Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Con Men Reveal SECRETS to Avoid Being Scammed

Episode Date: January 28, 2024

Con Men Reveal SECRETS to Avoid Being Scammed

I always have a passion for our speaking engagements. I mean, you were already on your way. You were with the Tony Robbins thing. Like, you could have turned that into a whole thing. Well, yeah. Had you not been committing crimes. Well, yeah. But had you not been committing crimes,

you would have never met Tony Robbins either. It's a big circle. Yeah, it is scary. It's scary. It is. It is. That opened up a doorway that I would have never imagined exists. Hey, this is Matt Cox.

I'm here with Zach. Yes, sir. And we're going to be answering, what do you call it, viewer questions? We're going to be answering viewer questions that obviously viewers have left for Zach and I. So go ahead. I think most of these questions are for you. I don't think so. Some of them say Zach.

I know some of them say Zach. Yeah, one or two of them. I mean, you know, but you bring me in to answer two questions. I'm answering the two questions and I'm leaving. We're going to do another video. All right. All right. So question number one, it says, how does a regular person stay away from being scammed?

I mean, who picked that one? Did you pick that one? Yeah, I picked it. What do you mean? If it's too good to be true, it's not true. I mean, it's like, you're thinking, okay, so their question probably is how do they avoid being a victim? Not being, well, I don't know. Maybe it is like scam, like, hey, if.

you get me $50, you know, like there was a thing going around where they had this group where you had to get like 13 people to give $50. And if you got 13 people and each of those 13 people got 13 people, then you'd end up getting like $2,000 at the end of the week once. It was just like a pyramid scam going on. Right. Is that what you're saying? Like that sounds too good to be true.

It could be anything. Like most of the people like the loan officers and lawyers and stuff that where I would walk in and give them my documents and give them this and just go go through the motions a lot of them said man i felt like something was wrong like i like you know like remember the the lawyer that recognized me we were doing the closing he'd seen my picture right his my wanna poster was in the back room he saw my picture he came sat down started disclosing and i started to sign or i wasn't signing he just started disclosing he goes he looked at me and goes huh he was can you hold on a second. Sure. Got up, walked back, looked at the poster, but it said like that I was

wanted out of like Atlanta, Georgia or something. And he said, and he said, looked at the application. It said that I had just come here from Florida. And he looked at it and he went and it said that I'd worked for this company for five years and he goes, oh, can't be the same guy. Like for some reason that made sense to him. Even though it said, identity theft, you know, wire fraud, bake fraud. Like, you know, passport fraud, like all these different things. he's like, yeah, must be, walk back disclosed and I walked out with a check for like $150,000 or something.

Nice. So what I'm saying is afterwards, when the Secret Service showed up to talk to him, he said, man, I felt like something was wrong. I just, and a lot of times these guys when they get scammed and they're being told, hey, you know, the IRS called them

and said, you owe $1,500 if you don't pay us right now. You know, like they make them go to Walmart and get a Walmart card and put money here and wire us money here. and it's like that amazes me that works that that works and then so what's funny is those people were like I felt like something was wrong like your intuition told you something was wrong there's nothing wrong with with with checking right what's why didn't you check you know I don't know he said not to hire not to hang up the phone yes and and they they're going to stay on the phone with you while

you go to Walmart and you're going to pay their company it's like basically if you didn't pay you get arrested. I don't understand why you felt so much pressure. Like, I'm going to do it. Yeah, but if you don't do it, you're going to get arrested. So I'm going to stay on the phone with you. Like, why do you care if I do it or not? Right. Yeah, it doesn't. The thing is, is like, a lot of times it's intuition. A lot of times if it's too good to be true, right? Like, it's an investment opportunity. Like, I'm sorry, there's just very few. Like, first of all, if it's an investment opportunity where, hey, I can make 300% on my, on my investment, great. Well, you have to understand if you can make 300% on your investment, you also have to understand that there's about a 95% chances

you'll just lose your whole investment. And that's a legitimate investment where if I'm investing in, let's say a startup, I'm going to give you $50,000. Well, only, you know, like one in 10, more like one in 20 startups actually pay off. Right. So you've got like a 90 to 95% chance you're going to lose your entire investment. So, you know, but if I hit, I'll hit big. Great. Well, it's the same thing with this scam sounded too, but good to be true. And you lost your investment. You know, it's too good to be true. Right. But, okay, so think of Bernie Madoff.

