Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Cybercrime King's Final Words Before Prison

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

Colby Kopp was a dark web dealer, he breaks down what lead to his rise and eventual fall of his empire. Follow me on all socials! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mattcoxtruecrime Do you want to be a guest? Send me an email here: [e-mail] Do you want a custom "con man" painting to shown up at your doorstep every month? Subscribe to my Patreon: https: //www.patreon.com/insidetruecrime Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox Check out my true crime books! Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8 Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438 The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402 Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1 Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel! Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here: Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69 Cashapp: $coxcon69

I mean, by the time this comes out, you'll have been sent it. I don't know currently as of right now, but it won't be that much longer. I hop on. We have like $21,000 in sales. So we went from like $500 to then $21,000 just like that. There are services on the dark net that you could go to where you exchange that piece of gold. Well, it turns out the FBI also had control of that service. and they were catching a lot of people trying to wash their money.

Have you considered selling stuff on Etsy, like maybe stuff that's not banned by the federal government? Every law enforcement agency in the world, and you have the most advanced units in those agencies after you. You have every single hacker in the world trying to demand ransom from you, trying to hack you. You have other markets competing with you that will also who are also very technically advanced people

that will try to mess up your website just to drive traffic to their website. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I'm going to be doing an interview with Colby Cop. He was actually indicted and is awaiting. Actually, by the time this video comes out, he'll have been sentenced and either be waiting to turn himself in or on his way, on a bus. on his way to um uh to a short vacation and so he he was indicted for how can i put this he was a a dark market or what a dark web um counterfeit pill dealer let's put it that way so it's going to be an interesting interesting story every time i've talked to him i've unfortunately I know I'm not supposed to laugh about it, but I've laughed about it.

And it's an interesting story, so check this out. Why are you laughing about my story so much? Because you're telling me when you tell me what happened, you were laughing and you were like, Jovely, not laughing in a bad way, but you're like you're like you're like I'm going to laugh at pretty much anything just because it's just how I get through the day or how I get through anything. I try and I find the humor in pretty much everything. otherwise you're walking around crying all the time you know and right so i'm just going to try and see the

humor and everything you got to say you got to stay calm that's the thing i'm learned going through this process you got to your mental health is paramount because you'll go crazy yeah yeah yeah yeah if you're strong mentally and you go to jail or i mean to prison you can figure out pretty quickly um how to make that time work for you that makes sense um so so let's let's go back let's start at the beginning like i mean you know where like where where'd you grow up i grew up in a small town called a winstead connecticut it's it's rural it's not it's outside of like some mid-sized cities i mean it only has really like 5 000 people in it um wow it's a yeah but it's like a it's eclectic we'll say so like we have a a a lake in the middle of our town

where you'll have like rich new yorkers come for their summer homes but then if you go to main street you'll have literally like crackheads wandering around so okay it's uh it's an eclectic mix of people yeah i think you've got you yeah that's pretty that's the last place like that even even where i live i live way out in the suburbs you still see guys like like i don't know where they're going like this dude's gonna be walking for a lot he's got he's got a grocery cart pack another one he's pulling it and I'm like I don't know where that guy's going like it's a she put an Oprah on them to see I don't know this guy he's going to be walking a while but yeah yeah they're they're they're everywhere so um you know and I'm sure he's a very nice

person um anyway so you grow up in a so small town 5,000 people that seems extremely small but um so so um what you're uh you're where your parents married you have two brothers you got a sister i grew up with uh only my mother um my father divorced her when i was like two years old and then eventually she met my stepfather and then they had my sister um then over time she divorced him as well and now it's just my mother and my sister and i okay um when did so where did you go to high school I went to high school in a, it's a semi-private high school called the Gilbert School. The town, we don't have like an actual, like, government high school, so they had to pay to send everybody there.

So it was, it was good. I had an idyllic high school experience. I never touched a drug until I was 19 years old. I played football. I had good grades. I had a 4.1 GPA. I did. cross country. I did track and field. I did wrestling. I did a lot of other extracurriculars like

Model U.N. I got to learn Mandarin Chinese in high school. We had a lot of exchange students over from China. So that was an immersive experience in learning about other cultures that I really enjoyed. Okay. And so now it's the leap to counterfeit drugs makes total sense to me now. No, I mean, so how, when did, so you're 19, you graduate high school, you're 19 and you, you started. So let me, let me, so I'm hanging out with my, like, I was part of like, I did football and everything, but like, look at me. I'm a nerd, right? I was with my like geeky friends, if you will. So there's my friend named Thai.

And, you know, in around where I'm at, the marijuana is not good. Okay. But he shows up to our social gathering with an ounce of the most beautiful pot I have seen at that point in my life. And I know damn well, Ty does not have the social skills to go out there and ascertains that weed. So I'm sitting there just staring at it. I'm like, Ty, where did you get this? Because I know you don't leave your house, like literally ever. You're a shut-in.

And he's like, get a laptop. I'm going to show you something really cool. I'm like, a laptop, for what? He's like, just listen. Stop talking, just listen. And he opened up a laptop, and he used this special software called Tor, the Onion Router, to access this thing called the Dark Web, which is a portion of the Internet that's not normally indexed by search engines, you know, like Google and Bing and Yahoo.

You need to use the special software tour, in order to. access it, right? So he goes on there and he proceeds to go to at the time dream market, a dark net market. Darknet market is basically an Amazon for illicit things, you know, counterfeit credit cards, folds, of course, narcotics. So he goes on there and he shows me the vendor account of the person he purchased the weed from. And this dude is making like 15,000, dollars a day just selling weed and I'm like is this real like you bought you how did you get the weed from this guy and he's like well I got some I purchased some some cryptocurrency some bitcoin I sent it to him and then he sent me weed once I opened up my package pretty much pause pause pause

he mailed you drugs yeah through who USPS yeah that's another charge Yeah. And I'm like, let me get this straight. The mailman brought you this weed. He said yes. And I'm like, okay, can we order some acid? So we proceed to order acid and marijuana and, you know, various stuff just for ourselves for personal use. And then one day, while I'm sitting there with my friends and or tripping acid, I look at them and I'm like, guys, how much is the weed on there? And they told me, and I'm like, you know, I know some people that sell weed around here. This weed is a lot better, and it's literally like $800 cheaper for one pound. So why don't we order it and go to our friends, people that I know that already sell weed, and just sell it to them? And they all looked at me like I was crazy, and I'm like, no, no, it's very simple. It's just weed. It's harmless.

but then as we all know you start with one seemingly innocent thing and then you just go go go from there right so you know after a while we start getting pounds of weed and i'm doing my thing and i'm selling it through the mail one day i meet one of my friends and this is wait this is all through the mail this is all through the mail i get it to the point how long goes this because you're How old are you? I was 19 at the time. But how old are you now? I'm 24 currently.

Okay. So this wasn't that long ago. No. Okay. No. Sorry, I haven't heard any recent stories about like the dark web that is that recent. I mean, I guess I interviewed a guy the other day, but his was a long time ago. His happened back, I want to say in 90, I want to say it was in 2000.

eight or something like this is pretty recent and i talked to a guy or maybe this no it's still listen it was at least at least 10 years ago i'm pretty sure so and then i talked to a guy who was a reshipper i didn't interview him but he was a reshipper and he was getting orders in and then from other countries and then they would send him bulk packages and he would reship it from inside the united states because if it shipped from inside the united states there's less scrutiny yes exactly exactly domestic packages don't really get flagged you get caught usually getting packages from let's say india china pakistan and then it gets flagged by customs right okay so this is cool so this is only like five years ago four or five years ago yeah well really

up till recently too i know but go ahead i'm sorry at a minute up no no that's okay that's okay your show well so i meet a friend dan after a while and i start selling him weed and he's like you No. My dad sells a lot of Coke. And I'm like, Coke. I can't deal with that. It's crazy. What do you talk? Cocaine? And he's like, hold on now. He's like, just go on there and show me. You know, eventually, of course, me being an idiot, I go on there. I order some cocaine. I get it in the mail. I didn't know it at the time. But this was literally like cocaine around here on the East Coast. is, it's what's called stepped on, meaning people have added adulterance to it and they dilute it in order to make more money. The cocaine that I ordered was basically pure in an American context. It was only stepped on one time and that was from whatever Mexican person I purchased it

from. Right. So he takes this to his dad, who is a large cocaine dealer and he's working for a biker gang locally um and i knew of the dad he was actually one of my neighbors when i was growing up i i i i was in high school literally with his kid right the kid that i'm talking about the kid that i'm selling weed with right so we take the cocaine to his dad and he looked at the cocaine he's like how much can you get and i'm like well really how much do you want and he's like you can get consistent drugs off the internet and I'm like yeah he literally looked me in the eyes and he's like

if you do that I can make you rich and I'm like really that sounds great I would like to be rich I would love to be rich and of course me being a stupid 19 year old I keep indulgent and I keep going down I keep accelerating if you will because before it was just a little bit of weed or some magic mushrooms or something that's harmless but now it's cocaine can it get any worse well so you know remember how i said that this this this gentleman was a was a was a pretty decently sized local cocaine dealer right and he was working with bikers well it turned out the leader of that biker gang was um insane and he one day was driving around was insane because he was on a bunch of drugs and there was an elderly couple that, you know, was driving poorly around him.

So instead of just honking his horn like a normal person, he proceeds to point a Mack 10 at them and started saying he's going to kill them. So he gets busted and the cops know he's a leader of a gang. They open his trunk and what do you know? There's tons of Xanax. There's tons of cocaine and he had an illegal firearm on him. So automatically the feds are coming in because of the amount of drugs he had. And it turns out the DEA was already investigating this biker gang and they started indicting tons of people, right? So my friend's dad, he did not have any charges. They weren't able to get him, right? So we still keep doing our thing for about a year and a half, right? We're just, you know, I'm just living my normal life. I have a normal job, but I'm still ordering

shit off the internet and be selling it. That's my real job, right? Right. Are you still living at home? Huh? Are you still living at home? Yes, this entire time I was living at my house. Your poor mother. I never ordered drugs to my house. Okay. One day he's sitting with me and he's like, listen, we're getting all these drugs off the internet. What's like, who are we getting it from? And I'm like, Well, I don't exactly know literally who it is, but they're like, it's like a, it's like a seller profile like that you would see on Amazon, how you see like a screen name and you don't get to know the details of the person sending you whatever you're purchasing. You just see an online handle. And he's like, so they're like online accounts. I'm like, yeah.

He's like, wait a second. Is there like an open registration for that? And I'm like, well, yeah, anybody could go on there and try to sell something. He's like, really? Really? I'm like, yeah. So he's like, open it up and show me. He's like, I have an idea. He's like, when I was living out in Colorado, I knew a group of people that came up from Mexico, and they got a pill press, and they made a bunch of fake oxies. They're not what were percocets, percocet 30s. And then they would resell them. So they would take active ingredients. They would manufacture counterfeit percocets for like, 50 cents and then they could turn around and sell them for like 10, 15, 20, $25 even depending on what level of the dealing you're at. Right. So I'm like, really?

And he's like, the only problem is we don't have the capabilities to manufacture that. And I'm like, okay, I think I could work on that. So at the time, I was studying computer science at University of Connecticut. so i have some knowledge about about computers right so i'm on these websites and i'm trying to attain a pharmaceutical grade pill press and uh no one wants to even talk to me because they can see that my ip is like a normal residential ip the ip address for my computer for my router at the the home i was at so i looked up a little bit list of a registered pharmaceutical vendors.

And then I spoofed their IP, meaning I basically made it look like my IP was their IP. I ordered a pill press, rerouted it to a different destination. And then I ordered the most basic components. So, you know, if something happened, it wouldn't raise too many alarm bells. And then I ordered the rest of the more advanced components from China so we could assemble everything ourselves. Instead of buying a $5,000 machine that's just ready to be plugged in and ready to go. I just bought the thing that like presses the pills like effectively and then everything else I purchased from China and had it sent in piece by piece. Because if you buy a

whole pill press from China, the DEA will come ask you questions. Man in suits will show up to your house. So you got to be, you got to be smart with that. And also, I learned that there's a place where I could attain a pharmaceutical compression binder, meaning when you have a pill, right, a pill that you take, let's say blood pressure medication, there's a matrix that the medicine goes into. Usually it's like a calcium-based matrix that you press the pill. And that gives the pill its shape and it makes it hard enough so that it won't dissolve immediately in your stomach. and kill you.

