here. Yep. So go ahead. Sorry.

No, no, no. Please, please. So the radicalization, the radicalization. So you're saying one, that's the Charlie Kirk. What was the other? Certainly the shooter, former president or president of Trump. Trump shooter. And we've got, what is the, what's, and the guy with the coeds, the, all the,

Brian Coburger. Right. Was there a. guy also in the house that wasn't supposed to be there? Correct. Well, again, very hard. He pled out, and so there's a lot of details about motivation that he hasn't disclosed yet. Does he have to? Is he? No, he's not, part of his, part of his, uh, my understanding, and this was the victim's families were very frustrated by this, that part of his plea agreement was that he didn't have to talk about. You know, he pled guilty. Fine. I did it. Four life sentences. I don't have to

speak about anything else. Oh, I don't know. Oh, I got to know. We got to know. Right. I got to know what your motivation was. Like he was clearly, I watched a couple of YouTube videos on it. So I know everything. But he was clearly, he was clearly an oddball. I mean, every, all the other, because he was a teacher's aide, right? Yeah. And a lot of the students were like, he was just, he was weird. He was, and he had driven by the house over and over again, right? Like he had, and he had communicated with these women. There was some motivation there, like they had rejected him or he knew they were. So it's interesting.

And James Patterson just wrote a new book about this where he kind of lays it out. James Patterson, the crime author, of course. And it's interesting. I read the book the other night. It's funny, I was flying back. I picked it up at the Denver airport and almost finished it between Denver and Kentucky.

It's a breezy read. You know how it is when you've read enough stuff on things. It's breezy. But there were a couple of new things in that book, one of which alleges, and again, I don't know the sourcing on it. And I'd never heard it before, so presumably it came out, you know, subsequent,

that Kohlberger had actually been in the restaurant where one of the victims was a waitress, attractive young lady. He made an approach to her. She kind of rebuffed it. That was that. But Kohlberger was part of the, they say the in-cell.

Yeah, yeah. Are you familiar with that? Yeah. Yeah. What is it, the involuntarily celibate? Yes. We used to just call that. What?

Guys, it couldn't score. Yeah. You know, apparently now it's got a name like everything else. I'm an in-sell. Cool. You should just hit the gym or get a haircut or take a bath. I don't know. Whatever.

But you're an in-cell. Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. So, you know, relationship. And again, all that dime store psychologists, and I'm not going to be one of those that goes back and looks at relationships with parents and relationships with people growing up. yada, yada, yada, and all that kind of stuff. But certainly had some issues with women.

He was a teacher's aide, right? He was pursuing his Ph.D. in criminology at Washington State University. Yeah. Had tried to intern with the local police department, had written a paper on technical forensics using technical forensic work in or technical investigation in a rural department. And so informed a lot about it. And then the other thing you see with him, and again, we talked about it before, ego. right? I really think that he thought he would be able to get away with it because he'd studied this.

He definitely put a lot of thought into it. Certainly. He did. It's fascinating. But as you said, he put a lot of thought into it. He actually took some steps to prevent forensic reconstruction, but he did it in such a way that he missed some key things. And so it actually, once all of the information came out, it was worse than if he hadn't, hadn't done a before. Yeah. Or hadn't tried to hide some of these things. There'd have been different ways to do it.

As you said, he didn't have his phone with him. Yeah. The night of the murder. He put it on like airplane mode or something. He turned it off. Yeah. What are you doing? Yeah.

So he left his house at 2.47 in the morning, turned his phone off. You've been better off just leaving your phone by your fucking, by your, on your nightstand. Yeah. So drove his car to the crime scene, drove in the area a couple of times waiting for people to go to sleep. and his car was ultimately the big, the big tipper, the first big tipper, depending on who you believe on the DNA evidence from the knife sheath that he left behind.

Which was just a fly in the ointment. Like he lost it, right? Like some in the struggle, he misplaced it, didn't know, and ended up leaving it. Yeah, left it behind. Yeah. But that's the flying. Like sometimes, you know, you feel like you can account for everything, but there's just some things you're not going to be able to account for.

100%. And you look at that and you're like, oh, what an idiot. I'm like, have you ever... Right. Not that I've ever, you know, stabbed for people to death. But, yeah, absolutely. I mean, he'd accounted for a lot of things. Now, there are some other things, you know, driving his vehicle to the scene.

His vehicle was ultimately captured on camera, license plates, got him, got the suspect name. Had accounted for his phone. You know, his phone was turned off. So when they did a tower dump, where they dumped all the phones that were in the area at the time of the murders, his phone wasn't there. Kind of an interesting little technique that he used. used. Yeah, but the sheath.

But I don't know. I don't know whether they would have gotten to the DNA without the car. Because unless you're, as you know, unless your DNA has been captured. Which just hadn't, but it was a, it was a, what do they? Is it familiar? It was a genetic family. Some cousin or uncle or father? Yeah, here's a really interesting thing.

They ultimately mapped it to his father to start with. But they were working, and this is a technique, I don't think that law enforcement spends a lot time talking out loud about. Yeah. But all the different ways that they're all about to map genetics and map DNA. So you don't necessarily have to have your DNA, right? Could be your... Got your cousins, got your sisters.

Right. Five years ago, you know, your sister bought your parents at 23 and Me Kit. And now, you know... You thought they won't sell that information. Right. Right. Yeah, exactly. Well, it won't get stolen.

They won't get sued. They won't lose. Now you can buy the whole... Now you can buy everything. They won't share it to law enforcement. That doesn't... That stays in their database. Right.

of course because there's a privacy agreement well the other thing I always joke about when I talk to people particularly people in the military I'm like well you know your DNA would never be out there I mean the military collected it but that would never be exposed you know just ask the Chinese about my security clearance and my SF 86 that they stole you know the government will certainly protect that information but yeah it's it's it's fascinating but that trace DNA yeah I don't know whether that they would have got there or not it was the car the car and the license plate reader you know the description of the car that begat the license plate that begot the name, that begot the phone, that begot the circumstantial

evidence of him turning his phone off, and then the fact that that phone had been in the area of that house 12 other times over the previous months. Fascinating, really. Why, I wonder, I mean, out of all the things that kind of the stalking and the him, him thinking through the various different ways to get away with it, I wonder why, because to me, I live, of course, I live in a, like a New Suburb is probably built five, six years ago. And every single house has one of those cameras on it. Yeah. You know, my, we have cameras all around our house.

And they're all of those little recorded videos, recorded video, look, three seconds, 12 seconds, two seconds, six seconds. Somebody, three people came to the door and knocked on the door today. We got five, we know everything all the time. So I wonder why he didn't think to himself like, like, bro, like, I, like, you're going to be. caught on camera somewhere. There's just no, I mean, the only thing he could have done, but it is so cold.

And maybe he didn't want to be cold. But, you know, like, park your car and buy a shitty bike and ride the bike or throw the bike in the, in the river. Like, I mean, there's so many other. But, yeah, that one thing and the whole thing just came unraveled. And then all the other things that he did to try and cover himself up, well, it actually now just looks more like you did it. Yeah. And so he actually tried to account for the car. Six days after the murder, he went and changed the license plates.

So he had Pennsylvania plates because he'd moved to Washington State. And so he hadn't registered his car in Washington State. So we actually went to the DMV, got new plates. So what he was thinking was plates, plates, plates. Yeah, that doesn't look so spacious. Right. Right. Well, but again, if you're looking for, you know, plate number, blah, blah, blah,

or some out-of-state plate or something like that. But like you said, once you start to try to cover it up, it almost, it just gets worse. Yeah. Right, it gets worse. I had a cellie that he robbed, like, the credit union at the university, and he stayed in the dorms on the university, and he literally had gone in, robbed the credit union or something, came back, went upstairs to his dorm room, and he shaved, and was shaving his head because he knew that they were looking for a guy that looked like him.

