Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Exposing Bill Gates $14M Scam

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

Exposing Bill Gates $14M Scam

Bill Gates is going to write us a check for $2 million. One day, I'm going to walk to that mailbox thinking it's just bills, and our life is going to change. It did happen. He got the letter and came back in and went, Bill Gates. And we all were like, oh! So now we're getting $14 million from Bill Gates and his family. Let's start at the beginning? Yeah, thanks for having me on.

My family grew up with the Gates family. When you say grew up with, like, were they in the same neighborhood? Not exactly in the same. 15 minutes away. So every summer they would go to their summer home on the Hood Canal. They would be barbecue and Bill Gates Sr. would be out on the boat with, you know, my uncles and aunts and they'd be swimming across the lake. And, you know, they would meet for social gatherings a lot. Mary Gates and my grandmother, Sarah, were best friends. They would do social gatherings. And every year they had this Christmas party. It was this huge Bill Gates family Christmas party that my family would go to. So I had

never heard of the Gates family until this story starts. So to give you a little context of who my dad was before we get into this, I always compare him to George Costanza from Seinfeld. He's just chronically unemployed, bald, fat, thinks he's the smartest guy in the room, but none of his schemes ever work out and a total womanizer. Yeah, my dad was deeply religious and yeah, I know ironic, right? And especially involved with the prosperity gospel, the idea that if you just give the church your money, God will rain down money on you and you'll just be this wealthy. You know, when you see all the super churches, mega churches, they're all preaching the prosperity gospel and they're all profiting off of it. It was going to say, it's funny because some of the biggest,

matter of fact, every Ponzi schemer, almost every Ponzi schemer that I met in federal prison could quote scripture like nobody you've ever met. And almost all of them were super involved in the church. Oh yeah. Luke 638, man. You know, good measure pressed down, shaking together and overflowing. Like that's the idea. So yeah, the televangelist, you know, make a thousand dollar leap of faith. Send me that thousand dollars and the Lord's going to, someone out there with credit card debt. Oh, the Lord's going to take here. My dad was the guy in the living room. going, I have credit card debt. Oh, my God. The Lord is telling me to send this guy a thousand dollars. And my dad didn't work. So a thousand dollars, I mean, especially for the 90s. That's a lot

of money anyway. So how did he, how did he have a family? He didn't work. All right. So I was born in California. I was born in Santa Barbara. And pretty soon after that, because he had no money, he went up to Washington where my uncle owned an apartment complex. My uncle's very successful real estate guy, mostly with commercial properties. Okay. So he, owned an apartment complex and he offered my dad like, look, you can have an apartment for free. You can live there. I just need you to do like one shift a week security. You don't even have to be out driving. Just every couple hours, just peek your head out and take a lap and just make sure everything's good. And you can live in this apartment for free. So that's how we ended up in

Washington. We were there for a while and yeah, my uncle showed up to the apartment one day and my dad was being real weird and my uncle was like what's going on and my dad's like well I haven't worked in forever and we don't have any money and we don't have any food and we don't have any diapers so my uncle's like you should have told me so he goes to the store and gets all that and brings it to us and that's kind of how we were surviving was church food banks welfare checks food stamps stuff like that and then every once in a while why didn't he get a job you know I mean even a shitty job yeah because he was too good for that he was too good for the shit job. So this is, this is like, not too good to accept handouts. Well, he would hate you for the

handout, but he would take that money. So he hated my uncle. My uncle and him grew up together. They have the same education. They both have business degrees. They both worked on the pipeline in Alaska. All the same opportunities except my uncle can meet someone, integrate, work with them, and make them successful and everyone wins because my uncle is this amazing guy. He's very honest, and everyone loves them. My dad would become an assistant to a wealthy guy. guy, everything's looking good. If he just sticks to this, it leads to success. But within two months, oh, this guy's an idiot. He doesn't know what he's doing. Oh, I could do this better. But instead of quitting, he would just be the shittiest employee until you fired him so he could

blame you. Yeah, I was going to say, I always meet these guys who were like, you know, it's funny, like I met a guy who was homeless, hired him, gave him a job, gave him a truck, cleaned him up, you know, and two months later, he's trying to tell me how to run my business. were homeless two months ago. Yeah, yeah. I did stucco when I was 18 and, you know, we would get guys from the halfway house and it was always, oh man, Jesus, Jesus saved me, halfway house. I'm the hardest worker in the room. And then in like a month, they just wouldn't show up. They absconded with the work truck that they were given or, you know, the truck is found at the airport and they're gone and their parole officers looking for them. So, yeah, it's a whole thing. So your dad. Yeah, yeah. So my dad did

that. And once you get into circles with successful people and you kind of fuck them all over, they start talking and nobody hires you anymore. So I remember in the early 90s, he went to Saudi Arabia to help with the oil spill that happened. And he was gone for almost two years. He left right before my sister was born. I would have been four at this point. You'd think that'd be good money, right? It was good money. Yeah, it was good money. I don't know why he came back after just a couple of years or what he did with this money. But when he came back, My sister didn't even know who he was because he had been gone her whole life. Right. And then at one point, he got an accounting job for a construction company in Michigan,

and we're living right outside Seattle in federal way. So why he got a job in Michigan never, I mean, I'm a kid, so not a lot of anything makes sense. But he was gone for a little while, and my mom had this really interesting way of dropping super inappropriate details about their relationship to us kids. So all of a sudden he came back and a couple years later she let it slip that he had met a girl in his apartment complex and there might have been some frattenizing there. So she demanded he come back. Right. So we're living in federal way and at this time my entire family except for my uncle is living around Seattle. We're very close.

My aunts and uncles and cousins, I remember birthdays and holidays and everything. Like it was great. And I was too young to realize that my dad was, you know, the black. sheep of the family, the guy that was just not like everyone else. So eventually he got a job with Raytheon in Chicago. So we moved from Seattle to, we lived in Indiana, Hobart, Indiana, about 45 minutes from Chicago. And he had that job for, I want to say, a year to two years. I think he was a construction foreman, because he had a trailer like on the work site. He had to wear the hard hat. He brought me there a couple of times, like bring your kid to work day. So I never really understood

what he did, but it was like this big construction site. So in 1996, so in 1996, my grandma dies of cancer. She had had lung cancer for a couple years. We were all expecting it. So we, you know, arrangements were made through her, what you call it, estate to pay for our family to fly back to Seattle, stay in a hotel for a week. We were going to go to her condo and split up all the possessions and do the memorial and all that. And it was about a month in between her dying and us going there. She was cremated, so we didn't, you know, there wasn't a rush. Yeah, exactly. She had very specific instructions for how she wanted everything to go.

So it took a while to put together. So my dad was, you know, I'd like to believe he was sad that his mom died. But what he would talk about was the jewelry collection that she had. Because, I mean, they were, my grandparents were very wealthy when, when, I mean, I think they were wealthy up until the time they died. So my dad's talking about this insane jewelry collection. that has to be worth hundreds of thousands, if not over a million dollars. Your grandfather had already died. Well, my grandparents had separated.

Yeah, yeah. So they were still technically married. He's living in a separate townhouse, and she has her own. And while this is happening, he has emphysema, so he's also dying. Okay. Yeah. The last time I saw him was at that memorial, and, you know, he's dragging the air canister behind him, and he's got the little line in his nose.

So, I don't know how it is in, you know, Seattle, in Washington, but in Florida, you know, if your spouse dies, the spouse gets everything. Yeah, and he did get everything. Yeah, yeah, he did. But your father's thinking there's going to be, there's going to be some, we're going to, I'm going to go and piled for the jewelry. Oh, yeah, we're going to get the jewelry. We're going to get the cash that she's got in the safe.

Like, like, he's just, he's like immediate payday. And even though he was working, he had no impulse over his spending. So we had no money. We were always behind in rent. Fortunately or unfortunately for him, our landlord was a quadriplegic and he had no family help. He had a really hard time getting out of his house. So my dad took advantage of that. He can't come over here. He's kind of a slum lord. I know this about him. So he's never going to kick us out of this house. That's the thing that my dad did is when he got involved with someone, he would dig into them. He would look into their tax records and all that stuff.

Like, you know, how can I manipulate this person, which is just nuts. Yeah. So we get out there, and it's maybe the first or second day that we're there. And my dad asks my uncle, where's the jewelry? Like, she also had a large collection of pure silver, you know, utensils, cutlery, baking dishes. Like, that was supposed to be worth a ton of money. Yeah. And my dad's like, where is it all?

And my uncle's like, where is what? He goes, the jewelry, the cash, the silver, where is it? And my uncle goes, there isn't any. What are you talking about? He goes, mom never kept cash. Like, when do you remember her ever keeping cash? The jewelry was not real jewelry. You know, like, it was one of those things.

Like, they rolled with expensive crowds and they had money, but they were frugal. Right. So those diamonds weren't real diamonds, and that silver wasn't real silver. Right. So there was nothing. My dad had just, you know, I think that degree of that was how much he told my mom, how much money we were going to get. So now in front of her, he's being told that we're getting nothing.

Or maybe even he, he, you know, believed it by that. But if you're thinking this, if you're saying this for 10 or 20 years, people don't realize is that people that tell a lie for 20 years straight. They believe it. They, at a certain point, they've created the memory of that lie. And you can't, they'll pass a lie to tact your test. Yeah. They've completely convinced themselves. It's really interesting.

thing. When you get into repressed memories, too, that's like a whole other thing. Yeah. Well, I mean, because how many times have you had a child? And this has happened to me, especially since I got out of prison and went back and saw my old buddies. Yeah. They're telling me about things that happened. One, either I can't remember or I'm like, no, no, I, we were at the party when that happened. They're like, no, bro, we were at the gas station. Remember this and this? And I'm like, and as they're telling me, even though I have a vivid memory of being at a party when this happened, I'm like, oh you're right yeah and john's brother was there right yeah what do you talk i'm like was jennifer there and they're like no bro we didn't even meet her for another year i'm like i could have swore she was there at the party with us when this happened like just completely and i would have looked and i would have swore that's what happened oh yeah but one of my good friends danny has a tattoo i did on him 13 14 years ago and i still don't believe that i did it i have no memory hey he showed it to me have you ever had that john i always remember the tattoo.

Yeah. Ever the person, always in Oh, yeah, he's like my good friend. And he was like, dude, remember when I got in that car accident right outside where you were tattooing? I just came in and you gave me this thing as a consolation. I'm like, no. I don't remember that at all.

But I look at him like, hey, if you say so, I believe you. I was going to say, people will say, yeah, remember you said this? And I'm like, I don't remember saying it, but sounds like it sounds like me. Yeah. And the quality of it was about where I was at at that time. So, yeah, it was all blown out and shitty. But, yeah, so my dad. So silver's gone, no money.

No money. The jewelry's not real. What are you doing here? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm surprised he didn't just pack it up and fly us back to Indiana the next day. So, but he just goes into a rage. And this is the, my dad can talk himself into anything. Right.

