Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Con Man Confronts Lawyer: Real Estate Scams & Avoiding Bankruptcy

Episode Date: November 19, 2022

Shawn Yesner talks about bankruptcy, scams, foreclosures, and more. Check out Shawn's Firm here: yesnerlaw.com

I remember one story when I was foreclosing. The bank called us. They'd got someone in there. A couple of stories. They'd got someone in there. The homeowner was so upset about losing the house. He painted everything black. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I'm here with Sean Yessner.

Sean is a real estate attorney in the Tampa area. Yep, Tampa. In the Tampa area. And we're going to do a podcast. We're going to talk about a bunch of stuff, one of them being foreclosures. He may or may not have foreclosed on some of the synthetic identities that I created when I was doing scams in Tampa. And so we're going to talk about real estate. We're going to talk about foreclosure, the foreclosure process.

And Sean also has his own podcast. The other thing I want to talk about real quick is this. this is what I was going to explain to you is that so YouTube, so you have a podcast that's on, um, it's a, it's on Apple and Spotify and all. Yeah, it's, it's audio only. Okay. So the thing about, um, the thing about YouTube is that obviously, you know, you can get monetized, right? So, and it's not that hard to get monetized either. I mean, well, so I, I have my show, my show does go up to YouTube. Right. But all it is is the logo of the show with the audio behind it. There's no, sometimes I'll, we, are experimenting with video. Right. And we'll probably get some video up of me doing, you know,

interviews like this. But you don't even need to do an interview. Even if it was just you talk, you've seen Graham Stephan, right? Yeah. It's just Graham Stephan. Well, and I've got a, I've got a co-host now. So at least it's the two of us talking. If it's an interview, there's a third one that comes in. Right. But yeah, right now the show does go up to YouTube. It's just, for now, it's the logo of the show with the audio behind it. And that's it. You got to get a camera. Oh, you got to look up again. And these are so easy. These are like the Sony's. I'll, like, They're like 750, 800 bucks. Like they're cheap and they're perfect.

They're made for podcasters. Yeah. Like anybody can figure these out. I can figure them out. I don't barely know anything about technology. I'm horrible at it. And even I can semi figure it out. So, but here's the thing.

YouTube, once you're monetized, they just introduced something called a thank you. So right under the video, there's like a scroll button or like a, you know, you can scroll through it. Typically, you didn't used to, but now you kind of have to. There's so many different features. Well, one of them is obviously the last. like button so you can like the video right um and then you can do you would like it you can not like it well one or you could share it one of them now that they have if you go down to that

button you can scroll it and it says thank you and it's a little dollar sign so if you click on the dollar sign you can do that people can just donate like do right a dollar 99 i think it's dollar 99 299 499 and then the next one or is it yeah i think Then the next one up, I think, is it's $49.99. So I've been pushing this, right? I've been like, hey, by the way, you do, because there's a problem is it's not directly, you can't see it. So you pull it up on your phone, you don't see it. You have to scroll over, so you have to tell people, hey, this is a feature.

So, you know, people are like, you know, if they don't want to join Patreon, so I have Patreon. Yeah, we got Patreon too. Right, but not everybody wants to join Patreon. And, you know, they don't want to kind of, you know, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a commitment. Right. So, but if they're like, hey, man, that was a great video, I, you know, I'd like to send you money.

And I have people send me money. Like, they'll send me, you know, ridiculous stuff. Like, they'll send me like, hey, Cox, here's like $3 for coffee, you know, which is great because you don't owe me anything, which is great. But, you know, how often are they going to go through that and they'll cash at me three bucks or five bucks from which is cool. Right. But what's even cooler is that all they got to do is just scroll over and boom, they can

hit the $1.99. why two guys like in the last week or so that that thank you for $49.99. Oh, wow. Like that's like, you know. And it's not like Patreon where at different levels you get different stuff. No, you don't get anything. Basically what you get is like right now, one of the guy's name was, is I'm going to mention it. I don't say that I'm going to mention them.

But we were so shocked. Like Colby contacted me and said, bro, like he screenshot it and sent it and said, hey man, this guy just, just thank you. you for $49.99. Wow. And I was like, wow. And then like three or four days later, another guy, which the first guy that did it was, his name was Robbie the Dragon. No, sorry, Robbie the Danger.

Sorry, Dragon. I've been watching Game of Thrones. Right. So it was, his name was Robbie the Danger. I mean, we really should have used a real name. And the other guy's name is Joe Me. And both of them, so I have two guys. They both did it.

And I just thought that was cool. And I was like, hey, Colby said, bro, you got to give these guys a shout. I was like, yeah, definitely send me that, send the name. So that's it. So thank you very much, Robbie, and thank you very much, Joe Me. Like, they really should, you should have to use your real name. It's just so silly. So anyway, that's these guys.

But yeah, definitely. Like, it's not that hard. Like, it's 1,000, 4,000 watch hours. Right. And a thousand subscribers. And if you just went on two or three programs, And you're doing financial advice. That's one of the highest RPMs you can get, which is how you get paid.

So, well, and that's what, that's what my show is about. And we can talk more about that as we go, but that's the title of my show is crushing debt. And that's what it came from doing foreclosures. And that led me into bankruptcies and that led me into helping people get rid of debt. And so that's what a lot of the show is about. Right. I mean, but that's, that is, you know, CPM is like how much they pay you. Yeah, cost per mill.

It's right. Yeah. So, like, like the joke programs, like where the, you know, where they do gags and they tell jokes, or they do funny, you know, whatever skits or whatever, those have like one of the lowest, um, uh, CPMs. And it slowly goes up. Like, like true crime and stories and stuff is probably around, let's say, $10 or $12. Like mine's pretty good for my channel. It's around 12 or 13. But financial advice is like 20, 22. 18 to 26 or something like it's one of the highest ones out there yeah but you got to get a lot of a lot of subscribers a lot of a lot of downloads a lot of minutes a lot of you to get that yeah but you're already doing it yeah that's what I'm saying you're already doing it yeah throw a camera on there

and push for subscribers like yeah probably you probably get a thousand subscribers in a month or two I've got so so the law firm is yes and her law has a YouTube page that I post video content to that page. Okay. The page that hosts the podcast is my personal page is Sean Yessner. So there's two YouTube channels. I tried once incorporating them. What I heard was that you shouldn't mix video with static, you know, video with just the picture. Okay. And so that's why I sort of separated him out into the two channels. But, you know, at this point, having done podcasting for so long, having been in this space for so long, what one person says another's going to say is garbage. And Well, one person says is great.

Another one is going to say doesn't work. And you just got to experiment until you find out what works for you. Yeah. Well, that's the problem is that everybody's an expert. Right. And typically they don't know what they're talking about. So I met you. I went to Chris Kay is, you know, we both know Chris Kay.

He owns and operates Podfest, which is what? 3,500 members, like with the largest? There's a lot of people. It's one of the largest in-person podcast. Codcaster conferences in the country. I think the only one that's bigger is podcast movement is the only one that's bigger. Podfest started here in Tampa. It's since grown to Orlando.

I think there's one coming up in January of 2023, which it's killing me because it's the same weekend as Gasparilla here in Tampa. And it's the same weekend my son has a soccer tournament in Jacksonville. So I'm trying to decide how to be in three places at once here. but yeah there's typically we get pre-pandemic there were 2,500 people that attended live right we just had our first one post-pandemic live and there were i want to say like 12 to 1,500 people there right that's the one i went to in Orlando right yeah so it draws a lot of people um and and we're anticipating to get to get even more we've also done uh virtual so just online and whatnot and and i think

Chris twice has set the world record for the, and it's really specific. It's weird the way Guinness does it, but it's the most attendees at a virtual podcast conference, and there were over 5,000 people that attended online. Yeah, it was pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, it was, it's a lot of fun. But he also has, like, smaller groups where you get together, and that's where I met you. It was a small group here in Tampa at the IHOP or something. There's like 20 people or something. So I ended up meeting you and and then when I was leaving, like I talked a little bit about my, you know, my channel and you talked about your, uh, um, podcast and your podcast and crushing debt. And so I didn't really realize, I didn't make a connection that you had ever done real estate. And so when I was leaving, I said,

hey, you should come on the show. I said, you come on the show. And you were like, and I was like introducing myself and you were like, I've, I've read your book. Yeah. I had, I had been exposed to you. a couple of years even before that. And that's where I first got the book and read the book. And it was, I loved it because I'm sitting there reading it. And from my perspective as an attorney that's done foreclosures, an attorney that's been involved in title and closings and real estate transactions. And then on the flip side of it, defending foreclosures and all that stuff, I'm reading the book going, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. Yeah. Okay, yeah, I see that. Yep, I understand. Yep, yep, yep. And almost kind of thinking to myself, why did not?

I think of any of this, but you know, what's funny is it's so for you to say that, like, do you know how many times, when I went on Concrete, which is a channel here in, and, you know what Concrete is? I think so. Yeah, it's a guy named Danny Jones. He runs a channel out of

I'm going to say, it's, was it Sarasota, where is it? Not Sarasota, it's St. Pete, right? St. Pete. Yeah, St. Pete. Out of St. Pete. And I, you know, and I explained what I did. Like, there were so many people in the comment section like that's not true you can't satisfy a mortgage the bank would know you can't or they would say you can't do that anymore that wouldn't work anymore nothing's changed

like it's only it's become easier yeah but uh but but but so it's it's funny for you to sit here and say that but what what i was wondering and we were talking about earlier is like i all the things that i did to create those synthetic create synthetic create synthetic identities and drive up the prices on the houses. And, you know, for, like for anybody who's watching that doesn't know, the quick version is, I made a bunch of synthetic people. I built credit histories for them. I then would buy properties for $40,000, $50,000 in, in Ebor City. You could buy them then. God, now they're like 200,000, 300,000. Even for a complete shit hole. It's 150, 200,000. It needs 50 or 100 grand with the work. Right. Well, what I was

When you were doing it, we were still just starting to get on that uptick of housing increasing. I think it would be, I think it could still be done. I think it'd be more difficult because prices have all appreciated. And we're not getting, and actually that we took a big jump here recently and then the prices have kind of leveled off a little bit. So I don't know that you could buy them as low. Oh, no, no. I don't mean that. No, no.

I just meant, I'm just trying to say that anybody who's watching who doesn't know my story is that I was buying them for, let's say, 50,000. and then I would record the sale price. I'd pay extra dock stamps. And I would record the sales price of a $50,000 true sale at $200,000. So I did that with so many properties in a very small area that it drove the prices up. And then, let's say I would borrow money on the property. I was then also able to go downtown and I would, if there was a mortgage on the property, I could satisfy the mortgage on the property.

and now Bank of America who lent me $200,000, let's say, on this property or $150, whatever it was, I would file a satisfaction of loan from Bank of America, and I could satisfy that loan. Bank of America doesn't know it's satisfied, but now if you look at the title and the property, it now says that I bought the property for $200,000. I had borrowed a mortgage, but I paid it off, and I don't owe anything on the property. Right. And so, so that was essentially what I had, I was doing in Ebor City and around the country in different places as my story, you know, I kind of continued. But, and we were talking, I was saying like, I kind of figured this out because I was, I dated a girl that worked at a title company.

And so, and I was constantly, then eventually I started doing it on my own. I would just go down. I'd look at the documents and pull them up when you had to go downtown and look. And I'd pull them up and ask for, can I get a copy of this? get a copy of this, you know, and so I would do that, and I would slowly figure out what the process was, but I've never actually spoken with an attorney about what is the process of how to foreclose, like the scenario of somebody buys a house, they pay their mortgage for six months, and then something happens, they lose their job, whatever it may be, and they get behind,

and then they make another payment, they try, catch up, they don't, and then, you know, you always see that, you know, two months later, they make a payment, and then they go another month or two. So in six months, they've made two payments, and now the bank wants to foreclose, like, what is the process of trying to foreclose for a bank on an individual? Yeah, so that's basically, when people kept saying in the meltdown, we need to stop foreclosures. You're never going to stop foreclosures. Foreclosures are going to happen in any, even a healthy market. Foreclosures are going to happen. Typically, what will happen is a borrower will get 30 days late, and they get, uh,

a notice from the bank. Hey, you're 30 days late. Is everything okay? You have a little fee. Right. You're late charge and whatever. Catch it up. If they then fall two payments late, maybe they get a phone call and a letter that's, hey, you're now, you're two payments down.

You owe us two late charges. You owe this, you owe this. Typically, and I think theoretically the loan says when you're 30 days behind, the bank can pull the trigger and start the foreclosure. But I think the federal laws come in and said, well, we want you banks to wait until the borrowers are four months behind. And in that four months, we want you to try to reach out. We want you to try to modify. We want you to try to do this or that or, you know, try to figure out some kind of resolution before we'll allow you to pull the trigger and foreclose. And it's interesting because the documents say 30 days late, we can accelerate, we the bank can accelerate, pull the trigger and foreclose.