So he shaved his head, and like his roommate walked in. And he's like, you could hear like the sirens in the background. He's like, why are you shaving your head? Like, someone just robbed the bank? You know, like, that definitely looks like, yeah, you probably would have been fine if he'd just been laying in bed, you know, taking a nap in the middle of the day. But his effort to look unsuspicious only made him look more suspicious. Well, so let's bring in my man Luigi there, man Gianni from New York. You know, again, we talk about all the, all the technology in the world really thought out.

Right. But what jams this guy up? He's flirting with some chick, right? Well, that. Is he like, hey, hey, how you doing? That's it, you're done. Remind me to tell you story about that, by the way. No, he's in McDonald's.

Right. Oh, just some Joe Schmo recognized him, right? Mick Ribs back for a limited time or whatever, you know. And, yeah, well, somebody looks at him and says, well, that's weird, because he's sitting there in the corner of the McDonald's wearing a mask up and a toboggan pulled down. So all that you can see are those freaking eyebrows. They were all you could see from all the videos in New York. had he just thrown a hat on backwards and put a Penn State University sweatshirt on or wherever

and sat there and ate his McDonald's, he'd have been good to go. No one would have thought twice. But he's sitting there looking, you know, looking suspicious. And of course he had his backpack that had his gun and manifesto and still had his fake ID that he used to check in. So I actually went up to, I went up to New York and I rewalked all of his steps and I photographed it all. And because I do evaluations of things like this from a technical priest. perspective. And I went into that hostel. And I'm pretty sure I'll bet you, and I don't know this for a fact, but I bet you I talked to the gal that he talked to. Super attractive, very

charismatic. The kind of person, you know, you'd pull your mask down and smile at. So it's funny. I actually have a, well, I have a photograph over. Because I'm, you know, I do research. And, but anyway, but yeah, that's it. That's it. I always joke about that. Like, not in the history of any operations has a young man screwed up an operation for a piece of, yeah, for a woman. Make an attempt. Yeah. Yeah. This is worth the risk.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I was going to kill this guy, but if I got a shot with her, I don't know. Yeah. Maybe, yeah, why not? He did. By the way, I have a question, because last time I looked into it, they hadn't figured out the weapon. Was it a one pole?

Yeah, it was the one pole? Well, no, so it was a 3D printed. weapon. Oh, it was a ghost gun. It was a ghost gun. It was a three-d-printed weapon. Andy Greenberg from Wired, who, you know, I think I've exchanged messages with Andy, but don't know him, not a friend or anything like that. He did a great episode where he went down to a gun store in New Orleans, in Louisiana, where he could 3D print. Took the same type gun, printed the gun, tested the gun, the same function and everything with the way that the receiver was printed because it had a suppressor on it. Suppressors notoriously slow down the blowback. So I've heard potentially there's slow cycle.

That's just natural weather suppressor, particularly on a low caliber handgun. And so when Andy printed it, fired it, it worked just the same way he did with Luigi where one shot and he'd have to manually cycle it because it didn't have enough blowback. And part of that was a material that's printed from and part of it's just the design of the gun. But yeah, so it's 3D printed gun. Louis, he's another one where I think when the final court records come out, there's going to be a lot of really interesting things that we haven't seen yet. There's a lot of interesting things we have seen, but that's... And what was his, the motivation was the CEO had...

United Healthcare. Yeah, had spearheaded software that was denying, that they knew didn't work and was denying claims that should have been claimed. Was that ultimately, was that? I mean, the crux of it seems to be that, right? Are we never going to know? Well, I suspect this one we may know. So because I think that's going to be part, I suspect that'll be part of the defense.

I don't know no inside knowledge or anything like that. But Luigi stated motivation from his manifesto and from research from it. He had back problems. He had back surgery. He had back issues. And he believed or he articulated he was getting denied the care that he should have gotten. And that was the whole. United Healthcare, right, denying people's claims.

I mean, it's any insurance company, right? What's the first rule of insurance? You know, collect the money, don't pay it out. I mean, that's how insurance makes money. No offense for your insurance out there, but you know it. So that was the motivation, was in general, it was the fight against the healthcare center. It's a hell of a leap from back, from wanting to get your, you know, your claims denied. But again, if you look, so some of his literature that he was reading, a little dystopian, a little anti-government, anti-capitalist, anti, you know, this was take a shot of the big capitalist who's keeping the little guy down. And for him, you know, physical pain.

Do we know that he was on these forums? Or is he just, he's just self kind of educating himself, kind of like the whole, the Unabomber. commented on a couple of books, commented on a couple of social media sites, but not an extensive. Now, I think probably the most extensive would have been his manifesto, but I don't think that's been published. Manifesto. I was going to say, who was the first in-cell would be what the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynsi, right? Like he was, he was a brilliant guy. Yeah. He was brilliant.

Yeah. He wrote a manifesto. His brother turned him in. Yeah. read the manifesto and it was published in the New York

Times I believe yeah read it and was like boy this is a lot like Ted's writing that's Teddy yeah yeah

that's Teddy yeah but also he you know right thing he's guys trying to he's he's blowing people up

he's and the manifesto in general his ideology for the future of America and what and his

his rant against kind of technology was just so fucking out there yeah it's like none of that's

ever going to happen. Like, can you pick, you pick another, another project? Yeah. Because you're not pulling this one off. Yeah. All right. So, Matt, let me, let me, let me turn the tables on you a little bit. I've got a couple questions. I'm curious, right? So you, you were talking about ways that the Idaho bomber, you know, park your car away, write a bike in, if it's not too cold. For all the criminals that you talk to and the experiences that you've had, when a criminal's getting ready to commit a crime, to what extent are they researching police techniques for investigation or trying to avoid that have you found oh i don't think i don't think any i think they're they're getting most of their uh they're getting most of their information on you know watching movies and TVs and you know law and order and those types

of you know some of these guys um are i i i've had one or two that have looked into maybe what the sentencing guidelines or like how much time would they get if they got caught or maybe some techniques of some type uh and i'm one of the people i'm thinking as uh for instance um uh jeff turner but it's nothing new with law enforcement he's he was making counterfeit uh u s uh you know notes right and he at some point ended up researching The, was it the paper or the ink? The manufacturer. Who made the, who manufactured the paper?

Yeah, who was manufacturing the paper. Yeah. And so he, he did the, well, no, it wasn't just, it was something. It was probably both. It was multiple things. But he actually, it turned out that the, the manufacturer of the bills filed for a, like, a patent or something. And he saw it, and like, they had no idea, like, the Secret Service. And, like, they were like, so it, he's like, yeah, I mean, I got the design off the patent.

And I just looked at it. And they were like, what? You buy from the same supplier. And then North Koreans is the same thing. Yeah, they were just like, what? Like that's not possible. He's like, no. And they had no idea that these, that was actually out there.

And he, he's the one who kind of told them. And, but yeah, he did research. And I've had a couple of the guys who've done some research. But for the most part, I don't think they've, I also don't think that a lot of those techniques and things that the government does that people necessarily know exist or would be out there. And I guess it'd have to be a lot of research. Like there's there's there's a lot of, I think there's several techniques that are probably out there that people, I'd say 90% of them you know. There's probably five or 10% that law enforcement does in general to track people down that you don't really realize that they have the equipment to do certain things.

And then you're like, oh, wow, like, you know, how accessible. And I think we also believe that we have more, more privacy rights than we believe. we have. Like people are, oh, well, they can't do that. Oh, come on, man, stop. You don't think that they're going to be able to figure out where you were at that time. You know, oh, they need a warrant.