So I think that this was a big projection of the resentment he felt towards my uncle for helping us out. Because that apartment story is only one way. My uncle got my dad out of some sketchy tax shit. Right. Yeah. And my dad, he just, my dad always wanted to be with wealthy, well-to-do people, but he resented them because he wasn't one of them. Right.

But he wasn't one of them because his pride was too big for him to pass entry-level positions. If he could just shut his mouth for two years, you know, he could be put on a fast track for success. He just couldn't do it. So I remember in the car on the way to our hotel that night, he is just raging. They have stolen everything. there was absolutely cash in that house there was absolutely jewelry in that home and my aunts had actually gone through and you know the jewelry belongs to them it's their mothers like basically the

sale of the townhouse and the sale of whatever was left over after the kids picked through everything was going to go to my grandpa but until then like the family could claim anything that was in the house that they wanted it so my aunts had actually gone through and divvied up the jewelry between them and then they were like oh you know what let's save a few things for i'm not going to say my mom's name but for her right you know we like it would be nice because you know she loved our mom also so when so they gave her i don't i don't know exactly what it was it was a small collection of jewelry and my dad was so fierce he was like they gave us the worst of the whole collection like he didn't see the collection it was already divvied up by the time he got there but he's assuming that we've gotten the

worse. They gave us the worthless stuff while they got the diamonds and they got the gold and they're going to be laughing all the way to the bank and what, you know. Well, that was true. You should have been on your P's and Q's in the moment she was sick. You should have been there when she died. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, waiting a month later. Yeah, I know that my dad did go and see her once before she died and he described her to me and sounded horrific. And I got to say goodbye to her on the phone and she was completely delirious out of her mind. I don't even think she knew that she was talking to me or who I was at that point. Yeah, but you'd think, you know, maybe don't treat your family like shit.

Like, when we moved to Washington, we didn't say goodbye to them. Like, my dad didn't even tell them. My uncle just came to town one day and was like, hey, let's hit up, you know, Mike and let's get the family together because I'm in town and they're like, oh, he moved. And my uncle was like, what? So my dad's name is Mike. Right. So, yeah.

So we're there and he's just melting down. And he's the type of guy, I think he's got like an anxious, anxious attachment where when something's bothering him, he can't not talk about it. So every time we're in the car, he's talking about it. Every time we're at the hotel, he's talking about it. The only time he's not talking about it is when we're with the family. He doesn't want them to know what he's thinking. So we start divvying up, you know, the possessions, you know, with the stickers. You can go put your color sticker on the thing that you want.

If two people want it, you'll flip for it or whatever. So after being there for a couple of days, my dad was alone in this room. he's looking for jewelry. He's looking for cash. He's looking for what he can steal to get his because he just got screwed by everybody. And he finds this box. And he opens the box and in it is years of personal correspondence

between Mary Gates and my grandmother that had family details concerning the Gates, stuff that was happening. There was handmade Christmas cards for the Christmas party that they would throw every year. She would hand-make the cards and send them out, and he had just years and years of those pictures of our family with the Gates at the summer vacation home. I mean, just a ton of stuff. You said the one photograph of Bill Gates on the cover of it. Yeah, yeah.

So there was one card in particular. They had taken a blank Time Magazine template and it stuck a black and white photo of Bill Gates when he was about 13 onto it. Right. So my dad sees that. And Bill Gates had just recently been on the cover of Time Magazine for real. So he's thinking, cha-ching, this is worth a ton of money.

Not only is it Bill Gates memorabilia, but this is foreshadowing of Bill Gates being on Time Magazine. So he's just seeing dollar signs. And he's also seeing, I ain't sharing this with them because they already screwed me. So he takes a little Manila envelope. He grabs five or six of these cards. He stuffs in the envelope, puts it in his jacket.

and we get yeah we get back to like super espionage uh so we get back to the hotel and in front of us kids he pulls the manila envelope out and says to my mom look what i found and he's like pulling them out and she's looking at everything and she's like okay and he says this is gates family personal memorabilia personal letters with family details that they don't want other people to have to my mother, this is worth millions of dollars. This whole collection could get us millions. That was the thing. My dad, he saw things in millions.

You know, like, we were the family that when the whole block would have garage sales, like we would have a weekend where every family had a garage sale. You know, everyone else is selling books for 10 cents. My dad is selling like old prints that he got from my grandma's on a nice frame for $700. And no one's buying. Yeah, just delusional. Yeah, and he's sitting there, like, mad that nobody's buying, like, doesn't anyone see the treasures that I have?

People don't go to garage sales to spend $700. Yeah, I was going to say, my mom would go, and it's $3, and she's still trying to get it for a buck. Oh, yeah. Yeah, oh, you want $0.50 for that? Would you take $25? Yeah. I got a quarter.

That's right. That's how I got my first National Geographic magazine collection. But, you know, but the family, you know, you know, car, Like, it's funny because, you know, when we talked about this on the phone, like, I can kind of, you know, in a way, it's like, okay, I just don't see that they're worth anything. But in another way, I think to a collector, they're probably were something. Maybe, maybe, I don't know how many there were, but it could be maybe, maybe it's $1,000, maybe it's $10,000. Yeah, who knows. And that is the thing.

Yeah, I could see a super tech savvy memorabilia collector paying a thousand. thousand bucks for that car how cool would it be to have that that that template that you know the time magazine or was it time yeah time magazine with the thing and then the real one that when he framed next to it frame next to it totally that's pretty cool i could see that being a thousand dollars the thing is is if my dad had actually made that like he completely missed it he could have actually created something out of these cards and actually had gotten money right i think yeah he wants to make a few phone calls and get yeah my dad was the type he was looking for like the big break. Like, when, do you remember when Taco, when Batman and Robin came out and Taco Bell had

the big Batman and Robin thing with the game pieces that you would pull off the, the sodas, you could win the Batmobile. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, yeah, we went to Taco Bell a lot. And I remember, like, as a kid, I'm like, we're going to get the Batmobile. And I remember my dad saying, if anyone's getting the Batmobile, it's me. And I, and like, you know, not even thinking like, so we could sell it. Yeah. I'm thinking like, wow, I didn't even know Dad like Batman. Yeah, my dad's going to be, you don't ever watch, but you want the Batmobile, you don't even watch it with us, like, you know, one thing that he also did that was really funny was probably when I was about 13 or 14, you know, we had been doing the Taco Bell thing

and the Monopoly, the McDonald's Monopoly. So he's spending tons of money to like get these winning game pieces that one day he says to my mom, he says, I've been going about this all wrong. There's a way to get winning game pieces without spending any money. I'm just going to go dumpster dive all the McDonald's tonight. Wow. So every time the McDonald's game was being played at McDonald's, he would go dumpster dive in the middle of the night with like a flashlight because he was convinced someone, some idiot had thrown away park place and he was going to find it. But a job was too much.

That's out of the car. Yeah, job was way too much, but we will dumpster dive McDonald's. So here's the thing I wanted to mention this because it reminded me. So I had a buddy, I had a girlfriend who had a buddy named his name was Greg. And I remember Greg had He one, he collected a couple things One of the things he collected was And it was actually the loser of presidential elections

He had a whole huge collection of the pins Used to be a big thing with the pins And it would be like the loser of the You know, he had Dukakis You know, he had like he had all the losers of that ran And he had tons of them And he's buying them for You know these are going for 50 and 100, 200 bucks

Each pin and the losers Right So the other thing he had was so Abraham Lincoln was actually was a lawyer prior to becoming president and he actually had like a motion or a certificate something from the court where Abraham Lincoln had written out and it was only a few paragraphs some kind of an agreement of some kind and he had the original agreement that that Abraham Lincoln had signed so wow was it what was it worth I don't know but he certainly and even when I saw I thought pretty fucking cool. Yeah, I was only like 20. Right, right. So I can see, but to me, that's an individual thing.

Very individual. That you're going to have to frame, you know, maybe make a little authentic authentication certificate, something. A COA. Yep. Yeah, something. Yeah, stuff like that, unless you just find the right guy, it's worth more cool points than it is dollars.

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, they come up with a plan. And so the card with the Time magazine in particular, my dad was convinced was worth a million on its own. The fucking people are delusional. It's crazy, right? Yeah.

So they come up with a plan. How do we, well, my mom points out, hey, if you sell this collection and you're going to get millions for it, it's obviously going to get back to the family. They're going to know that you stole this. Why does your mom even believe this? You know, I mean, what's she thinking? My mom was in. She was on board. Like, she was following this guy and his plan.

The thing is, is, despite my personal feelings about my mother and her character, my dad was extremely charming and very charismatic. That'll get you a long way. It will get you a long way. The unfortunate thing was he was as prideful as he was charismatic. And he could only keep up the act for so long before the pride would start and then, like, truth would reveal itself. I can keep it up forever. Yeah. I mean...

Pride, I'll throw pride to the side. I'll humiliate myself to maintain that charisma. Yeah, and that's kind of what he did here a little bit. But the difference being the family can't leave, anybody can fire the guy. You know what I mean? Like, we were forced to endure this. So they come up with a plan. Let's sneak the collection back in to that box at the townhouse.

Okay. And then in the next couple days, when enough people are in that room, you find it again. and oh do you guys remember oh my god look at these pictures and this is exactly how it went down oh my god look at these letters these pictures oh there you are oh there's bill you know like like going over it and you know they're all like oh yeah yeah those man those were sweet memories and my dad goes you know this stuff's not worth anything but you guys know i like collecting stuff i like collecting memorabilia would you care if i took this and they were like no you can totally have it gotcha bitch gotcha yeah yeah it's legit

now so yeah i remember that night just them coming up with my dad just you know this is what we're going to do with the money like can you imagine this money how how much like are all these things worth he's reading all the stuff and fucking dreamer oh complete complete dreamer and just a narcissist you know so the idea becomes we're going to write a letter to bill gates himself making him aware. Bill Gates Jr. was who, actually, no, you're right. Bill Gates Senior did get the letter. Bill Gates was actually not directly involved in this at all. He was aware that it was going on, and he had a couple conversations with my uncle. But at that point, you know, he's dealing with Microsoft and all that. So the dad is taking care of everything. I was just say, I wonder if anybody,

if when we're talking about this, people realize, like the Gates family was a wealthy family. You know, prior to Bill Gates, there was Bill Gates senior. They did very, well. And Bill Gates, then, you know, as a kid was programming, went to college, dropped out of college to start Microsoft? Did he drop out? I should know this. I know he was writing a bunch of, I know there were a bunch of blogs and paperwork, sorry, blogs and articles that he had written while in college. I don't know if he actually graduated. But I think that they learned, because you had to program it manually back then on these like pieces of tape. And I think that he learned programming in school. So he did go to school.

I don't know if you graduated maybe somebody will tell us in the comments yeah yeah so let us know so he he ends up getting out let us know bill yeah he ends up so he ends up starting Microsoft yeah you know and he started starts writing Microsoft and you know as the whatever the what do they call Microsoft it's the operating system yeah the OS Windows yeah windows yeah so he does that and of course it becomes super successful you know and then Steve jobs comes in with Apple and they yeah yeah yeah they yeah yeah did you ever see the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley. What a great movie.