Right. One of the things I get a ton is the bank wants my house. There's so much equity the bank wants my house. Bank doesn't want your house. Bank wants your money. No. They want that stream of payments. They're not in the business of buying and selling real estate.

They've got to hire the agents just like, we do. There's too much cost involved. There's too much chance that something will go wrong while they own it. And on top of that, when they sell it, they typically almost always lose money. Right. Like people like, oh, they made this. If they make money on your house, they have to give you the money. Like they have to.

So let's say the foreclosure goes all the way to the end. And there's a sale at the courthouse steps. And I can explain all this. But let's say there's a sale at the courthouse. steps. And let's say it's 150,000 that's owed. And somebody buys it for 200. The bank only gets 150. Right. That extra 50,000 goes, if there's a second mortgage, they get it. If there's an association, maybe they get it. If there's judgment liens, maybe they get it. And then at the end, the borrower, the same thing you would get if you actually sold the house. Right. Exactly.

Right. So, I mean, obviously they can add and they add in all their fees and if they had to order an appraisal and they had ordered it. All the fees associated with the foreclosure, the attorney's fees, all those things, have to get taken out. But you don't have any of that money coming anyway. Right. And so that's, so once the bank gets to the point where they've decided, okay, we're not getting paid, this borrower's not responsive, we're going to pull the trigger, we're going to file the foreclosure. One of the reasons that your book was so interesting is one of the first things we have to do is pull a title search. We got to look at who else is on title to this house. And that would be the first time as the bank, as the attorney, that would be

the first time if there were any of this false satisfactions or I think one of the other things you did that I was reading was not only would you go to one bank and say, hey, I got this free and clear house, but then you go to another bank and say, hey, I got this free and clear house. And then you go to another bank. And the problem is it takes yet two, three, four weeks for this stuff to appear on the public record. So banks one, two, and three are all going cool. We're going to be in first position on this free and clear house. And now their first, second, third position. So we would figure out that kind of stuff, figure out who the defendant should be, and then the foreclosure gets filed. We got to serve the defendant. Now, again, in your case, these people

didn't exist. They could never find them. So for the bank to get money out of these borrowers, we got to serve them personally. Someone had to have to knock on the door, hey, are you Matt, or hey, are you Joe Smith, or hey, are you, whatever, here you've been served with a lawsuit. Sometimes it's the sheriff, sometimes it's a private individual, whatever. But that's the only way the bank can get money out of you. If it's somebody that doesn't exist, the bank can publish notice in the newspaper and still get service on the property. Right. So the bank can still foreclose on the house, even if the person doesn't exist.

And so you've got to go through that process. So if they can, if they can serve you, you're saying they can get money from you. You mean they can get a judgment against you. Well, they can get a judgment in either case. But let's say, you know, the previous example, the house, the judgment is 150,000. thousand and the house sells for 200 we'll flip that what if the what if the judgment's 150 but the house is only worth 100 right and so there's a 50,000 dollar deficit for the bank to get that 50,000 dollar deficit from the person they have to physically serve the person so but keep on

if I don't have $50,000 well then that's where garnishment bankruptcy that's where all that stuff comes in but if they can't serve you then they don't have the right to go to garnish your wages or do any of those things. Right, because the court doesn't have personal jurisdiction against you. Okay. The bank, if they publish a notice in the newspaper, then the court has what's called in rem jurisdiction, meaning they have jurisdiction over the property only. But not you. But not you. Okay. They don't have the in person or personal jurisdiction over you. So once we get through that process, people provide whatever defenses they have to the foreclosure or they don't do anything and they just get steamrolled. So what happens? What happens if the person fights the foreclosure? Like,

What is the process of? It depends on what the fight is. So when I started doing this, I did it for three years from the bank's perspective, 01 to 04, and then in 04, I switched sides and started representing homeowners in foreclosure. And there are a lot of my contemporaries. Some of them don't exist anymore, meaning they've been disbarred. They don't practice law, whatever. Some of them still do.

But there were a whole group of attorneys, maybe two different groups of attorneys. one group would say all banks are evil they shouldn't have given you the loan they bifurcated you know they split the note from the mortgage the debt from the security agreement they had all this tricks and and all that stuff and we're going to fight the banks and we're going to try to get you these houses free and clear and da da da da that was one set i more fell into the other set which is you borrowed the money yeah let's figure out a way to either pay it back and save the house right or get you out of it whether that meant get rid of the house sell house whatever modify we could even in bankruptcy we can even save the house through chapter 13 through a payment plan bankruptcy so let's figure out either number one how to save the house or number two how to get rid of it so that you don't owe the bank any money that was sort of where i right where i felt kind of negotiate yeah as opposed to try and trick them into being able to keep the house somehow or another by saying exactly you never properly signed they never properly disclosed they can't find the original robos signing and all that.

I didn't fall into any of that nonsense, probably because I had been doing foreclosures from the bank's perspective. Right. And so I had that creditor slant in me. Plus, one of the other things that sort of played out today is that if you delay, delay, delay, delay, delay, delay, I've got some foreclosure cases that I inherited from other attorneys that are seven years old, eight years old at this point. Well, back in the mid to late 2010, 2000s, back in that time frame, there were a lot of tax laws that said,

if you lost your house and you took a loss on it, there would be forgiveness of debt income. You would have to report income. If the bank said, hey, that $50,000 deficit, forget it. You don't have to pay it. Well, the IRS comes in and says, well, great, if you had to pay it and didn't pay it, we're going to tax you on it. Well, there were some tax laws back in, I think, the late 2010s, just before 2020, there were some tax laws that came into effect that said, hey, if you have that deficit from the sale of a primary residence, a short sale of a primary residence, you don't have to pay taxes

on it. Those laws have now gone away. So delay, delay, delay, delay, delay, delay, if you get rid of the house today and you take a loss on it, you might still have to pay tax on that. loss. Okay. Or you, there were some, there was one scenario where the person had a gain. So they had to pay capital gains taxes because it wasn't homestead property. But they had borrowed so much that there was a deficit based on what they borrowed. And so they got hit with forgiveness of debt income. So they got whacked from, from both sides by the IRS. IRS said, great, you had capital gains. We're going to

tax you on that. And the bank got rid of debt that you didn't have to pay. We're going to tax you on that. So a lot of these delays may have put some borrowers in a worse position, where now they're getting hammered by the IRS. And I can negotiate with banks. I can make banks go away all day. The IRS is a totally different animal. And I've been able to do some negotiation with the IRS, but that's a different. They're in a way stronger position than anybody else. Exactly. So, so that's really where I came in was more of a, let's figure out how to do it. So a lot of the delays, what I tell clients is the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to file a motion, a motion for extension and time and say, hey, I just got hired, which is true in most cases. You typically

have 20 days to respond from when you're served with the lawsuit. So hey, I just got hired and I need time to figure out what's going on, Judge. So you just got hired as the attorney. Right. Okay. Give me an extension. Right. And most times those are granted, just professional courtesy. Here you go. Here's an extension of time. Then, you know, we'll see. Did they comply with all the prerequisites. Did they send out all the proper notices? I'm going to make sure that the bank did what the bank was supposed to do. Right. But I'm not trying to get anybody a free and clear house. Right, right. Unless I think there's something there. Yeah. I have a handful of cases floating around right now where I think there's a legit defense. And so, yeah, absolutely. Let's fight.

Even then, I tell the client, look, if I can get the judge to agree with us, that you tried to make your payments. And for some reason, the bank wouldn't let you make your payments. Well, at some point, even if the judge rules in our favor and says we win, at some point, even the judge is going to say, look, your X number of payments behind. Your payments are whatever they are per month. You've got to catch that up in order to get to where you should be today. We'll wipe the late charges. We'll wipe the inspection fees, the attorney's fee. We'll wipe all that nonsense. But your X number of payments behind, your payments or so-and-so per month, you've got to pay that amount to the bank to get current. That may be where we've got some leverage to say to the bank, okay, give us a loan modification

that's favorable. Right. Give us a good loan mod. Let's just take those and stack them on the back of the, you know, let me start paying again, put them on the back of the, do they do that often? They have. I mean, and that's a loan modification. Oh, okay.

So yeah, let's do a loan modification and do it that way. Okay. And so I've been able to do that for some people too. so what happens if but still what's the process of one okay i get it you get extent let's say you're foreclosing from the bank's perspective right like what's the first document that you file with the court well you've got to file the note and the mortgage so right um florida has specific requirements in terms of i got a file an affidavit that says where the original note is right to to get rid of that defense of you lost the original note right and i can tell you from doing it in in the early days

what would happen a lot of times is the bank wouldn't send us the original documents. Right. Because they don't want those documents in transit. Yeah, yeah. They don't want them to get legitimately lost. So they wouldn't send them to us. So when we're getting ready to file the foreclosure, we would have to say the judge,

we don't have the original documents right now. The case would get ready to go to the final hearing and the bank would send us the original documents. We'd file those in the court. Now we've got the original documents. Let's foreclose. But a lot of times, We didn't file the original documents because the bank didn't want to send them to us yet, not because they didn't exist.

So you got to file the note, you got to file the mortgage, you got to file any assignments that show the chain from the original lender to whoever's foreclosing now. Right, because banks close with, you close with, you close with ABC lending, and then a month later, your mortgage just got sold to countrywide, then countrywide goes under, or ends up getting assigned to Bank of America, so you have to explain what it. And Bank of America sells it. legitimately, why this bank, your bank legitimately owns this fucking mortgage. And even then, sometimes it's not that the loan got sold to Bank of America. It's that the servicing rights got sold to Bank of America. So Bank of America is servicing it, but they're servicing it for this other bank, this other Wall Street security, whatever it is. Right. Which means they're just collecting the payments. I'm sorry, some of the stuff you're saying, like, I know what you're saying.

Right. So servicing it means we're collecting the payments because we have a processing center. We can keep we have all the software and then they get a little percentage of whatever the payment is or the interest rate but somebody else really is holding the debt yeah there's some wall so a lot of these things get a lot of these loans get bundled up into packages and then those packages get sold on wall street right and so you may have a wall street security that's got a thousand loans in it well bank of america is the one like you said they collect all the money from the borrowers they pay all that money over to whatever wall street security bank account owns the loan. They're in charge of collecting the payments from the borrower and giving

the payments to whoever ultimately owns this thing. And they take a little piece. And they take a little piece of it. And that's where the other, I loved, I don't know if you saw the movie the big short. I loved the big short two weeks ago with my girlfriend because she'd never seen it. It was a great, it's a great on the ground telling of that story. Like, did you ever watch too big to fail? Yes. Like, I like that. But if you're just kind of like an average person, Like, it's too surface. It's too high up and you're looking at everything, you know, from, you know, whatever, you know, two miles up. Right.

As opposed to the big short where you can really see it's a down-to-earth where like, now this makes sense. That one scene where they go to that house, I think it's in South Florida somewhere, and they knock on the door and can we talk to blah, blah, blah, and the lady's like, yeah, that's my dog or something. And they're like, wait a minute, your dog got this loan. The mortgage guy came out and told me to sign a bunch of papers and we got money. Yeah. And that's literally how it used to work sometimes. Do you remember the douchebag mortgage brokers that were like, oh, I go for immigrants or I try and focus on what do you say, on strippers and like, those were my brokers. Those were like every time I watch that, I'm like, oh my God, like at the time my brokers seemed pretty cool.

They're watching these guys and I'm like, these are the kinds of idiots that I hire that were doing loans. Like that was the kind of, it was, it was horrible. It was literally, can you fog a mirror? We'll give you money. Yeah. Making up pay stubs, making up jobs, make no no verification of income requirements, all that. People say to me, you know, the banks are to blame for the mortgage meltdown. They are.