So. That was, see, that's a good scam. Because he didn't pay outrageous returns. He paid slightly more than the, than what, the NASDAQ. So they come along later and say that, like, how was he getting more than what everybody else was getting? Right, but it wasn't outrageously more. It was like 8 to 12%. Right.

And the market was making. It was more. But people, you know, I don't know. You know, another thing, another big thing is there was a guy named Andrew Levinson who used to tell me that people were more, his big thing was the whole urgency thing. And one of the things he did was he would break up a, he did business opportunity scams. And he would break up a city into like eight different sections. And he'd say, okay, well, and the guy would say like, yeah, yeah, I do.

I'm interested. I'm not sure. I'd like to be in Tampa. And you go, okay, well, Tampa's eight. We have eight different, eight different divisions in Tampa sections. Right. Three of those are already sold.

I know that we have one of them that we just sent out the contract. I don't know if that guy signed it yet. So let me, okay, so what area first? What area are you interested in? So right now the guy's like, there's eight areas, four basically gone. Right. There's four left. Like, well, I want to be in this area right.

Oh, no, that one's gone. That one's gone. Okay. That's one of the ones that went, uh, three, uh, on Monday. day. So, okay, so wait, well, what about, we've got this area. So you're already thinking, I'm going to lose out on this opportunity. People are more concerned about losing out on an opportunity than they are at risking their money. Yeah, with the, uh, somebody else is coming and look at the car type of. Right. Yeah. It's like, okay, I just had a, I had a guy come in

today and look at it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like, oh, okay, gosh, I better get this one, because they didn't make 30,000 Ford Chev, you know, Ford F-150s last year. you know like okay well i'll never find another one yeah you'll never get a deal like this one is your problem yeah look look leave leave and you're gonna miss out right so you're saying if it sounds too good to be true it's it's not true right so just take a moment and verify yeah there's nothing wrong with like trust but verify right Ronald Reagan so that's right that's right that's right there's nothing wrong with that that's true and if some guys like oh if you leave a lot if you stop it stop you know it's a scam now I know you're full of shit true

If I leave the scam, there's a good chance you call me up tomorrow and give me a better deal. If I leave the car lot, yeah, it's a better chance you call me. Hey, I talked to my manager. Did you? Yeah. He's willing to knock it up for $350. What about the people that were showing up? Yeah.

They never showed up. But I need you to show backup. Right. Stop. Come on, stop. You know. All right. Easy enough.

All right. So this one said, let's talk. They want you to talk more about your crazy tenants and crazy ex-wife stories. Who picked to this? I can't do a whole crazy tenant. Colby? I can't do. Did you pick that?

Listen, these are questions. I tell you, they weren't mostly about me. My crazy ex-wife. First of all, just saying the word crazy ex-wife on here, I just got a phone call. You understand? She can never see this video now. So I usually will get the video and I'll share it

and send it to like maybe 10 or 20 people that I know, and she's one of them. I can't send this video now. And I'll never remember that this was in a video. Listen, listen, trust me when I tell you. She watches them anyway. Okay, good. Trust me when I tell you, I understand.

I know you do. So you have to be extremely careful. You don't want to upset. We don't want to upset the exes. No, no. Like, yeah. I feel so bad for her husband. That dude's doing some hard time.

Yes, he is. He's doing some time. So no tenant. What about the tenants? No tenant story. Is that what you're saying? You're denying the questioner? Well, I mean, I think I've told, like, I've got a, she's got a bunch of them.

I ought to have her. She'd never do it, though. Like, she could tell you, tell you the stories and you relay them. Yeah, I could do that. We could dress them up. All right, well, I'll think about that. We'll do another video. What's going on?

All right, next one. Hey, by the way, just want to let you guys know if you're interested in supporting me and supporting the channel and you like artwork because I do have a degree in fine arts. I'm selling all of these paintings. They are modified screen prints and they go for $285 and I will ship any one of them to you within the continental United States for the price of $285. My email will be in the description, so just shoot me an email and I will ship you off a painting and I really appreciate it. So back to the video. So I know you guys said when you were, when you get imprisoned, you, wait, okay.