Do they? Is it that so security? Can't we get that later? Of course not. Law enforcement does everything by the book. No fruits of a poison tree or anything like that. Phones. If I'm a criminal, how do I think about my cell phone now?

Oh, it's a just, I'm on the tracking device all day long. But do I think about it? about that enough that I'm going to do something different with it? Or do I not think about that one? Again, I'm a criminal. I'm going to rob a bank. I'm going to rob a car. I'm going to rob a house. I'm going to do whatever criminal thing I'm going to do. Do I think about my cell phone?

Listen, a lot of these guys will have like two or three cell phones. And every time I talk to somebody, any of these guys that I know that have two cell phones, Zach, they'll have two cell phones. And I'm like, okay, he's like, oh, wait a man, that's right. I'm using my other cell phone. Why do you have two cell phones? Oh, you know, just in case you need one. I'm like, no, no, no.

You don't have two cell phones? I don't have suit. There's no reason to have two cell phones. It's like these guys that will, they'll text me and then say, hey, can you, can we talk on, what is it? Signal. Signal, or there's another one, too. Wicker. Wicker.

Wicker. Hey. Gima, Lund. I don't know. Let's switch this over to a, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, wicker. And I'm like, no, no reason to talk on wicker. Don't need the app. They'll send me the app.

Don't need the app. Thank you. There's nothing we need to have a conversation with a matter. I thought about that because you're like the only guy I text. You texted me and I was like, who texts? I do. There's nothing. You can read anything I've read.

Law enforcement can read whatever. I'm not having. There's no conversations. Nothing. Nothing? You ain't getting me again. I'm not going back. I'm not going back.

I learned my lesson. The judge was very, very clear. I don't have these. And I've had many conversations. He's got, bro, like, if you could just, don't, bro. Come on, bro. I'll take you to lunch. Bro, I'll give you three grand.

Just talk to me for like, give me one hour. I'll give you three grand. I'll send you the money right. No. No, right now I'm already indicted. I've already been indicted. It sounds like a criminal conspiracy to me. It is.

It absolutely, even though, oh, I would never say anything. Stop it. Stop it. You don't even have to say anything. When they go in front of the grand jury to indict you, they're going to say this guy, he's did all these things. By the way, we got... Known associate with a felon?

We got four phone calls with this guy, Matt Cox, who has done similar things. We'd like to indict him, too. And they'd be like, of course. Let's indict him too. That's all we got is some phone calls. Sounds like probable cause. And if I was sitting on, if I was sitting... Reasonable suspicion.

If I was sitting in there with the grand jury, you know what I'd say? Yeah, it sounds like he was involved. Throw him in there. Yeah. Fuck him. Yeah. That's what I would think. He's been fucking arrested.

He's a career criminal. Well, listen, indictment doesn't mean guilty. No, that's what I was going to say, it'll work itself out in court. Yeah. I can't get on the stand. I'd have to sit there the whole time. Like, you put me on the stand because then they'd be like, all they'd have to do is say,

okay, yeah, I understand, Mr. Koss. You're saying you didn't do anything with this. No, I talked to a guy four times. I haven't, no. Okay. Well, have you ever been to prison before? Ah, fuck. Oh, come on.

What for? Oh, come on. Yeah. I wouldn't believe me. If I was on the jury, I would be like, you get a very believable face. I mean, you know, when you say things like, you know, my celly. Yeah. Yeah.

That doesn't sound. like you should be, you should still be in prison. I feel like you should go back. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's fine. It's fine. Okay, so hold on. Hold on. Okay, so your phone.

So you have multiple phones. But do you think about your phone when you're moving around? In general, I don't. No, but if I was committing a crime nowadays, I would definitely think about my phone. Okay. Now. You know, now I would. Now you would.

Yes. Do you think, is that common? Do you think most people are thinking about that? I think that most criminals do not think. in terms of the way I think when I set up a scam, I was thinking... In the past. In the past. Just to be clear.

Six months to... I think about it all the time. I don't do anything, but I still think about it. But it's like I'm thinking, I'm thinking three months, six months, nine months a year, and then you're... And my exit strategy. But I think most criminals are thinking what's going on for lunch? What am I going to have for dinner? Like, they're thinking a couple, maybe an hour.

or two. Like, they're not thinking, and they're also thinking, well, if they get my phone information, it means they've got me, so it doesn't matter about my phone. Does it make sense? Like, they're not, I don't think a lot of them are thinking. I'd say 95% of them are not thinking about their phone at all, even when committing crimes. Like, I think they'll go into and burglarize a house with their cell phone in their pocket. I mean, I think they're generally not making those leaps at this point. Maybe a little bit, but that's what, 5%? One out of 20 guys? Yeah. How about I could start asking for you. No, no, no, no, no, I'm just curious.

We can take a, we could start. I'm just curious. I've been doing a lot of reading recently about database policing and about advanced technical ways to solve crimes. And it's interesting because I live in a community where people are like, ah, everybody already knows that. No one would do this. No one would take their phone to a place.

And I'm like, man. But these guys don't think like that. These are criminals. They're not thinking normally. I don't hang out with these. I'm asking. I don't hang out with these. How about your car?

Are you thinking about your car? when you're committing a crime? The amount of information that your car collects and throws off, are you thinking about that? I mean, if I would, if I were doing something like that, I would. I only would because I watch so, so many documentaries on YouTube about, and listen, every time it's like, well, he said he was here, but we got his phone, or I'm sorry, we got his car data, and he was actually right here. You know, it's like he said he was here. This is where the person was killed. You know, or even if he left his phone here, they're not, they're almost, they're never.

thinking about their cars. Yeah. Ever. Maybe in my opinion, they're almost, they're almost never thinking about the car. Because it can't be because I've watched these, listen to these true crime things where they kill two people. Or they think out the entire crime. They're, they got disguises. They got guns that they stole from somewhere.

They got, they got all these things. And it's like, yeah, but you drove your car to the fucking place where you shot the guy. And you came back. You might as well bought the gun in your own name. Right. Like, you might as well have registered. the gun. You might as well kept your cell phone with you. Because you drove your fucking car. Yeah, I know, but I switched the tag. See? Yeah. I switched the tag. Oh. Oh.

That changed everything. Yeah. Or I saw one guy who they, they were asking him like, is this, is this your car? He's like, no, it's not my car. And they go, why? He said, well, my car's got a sticker on the back, and this doesn't have a sticker. So he thought he was clever because he had removed the, you know, dad of the year sticker. When he killed his baby mama. Right. You know, then he stuck it back.

So he was like, yeah. Of course, there was a, there was a, what did you call the old, old person? Lop. There was a little old person, Lop. There's like a lot next door that was like, I remember when he took the sticker off the car.

I thought that was weird. So, but he put it back. This is a real one, too, by the way. No, listen, I teach a case study of a guy. Do you remember the very attractive, uh, female jogger down in, uh, Knoxville, Memphis, Memphis a handful of years ago. She was out jogging and she got kidnapped and ultimately killed.

Oh. And, uh, you know, you know how it is. Justice is equal for everybody. Now the fact that she was an attractive young lady and her grandfather was a billionaire had nothing to do with how swift the cops put that one together. Right. Uh, but when they put it together, right, they find the guy.

Why? because he took the car where he kidnapped her and they walked it all the way back and they found the car. And my man was thinking about the car because one, he'd barred it from his boss, which I loved. Hey boss, can I borrow your car?

I've got to run some errands here. That'll never track it back to me. If the police show up and show this photo of me, do you know this man? Right. Or did anybody borrow your car? My boss isn't going to remember. We're not going to rat you out.