The brokers. The brokers, the appraisers, even the government officials. I mean, the counties love. it. Their income was going up because all these properties are increasing in value so much. They're getting all this tax revenue from the appreciation of the properties. And you read my book. You saw how many times did I get caught? Like I got caught over by the banks would catch me over and pay them off, pay this, agree to do this and just kept going. And kept going and kept going. Like nobody ever called the FBI. Yeah, they didn't, they were making money. They didn't care. They were making money hand over a fist. Nobody. I think in the, I think one of the things in the beginning of that of the book, I

explaining about, like, I got to call one time red-handed. We were talking about like $2 million worth of fraud. I mean, it was a ton of fraud that one broker had committed. And literally, they were like, they were like, look, just promise to, if we get it, have to take any of these loans back, just promise us you'll help us either refinance the house, sell the house, you'll help us out because they were in Chicago. Right. And like two or three weeks later, the owner of that company flew down, took me and

three or four of my mortgage brokers out to dinner and he had a few drinks and he was he even told it he said look man I don't care how much fraud goes through as long as it gets passes through our quality control and I'm able to sell it on the secondary market he's like I could care less yeah I mean that was really his they're at it and they were doing they probably they weren't a huge company but they were probably doing 10 million a month yeah I mean when the money's flowing nobody really cares it's when the music stopped yeah that everybody went oh my god what's going on. He wants Khan Bank of America out of $250,000 using nothing but a fake ID and his charm. He is the most interesting man in the world. I don't typically commit crime, but when I do,

it's bank fraud. Stay greedy of my friends. Support the channel. Join Matthew Cox's Patreon. So you file with the, sorry, back to you file with the court, you say, hey, here's the here's the note here's the here's the note everything was signed everything's proper they're not paying like if the borrower the borrower's been served or not served

and you know like you said if they're not served then you run an ad in the newspaper saying hey this person's in foreclosure they don't answer because they don't know they're running some little dink newspaper nobody nobody ever looks at but they know they're being foreclosed on anyway and then so what's the next

process of is that Is it, do you file like a less pendants or what? So, list pendants is filed at the very beginning. Oh, that's the beginning. Yeah, that's. And a lot of people confuse the list pendants with the foreclosure. Really all the list pendants means is that there's a lawsuit that affects property. So I've used list pendants in quiet title lawsuits where you're trying to say I really own the property, not this other person.

I've used list pendants in partition lawsuits where two people own property, but they're fighting over how to what to do with it, how to get rid of it or keep it or whatever. So all the list pendants. means is that there's a lawsuit that involves property. Okay. Now, 99% of the time, that's foreclosure, but you could have a list pendants in other types of real estate related lawsuits. Okay. But yeah, you file the list pendants, the complaint, all the supporting documents. Then the defense attorney typically comes in and says, you know, hey, here's my motion for more time. Here's my motion to dismiss. Here's my answer in defenses. You know, whatever it is that's filed. One of the advantages that we have here in Florida, and I use advantages loosely, the foreclosures have to go through the

judge. There's other states where it's all a document process. It's all pushing paper. So in Florida, the homeowner owns the property. The bank only has a lien on it. In other states, the bank owns the property until the borrower pays it off. Well, in those kinds of states, you just file a notice and the bank gets to foreclose. It's a much faster timeline, mostly. It's like I'm taking your car. Right. In Florida, you've got to go through the judge. And so the judges have calendars. The judges have dockets. The judges are busy. We just had Hurricane Ian come through, which shut down court for a week. So in those kinds of cases, there are some delays that are just created naturally by the judge and the judge's schedule and the clerk and the amount of cases that are being processed and all that kind of

stuff. There's just natural delays there. We can typically file stuff that does create an answer that creates some kind of defenses to the foreclosure lawsuit. We can ask one of the other things that Florida did, which we can talk about too, Florida put in a mandatory, not a mandatory, but in most cases, if the borrower asks for mediation, the judge will give it. So the borrower can submit a document that says, hey, I want to mediate with the bank to see if I qualify for a loan modification. Even though the bank had to take four months before they filed this thing to try to modify with the borrower. The borrower within the foreclosure can then file something that says, hey, I want to, I want a mediation to see if I can get this loan modified. So you can do that.

Well, that whole process slows things down for months and months and months. Eventually, the bank will get to the point where they say, okay, forget it. Here's our motion for final judgment, motion for summary judgment. Here's the motion that we're filing that says, judge, bang the gavel, say we win, give us the house, schedule the sale. whatever. When that happens, I can even go to that hearing. Florida law says the foreclosure sale has to be between, I think it's 28 and 35 days from that final hearing. So when the bank files for that final hearing and says, Judge, bang the gavel, say we win, give us our judgment, schedule the sale. Florida law says the sale has to be 28 to 35 days from that point. But I can go to the

hearing and say, judge, we're trying to sell it. The borrower is sick. We got the end of school coming up. We got Thanksgiving. Whatever. And in most cases, the judges will give 60 days from that date, 90 days from that day. You're like six months from the first time they stop the pain. And that's if typically I could some, I can most times get it out of year.

I was going to say, that's if everything goes in the bank's favor. You're like six months. Right. So you're saying if you drag it, you can go a year or more. year. Yeah. And when, when I was doing foreclosures, my fastest foreclosure from the day the list pendants was filed until the day of the foreclosure sale was 91 days. Right. But that was my, that was my record. But that was, that's with nobody fighting. That's with, and that was what, 15 years ago? That was, yeah, 2002 or three. Okay. Like I said, I've got some now that are six, seven, eight years old. Now, to the

extent anyone from the Florida bar is listening, I do put in legitimate defenses. I'm not trying to delay just for purposes of delay. Like I said at the very, very beginning when we started, I've got some plan in place with the homeowner that we're going to try to sell it and pull out the cash. We're going to try to short sell it and eliminate the equity. We're going to try to modify it. And then even then with the sale coming up, if there's a foreclosure sale coming up, we've always got bankruptcy as an option. Right. We can do a Chapter 7, which is a liquidation bankruptcy, which basically is the homeowner saying, I want to get rid of this house. But the bankruptcy stay causes about a 90-day delay. or we can do a chapter 13, which is a payment plan bankruptcy, and I'm going to try to catch up the mortgage through this bankruptcy plan. And bankruptcy plans are typically five years in length. The other thing is here in Tampa, and I think all over the state, but especially here in Tampa, we've got a mortgage modification mediation plan within bankruptcy court. So you've got the first four months that I'm going into default that the bank has to try to modify with me. Then we get into the foreclosure, and I ask for mediation to try to modify the loan in the state.

court foreclosure. If all that fails in the bank schedules a foreclosure sale, then I can file a bankruptcy in a chapter 13 and say, I want to save the house. And oh, by the way, I want a third shot at trying to mediate with the bank to get a modification put in place within the bankruptcy court. So I got three tries at least to try to get this loan modified within the foreclosure process here in Florida. Okay. So here's what I'm wondering, because I, in my opinion, like, and I'm got to be totally wrong, but like most people, they get a few payments behind. They, they can't catch up and they kind of put their, typically, like, don't they pretty much, like, just put their head in the sand? Yeah. You know, like, that's the problem. Like,

they think there's nothing we can do. And then, of course, if there is, then they have to pay you to try and figure these things out for them. Um, so what I'm wondering is, like, do you ever get to a point, do you ever get clients in that are basically like saying, look, you know, I'll pay you, but I want to, I want to just stay in the house as long as possible. I don't really want to pay anything back. I just want to stay as long as possible, put as much money in my pocket as possible, and move on to something else. Like, I mean, is that, like, because I guess my problem is when I've, I've thought about this, you know, you know, multiple times. And actually, I have a friend of mine that I was telling him you were coming over and we were talking about it.

And I was saying that, you know, like, he's like, well, you know, we went back for the, and we were talking about, like, I was talking about like, um, adjustable rate mortgages. Right. Because I was saying, initially he was like, man, you know, they know what they signed. You know, he was saying, they know what they signed. They owe $1,200 a month. They couldn't pay it or they decided not to pay it or they didn't want to work hard enough to pay it. And so they get foreclosed on. And I went, you know, and honestly, I said, a lot of times that's what happens.

They lost their job. They didn't save enough money. They didn't budget. correctly they get a little bit behind then they get further behind then they justify not paying they get angry at the bank then they this i said but to be honest with you i said having been a mortgage broker a lot of times people with adjustable rate mortgages had no idea what they were something you know i agree with you know like and when you read the documents like i literally used to be it would disclose to people what the documents said and when they read it

i would let them read i'd say well here's oh you can calculate right now what you're payment would be. And I would say, well, look, right here. And I'd say, oh, I see. It says that your late payment will be, or your adjustable rate is based on the LIBOR or the whatever. And I'd say, that only just only goes up a couple of percentage of whatever, you know, they go, so my payment will only go up like a one or two percent of the payment. I go, yeah, so I'm sure, yeah, that sounds what it, that's not what it means. But I go, yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what it means. I know that's not what it means. And then I would say, they'd say, well, what's my late payment goodmower. I have a prepayment penalty. And I'd say, well, let's see. It says it's going to be,

oh, here's what it says it's going to be, and it would say 80% of whatever the remainder of the prepayment period is, you know, based on whatever your interest rate is. And so the way it made it sound like it was 80% of the interest on the payments. Yeah. But the problem is, so to them, they would think, well, my interest rate is, let's say, for sake of argument, 5%. Right. My payment's $1,000. Five percent of $1,000 is $50. And I'll have two years left.

So 50 times 24, right? So, oh, so it's like $240. Or, no, I'd say it'd be like $120. They want 80% of $120. And I'd let them do that calculation. I'd go, yeah, that sounds right. And they go, oh, okay, no big deal. that's not what it means.

No. Because almost your entire payment for the first five, six, seven years is all interest. So what they really mean is it's like 80% of your payment. Right. That's for the next 24 months. So, you know, it's thousands of dollars. But so a lot of these people I know just from disclosing to them and talking to them and having them look into it, I know that you have no idea what you're about to sign. And then they would get into that position and they go to sell the house a year and a half later and they'd have a $6,000.

prepayment penalty that they had never saw coming, or they would, you know, or the, their adjustment would hit, period would hit, and their payment would jump $220 on their payment, and they never saw that coming. Right. So to me, like I was explaining my buddy, I was like, there is such a thing as predatory lending. I think there are legitimately, like you said, some borrowers, either prepayment penalties, adjustable rates, balloons, there are some borrowers that legitimate.

had no idea what they were signing right and and in that instance yeah they were taken advantage of but but where the problem that I always had to overcome as the attorney making the argument for the borrower is they still got the money to buy the house even though they were taken advantage of by the mortgage person or they were taken advantage of by an appraisal for a property that wasn't worth what it appraised or they were taken advantage of by this one that one the other they still they they got divorced. Their income, their household income got cut in half because of the divorce. Now they've got alimony and child support on top of that. They didn't understand what they were signing, but they got the money to buy the house. So is it fair to the economy to give them this

house for free because they didn't understand that, hey, I'm borrowing this money and I eventually got to pay it back? That's where I always struggled. So that's where I always said, I'm going to defend you as best as I can. And I'm going to buy you as much time as I possibly can. But at the end of the day, you owe this money. We got to figure out a way to pay it back. Right. Either sell the house and pay it back, short sell the house and let's wipe the deficit there or modify it. Let's get it from an adjustable rate to a longer term loan or that call in hard money lenders. Now, at that stage, no hard money lender was interested because the house was 100, 110, 120 percent financed. In other words, they had borrowed more than the house was even worth. Right. So hard money lenders, the private individuals were not going to come in and loan those people money. But let's figure out some way to resolve. Put your head in the sand isn't the answer.

Put in your head in your, yeah, at a minimum, call the bank. Yeah. At a minimum, call an attorney. Most of, I know I give free consultations. Most of my peers give free consultations. So call an attorney, talk to, and we're bound by attorney-client privilege. So if someone calls me and talks to me, I can't, you know, hey, Matt, your listener, blah, blah, blah, I call it. I can't tell you that. I'm not allowed. So, you know, contact somebody. Even the bank, contact the bank. Like I said, the bank has four months that they got to try to figure out something before they can pull that foreclosure trigger. The other thing that I, that I, that you said is that, you know, what will happen is, well, I've got the money this month, so I'm going to make this month's payment. Well, I don't have the money next month. But I've got the money the month after that. So I'm going to make the payment then.

Well, what happens is if you skip a month and make a payment the next month, say your payment's $1,000. Right. And like you said, a 5% late charge, so $50 late charge. What will happen is you skip a month. So now $1,0.0.50 is due. Right. You pay that $1,000 the next month. The first 50 pays the late charge.

Right. So now you only got $9.50. So you didn't make a payment. So you didn't make a full payment. Right. You got $9.50. So now the bank says, well, we're going to put that into this suspensive. account. And so 950 sits in that account. And then you skip another month and then you pay

a thousand in the following month. Well, again, now they've got two more late charges. So a hundred comes. Right. They got 900 left. They're not helping yourself. They take 50 of that. In other words, you're, you're not instantly behind, but you're, you're, it's a, it's a slow death. It's a, you know, every month you fall a little bit further behind. And so typically I tell people, if that's what you're going to do, just stop making payments. Yeah. Start saving up. up your war chest and let's figure out what we're going to do are we going to refy the house are we going to modify are we going to bankrupt or what are we going to do but you've saved up so when it comes to paying me or paying another attorney or or paying down debt or doing this or doing that

you've got a war chest built up to do that with right so so once you get in front of the judge there's just nothing you can do to stop it and i'm saying assuming you get to that point there nobody's showing up. There's no way to remodify to that point when the judge says, okay, we're going to give, we're giving the house back to the bank. The bank now has possession of the house. How long, what does that process? Because like if they, they do it at 10 o'clock in the morning and the judge, you know, hits the gavel and says, okay, the bank gets the house back. Like, I mean, can they go right then and just say, hey, grab yourself and get out the house? So it's literally an auction. And back when I started, it was literally. There was a guy

at the courthouse steps in front of a podium and they were bidders and, you know, you bid 100 grand and you bid 105 and you bid 110, literally an auction on the courthouse steps. Today, I think all over the state, at least in most of the, I know in all the Tampa Bay area, and I think in almost every other county, it's all online. So you go online and you say, well, for this house, my max bid is this or for this house, I'm going to start my bid at this and I want it to go up $100. So I'm going to start my bid at $100,000. and I want it to go up a hundred bucks until it reaches 150. And if somebody outbids me at 150, stop bidding. And so all the different bidders will put their instructions in. And it literally, the computer just does it. You figure out who the winner is. Now, in Florida, a lot of people get confused and they say, well, I've got this right of redemption. And you do.