Yeah, I know some of these guys, bro. It's like, come on. So they're saying that we had money taken away. They said, what if we laundered the money and make legitimate investments? Can they track that? depending on how it's laundered and how legitimate and how long you've had the legitimate investments is whether they can track it or not.

Like the Domino's, like they did not seize the franchise that I had. Right. But then it wasn't in my name, so I don't know if that was the issue. I don't. It really depends on the U.S. attorney. Yeah, it does.

If he really wants to be a jerk, he can try and grab every single thing. Well, see, sometimes. complexity like I was saying they're looking from the outside end so when they only see certain things and they don't understand like everything that's going on so I don't think that he saw that because if he if he would have I think he would have pursued it so the fact that because you know I got grabbed on something I did in Tampa right I didn't get grabbed on anything I did anywhere else right And the information that they received told them speckles of things that we've done.

They had no idea the scope of what was going on on a daily basis. Right. You know what I'm saying? So by not knowing that, they're looking through a hole about this big when like on the other side of that hole. They'd have got through it. They'd be like, holy shit. Yeah. Jesus, dude.

We'd be having this conversation right now or the phone. Yes, we would. So it just depends on the. the scope. And just like you were saying about someone where 1% of what they were doing is, is, is, was fraud and it took the 100%. So that, that happens to drug dealers if they pull up in a new car and do a transaction or, you know, if they talk to you on the phone in the car. Like if they can associate their vehicle, they want to take it. It's like they want to take everything. Well, I mean, I mean, look, the, the bottom line is like if you have, so if you

have like a job where you make 50,000 a year, and then you make another 200,000 fraudulently, let's say. Like if they grab you and you say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And they say, we're taking the 250. You go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, 50,000 of that's legitimate. And I can prove that's legitimate because of this and this and this. And I took that money. And then they say, well, what about you bought these three houses? Yes, but I use that $50,000. And I, so you can, they're not going to let that happen. Well, it does happen. It does. If you plead guilty and, and you're argue with them, they will say to a certain extent, like, okay, well, you're right, you can legitimately show where you made this money. So we're not going to, we're going to let that

go. Like, but once again, like you said, like I said, it's the U.S. attorney. Listen. Okay. So the U.S. attorney might just be like, I don't care about any of that. I agree with you. But did, okay, forfeiture, the forfeiture laws, and especially under President Obama, got to be so generous that it's like, it went from, and, And I saw this statistic. I'm trying to remember where I saw it because I'd like to cite the place. And if I can, I hope you put a link. But the statistics of what the U.S. attorneys gathered in forfeiture, like in 2000, 2010 and 2020 is like in 2000, it was like maybe like 600 million.

And in 2010, it was like $7.8 billion. Right. And in 2020, it was like $43 billion. Yeah, it becomes profitable. to go after. So somehow there's kickbacks somewhere. There's no reason for them to seize so many assets. Do you know now, even if you're under investigation or accused,

they can seize an asset and you really, they don't have to give it back? It's unbelievable. Listen, the forfeiture laws now, they want everything. If they can, if you do something in your house, if I call you from my house phone, they're like, we want your house. you made you made the criminal call to Matt

well I understand it's that liberal but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're doing going to do that every time okay okay well I'm saying in in general if you can prove I made this is legitimate money I bought this asset with that money you can see the money went in the bank you can see that like there's certain things they'll say okay well

we can't grab that it's legitimate like you legitimately made the money to grab it they act like it's well I'm not saying they don't I'm saying that most of the U.S. attorneys are not going to go out of their way. Like, you can argue in front of the judge and argue your honor this. And then if the judge is going to be like, okay, well, I do, look, he did make that legitimate. What are you doing? Like, what I'm saying is most of time when you plead guilty, you're so desperate to get a decent sentence, you're ready to sign over everything.

Yes. Because you're thinking it will help you with your sentence. But the truth is, it doesn't really help you. Like most of the time, if you sit there and say, I'm not giving you this, I'm not giving you this, I'll plead guilty, but I'm not doing this. You know, a lot of times you can argue. And because giving all that stuff typically doesn't help you anyway. Right.