Okay. Because I wanted an actual pharmaceutical grade, time-released compression binder because I don't want people dying from the product we're making, right? Yeah, that tends to bring scrutiny. Yes. Yes, that does. So, believe it or not, there are entire websites dedicated to people that... make counterfeit pills and what do you know the pharmaceutical grade compression binder is right there

and i could pay in cryptocurrency so it's anonymous right there's the service called bit pay that you could use because i don't want to put any billing information on something like that that would be absurd you'd be on a government watch list so i attained a couple kilograms of this pharmaceutical compression binder so over this took about six months to actually pull off and then once everything was made we made a batch of pills and then we sold them locally and people loved them we were one of the only people around here that had the capabilities to make them and sell them for that cheap so then eventually we got our stock up enough to be able to then like okay let's let's try our hand on the dark web right what is your what is your buddies

This is still your buddy's dad. Yes. Is he still, like, I mean, what's happening since it's taking so long? I mean, you guys are still, I'm assuming you're still bringing in the Coke and selling Coke. So you're still doing that operation. This is just, you're working on this simultaneously. Yeah, so he was still, he was still selling cocaine and marijuana, you know, on a local level. You know, we were just living our lives essentially while we were prepping for our business.

Right. Okay. Right. So then I would say, late January, right around my birthday of 2020, we finally turn on a vendor account on a website called Empire Market. This was the premier dark net market in the world. It had about 2 million people that would use it. the two million active users okay okay the the name of my um darknet market was mad hatter pharma right that was the the screen handle we used so naturally if you're just a new player on the scene you you have to that you have to be a businessman if you want to make money on the dark web it's not like traditional drug dealing in traditional drug dealing if you

just have the best stuff drugs sell themselves right but if you're on a website where you could see 50 different people that sell the same exact thing then the appeal of drugs selling themselves doesn't work for you you have to actually use business skills in order to do that so I looked at our yeah well I was just say and periodically these guys are are ripping each other off too right because yes oh yeah oh yeah they try to sabotage each other yeah your credibility is a big deal. Everything. Your credibility is literally the determining factor in your success on the dark web.

You don't have credibility. You will not make money. All right. So I go, excuse me. So how did you get credibility? So the ecosystem that exists on the dark web, there are forums that are separate from the markets. And then there are the markets where people go and transact. But there's an independent forum.

At the time, it was called dread. that was the name of the forum and there's very it's like uh it's like reddit except it's an exact copy of redd it's just called dread so it's a separate service that a person who's called hug bunter has control over right and he's like the main man on the web like if you want to advertise something you go to this website and you go to the to the to the sub forum in my case it was the opioid forum And I had to talk to the admin and I'm like, listen, I'm a brand new opioid dealer and I would like to give away some products in exchange for reviews. And then eventually I could get what's called a vendor flare. Think of that like a blue checkmark on Twitter. Like people get to know,

like this is a real certified person. Right. So he's like, listen, get your first 10 legitimate sales after your free giveaway. So when people review the free stuff you give away, I'm not going to count that as a sale. But after your 10 organic sales, I'll give you a vendor flare. And that will lend you a lot more credibility. So I'm like, okay, this is going to be a process. So we give away about a thousand pills over a month period, right? There was hundreds of people that left reviews. right so i have a name buzzing around me obviously that's gonna that's gonna drum up some organic traffic and what i mean organic is you're just listed on there and people search you up people actively look for you right so at that time we're only making like three four five hundred dollars a day

with the organic traffic right but is that profit or just sales just sales period i mean it only cost us about 50 cents to make each pill but still like $500 is still $500 no matter the profit margin right so then eventually we get the 10 organic sales right when the people clear the escrow right so dark net markets you don't get paid right away the the dark net market holds the money for the buyer right I have to send the buyer the drugs they open it up they're like like this is good. And then they go onto their account and release my money for me, right? Right. It sounds like a sketchy system, but it works. Like 90% of the taxis sounds better for,

you know, it sounds better for the, for the customer for, you know, you know what I'm saying? It builds credibility. Like if this guy has got the check, he says it's going to ship, it's going to ship. You don't, nobody's getting screwed over. You have to trust the administrator, of course. And we'll get to that later. Believe me, there's a lot. of trust in the administrator. Okay, so I get the vendor flare on the forum, right? So now people know I'm a real certified vendor, like when I talk on the forum, on Dred. They see MadHatter pharma, and I have the little checkmark that's in my name. So I do an advertisement campaign on every single darknet forum. Dread is just the biggest one, but there's two or three other ones, right? Honestly,

I can't remember the name of the two smaller ones. I only went on them the one time. So I go on all the forums and I present my new product listing. Now I actually made it now on my vendor account, all I had was a free giveaway as my product listing. But now I made the actual legitimate product listing, right? So I revamped it. So now I have tears. Because before all you could do was buy like 10 pills at a clip. You know? So I was, was still making money off of my samples after i gave away the pills so i had to i had a i had to try to entice people with that model and then i could go to a full scale open model you order as many as you want right there is um remember how i said that this was all organic traffic right you're also able to

create i guess you could call it synthetic traffic there's um there's this thing called a sticky if you will for your listing. So I'm able to go on empire market. I could pay empire market money in order to take my listing and put it at the tippity top of the opioid ratings. Right. So when people search perk, percocet, oxycodone, you know, it goes off the keywords and I get to choose the keywords myself. So I put like a thousand different keywords, anything relating to pressed pills. anytime people would search up press pills in the opioid section my store would pop up so we do the sticky right i wake up the next day after i did the sticky i did the sticky at like one in the morning i wake up at like 1230 the next day i hop on we have like 21,000 dollars in sales so we went from

like 500 to then 21,000 just like that. I mean, can you make that many pills that quickly? Like don't you have to have them shipped out in a certain period of time? We already had the stocks already in reserve because what we did is we would have people. We would sell them in person as well to just bolster our supply. Okay. I did that at first because we knew we needed to have the inventory in order for this to work. because I told him like the way that internet businesses work is it's going to be slow it's going to be slow it's going to be slow but when it picks up it picks up and it does not stop it just goes it's like a rocket ship and another reason I was able to get a lot of customers is I would I like to call it guerrilla advertisement you know how like the Viet Cong would do guerrilla warfare right I was actually a smaller like $20,000 sounds like a lot right but I was like

the sixth or seventh percocet vendor at the time, there were dudes making over $150,000 a day doing this. They were much, much, much larger than me. But if there's a large business, the emphasis on your customer relations diminishes because at that point, you're just focusing on getting the products out. So the larger vendors would mess up, you know, they would have bad batches or they would have exorbitantly long shipping times. And I would be sitting on the forum. I would be seeing like a text thread of like 45 people complaining. And I would just go message all of them. I'm like, hey, I'll send you a free pill if you just want to check me out. And I would do that. I did that to hundreds of people. And then eventually,

you know, my turnover rate was about 70% because they're already pissed at their vendor. So 70% of the time, the people are going to come to me. And then on top of that, when they actually search me up, they see like a legitimately established vendor. Like I don't look sketched. I don't look like a scammer. All my reviews at that point are good, right? Right. So. Yeah, you're getting your stuff out right away. You've got your checkmark.

You've got your blue checkmark. Yeah, the whole thing. Yes. So that creates a positive feedback loop, right? So when a random person goes on Empire Market and they just type in Percocet, they're not necessarily going on the forum to vet, you know, like, oh, who's the good vendor? A lot of people don't do that. They just hop on the market.

it and they just want to buy drugs. They don't want to do all that extra work. So now they're going to see me as a credible established fender. And also being the new kid on the block that's proven himself is advantageous in that industry. Because again, you know, the guys that get really big, they're not going to give you the status, the customer satisfaction that I was able to afford you at first. Because eventually I was getting so many orders, I couldn't have. have that mom and pop, you know, air to my business. I couldn't do that. It was just too much. I would wake up and there would be almost a thousand messages to my account daily, if you will. So I just couldn't answer all of them. They would take hours and hours and hours.

And I'm already working 12, 13 hours a day because on the Internet side of things. I was doing everything, advertising, customer relations, you know, e-commerce. I'm sorry. scoping out my competitors, everything. You couldn't get an assistant? No. We're running in an illegal. An ad in Craigslist? Maybe I should have done that.

This is going to sound sketchy, but I need an assistant to help run my illegal counterfeit pill business. Have to pay in Bitcoin, by the way. He's been known to cure insecurity. with his laugh. His organ donation card lists his charisma. His smile is so contagious. Vaccines have been created for it. 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, my friends. Support the channel. Join Matthew Cox's Patreon. We're starting to blow up a little bit. I wake up to like $20,000 in sales, right? Right, right. Well, here's the issue with any online business, any escrow-based business, right? Any online dark web business, that is. You don't get the money right away. And again, every individual package, this is going all across the country. So the time of delivery, it's called toward a door in the industry, how long it takes from the person placing the order to how long they're opening the package. That's called toward a door, right? That's going to vary.

for literally every single person based on their region, based on like, you know, what time a year it is. So I see 20,000 plus dollars in sales. That doesn't mean I have access to $20,000 in capital. So it's, it's segmented. It's segmented. So I would wake up and there would be four or five, you know, sometimes $10,000 available to me in cryptocurrency. And that's another issue. I have to take the cryptocurrency and I need to figure out a way to convert that to actual cash. Right. So you can then turn around and go buy the chemicals to start the whole process over again. Exactly. We didn't have to do that at first because again, we had our in-person businesses going. But over time, as any businessman knows, you're going to get strapped for cash.

you know you're doing so much business you don't have working capital to do anything right right so did you consider going to the bank and explaining this to them and trying to get like a credit line to kind of maybe with a fake idea I would but I mean say listen I'm bringing in a lot of money I'm having a cash flow problem but I promise it's coming in maybe Wells Fargo would do it you know yeah at the news with all the criminals they would so what happened Would you tour it or? We would, I mean, we would, we would get bottlenecked and I would have to go on what's called vacation mode at times, right? Because I would, I would, I would, you know, I pause, I would pause all incoming orders, all people that I couldn't fulfill.

I would just refund them their money. I'm not trying to do anything shady, right? Right. So capital would get freed up. I would go on vacation mode for a week or two at a time and have all the money because I'm, you know, I'm, 20,000, you know, 10, 15, 20, 25, maybe even 30,000 some days would come in, right? So on a weekly period, it could be anywhere from like 60 to 110,000. So I would just, I would vacation mode.

I would let the money come in, you know, or as much as that would in a weekly period. It would be about 40, 50, 60,000 dollars. And then we could just resume, right? Why aren't your buddy's helping you out? Why don't what happened to the biker guy in? and you're his son and I mean they aren't they in on this no his son isn't in on this the viker guy is my business partner I am not touching any drugs at all everybody is shipping everything out for me I'm not even living near the actual like the the manufacturing of the

drugs I only exclusively deal with the internet aspect of things I don't actually not even involved the the federal government would disagree you're like you're like the guy driving like listen i i i wasn't robbing the bank i was just driving the getaway car oh you're not even involved exactly i'm just on the the computer like that's that's that's all i do no they actually gave me a modifier to my charges just because it's it's a it's a two level increase for distributing narcotics on the computer oh okay i was going to say uh access no what were they access yeah yeah that's access no i got a um i got one of my enhancements was a specialty device, which was a computer. Specialty device. I used the computer.

They're like, it's a specialty device. What does that mean? Everybody uses the computer. It's a specialty device. I mean, the federal government can just make this stuff up and what are you going to do? They have the guns. I have the prisons and the judges. I think you've heard me say, you must have heard me say that. I said exactly that. Every time I talk to one of these sovereign citizen guys that say, you know, you don't have to pay your taxes. If you look at The Congress never ratified the 13th, 14th, 17. Stop, stop, stop, bro. They got the guns.

They got the prisons. They got the law enforcement. Like, you're going to jail. You can complain the whole time you're doing your sentence that you shouldn't be there. You're going to do the sentence. Yep. So it's a bad argument. Yeah.

Yeah. So, so, so, so bottleneck, you're on vacation. mode so eventually i realized something and my business partner realizes something in order to meet all of the incoming orders we either need to have more product or we need to drive down our current costs of you know of the product right in order to do that we need to meet new suppliers because we're getting it from local people i mean we were getting our active ingredient from a gang at the time but their prices are that are still terrible And, you know, relatively speaking.