Definitely, yeah, totally. Can't believe he told on me. The other thing that I really appreciated from that particular forensic reconstruction was they had the guy on camera cleaning out the car afterwards, where he's making trips back and forth from his house to the car with his trash bags and his mop bucket and all the other things. But anyway, I just, I wonder about that because it always seems like in retrospect

when you put these things together from a technical perspective, what's obvious. Why would, everybody knows, you know, DNA, everybody knows the car and the phone and the wearables and the, you know, they use this credit card to buy the trash bags at the home DPA. that he wrapped the girl's body in. Well, I mean, I always love the guys that I'll get, we'll get the same type of guys. I'm like, well, where'd you get the credit cards that you, you stole this guy's identity, you ordered a bunch of credit cards in his name? Where'd you get them mailed to?

And they're like, I got, no, no, no, do you have a mailed to your house? No, like, I'm not stupid. I had them mail to my sisters. Right. Because when the cops show up and show your photo, your sister's not going to say, that's my brother, what do you? Like, your brother, trust me, your sister already hates you. She grew up with you.

She already hates you. You know about my family? And if you think your sister's going to fucking take it on the chin for you and be like, I ain't talking to you. They're going to put it together. Like, come on, man. You got three credit cards mailed her house. She's going to say, or if she's a good, she's a good citizen, what she's going to do

because good citizens, brother or not, they cooperate with police. They say, oh my gosh, that's my brother. Why are you showing me a picture of my brother? Like, they're thinking, this is a police officer. He's trying to do something. There's a picture of my brother. Something's going on. I need to help him. Maybe my brother's in trouble. Maybe he's done something wrong. I still need to help. And they're going to say that. And that's what's just what happens. I think that you cannot rely on a square person to help you as a criminal. That's a mistake. They're going to go with the government. They're going to roll.

Yeah, absolutely. Weekest line. Absolutely. Absolutely. What's that old saying if you want to keep a secret between, the only way to keep a secret between two people is a one. One of them's dead. Yeah. Yeah. So what I'm wondering is, does law enforcement have the ability?

Let's say you're in an area and they say, okay, well, we know that the perpetrator had to be in this general area in a vehicle that has, you know, whatever, is this kind of a vehicle maybe? Can they go and say, okay, what vehicles with this makeup were there during this time and then track it back all the way? way to like its location or find the tag or you know what I mean like that because that that's huge is that something that maybe what do you think possible I mean I think I mean I think if they don't they will within the next six months because I mean things are happening so you know with AI that's happening so what what happens in five years from now when you sit down and you just feed it into GROC 2.0 or something and you just tell it this is what happened and this is what's going on who is it? And it calculates everything and says, oh, it's Todd James and here's where he lives.

Yeah. So two things. One, I'm going to give you a PSA, because this just came up yesterday morning. For the love of Christ, don't use Grock or AI for facts. Use it to write. Use it for ideas. Use it for something like that. But if you rely on it for facts, you are going to get screwed over. Yeah. That's just a PSA. It's on top of my mind. I think about the lawyers that have been, lawyers that have been caught writing. Have you heard of this? Morons. They're having it right motions for it, and it will give them case law. And they're, of course, using the case law.

They're reviewing the motion and sending it in. Doesn't exist. Right. And then the prosecution gets it and says, well, I need to look up the case law so that I can give them a rebuttal in my motion to, in my response. And when they look it up, they come back and they're like, Your Honor, there's six case laws here. None of these fucking case laws exist. And then the judges are like, did you use chat GPT to write this? And they're like, well, my assistant, they was like, it's my paralegal.

Screw that guy. I can't believe it, Your Honor. Are they insisted? Firing them right now. Listen, so I'm fascinated by AI. I'm fascinated by AI because I think it's going to make good people better because we know how to think through and use it responsibly. And it's going to make lazy people lazier. And they're going to get jammed up.

If I said, hey, what are the six cases that relate to this particular for the Fourth Amendment related to this coffee cup? Fine, it can give them to me. Now I'm going to do the work and I'm going to research them, and I'm going to find and make sure that's true. You better. I'm great. If I just go, oh, great, here's the six cases. Starbucks v. Cox. Yeah.

You know, and that doesn't exist. Yeah. Okay, anyway. So, yes. So one, two. Back to your question. How would I track a car today? Right?

Let's say that you robbed the hard rock casino down the road here and you drove back here. How would I track your car? I mean, well, one, I guess it could be, isn't there, what was the name of that Swift service or something? There's some new, some new thing that they're putting up basically everywhere. It's cameras now that are tracking like vehicles through their tag numbers. But also through right now, you've got the red light cameras. I don't know if those are taking photographs constantly. But you could also, I would also think maybe satellites, like I don't know how much data.

Jesus, the stuff that they're putting... 25 gigabytes an hour a car produces. So my car, you mean, is that being captured on images or my car is uploading that? Your car is, in general, right? And again, it's technology. It's, you know, wide ranges and it depends on the type of car. But for a connected car, right? So cars have cell phone.

Cars have MZs and IMZs. They have SIM cards. They're their own Wi-Fi hotspots. But are they all connected? Since 2008 in general. I'm good. Cars are connected. vehicle's a 2007.

Yes. But you definitely don't use your phone in there. I do, oh, I have my phone in for my... And you definitely don't have a GPS. And I do it everywhere, by the... If I go home and I can go...

I can get myself home from here without any help. I still like to hit it because I like to look at the real thing. You want to know the traffic? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, of course. So, cars are collecting a tremendous amount of data, right? And they're storing it and transmitting it.

Mm-hmm. That's internally. externally, like you said, the license plate readers. License play readers are great. Let's talk about another one. The second acknowledged Trump assassination attempt, the one that happened down at Mar-Alargo, where we had the shooter in the tree line and the Secret Service engaged him before he had a chance to take a shot at the president. He fled, ran to his car, jumped in his car, drove away.

There is a great video I use in my training where the chief police describes the whole incident. Someone sees him run out of the bushes, jump in this car, drive away, they take a picture of the guy and the car with the license plate. Lop. Fricin Lops, man. Lops. Calls it into the cops. The cops call it into the National, or call it into the real-time crime center. They push that plate out to all the license plate readers in the area. Tripped a license plate reader gets pulled over by a cop. He's in custody 20 minutes afterwards. Whereas before, forget about it. What are you going to see? I don't know, white guy coming out of the bushes. It was a black or brown sedan or SUV. I don't know. Yeah. But now with the tag

and the dude that took the picture, the lop. Here's the plate. Plates on the LPSA, the license plate reader detectors, and they've got him in custody 25 minutes later. Right. You know, I was just thinking about Timothy McVeigh. Yeah. Got to get that deposit back, brother.

Got to get that deposit back. I, I, he, he, uh, what he got pulled over, he's driving. Was it driving a, was it a stolen car with a no tag? I mean, like the whole thing is, it's like everything was, screaming, like you did, you put this whole thing together. All that planning, looked into everything. And then your getaway vehicle screams, pull me over. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. So, okay, I'll give you another one. That's fascinating. When you're a criminal, hypothetically speaking, are you planning through your crime? or are you planning then after your crime as well? Because sometimes what I feel like is people are planning and right up to the execution of what I would call,

execution of the operation, but aren't necessarily thinking through the backside of that. Tim McVeigh, perfect example. Your other one, Luigi. Luigi shoots the guy in Manhattan, does this thing, transverses through Central Park, gets on the bus, heads out of town, life's good. When I saw that, I said, this dude's gone.