And what the right of redemption says is at any point before the sale, before that auction, I can pay the full balance to the bank and I can get my house back, right, at any time before the sale. What a lot of people get confused about is between the day of the sale and when the clerk of court actually issues the title and says, okay, bank, you were the only bidder, you win it, or Matt, you were the successful bidder, here's your title. In between the day of the sale and the day that title's issued by the clerk is a 10-day window. That 10-day window is only to challenge that the sale was conducted. properly. A lot of people confuse that and say, I've got that 10 days to redeem my property. I've got that 10 day window to pay the bank in full and get my house back. That's wrong. That 10 days is to challenge. And I actually had that. I've got one reported appellate case in my career and it was

that kind of a situation. The borrower had paid off the bank and the sale was down in Palm Beach and we tried to get the sale stopped and the clerk refused to do it. So I said, said to the bidder, to the person that was bidding on behalf of the bank, because when they were live, I said to the person bidding on behalf of the bank, before the clerk starts the sale, announce as loud as you can that the borrower had paid off the loan. What that did was that created an issue in terms of the sale itself. So anybody that was bidding knew, hey, we're going to try to stop this thing. Right.

So the, the, our bidder did that. Who wants to bid on that? Who wants to be involved in that? Somebody bid on it. And one, we then filed our motion within the 10 days that said, hey, there was an irregularity in the, in the sale. We knew because we created it. So there was an irregularity in the sale.

The sale needs to be unwound. That would allow our borrower to redeem before the sale happened so he could keep the house. This particular borrower could keep the house. Well, the clerk didn't docket any of that until after the fact, docket, meaning putting it on the court record. Why? What was wrong with this clerk? was just to Palm Beach, left hand, didn't know what the right hand was doing, they were flooded,

they were overloaded, I don't know what the reason was. And I actually have an opinion where the court said, the appellate court said no, because everything got to the courthouse on time. Not our fault that the clerk sat on it for two, three, five, ten, however long it was. Everything got to the courthouse on time. That was proper. So we were able to create that irregularity to get the sale unwound, to then allow the borrower to redeem the house and save the house. But a lot of people will say in that 10-day window, I can redeem. No, you can't. Right. Once that sale happens, your ability to pay off the loan is done. I had someone call me two weeks ago. And this is at 8.45 in the morning. They called me. We have a sale at 10 o'clock.

Okay. They said, we have a contract to sell the house. Okay. Can you stop the sale? No. Not with an hour and 15 minutes left. There's very little. If, if you're a contract, we're If I can get to the bank, maybe, if I can get to the court, but I don't know that the judge is going to have time to listen to review this motion and rule on it. Plus, all you've got is a contract. You don't have the money. They still not go through, yeah. Right.

You just have the contract. And so I said, okay, well, send me the contract. Never got the contract. Yeah, there's probably, so it was probably some, either an investor or a realtor or somebody that didn't understand. So, okay, so let's assume the house goes through. somebody buys a house. And that process is like, you know, if the houses, they owe the bank $180,000 and they bid $160,000. The bank has got $20,000, but basically now the house is

owned by this new person free and clear, even though they didn't pay the 180 off. They paid 160. The bank now has to go after those people on their own. Yeah. Well, a lot of times what the bank will do is the bank gets a credit bit, what's called a credit bid. So if you think about it, in your example, $180,000 judgment, if somebody bid $500,000, the bank gets the first 180. Right. So the bank doesn't have to pay any money to the clerk until the bank's bid goes over their judgment amount. Because they're going to get, in your example, they're going to get the first 180. It doesn't make sense for the bank to pay 180 to then get it back. Right. So they get a credit for the amount of their judgment.

But a lot of times what you mentioned is really good is that the bank will do its own evaluation and say, well, this house is only worth 160. Yeah. So we're not going to bid 180 because if we bid 180 and we get this house back, now we got to hire the realtor. We got to secure the house. We got to do this at the other. So we're only going to go to 160, which is what we believe to be the value of the house. And if somebody outbids us, great, we'll get our money. If nobody outbids us, we'll still get it back at a value that we think we can sell it and at least try to break you.

even or cut our losses or whatever. So in your example, judgment's 180. Somebody buys it at 160. They own it. It's up to the bank whether they want to go after that 20,000 against the borrower. And again, did they get personal service? Did they publish in the newspaper? That's where that issue comes back to that the bank has to evaluate. But the person that buys it at 160, they own it. Any other judgments or any other issues that are inferior to the mortgage. So a second mortgage. Associations are different in Florida, but IRS liens. Judgment liens.

All that stuff, assuming the bank did their title search, assuming the bank did their homework up front, assuming the bank named all those parties as defendants in the lawsuit, they're gone. Yeah. They're eliminated. So now I own the house. I paid 160. I own it.

You own it free and clear. How do I, but people, but there's still two, there's still a husband and wife and two kids that live in the house, now what do I do? The judgment says you can evict them, and you don't have to start the eviction process over again. So what a lot of investors will do, what a lot of banks will do, is they'll knock on the door and they'll say, hey, here's our certificate of title, we own this house, we understand you live here, if you move out in the next 15 days, we'll give you two grand. If you move out in the next 30 days, we'll give you a grand.

If you move out in the next 35 days, we'll give you 500 bucks. If it takes you longer than that, we'll just evict you. Right. And that's called cash for keys. Yeah, yeah. And they'll just, you know, because what the banks realized or what the savvy investors realized is, as much as I have my own mortgage to pay, you can save some money by paying these borrowers or these tenants to leave as opposed to fighting it versus hiring me and fighting it. Yeah. I had a girlfriend that, oh gosh, she had her tenants show up.

Like, you know, you always hear these nightmares about tenants and stuff. Like my ex-wife and I, we've, you know, evicted, you know, plenty of people. And she's, since we divorced, she's evicted, she said one or two people a year. That's it. And she's never really had any horrible scenarios, right? Like people are like, what if somebody destroys your house or it almost never happens. You know, it does happen, but almost never. So, um, anyway, I remember this.

I remember I had a girlfriend that literally somebody showed up with her sick kid. I mean, the oxygen tank, the whole thing. And the judge immediately six months. And she was like, six months. Oh my God. I was like, like that's not like, so assuming that these people don't show up, you're saying they go in with cash for keys. They could just start evicting immediately. They could evict.

Once they get that certificate of title, once they had 10. days pass and they get the certificate of title, they can begin the eviction immediately. And they don't have to start like a traditional landlord would send a three day notice. You failed to pay rent. They don't have to do that. They go back and say, here's the judgment. The judgment says if anybody's living there, and that's why you'll see in a lot of foreclosure cases, they name this unknown tenant owner. Right. And that way they pick up any. So if I'm the homeowner and I just throw a tenant in there, well, that tenant is now covered within the foreclosure lawsuit. Is It doesn't mean that tenant owes the bank money, but it means that that tenant is now covered

in the lawsuit, and if I get the house back or anybody who gets the house back can now evict that tenant. Doesn't matter if they have a lease agreement or anything. There is a law in Florida, the Protecting Tenants in Foreclosure Act or protecting tenants at Foreclosure Act, some kind of goofy name like that. And that law does say if there's a legitimate lease, so it's got to be a legitimate lease, fair market value. You can't be like I slapped a lease together on a napkin five days before the sale and you're

paying five bucks a month. Right. If there's a legitimate tenant, a legitimate lease, the bank or any person who bought that property for investment purposes has to honor the terms of the lease. Oh, wow. If it's somebody that bought the house to live there, 90 days notice before they can get the person out. So there is a law, and that came out of the foreclosure meltdown as well of people

making up bogus leases and people saying i didn't know the house was in foreclosure and all this other stuff so there is a a law specific to florida that says yeah you got to give some notice if you're going to live there if you're not going to live there you got to honor the the terms of the lease if it's a legitimate lease okay i remember one story when i was foreclosing the bank called us they'd got someone in there a couple of stories that they'd got someone in there the homeowner was so upset about losing the house, he painted everything black. The floors, the walls, the ceilings, took out the light fixtures. What are you doing? Everything black. There's stories of people that put socks down the toilet and flush the toilet. You know, it's all that kind of there. I have heard

stories like that. I haven't experienced a lot of it, but I've heard them. Yeah, I mean, I've, you know, the whole thing is too, like it, listen, you give someone a hammer and five minutes and they could do $10,000 for the damage to a house. You know, it's not hard. Right. But typically what happens in evictions is that the person knows they owe the money. Yeah. You know what I'm saying?

Like people, you know, at heart are, you know, they may try and justify this and be angry about this and, oh, the bank this and this isn't fair and it's not my fault and it's not. But in the end, you know, you know you owe the money. Yeah. You know, so they typically leave, they may leave it trashed, but most likely it's about a 99.99% change. that they're not going to take a hammer and knock the windows out and crack the toilets. And they're going to leave it a mess. Yeah. Like I'm not going to clean up the bank's house.

Right. But I'm going to get my stuff and I'm just going to leave. Right. You may have to, as the bank or as the foreclosure bidder, you may have to clean out the refrigerator. You may have to replace the carpets. Well, typically they're not taking sledgehammers to the walls. And I was going to say, if it's cash for keys, then you could always say, look, if you leave the place in good shape. Yeah.

You get two grand. Typically, cash for key says you got to leave it in what they call broom. swept conditions. So you got to put some effort into cleaning it. You don't have to make the floors clean enough. It doesn't have to be rentable. Right. But you've got to put in some effort to tidy it up before you go. Right.

Law enforcement often questions him. Not because he's suspected of a crime, but because they find him fascinating. He is the most interesting man in the world. I don't typically commit crime, but when I do it's bank fraud.

Stay greedy. friends support the channel join matthew cox's patreon actually have an idea for a a business i'll tell you later um offline that yeah only because like right now it's not really a thing like it's not really a a business that needs that that is needed at the moment right but in a year from now it might be huge right so um but what i was going to say is like right now you know the economy right So, I mean, you've, you've got a podcast. You give financial advice or, you know, crushing debt, the name of it's crushing debt. Crushing debt, yeah.

I see, you got a shirt. I don't have shirts. I have shirts, but my shirts are so, like, I don't, they don't, I need to get better quality. They're good. They're cotton, but they don't, I don't like the way they fit me. Anyway, so, yeah, crushing debt. Is it just about how to, how to kind of get rid of debt and, and, and, you know, and, bankruptcy or is it no there's other ways there's there's other ways so one of the one of the

stories that i that i've told on the show one of the stories that i've told before my best example i have a client who uh former all pro football player um was getting money thrown at him just he was an all pro football player so he's getting money thrown at him he ends up blowing out his knee careers over goes into coaching well the bank then said hey we want we want this money back And we're like, wait a minute. We went from an all-pro salary to not even an assistant coach, like a positional coach salary. We went from seven figures to low six figures in a second and couldn't pay it back. So I ended up getting into a lawsuit.

We ended up settling that one. He ended up owing the bank, I want to say like $350,000. We ended up settling it for $175 on payments. We're making payments to settle the 175. But he calls me one day. And he says, hey, look, when I'm... I was at the last city I was at, which happened to be here in Florida, when I was at one of the last cities I was at, I got this electronic store to give me a bunch of equipment for my house.

And when I asked him what I was going to pay for it, they were like, don't worry about it. Just use it. You are who you are. Just use it. Tell people about our store and whatever. He said, so they never asked me, I never paid it. Well, when I got hurt, they now wanted either the stuff back or to get paid. And then when I tried to give him the stuff back,

they said, no, no, no, we just want you to pay for it now. And it was like nine or ten grand worth of equipment. Did he sign anything? I don't remember. You know what I'm saying? Like to me, you just gave me a bunch of stuff is what just happened. So anyway, he ends up getting sued. He moves away to the next city where he's now an assistant coach at the next team.