Gang. They don't know how to do business. No, they don't. They don't have to do business. That's so hard-edded. So eventually, my business partner is telling me, he's like, I used to live out in Colorado. I have some friends who are from the south of the border, let's say. And they could really help us with this situation.

They could get us what we need. I'm like, really, are you, I'm like, are you crazy? He's like, listen, listen, these people, they're business people. It's not like, it's not like how it is in the movies. They don't want to come harm Americans. Right. They don't want to do that. They're actually incredibly professional.

I would rather deal with those types of criminal organizations over any American organization, to be honest. Because Americans kill other Americans. They will not. Right. you know it has to be an extreme situation yeah i hear you yeah yeah they're very much about like you can even i mean i've you can i've known guys that there have been major problems like millions of dollars missing and they've gone and gone to them and said okay what's your payment plan like how are you going to get us this money back where you would think no you're going he's going to end up

in a bucket somewhere no you know no no if it happens again you got a problem but as long as you start paying and doing what you're saying you know so yeah it it's it's it's a you know it's forgiving once no it's the forgiving forgiving is an interesting word so what what uh what uh what what happened so you've got you got suppliers so at this whole time we were on empire market you know we were we were we were being bottlenecked we were um going into vacation mode all the time but we were still making tons of money, right? So eventually, my friend, like, he brought this up to me, and then it was like another, you know, month or two later.

And then he sat me down and he was like, okay, listen, we're going to go take a road trip, you and me, we're going to go take a road trip. And I'm like, okay, he's like, put the store on vacation mode, but bring your computer with you or bring your flash drive with you, right? Because there's the normal computer that, like, we're on, right? But the actual store, if you will, was on an encrypted flash drive that I had, right? And I could plug it into any computer.

And it used a special software called Tails Operating System. It's known as an amnesiac operating system, meaning every time I rip it out, it forgets everything, right? it deletes all information i had to memorize all the passwords up here right to get back on to everything because if the federal government blows in my door all i have to do is rip that flash drive out of the computer everything on the local drive of the computer gets white and everything is is encrypted in a flash drive and they would not it would take a thousand years to get access to that mathematically speaking right so all i had to do i had literally i would wear it on a necklace right I would keep it right here.

I would always know where it is. I would literally would sleep with it on my neck. Like you never ever go to sleep or go away from your computer ever. So many people have been caught because of that silly little mistake. So many people. Right. So I was bringing the flash drive with me. And he's like, we'll just, you know, we'll just get a computer out there.

And we're going to go show my friend. So we're going, we're going on a long 13, 14 hour drive. And we go to a place. It's very rural, very, very rural. It's still in the United States, but it's incredibly rural, right? We get to, like, it's out in, like, the desert. So we get to, like, a mountain compound, if you will. We drive up, like, for, like, 25 minutes. And then we get to a gate with, like, Brahmin skulls on it, right? And you have to, like, press a button to just have the guy come. And I hear a, I hear a guy someone's like, Hey, what's like, hey, what's going?

These guys are old friends. So he's like, I'm going to send my, I'm going to send my people to come open the gate. There's like three dudes with guns that come open the gate to come introduce us and bring us over. There is pot growing everywhere. There's probably like, I saw probably like 900 pot plants just on this mountain just growing. I saw a greenhouse with an indoor pot girl right there, too, and I'm like, okay, where am I? Right. So we go inside the house, and I got introduced to a serious, serious dude.

He's very friendly, but I could tell just by looking at him, I'm like, this dude is, he's very serious. He's a serious guy. So we get to talking, you know, we do a little cocaine, we're having a good time, we're drinking. Him and I did cocaine and drink tequila all night long. And then after, you know, after our pleasantries were exchanged, we woke up the next day, right? I'm sitting in the living room and my business partner and this friend is talking about business. So naturally, I just walk away because I don't want to be disrespectful. This dude looks over at me. He's like, come over here. You're a boss too. I'm like, excuse me. He's like, you're a boss too. I know about you. Don't think you'd be at my house if I didn't know about you. Come over here. Let's have a conversation. Right. Remember how you explained earlier that the website has to be a trusted administrator of the funds and the monies. Right. Right. So again, would you like me to reiterate how the system works just to break it down to the audience?

Yeah. Just, yeah, they, yes. Okay, so let's say Matt Cox wants to buy an ounce of marijuana for me, all right? I send you the marijuana, no, you place the order on Empire Market. You get $200 worth of Bitcoin. Empire Market holds that in an escrow account and facilitates all the, the aspects of the transaction. So I see it in a little vendor panel. I see, you know, your name, your details. and, you know, I get your package ready. I pack it up and I send it to you. Eventually, when you see it, you're like, wow, this is cool. So I'm going to open it up. I'm going to, I like it, I smoked it. It's good wheat. You go on to your buyer account and you release the $200 to me.

And immediately it gets released to me. Well, here's the issue with that model. There is absolutely nothing stopping the facility. of this transaction from just taking all the money and shutting down the website right i was going to say well first of all weren't you saying that they they hold it for a while right they hold it they don't release your money until the person releases the funds that's to because there's a lot of scammers on there yeah i didn't even understand that i thought maybe they held it past that date for a certain period of time no no no no one the customer releases it's it's in it's in your account okay and that that's why you were

explaining the um i thought it was in addition to the tour to door gap that period i thought there was an additional period after that no no okay cool got it got it um there's like special circumstances where really big vendors can apply to be like listen i want to give my money right up front but i've already made i've already i've already i've already sold like 10 15 million dollars worth of stuff on your platform like you know what you know you know i'm not going to just start scamming people all of a sudden. But that's, those, those guys are unicorns. They're not going to let just anybody do that.

Even me at the time, you know, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in transactions, I'm still a small fish in a very large pond, right? So as I'm trying to log on to the computer, we bought a computer before we went up to the guy's house and everybody's like, okay, open this up and show me. He's an old school type of guy. He thinks all this internet stuff is bullshit, you know? so i'm trying to i'm trying to get on empire market and it's not working and i'm like okay some a lot of the times there's these things called d-das attacks distributed denial of service attacks basically

somebody floods a website with a bunch of fake traffic to overload the website server in order to make people not want to go use it because it's it's a horrible experience to use it'll take that fucking two hours to just do one transaction whereas it would take 10 minutes normally right and usually this is hackers demanding ransom or like other markets trying to direct traffic to their market because this is the biggest market in the world at the time right so i'm thinking it's a normal d-dos attack right because this stuff would happen periodically you would no one would be able to get on for like two days at a clip well here's the thing right since i'm a mid-sized vendor i'm big enough to where the admins of the website would give me and other vendors like me special

links to get on the website, right? Because it can't facilitate the normal traffic of a couple hundred thousand people at a time, but it could facilitate, you know, like two or three thousand people, the vendors going in there to get their money out. Because again, anytime the website's not working, you're thinking immediately they're exit scamming and they're stealing our money. so they specifically give you those links if you're a vendor to you know to us to try to so you can go on there and get your money out right so they don't scare you well i use my i have 10 of those links i used all i tried to use all 10 of those links to get on the website and it did not work so now i'm legitimately i'm like oh my god we have like 150 000 in escrow and mind you just because we're making a hundred thousand so out a week remember how i said not all of of it comes out at once. And also, I have a whole operation we're dealing with. Like, I have people on payroll. There's other ancillary costs we have to deal with. So it does take a lot of money to run this at scale. It's not, you know, you don't just get to sit with all that 150,000. Oh, that's all profit.

About half of it would be profit, right? Right. Okay. So we're at his house and I'm like, oh, it won't work right now. You spend another day. We party. You know, I smoke a lot of his pot. He shows me. He's showing me like the cultivation process, giving me a little impromptu, you know, like growing tutorial. We're shooting guns.

We're going on hikes. We're going into the town, going to dispensaries and fun stuff like that. Right? I go on. Did you go on? What about the other websites that you had accounts on? You said,

we didn't do that yet. That's in the future. I was going to say you could have gone on one of those just to show them how it works. I did do that. that i did do that to show him but again he's like unless i see your thing with money coming in it's all bullshit in his mind he doesn't know right he didn't even know what bitcoin wants really at the time he's like i heard of it but he he called it he literally called it silly internet money so right

that's that's yeah he doesn't he thinks it's all bullshit he doesn't think it's real right okay so that whole second day goes by we're just it's like we're on a little vacation again more tequila and cocaine at night you know we're i like i'm trying to make make him laugh, you know, we're doing all the things. And he's like, my business partner went to sleep at this time. He was, he was spent, you know. He's 20 years older than me, so I don't blame him. So I'm sitting with the guy and he's like, listen, try to show me that again.

You know, like now it's you and me were alone. All the other people are asleep. His girlfriend was asleep. He's like, I want to sit with you. He's like, obviously you're, he's like, our friend isn't going to just bring you here for no reason. He's like, I think it's bullshit, but I also know better. Someone isn't going to be brought to me and, you know, for no reason. And I explained to him the DDoS and everything.

And I'm like, I understand how it looks. Please keep an open mind. I also showed you the other service too, right? And I offered, I'm like, do you want to order anything on there? And he said, no, I don't want to order any packages off there. I'm not doing anything until you show me your main stuff, you know? Because I was going to be like, well, if my stuff's not working, I could just just show him, let's say, a magic mushroom vendor and, like, go by an ounce of mushrooms just

to see how this stuff works. Right. He wasn't, he wasn't, you know, he wasn't, he's not going to do something like that. He doesn't care. It's all, in his mind, it's all bullshit still. And I don't blame him. That's how it looked, right? Yeah.

So after the third day, I go on dread, you know, the forum we mentioned. Right. You may not be able to leave. If you don't get this thing up and running, you may, I would be thinking, am I going to leave here at all? no it wasn't like that it wasn't like that not at all so i go on dread right and i go on the empire market threat and i see the admin for empire market on dread not the main admin the person controlling empire market the forum admin he said death death to empire market i have lost server access

I'm like, oh, fuck. That means he lost server access. He lost backend access. So, like, people that start darknet markets, they reach out to people to be their intermediaries and their voice, right? If you start a darknet market, you're insane if you're going on the forums yourself. Like, that will exponentially increase the chances of you getting caught, right? So you reach out to people that act as your intermediaries and pay them a salary, right?

so the person that was the main intermediary for the web the premier darknet site literally said the ship is sinking the ship is sinking we're screwed and i'm like oh my god we just lost all of the money we had i already knew i already knew it was gone people were all speculating i'm like no no no this is gone so immediately i still have my vendor flare and i'm a certified vendor on dread right empire market's gone but people are people still know who i am right you got to strike while the iron still hot so to speak right so i go and i i i go get a phone and i set up an encrypted chat service on that phone called wicker wicker at the time was used to facilitate a lot of off-site deals so you know a lot of vendors like me would get pissed off that these markets would play games with us

so we would try to route as much traffic to other intermediaries usually intermediaries that we would directly control ourselves and then we would just keep all of the money and not have to play any of their games and get screwed over right so i immediately set up a wicker i i go on to my dark net um my my dark net account on dread you know the certified this is the real mad hatter pharma account and i post my wicker so i'm like listen um the dark net dark net markets you know dark net markets are are not the place to be right now because when there's one big exit scam there's going to be a bunch of other websites that exit scam immediately after because they have massive influxes of traffic and they will see more money than they've ever

seen in their entire lives and a lot of the people just steal that money for a big payday instead of actually risking themselves to actually run the market over time to make the money, you know? Right. So I already know there's going to be tons and tons of exit scams. So I set up a wicker. I'm getting decent amounts of people. Like, you know, the first day I got like five, $6,000 in orders on the wicker, you know, just from people seeing. I'm not going to get as much exposure on a dark net market as I would on a dark net market because, you know, there's just much less eyeballs. Business needs to keep going.

I just lost, we just lost $150,000 plus. So, you know what I mean? So we're still at our friend's house for the period of about, I'd say, eight days.

Right? We're just chilling. We're relaxing and we're like this. I hate to say this. Where does your mom think you are? I wasn't living at my mom's house at the time. I've moved out since then. Okay.

Okay. Where does anybody think you are? They don't, no one, no one knew where I was at. Okay. You don't know where you're at. No, I don't, I didn't even know what I was at. So I'm perusing the forums and there's a market that, a new market that comes out called Icarus market. And I'm like, here we go.