I was literally, I was a great movie. I was literally in the shower this morning. And I was like, I'm going to have to bring up that movie. It's a great movie. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's a great movie for being

kind of a TV movie. Sure. It's a very dramatized and a little bit massaged story. Yeah, but it's, yeah. They don't paint a good picture of either of them. Oh, no, they're both scum bags.

Oh, my dad loved that movie. because it validated his feelings towards the Gates after this went down. Well, it's the same thing with, oh, if you hear some of the stuff that Bill Gates did, just running Microsoft, the kind of bullshit that he pulled, it's like, okay, that's illegal. You can't do it. And they would get shut down, but he'd do it for 10 years, and they'd give him a fine, and they'd shut him down. But, I mean, it's that way everywhere.

Yeah. But it's the same thing with, like, what was the other one that came out about Facebook, a social network? Great movie. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, yeah. Same thing. You watch that, and it's massage a little bit.

You have to massage them a little bit because otherwise you can't start it. You can't do a correct timeline because otherwise by the time the first 10 minutes something happens, two and a half hours later when they talk about it again, when it came to fruition, nobody remembers it's like, what have they talked about? Remember the first 10 minutes of the movie? So they have to kind of consolidate things. Yeah, 10 conversations from 10 people turn into one from one person. Exactly. We can't have 120 characters. We can have 12.

And that's excessive. Yeah. And I mean, when you're casting, you know, Timberlake and Garfield, you don't want to bring in more people and dilute the talent pool. Right. Or the look department. Oh, well, listen, what I'm understanding too now is that, like, for some reason, like some of the stars will ask for more screen time. Like, yeah, you're going to pay me my $8 million plus my percentage. But you know what? I noticed that I only have about 20 minutes of screen time. I need 30 minutes of screen time to do this. Like, oh, okay, so Jennifer, so-and-so just got cut. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Her whole character just died off. We're going to give all her lines to you. To you. Yeah. Now you're, now he's, she's a man and yeah.

Right. Yeah. People are. Anyway. It's like Wardox. Oh, yeah. He's got switched. Yeah, yeah.

When I told some people I was coming on here, I was like, well, he wrote, you know, the book that inspired the movie War Dogs. And it. Wow. Didn't they kind of, didn't they kind of rip it off a little bit? Yeah, yeah. You wrote Everham Deverely's story. Listen, I have a, I have a book that I have a book that I have.

I wrote about the lawsuit. I was hoping that you had it. And I'll give you the book. Awesome. You'll, when you read it, you'll be like, oh. That one, Bozzy X and that. I am deep into those stories. Awesome.

Awesome. All right. All right. So where we're, okay. So basically, we're going to try to just do it easy and sell it directly back to the gates. Right. We're going to write a letter that heavily implies these.

How's coming is that? Oh, it's horrible. Like, the fact that his mother has just died, my grandmother. But you wrote your personal. personal cards to a dear friend and I want you to sell them back to you instead of just saying hey do you want these you know what I'm saying and giving them to them I mean yeah as a as a money making scheme it doesn't make sense it made it didn't make sense to anybody but my dad from an ethical standpoint this is horrible this is terrible and and he was using that angle because the letter that

he wrote basically said without saying these letters in this collection have very personal information about the Gates family written to my grandmother. Right. You wouldn't want other collectors to have that information, right? So just send us a million bucks. Yeah. It wasn't worded like that, but he did catalog. Well, he cataloged the collection.

So as he's describing which each letter is saying, he's painting a picture of, I don't think you guys want this much personal information out there. Right. So it's low-key blackmail is what it is. disguised as, want to buy this memorabilia collection. They're not interested. They actually said, you know, oh, we're very sorry to hear about Sarah.

We had a lot of great times with her. We really loved her, and our hearts are with you and your family. They start off, like, the most amazing way. They're like, as far as the collection, you know, we still have a lot of those cards that we made. And, you know, that kind of stuff, we just, we don't really keep around. So we're not really interested in buying it. So my dad's like, great. So to him, well, I've offered them.

So now I have carte blanche to sell it to whoever I want, which technically he owns it. So he does, but ethically it's shitty to this family that was really generous to him when he was younger. So he starts contacting appraisers. And, you know, he's sending off these letters of what the collection is and all this stuff. And he's getting letters back from appraisers going, no one wants to touch it. We don't know how to even begin appraising this. There's no comparable collection of anything. It's the Gates.

at the time the Gates' most rich man in the world, there's no memorabilia collections out there being sold from the Gates family. So no one really knew how to assign a value to it. What year was this? 96. It's 96. Yeah. Okay.

So eBay, is eBay around in 96? No. No, I don't even think the Internet was in every home in 96. Yeah. In 96, I think it was just coming out of colleges. Before I would go to anybody, I would go, I'd look on eBay. Oh, just to see if there's anything. I think. It's funny, I did look. There's nothing like this on eBay.

So to me, what you do is you take one of the more mundane cards, you put it up on eBay. First, you start a website. Right. You put one of the, you know, talking about, you know, collecting, you know, memorabil, whatever. You put one of, and categorizing several, not all of them, then you take a couple of the more mundane cards and you put them on eBay for $1,200, 600 bucks, you know. See what they sell for. Yeah. Not only, buy them yourself. You create the market. You create the market.

You create the market. Oh, that's so smart. With a few different people. Isn't that what celebrities were doing with the digital art NFTs? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally stumbag. And, you know, it's farming. You're creating a market by, you know, cultivating a market that's not really there.

Yeah. If you did that with over the course of six months to a year, that there's a few different collectors that have these pieces. Sure. You could inflate it up. And they're selling. You know, and then you have a website that has some and another website for another somebody who has some. Within a year, every single one of these is worth $1,800, $1,200, whatever.

Oh, yeah. Then you could go to somebody and try it. You could go to one of a small bidding place and bid, and I'd show up again to bid. Because, keep in mind, if I'm paying $1,200, I'm getting $1,200 back. It's going right into your pocket. You know, what's eBay getting? 60, 30 of it? Yeah.

I mean, with you, you could even make fake buyers. So you're just selling them really. they would all be fake wires oh okay i'm saying the buyers would all be right right they'd all be you yeah yeah listen but by the time the appraisers went and looked that you tried to get them appraised and they went and said well you know let me check see if these are selling for it damn there's a market oh yeah how many do you have we're talking a couple of thousand at the most not a million it doesn't matter he's not making any money if i've got 80 of these things or 30 of them right well no but what i'm saying is we're talking about a couple thousand a card not a

million. Right. He's delusioned. Well, but he's just, oh, my dad would have never gone for a couple of thousand a card because he had his mindset. Like, he could have nothing. Oh, yeah. He would literally like keep his pride and lose it because then he could say, they didn't

know what I had, but I knew what I had. Listen, I'm getting a new Mercedes out of it. I mean, legit. Right. Yeah. Or maybe buy your family a home. Like, you know, something. Yeah.

Yeah. Not your family, my family. Like, we didn't have a nice home. I wasn't directing that at you. All right. So, yeah, all the appraisers turn him down. Right. So he creates his own appraisal.

Nice. The collection's worth too many. I don't know. You know, you're selling me on your dad. I'm sorry. You know, I know how this was supposed to go. I actually thought about it on the drive over and I was like, you know, if after all this, Matt pulls me into a side room and says, I actually know your dad.

I put it together when you were talking and hears his information. You know. I won't be shocked. I text him every couple of days. Well, the thing is is, and this is coming up. he got into he was a mortgage broker also and I knew that of course he was yeah I knew that yeah you guys probably did some deals together he probably you know Gary Sullivan might have sold him a property or two or Mr. Black yeah Michael or whatever he's calling himself now but my dad

had he actually thought about how to use mortgage broking to scam the way he thought about this he would have done what you did a hundred times over like he and he never would have stopped I'm like I say bro you're selling me on this guy yeah yeah hey if I had his contact information, I would pass it along, but I do not. So he makes his own appraisal. Two million is what he wants for this collection. One million for the Time Magazine card and one million for the rest. And he starts, you know, shipping it out to every major publication, Time Magazine, Washington Post, you know, computer technology magazines, and then some private memorabilia collectors.

So this whole process, you know, we come home from the funeral and everything we just talked about was probably about a year or so, you know, hearing back from the appraisers, hearing back from the gates. And then you have life that's happening. So this all sounds, as I'm talking about it, like it happens really fast. But it was stretched out over about a year, year and a half. So he starts blasting out and he's getting refusals from everybody. Nobody is interested in this collection whatsoever.

But a couple of the publications because of their close relationship with the Gates family, they reach out to Bill Gates Senior. So they contact Bill Gates Senior and they let him know this guy. Mike is contacting us. He claims to have personal handwritten letters from your late wife. Right. Because she's passed away at this point. And cards and personal family information. Like do you know this person? Like we're giving you the heads up. And he was like, oh, I know him. Do not buy from this person. And they're saying, well, we've heard from him a lot. He's really aggressive about selling this. So just whatever you want to do with that information, let us know. So my uncle at the time, you know, my extended family has no idea this is happening. We know this is happening, but what our dad is selling it to us as is, I've tithed and give to the church ever since I was in my 20s. They're the scriptures that lay out that we have great wealth that we are destined for because I'm following

this prosperity gospel. And then he actually found a televangelist that put a number on it that said when you tie that 10%, that's just gone. You just owe that to God. But when you tie, when you give on top of that, whatever that number is, times that number by 10. And that's the amount you're getting back. And my dad was an Excel spreadsheet guru. Like, I don't remember him never, not have having an Excel spreadsheet taped to the wall by his computer. And he's got exact dates of all the times he gave to which televangelists, which churches, and he's got that number times by 10, and he's got it. In case God needs documentation.

In case God needs, you know, a bill or a memo to tell Gates how much to send. That's how God does it. He's like, you have a, I want to give to you, Mike, but do you have a spreadsheet? Well, I do have a spreadsheet. So he's like, yeah, and it's because of my faithfulness. that we are getting this windfall of cash from the gates. Like, the fact that our family stole all that jewelry and the cash and everything, that was destined to be.

I see it now. We were never supposed to have any of that because that's tainted family money. This is clean money that we're getting directly from God. And I'm 11 at the time. I hear him. Yeah, yeah, no. I mean, you know, if I could just go back to believing. because I'm 11 and I believe everything my dad's saying and we're raised in a very strict

church. We're Pentecostal. So things have been strict my whole life. God runs the show, despite the fact that the show's been falling off the track since I was born, the perception I've been given is everything's in control. We're just going through the hard season of faithfulness before we get to the glorious season of reaping. Right.