He is gone. Three days later, he's sitting in a McDonald's wearing a mask, in the stocking hat with his bag, with his gun, and his manifesto. It's almost like whether he thought he was going to get caught or something like that, didn't have the plan. Yeah. Tyler Roberts is the same way. The Kirk assassination.

Did the assassination, but left the rifle behind. And now he didn't plan to get caught, according to the text with his partner. But so how much thought goes into the afterwards? How you're going to handle the money that you stole? If you're going to launder it. How you're, you know, what does it look like after that? How much time you spend it on that? I mean, for me, mine was pretty easy because I just, as soon as I got all the money I was getting out of that person, then it depends.

There's two different, it depends on the scam. If I was on the run already, then I just dumped everything. Like, I mean, I threw everything associated with that person away. And then I whatever. The persona that you were using to conduct the scam. Yes. And that includes like the vehicles, the house, like every, I up and moved to a completely different area, completely different name. completely different legend, let's say.

And these guys are gone. Now, when I was, if it was a scam like I ran in Tampa, what I did was after I got all the money, I continued to make the mortgage payments for at least five or six months. And then I had, I stopped paying all the mortgages, all the personal loans, all the credit cards at the same time. And then I would take an article for like a 12-car pile up on like I-4 and I where someone was life-flighted and I would, I copy, paste it, I put my guy's name in it. And then I reprint, I cut it up, reprint it on newsprint and make copies of that.

And that way when the banks foreclosed and they started in the process of the foreclosure, they would start to mail letters to you saying, hey, you're going to go into collections. Hey, once it got the collections and you actually get kind of a letter from somebody, that's when I would write a letter from my fake person's sister saying, hey, my brother was in a catastrophic car accident. He was lifelighted to Tampa General Hospital, currently in a coma. Doctors say even if he wakes up, he'll never work again. Here's the article.

Highlight the name. I understand you're in the process foreclosure on the house. He's not going to be able to fight that foreclosure. By all means, take the house. We won't be showing up. He won't be showing up at any court dates. Did that work? It always worked.

It always worked. You understand when I took off on the run, the only reason they ever found out that I'd stolen like $11.5 million was because a buddy of mine got caught and told them. That scam, these houses are going in foreclosure. They're being placed back on the market. They're being resold.

And all the money is being charged off. $100,000 here, $120,000 here, $110,000 here. And they're just like, yeah, yeah, the guy was in an accident. They're like, he never resist. But that was okay, that was part of kind of closing it out. What years were that? This was 2000. this was 2001, no, 2002 and 2003 for two years.

So I always say it's, I would say call it maintenance. Like the problem with most guys is that they don't complete the maintenance. They don't complete the operation. Right. They get the money and they're so happy. They're like, woo, hoo, hoo! And then they run off. And like you said, they run off and they've got, they've still got the driver's license.

They're still driving the car that they were driving. They still got, like, they're still getting mail to their address, for the for the the stolen identity. They're still like, you've done, you didn't think this all the way through. Let's face it, even if you think it all the way through, there's always the flying new appointment. There's a good chance that law enforcement doesn't come up with that because there's so much data there, right?

So every once in while, there's going to be something you can't account for, you know, a photograph or somebody remembers you or something, you know. I've been like almost all the times I was caught was because it was something that I just could not account for. The mistake somebody made that ended up getting me in trouble, but you just can't account for everything. How about what you hear from the guys that are conducting theft or murder or something like that? I don't know, probably murders aren't talking too awful much, but what's their long-term play? Is it just, hey, I'm going to get away with this? I'm going to ditch the gun, ditch the car, ditch the clothes, call it a day. And I'll just never say anything to anybody.

I think most of those guys, the murders are so, they happen. They're, they're not really premeditated. And if they are, it's only by, we know that this guy is going to be here and we're going to kill him because this is, I'm thinking of a guy that we have. Hours, days, target of opportunity. Days. Yeah, exactly. That's all they're thinking about how to pull off the, because they're mob, it's mob related.

Those guys aren't thinking really clearly. And I was going to say the other guys that it was spur of the moment, right? We had a guy here that he killed like a good friend of his and in his apartment and dismembered him. Yeah. And then threw away the... Did he plan to dismember him in the apartment? Or is that just a feature of? I killed him in the apartment.

Now what do I do. Exactly. That's what he was like, what do I do? I watched Goodfellas last night. Get the steak knife. Dragged him in the tub. Let him sit there for like a day and then drank a six pack to get up the courage to just cut him up. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive this.

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But in a way where he explains that as a regular person, you live in this kind of tunnel. that you're in. And he's like, and you function in that tunnel as a human. And he talks about how when he had to dismember this guy, he said, I stepped outside. He said, one, he said, he said, I stepped outside that, that tunnel. And he went, and I, and I could see myself doing it. He said, so it becomes surreal. He said, and once it was completed, he said, I realized I'll never be able to be back

in that kind of that group of humanity that everybody functions and in that tunnel he's like and I'll always be outside of it. And I don't I'm not saying it as good as he did. But when he said it, man, it was just like the fucking goosebumps. I mean, he so he did it so well. And by the way, I mean like he was genuinely like a nice guy. Like he went to prison for this. He did all that. And he was deeply disturbed by what he had done and had said it irrevocably changed who he was. And he never be able to reintegrate back into being like, I don't know, I don't think he said human, but his humanity was gone that he'd lost. It was, it was, it was, it's, I always feel bad about that because his video didn't do great.

But he was amazing. Because that's what I'm concerned about. Bues. Jesus Christ. But it was, it was, it was like, wow. But once again, he didn't think it. It was, is he committed the crime. and then afterwards he had to think about,

what am I going to do now? So he puts, he has to do this, and then he puts it in bags and little duffel bags, and then he gets rid of it in different places. And that's actually why he ended up getting 15 years. He was supposed to get 30, then they lowered it to 15.

No, 30 to 25, then 20. And he said, unless I can get it to 15, he said, I'm going to go to trial. And the family said, look, if you'll just tell us where the rest of the body is, because they'd only found pieces. they said, just tell us and you'll get, and they said, we'll give you 15.

He said, so I led them to where I deposited the bodies. How did they catch him? It was like, there were people in the apartment. And he's thinking, you know, the street code. They're not going to say anything. It was like a buddy of his girlfriend told. Matter of fact, was it also the girlfriend of the guy that he killed was there?

Was she there? Yeah, I think he was. Yeah, yeah. I think she told also. But a lot of these people, part of the reason he got so little time, a lot of these people weren't testifying. Like they were still gang people and like they didn't want to testify. So even if you said, hey, this person killed my good friend, I'm going to testify. In that realm, those people are still like, no, you don't cooperate.

He's like, yeah, but he killed my, like, I'm not going to be able to, there's no street justice. This person's locked up. I'm never getting to this person. Right. So what? He gets to get let go. Right. You know, like so he ends up taking 15 years.

and now he does the podcast and TikToks. Thank God I was going to say he has a butcher shop or something. No, no. He's a French chef now. He's really good at chopping up the meat. It's fascinating. And, you know, as I ask these questions, I just think back to my own roll decks of experiences and whatnot. And Colberger, right, our Idaho University murderer, Ph.D. criminology.

That's a good guy. Prior to committing his crime, he had went out. out on Reddit and was conducting research for his PhD, which makes sense where he says, tell me what you were thinking. Right. Before your crime. What were you thinking after your crime? How did you decide?