Time to start up again, right? But I still have my business on the side with Wicker, the direct business. because now I understand you've got to become a big vendor. The way to really play this game is to be a big vendor, eventually figure out a way to develop your own, not necessarily your own market, but your own store that you control, right? Right.

And also list on the markets as well, because ultimately you're still going to make more money on a market that has hundreds of thousands of eyeballs versus your own smaller market. Right. But you can funnel your, funnel your, your more solid customers to your own. exactly and i would incentivize them like listen you're going to be paying me up front but i'm going to drop the cost by like 30 40 percent so it's a win win for both of us and you already have the trust with me i've never screwed you over so you know right so i set up an account on icarus market they literally just give me the account for free because once you're a large established vendor

the dark net markets will just give you an account for free on empire market we had to pay like i think was a thousand bucks to get started if you're just a joe schmo off the street you're like you you know if you're just an average dude and you think no i want to start uh being a dark web drug dealer take a thousand dollars and go start it you know you never know but you're you're bringing so much business exactly it makes economic sense for them that thousand dollars they're going to make back many many times over right because these accounts also like you remember how i said there was a sticky on empire market that would move up my listings right that would that would cost like a thousand dollars to do

that and it was for 24 hours but that thousand dollars would bring me in 20,000 dollars with the business so that's worth it every single time and like you could purchase like banners on the website and stuff they had they had insulary means to monetize their website and on top of that they're taking 1% of all transactions as well so yeah so eventually we're on Icarus we're transacting, business starts flowing in immediately. By this time when we already got home, you know. But before I left, our friend sat me down, and he's like, listen, he's like, he's like, the business you're in is a messy business.

But there's a different business that makes just as much money, but it's much cleaner. And that was the cocaine business. And he said that I could get the best cocaine at the best prices. Just let me know. Just let me know. Right. And also, we still had enough money to purchase a good amount of our active ingredient that we need to drop the costs. So we didn't have to deal with local gangs anymore. Right. We were able to just have a dude just ship it to us, you know, from Texas. So win win, you know. So we're on Icarus market. Now we're back home. We're on Icarus market. Things are going seemingly well. We're still making. it's not a hundred thousand dollars it's like you know 50 60 thousand dollars a week right well after about three weeks icarus market exit scans as well and you're saying that's because you think that's because all the traffic had moved over there and they they just got blew up and they said hey we can take off with a bunch of money exactly think about this you're you're a

programmer or a team of programmers and you're you make a secondary market to compete with the main market right it's a waiting game in that ecosystem right like dark net markets have short shelf lights you're you never are going to last more than like two or three years you just can't you just can't it's it's almost impossible is that i mean what's because you think they get shut down is that what they get shut down because of the you have every law enforcement agency in the world and you have the most advanced units in those agencies after you. You have every single hacker in the world trying to demand ransom from you, trying to hack you.

You have other markets competing with you that will also who are also very technically advanced people that will try to mess up your website just to drive traffic to their website. So it's you against the world, literally. Right. So it's only a matter of time until something goes wrong. Right. And also, too, if you see $20 million in front of you, which the empire market people did in escrow accounts, they're like, we're just going to take this and run. I think it took like

$30 or $40 million in total, actually, that they got that was in the hot wallet of their empire market account. I don't blame them. Be honest. I don't know you guys. Of course, that was my money. I have said. I feel bad about that. But I don't really know you. You seem like a nice guy. But there's like $150,000 here and along with $20,000 other million.

I, you know, and in order for me to make a clean getaway, it's basically I just have to like pull the plug out of my computer and walk away. Like for $20 million, I'm willing to walk away. And that's literally what they did. And to this day, they haven't been apprehended. They probably never will be. I mean, I got to, I got to tell you, I, I'm with them. I mean, I feel bad for you.

Do you? Do you really? I was like, with my wife, I'm like, I, I, I, I, I, I want to be on your side. But I'm just not. But you're, this is one of those times when you're just wrong. I mean, you're, I mean, I understand. And if I was sitting in their seat and I see like $20, 30 million, I'm taking it in a heartbeat. I mean, and who am I screwing over?

You're bad people. Randolph people. What are you guys doing? I just figured this out. You guys are selling drugs on my forum. I can't have anything to do with this. I'm sorry, fellas. And I don't feel right about giving you this money that's in my escrow account.

It's all wrong. It's dirty money. But I know what to do with it. So, yeah. So it's good times. Good time. Yeah. So Icarus market goes by-bye because they get the same idea. It's like, let's just steal, you know, like two, three million dollars real quick. So they did that, right? So again, I'm sitting in the same position. How long? And you said it's only like a few months later just no weeks oh three weeks had you gotten back on your feet pretty much yeah quickly yeah yeah because remember like we still had our profit you know we still had our money as

well and i'm like i'll invest everything if i have to because i see how viable this really is you know what i mean so at this time i'm perusing the forums again and the individual with the uh the handle Eric Callahan reaches out to me. And this is a person that Eric Callahan, right? And he offers, he's like, hey, I could start to help you build your own shop. And I'm like, let's do it. I'm game.

So I've sent him packages multiple time. And remember how you made the joke about posting an ad on Craigslist and you can get some helpers with you? Well, there's actually an ecosystem on the dark net where you could, You could get workers and you could pay them either in drugs or in cryptocurrency. Eric Callahan was an opioid addict, so I would ship him packages, the bills, as his payment, hundreds, thousands of not, right? And he would, he would, he, he helped me create my own means of transacting. That was 100% mine.

He set up server infrastructure and everything, right? This is, by the way, paying him in pills is along the same lines as when I used to interview homeless people for their interview. No, what you did was way worse. They were not willing. No. I mean, you're up there. Okay. That's not arguable.

I tricked them. They didn't even know what was happening. They thought I was doing them a favor. You're going to give you $20? Thank you. I'm like, I'm a good person. How much money would you put in their names for $20? I borrowed I borrowed $1.3 million in one this guy's name.

Listen, I feel terrible. You're terrible. I feel horrible about that. You live and you learn, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I have my own personal, let's call it a tertiary means of transacting. It's still, it's making five, six, seven, you know, sometimes $10,000 a day. And that's direct money.

So it's much better, right? But, you know, every day isn't that good. Honestly, on average, that store for me, style probably was making $3,000 a day. But that's still over a million dollars a year. You know, if you scale it and adjust it for like yearly, you know, business income, right? So that's not that's not that bad. But it's not, you know, $30,000 a day, which is what I want. you know so we do that for about two and a half months right because i i need i'm like i need

to wait for like the insanity to die down because there was there was other markets coming up and they were exit scamming people left and right a market got seized by the police tons of people got arrested it's it's insanity it's like a it's like a fire it's like a forest fire and I'm sitting in the middle of the forest in a pond, like, this is great. Everything around me is going to hell, and I have my little oasis, if you will, right? So after the dust of chaos settles, right, I'm on the Dread Forum, and I see there's a new market called White House Market, right? It's not really a new market.

It's been around for a while. It's been around the time of Empire Market, but it was. was really a secondary market, right? I'm saying a new market in the sense of they completely revamped it, you know, it's much more technically adept, right? It's much better to transact on. It's much more secure, right? It uses a different cryptocurrency called Monero as opposed to Bitcoin.

And Minero is what's known as a privacy coin. Basically, the basically, I'm just thinking these guys could be running scams on multiple levels. So they came out with their own crypto. No, no, no, no, this isn't their own crypto. This is, I know. I'm just saying that they could be running multiple different scams. You're all, why are you always thinking like a scammer? Come on. I mean, they're asking, they're telling you, look, you can buy on our stuff, which people want to do, but you have to buy this crypto. Yes. They can. I understand. Yeah. But anyway, they could easily lead you down a path that would make it easy for you to be scammed. Obviously, I was scammed myself multiple times. Right. So think of Bitcoin, right? Each Bitcoin, think of that as an individual ingot of gold. Okay. Right. You could, you could cut up that piece of gold and send it as fractions, right? But at the end of the day, there's always a serial number on it and it's traceable.

And ultimately, that led to my capture. But I can expound on that at the end of the story because it'll make a lot more sense, right? So basically, since Bitcoin is traceable, because every Bitcoin goes on this thing called the blockchain. Think of the blockchain as an immutable ledger in which every transaction is publicly broadcasted. And there are mathematical proofs that are done in order to literally prove that this is a real transaction in a mathematical cryptographic sense, right? Right. Basically, it's traceable. If someone really wants to find you, there is a giant company called Cypher Trace that's worth $10 billion that the government employs literally to trace cryptocurrency and link it to criminals, right?

Okay. So basically, the reason that White House market wants to use this new coin called Minero is because Minero uses a different protocol, meaning a different means of transacting and a different means of dispersing the monies, if you will, dispersing the cryptocurrency. So it is not traceable. To this day, the government is offering, I think, like a $750,000 bounty to the programmer that can figure out how to trace Manero transactions. But I don't really think they have a good grasp on it at all.

all they don't know okay so obviously remember i'm still a certified vendor right so white house market gives me a free account right i go on there for a little bit remember how i said i have my ancillary um service right at this point i am completely fed up with dark debt markets right i think they're out there just to screw me over because ultimately they're criminals as just as much as i am they just are out there to make money they're just doing it in a far more sophisticated way, right? So I start siphoning as many customers as possible into my own ancillary service. Now, the admin team on White House market was much more with it than on Empire market. So they found out I was doing this and they banned my account on their service, right?

okay so I'm sitting here that's a terrible look to be banned people automatically assume they're a scammer but then I went to the forum and I explained I'm sick and tired of dark net markets screwing me over I was just siphoning customers to my own service I wasn't misleading any of my customers I was still giving everybody the product they purchased if anything I was scamming the dark debt market that's why they got pissed and they banned me right right let this around this time there was another dark net market that was a competitor. So sometimes in the dark net market ecosystem, usually there's just one big market.

But other times there's like two, maybe even three big, viable markets that you can transact on, right? At the time, there was three. White House market, dark market, and deep sea market. Deep sea market, it smelled fishy. It was a scam right away. I could just tell the way it was set up, it was a scam.

And guess what? Eventually, it exit scammed. So I didn't even bother going on there, right? Okay. I immediately set up an account on dark market. They gave me, you know, a free account. I'm able to go on there. I have my own inciliary service.

Eric Callahan at this time goes dark. Keith, the server shuts down on my inciliatory service, right? I don't know what happened to him. So now he just, we'll get to that later. I'll tell you what happened to him, right? So I'm on dark market, right? We're doing our thing. We're transacting.

You know, we're not making nearly as much money as before because remember I got banned. That's a bad look. And I was focusing on trying to develop my own service, right? My own market, my own special vendor. account my own my own vendor account and again ultimately remember how i said you have to strike while the iron is hot while there's a buzz around your name it just wasn't the same around around me you know looking back at it if i could if i could have done it again i would have just started i would have replicated the process under a new handle i would have given stuff away again for free you

know but it you know hindsight is always 20 20 with crime always my thinking at the time was I have an established brand with a history of actually being, you know, good. And I don't want to, you know, have to build everything all over again. Right. Right. But what does it matter? Yeah. I mean, you're, like you said, you've been better off.

You just didn't want to have to do that all over again. And your guy took off. So what do you, you basically, both your streams of revenue just stopped. Yes, but that's why I had some. Remember how I said that my inciliary service was directly. paying me so i was able to have enough working capital to start up on dark market and be relatively competitive you know i was never the number one dude in any category ever i don't want to be i was always number i think at my height i was like number four on empire market when i was

crushing right right but number four is still a great place right millions and millions of dollars being number four number one makes like like 30 40 million dollars as number one in any given market right so let's say like a cocaine vendor there is this dude named xx snow white express xx right he in two weeks made like four million dollars so yeah that just to show you how much money like the really big serious vendors can make i was big but i wasn't like that that that's absurd they there's some type of hyper organized like you know they've been doing this a while they're obviously that's like super organized crime right he built some of the nation's largest banks out of an estimated 55 million dollars because 50 million wasn't enough and 60 million

seemed excessive he is the most interesting man in the world i don't typically commit crimes But when I do, it's bank fraud. Stay greedy, my friends. Support the channel. Join Matthew Cox's Patreon. So we went on dark market and we're transacting. It's not nearly at the level as it was before. You know, I spent far too much time off of the markets.