I hear you. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense of me. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And again, my dad is charming and charismatic. And he's got scripture to back him up. So yeah, so my uncle is at a hotel that he owned in Georgia. And he's having this really expensive dinner with his wife. And the matri-D comes to him and says, hey, you have an emergency phone call in your room that you need to take from your sister. Now, my grandpa is dying of emphysema. So he's like, oh, man, like, you know, because there were a few close calls where he had to be resuscitated. So he's like, oh, man, it happened. Okay, I'll go up to the room. He goes up to the room. He gets on the phone with my aunt and she goes, I need to talk to you about Mike. And he goes, okay, what about Mike? She goes, well, I just got a phone call from Bill Gates, senior, personally. Now, you know, they hadn't

spoken in probably a couple of decades at this point. So like when Bill Gates calls, it's like, oh, what's, hi, you know, what's going on? And she says, yeah, apparently Mike has taken that memory, that collection of memorabilia that he convinced all of us was worthless and he's trying to sell it for a million dollars or he tried to sell it for a million to the gates family they turned it down and now he is trying to sell it really to anyone that will buy it and bill gates senior was just made aware and my uncle is like what no one because it makes no sense right and two like so he lied to us about like shocking well it's shocking but this family is very close i mean to this day i mean my uncle talked on the phone the other night for six hours like i've never talked to someone that long

never talked to a family member that long no no i don't think that i spoke to my dad that that much maybe even collectively so and yeah i talked i had a joint call with him and my aunt a week ago that was four hours like we're very close tight-knit family so this was extremely hurtful and damaging really that he would do this so they're what are we going to do we got we got to confront him we got to convince him to stop. And it wasn't stop so you can't make this money. It was the gates are going to come after you. Are you an idiot? Like Bill Gates Sr. and his high power attorney will ruin. You don't have the money to defend yourself even if you had a defense, which you don't. Yeah. So basically, they decide to get a group call going with my dad. And it's my two aunts, my uncle,

and my grandpa, who's dying of emphysema, and he has C-O-P-D at the time, so he can barely even speak. So they call my dad on a group call, and they confront him, and they're like, what are you doing? You are not thinking about what you are doing. This is the Gates family. This is the most powerful and influential family in the world at that time. They can absolutely ruin. They will take this public. They will publicly smear you, and then you will have no reputation to work.

What are you going to do for your family? Even put that aside. This is a family that was personal friends of your family and was such good friends of your mother. Yeah. They wrote a personal handmade card. Many. Over and over, like throughout your entire life. Yeah.

Yeah. Like, you know, drop it. Yeah. Yeah. Drop it. And he dug his heels in and he just said, this is my property and you don't have the right to tell me what to do with my property. So my grandpa. who, again, has C-O-P-D, he speaks for probably the first time in weeks.

I'm cutting you out of the will. No, no, no. He's like, Michael, I'm begging you. Like, he's literally dying. Right. And he's begging my dad, stop what you are doing. The exact words was, do not fuck with the gates. You don't know what you're doing.

And so my dad said, you know, this belongs to me. And I'm not going to listen to any of you. And he hung up on all of them. So over the course of the year and a half since the collection was stolen, like I said, he just constantly talks about how our family had screwed him, how they had stolen the cash and the silver and the jewelry and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like he never got over it. And now, well, technically it wasn't stolen. He showed it to your family. Well, no, he's going on about how they stole from him. Oh, they had stole all the cash jewelry and silver.

Because that's my, that's the thing is what my dad is doing is. Yeah, yeah. What my dad is doing is f*** up, and it's a scam. It's not real. And you could even say he got it through fraudulent means because he lied about what his intentions were. He knowingly lied. It was a plan that they made up the day before. So, but all of that is okay because it's justified by the fact that this imaginary silver and jewelry and cash that we never even saw was supposedly stolen from us. So he's talking about that. So now he's starting to get more personal about the family. Oh, and you're aunt and her uncle are fat and disgusting if you ever watch them eat like he was going off about them and then my uncle had been divorced a couple of times and oh the womanizer that can't keep a wife my dad had also been divorced at that time right just he's just tearing him down and then they sit us down one day and they tell us we are no longer going to speak to your uncles or your uncle your aunts or your grandpa who's on the verge of dying and we're like why And they were like, well, because the Lord ordained that this wealth is coming to us.

And they have stepped in and have asked us to not sell this collection. They're putting the pressure on us to stop because they're not going to get any of the money. It's the devil's work. It's the devil's work. They're listening to the devil. They're trying to take what the Lord has already given us. That was the thing. The Lord already gave it to us.

I heard like a hundred times. Well, then where the is it? Like, where is it? So he's saying, So from now on, this is the rule. When anyone from the family calls, you immediately say, my parents are not home, and I'm actually about to step out, but I'll have, I'll let them know you called. And then you hang up the phone and you walk to the front door and you open it and you

step out. And then you come back in because you didn't lie. This is stupid, but okay. It's, I mean, this is like. Still manipulates, still misleading. But okay, whatever. Yeah. And we did it.

Like, that was the thing was, you know. it's bad enough if he does that. But you're telling your innocent children who are hurt by the fact that they don't understand why their uncles and aunts and cousins are suddenly not in their lives anymore. And they're watching this man fall apart. Right. Yeah. And our mom is going along with it, like pretty hard.

So the job at Raytheon eventually ended. And that was the most stable job I ever saw him have. And it was maybe a year and a half, two years. Maybe. Yeah, two years, maybe. and he just didn't even try to get another job because we had millions of Bill Gates money that was sitting in the shoebox. Yeah, it was sitting in the shoebox just waiting to be paid out.

The Lord already gave it to us. We just have to receive it. So at this time, so now that he's not working, he's blasting out the offers. Every time an offer comes back to night, he lowers the prices a little bit and he sends it off again. He's harassing these people. And then we are part of this church. It's called the nice church. So we're living in Indiana.

Indiana is a big church state. Like if Kentucky's the Bible Belt, then Indiana's like the dress shirt that gets tucked into it, you know? So we're going to this like very, very Pentecostal church called the Nice Church, the Northwest Indiana Church of Evangelism. And my dad starts getting really involved with the church. You know, like look how perfect my family looks. Look how happy my children are. Look at my wife. She smiles and dotes on my every word.

Oh, also I play guitar. I'm going to join your church band. my kids are going to join the Royal Rangers, which is like the church equivalent of the Boy Scouts, we're going to just like integrate into this church and become like a part of it. So that's what he does. And he, and you know, the pastor loved him. And my dad gets off on that. He gets off on being around people of importance and convincing them that he is one of them.

But he hates them at the same time. He hates everything that they stand for, but he wants the status. And he gets off on convincing you that he's one of them. of you, even though he's clearly not. So, yeah, so that's going on. And he's unemployed for months. And so he gets his broker's license. And he works with this employment agency that gets him a job at a local, what do you call it, a firm? Or brokerage business? For mortgages. Yeah. Okay, yeah. All right. So having never done mortgages before in his life, he went from new hire to employee of the month in, like, record time, like weeks almost. Like he would get leads. And he,

and they would be closed, like super quick. But if you have no morals or ethics, you can go very far in the, you know, I never even thought about that. Yeah, yeah, he was probably, yeah, he was probably whiting out some stuff. Yeah, he's just blatantly lying to people about what they're signing. Yeah, yeah. So I remember him bringing me there one time. It was, I don't know, maybe I was staying home sick, so he had to bring me to work or

whatever it was. But they had a list on the wall of their top employees, and my dad is number one. and so my dad comes home one day and he says oh they're having a contest at work whoever closes the most loans this quarter gets a three-day paid cruise it's just going to be you know your mom and me but how great is that like I'm already the best I'm going to get that cruise so he worked and he won unfortunately and I don't know all the details but the cruise did not happen what happened was he was called into his boss's office and they were like look something got screwed up along the way. The cruise is not available. So what we're going to do is we are going to

pay for your entire family to spend three days wherever you want. We will pay for the hotel. We will pay the travel. We will pay the food. We just can't give you the cruise. That was not okay to my dad. He came home just furious that these guys lied to me. They baited me to get my, you know, to get my professional know-how they made all this money off of me and they screwed me and my mom's like yeah but they're making it up he goes does it matter that's not the promise that they gave me so they this offer was under false pretences this is fraud same way he got the cards same way he yeah 100% yeah it's not okay when other people do it so a few days later he's fired right and i found out it was because he printed out the information for the crews, like the whole flyer that they had

passed around the office or whatever. And he wrote on it basically calling the boss out, I want my crews or everyone's going to know what a liar you are. And he taped it in the break room for everyone to see. And they fired him within a couple of days of that. And, you know, that's his fault. That's the boss's fault. Oh, I got fired because he didn't like being told what he was doing wrong. He didn't like keeping his promises to me. Okay. So he goes back to the employment agency and they find him a place at another broker place. Same cycle starts again. He's immediately successful. He's well liked by everyone. He's doing great. And then suddenly he's fired. And he's fired because he got maybe a couple months into this job. He's like, oh, my boss is

an idiot. They're so slow with how they do things. I could do this better on my own. Everybody's an idiot, but they're signing your check. A hundred percent. Yeah, yeah. You're calling them boss. Right. So did something right. So he stole a bunch of leads from the office and brought them home and tried to close them himself from home outside the company and immediately gets caught.

So they fire them. So he goes back to the employment agency and they say, yeah, we're not working with you anymore. You're a problem. Yeah, you're a problem and we're just not sticking our necks out there for you anymore. So my dad's like, oh, fine. So he starts his own mortgage-broking company at our house called LaSalle funding and doesn't work at all. He sits at his computer and just clicks the mouse. And the best way that I can describe him because it's the most common memory I have is oversized, stretched out tank top, witty-tides.

George Costanda. George Costanza. Like straight up. Yeah, him posing on the couch. That's my dad. And my dad was so interesting. He was so vain. He was completely bald up top.

But he would grow the sides and the back out so he could wear a hat and make it look like he had a pull out of hair. And then he grew out this obnoxious mustache. And he would have two combs in the car. So we would pull up to a place. Now, he looks like shit, but the hair is going to be on point. So we would pull up to a place and he's like, whoa, whoa, hold on. And we'd have to wait and he'd rip that hat off. he'd grab his brush and make sure that the few strands that he's got left or, you know, where

they need to be, he put the hat on, then he grabbed the comb and he'd make sure that the mustache was good, and then we'd go. I mean, it was wild, man. Okay, so the agency will work with him anymore. So there's a, at the church that we're in that we've, like, integrated into, and now he's on the praise and worship team. So he's, like, in the church meetings. Praise and worship team. Yeah, I know. You need a team for that. So they're having a meeting one day, and one of the guys says, oh, by the way, I'm looking for a new accountant at my office. If any of you know anybody that's looking for work, I'm looking for somebody. I'm an accountant.

Yeah, preferably somebody that's in the church. And yeah, exactly. My dad's like, oh, I'll do it. Is he an accountant? I mean, he had a business degree. Oh, okay. So, I mean, he understood that money was a thing. Right.

But I don't know if he understood exactly how it worked. He didn't an accounting degree, you know. Yeah. He's not saying he's a CPA, so. Right, right. So he goes to work for this company called Goff and Goff. It was owned by a guy named Michael Goff. And he was there, I don't know, maybe a couple of months.