How did you choose your victim? And all this stuff that if you're reading it from the perspective of someone pursuing a PhD and conducting research, it makes sense. But in retrospect, you look at it and you're like, well, this dude was getting some ideas. Yeah. Anyway, as I'm asking you all these questions, I'm like, I hope I'm not coming off a little Cole Burger E here where I'm asking, so if I were to, you know, walk out today and stab someone in the face, how would I get away with it? Obviously not my intention, but I'm. How hard do you think

it is to get away with something with today's technology and all this tracking, GBS? Like, how hard is it to get away? Because I mean, Matt's interviewed someone who they were hijacking planes and, you know, almost get away with a little hijacking planes. Like, they don't know who this guy is. I was in the 70s, how easy these insane crimes are like, what about today? Yeah, so the question about how easy I think it would be to get away with

some significant crime today with all the advanced technology. Yeah. It depends on how much thought process it goes into, right? You know, I think it depends. How much time, how much money? Yeah. Well, and as you said, there's always going to be loose ends. Because the thing you can't account for for me is

is the soft part of it, right? The stress, the adrenaline, the, you know, no plan ever survives first contact sort of thing. I think it's a lot more difficult today. If you're not understanding and accounting for all these threats, I think there's a lot of loose ends. But the other thing I always go back to, if someone's looking. Right. mean if someone's looking. If you've created a big enough issue that someone's going to look, Matt, no one was looking for your things because they wrote it off. Yeah, nobody thought there had been

a, they'd been a fraud. There's no crime. Right. There was no crimes and no investigation. The way they looked at it was some guy who's qualified, who has a job, bought a house, he made a few payments. He stopped paying. Like, that happens. Listen, if you hear hoofbeats, you think horse, you don't think zebra. Right. So you closed the loop and you gave them everything they were looking for. It didn't cost them any money. it wasn't coming out of their pocket. They were risk adjusters, and they were people that got paid to, you know,

cross a T and dot an eye, and that's what you gave them, and so there was no crime. And I was going to say, I gave them a reason. No reason to look. They also had a reason that this had happened, and that makes sense.

That's it. That's it. So I guess that's it for me is, you know, in today's world, if you're conducting a crime that's big enough that there is a victim and there is going to be an investigation and you're, you know,

where you rack and stack, I think it's relatively easy. But I also, you know, look at it and I think there's a lot of things that go on on a day-to-day basis. And how much of it get looked at? Right. How much of it gets looked at. That's another thing, right? What are the resources?

Yeah, what are the resources? And, you know, if there's X amount of murders that take place in Chicago and you'll have so many. So many cops. So many prosecutors. They all get a cursory look. Yeah. But the ones that are easiest to solve are the ones that get solved. The ones that you're going to have, oh, no, this is going to take a considerable amount of hours to solve it.

is if it's even possible. It's like, do we spend the next 300 hours on this? Or do we start? We can solve this one for 60 and 60 hours. This one in 40 hours. This one in 30 hours. This one in 70 hours. Like, we can solve six as opposed to maybe serving this one.

Yeah. Like how much resources do you want to expend? Right. And that's where I go back to the case I was talking about earlier about the female that was kidnapped and murdered in Memphis. All justice is equal, right? everyone's going to conduct the same enthusiastic investigation on every crime. However, in the real world, you know, you murder someone that people care about or that people are going to be resourced or it's going to have some media flair, some sizzles, some whatever that there's going to

be interest in it. You're going to get a lot more investigative resources. You murder someone, unfortunately, that doesn't have all that going for them. If it's an easy one, yeah, of course, they're going to solve it. But, Yeah, so I don't know. Back to the question. I don't know. It depends on what you're trying to do. Yeah, I think it's also how much did that person put into how much work.

Like how much if you have a chunk of money and you have if you prepare and you have enough time, you can come up with a, there are scams out that you can come out with that aren't solvable necessarily. Or at least there aren't really. detectable, you know, or, or, or, you have to put some thought into this. Oh, tons of thought. I think, I think all the time. And I've, you know, but I mean, I was never, I was never rushed. I never did something right away like they never like thought about something and then within an hour or two pulled off a scam. My scam's required time. And so as a result, you become very, very patient. you wait. And you realize, too, the longer I wait, the better this person looks, right? If you're building a legend, the longer that, the more history there, the more legit that person looks. The more legit they look, the less likelihood that people look into it as being part of the scam, right? They think this is a legitimate person that did this and it went bad. Maybe he's in bankruptcy. And I've done that, too. I've gone down and gotten the bankruptcy forms from the federal bankruptcy court in, uh,

it's on the way to Clearwater. Anyway, and there's a form you can send to all of your creditors. And I've mailed those out to the creditors. They just stop. They stop mailing you letters. They're waiting for the court to notify them of when the bankruptcy hearing is going to be. And most of these places, if they lost $7,000 or $12,000, they're not even showing up. We're not sending a lawyer down there to try and get, be a part of a bankruptcy for $12,000.

or we're not doing that. Now, maybe if they lost 100,000, they might, but they don't get notified ever. And eventually they forget about it or whatever. Maybe they show back on. You get put on the bottom of a stack of a guy they'll get to and they get to. I mean, this person's claiming bankrupt. We're never seeing our money.

But it just depends on how thorough you want to be on some of the scams. Yeah. On whether you could get away with it. But if it's something like murder or something, I can't imagine. Unless it's a long, I can't. I just the idea that, And the consequences are so high. You know what's funny?

Before I took off on the run, I'm sure it happens all the time. But before I took off on the run, I had a friend that they had a friend that was going to college. And he was from Iran, Iran, whatever. He was from the Middle East. And he was coming here. Iran, but that's fine. Iran. Iran. There you go. That's right. So he was here. He was going to school. And as soon as he was done with school, he was going back. He was never coming back. There was no, no, I'm going to come back. He's like, no, no, I'm going to work for this and do this and do this. And so what he had decided was, and he had perfect credit. And so my friend, my mutual friend said, you know, he basically has about $40,000 or $50,000 with a credit card that he's going to run up in the last. He said in the last six months, I'll run up all my credit cards, buy everything. everything, start shipping things back, get as much cash advances, and leave because I'll never

come back to the United States. And he said, and Iran will not, they were not extradite, even if they said this is fraud, they're not extraditing a citizen. He goes, and I'm not, he said, and to be honest, he said, almost all of my friends that are, are, all of them are doing the exact same thing he was doing, except for the ones that believe that they would be wanting to come back to the United States at some point. And she only came to me because she said, what if he bought a bunch of houses? Like if you could, we're going to jack up the price. Like, we'll go in and buy a house for 50,000.

Get it appraised at 200. Have him come in and buy the house at 100% LTV, loan to value. Pull out the $150,000. And then he gets $75 and I get $75. She goes, he can buy five houses. She's like, that's like being, he'll be going back there. Even if he goes back and he's only got $350,000 or $400,000, it'd be like going back there and that's like four or five million dollars over there.

And she's like, he'll do that. And she's like, and you know, we could make 300,000, 350,000. I was like, wow, I took off before I did it. But we were in the process of doing that. We were going to just go buy some cheap shit hole houses and have it. Because I had jacked the area up. I could get the appraisals. But that never happened.

So I think how many of those scams happen where somebody comes in here? Same thing, though. That was time. He had time and money. He came here at university student. And over the course of several years, built up an amazing credit profile and had about $50,000 worth of available credit to him. That's something that takes time and planning.

And he had an escape. He had an afterthought. I'll never come back. How soon does that happen, I wonder? Man, that is interesting. Because that gets into another question I was going to ask you. If you had to do it again today and you were creating these. personas or these synthetic IDs right would you create one whole cloth or would you take

someone's ID or now you've given me a third option would you buy someone's ID that was leaving and never coming back and now you're Mahmoud Amazadeh no I would um hmm it's bad bro it's a bad question it's a bad question not gonna not gonna look good now you're not making me look good here If I was to be... Hypothetically, right? If I was a... You were to take morality out of it?