You know, White House Market was the premier, the number one. And they banned me. So they had a million, one and a half million. people that used their service. Dark market had like 650,000. And that's all throughout the world. So in America, there was probably only 300,000 potential customers. Probably only like 60, 70,000 of those would be willing to buy opiates. So my market share has severely diminished. And at this time, there's a lot more competitors that have cropped up. And they are. Hey, we know you probably hit play to escape your business banking, not think about it. But what if we told you there was a way to skip

over the pressures of banking? By matching with a TD small business account manager, you can get the proactive business banking advice and support your business needs. Ready to press play? Get up to $2,700 when you open select small business banking products. Yep, that's $2,700 to turn up your business. Visit TD.com slash small business match to learn more. Conditions apply. Google. So remember how you said earlier about how like vendors would try to screw each other and play games and whatnot? Like I would have vendors like this was on every single market I was on. They would order like I had a dude order like 10,000 pills one time. It was like a like a $40,000 order and he just kept delaying paying me.

He kept delaying. and then he disputed the transaction, right? You're able to dispute the transactions on these websites. So he was trying to screw me over by holding up my money as long as possible. Well, you, there's a, so there's a dispute process and the intermediary, the market, is the ultimate arbiter on who wins that dispute process. Overwhelmingly, they always side with the vendor because ultimately, like the customers come and bring the money, but the vendors have the,

to have the stuff that gets them the money. You know? Right. If you, if you, if you, if you, if you piss off your good vendors eventually, like, they're already, vendors already hate going on the markets as it is. If you, if you screw me out of $40,000, I'm definitely leaving your site, right? This was on empire market, by the way. The, the dude lost the dispute because I'm like, I shipped, here's the tracking number

for the package. So he literally got the order. I don't know why he's complaining. And also, too, like, I have, I have, I had other. bulk people who gave me. Right. It wasn't like this was a one-time thing. You have a track record of sitting this stuff.

Yes, of course. Thousands of people at this time have bought for me. A couple hundred of them are like buying lots, like thousands of pills, hundreds of pills at a time. So I already like, obviously I could handle transactions as large as that. So why do you have an issue, whereas all these other people don't have issues? It's not, no, the marketplace knew that this person was scamming me. And I suspect, I can't prove it, obviously. Anyone can just go on there and make a seller account.

But I suspect that it was another vendor trying to screw me, right? Because what's 40 grand to them? Because if they're thinking, they're thinking is if they, if we jam them up for a few days, that's potentially like $100,000 of traffic that we could direct to ourselves. Right. and it may end up we're actually working and they may side with them yeah so now they're gonna have thousands of free pills that they can just turn around just sell themselves so yeah so we're on dark net market we're on we're transacting it's going reasonably well we're making about

$10,000 a day again remember that doesn't always clear at once so the actual monetary value that clears every day is probably about $2,000 well one day dark net market gets seized by the german authorities so they actually apprehended the individual that's that's not good that is very not good luckily i didn't purchase an account they just gave me an account but here's the thing the fbi now has access to all the back end data and they're just sitting there like okay time to just capture a bunch of people so they launched they launched Operation Hunter. Ha ha, ha, get it, Hunt, Tor.

Yeah. They're very clever with their name. Guess who is part of, guess who was one of the people of interest with Operation Hunter? Well, was it you? Maybe. Possibly. Who knows? So I go about my day, you know, I go about my normal business.

I'm like, you know what? I'm fed up with this stuff. I have a little, you know, I had a small chunk of change. and I just, you know, went away and did my thing. You know, my business partner and I, we, you know, he's like, I'm going to go, I'm going to go move and start a construction company, and I'm like, that's good. You know, I'm going to go live my normal life. I went, eventually I moved back home.

I was estranged from my family throughout this entire process. I made up, moved back home. I was living my normal life until one day, there's a strange piece of mail that comes from FedEx. and I have to sign for it. So I rejected it like six times until, you know, and the FedEx truck kept coming, kept coming. And it was a packet, like a Manila packet, right? So I'm like, what the hell is this, right?

Remember how I said that my mother divorced my stepfather? I was thinking it was some like, you know, like, you know, like something I had to sign for for like some like small court perceiving here for child support or something but then again i'm like why would i have to sign for that i'm involved in that so i i open it up and you did sign for it yeah oh yeah but when i open it up it's a letter from an fbi agent saying i was tapping target target letter yes a target letter from one of the phones i had like seven phones at the time but you know they were tapping one of them at the time right and they and the dude put in his card and said call me if you want and i was like yeah i went and

burned it i burned everything i'm like i am not calling you i'm just going to pretend this never happened right what did the letter say just that you're letting you know you're a target of the investigation as a result of this a target letter and it said that like it presented the warrant for like the phone number at the time and it was like this t-mobile device like we were we were like pursuant to this law this law and this law we were looking at this phone number you know so at the time previously up until that letter i thought i got away scot-free you know right every criminal thinks they're getting away scot-free when you're in the act of doing crime no one really ever considers oh i'm i could get caught you think that's always other people

other people get caught i don't get caught every criminal really thinks that way yeah yeah yeah yeah So I literally, I'm like, I'm about to shit my pants. Like these are the feds. I'm like, do I call the number? Do I not? I decided against it because I'm like, this dude is literally trained to get me to say things in which he can arrest me. If he's sending me a letter right now, clearly he doesn't have enough to just come blowing my door and get me. And also, why would he send me a letter after I'm done with everything?

Why wouldn't he come get me while I'm in the middle of doing everything? because they're still i mean i understand you don't know why but at the time you didn't know why but yeah like they don't have enough to arrest you they're exactly and they're hoping you'll come forward and provide them and for like had you gone there and provided them for information up front you could have entered into a pretrial or a um shoot i forget what they call it um pre trial intervention pre trial intervention yeah um and you could have made maybe avoided being indicted at all. Well, it turns out 10 other people did that to me.

Well, then you couldn't do that now. Exactly. I couldn't. You should have signed for that first letter. By the time you signed, it's too late. Exactly. Exactly. But I didn't, again, up to this point, I was ignorant of how all of this worked. Now I've had a crash course in that. When those people, they signed this, so they got their letter, they called, they went in, they

cooperated. again i don't but what about the street code that doesn't really exist no what is it like 98% of people in federal cases like cooperating no listen i saw law and order one time i saw a law and i watched the first three godfathers and they were very adamant okay well i mean if you're caught with like three ounces of weed and you're facing a ticket yeah you're not going to But if you're looking at like 15 or 20 years, then I'm going to be curious if you're going to, you know, be reciting the same mantra of I'm tough and I'm not going to snitch. 99, literally 98% of people cooperate in the federal system. Yeah.

Literally. So. And you know, it's funny is that people say a lot of people, because the number of people that get a benefit from the cooperation is lower. It's like 85. That doesn't mean that 99% didn't try. Of course. But not everybody gets something. Sometimes you go and you tell them everything and they go, we know that.

Like your co-defendant Jimmy and Todd and Bill already told us that. So what do you have this extra? And you're like, well, I don't have anything extra. And they're like, yeah. You don't get anything then. And you're like, well, I cooperated. They're like, yeah, did you? You're going to go to.

Now you better just plead guilty. You go to prison. You're not going to get anything. You should have come in sooner. So yeah, it's a, you know. know being first is being for first second or third really is the best because after that it's like yeah we don't really need you so yeah so there's 12 people lined up ready to talk telling on you yeah there was like like when i was going through my affidavit and like the paperwork with my

lawyer he was like there are the there's like nine people listed as unindicted co-conspirators and i'm like what is that he's like well picture this scenario you're a low level like you know like drug you know, going about your daily business and all of a sudden five agents and suits show up to your house. And it's like, hey, you're going to talk with us and sign every paper we have and we're not going to charge you and arrest you. Or you could be tough and then we're going to drag you away and, you know, add you as an element to a conspiracy. What do you want to do? Right. So obviously, you know, you already know how that goes. Yeah. But by the time you figure this out, it's too late. Oh, yeah. And also, too, you know, you read my PSR, you probably saw. I also

have a four-level modifier for being the organizer leader. You were barely involved. You were just, I didn't even see the drugs. I was way over there. You could tell to judge that when you get in there. Your Honor, there's been a huge miscarriage. of justice here. Yeah. I was just the computer guy. Yes. That's not going to go over well, by the way.

So this was about January, no, this was early February of 2021 when I got the letter, right? Okay. So I went, I'm back home. I went and I got a normal job. I worked at a factory for about a year, right? But then, you know, after a while,

I'm like, I don't, I'm like, I should just move states. So I saved up money from that job. And then I moved. to another state right yeah you did i don't know i mean i don't know how much you know about law enforcement but the the the fbi is it's it's national i yeah i understand that but i'm thinking if i remove myself from the locality it's still going to be harder for them this is this is an idiot thinking like you the f i can go anywhere and get and i hear i hear you but it's still national

i understand that they'll make the drive they'll make the drive they have vehicles they they they have their own vehicles nice i know that but if you're the person that actually gets the letter you're going to be thinking of crazy things like that like oh if i go move halfway across the country maybe this will just go away magically turns out no it doesn't how many states over huh how many states away did you move i live on the east coast i was living on the west coast oh you could have gone any farther no no you'd have been in the water You could have gone to, well, Hawaii. Yeah.

Pretty sure they have a field office there, though. They have field offices everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. So after a couple months of me living out, you know, in this place, February 11th, 2020, that's when my arrest warrant was issued. I didn't know that. I was literally in a whole other state.

Now, remember how you just, you know, you made the joke about how they could drive and everything? They went to my old address, not my mom's house, but the old address I was living at, at Connecticut, the place I was at on the computer, right? Okay. They went to that old address. So I was somewhat right. So I was literally sitting on the West Coast. I had no idea for months because, again, I went off the grid completely.

I wasn't talking to anybody for a couple months of time. I roughly explained my situation to all the loved ones in my life, and I'm like, I need to go spend like a year or two or somewhere else and just, you know, I'd still talk on the phone and stuff like that, but very minimal, like, minimal footprint, just be a normal dude living a normal life. You need to reset. You need to reset. Exactly. Exactly. After a while, though, it's brought to my attention that, hey, my mom was like, hey, the FBI just. showed up to our house and there was like 30 dudes with machine guns and then other like 10 other dudes in suits and they were asking for you and I'm like did you tell mom what did you do well unfortunately they asked for me by name so I couldn't you know make that joke so I love the one guy I interviewed like like the fed showed up at his house and they were like do you know why we're here yeah I do my

girlfriend's running an illegal operation no I'm just joking but my girlfriend's selling drugs. Thank God you're here. You could have done the whole, I know exactly why you're here. My mother is selling counterfeit pills on the internet. It's crazy. Crazy. Thank God you're here. I had to move across the country to get away from her. You make me, I feel so terrible, too, just explaining this. I feel I'm a terrible son. My God. So eventually it's brought to my attention and I retain a lawyer for $50,000. So I'm like, okay. I'm on the phone with him. And like, he's like, yeah. He's like, let me contact the district attorney in your case. You know, my case is out of Washington, D.C. So I'm like, are you serious? It's out of the capital.

And they're like, yeah. Yeah. Washington State? No. No, no, no. So my lawyer is like, you're going to need to he's like listen he's like you could turn yourself in in a field office but you're going to be introduced to a phenomenon called diesel therapy and i'm like what what what is that he's like oh where it would take you you know six days on a bus to get here from where you're at but if you turn yourself in and your locality it'll take like six months to get here because you're going to hit each prison each county jail you know you're going to sit there they're going to book you and then right after they book you, they're going to throw you on a bus or a plane and they're going to bring you to the next place. And it's going to be a long, inefficient

process. And book you again. Yes. And yeah, every place you go, you get booked. And it's miserable, miserable. So that's why he's like, don't drive your car. Take the bus. Take the Greyhound bus. Get over here, you know. And then I will pick you up in my car and we will go directly to the court, the federal courthouse, and you will surrender directly to the marshals because the marshals have field offices in every federal courthouse. You will surrender right there, and you will be arraigned that day, and you could have a bond hearing within, I was an idiot and turned myself in on a Friday, so I had to spend a couple days in jail before my bond hearing.

Right. Right? Yeah. He didn't tell you that? That's an issue. No, he did tell me that, but I'm like, I just. I need to leave. Let me get the bus ticket. I don't care. A couple days in jail. Oh, well. You know. Doesn't matter. Acklimate you to the environment. You want to get a little in there. So you kind of know, I get it. I hear you. Baby steps.