So the other thing I want to say is, look, if you take fraudulent money and buy and turn it into a legitimate business, they can go after that business, right? Correct. Okay. But a lot of times, they may not necessarily go after it because it requires a lot on there. If they're not getting help and getting you to sign it over, typically they may not go after it. They may or may not. Okay, you're going to say, we have difference of opinion. Yes, we do.

Because you're citing the letter of the law and they... I understand, but a lot of times they'll skate the letter or the skirt? Skate. I don't know. Whatever. They'll get around the letter of the law just by saying, do this. You're going to plead guilty, but to plead guilty, you have to do this. So you're, oh, okay.

The truth is, the law says they can't do that, but you just agreed to do it because you wanted to get, you wanted to plead guilty and get a decent. You thought you were going to get a decent sentence, and you thought it was going to help you. So we have a difference of opinion on that. Yes, we do. So I think, regardless, they can take your business if you use fraudulent proceeds to do it with. They can take it. They can.

Will they? You say they will every time. They will. They will. They will say it's, I want to think of the term that they use when they think it's so inter. For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a Small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax.

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Oh, you're not? No, just ask your doctor. About Wagovi. Yeah, ask for it by name. Okay. So why did you bring me to the circus? Oh, I'm really into Lion Tamers. You know, with the chair and everything.

Ask your doctor for Wagovi by name. Visit Wagovi.combe.com for savings. Exclusions may apply. Intric. I'm going to get interwoven? Yeah. It's something in, uh, interwoven that they can't separate out the legal funds from the illegal funds.

And they're going to take it. Or if you had any activity in whatever vehicle or whatever, they, they, they, their, their goal is take, take, take, take, take. Right. You know, that, that's, that's. The first thing, we can seize whatever property you have. Okay. All right.

So anyway, I don't think I had spared that, like unbelievably. Well, I don't think we answer that question at all. All right. Good for us. All right. Given all the time and effort, cleverness, you guys dedicated to make fraud an art form, in retrospect, what could you have applied all those skills to do legally? Come on.

Why? Why do people do this? You try to make me feel bad? These are our viewers. First of all, I, actually am doing something. You know what I should have been doing? I should have been painting and writing the whole time.

But I really didn't really work on my writing skills until I went to prison. So really I had the time to hone that crap. You weren't passionate about. What were you out passionate about over like, oh my God, dude, that's brilliant. Prior to prison? Yeah. Like what would you have found brilliant prior to prison to write about? A love story?

I mean, I don't know. I liked crime movies and stuff before I went to prison. You know, I did. So I even wrote a book called this. I don't think Logan's run is crime. I wrote the associate. I wrote a story called The Associates when I was before prison. Show to John Grisham, but go ahead.

I wrote it before him. Oh, okay. And it's a different story. So, I mean, I would say, I don't know, I would say fucking, I would say art or, or. An art story? No, art. I mean, just right, the same thing I'm doing now. only the difference is then I was trying to make money and making money was more important

than following what I was passionate about. And now I write, wrote when I was in prison, and I paint. For example, I painted all of these paintings and they're all for sale. That's what we got to do. We got to do a little commercial. We'll have to do a commercial and just embed it. That way I don't have to do that. Like you just, it'll just show up and it would be different. Yeah. So anyway, there will be a link. There'll be a link in the description where you can contact me if you want to, if you want to buy a painting. They're going for like $2.85 and I ship them to you. That's a deal. Is shipping included? Shipping is included if you're in the continental United States. And if you're not in the continental? Well, then you have to pay extra. I mean, like if you're in, if you're in Australia and it's going to cost $110 to ship it to you. I'm not paying that. Okay. Fair enough.

Hopefully they won't get that in the. Yeah. I mean, what could we have legally done? And like, I don't know, I could have probably stuck with real estate and just kept, if I, if I'd been patient, if I'd just been patient and stuck with real estate, I probably would have done well in real estate and then lost everything during the 2008 crisis, you know, crash, whatever. Crisis. It's it, what do they call it, the 2008 crisis? Crisis. Yeah. So I probably would have lost everything then anyway. So what does it matter? I think I could have, like, warmed my way back into maybe training or teaching. Yeah. I have, I always have a passion for, or speaking. I mean, you were already on your way. You were with the Tony Robbins thing. Like, you could have turned. that into a whole thing. Well, yeah, because... Had you not been committing crimes. Well, yeah. But had you not been committing crimes,

you would have never met Tony Robbins either. It's a big circle. Yeah, it is scary. It is. It is. That opened up a doorway that I would have never imagined exists.