Because again, it was, oh, man, I really liked this guy before I started working for him. He was, you idiot. Like, just the way that they file pay. Like, these guys are morons. I could run this company way better. And so he comes home one day and he tells my mom, he's like, you'll never believe what I found out. She goes, what? He goes, they didn't file their taxes properly for the past, like, three or four years.

They're, like, making fraudulent claims on their taxes. And my mom goes, how'd you find that out? He goes, well, today when everyone left the office, I went snooping, and I went through this file cabinet, and I found all the tax records, and I just went through them. And I was like, why? Like, work and make the paycheck. Bring money home to your family. Why are you snooping?

I mean, I was like, oh, I'm going to call him out on it. So at the next church meeting, my dad goes, you know, I have a real problem. problem with, you know, the higher-ups, you know, preaching about money and preaching about tithing and giving and pay Caesar what is Caesar and gods what is gods. But Michael Goff, you are completely screwing over the IRS with your tax. And like calls him out in front of the entire group. It doesn't go well for him. Right. Yeah. And within a couple of weeks, he's, it's made apparent that we are no longer welcome at this church. And my dad's like a bunch of corrupt fake Christians, like, when I bring the light to the sin, I get cast out. It was just, it was

unbelievable what was going on. All right. So, so at the time that all this is happening, before we left the church, we were having friends from the church come over. And once we got to know them, my dad would be like, I need to tell you this story, because we need prayer warriors on our side. So he would talk about the collection of Bill Gates' memorabilia, not how he got it, Not any of the other stuff. Just I have this collection. It's worth a lot. Like God has told me that we are going to get two million from this.

I need people to pray with me over this collection because the Bible says that if two or more gather in my name, there I am. So, I mean, we would regularly have six, seven, eight, nine people from church come over. And we would all be laying hands on this collection in our living room until like two in the morning. like insane and you know Pentecostals I think you're Catholic right right yeah we speak and they speak in tongues it's this made up language and and the thing about it is every for a limited time at McDonald's enjoy the tasty breakfast trio your choice of chicken or

sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery when you're a forward thing You don't just bring your A game, you bring your AI game. Workday is the AI platform that transforms the way you manage your people, money, and agents, so you can transform tomorrow. Workday, moving business forever forward. On July 18th, get excited.

This is big! For the summer's biggest adventure. I think I just smurf my pants. That's a little too excited. Sorry! Smurfs. Only dinner's July 18th. A person I've ever known that spoke in tongues, they say the same fake phrase each time.

So I heard my dad speak in tongues my entire life. I could still tell you what it sounded like. I could perform it. It's a performance. I was at my wife's, my wife's former sister-in-law, they go to a church where they do that. And she's like, I mean, it's just people scream and they speak in tongue. Yeah, she's like, oh yeah, yeah, they pass out. yeah it's too much where I live in Pensacola I mean it's predominantly churches like that and we have

a revival area called Brownsville and you have pastors that decide at 10 p.m. when everyone's ready to go all right everyone single file line I'm touching everyone's foreheads there's 3,000 people in that church and they do and you know 2,000 of them like collapse and they're doing this I was always they like mattresses on the floor I mean literally like yeah they had people catching them and shit like I remember when I was a teenager like going to a youth group and one guy did that and I'm like oh here he comes here he comes I'm ready I'm ready God I'm ready ow and be like wait what happened I'm not on the ground the guy just hit me like nothing nothing nothing nothing happened yeah yeah all right so so yeah we have people coming over and praying we're praying as a family my dad starts preaching to

us late at night like school night it's 11 p.m and he's got us on the couch and he's reading scripture to us and preaching to us and me and my brother are like falling asleep because we have to be up at 5 a.m. to get ready for school and he's like screaming at us for falling asleep and telling us how disrespectful we're being stand up you're going to stay awake stand up and he would go on for another hour I mean it was it was psychotic like my sister at the time is like six or seven and he's making her stay up like she doesn't she didn't even comprehend what's being read to her really and in a lot of ways we couldn't either so all right so basically Basically, Gates Sr. has had enough with people reaching out to him going, he's still writing us letters. He's still sending us this. Now the price is this. Now the price is that. And he just decides, I'm just going to cut this off. And so basically our dad, this is actually really funny. He told us one day, you know, the Gates fan, Bill Gates is going to wake up and the Lord is going to have softened his heart to write us a check for $2 million. One day, I'm going to walk to.

that mailbox thinking it's just bills and our life is going to change and it did happen right but it was a process server it was a cease and desist letter like i remember he got the letter and came back in and went bill gates and we all were like oh and i remember when he opened it and he read it he goes hmm he's playing hardball yeah yeah yeah he he's offered us half a million Should we take it, kids? This is the letter that they give you just before they should check. Well, what this is is the devil trying to cast doubt on the situation. So what we need to do is lean into it harder with faith.

Wow. Yeah. So it was a cease and desist letter, basically saying if we hear that you're continuing to offer up these documents, we're going to take you to court. I don't know if they actually have legal recourse because my dad technically. owned it. I was going to say it wouldn't matter. It wouldn't matter. Now you got to get. Well, yeah, you got to go get a lawyer. You have to get and if you stand up and say, oh, I'm going to represent myself. Okay, well, you're done. You're going to lose. Yeah. Yeah. Even if they're wrong, you're going to lose.

Totally. Totally. Yeah. I've known lawyers that have said, like, I went to court today, today, you know, and I won the motion. And you're like, oh, good. And they're like, oh, I never should have won this motion. Like, it was total bullshit. Yeah. You know, but the other attorney did, and this is against another attorney, but, you know, he's new. He doesn't really know anything. He wrote a horrible response the judge was already irritated with him he wrote he he went my way and mine was shit i mean even great lawyers can sack a case look at the o j simpson yeah oh yeah yeah yeah those lawyers shit the bed right and left probably would have been a not guilty plea anyway but then they didn't help in there and the whole racist you know even on that case it always makes me

think you know because i've always people are like oh he did it he did it i've always been yeah i hear you But the moment you've got a detective who's sitting in the stand, whether everything he said about the case or not is true. And he's lying and blatantly, he's clearly a racist. He's lying about, he's lied in the past. He's lying on the stand saying, oh, I've never used the N word. And then they come out and say, oh, you have, you actually try to retire based on saying that you hated, you know, this race of people. So like, I'm sorry, I can't believe you. Yeah, if you don't handle it with honor, then we kind of have to give it to the other guy.

Or else we're China. That's what you say. And listen, I'm not saying he's not guilty. I'm saying in a court of law, yeah, in a court of law, I can't find you guilty based on this man's on that evidence. And now the evidence is gone. Right. Now we didn't find blood. Now there's no evidence that really that much evidence that shows that you did it.

Like, oh, we've got a problem. Like I can't. Now he's dead. Yeah, he is. You know what's funny about that? Listen to this. I got an OJ story. We had somebody reach out to me and say, hey, look, I wrote a book about O.J. Simpson.

There's a whole different angle, blah, blah, blah. Oh, I watched that one. Yeah, he was strange. And, you know, but here's the thing. So sometimes I get great guests, you know, which are like, oh, my God, it's going to get four or five hundred thousand views. It's amazing. Like, oh, my God, this is amazing.

I got to, you know, he's famous. It's an amazing story and he tells it amazingly. Great. We talk. I ask some questions. It's a semi-interesting. case, but in the end, it reminds me of like Indiana Jones, right? Like, you know, the problem with Indiana Jones is there's a whole movie about stopping the Germans, the Nazis, from

getting a hold of the arc and opening it. In the end, they get a hold of the arc and they open it. Like, what did we just watch all this for? Although it was super entertaining. Well, they did melt that guy's face, so there was a payoff. Pretty cool, right? Like, you know, for the time, you know, not bad as special effects. Anyway, so the point is that I listened to it, whatever. It sat in the queue for weeks. Yeah. And it just low priority.

Yeah, low priority. We know it's going to get 15,000 views. It's, it's, so first of all, remote podcasts don't get as many views as in-person podcasts. Right. Two, wasn't super long. Story wasn't super interesting. I didn't make it through it.

Right. Because he kept doing this and, like, all of it. Like, he's looking for the story. In the end. It didn't seem engaging to me. Well, in the end, OJ still killed. Like, you didn't come up with it. You just said, hey, there's a guy.

There was another guy. And it was because of this. Okay, but. Well, that's been a theory for ever. But didn't O.J. still kill her? And, and, kill him and her? Oh, yeah. But not because of why you think.

And by the way, there was another guy. I don't give a fuck. Like, that's just stupid. Yeah. Yeah. Who cares? That video was in the queue for weeks. And then we had put out a video.

I want to say we put out a video that didn't do great. And so sometimes we'll put something out and you think, oh, this is going to do okay, and we'll put it out, and it doesn't. Right. Like it gets like 6,000 views in two days. Or let's say 6,000 views the first day or 4,000 or 3,000 first day. It's like, holy shit. And what that does is it takes our watch time, the average watch time, it starts to dive.

Right. And we're trying to keep it at a certain level so that over the course of the month, you get a decent check. So there's so many metrics to this that I've never considered. Oh, yeah. It's like click, like views don't really mean much. time but they're semi connected like so it's oh so you got to keep people engaged it's not even getting them to click on the video oh yeah I've got videos that have a hundred thousand that are two hours long that have a hundred thousand views and the video has made six hundred

dollars and then we've got other other videos that have a hundred thousand views and are an hour and a half but people watched more of it right and it's it's fourteen hundred dollars even though the same is that monthly or just a one time well I'm just saying let's say within a few within a month or two let's say gotcha the point is is that we looked at it

and Colby will come back the first day he'll go listen I think he's got 3,000 3,500 views maybe it's going to get another it's going to stop it

5,000 views 10,000 views like I'm going to go ahead and release that OJ video at least we can get another 5,000 6,000 views okay cool

he releases it it actually got the first day like 1,500 1500 sorry 1500 sorry 1500 1500 sorry am I saying 15

thousand views. I mean, that's great. Wow, that's pretty good. And then the next day, I'm driving to a doctor's appointment. And I've got my, I'm in my wife's car, and I've got, you know, she's got one of those little arms that holds your phone.

Oh, yeah. And I'm driving, because I went the back way. I don't know the way. And also, and I see, I have the push notifications for people that leave comments. And I see that like, I'm driving. I'm looking at the map quest or the maps map quest. Don't say anything, but don't.

The Google map, and it goes, Bing. Bing. Bing. Bing. Oh, and then it. Bing, Bing, Bing. And I'm like, the fuck. And over the next five minutes, like, this thing is going nonstop.

And so finally, I'm like, what the fuck? And then somebody texts me, and I click on the text, and it says, yo, bro, I don't know if you realize this, but you released a video about O.J. Yesterday, it was just announced that he died. And I went, holy shit. So you were first in line before all the other podcasters to talk about OJ. Exactly. So anybody.