Baby steps, precisely, precisely, right? So I go to the courthouse and immediately my lawyer goes over to the field office room. And then like seven marshals come out. And I'm sitting on a bench. And you're like, stand up. Hands on the wall, spread your legs. We need to search you. They searched me. They cuffed me. They brought me into the back holding area. They swabbed my mouth. They took my picture.

They took my fingerprints. They cataloged my scars. They asked me if I had tattoos or anything like that. I said no. And then they tried like asking me a bunch of strange questions. And then I'm like, I have an attorney. And then they just left the room after I said that. But I'm like, oh, I see what you guys were trying to do.

I see what was happening. Right? Yeah, they bolt. The moment you say attorney, they bolt. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, when they asked me, are you, are, you know, who you run with. So who are run with? They said, who you run with? Are you with a gang? And I said, I'm, I'm with the Florida, the Florida, Florida mortgage brokers association. I'm a mortgage broker. The most violent criminal organization in all the Florida.

where they yeah they yeah so they said uh you're not dangerous i said ask bank of america yeah so okay so what happened they uh they brought me to a holding cell i'm sitting there there's a little white guy who's like you know you've been to prison you understand there's like the normal humans and then there's the insane people this is the first time I met someone who was like legitimately like medically clinically insane right this dude is sitting there screaming they're stealing my face they're taking my documents and they're going to clone me and I'm just looking at I'm like what bro what are you talking about like get me out of here and then about 30 minutes later after I'm sitting in the cell with this insane dude right it's

DC right so like everybody gets federally charged even with misdemeanors right yeah yeah yeah so like all of like the normal normal criminals if you will were being brought there as well so they brought in this dude that really didn't speak english right he was a columbian national i speak spanish so i get to strike you up a conversation with him and i'm like why are you here i'm like you told them immigration but you're columbian i know that's bullshit and he's like okay in reality i got caught piloting an airplane and i'm like illegally like in US airspace and I'm like yeah I'm like that's not that bad you know what I mean he's like well they found 20,000 kilos of cocaine in the airplane I'm like oh and then I realized the

gravity of the situation I'm in I'm like if I'm in a cell with this dude awaiting an arraignment I got myself into some serious serious trouble I'm sure you have that one defining moment as well when you first got apprehended when you realize the gravity of the situation you're in like oh yeah yeah yeah yeah it's a it's an issue and i didn't get to turn myself in so yeah really oh they just they just arrested right arrest him they just fucking pulled up on me pulled the guns out get on the ground get on the ground get on the girl's like ah was it like the FBI or the secret service it is a secret service okay which were actually extremely you know like in retrospect in comparison to the FBI they were extremely um

professional. Most of the FBI agents, with the exception of maybe one FBI agent, have been almost like thugs. All the Secret Service agents were polite, professional. It's like they were just, I always like the guys, and you'll realize it's like the guards that you meet. You always like the guards that are basically there to just check in and check out. Like, I'm just here to do my job. Like, I'm not taking it personally. You have to do this. Don't do that. Like, you know, they don't, they're not upset about it. they're not they're not taking a personal interest and same thing with the police you have some cops that are just like hey look I got a handcuff yet here's what we're doing here's how this works

and then you have the ones that just hate your guts and it's like they think it's their job to make you miserable and talk down to you and be a jerk to you it's like like you don't have that you don't have the attitude for this job like you're you're a horribly aggressive angry person well unfortunately you're locked in the cage and those are the people that are bringing you your food so right yeah yeah well you listen i tell you right now when you actually get to prison you will like prison 100% more than you like being locked up i think in your case you'll probably be able to either self-surrender or they will take you at sentencing i will be able to self-surrender i know that perfect well that's that's going to be that's way better because you don't have to go through

the u.s marshals holdover which you could be sitting there for a few months and that's basically county jail and county jail sucks when you go to prison you almost have you almost no once you get into you where your housing unit is you almost have no contact with with the police like you'll get a job you'll get a little routine before you know it you'll be like this is like this is like a this is like a summer camp i mean it's a shitty summer camp but it's like a summer camp with guys that might stab you but but if as long as you're polite to everybody it's not a big deal as long as you don't run up a bunch of debts and start talking shit about people you'll be fine and they'll love you because you've got a great story

and you're a good storyteller but i digress go ahead what were you saying so you turned yourself in when you got in front of the judge what happened i wasn't able to appear in front of so you know how they bring you in front of federal magistrates first for a bond hearing the federal magistrate was like i have no jurisdiction in this you have to go in front of a circuit judge so they they they They held me for the weekend. I got my little dose of, like, prison life for the first time ever. I was in the shoe for, like, I'd say a day until they brought me to Genpop. And the facility I was at was 100% indoors.

So I go into the pot, if you will, and I look around. And it's like, there's like 200 dudes just all in a small, relatively small room. I'd say the size of probably like a high school gymnasium. And I'm like, okay, this shit's real now. Now, luckily, all the dudes in there were, they were completely respectful, you know, no fights or anything like that happened. The worst thing that happened was like people screaming at each other and stuff. But, you know, all the guards there, too, they were sheriffs.

So they weren't like private prison guards. So they all had, they were incredibly respectful at that facility. The guards had the utmost respect for you if you were respectful to them. All the other inmates, it was a mix of federal hold inmates. and Virginia like just normal you know like people that had small like under a year sentences or people that just got off a long stretch and they're brought to there for like the last year or so of their sentence right right so I met a couple dudes I met a bunch of of people that were in a federal RICO murder gang case and they were called the reckless tiger gang

they were a group of they were an Asian gang right and I met this dude and I'm talking to him and he's super nice i mean he has a bunch of tattoos and everything i don't really judge that well find out later i find out later that he did you just straight up just like executed somebody so i'm like i was talking to a literal murderer and he was perfectly cordial and nice yeah some of the nicest people are guys that murdered somebody my cellmate was a turkish national who got indicted for espionage because he uh he dealt in defense and somehow drone technology that he attained ended up in the hands of iranians and he's like i went to him vacation to spain and then interpol just came to my hotel and took me away and i'm like well what do you think was

going to happen you can't go to any place that would extradate you you know there was like you know there was hackers, there was like Russian mobsters, and then there was gang members and everything. It was my first, like, I'm like, okay, this is prison is like, it's just, you'll take a person like me. I did a mid-level crime. Well, you know, people would say it's big, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not that big, right? But you send someone like me. Not small. True, but there's people that make billions of dollars.

You know what I mean? There's a few, but mostly you're going to meet guys that brought a gun to a $10 crack sale and ended up getting 10 or 15 years. And you're going to be surrounded by, you're going to be surrounded by guys that you're like, so this guy stole, you know, $500 million and he got, you know, eight years. And this guy has been arrested three times and happened to bring a gun to a crack deal for less than $100 and got 20 years. Wow, that's insane. Yeah, like the disparity between the sentences are so outrageous. And then you'll be like, this guy looked at some little kids on the internet. He gets two years.

Yeah, he got three years. this guy you know like you just there's just no but you'll meet some guys there that you're like this guy's a complete lunatic and he's insane and he should never be let out and he's getting out next year and then you got this guy who's the nicest help most helpful person ever and he's got 30 more years to go yeah you'll meet some great guys and you're going to get in good with a group of guys that you like and you hang out when you'll get a routine and bro that that time's going to blow by it'll be it'll be good. cool, but it'll be good. I mean, it won't be, it won't be great. But once your, your expectations

are lowered, which sounds horrible, you'll be, you'll be like, oh, I'm, I'm okay here. Like, there will be a day you'll just wake up after, you know, whatever, it could be six months, could be a year and a half, and you're going to be like, yeah, I'm all right. This is going to be all right. It's not a, this isn't horrible. Like, it's that first, but it's until that point when you're like, this sucks. Um, so what happened? So, sorry. Go ahead. The point I was trying to make is you take someone like me who messed up, right? But then you're going to put me around, you're sending all of the people who have gotten,

who did all these things and you're putting them together. And you think they're not going to be sitting there. Networking, networking, excuse me, scheming, learning new things. Oh, yeah. Some great conversations. Like, you'll get around a group of guys. And once you guys start talking, you'll be like, oh, my God. Well, wait a second.

Here's what I did. And then that guy will be like, did you ever think about doing this? You're like, oh, my God. So you can get fake IDs. Yeah, I can get fake. Oh, my. If I could have done that, I could have. You know, then like, what about can you open up bank accounts?

Yeah, bro. I opened up 15 bank accounts. And you're like, oh, your mind will get go nuts. And then you kind of have to talk to yourself down. Can we laying in bed thinking and then I think, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So I have to throw a surprise into this story, right? Okay. Remember how I said there was the worker Eric Callahan?

Yes. He was an undercover federal agent the entire time. Are you serious? 100% serious. But he just, and this is a guy that helped you set up your thing. Mm-hmm. So he helped you set it up. So were they watching you the whole time?

Think about it. The way I structured my story, like there were some glaringly obvious things that have someone really thought about it's like, wait a second, you're telling me a random opioid addict is going to have the capability to set up server infrastructure, really? And then he's only going to accept payment. He might, listen, I knew, I'm one of the smartest guys I knew who's a, was a professional hacker and can build you websites and computers and do all kinds of, he's a programmer, everything. That guy was a heroin addict. He was like a 19 year old heroin addict. So that's very, so I don't think that's so crazy. That's possible.

You're right. You're right. But in my experience, right, like meeting technically, like people who have those technical skills, they tend to not be. He's unique in that regard. He really is. Well, plus and his ability to follow through. Like most drug addicts because exactly. And that's what I'm saying.

This dude was getting, you know, like every drug dealer is going to have their funny story. This dude must have had 60 root canals when he was mad. He said, oh, I just had a root canal. send me some extra pills. I'm like, whatever, man. You're helping me do all this stuff. I'll send you extra stuff all the time.

It turns out that was being sent to an undercover FBI agent. And then they were taking those pills and sending them to the DEA analysis lab. And they were just sitting there tacking on the charges, tacking on the charges. You didn't have a root canal? No. No. Are you telling you, I'm not going to sit here and listen to you tell me that an FBI agent lied to you.

you're telling me that a CI lied that's unheard of it's typically so honest so all right so what happened so you're your lawyer you so you got out on bond right so okay so I find the reason I'm bringing this up now right I have my little three days in jail on Monday they put me in the van and they drive me to the courthouse which is like 15 minutes away from the holding facility right and remember the Asian individual I told you about that's the gang member he is with me because he's from my pod so he also had the court date on the same day right so we all went there he was going for sentencing though right turns out he got a life sentence it's terrible it's so terrible being near someone and seeing them even though he killed somebody though but it's like the

humanity of it looking at this 20 this dude who was one year older than me it's like you're going to spend the rest of your life in jail it's just it's sad man And I, a brief point before I explain everything else, when we're driving back, he literally looked at everybody in the van. He's like, crime isn't cool, man, and just sunk his head. And I was like, that's terrible that you realize that now, you know? So back to like when I'm having my bond hearing, they bring me in front of an actual federal judge, like a circuit judge. And the U.S. District Attorney is there. And this is the first time I see face-to-face the FBI agent in my case.

He was the CI. I'm not going to name his name, of course. I don't know if that could blow back on me. But he's sitting there explaining reading the ad. This is the first time I got to see the affidavit in my case, too. And I'm like, oh, my God, Eric Callahan wasn't undercover this entire time. I thought Eric was going to walk in and be like, hey, what's up, Colby? He hands of your indictment.

You're like, well, he did. He did. I never shared my name with him. but essentially Eric Hallahan didn't say come in and say what's up Colby because he was the undercover CI so essentially he did do that was that shocking um looking back at it I'm like that just makes so much sense I mean of course like it is shocking but like in again hindsight is 20 Tony with crime sitting there thinking back I'm like of course he was a CI with the questions he was asking and every single day, right?

I had him, remember how I said I had Eric Callahan set up my own proprietary means of transacting? Yeah. He just also happened to work at a print shop while he was doing this and was able to print up flyers for me to send them out to my, I had him, I was going to have him mail me the flyers and I could include them in all of my orders on White House market. Instead of using the internet. to say, hey, this is my store, I was just going to be like, I was literally going to stick a flyer

in their package and like, look at my store. And this code, this cold, huh? Eric's a good guy to know. He's connected. He's just being, you know, he's just being a good business partner. I never had him send me those, by the way, because I've even thought about him, like, that's terrible operational security. I can't ever give him an address to send me anything.