All right, talk about bandman Kivo, Money Man, and Rich Wayne. You picked these, right? Colby, did you pick... They're all of them. We were just said we were going on.

Okay, well, I mean, I mean, like what we... What that is, that's basically saying we should do a reaction video to those. So we will. At some point, we'll watch one of those. A couple of the people that I talked to that were in with us and out, like my friend, they watched those videos. Like, man, this guy is, I mean, he's telling you how to make it, man.

And, like, he's speaking my language. Like, so they're giving dreams to thugs. Right. Well, it's like when I taught the real estate class and every guy that left the real estate class thought they were going to go out and start flipping houses and make millions. Yes. And it's like, I get them hyped up and everything. And if they had a little bit of experience and maybe they could do it, but you can't.

And first of all, a lot of the stuff that he says is, you know, it's inaccurate because a lot of it, it's basically like you have to lie on the application. You have to like, he doesn't tell you that when they ask you like your job, you have to basically say you've been on the job five years or three years or two years. You have to say you make like $85,000 a year. Like you can't sit there and say, you know, you've been on the job, what, you know, oh, unemployed. you can't be honest about it or you can't say you know street pharmacist yeah exactly drug deal like you can't you're already committing fraud while you're filling out the application and then the whole where they talk about putting the money in the bank and then borrowing against the money and then taking that money and put in another bank and you know doing this over and they start they have all these little tactics but every time that you go to do certain things you're constantly kind of lying about this and they not that they don't work people do they do work I understand they work

right but you're also committing fraud on a lot of them not all of them but a lot of them you're kind of committing fraud and it takes time yeah let's say you do it all legitimately you really have a job you really put all the correct information down and you really do it takes time and I always love it like they'll build up to where you can borrow like 200,000 or 300,000 it's like but what are you going to do with that money like you're excited because you borrowed 300,000 dollars from like three different banks or or 100,000 from three different banks you got 300,000 what are you going to do with the money like basically what he's saying is like there they'll be different though some of these guys will be like yeah yeah now you got the money you can do whatever you want what the money no you have to

repay the money like basically you're setting them up for foreclosure yeah i mean i'm sorry for for bankruptcy or collections and that's fine but if you go into that scenario with that in mind you're committing fraud yes you say well i'm going to get the money i'm never going to make a payment well that's fraud i'm not saying you'll get you'll get uh prosecuted you may not get prosecuted you may or may not, but the truth is, a lot of these little schemes are just fraudulent. I listened to one of his videos where he was talking about putting down like 5% down on the house, and then, which is essentially like, that's an owner-occupied property. You're not going to, you have to put 20% down on an investment property, 5% down on

owner-occupied. So, and then he says, so once you get that house, you go get another house, and you put 5% down on that one. Then you go get, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, how many owner-occupied? properties are you going to tell these people to do? You're saying they're moving in the house, putting down 5% for an owner-occupied loan, but you're telling them not to even move into the house. Right. Or move in the house for a month and then leave.

He doesn't even say that. But move in the house and then leave, it's like, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. If they don't move in the house and didn't have intentions and they got an owner-occupied property, which means that they told the bank I'm going to move in this house, and they never didn't, never intended to. You just committed what's called owner-occupancy fraud. And then you went and bought another one and told the next bank the same thing.

You just committed owner occupancy fraud again because they're talking about renting out the houses. Like your whole, like I listened to him and another guy talked to this whole scheme about ending up with like $2 million worth of real estate and you're like, you just told these people how to commit $2 million worth of fraud. That's a little bit of time.

Yeah, that's a little bit, yeah. But they put that out there and all these guys are like, yeah, man, yeah, that's the shit. It's the hype. They're living off the hype. Right. Well, first of all, they're never going to do it. Because to qualify for those mortgages, he never mentions you have to have a job, you have to have the money in the bank for 90 days, you have to have good credit.

Like, they never mention all that stuff. Well, listen, to be fair to them, neither did you in your real estate class. So. That's a blatant lie. My real estate class is good. Yes, it was solid. Let's go to the next one. I don't even believe anything you say.

I feel like one of your victims. Yeah. Okay. Those guys.