Everyone went for it. Oh, anybody who had just heard he died and went on YouTube to try and get the information. My videos, like the first one that shows, it got, it's got over 500,000 views right now for my shitty little channel. Oh, wow. That guy got 500,000. Are you kidding me? Listen, over the next day, it got 200,000 views. That most any one of my videos has ever gotten.

ever and then of course it trailed off because within two days everybody jumped on it on it but still it's now but you made yours i mean it's got over 500 000 right now what timing just a fluke just yeah that's amazing what a what a fluke yeah like fuck out very lucky yeah yeah oh listen i'll i'll i'd rather be lucky than good oh you know that's all that's the whole thing yeah so anyway sorry back to your thing okay Where are we at? Okay, so he gets a cease and desist letter, not the check we thought we were getting. So now he's scared like, oh, man, you know, the family's right.

Now he's threatening legal action. And after a few days, so he tells us, he goes, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to fast and I'm going to pray about this. And I'm going to consult with God about what the right thing to do is. So, yeah, he fasted and prayed for a couple days, and then he came up to us. And he said, okay, so this is my plan. I'm going to box up the entire collection. And I'm just going to send it to build.

Bill Gates, Sr. so that he knows I don't have it anymore, and I'm not trying to sell it. And the Lord has told me that if I take that leap of faith, actually sending this collection away, that Bill Gates, Sr. will send us a check for $2 million. He's really delusional. Oh, he was all in. Does your mom have any idea at this point? No, my mom was in. The thing is, and I'll get to this later, but I don't have a relationship with my mother.

right but I have relationships with people who have relationships with her right and according to them her view on this is I never believed anything I never took part of any of the abuse I was just as abused as everyone else and scared it was all your dad right I don't buy it because I wasn't six when this happened I mean the last time I dealt with both of them I was 18 years old so I remember with my 18 year old adult memory what these people did and what they were like and I don't buy that my mom was 100% on board with this right up to a point there was a point where she jumped off the train for sure so yeah so he sends the the collection with with a handwritten apology letter and and my uncle and aunts get an update from gate senior you know he's given this to us with

a apology letter so we consider this to be done now and so we start so we leave well we got really kicked out of that church once he exposed the tax stuff so we start going to the this smaller church and I think my dad's plan was I'm going to integrate into this really small church and then when we get this money I'm going to help build it into this bigger church so I will naturally be given a position of authority and importance because he really thought he had a direct line to God like he would redo a scripture and then he would tell you what that scripture meant and it was not anywhere close to what the scripture was saying he just felt like he had a special thing so we start going to this other church and the

The biblical brainwashing just, it gets intense, like, everything that happened. So, you know, going back to the Tithing Giving, we had a very close family friend. I won't say their name, but the son was like my best friend. So his parents got pregnant. And it was this big deal because they had struggled to get pregnant for years. They were really trying. And then once they gave up, God has blessed us with a baby. And we went to the, and the dad was actually a surgeon, so very wealthy, of course, family.

and it's funny because like we always hung out with way better families and it's only occurred to me as an adult like they probably knew exactly what was going on they probably felt terrible for us which is why we were allowed over you know so we go to the hospital to visit the new baby they might have just found your dad entertaining they could have been most people to hang out with me just nothing because they think hey we're on the same level right just think this guy is entertaining yeah he opens his mouth and the party starts yeah yeah like I wouldn't lend him money right right I wouldn't give him my soche. He does keep us laughing. Oh, that's funny. I wouldn't take him to the Bank of America Christmas party. Exactly. Yeah, so we arrive at the hospital to visit this new baby, and we found out that the baby was born dead.

And the family is absolutely devastated. And on the way home, my dad says, well, it was born dead because they don't tithe. This guy is just. Like, and the thing was is at the time, I'm still, it wasn't until I was, I was much older that I realized all this was bullshit. So I'm just like, oh, they didn't. Oh, they don't know about tithing. How can they not know about tithing?

It's like the main thing. Did you ever have an allowance when you were a kid? Yeah. All right. So we had an allowance. All my friends were getting like 20 bucks a week. We got $2.50 a week allowance. And on an Excel spreadsheet, we had 35 itemized items.

We had to do every single day from, the moment we got up to the moment we went to bed, and if one of them was missed, we did not get the 50 cents for that day. I mean, it's insane. Say, I'll just forsake the whole $2.50. Oh, well, then you would just get hit. You just get hit.

And then at the end of the week. So, I mean, he would literally, he would grab the list, go through the whole thing. And if it, you know, one of them is sweep the kitchen. If it had been longer than an hour since you did that, it might be dirty again. Right. So it's like, no, I did, but this is new.

We'd be like, nope, not good enough. So if, you know, with at the end of the week, if we got the $2 or $2.50, we had to tithe and give on that money. So we're already being given slave wages for like dozens of things we have to do for a day. Everyone else I'm seeing, wait, you're getting 20 bucks a week because you take the trash out every night and you do the dishes. Right. Can I come live at your house? Right. What the hell?

So the tithing and giving thing is beaten into us from the time we're little. So it's like, oh, man, their baby died. Why didn't they tithe? Why didn't they give? It's so obvious. Like, we're so brainwashed that, like, tithing and giving is the way to success or to keep your unborn children alive, according to my dad. Yeah.

All right. So he does the same thing that he did at the old church. He integrates. He becomes friends. We're the perfect family. The pastor's coming to our house. We're going to the pastor's house. Church was smaller, so the pastor was a little more accessible.

And he would come over, like, people would come over. he would be like, okay, I need prayer warriors. I need to tell you guys what's happened. But the way he would present the story is, my family stole everything from me. I should have gotten blah, blah, blah from my mom dying, and I didn't. What I got was this collection, and now that's been stolen from me. So now, it's really funny. After one of those meetings, now we have a family meeting. And my dad says, so I know that everyone is thinking that, you know, it's over because I sent the collection back.

and, you know, all this money that God promised us is not coming, but it's actually not true. It's the opposite. We actually are going to have more money coming now. We're like, okay, how? And he goes, well, I was reminded, I wrote down the scripture, but I forget it. I think it's Proverbs something, or Paul something. One of those P chapters. It basically says when a man steals from another man, he must repay seven times the amount that he stole.

So my dad saw this situation as, okay, this is what the Lord has declared. that the Gates family used their power and influence to steal that collection back from me, the collection that God had blessed me with that was going to lead us to this insane wealth. That collection is worth $2 million. So now we're getting $14 million from Bill Gates and his family, unequivocally. And that's just for the collection. All the other stuff that already existed on the Excel spreadsheet from him sending welfare money to John Hagee on TBN. All that's added in.

Bill Gates is on the hook for the entire bill. So at this point, it's like 14 and a half or whatever it is. It's freaking nuts. All right. So one day, one Sunday, after church, he's like, hey, we're going to go on a little drive. And where to? Well, there's this cool little neighborhood. And there's this cool little house that I want to show you guys.

And we're like, oh, great. Now, the house that we're living in at this time, it's reeked of, wet dog like whoever had the house the day before us their dog smell just got into the carpet and they didn't replace the carpet so our house smelled like wet dog the crawl space was full of mold and mildew and my brother's asthmatic and like black mold was like growing up you know like past the carpet onto the wall he was going to the hospital the floor in the corner of our room and in the closet was actually coming off the wall so you could just move it and you'd be looking down into the crawl space. I mean, it is a horrible home. So when he says there's this cool neighborhood with

this cool little house, we're thinking, did he get the gates money? Right. Oh, are we moving? This is great news. So this cool little house was a sprawling million dollar mansion that at the time was a model home. And it was called the Bordeaux. And it was in Chesterton, Indiana. I since have tried to find it. And I mean, this is 98 or 99 maybe. Right. So, If it was ever on the internet, I can't find it now. But we tore through this home, and man, I could describe to you exactly. There's a movie theater, eight bedrooms. It's a three-story, and it's sitting on a wildlife preserve that's like a couple acres.

I mean, it is a breathtaking home. And so we walk through it, and then we get into the car, and he goes, okay, children, I have something to tell you. We're like, what? He goes, the Lord spoke to me. The Lord led me to this home. That's how I found this home. And the Lord has said that because of our faithfulness of what we have been patient through the last couple of years with losing your guys' uncle and aunts and the gates and the funeral

and all of this, this is the home that he's blessing us with for all of our faithfulness. What's wrong with him? Why do that? I don't know. I mean, that's the thing, like the why. One thing that comes up for me in therapy is that if I have a why, even if you're it's fucked up, it helps me with a roadmap to empathy and then forgiveness. And I had to find other roadmaps for this guy because the why doesn't make sense. Like, they're delusion. And my mom's on

board, so it's folly adieu. It's delusion for two. And then all of us believe it. So it's just, it's a whole family of delusional people. Well, she's, I mean, she's enabling. A hundred percent. It's like a pathological liar will lie just because they actually derive enjoyment out of fooling someone. They feel better about themselves. Totally. Because they fooled you. Even if very quickly, their lie will come unraveled and you'll realize that it was all a lie, they can convince themselves that that doesn't matter or that, you know, no, I never said that or I mean, because they can create this own delusion within themselves that they have no. And if they can get you to buy the second lie that covers the first, well, of course, that's what he's doing. He just

keeps altering it, altering it. It's always somebody else's fault. And this happened. That's not my fault. And this happened. That's not my fault. And I did this. And they said they do this. And they didn't do this. And the Lord said this. Yeah. I don't want to make a blanket statement about Christians because I have a lot of friends and clients who are Christians and I respect that. But the majority of the Christians that I personally dealt with growing up, because I was raised by this man, were all kind of like him. Like our actions, no matter how awful, are justified because we have God behind us. And if I do something that's a little f*** up,

then on Sunday I'll just ask for forgiveness. And that's just kind of how it was. All right. So we end up touring this home every Sunday for like two years. Like the realtors knew us by name, us kids. We were given strict instructions. Do not say a word when we are in this home. We don't want to give them any indication that we're really interested,

even though we're showing up every week. So obviously we're interested. And after a while, the realtors, they would have, like, our favorite snacks and treats. And I think they just felt bad for us. Because to look at us, we look poor. And we're touring a million dollar model home. Right. Like, it makes no sense.

So, yeah, we start doing that. And then, yeah, my dad starts planning out the cars he's going to buy and the friends that we're going to have. And we're told this entire time from the moment he steals this collection, do not breathe a word of this to any of your friends. We don't want them to know that we have this money coming. And we don't really want anyone to know that we have this money. Those two things make sense. And as soon as we get it, they'll never hear from us again because we will be gone.

We are going to leave all of our, ew, lower class friends. And we're going to move into the sprawling Bordeaux mansion. and we're going to be going to wine and cheese dinners with our fucking neighbors. That's what God would want. Yeah, that's what God is telling us we're going to do with our time and money. So don't tell anyone because we don't want them to know, and they're never going to see us again anyway. So, okay. Okay, so at this point, my grandpa is on his last lungs, really, his emphysema.