And then he was like, well, you could see. send me pills and I can then, you know, ship everything out. And then I'm like, no, no, no, no, you're an opioid addict. I'm never sending you stuff. You can't handle my business. You know what I mean? You could handle like the online, some online aspects, but literally dealing with like products. No, you can't do that.

I wouldn't trust someone to do that. And I already had that down, like that network established myself, right? Now looking back, he was trying to, if he, you know, that he was just trying to tack on as many charges as possible. Yeah. right they're trying to run the numbers up right so um though you do you know the literal argument for the that the u.s attorney used to keep me out in jail the u.s attorney said that i was a danger to my community and my family because i smoked marijuana daily i okay i think it i don't see

that that's silly but okay the judge literally just stared at the unit's attorney like the excuse me and the person reiterated their point and he literally looked over at my lawyer and he's like you guys have not demonstrated sufficient evidence that Mr. Cop actively attempted to elude arrest he literally came in and turned himself in with his attorney right you guys just went to the wrong address you could have had them literally they literally did and also I was living at my my I was living back at my home you know that I grew up in for over a year so how do you not know where I was at. Right. So, all right, so, I mean, so how has this progressed so far? What, I mean, they let you out. They let me out. I'm on bond. We were, I, I, I pleaded not guilty

during my, my, my arraignment. You know the thing right after arraignment when they, like, give you, like, this is the judge in your case and you're, like, what is it, initial appearance or? Yeah, yeah, yeah, first appearance. First appearance, yeah. I entered a not guilty plea because I have one of the best lawyers in the area. So he's like, he's represented dark net cases before and has won. So he's like, I think they have some holes in their case. Well, remember how I said that the U.S. Marshals took my fingerprints and everything?

Right. The one package I ever touched myself happened to be sent to an FBI undercover. And they had my fingerprint on the USPS mail envelope. Listen, you have a lot of, a lot of FBI guys buying drugs from you. Well, it's a public forum. Anybody could go on there and purchase these things. Right.

So that's how they catch these people. And also, too, remember how I said like the, remember how I alluded to earlier that the cryptocurrency is eventually what got them on to me? Right. So remember how I made the analogy with that Bitcoin is like a piece of gold with a serial number, right? It's traceable, right? There are services on the darknet that you could go to where you exchange that piece of gold, that Bitcoin, if you will, or the fraction of, you know, of the gold bar, the fraction of the Bitcoin. You exchange it for many other pieces of gold for a small fee.

right yeah well it turns out the fbi i also had control of that service too and they were catching a lot of people trying to wash their money i feel like the fbi is not playing fair like you know it's that's not right it's i mean it's an open i mean yeah they've caught so many people like that before so many people yeah it's homeless yeah well no that's what they do because i should went to multiple different services to do that i went to one service so thinking i was okay and then i could take the crypto and do whatever i want with it because on paper it's just you know have you considered selling stuff on etzy like maybe stuff that's not um banned by the federal government so actually i would like to start um an amazon store when i eventually get through my situation because like my

reason is if i could if you can make money on the dark web i think that's more competitive and harder actually to make money on the clear web, the clear web being the normal website that the normal web that we're on right now with normal websites like Google, Amazon, you know, if I could, I know how to source products. I know how to facilitate like build infrastructure. I know how to navigate and learn about the ecosystems that could facilitate e-commerce. So that's what I want to do ultimately. That's my goal is I want to have Amazon businesses after, after I deal with my situation. That's the goal. I would like to work towards.

What are you going to sell? I need to figure out how to know what to sell. I don't know yet, right? So once I learn how to do that, then I can remember how I said, I know I've learned Mandarin and everything, right? Well, I have already developed a relationship with some Chinese manufacturers of, let's say, like,

kitchen appliances or, like, let's say, like, you know, like phone chargers and stuff like that. I'm trying to develop the raport and to be able to purchase stuff from them. Get it over here and use Amazon to facilitate that transaction. But the difference is, is the feds won't blow in my door if I'm selling phone chargers. True. That's true. Yeah, listen, you know, I wrote a book for a guy named Devoroli.

He was selling, I mean, he was selling all kinds. Well, he's selling guns, but that's what got him in trouble. well actually munitions but he also started just selling accessories to weapons you know just the just accessories doing the same thing he's selling he was buying them from china he'd get them you know they're making them for a dollar 75 and he's selling them for you know $22 a piece and it was you know it's amazing and and still undercutting yeah the uh the competition and he was doing just drop shipping and everything it was all just through um through the internet um through different services.

So when are you going to be sentenced? I mean, by the time this comes out, you'll have been sentenced. Yeah, I don't know exactly. They moved up my date and I'm awaiting. It's kind of in the air right now. I'm awaiting. Moved it up or back? Up.

Like, I don't know. Like, they canceled. They canceled like my previous sentencing date. And they're going to, they have to work out their schedule to see. It might be a couple months in the future. You know, and I, you know, I don't know currently as a. right now but it won't be that much longer right okay um mm-hmm good times good times uh yeah you got time to write a book yeah you know you can make it sexy it doesn't have to be super huge were you dating

anybody during this time yeah i had i had various girlfriends sometimes multiple girlfriends at a time honestly i mean then well you did you travel no no it was a lot of work doing this because again i i i solely handled the internet portion of it basically by myself like i would work 12 hour days not stop seven days a week yeah well you're selling a product like fraud's not a full-time job like i i had a lot of downtime on my time so i traveled a little bit um Uh, let me think, yeah, okay, that could be a good book. Do you have a nice car? Did I have a nice car? Yeah. Yeah. You're driving like a Toyota camera? What are we driving? Like, we driving?

Multiple vehicles. Some of them were unregistered. Some of them were registered. None of them were in my name. Yeah, you could, you could write a good book. You write a good book. It doesn't have to be super long. my book was pretty long because you know well it's like 330 pages i think which that's that's really that's not even a long book no but it's um yeah but you know but uh but yeah you know all the intricacies that you've done and the close calls and uh you know and you get to write the backstory you could or you could ask did you get you got your discovery right uh yes i believe so i have to talk to my lawyer about all that yeah if you get your discovery now, like ask your lawyer for your discovery, and then have it sent,

ah, damn it, hold on, decline, hold it is, hold on, somebody called. If you get your discovery and give it to your, like, your mom, then when you get to where you're going, going, where you're going to be a while, like that you're probably going to go to a low, then have her send it to you. Then you can write a story about not just what happened with you, but what was happening on the other end because you'll have all the documents from the FBI and they'll explain like you know at this point they heard about you at this point you know they'll have the dates and the names and so to be they knew about me pretty damn quickly like they were watching me for years

well then that's great then that that ends up being cool because now it's kind of a cat and mouse game why do they not i don't think it's cool other people may think it's cool i think it's terrible i mean yeah you know work with what you got true uh At this point, you know, you've got to work with it. Yeah. Yeah. You have some downtime. Learn to play the guitar.

I like chess. Tons of guys. Listen, they play chess in prison. You've never played just like this. Like the, you know, you know, chess to me is a game of kings. It's a sophisticated game. It's a game of, of, you know, rules and, you know, it's a game played by the upper echelon of society. That's not how it's played in prison.

In prison, these dudes, they move the, you know, boom, oh, yeah, I got your bitch, bro. I got your bitch. And then, oh, oh, oh, yeah, what you're going to do now? I'm in your house. I'm in your house. What's you going to do? You ain't going to do shit. That's right.

Oh, I mean, you're like, like, it's. It's, it's, I mean, I don't know how you take that game and make it aggressive. But everything is, I assume, aggressive in jail, though, everything. It's, it's not to be. Listen, you'll get a group of guys, like, you know what it's like? Like, it's like being a non-enemy combatant, right? Like, you know, in a war zone. So you're, you're just like a guy that lives in this town where these guys are shooting each other. You just, you know, I live in Ukraine. I live in Ukraine.

Exactly. And you're just trying to go to your job and make bread. I'm just trying to go to my, to the bakery and make some bread today. These guys are shooting. I had to stand over here while they shot and, oh, they blew that up. I got to go home. I can't make it there today. I'll make it. I'll go tomorrow. And then you go, you have a good day. You go, you work three days in a row and you're good. And then one day you're walking home from work and two guys are shooting each other, only in prison. They're just stabbing each other or getting into a fight and you walk by and you go. And you'll, you will become kind of. of desensitized. I remember one time I was I just got into the low I was the medium and I had just gotten to the low maybe I'd been there two three weeks this guy name this guy's name is Kiki you're gonna meet about 50 got me well you're you got 10 years you got you'll take did you take are you taking the drug program yeah I qualify for our dad because of cocaine use right so you'll get the if the drug the hopefully you know get the judge to recommend minute you'll get a year off of that you'll get good time did they ever give you halfway house or they is that just bullshit no you'll get halfway house you'll probably get six months to a year halfway

house you know you're literally you're whittling like you'll end up doing whatever six years so so let's say you do the six years um you're gonna in that time period you're gonna meet about about 50 60 guys named kiki so uh you're gonna meet some pookies um but anyway what happened one time i was I had just walked in my cell, and this guy, this big black guy named Kiki, was kind of walking down the hallway, right, and walked right in front of my cell and dropped dead of a heart attack. Boom. My God. And I was, yeah, he was like 30 something. Was he doing drugs?

He'd been to medical several times over the last few days complaining about chest pains. And they kept saying, come Monday, come Monday. Got to come back Monday. So he died like Saturday, I think it was like Friday or Saturday. So, you know, it was just inconvenient for them to look at him because of the chest pain. You know, it's the weekend. So Kiki died and hit the ground, boom, died and slid about a foot. And I remember looking down and thinking, like he was right in front of myself.

I thought, fuck, they're going to lock this whole place down. and I'm going to be stuck in my cell for the next all night. I better go get some coffee. So I stepped over Kiki's body, walked down the hallway, went and heated up some water in the microwave, and stood there. By that point, they called medical and they'd come running up. They got there pretty quick, but Kiki was definitely dead when he hit the ground. So they put him on a stretcher. Kiki was a big guy.

So it took like four of them to pick them up and bring them down. And as soon as they got them out there, they said, you know, walk down. And so I walked in my room and drank my coffee. And then I kind of was sitting there drinking my coffee. And I was thinking, did I just step over a guy's dead body to go and get some coffee? Like, you're a cold motherfucker. And I'm, that's nothing. Like nobody shed at a tear for Kiki.

There were guys that were walking around like, damn, Kiki dead, man. I've known him 10 years. Kiki made the best pizza. it was like he's just upset because his pizza partner is gone there'll be another kiki so there's like there's going to be another kiki um yeah it's it's you're going to get desensitized i remember one time this guy there was commotion people are screaming and hollering and running around you can tell when something happened because people are trying to heat up coffee and borrow stuff from other cells because they you know you're going to get locked down like something

happened in the rec yard and they were screaming lockdown and this guy comes running over and he goes Cox, Cox. And I go, yeah, what's up? And he said, yo, he said, my cellie just got stabbed in the rec yard. And I said, are you telling me that there's a two-man room available? Because it means that he's at stadd. They're going to move him. He's going to shoe at least. So I now know there's a two-man cell that has one bunk available. And he goes, yeah, bro. And he hands me a cop out and says, fill it out right now. Stick it under the counselor's door before we get locked down. So I filled it out, stuck it under the cancelor's door, ran back to my cell. And by the time I got, we got out like the next day, I had a new cell.

Were you in a cell alone, but prior to that? No, no, I was in a three-man cell at that time. Oh, God. I was going from a three-man cell to a two-man cell. There's no one-man cell. Yeah, yeah, you're going to be like, this is like, you hear that and you're like, that's horrible. But I mean, that's just, it's a survivor mentality. But you know once you get into you'll get a little job you'll get a bunch of buddies that you hang out with when you get there do not tell them oh i'm here for a computer crime no they're gonna think i'm a chomo yeah white you're a soft white guy yeah bad idea um it's gonna go bad and even what's so

funny about that is i've known guys that have done that or not told people what they're there for like they'll say um they'll go oh my lawyer said not to talk about my crime and guys I immediately. Do you guys not have your jackets in federal? No. No, you're going to get there with that. Well, you can mail off for your pre-sentence report. You can try and have it mailed in, but a lot of times they won't mail it in.