They sue him. This is all before I got involved. they sue him they got a judgment against him now they'd also sued him for civil theft and in Florida civil theft you can get triple damages so basically accused him as stealing this stuff

he wasn't around to get served with the lawsuit you mentioned personal service he wasn't around to get to get served with the lawsuit he gets his triple damage judgment he has a judgment against him for like 37 grand and change he then calls me and says hey can you take a look

at this well I look at it they didn't serve him personally. They knew that he had left the city when they tried to serve him. They didn't even try to serve him in the new city. They got, there were all kinds of issues procedurally with the way that they had done this. And one of the things that he told me was, the guy that used to own the store that gave me all the equipment, doesn't own the store anymore. It's like, okay. So I file this motion that says you got to unwind the judgment because you don't have service.

You got to unwind this. You got to unwind this. And by the way, we think that the person that's giving the authority, the person that's directing the attorney, is no longer the owner of the store. So I file all this. About a week later, I get a call from the attorney handling the case. Can we work this out? But he says, we're talking back and forth, BSing, whatever, talking back and forth. He says, listen, dude, offer me a dollar to settle this case.

Right. Like, okay. And then normally you got to get permission from the client. but I was like, whatever, it's a dollar. I was like, okay, we'll offer you a dollar to settle the case. He goes, accepted, send me the dollar. Okay. Right.

So I send him a dollar. It costs me almost as much to send him the damn check as the check itself. So send him a dollar. Get back a satisfaction of the judgment. Get back, you know, cases dismissed and all this, everything gets unwound. I call him back later. And I'm like, look, dude, I need to know. 37,000, I just got rid of for a dollar.

He said, well, Well, when the store sold, the agreement between the new owner and the old owner was that the new owner had to pay any settlement proceeds for any lawsuits outstanding to the old owner. And they hate each other. So, and the new owner likes my client, their buddies. So, dollar. Right. He called the old owner and said, hey, I settled that case against so and so. Here's their settlement proceeds.

Paid him a dollar and it was done. But that's my best success story in avoiding bankruptcy is I got 37,000 wiped out for a buck. But that's the, originally when I started the show, it was also from a real estate investor perspective. And there's still some topics that I'll do today that are for the real estate investors talking about LLCs and land trusts and private mortgages. And we'll bring up foreclosure topics and we'll do all that stuff. A lot of the show, though, is also geared towards how. to get out of debt and whether that's with bankruptcy with settling it with tweaking your budget it's all those kinds of tips yeah yeah i i was it's funny um i don't know like when you

know the the things that i see people spend money on you know what i'm saying like i don't understand i make this much money i this but it it is and i know graham stephen is big on this yeah um is that like like the the five dollar starbucks or six dollar Starbucks coffee and i I go to Starbucks, you know, like, honestly, I honestly almost never go anymore because now I almost never leave my house. You know, like I paint. I do, like, everybody comes here. Right. Like, was just perfect. Like, not that I mind driving. I just, I've set it up in such a way that I don't, I don't need to go anywhere anymore.

I can't, I can't remember the last time that I bought myself Starbucks. I've been to Starbucks, but I have people that send me gift cards. I was because I get gift cards all the time. And so I get Starbucks basically for free. I don't think I've ever paid to, to load my Starbucks account with money myself. I've paid. I've paid. I have in the past.

But I'm saying I'm, I'm, I'm. been lucky and I go so so seldomly now what happens is now like people will I've like a small group of people that are doing things you know in real estate and they'll call me and say hey does this sound right or explain this to me and I'll talk to him about this I'm like yeah honestly they're like guys charging me this much money I'm like that's excessive like listen call them back tell them this tell them that you know and I'll um even things like and then I'll get a Starbucks car yeah well and even things like like simple things like cable TV.

Right. You know, I pay, I used to pay like 300 bucks a month for cable, internet, and phone. Well, who has a landline anymore in their house? So cancel that. Internet, I can get from anywhere. And cable, I mean, you mentioned YouTube. My kids are addicted. I've got an 11-year-old and an 8-year-old.

They're addicted to YouTube. So who watches cable anymore? I can stream Disney Plus. I can stream ESPN. I can stream Netflix. I can do all this stuff. so I cut my cable bill from what 300 to 100 right and that's 200 bucks right there every month in savings that's 2,400 bucks a year and that's you know I can use that and put that into

something else and invest it or you know and you do that enough times I've been able to help there was one guy I was preparing his bankruptcy petition and within his budget food his food budget was like $1,500 a month. I'm like, dude, you're, I mean, he looked about our size. He wasn't overweight. I'm like, you're not packing away $1,500 in food every month. You're not. I know you're not. What is up with this? He's like, well, you know, I'm a single guy. I date a lot of women and I pay for all these dates. I'm like, dude, you're about to file bankruptcy. Dial it back. Yeah. Dial it back for a couple of months. Go from $1,500 a month to $300 a month. Yeah. Get a girlfriend.

Get a girlfriend. Do something. I can save you a thousand bucks a month right there. Yeah. You know, I've gotten people to cut back on smoking, cut back on drinking, cut back on subscriptions. You know, I mean, who needs physical newspapers delivered to them anymore? Who needs physical?

So there's a lot of subscription services that we have that people can cut out and save. And yeah, it's 50 bucks here. It's 100 bucks there. it's 200 bucks here, it's 10 bucks there. But you add all that up, if I can help somebody create $1,000 a month in their budget, now I'm really making a difference and they can use that in some other way. Do you do any like, well, I mean, do you do any like helping people rebuild their credit after, or you just give them a device and that's it?

Or is it like, because it's like it's not that different. Like after bankruptcy, a lot of people, well, I got bankruptcy. I can't do anything. Now, you can go get a secure credit card. You can start building right now. I've got banks that'll give borrowers secured credit cards right after bankruptcy. And that's one of the most interesting conversations. People will come to me not only, because typically when they're in foreclosure,

they've also got unpaid child support, unpaid alimony, sometimes unpaid credit card debts, unpaid hospital bills, IRS bills. I mean, I have people come to me. And it's funny, one of the questions I ask is, well, how much do you owe? if you were to hit the lottery today, you could stroke one check, pay off all your debt. How much is that? And I can see the wheels turning and I can see them thinking to themselves. I don't want to embarrass myself by giving Sean some number. But the most amount of debt I've ever helped a client get out of individually was $15 million. So there's not a number that you're going to be able to give me that I haven't heard before. And a lot of times you'll see that fear in their eyes of I don't want to embarrass myself by telling this attorney how much I owe. Even though, it's confidential, I can't repeat it. And then they'll come out with 20 grand, 40 grand. And I'm like, that's...

That I'd be embarrassed about. Like, I knew a guy who was going to claim bankruptcy for like 12 grand. I said, that's embarrassing. To me, with someday I plan on claiming bankruptcy just to go through the process. Like, I want to walk in with a million dollars minimum and be like, write it off. Although... Legally allowed to do that. You are.

Now, what I'll say in response to that is, if you got 12 grand in debt and you make 30 grand a year, maybe bankruptcy is a better option. Right, right, right. If you got 12 grand in debt and you make 120, yeah, bankruptcy is horrible. Let's figure out another way to pay off that 12. But, you know, they'll have all this other debt. And what they say to me is, I don't want to file bankruptcy because I don't want it to impact my credit. I'm like, dude, you got two lawsuits pending.

You got one judgment. You got this debt. You got that debt. Your credit's already smashed. This is your best bet. This is your best bet to fix your credit. Right. Like you'll never get back on track at the rate you're going.

One. Your credit's already smashed. Don't worry about your credit. Let's file the bankruptcy. Let's nuke everything. And then we can rebuild it. Secured cards. And what I, you may know this better than me or remember it better than me. But from what I understand, banks will loan you money to buy a house. Two to three is years. It used to be, I don't know if it's three years now, but it used to be two years out of bankruptcy. You could get like an FDIC. Or, or, or, or, um, FHA, like you could get these government-backed kind of loans two years out of bankruptcy. And I would have people come in and the mortgage company, and they'd go, yeah, the problem is I claim bankruptcy. And I'd be like, how long ago? Yeah, yeah, you know, 24, 23, 24 months ago. Yes. Well, and you know, the way the credit is calculated, even though the biggest piece of credit is making your payments on time, there's other things you can do.

You can take out, you know, typically car loans aren't going to be. as strict as house loans. So you take out a car loan, that that increases the mix of credit, which increases your score. You know, you can pay down other debt. Capacity. Right. So there's other things we can do. I don't do a ton of it. I don't necessarily charge to do it. I'm more kind of included in the bankruptcy costs. And I'll give people advice. And I have a banker that can set them up with a secured card or they can go to their bank and get a secured card, whatever. Yeah. But yeah, I've help people. I do have another attorney that I refer to if there's massive errors on credit. I'll refer to him and he sues the credit reporting agencies to fix credit. That's become its own

kind of fraud industry in and of itself is credit repair. There's a whole, you know, there's a whole thing on, um, on these guys on YouTube that talk about, you've heard of a CPN. CPN. I don't, Okay, it's a, I, because I've done a bunch of videos, they call them, it's a, a credit, what is it, what do they call, what is it? A credit, it's a CPN, a credit profile number, I think is what, or, okay. So what they're, this is supposedly what happened. And I get people that just, you don't know what you're talking about, because they think somebody put a website out there that says we sell CPNs. Well, if it's on the internet, it's true. It's true, right? And listen, if you. If you read the website, it sounds convincing if you don't know anything. Right. So it's basically saying, hey, you can go to this website and you pay 150 bucks or 75 bucks. There's different plans. And we'll give you a number that's issued by Social Security.

It's not. It's a lie. Well, it actually is issued by Social Security. But, and it's a, you know, it's a, it's a number that's issued that's your, it's your personal number that you can use in placement of your social security number. So you can go and apply online, you use your name, and you use your CPN and your date of birth and everything. You can apply for credit cards or secure cards, and it tells you how to basically create

a completely separate, it's basically you're creating a synthetic identity. Right. But what people think they've been issued by either the Social Security Administration or there's some government body that issues these numbers and that, they'll tell you that, oh, this is what celebrities do. And this is like, there's all these just idiots. And they will build an entire credit history, acquire loans, run the loans up, let them go under, or they'll create an entire credit profile, and maybe they'll use it.

Maybe they'll always pay the loans. But the problem is the numbers are actually numbers that have already been issued to somebody. Maybe it's a five-year-old kid. maybe it's a two-year-old, maybe it's a nine-year-old kid. These are social security numbers that have been issued and haven't been used. Or they may not have been issued yet, but they will be issued someday. Now, what's not happening is you're not getting a social security number that's been issued to a 45-year-old man. Because if you use that to pull your credit, that'll trigger.

It would trigger it and they'd say, hey, this is a fraud. This is something's wrong. This is somebody else's credit reporting on this. So these companies, they find these numbers that aren't being used and then they sell them. And they'll sell like, let's say, a $69 package for the number. And but if you want, for the $120 one, we'll give you, we'll put, we'll give you a credit, or I'm sorry, a credit card history. So they've got somebody else that will add you to their credit card using your information.

And now suddenly this credit, this new CPN. that you have with your new profile now has a card that's been has a $20,000 limit, has almost no money on it, and it's been around for five or 10 years. So now suddenly you have a score because you're an authorized user. Right. So it, and then it allows you to turn around and borrow a couple of secure credit cards. And it's a whole thing and it happens. And periodically people get arrested for it. No matter how many people get arrested, no matter how much research you do, no matter how many times you go and you look through these things, there's a whole group of guys that believe this.

And there's a whole, it's almost like a subsection of guys on credit, how to build credit, that are making tons of money doing this and have been doing so for, or I can see for five years, 10 years. And they, so it's, it's, what I've told clients before is, you know, we all started with zero credit. Right. You built it up once. the fact that you had a bankruptcy, you build it up again. It's not, you can do it. The old trick,

the old scam used to be, and I think what the law says today, if you send a letter to the credit bureau and you say, hey, verify this debt, they got 30 days to do it. Right. But the wheels turn so slow that they can't. And so you send them another letter, verify, another letter, verify, another letter, verify. And you wear them down where they don't verify and then it falls off your credit. Right. Well, eventually they do verify and it pops back on. Right. So what a lot of mortgage people were doing is saying let's hammer the credit reporting agencies get this stuff pulled off your credit get you the loan and then when it pops back on who cares you're paying the loan yeah and so all these people that say we can get rid of bankruptcies we can get rid of this we can get rid of that you can

only get rid of stuff that's false yeah if you actually filed bankruptcy it's not coming off your credit unless you're doing something i don't want to say illegal maybe illegal improper at least it's not coming off your credit unless you're doing something wrong you know unless you're doing something improperly. So I don't do a lot of credit repair, but I do have, I just referred out a client the other day. We settled with the creditor, and part of the settlement, it was a commercial loan, and part of the settlement was you'll delete the trade line from the client's credit. It's paid off. You'll delete any negative reporting, and they agreed to it. And that was a year ago, and they haven't done it yet. So that one, I sent over to my buddy to sue because you agreed to do it,

You didn't do it. Right. We're going to pop you for it now. So I actually know a credit repair guy who has just has a lawsuit in his computer already written. And he goes through the process trying to get you. And he said, look, the moment they don't do it, I print it up. He said a lot of times you print it up and you just send it to them. You don't even file it.