No, no, hold on. Here's what we'll do, right? Let's chat GPT it. Right? It's all about the prompt. So if I were writing a story for a fiction novel... Mm-hmm. What would I do?

And aliens were going to come down to America now and impersonate people. How would the aliens do it? I would probably... I'm a big fan of stealing homeless people's identities. Don't judge me. Don't... Now, do you steal it or do you buy it? No, no, I trick them.

You don't want them to know. You go in, I would make a, I used to make a survey. It was 17 questions, and it was like, and I made a, I had a statistical survey badge that said I was a statistical surveyor. And when I would go around and I'd say, hey, excuse me, I'm taking surveys for the Salvation Army to try and determine where we're going to place our next homeless facility. Would you? I'm like, I'm assuming, are you homeless? And they'd be like, oh, yeah. I go, okay, well, look, I'm taking a survey.

They go, oh, I'm not interested. You know, it pays $20 cash right now. You're going to pay me right now, $20 cash, right now. And I'd show them a couple of 20s. And I go right now, bro. 70 questions, no big deal, real easy. And they go, okay, I go, look. And I say, I need to see something with your, something with your name on it and stuff.

Because they said, don't give me any bad information, bro, okay, because I get paid like $40. And if I take it, give you $20, you just fuck it. And they'll, no, no, no, I'll tell you the way. Okay, great. And then they show me a Social Security card or something. Okay, great. And I write name, date of birth, social security number, what county state where you're born in? Have you ever had a valid driver's license ID? You ever had a passport? You ever been in the

military? Are you currently receiving SSI, Social Security, Disability, or whatever? Do I go through all the basic questions? Where'd you go to high school, that sort of thing? All things I need to steal your identity. What was your mother's main name? Just for security question. I get all that information. They'd give it to me, and I'd give them the 20 bucks. Thanks. Good luck, bro. And I go and I go online. I'd run their credit. First, I wouldn't pull their credit. The first thing I do is I just order their birth certificate, order a copy of their Social Security card. Then I would, sometimes I would register to vote in their name. Where would you send it?

I would never do it in the state they were in, by the way. Okay. So I, well, it depends. I would, sometimes if it was something where I was setting something up, I would, could mail it to the house I was in. Or I would just find an abandoned house. And I'd have everything mailed there. Or I'd have it mailed to one of the, they used to have mailboxes, etc. Now it's, um, shit.

Mailboxes.com, UPS. Yeah, yeah. I'd have it mailed there. And, of course, sometimes the credit cards, because I'd have, you know, I, of course, order their credit, order credit cards in their name. And sometimes credit cards, and they would be like, oh, no, this is a mailbox sitting receiving station. They say, if we're wrong, let us know, send us a utility bill.

So I take a utility bill. I'd just change it to make it look like, no, it's just an apartment. And I'd send them a utility bill. Like, what are you talking about? Oh, sorry, and they mail me the card. But usually, sometimes it would be an abandoned house or to whatever. If I'm typically, I would be living somewhere as someone else anyway. And I'm going to abandon this at some point.

So I would just mail it there. So I'd order three secure credit cards, build up their credit. So what I would do is I would do the same thing, steal somebody's identity. I would probably build up their credit of some type. And if I could remember, if I could keep an eye on this person, the ideal situation would be to keep an eye on the person. So in my opinion, I would build some kind of a scam using a cell phone in that. person's name, using everything in that person's name, maybe even bank accounts, maybe even whatever I need in that person's name, then go, and I'd probably do a very easy, easy scam

where I would most likely I would just go buy or, you know, you could do an Airbnb, just get an Airbnb and run some kind of a scam with the Airbnb, rent it out for a month or so, go and satisfy the loans, any loans on the house, transfer the warranty deed into his name, open up a couple bank accounts in his name, and then either sell the house or borrow from hard money lenders or private lenders, borrow three or four mortgages at the same time in that person's name. And then once that's done, same thing, laptop in person's name, the whole thing. When the whole thing is said and done, I would say that once you've got the money,

money, you pulled the money out, I would then turn around and I would go back to that guy and I would give him his cell phone, his computer, some money. As much stuff as I could, I'd probably ask him to hold some documents. Whatever it is, I'd ask him to hold and keep in the hope that once I took off with the money and law enforcement looked into it and said, hey, there's a million dollars missing here. that they track him back somehow to the cell phone and grab him and arrest him and he'd go to jail and it'd take a year or two before they figured out that he had nothing to do with it and that just puts him that far off because everything's going to lead to him now if he can has a criminal record it's that much better like if you could actually find a guy that he's done fraud charges stop judging had fraud charges and you did that and he's got some kind of mental which most of these guys do, who, stop it, stop it. I'm home free.

Even if I'm not, even if somehow or another it led to me at some point, the likelihood that I'm going to be charged or found guilty of anything, like what are you talking about? Yeah. This guy had everything on him. When you caught him, he was using his cell phone, especially now since they have cell phones. You could call him on his own cell phone that you eventually drop off. So you could call him, hey, buddy, how you doing? Just checking on you.

Do you need any money? Do you, man, I met this guy in the street. I took a survey. He likes me now. He's like, kind of like acting like a social worker. He stops by every once in a while. He gives me money. He calls me.

We talk on the phone. Like how LinkedIn are you? You're completely fucked. When the cops show up, even if you said, no, this is my. No, yeah, yeah, that number. I get calls for. That's some guy I met one time. They're going to be like, stop it, bro.

I see you got the laptop. You're using the cell phone. You got the cell phone. He's got some problems. And I feel bad for even thinking along those lines. I would never do that. That's wrong. But if you take morality out of it, that's a great.

Let's agree. Let's agree. Morally reprehensible. Yeah, yeah. Never do it. Sounds horrible. But think about this. That is a story for a fiction book.

Of course. If they did track him back, once they get a hold of him, the likelihood that they even go and pull photographs or any type of, and even if they. do pull some shit from a camera that's 30 feet away in a bank. You know, maybe if you wear this, or even better, what if you actually get some photographs of this guy and get one of those fucking masks or something and you go pulling out? As long as he's linked in, he's probably going to do some time.

Yeah. You know, he's not going to make a great witness. Stop rubbing your head, Colby. Like, Colby's like, Jesus, I can't play this. This might make a good fucking thing. I don't know. Could make a good short. This is going to cost us more for lawyers than it will.

Or fans. This will be a TikTok. This will be a talk. But how amazing is it? Because even then, it's like you've got that, like, law enforcement would just be baffled. They'd be like, I don't know. Like, did the guy say he took a survey? If he remembers a survey, he has all the stuff.

There are phone calls. No, I feel like this would be one where, you know, obviously he's lying because the preponderance of technical evidence says it's this. It obviously was him. How could he have perpetuated this complex scam? Don't know. Maybe he had an accomplice. Doesn't matter. Even if they have.