And with emphysema, you can't get the full breath in. You can't expel it all out so you get a buildup of stuff in your lungs. It's horrible. so basically at this time my aunt is called by my grandpa's doctor and he goes hey there is this surgery that is now just available that can lengthen your father's life for four to seven years and basically what they do is they take the lower two-thirds of your lung and they just snip it off and so you can get that full breath it was about 300,000 for the surgery and it was not covered by insurance whatsoever So at this time, the inheritance that, like basically the amount of money that's available, like if he died that day, all four kids get this amount.

Right. And it would take all four kids giving almost all their inheritance away to pay for my grandpa to have this surgery, which my uncle and my aunts, they were like, absolutely, we would rather have him than the money. Because they also, I mean, because they loved my grandpa. They're genuine people. But also money's not really a problem for them. They're all successful, you know. My dad's the one that's not. So that's a problem for him because he wants that money.

And he doesn't care if my grandpa dies or not. It didn't seem like he cared when my grandma died. So my uncle calls my dad and says, hey, there's this surgery. It costs this much. Like everything I just told you, he lays it out. He goes, but you're going to have to give like 80% or something, 90% of your inheritance for us to pay for this. now my grandmother my grandfather saint of a man like amazing i've never heard anyone say a bad word my grandmother though not the same and she made his life hell and it was hey we want to keep

him around but he also deserves a few more years on this earth away from your grandmother right like an actually good life right what do you say and my dad says no he's had a good run I'm not doing it. He wanted that money, man. Like, I think he was so desperate because the Gates money had not come in. Right. And he was refusing to work. The Gates money, there was never, there was never, I know.

It's so crazy, right? So I think, like, having that inheritance come to, he was banking on my grandpa dying and him getting that money. Right. Because he was hitting. I mean, I think that inside, maybe he knew that this wasn't working out. Right. But if I just got some.

more money, it would buy me some more time to say some more prayers and recruit more religious people in on this ridiculous scheme. So he does not agree to the surgery and my grandfather dies because of it pretty quickly after that. So my uncle calls my dad and says, hey, we're going to do it the same way we did it with mom. You know, the estate is going to pay for you and the kids to fly out and we'll put you up wherever you want. You can choose. You know, I know that things have been not great the last couple years, but you got to come say by to dad. Actually, I'm sorry. I'm going to back up.

He actually called my dad a week before my grandpa died and said, our dad's dying wish is to see you. You need to get on a plane. And my dad said, no, I'm not coming. Like, I'd rather remember him the way that I knew him. I'm too busy. I'm not coming. So dying wish, he won't go.

Say goodbye to his dad. So then his dad dies. I cut him out of the will. Those, you know. That's what I don't understand. after all of this it would have been the right thing to do but my grandpa was not that kind of man my grandpa was a righteous man uh i have a few really cool memories because i was younger but he is the type of person that i aspire to be for my child and my grandchildren i want them to

tell stories about me the way that my uncles and aunts tell stories about my grandpa yeah yeah so he dies and he's like oh we're going to work it out the exact same way it'll be you know he was also cremated, so, you know, it's not a rush to get you guys up here. And my grandpa had set aside $40,000. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size. Whether you're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus, IKEA has hundreds of design ideas and affordable options to complement any budget. After all, you're in your small space era. It's time to own it. Shop now at ikea.ca.

Book club on Monday. Gym on Tuesday. Date night on Wednesday. Out on the town on Thursday. Quiet night in on Friday. It's good to have a routine. And it's good for your eyes too. Because with regular comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers,

you'll know just how healthy they are. Visit Spexsavers.com. book your next eye exam. I exams provided by independent optometrists. For his funeral. I like rent a yacht, get all your buddies, come out and it's a party. Like I don't want a stuffy church funeral like your mother had. I want you guys to celebrate my life as if I'm still there. And my dad knows this. Like man, it's a blowout party, man. We're doing it. So they buy the plane tickets. They pay for the hotel reservation. And then the day before my dad says, you know, I'm just too busy with work meetings right now.

I've got a lot of business meetings coming up that I'm just too busy. I'm not, I'm not going to come. And my uncle's like, what are you talking about? Like, it's tomorrow. He goes, yeah, I'm just too busy. Can't make it. You know, I'd rather just remember him the way he was, we all know how that other funeral went.

We're just, we're just not going to come. The thing was is he told us from the beginning we weren't coming. We knew that entire time. I only just recently found out that. that conversation happened, I thought he just turned it down from the gate, because he told us, like, hey, your grandpa died, but we're not going to go. Right. And we're all on board because he's completely turned us against our uncle and aunts.

So at this time, like legitimately, I didn't like them either because he's been telling me lies for years, and I think that they are with our God-promised wealth. Right. And, you know, you don't go up against God. You know, it's a terrifying issue when you're a kid. it. So we don't go. It was insane. So my dad gets the inheritance. Right. 110,000. Now, it's 99. 1010,000 in Indiana is a ton of money. He could have bought a home for 50.

I was going to say 99. Yeah, yeah. He could have bought two homes and paid for one off of the rent from the other if he was so smart and so money savvy. But he doesn't do that. He blows the 110 grand. How's he blow it? What was you buy? Oh, my God. So back then, the big screen TVs were the big, like, wide, deep boxes. Those are a few thousand dollars, right? Because weren't they just coming out?

Yeah, they were just coming out. DVDs had just come out. They were $50 a pop. So, yeah, so he buys big screen TV, huge sound system. We've got a library of DVDs. We've got satellite TV. He buys two new cars. He buys music instruments.

He's sending thousands of dollars to televangelists on TV. he's giving thousands of dollars to our local church. A house? No house. My mom begged him to buy a house. So he bought all depreciating items? Yes, because that was the play money. Right.

The real money was coming later from the gates. So this is just, this is just to tide us over to give us a little taste of the rich lifestyle. So if you can imagine the shittiest house on the block filled with the greatest things inside. Right. I mean, no thief would ever break in there because of how it. looked on the outside. The inside did not match the outside. And he's buying these things. And my mom is begging him, like, buy us a home. And he goes, what about the Bordeaux? She goes, when we get the Gates money, we can move into the Bordeaux. But right now, we are living in a dilapidated house.

Like, you get us a home. We could have just moved into a better house and rented it. Right. We didn't even have to buy a home. He doesn't do that. And one day I was home sick. And my parents, they wouldn't fight in front of us, but they would fight in the next room. where we could clearly hear everything. Right. And she was screaming at him, like, all these years that you have not worked, all these promises that have not come true and you get this money and you spend it, why do we not have a home?

And I remember this was the first time where I realized like, oh, things are not as good as we're being told. He told her, when your ass is not as big as this garage, I will listen to you. Oh, my, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So hearing that from your dad for the first time, time it was like, oh shit, things are not okay. And at this time, we're still touring that house

every Sunday, but we're pulling up to that house on a nicer car, wearing nicer clothes. Things are looking like we're doing well when we're not doing well. He spends his last 24,000 on leads. He tells us like, oh, I'm going to restart my business. And I have found this lead company that has high quality leads. Like every lead is a closure. I just have to do the work, which you know, that's bullshit. Leads are exactly that. They're maybes. He spends 24,000. I can't imagine spending 24,000 on leads for one person to work. How can one person work those leads before they become irrelevant? Like, leads are only good for a few days. Yeah, exactly. And it was two separate transactions. It was 12,000 for this bunch of leads that were all bunk. And then he spent another

12,000 for this bunch of leads that were all bunk. And now we don't have any money. And it's everyone else's fault. Not to, you know, let's ignore the, I mean, what is that equal? $25,000 that you spent? No, that last 24 really wrecked us. So we start selling everything for pennies on the dollar, like having garage sales, like this guitar that he bought for $1,000, he's selling it for $200, you know? And we barely get any of that money back. It's just all gone. So me and my brother had both gotten these government bonds that our grandma took out for us when we were kids. And they would mature when we were 18. It'd be a $1,000 payout. Well, they convince us to go cash those in early give them the money so they could get us a car they did pay

us back eventually but we didn't get the thousand that we were supposed to get you know and we didn't even know about those bonds until they were like hey we've got an idea you you kids are going to buy us a car basically all right so so yeah money is gone and at this time my like the abuse really ramped up I think my dad was so desperate and so just like up from what was going on and so stressed out that he actually started getting physical with us kids where you know we got spanked when we were kids I don't spank my child because of this and they started off as spankings and then it became the littlest things that you know just go to your room should cover no we were getting spanked right and then those spankings were going on longer and longer and getting more and more painful

and then they became bare butt spankings and then they became bare butt with the belt and then they became bare belt with the belt buckle. Right. And my dad would start and he would just lose it. And we would just have welts like on our backs and like, you know, on our upper thighs. He started like just flying off the handle screaming at you for nothing. And when this is all going on and you're a kid and you're in survival mode in your own home, I was also getting bullied at school.

So I was kind of in survival mode everywhere. Right. I was taller than I should have been. I was thicker than I should have been. I wasn't manly enough. And so I got bullied in. teased and beat up. So I'm just flipped out. And at some point, my dad came at me and I just like, I lost it. I didn't know how to react. Well, that reaction is a direct rebellion against his

authority. So the beatings got worse. I mean, it was unbelievable. And he came up with these really weird rules for the house where like, my brother, not a good student, like really struggled in school. C average was like the best he could do if he studied every day. Well, all of a sudden, And my dad's like, if you don't get a B average, you're grounded until your next report card, knowing my brother could never pull that off. My brother was grounded for like two straight years. Right. He did that just to target my brother because it made him feel good.

My brother would come home. Like, it's summertime. We have summer plans. And his report card is at 2.98. My dad won't let it slide. Right. Brought it up from where it was before to almost a B. And my dad wouldn't give it to him.

He made us answer the phone in a really weird. all of a sudden he was like, okay, this is how you're going to answer the phone. So say my last name, Smith. Jesse Smith residence, Jesse Smith speaking. God damn it. Who answers the phone like that in sixth grade? Someone who wants to get teased and beat up. And we were begging him, don't make us answer the phone like that.

Like, if that hits the school, we're going to get made fun of for that. Well, I don't care. We're doing it. So we would just not answer the phone. And it would be like the phone would ring and me and my brother would look at each other like, are you getting it or I'm getting it. We would both start backing up out of the room, and our dad would be like, get that phone. Okay.

So that, or like, if he called us from the next room, we had to say, yes, sir, I'm coming immediately. If there was even a two-second delay, we were in trouble. I mean, or if, like, I remember one time I was eating when he said it, and I'm like chewing, I'm trying to swallow my, I'm coming. And because I skipped the yes, sir, I got in trouble. I mean, it was, it was like Nazi regime bullshit. Right. Because he was losing control over everything else. so the control at home, like, became crazy, and the punishments were insane.

I walked home one day from school, and I found a broken lighter on the ground. And I put it in my pocket to throw away when I got home, not like trying to be an angel or anything, but I picked it up, it didn't work. I'm like, I'll toss it when I get home. Forget it's there. My mom finds it in my pocket when she's doing laundry, and my dad took a metal ruler and beat my hands with it. Just insane shit like that was going on.