You say, this is what I'm about to file. Right. And then suddenly you get the phone call, oh, well, taking it off, or this, or that. Because they think you just won't go through the process. No. Um, but I was going to say, uh, in, in the course of you just doing foreclosures and looking through title, have you ever, have you ever found any title fraud or any of the stuff that I had done or?

So I, I can't think of anything off the top of my head. I've certainly, I've been involved in title issues. And I've, you know, a lot of what, what fascinated me about your story was the, the other side of it, the side of it that you didn't know. And so I'm not saying it was wrong of you not to tell it. It's you didn't know it. The title side of it, the title claim side of it. So what would happen is as the foreclosing attorney, as the lender's attorney, I would get it in and I would say, oh my gosh, there's a falsified satisfaction out here.

And so I would then have to go to the title insurance underwriter. Because remember, when you do a closing, there's two policies. There's the owner's title insurance policy that protects you as the buyer. I bought this house. There's no title issues. The lender also gets title insurance policy that says your loan is legitimately in first position. And so we would have to send the claim to the underwriter to say, hey, we've got a first

mortgage here that may not actually be in first position. And typically, really, what's happening is the title insurance industry would then have to absorb that loss. They would then pay, probably pay off the invalid mortgage, the fraudulent mortgage. to protect the legitimate mortgage, that then has the ripple effect of title insurance premiums have to go up. The reinsurance market for the title insurance industry has to go up. The cost of closings have to go up. So it was interesting the ripple effect that that has in the economy, but that's what title insurance is for. If I'm the foreclosing lender and I see that I loaned

on a property that still has a legitimate first on it because it was fraudulently satisfied, I still loaned out the money, and I've got this insurance that protects me from that. So that was kind of what fascinated me. I've got a couple of title claims going on right now, one that resulted from a bankruptcy where a loan allegedly was eliminated in the bankruptcy, but the bank that got eliminated is claiming they weren't, and so they're still in first position, but the new bank came in in first position, so we're fighting that one. I've got another one where some, like a a guardianship where the person that sold the property then got subject to guardianship proceedings.

And so that person's heirs are saying he didn't have capacity to sell this property. And so we're going to go after it and say that it's really our property. Right. But my buyer got it from a flipper. The flipper didn't know anything about it. So we're two, three layers deep. But that all went to the title insurance underwriter to say, hey, here's our claim. handle it.

Right. So I was going to say one time that this is, you know, we were talking about, you know, the ripple effect. One time I had bought a property. Right. In the name of, actually this is what a guy, Gary Sullivan, where I, the guy was in foreclosure that I bought the property from. So I pay like $10,000 to catch up, he got maybe a grand, the owner. But I caught up the mortgage. Right.

So they reinstate it. It's fine. I just, I'm supposed to pay him. he's supposed to pay them. Right. So a few months later, I go by the property and there's a guy putting, like, this was in South Carolina, they was putting like a neon pink or orange note on the front door that says like notice and putting on the front door.

And I pulled up and keep in mind, I'm not Gary Sullivan. Like I'm concerned. Like I was like, but it doesn't look like a cop. And so I pull up and I stop. I walk out and I go, hey, what's going on? He said, are you, whatever was guy's name was something like Hutchinson or whatever his name was. I was like, no, he's Gary Sullivan. I was like, yeah.

And he goes, oh, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a foreclosure notice. I was like, what? Like, I had been paying, there was a wraparound mortgage. Right. I'd been paying the, the guy who went to finance the house. He wasn't paying his mortgage. Right. I call him up.

I yell at him. Not super like crazy yell, but I'm like, bro, what are you doing? I've been paying you. I'm sorry. I'm just, I'm trying to get my, you know, I'm going to have to claim bankruptcy. I'm like, yeah, but I've been, I've been sending you like $1,000 a month for the past. however much a few months and you weren't paying them oh I'm sorry and so I said look give me your payment booklet give me all the paperwork everything you have and I you know I end up calling the

people that were the lawyer that was foreclosing and he was in South Carolina or in Columbia so I go there to him well first I find out how much is owed I go there and I pay them right but I went there and I paid them and they said look from now on we'll just send everything to you because you're paying. I can see what happened. But when they started foreclosing, here's the interesting part. When I looked through the documents, because keep in mind, I'd already satisfy the loans. Right. So I thought, geez, they did a title search, and they must have seen the satisfaction. When they continued the process of foreclosure, they saw the satisfaction for their client. And all they did was included it in the foreclosure. They said,

your honor we're foreclosing for you know federal bank um who accidentally um satisfied the loan that was filed on this date for this much we are currently you know we are in the process of fort late they just happened to mention by there was an accident the banks are so big they probably didn't know that it was you or whoever else that had forged that satisfaction they're so big they don't they don't know right but i listen i i i can't to me it's like you didn't they didn't even look into it they even make a phone call Like, it was like, and I had signed it, you know, what's funny is I had actually pulled one of their satisfactions. Right.

And I'd actually gotten a, I'd actually pulled the notary stamp off from the notary and superimposed it and did every, so it looked very much exactly like one of theirs, like the same bank president signed the whole thing. Which is probably why they thought it was accidentally satisfied. They didn't, they probably didn't even realize that somebody had forged it. Yeah. And they just let me, anyway, I went and I. cut the guy a check. And he said from now on, you'll just pay it. And I already had the payment booklet, but they, you know, whatever. Week later, they sent me something. And what's interesting, one of the first questions I get from a real estate investor. So they've got, so when they buy

the house, they have to buy it in their name because the bank's not going to loan to an LLC. The bank's not going to loan to a trust. The bank wants to loan to a person. Well, all these loans in Florida, at least, and probably in other places, too, have what's called the due on sale clause. In other words, if I borrow the money and I don't own this house anymore and the bank didn't give me permission to sell it, then I've got to pay off the bank. Now, typically, if I'm going to sell you the house, your purchase price is going to pay off the bank. It's not a big deal. Right. But if I sell you the house subject to that loan, now that's a breach of the mortgage. The bank can foreclose because you weren't the original borrower. I was. And I've sold the house

without their permission. But how often does that ever happen? As long as they're getting paid. Right. As long as the bank's being paid. So I have people ask me this question all the time. Can I put it into my LLC? Well, you can, but then there's a due on sale violation.

Right. There is a federal law that says if you put it into a trust and you're the beneficiary of the trust that it's not a due on sale violation. But if you put it in a trust and the LLC becomes the beneficiary of the trust, then again it is a due on sale violation. but you nailed it. So I've been doing this now since 2001. So what, 21 years, 22 years now I've been doing this.

I've never seen a bank foreclosure only because of the due on sale violation. Typically, the payments stop. The bank says, wait a minute, payments stop. We're going to foreclose because there's no payments. Oh, and by the way, there's a due on sale violation. We're foreclosing for that reason, too. Yeah, yeah. If you're, like, you'd be hard pressed to, I can't see a lawyer going in front of a judge saying,

your honor. These people bought the house. They live in the house. They transferred it into a trust. They've been making the payments, but they violated the due on sale. We want you to go ahead and let a foreclosure go through. I think the judge is going to be like, what are you doing? Yeah. Come on. It's just silliness. I've never seen it happen ever. And that was the same, like I one of my big things was I would get people to own or finance their houses. I'd say, hey, look, you know, I put an offer on five houses. Multiple people would come back say, okay. Or they'd say, Yeah, but I own, or I owe, I owe $200,000 to this bank. Like how, no, no, we'll do a wraparound mortgage.

Right. And then I would have, it's so funny, too, because I would have to explain to the real estate agent what a wrap around mortgage was. Right. And I'd say, you know, it's just a, it's subject to the mortgage. We'll do a subject to the mortgage. You know, or even I would, I've done this, I've done a bunch times too, where I would go in and I'd buy a house. And I'd say, look, you owe $100,000 on your house or on your mortgage. you're selling your house for $110,000.

I'll just give you $10,000. Let me make the payments of the bank. I'll just take the mortgage over. Right. Like that's all you're going to get anyway. Right. And they would do that. You'd be shocked how many times,

how many times people will do that. And the problem is, of course, they're like, yeah, but, but, you know, but if I sell the property, like I have to, you know, technically, I have to notify the bank, I have to this. Yeah, but I'm making the payments. The bank isn't going to foreclose. And that would, you know, don't, don't, I'm going to make the payments.

They're not going to foreclose. So in 2004, when I first went off on my own, I answered an ad in the Florida Bar Journal, Florida Bar newspaper, somebody looking for an attorney. So I answer the ad. It was this pair of real estate investors. And that's what they would do. They would buy subject to. They would buy using wraparound mortgages, seller financing, whatever.

And this was started at the end of 2004. So right as the market was going crazy and the crash occurred. And what they would do is they would send out mass mailers to the foreclosure lists, let us help you, let us do this, let us do that. People would come into the office, they would evaluate it. They would say, okay, yeah, we can help you. We're going to buy this house. We're going to do it subject two.

We're going to do land trust. We're going to do this at the other thing. I would come in as the attorney representing them to do the closings. If it was a house that they were not interested in, they would say, look, I'm sorry. This is really not a house that we can do anything with. We can't help you. I'm sorry, but we've got an attorney that rent space from us downstairs, would you like to talk to him? Right.

And so they would just, I had that that built the practice at the very beginning. That gave me the education on, okay, now I got to defend foreclosures and slow them down. How do I do it? Well, I got a ton of clients from doing that. But that's what they would do, wraparounds and subject twos and all these different types of transactions. And you pretty much hit it too in terms of that's the biggest danger. If you do a wrap around, there's got to be a big level of trust. that whoever you're making the payments to is going to pay because the problem is let's say

you as the one who has to make payments under the wraparound mortgage doesn't make payments. So I'm the borrower, you're going to make payments to me on a wraparound and I'm going to pay them to the bank. Right. Supposedly. Right. If you don't pay me, I have to foreclose against you while I'm still making payments on my loan to the bank.

Right. And that's a lot of people don't understand that. So there are some issues there as well. You're not exonerating. I mean, like, you're not released from your responsibility to pay the bank. You still have to pay the bank. You say, well, listen, I sold the house and I have a wraparon. The guy's not paying me.

Like, Bank of America's not going to be okay with that. That's where they're going to pull the deal on sale clause and say you need to pay us. Right. That's funny. That would be a great video. I was just thinking about that. I taught the real estate class in Coleman. And I used to do a whole class just on owner financing.

Yeah. One was wraparounds. and then one was due on sale or I'm sorry subject to a mortgage closings and that would actually be a good because I had all these rebuttals you know but one of the things that um shoot that that do ones oh one one thing I was say is uh I would you know while I was would talk to people I'd say oh well you know crystal the fear is you know what if you don't pay me well you know then if I don't pay you then you know what is your concern that I'm not going to pay and they'd say yeah what if you don't pay i'd say okay well then they go well i have to foreclose

and i'd say well then we'll do i'll sign a a lieu of foreclosure right you know and you don't have to foreclose you just sign it and then you just evict me i mean you just it's like a quick claim then you just it's back in your name we can let the lawyer your lawyer hold it and if i ever can't prove i'm making the payments you just go down he he'll file it downtown and now the house is in your name again you just have to go through the foreclosure i mean you just have to go through the eviction process so that was always one of my i know i never started with that. I was started slowly. Now, I've got, I've seen that a bunch of times. There is a question legally in Florida as to whether you can do what's called like a self-help

foreclosure. So the deed is invalid until it's delivered. Delivered is a legal term, meaning I physically have to give you the deed. Here's my house. And you have to accept it. So I know there was one law firm in town years and years and years ago. What they were doing is they were doing like a forced deed in lieu of foreclosure. So the borrower would get into foreclosure, couldn't afford it, didn't want to keep the house, whatever. They would sign a deed. They'd say, okay, the foreclosing bank is Bank of America under securitization series, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They would sign a deed to that plaintiff, record it. And then they'd call the bank and say, why are you foreclosing? You own the house. Well, under Florida law, not only does a deed have to be delivered, but it's got to be

accepted. And so there is a question whether that issue of, I'm going to sign a deed in advance. And if I fall behind on payments, you can just trigger it and get it back. I'm actually litigating a case about that issue right now too. So there is a question under Florida law whether that's valid. But I know a ton of real estate investors do. Right. So you also have to keep in mind, at this point, I'm just trying to convince you to like whether it's ultimately valid or not, you throw it in there. And it's just like, you know, I would always start with, oh, I'll write out 24 months worth of canceled checks or with it worse of the checks you can put one in the bank they'd be like yeah but what if the checks bounce oh okay well what if I give you a cashier's check you know

a month ahead of time yeah but what if eventually you don't oh okay uh you know I always act shocked like oh yeah that's right that's right like because like it wouldn't even occur me to not pay and then I then I said well okay well oh I know what I can do and then I hit him with the deed in lieu of foreclosure and then they and then if they were like no I don't know I'm not sure I'd say okay well you know I understand like something you have to be able to walk away like It's like, okay, I understand. Look, I mean, it's not going to work out. And I get it. And that's, you know, and I'm sorry about that. And I'm sure you'll find somebody. You know, I mean, I know you haven't in the last, you know, six months. But you're going to find somebody. So it's a nice house and I appreciate it. And nice. And you leave. And four days later, a week later, two or the next day, they call up. Explain this to me again. I actually, the same investors that I, that I hooked up with when I first started on my own. What I've always said to the investor community is if you're treating people right, I'll help. I'll help. I'll, I'll, I'll, be your best friend. If you're treating people wrong, then I'm going to pick up on the side of the homeowner and I'm going to try to do some about it for him or the person that sold a subject to

or whatever. So these guys that I worked with at the beginning, I thought they were doing things right. And I remember I get a call one day from another attorney. He's like, by the way, this house at whatever, one, two, three main street. I said, yeah, he said, it was bought by blah, blah, which is my investor landlord client. I said, yeah, he said, tell me why I shouldn't sue for taking advantage of my my former homeowner client and was like well look I get it you you this guy's an investor you don't like him I get it he put a new roof on the house put a new AC unit in the house gave your guy five grand caught up his mortgage the rent that your guy is paying is $250 less than his mortgage payment tell me again how your guy was taking advantage of right