Yeah. Even if they have some photos. Right. Right. mind too, you could always, that's the kind of guy that could go open up bank accounts for you. Like that's the guy, if he speaks well enough, you could say, listen, man, would you mind open up a bank out? I'll give you 500 bucks to go open a bank account. He opens up two or three bank accounts. You get him to do one or two things. Even if they say, okay, we think he had a partner

and they have some photographs. They still got the main guy. Everything's in his name. He's going to be, he may be the, you know, the mastermind of the whole organization as far as law enforcement's concerned. He's probably going to do five, maybe 10 years. Yeah. You know what that reminds me of is one of the early scenes of Ozark, where Marty has the gal, I forget what her name, Ruth. They go to, yeah, Ruth, Ruth, Ruthie, man, she's, she's, she's tough, where he takes her to the bank to the ATM and he puts the money in the bag and then has her actually put it into the ATM. Oh, he says you're now a part of it. And now you're now in front of the bank camera, now you're a part of this. And so you say whatever you want, but you're in it for a penny and he's in it for a pound at

this point. Yeah. It's the same, same thing. And the great thing is, is that this guy probably doesn't know anything, he doesn't realize there's been a scam committed at all. So when law enforcement gets him, everything that he's saying, they just think is a lie. Yeah, 100%. You're just lying, you're lying, you're lying. And my God, you had money. Right. And or even, even better, this is horrible. You give him enough money. You give him enough money. He dies. He overdoses on drugs or something and then you don't have I feel bad listen I feel bad the rest of this I can sit and listen to but at this point I'm at the cover my face I just want to be very clear give him 10 grand he's probably not making it don't edit this part out well you see you see Matt you know he says

I feel bad I feel bad the issue is the tick talk ends after the great part is if you give enough money yeah yeah that's exactly where I want to be very clear I this is what I'm giving the you know even if they even if they grabbed me He's deceased. And they say, well, you went into the bank as this and this. And you just say, I'm not going to talk. I just want this. I just supposed where he's talking and my hand is in my head.

No, he's going to cut one of the parts where you're going out. That's what I would do. That was our technique. Former CIA. Talks about killing homeless people to furtherance of scam. Copy at five. We knew it. I was just going to say, that might be in the first.

first 10 second clip. Yeah, that'll be the hook. Yeah, of course. And you're laughing and then it goes right in. Yeah, CIA officer with homeless person, kills Candice Owen. And, uh, so, all right. Yeah, good times. Yeah, it's good.

It's good. What are we at now? Do you want to, do you want to wrap this up, Colby, or, or, and then do another one? Do we have a theme in here? I have a theme for the next one. Okay, yeah, yeah. Let's wrap this up. I do have one final question.

Um, so. Are you done? I'm sorry, are you finished? Yeah, is there any points that you have left to make? My thing is do you think foreign governments or foreign people, whatever, agencies are, were involved with the Kirk shooter? Or, you know, do you think that's a possibility? Do you think it was or was not? And, yeah, I guess kind of give your final thoughts on that.

I know there's like a bunch of conspiracies and stuff like that. Yeah. So the question was, do I think that foreign influences, foreign agents, foreign intelligence services, foreign governments, foreign anything was involved in the Kirk assassination? That was the question. I have not seen any information to suggest that was the case. Some of the conspiracies I've seen about mysterious planes flying around and, you know, whatever, shadowing Kirk and all that. That to me is, it betrays credibility. Too many things have to happen for a plane. plane to fly around the U.S. and not be known or anything like that. So I am not inclined to think that it was as direct as that. Now, I am also not inclined to completely dismiss the possibility that there is some foreign

influence in some of these groups that are trying to encourage violence, particularly against public figures. And the win for the external actors is chaos. Kill a conservative, kill a liberal, it doesn't matter. It's chaos, right? That's what they're trying to do. They're trying to get us to pull ourselves apart. from the inside because I know that's the only way that they can defeat us.

They can be a better country than us is if we diminish ourselves. So dissent. Yeah, so dissent. That's it. And so tactically on this one, I haven't seen any indications of it. I haven't seen anything that leads me to think that it is valid for this particular case. Do I think this is happening overall using fancy terms like cognitive warfare? Do I think that this is a form of unconventional warfare that the Russians and the Chinese and the Iranians and other people that would like to see us fail are sowing here in this country? Absolutely.

Absolutely. But I can't. Nothing that would lead me to believe any of these attacks, murders, incidents that we've discussed today have anything to do with foreign influence behind them. Except for the ones where I said the Iranians literally were trying to find surrogates here to kill Pompeo and Bolton and President Trump. And that was happening. Right. According to press reports. So as far as foreign influences, it's that they're hope, you know, they can't pinpoint, like they're not influencing in such a way that they're pinpointing.

We're hoping to get someone to kill Kirk. They're just influencing in the way that we're just hoping to sow dissent within the political scene in the United States so that they can continue to tear themselves apart so that they focus less on external things. I mean, look, if a year from now some chat logs were laid out and we uncovered an internet persona that was, you know, Russian military intelligence, Colonel Vlad Bag of Donuts, was masquerading as a young furry and was influencing one of these kids to do one of these attacks or conduct one of these attacks, I wouldn't be surprised. Right. I have not seen any evidence that would suggest that has been the case. but to me that isn't a conspiracy. That's just a operation that was conducted and had wild success from their perspective, if it happened.

But again, I'm not saying that that's happened. I'm not saying it hasn't happened. I haven't seen any evidence or indications that that's happening here, but I'm also not privy to the type of information or intelligence that I would see it necessarily. Do you think foreign agencies or adversaries of the United States maybe aren't targeting like solo people for solo missions, but just the overall climate division. Okay, so the question, do I think that foreign agents are targeting the overall climate in the U.S.? A thousand percent. That is, you know, I mean, look, the Grasimov doctrine from

Russian military, I think empirically, unequivocally, we have seen that there are what we would call covert action, what other people will call active measures or disinformation, or all these fancy terms for it, unrestricted warfare, if you're the the Chinese, 100% that they are trying to sow dissent within our country. They're trying to erode our trust in democratic institutions. They're trying to erode our trust in individuals, in our democratic system, in the integrity of our voting. You name it, they're trying to sow dissent here. A thousand percent. And I don't even think, I don't even think that's a question. I don't even think that's a question. Now, again, grow up, Peter Pan, it's the world. Nation states that have the

capability conduct covert influence, covert action, disinformation, active measures, unrestricted warfare to shape an environment. That's just the way the world works. It always has, always will. And I think one of the fascinating things now, now you've got to get off on a little bit of a tangent, it's not just nation states, it's individuals who are high net worth people who are acting like nation states. The George Sorosos of the world and the Bill Gates of the world and the other people of the world that are using their money and influence to shape the world in the way they want it to happen. Now again, that's probably not new. Andrew Carnegie, where I'll go to Carnegie Libraries and Carnegie Mellon University and this, that, and the other,

affluent people have used their resources to shape the world the way they want it. Henry Ford did some wacky stuff up in Detroit. People do it. Get it, understand it. But yeah, but it's happening. And it's happening at scale, and it's happening with a lighter touch than we've ever seen because they can hide behind social media. How they can own the social media. They can own the platform. In the good old days, maybe you could own a radio station and touch enough people that were in your bandwidth. But now, forget about it. You can all over the world. Yeah.

Well, I mean, Henry Ford had, he bought a newspaper, you know. You know, weird. Weird, something, the turn of the century makes a lot of sense. It's not like anyone today would buy a newspaper, Jeff Bezos. I understand. I'm saying that he was one of the first, right, the kind of... What? I suspect as long...

Well, Benjamin Franklin produced a newspaper. Okay, right, right. Well, a lot of these guys... I mean, there's nothing new under the sun. I was going to say, what was his... Mussolini? Mussolini. He was a writer.

Like, there was a lot of these guys. They were, like, journalists. Nothing new under the sun. Anybody that you can figure out, how can you influence large masses of society. Yeah. Nothing new under the sun. I think the only difference now is the way that you can propagate it quickly.

As you were talking about earlier, about personas and things like that, how you can set up an infrastructure that touches is millions of people overnight, practically, a YouTube channel, a Twitter account, or an X account, or a Facebook account, or Instagram, or TikTok or whatever the coolest, newest thing that I don't even though is, probably white cotton, but I don't know, maybe something really cool. That's the influence, I think. It's fascinating. If you have the motivation, if you have the motivation, and the means.

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