Like, they'll catch it. Now, listen, I've had mine mailed in twice. It got in both times. But sometimes they'll catch it and they'll say, hey, you can't have this. We're mailing it. We're throwing it away. They'll tell you you can't have it. people like join gangs and everything then if there's no like the like the verification process

i mean you figure out a way to get it in like you have somebody shuffle up the papers or mail in a couple pages here two days later they mail in three or four like you know what i'm saying you can get it in okay mail it in like just in an envelope that says PSR on it that's never going to happen that's probably going to happen so i mean that that's going to be my application for the aryan brotherhood so i mean i need to get i need to get it in something when you would you You said gang, I was thinking, there's not going to be any gangs. Like, you're going to a low. There may be gangs, but you're certainly not going to have to be a part of a gang.

Like, hey, you ready? You want to join the woods? Yeah, I'm good, bro. Who's going to protect you? Come on, man. Stop. How segregated is it in federal prison? I mean, if it was a pin or something, it would be, but even then they'll mix a little bit.

You know, they'll talk, they'll this or that, but they don't really want to share things it's not like it's not like you're going to a pin in california no it's you're going to a federal probably going to a federal low and that low is going to be it's going to be soft there are going to be some guys that are walking around acting like it's a tough place but everybody kind of thinks they're a joke like like all right yeah i get it i get it it's yeah everybody's a stand-up guy but you know really you have to kind of know like look if there's i used to say this all the time at the at the low i you know guys would be talking about oh that guy over there bro he he he he uh i heard he snitched on this guy heard he snitched on that guy and they'd be

looking at i'd look over at the guy and i'm like that guy over there oh yeah oh okay and i'd say well hey i have a question for you you guys good at math and they'd be like well i'm all right why i go well 90 let's assume that 90 percent of every of people cooperate and gets It's even more than that. I know it's higher than that. And they'd be like, all right. And I'd say, so if 90% do cooperate, I said, so let's go ahead. I said, and there's 160 guys in this unit.

That means that, you know, and I said, that means that you've got out of this unit, out of 150, 160 guys, you've essentially got, I think it ends up being, whatever, It's like 106 guys. I'm like, so there's a hundred and six, I'm sorry, sorry, there's 16 guys in this unit. Sorry, 16 guys in this unit that didn't cooperate. And they're all like, so there are five guys standing around me. And they're like, right, right. I'm like, we can exclude some of those guys immediately because some of the,

because some of those guys went to trial so they didn't have an option to cooperate because they went to trial. So we know who they are. And I could just name them, right? Red Bull, so-and-so, W, and we'd name them off. You'd name off like 10 guys, 11 guys. And I'd go, so that means that there's five guys in this unit, five that didn't cooperate and didn't go to trial.

And have the most time out of everybody. Right. And I would look, and I'd look at the guys around me and I'd say, I'll bet it's you guys, isn't it? I'll bet it's you guys. what are the chances that all five of those guys are standing right here what did shakespeare say thou doth protest too much exactly listen and that's that's what it is so you know like even getting in that conversation is just it's just so much still like i i didn't i didn't

partake in the um you know the the the the politics of who did what or this guy or you know it's it to me it's like look I'm getting a routine down I'm going to find something to do that I enjoy doing every day I'm going to get a group of guys that I like talking to I'm going to get a routine I'm just going to go through the motions and whittled this time away and I didn't it was listen it was and honestly this is going to sound horrible but for what it is taking a consideration it was prison but for what it was it was it was a good experience It was the best experience that you could have had. So for me, I had the best experience, given the situation for what I could have had.

And in a lot of ways, I look back on it and I think it was a good part of my life. Like, I wouldn't want to redo it. But for what it was, it wasn't horrible. So. Okay. Yeah, I see where you're coming from. I see where you're coming from. Yeah.

How many people tried hitting you? Tried what? try like like because like i could tell you you're very witty so there would be a giant brutish dude who's saying something stupid and then you're like oh that happened that that happened several times yeah i i got i got nutted up a few times like literally i realize going in it was like i can i can either make smart ass cracks and get slapped every once in a while or i can just keep my my mouth shit for the next 20 something years and i went yeah i'm not gonna do that like i'd rather just take an ass beating every once in a

while so ever so i was probably really there was only one time a guy actually physically like like i want to say he punched me he he bitch slapped me from behind because you know what i'm saying he walked up behind me and went bam and just hit me because i mouth off to him and i had another guy one time that poked me in the eye but he was mentally off like he couldn't be in the regular unit they kept him in the shoe and i was in the shoe with him i didn't realize he's crazy so um other than that i didn't you know i really didn't have any any any issues okay luckily i'm a much i'm a bigger guy so i don't think people are gonna just come screw with me right well and the other thing is honestly like i i don't know if you've ever

watching my stuff but but literally if you get stabbed in federal prison you pretty much had it coming like you did something you did something like people think someone randomly ran up and did something no no you you ran up a debt or you gambled and ran up a debt didn't pay you um you know you can run up store debts like guys will have stores they'll sell stuff out of their locker like they'll keep extra commissary in their locker so you sorry what are they called they're called the shopmen right yeah yeah so you can do that you know and you run up people will run up a debt and not pay. And then they'll be like, yeah, what you're going to do? What are you going to do? And it may be some old man who's not, you're not scared of, he'll have somebody just come beat your

ass. Like, you know, so, or you talk shit about people. You start mouthing off about people or spreading rumors. That'll catch up with you. Like, there's lots of things that will catch up you. So, you know, you don't talk about people. You don't run up debts. Be polite to everybody. You'll be fine. You'll be in a low. You're a big guy. You know, you're, you're, you're, you're, You're going to be, it's going to be, you're going to meet a bunch of people that you're like, I can't believe I'm talking to this guy right now. I cannot believe. Like, you're going to want to say, almost stop the guy and go, bro, I can't believe I'm talking to you right now. You're insane.

But don't. I've already been there in the holding cell. That dude was talking about. He's like, they're going to turn me into the next JFK. I'm like, what are you talking about. I don't know what that means. I'm scared. You know what his charge was too?

What? He tried burning his school to the ground. They caught him trying to. burn a high school to the ground. I think he got a federal arson charge. Wasn't an idiot. Yeah, yeah. It's going to be all right.

It's going to be all right. Hey, I appreciate you guys watching, and I appreciate Colby coming on and telling me his true crime story. And if you like the video, do me a favor and hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified. Also, leave me a comment in the comment section. I've been slacking on comments, but I'm going to jump back on it and really start trying to answer as many as possible. I really need to incorporate my wife and have her answer some questions because she could probably answer some.

Sometimes she actually looks through them and says, hey, you need to answer this comment. So that's cool. Her name's Jess. And also, I wrote a bunch of true crime books. And so do me a favor and buy one of my true crime books and check out the trailers. Using forgeries and bogus identities, Matthew B. Cox, one of the most ingenious conmen in history, built America's biggest banks out of millions. Despite numerous encounters with bank security, state, and federal authorities, Cox narrowly, and quite luckily, avoided capture for years. Eventually, he topped the U.S. Secret Service's most wanted list and led the U.S. Marshals' efforts.

FBI and Secret Service on a three-year chase, while jet-setting around the world with his attractive female accomplices. Cox has been declared one of the most prolific mortgage fraud con artists of all time by CNBC's American Greene. Bloomberg Businessweek called him the mortgage industry's worst nightmare, while Dateline NBC described Cox as a gifted forger and silver-tongued liar. Playboy magazine proclaimed And his scam was real estate fraud, and he was the best. Shark in the housing pool is Cox's exhilarating first-person account of his Stranger-than-Fiction story. Available now on Amazon and Audible.

Bent is the story of John J. Boziak's phenomenal life of crime. Inked from head to toe, with an addiction to strippers and fast Cadillacs, Boziac was not your typical computer geek. He was, however, one of the most cunning scammers, counterfeiters, identity thieves, and escape artists alive, and a major thorn in the side of the U.S. Secret Service as they fought a war on cybercrime. With a savant-like ability to circumvent banking security and stay one step ahead of law enforcement, Boziak made millions of dollars in the international cyber underworld, with the help of the Chinese and the Russians. Then, leaving nothing but a John Doe warrant and a cleaned-out bank account in his wake, he vanished.

Boziak's stranger-than-fiction tale of ingenious scams and impossible escapes, of brazen run-ins with the law and secret desires to straighten out and settle down, makes his story a true-crime con game that will keep you guessing. Bent. How a Homeless Team became one of the cybercrime industry's most prolific counterfeiters. Available now on Amazon and Audible. Buried by the U.S. government and ignored by the national media, this is the story they don't want you to know.

When Frank Amadeo met with President George W. Bush at the White House to discuss NATO operations in Afghanistan, no one knew that he'd already embezzled nearly $200 million from the federal government, money he intended to use to bankroll his plan to take over the world. From Amadeo's global headquarters in the shadow of Florida's Disney World, with a nearly inexhaustible supply of the Internal Revenue Services funds. Amadeo acquired multiple businesses, amassing a mega conglomerate. Driven by his delusions of world conquest, he negotiated the purchase of a squadron of American fighter jets and the controlling interest in a former Soviet ICBM factory. He began working to build the largest private militia on the planet, over one million African strong. Simultaneously,

Amadeo hired an international black ops force to orchestrate a coup in the Congo while plotting to take over several small eastern European countries. The most disturbing part of it all is, had the U.S. government not thwarted his plans, he might have just pulled it off. It's insanity. The bizarre, true story of a bipolar megalomaniac's insane plan for total world domination. Available now on Amazon and Audubor. Pierre Rossini, in the 1990s, was a 20-something-year-old Los Angeles-based drug trafficker of ecstasy and ice.

He and his associates drove luxury European supercars, lived in Beverly Hills penthouses, and dated Playboy models while dodging federal indictments. Then, two FBI officers with the organized crime drug enforcement task force entered the picture. Dirty agents willing to fix cases. and identify informants. Suddenly, two of Racini's associates, confidential informants working with federal law enforcement, or murdered.

Everyone pointed to Racini. As his co-defendants prepared for trial, U.S. Attorney Robert Mueller sat down to debrief Racine at Leavenworth Penitentiary, and another story emerged. A tale of FBI corruption and complicity in murder. You see, Pierre Racini knew something that no one else knew, The truth, and Robert Mueller and the federal government have been covering it up to this very day.

Devil Exposed, a twisted tale of drug trafficking, corruption, and murder in the city of angels. Available on Amazon and Audible. Bailout is a psychological true crime thriller that pits a narcissistic con man against an egotistical, pathological liar. Marcus Schrenker, the money manager who attempted to fake his own. death during the 2008 financial crisis, is about to be released from prison, and he's ready to talk. He's ready to tell you the story no one's heard. Shrinker sits down with true crime writer, Matthew B. Cox, a fellow inmate serving time for bank fraud. Shrinker lays out the details, the disgruntled clients who persecuted him for unanticipated market losses, the affair

that ruined his marriage, and the treachery of his scorned wife, the woman who framed him for securities fraud, leaving him no choice but to make a bogus distress call and plunge from his multi-million dollar private aircraft in the dead of night. The $11.1 million in life insurance, the missing $1.5 million in gold. The fact is, Shrinker wants you to think he's innocent. The problem is Cox knows Shrinker's a pathological liar and his stories of fabrication. As Cox subtly coaxes, cajoles, and yes, Kahn Shrinker into revealing his deceptions, his strain danger than fiction life of lies slowly unravels. This is the story Shrinker didn't want you to know.

Bailout, the life and lies of Marcus Shrinker, available now on Barnes & Noble, Etsy, and Audible. Matthew B. Cox is a conman, incarcerated in the Federal Bureau of Prisons for a variety of bank fraud-related scams. Despite not having a drug problem, Cox inexplicably ends up in the prison's residential drug. drug abuse program known as Ardap. A drug program in name only. Ardap is an invasive behavior

modification therapy, specifically designed to correct the cognitive thinking errors associated with criminal behavior. The program is a non-fiction dark comedy which chronicles Cox's side-splitting journey. This first-person account is a fascinating glimpse at the survival-like atmosphere inside of the government-sponsored rehabilitation unit. While navigating the treachery of his backstabbing peers, Cox simultaneously manipulates prison policies and the bumbling staff every step of the way. The program. How a conman survived the Federal Bureau of Prisons cult of Ardap.

Available now on Amazon and Audible. If you saw anything you like, links to all the books are in the description box.