I'll call you back click never heard from the guy again so for me it was all about treating people right right you know he'd be legitimately put a new roof on the house put a new AC unit in caught up the mortgage did all this stuff it was it was about treating people right for me what's funny is I'll bet you I'll bet you the person you know the the their client um it people can justify all kinds like they'll forget all kinds of stuff like they'll forget about all this other stuff that happened and all the things that are in their in their favor um you know and justify you know being offended and upset and it's like the thing that's the thing that's the thing that drives me crazy as the attorney working with clients is the ones that, I get it,

bad stuff happens and bad stuff happens to good people. Bad stuff happens all the time. People get divorced. People lose their job. I get it. That stuff happens. What drives me crazy are the ones that don't take any responsibility for it. Yeah. It's not my fault. It's not my fault. So I don't have to pay you rent. Right. Not my fault either. The bank shouldn't alone me the money. You know, COVID happened. I'm still getting, I'm still getting COVID as an excuse two years after. You were begging the bank to lend you money at the time. Yeah. Listen, I used to, this happened, oh my God, this happened so many times where I literally, and keep

mind too, this is fraud. Like I would commit fraud. I'd have some guy, somebody who's got good credit, they'd come to me and they'd say, look, man, I want to flip some houses, but I don't really have the money to flip the house and, you know, and I know my buddy, so-and-so, you bought, you got them, they bought a house and you gave him like 40 grand and then you know he fixed up the house or whatever he rented it out and like man can you do that with me i got perfect credit and i go um yeah hold on i actually have a house i can work this out i'll get a mortgage broker fee and a point or two and i'll get some money

you give me this much money and you buy this house for 150 000 you'll borrow 100 or 200 000 it needs 5 or 10 000 in repairs you'll make 20 you'll make 40 grand let's say or 30 grand whatever it is Let's say 40. So you make 40 grand. Okay, you rent it out. That'll just make your payments. But you got 40 grand. You're saying you want to take that money.

You want to do something with it, do this. Pay off your car. You want to pay off your credit cards, whatever it is. You know, I can do that. I can work that out. Complete fraud. Those people would then do that, rent out the property to some friend of theirs. Two months later, six months later, the guy stopped paying them.

Right. Now they come back and say, well, that guy's not. paying i'd be like well i thought that was your buddy man fuck him and he's like okay well you know and then they'd say i gotta you know man i now i got to make the mortgage payment i had to make the mortgage payment last month or do i have to keep paying of course you have to keep paying you know and and they'd say well um okay so i got to make another mortgage payment this month it's it's it's 1400 or whatever i go okay i understand and they go man man you really screwed me on this bro how and this happened i can't tell you i can't think five or six people that this

happen with. And I would go, are you serious? The good real estate investors will tell you, you don't make money when you sell it. You make money when you buy it. Yeah. You got to know what you're doing. Yeah. You got to know what you're doing. And if you can't afford the $1,400 a month mortgage payment, if you're going to assume, you can't assume that this thing is going to be rented 12 months out of the year every month consistently. You're going to pay. People are going to leave. There's going to be problems. There's going to be maintenance. You know what I would always do at that in that moment. After it happened once or twice, I always found out what the answer was. the answer was man bro i'm sorry that i'm sorry i didn't realize it was going to be such a problem

for you i would i would always say listen here's what i'm going to do i'll make the mortgage payment okay just i'm gonna i'll get a uh the title company will write up a a a quit claim deed and you just you just quit quit claim deed it to me and i'll rent it out i'll evict the guy i'll rent it out and i'll make all the payments and they go are you serious i go yeah they go yeah let me think about that i think i might do that i might do that okay I go, okay, just give me the $40,000, and I'll take care of everything else. They go, well, what do you mean? Like, well, you made $40,000 at closing.

And they'd go, oh, no, bro, like, I've spent that money. That money's gone. I go, wait a minute. Yeah. So you're telling me you want me to give you $40,000 and make payments on your house. And you're okay with that. Like, you think I screwed you over, like, you're about. to let me give you 40 grand and make the payments on it.

Like, wow, you're a scumbag. Like, that's just, like, to me, and all of this is fraud. Yeah, and they may not under, maybe they do understand it. I just think people are, I just, you know, they just, they just, they just have, like you said, they just, they take no responsibility. They justify. Look, I had other people where, you know, they, they, same thing happened. They understood the deal.

Right. They were fine. They realized every once in a while somebody's going to move. Right. They're going to have to make payments. You know, they might get hit here or there. And again, I mean, I get it. You know, good things happen to bad people.

And that's another big conversation I have when I'm talking about bankruptcy. People, I borrowed the money. I need to pay it back. Yeah, I get that. But at the same time, if we're going the bankruptcy route or even if we negotiated away, Visa ain't going out of business because they don't get your $20,000 back, right, right. And let's face it, you know, like as much as I think if you borrowed the money, you should pay it back. The truth is that sometimes, you know, it's just things line up.

against you to a point where bankruptcy is your only alternative or your best alternative. And the truth is, is like, this is a, this is a, this is something that the government says, this is reasonable. Like, look, sometimes you get cancer. You can't work. Right. You've got kids in school. You can't, like, like, you lost your job.

Like, things went so bad and there's nothing you can do. And your only viable option is to walk. away from as much debt as you humanly, you know, possibly can. Right. And that's something that happens. You can say, no, no, I'm going to continue. Stop. What are you doing? Yeah. Like sometimes, but, but if you're just like, hey, I ran up a bunch of debt, I just don't want to pay it. It's just too much. It's, it's ridiculous. Then it's like, okay, come on, well, wait a minute. Right. Let's not get crazy. I'm looking around your house. I know what, I know what happened, you know, you bought a house, you shouldn't,

you drive in a car you can't afford. One of my very, one of my very, one of my very, one of my very first for bankruptcies representing a borrower she was you know but I can't do that I can't it's you know this is when the bank did this and it's not my fault blah blah blah blah blah and how am I going to pay for the $8,000 rims on my escalade oh my God if you got $8,000 or rims on your escalade you got bigger problems than bankruptcy and that's why you're having to file bankruptcy because you didn't have the money to put $8,000 rims on your escalade well I was talking to a buddy the other day and I was saying, you know, the thing is there's some people that you can give $10 million to and five years later they're in bankruptcy. And then there, you know,

there are some people that no matter how many opportunities you give them, they will always just go broke again. And then there are other people who you can give them, you can take everything away from them, put them here, and they'll be a millionaire in three years. And you take it all away again, put them in another state, start over from scratch, and in three or four years, they'll be a millionaire again. And there's some people that just, they just keep rising to the top. Yep. And it's just, you know, it's money management and it's long-term planning and it's sacrifice. Most lottery winners are out of the money within a couple of years just because they had bad spending habits. And they only made it a few years because they had the money. Right. Like, trust me,

if it was less, the less money they had, the quicker they would have been broke. Right. It's just, it's money management it's i mean that's basically what it comes down to right so what do you think right now with the economy and really you're getting tired aren't you no i'm good i'm good goddard rodotard ready falsely what um exciting stuff we're talking yeah i listen i i talk i talk i talk um what uh so what do you think right now is happening with the with the economy i know we you know touched on yeah it's weird because we're still you know i think i think Biden has said that COVID is officially over. I think the government has said, we're still dealing with some ripple effects of that. We're still dealing with this struggle between the banks need to get

paid because they loaned out all this money to buy houses, but we've got, we sent out all this money to help with COVID. Now we've got inflation because you've got to pay all that money back. Plus, like I said at the beginning, there is a healthy level of foreclosures and bankruptcies in any market. It's just going to happen. So, I don't know, I think business is going to pick up. I think there's going to be more foreclosures. I think there's going to be more bankruptcies. We're still having medical issues. We're still having, you know, we've got student loan repayments. Biden is just forgiven or started the process to forgive 10 or 20, depending on the type of student loan you have from your student loans. But you've got some people that borrowed six figures, a $10,000 dent in their

in their student loan is not going to not going to make any impact at all right so i i think with inflation going up with interest rates going up property values have started to stagnate a little bit um i think there's we've got to get back to a i think we were under what was a healthy level of foreclosures and bankruptcies and i think we have to get back to that a little bit um and i think i think that's where the economy is going i don't think real estate's going to take the dip that it did in 2008, 9, 10. I think real estate may actually pull us out of it this time because it's going to kind of stay in terms of its value.

Plus, people have equity today where back in 2008, we had no equity in their house. So I think, you know, there's amongst all the bankruptcy groups that I'm in, the Facebook groups and whatnot, there's chatter about the title waves coming. I don't know that it's a title wave, but there's got to be something on the horizon and to make these corrections. Well, I mean, I also think that that dip in, you know, in the real estate market is kind of offset as a result of inflation.

You know what I'm saying? Like, is it happening? It's happening. Is it as noticeable? You know what I'm saying? So you don't end up getting that kind of panic either. When people don't really see, they're like, well, that whole, the one that house across street sold for 350.

Like, you know, my house sold for 350, you know, a year ago. Like, you know, or maybe even it sold for a little bit more. Like, things aren't really as bad. But what really happened was. That house should have been selling for $400, you know. So you don't notice it. So you don't get, you don't get that panic, you know, that panic feeling as opposed to the house next door selling for $2.50. And you're like, oh, my God.

Yeah. What I saw a lot of six months ago, eight months ago, nine months ago, what I saw a lot of was buying site unseen, waiving inspections, you know, making offers 10, 15, 20 grand above list price, multiple. offers within hours of things going on the market, we're not seeing that as much anymore. Now it's, okay, there's now more of a competitive bidding process. Houses are on the market for longer. They're not, you know, there's, there's issues with appraisals. Now, it's so it's starting to, we still have a very low amount of inventory. Yeah. In terms of how long is it going to take for all the houses to get sold. And I think part of the issue, too, is that the real estate market is kind of localized. So what we're feeling in Tampa Bay,

may not be what we're feeling in Orlando. It's definitely not going to be what we're feeling in Atlanta. Right. So there's some of that going on too, but, yeah, I mean, my business is starting to pick up slowly. So, so, there was a, there was a girl, it was actually two women that were, they were, you know, when you read, I read these articles about real estate scams. Right. They never tell you quite what they were doing, but I immediately, I'm kind of like,

This is what they were. I think this is what they were doing. Right. This is what I think they were doing based on two articles that I read, which was they were renting houses, maybe even just doing like an Airbnb for a week or so. And then they would actually show the houses, take deposits for the houses. And I think what they, I don't know what they get. Was it $250,000 or $350,000 in like six months or something? Wow.

They were taking in a ton. Like they, you know, in the, the article makes it sound like they came up with a fake title company, a fake this, a fake that, you know, fake online like websites or whatever they did to create this illusion. And I was thinking like this was six months, six to eight months ago that they were doing this or I guess the articles came out maybe six months ago. So maybe they had been doing it for months and months before that. But within six months, so started maybe a year ago. I can see they rented a house, put it on Craig's list or whatever to sell the house, and then people would come by and see it. It's a little bit below market value.

And people are giving them like $5,000. And then they're writing a check to, you know, maybe they opened a title company, a bank or a bank account, like a DBA for themselves to a bank. And then they're depositing and they're pulling the money out. There were two women and they both got busted doing this. Wow. the other thing I was going to mention to you is is that and this is actually where I was going

I started talking about that one which has nothing to do with what we're talking about but that led me to this where there was a guy in New York this was probably like he's been he'd been doing it for like five or ten years this is what's insane and this was title fraud which I had asked you about title fraud before he would go and he would find houses that for some reason why he did this

I don't know what they had to be free and clear but that the houses were like free and clear right he would then place a lien on the house for let's say a couple three hundred couple hundred thousand whatever it was whatever it's five grand whatever a couple hundred thousand dollars and then and whoever lives there so it'd be a 60 year old or sorry like a 70 year old

retired person and he would put a couple hundred thousand dollar lien on the property and then he'd wait a few months and he'd start the foreclosure process legally through an attorney. Wow. So the attorney who goes in front of these judges all the time, goes in and says, Your Honor, he's sent out several letters to these people, which he probably didn't. They haven't responded.

It's been several months. We want to start foreclosure. So they start foreclosure. And maybe the person at the house even gets notified. Somebody shows up and serves them. So if you're a 70-year-old woman and you get served something saying you owe $200,000, you might even just say, I don't owe 200. This is a mistake.

Maybe they call the phone number. They don't. The person says, they say, I don't, I never took out any of this money. What are you talking about? Six months ago or four months ago, you did this. We're foreclosing. My client says you did. Even as the lawyer, what is the lawyer going to say to the client?

This woman saying she did, well, what's she going to say? Yeah, of course she's going to say that. So there's a couple of things. If the real teeth comes in, so a lot of times would also. to a client is it's the cost of defense settlement. So if it's going to cost you 5 grand, 10 grand, 15 grand to hire me to take this all the way through trial, again, I'd like to make money. I got my own mortgages to pay too. But if they'll go away for 5 or 10, you're coming out less than what you would pay me. You're resolving it. Now that's theft by them. So this guy's taking the

properties. Right. Like he's going through the whole foreclosure. They interviewed people that were living on the street now. Wow. In most cases, there's an attorney fee provision. So if you hire me and we win, we can go after him for my attorney's fees. So whatever you've paid me, we can go after him. Now, again, if he's really committing crimes like that, the chances of him having the money to pay you back all those attorney's fees are slim to none. But I would think, at least in Florida, there would be enough documentation or lack of documentation to prove that that lien was fraudulent. There's only two ways to create a lien in Florida, voluntary, like a mortgage, or an involuntary, like a judgment. Those are the only two ways. So if there's no lawsuit backing this lien,

then you don't have the support for it. And yeah, you may be able to set up some documents, but if the borrower comes in and claims, I never signed it, or as the attorney, show me where, okay, the lien is for $200,000. Show me your bank is. account that shows 200 grand leaving it to go to this woman or this man or this 70 year old show me where that money went to him eventually there's going to be no proof behind their their lean like the problem is with someone like me i'll give you the bank accounts i'll give you this like i would be able to yep here's my bank account here's this here's the closing here's the hud statement here's here like i would be able to provide all of that that would be a problem for

a 70 or 80 year old woman i think like that's horror like what i would do is probably counter it and pull her banks. Okay, you said you sent it to the bank account ending one, two, three, four. Her bank account is one, two, three, four. Here's the bank account from that time that that wire was supposed to go in, and there's no wire in. Yeah. Yeah.

And so it may ultimately come down to who the judge believes. This guy did it for five or ten years. He eventually, by the way, finally, finally, even though people had complained, like, it said that there had been multiple complaints. And what happened was the, like, the, the, like, the. the sheriff or whoever they complained to or the police department they would say well this is a civil matter

right and so they would keep referring it to a civil matter well so many so many there had been so many complaints by this one guy over the years eventually some detective was like wait a minute like eight months ago or a year ago and he's doing in different counties

different areas but eventually just so happened somebody said I'll look into this if he was smart what he probably would have done is if somebody pushed back he probably would have been like okay mistake let that one go

and move on to the next one well the FBI the federal government got in it like he was federally indicted and you know and that's another one of those things where you read a little here a little there I got a piece here I got a piece here and I kind of pieced it together and I was like

like oh because they explained he was placing liens on the properties he was then foreclosing for lack of payment so lien was a mortgage right you know the people were then saying that they hadn't borrowed any money. And a lot of people were just ignoring it. Like, you got a 75 year old woman. She knows I own. She's like, I own this property free and clear. You know, and that somehow or another, he was

figuring out, like, who could afford to fight. Right. You know, and they couldn't afford to fight. And he was periodically, he's taking some property, some brownstone worth a million dollars for whatever the amount was. And he's providing documents. And he's, and he had a legitimate lawyer who's foreclosing. And you've got a 78 year old woman going, your honor, I, didn't this, I didn't that. Hopefully, the attorney was not in on it. Probably. At some point he had at some point, you get three or four or five of these people saying the same thing. You got to start going, hey man. Yeah. Something's wrong. This many people from all these different areas didn't just come up with the same story. Hopefully. But I tend to be, I tend to be the optimist.

Yeah. I met a lot of, a lot of lawyers in prison. I don't know. We'll see. The other thing that that you were talking about in terms of renting, what I see going on right now, is, like you said, the wraparound mortgage, but in a rent situation. So I'm going to rent this place from you for $1,000 a month, and then I'm going to put in the rent, a sub-lease provision in our lease. And then I'm going to turn around, and I'm going to Airbnb it for $1,000 a week. Right. And so those Airbnbs are going to pay me to pay your lease agreement.

And I've been involved in a couple of those that have blown up, and those were messy to try to clean those up. But that's sort of the wrap-around equivalent in a lease situation is people wrap-around sub-leases. I was going to say, like, I almost feel like why would the owner care? But then, you know, it just depends. I guess it depends on all kinds of things. On what's happening? It's a lot of wear and tear.

On the one hand, why would the owner care? On the other hand, if it's my house and I'm getting $1,000 a month from you, but you're getting $4,000 to rent it out on a weekly basis. Wait a minute. Why can't I rent it out on a weekly basis and get that $4,000 myself? Well, I mean, you're also going through a lot of headache for that, too. True. You're the one coming in, cleaning it up.

You're the one. Like I know everybody wants to do the Airbnb's. Well, I know I got a friend that owns several of them. And she's like, listen, it's not a joke. Like you got to come. You're a maid. You're coming in. You're vacuuming.

You're managing everything. You know, you're managing keys and people and how this works. And she's like, you're getting phone calls. You're still got the toilet clogging up and the sink clogging up and this isn't working right. And that light needs to be changed. She is making good money, though. Yeah. I have a friend of mine, Danny.

I'm actually doing a podcast with him tonight. Okay. So, and that's like an hour. It's used to be a 45 minute drive. Now it's like a little bit over. Now it's like an hour and 20 minutes. Yeah. It's St. Pete.

But, yeah. So I don't know. I'm about, I guess, about 40, 45 minutes. minutes away. I'm in, uh, I'm in, uh, I'm in West Chase. Although the office, the office is in clear water. And just to plug, I, you know, I try to keep the footprint of the law firm to the Tampa Bay area. So, um, Hernando, uh, Pascoe, Hillsborough Pinellas, Sarasota Manatee. But as a Florida attorney, I could practice anywhere in the state of Florida. Um, I'm licensed in all three federal districts, northern middle and northern middle and southern. So in terms of

bankruptcies, I could do them anywhere. Right. Although I typically try to keep them. Because I, But the bankruptcy court during COVID, it was awesome. We could do everything by phone and Zoom and all this other stuff. Now bankruptcy courts are starting to go back to in-person hearings. And so as a solo guy, do I want to drive to Jacksonville and Tallahassee and Miami in Fort Lauderdale? Right. Well, I can put, you know, I can put your, in the description box. I can put a link either to your website or your email or whatever you want.

So we can pop that in there. Yeah. Either way. I was going to tell you, I, so. there's a guy named Frank Amadeo and Frank I wrote a story about him

he was in prison he actually did my I did I don't know if you know a two I got 26 years right I filed Frank filed

two 2255s on my behalf right to get my sentence reduced because for cooperation that the government wouldn't give me he then filed these 2255 saying my lawyer was ineffective and eventually got the government to give me, reduce my sentence twice.

Well, Frank is a rapid cycling bipolar with features of schizophrenia. He has a law degree. He eventually got it. He was disbarred. And since he was a teenager in his early teens, which is a little bit odd for this, but he's been hearing God tell him he's preordained to be emperor. of the world. Okay.

And it's insanity. It's insane. And if I hadn't been locked up with him, you know, I would think it was all a ploy to try and get out of his charges, right? Right. But it's just not. Like everybody you've talked to, like I've talked to a ton of people that knew him when he was out there and everything.

I've read the affidavits from people, from his wife, from friends. I've spoke with friends. And they were all of them. They were like, oh, no, no, this has been an ongoing thing. They go, but, you know, he'll laugh about it. And I'm like, so you think it's not true? They go, oh, no, he's absolutely serious. They go, but he also knows it sounds crazy.

Right. And so he was in prison doing guys' legal work. Well, at some point, I started writing guys' stories. And I ended up writing his story about just how he ended up getting in prison. And he actually backed like a coup in the Congo, right? Wow. Yeah, the Democrat Republic of the Congress in Africa. So we're talking about not just that he was trying to buy F-15s, he was trying to, he had a security force.

Like it's insane. Like if you actually look him up, like there's articles on it. Like how this didn't turn into like a series or a movie or something, I don't know. But I wrote a book on it. But he, he, I would say embezzled isn't the right word, but I'm going to say embezzled. He embezzled between $180 million and $200 million from the federal government. Wow. Here's how he did it.

And as a bankruptcy attorney, because that's what he did. After he, he was, I think, Emirate, took his law degree. After he graduated, he went to work for a company that was, it was started by the same people who started a H&R block, right? But it was for bankruptcies. You know, they tried for years to make it work. Yeah. It just never did. It eventually went under.

They claimed bankrupt. So he came in and he started working for them and they were doing bankruptcies. and so he learned how to become a bankruptcy attorney. He's extremely analytical. I mean, super smart guy. You know, as a lot of, you know, schizophrenics and, you know, people with bipolar condition, you know, are. You know, people with mental, for some reason, if you have mental condition, you tend to also be bright. Right.

So he, what ultimately he did was he started, he became an investor in businesses. So he would come into a business and he'd look at the business and go, well, you've got 500 employees. You're bringing in this much money. Like, what the hell is a problem? Why are you going under? And he'd start looking at it and he'd see the creditors and mismanagement of things. And so what he did was he opened up a company that was a payroll company. And so the first thing he'd do is he'd come in.

He'd go, one thing I would always notice is if even if people weren't paying their creditors, they were always paying their employees. Right. So I'd immediately have them shift everything to the payroll company. So now they're the payroll company. So now immediately he's got cash flow from them. He goes, because they can't pay me. Right. They're going under and they're going to owe me half a million dollars.

They can't pay. So he'd immediately say, and I could generate income this way. Well, here's what he did ultimately, you know, because he's out there. He would collect the payroll taxes and not send to the IRS. He would notify the IRS, hey, I have, which legally they have to do. Like, I owe this much money. Right. We don't have the money.

or it's been reallocated or whatever, but we can't pay it right now. We're contemplating bankruptcy. You're a creditor. And he said, if there was something like, if the IRS doesn't notify you, you have to do this with the funds or separated or whatever,

he said, then they just become a creditor. And so he would negotiate with them to pay them off. Like we owe you $4 million. We can pay you a million for the $4 million, and we can make a payment plan. And he would go back and forth first. months and continue to withhold. This got so bad, it ended up being a total of, like, $180 million.

So I'm going to, it's insane. Yeah. I'm going to give you the book. Okay. I don't have a code, like there's an audible version. I don't know if you read or you listen to it. I like reading. Most of the time I'm listening to podcasts if I'm in the car.

Okay. But because based on what he was doing, you'll get a kick out of it. Yeah. Because you're going to, like, I had to really dumb it down just for me. Yeah. Because I just, you know, but a lot, it's still semi-technical on some of the things he was doing. I focused mostly on the stuff he was doing, like, for instance, there's a documentary called, it's on YouTube. It's called Nine Days in the Congo.

And it's got interviews with Frank, interviews with the guys that he had, his security forces go to the Congo. They backed a political candidate. The candidate went from like 30 down to number three. he was him and all of his guys were arrested by the number two candidate for the Congo and held for nine days while they negotiated to get these guys released 30 they they they said they was an armed coup they were plotting an armed coup frank says the guys weren't armed however the newspaper said they pulled guns off these guys right you know um they grabbed 32 of them there were actually probably 60 or 70 security security personnel, but you're only like 32 in this one area. It, you know, if you read the book. It's interesting, though. Fascinating.

What you're describing, though, isn't really any different, like credit repair companies, credit negotiation companies, you pay us X amount of dollars per month, and when we build up a war chest of X, we're going to go negotiate with.