So then eventually we find out that the Bordeaux is going up. for auction, the big house. Right. So it's going to be auctioned on a Saturday in like a month. So us kids are like, oh, man. And my dad's like, no, that means the money is almost here because this is the house that we're getting. And if it's going on sale in a month, we're going to have it within a week or two.

And my brother says, oh, you know what? God actually spoke to me and said, yeah. Your brother? My brother, yeah. He said he wants you to buy me a bike today. Yeah, right? He said, buy that bike, you'll get the check tomorrow. No, he says, the Lord spoke to me very clearly and said the money is coming on a Thursday.

And my dad's like, great. So now on Thursday, we all pray at the mailbox before he opens it up, and there's no letter in there. And then my sister eventually said that she also heard that. So it comes to the Thursday before the Saturday that this auction is happening, which, as you know, you get a check for $14 million on a Thursday. doesn't it take some time to clear your account before you start spending that money? Like, we're not buying a home on Saturday. That's crazy. But that Thursday we went to the mailbox and it was empty and that house got sold.

So my mom was out at that point. She was like, this is bullshit. I'm not going. And it doesn't pull us out of it. She just separates. So she had been going to nursing school. She started doing clinicals. And every clinical that she had turned into a double shift because she didn't want to be home with our dad.

But that meant that we were home alone with him. Right. And he started to get really aggressive and just mean for no reason. And if we reacted to it at all, we were dealt with pretty brutally. So he tells us, so one Sunday we go to church and mom doesn't come. Afterwards, he's like, hey, we're going to go on a drive. Is she plotting her? Like, do you think she's plotting an escape?

Yeah. Yeah, I'm getting out, put some money aside, doing what I'm going. Yeah, I'm going to get the nursing career going. And once I got that, I'm taking the kids and we're out. My mom did that. She went to, she got her, she went and got a four-year degree in education. Yeah. Thinking at some point I'm leaving.

Yeah. She never did. Yeah. But that was the plan. Four years. Wow. It was, I think it was two between her starting and her getting us out. Well, I think she already had, when they got married, she already had a few years.

Oh. So she only had like 18 months or a year to go or something. Gotcha. Yeah. This was a long two years. I mean, I, you know, I, I, I don't want to judge her for taking two years to get us out of that home, but really it took her 16 years to get us out of that home. We should have been out when we were babies. But whatever. It's not my thing. So, so yeah, so he's like, hey, we're going to go for a drive today. And we're like, okay. So he takes us back to the same neighborhood that the Bordeaux is in. And we're like, why are we here? He goes, well, I got a little surprise for you. So when you enter in this neighborhood, you kind of drive at a decline, and there's the Bordeaux, and then you can turn left and turn right, and it's a sprawling neighborhood of mansions.

He turns right, and we go all the way down to where the neighborhood stops, and there's an even bigger mansion on an even bigger nature preserve, and this house is like $2 million. And he's told us, the Lord spoke to me so clearly and said, through all of the sacrifice that we've made, we have not lost faith, up to and including the house that he promised us being gone. So this is the house he's giving us. And we're like, wow, crazy. Have you told mom? And he goes, well, your mom doesn't have any faith. So the Lord also told me that when this money comes in, we're leaving your mom. If your mom's not going to have faith, then she's not going to reap the benefits of the Lord's wealth. And she will be left to deal with that on her own while we

are in this mansion okay like like fine you know and it was one of those things where it was like at the time I was like oh that's sad mind them divorcing now I'm just like that's really I think of the time you might have been like well the money's never coming anyway yeah you know yeah so I think at this point he's dug himself so deep and he realizes this is not going to happen it's not going to happen through prayer and it's not going to happen through any of that so he's to switch strategies and actually sue the Gates family. This man with no money is going to find an attorney to hoodwink into suing them. And he does. He reaches out to a bunch of lawyers. I remember one of them was named Tom Anderson. I don't know if he's the lawyer that took him, but he was the one

that he was like, this is my guy. He got turned down by all of them except for one. And whoever this guy was sent a letter to Gates Senior basically saying, we intend on bringing charges against you in court for stealing this memorabilia, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Gates Sr. sees it. And it's like, what the fuck? So just immediately sends the guy a cease and desist. If we hear from you again, we will wreck you kind of thing. And then he calls my family, my uncle, and says, like, I received a letter from an attorney.

And now Mike's saying he's going to press charges against me. And they're just like, oh, my gosh, we're so sorry. And he's like, well, it's fine because we sent the cease and desist. so we don't see this going any further. And then a month later, my uncle gets another call from Bill Gates' team. He goes, well, we heard more from Mike. And I received a letter from him. I want to talk to you guys about the letter, but it needs to be in person.

Because I think at this point, he was getting a little suspicious of my aunts and uncle. Like, are you guys just keeping me occupied with what I want to hear while he pulls this shit? Are you involved? But you're in on it. Right. He wasn't sure. He wanted to look. them in the eye. So they came over to my aunt's house and they all sat around this table. It was

Bill Gates Sr. and his attorney, my uncle and my two aunts. And he proceeds to read portions of this letter that my dad had sent him. And my uncle said he did not read the whole thing. He kept most of it private. But one of it was, let's see. Oh, this is like the, just allegations of basically he so the letter began with mr gates these are the undisputed facts of the case i will be bringing against you and basically he's saying that the gates family interfered with our family business to such a degree that they not only stole this collection and in turn our wealth but pressured my uncle and aunts to not allow my dad to come say goodbye to his dad before he left and to not come to the funeral, which is blatant bullshit.

Right. My uncle begged my dad to come, and my dad just would not do it. Right. And then so basically when he said that, my uncle burst into tears, and my aunts burst into tears. And then Bill Gates, Sr. burst into tears. And then his attorney cried. Everyone in this room was bawling. The attorney really is the one that's surprising.

Everyone else, they grew up with Mike. Right. You know, and this gate senior who was so generous and loving and giving to Mike has gotten this in response, these like allegations and harassment and bullshit. So the letter ended with, therefore, due to these infractions against my family, we demand 18 million in compensation. And I always wondered if there was any god shit in there. Right. And maybe that's why he didn't read it because he's like, well, that's ridiculous. I'm not even going to go into that.

But I was, I wonder if my dad quoted those scriptures and basically was like, you don't want to go against God, Mr. Gates. I actually was thinking he might have like, like sexual allegations or something as a child, this happened or so, you know, I was like how possibly, how much of it, you know, how devious, you know, was he willing to go on this. But, okay, he's, even though I wouldn't, I wouldn't put him past it. Even that is just stupid. Yeah. It's a, it's a, it's a nuisance lawsuit. Yeah, 100%. So, yeah, basically my aunt and uncles said, hey, like, we don't want you to go public with this because it's our family.

But if you do, we understand. And if you take this to court, we'll testify on your side. Right. Like, we're not standing with him, whatever you decide to do. And again, just like going back to, I don't know the gates, but the way they decided to not pursue this in court or publicly at all. They completely let it go. Right. And your father, your father never filed?

No, no. No, I mean, his attorney had already got. the cease and desist. So my dad, I think that, I think that was the Hail Mary. I was going to say, yeah, the cease and desist doesn't stop you from filing. No. But I think probably, and this is funny because just from owning apartment complexes, or they weren't complex. Well, I did own one complex, but from owning rental units, periodically, I've received the letter from an attorney. And what happens, actually, one time I bought a bunch of desks from a guy. Yeah. Like he handmade or he, you know, custom made these deaths for my office and and I was making payments to him and anyway he ended up

getting an attorney to write me a letter to say he was going to file a lawsuit and do all these other things because it's a little bit more complicated that but he ends up writing a letter but because I had apartment complexes I know that if you call enough attorneys you can find an attorney that'll say, look, I'm not going to file a lawsuit. I'm like, there's nothing I can do for you. You didn't pay your rent. You're getting kicked out. Like, I'm sorry that two of your plugs didn't work.

And there was a leak that took two weeks to get fixed. Yeah. But guess what? Tough shit. And you're going to have to pay me to file this lawsuit. You'll never get anything back. You might get another month or two. But what I could probably do, I could probably stop this guy or maybe even get you 30 days

or 60 days reprieve from the eviction. Yeah. But you're going to have to give me like $300 to write a letter. Right. So if you give a lawyer $300 to write a letter, he'll write one letter. Yeah. Well, you just find the one with the least amount of stars on Yelp. They need your business.

Listen, and what I would always do is, and I knew this, right? My brother-in-law is a lawyer. I'd call my brother-in-law. He'd go, okay, here's what just happened. They gave him $300 or $400, wrote him a letter. That's all you're going to hear. I go, well, what do I do? He goes, write him a letter back.

The attorney's forced to write a letter back. Respond to that letter. You'll never get another letter because at that point, they're going to go back to your client and say, give me some money. I was supposed to write one letter. I'm up to three letters. Give me some more money. They're going to realize, okay.

So that's what I always did. I wrote a letter back. They wrote a letter back. I wrote a letter back. And then I never heard from the people again. It was the same thing that. Yeah. That's the problem.

That's like what your daddy did. This guy said, well, I can start the process and I'll write a letter for nothing. Or he asked for 400 bucks or 300 bucks. Right. Yeah. And I think the 18 million letter was the Hail Mary. Yeah. Like just, you know, I'm going to send this off.

I'm going to have everyone pray over it. And if this doesn't work. Yeah. And it didn't. Yeah. I didn't. So my mom left my dad and my dad disappeared. What happened? Was it one day she just was gone? No, no, no. Well, she told me and my brother that she was divorcing him. And me and my brother were like, finally. Like, we were so happy. But we had to keep it from our sister. Our sister was too young to really understand what had been going on. She understood that shit wasn't

right, but she didn't get it. So yeah, my mom found a house for us to move into. And then we sat down as a family and me and my brother pretended to find out for the first time that they were divorcing pretended to be upset. We moved into that house and my dad disappeared for months. What did he say when she was leaving? Said I'm leaving. Was he upset or just like, fine, go? He threw her up against the wall. I remember that. Yeah. Because we were outside and we heard the thump. Basically, it was her telling him, this is how this is going to go down. These are the dates that I'm leaving this home. These are the dates you need to be out of this home. And he grabbed her and threw her up against the wall.

Wow. Yeah. So he got violent about it. But he didn't have a choice. What was he going to do? So we moved into this other house and he just vanished. Like we had no idea where he was. And then he popped up maybe four months later, wrote my mom this long letter about, I'm in

Pensacola now, which he had never even been to Florida. So I don't know why he went. But he was in Pensacola and he was saying, I've been diagnosed with bipolar issues and manic depression and I'm on meds and I want to fix the family. family and blah, blah, blah. And my mom just goes for it. Are you serious? Well, it gets worse than that.

She says, yes, they start to make plans to move us to Florida. And then he sends her a follow-up letter and says, hey, all that stuff I said, I was wrong. I just met this other girl, and she's my soulmate. I know it 100%. So good luck with the kids, and you'll never hear from me again. And my mom is telling all of us this. Like, she used us as her emotional support, which is so terrible to do to your children.

because you have to walk all this back when you decide to get back together, you know? So kids never know what's true. So then a couple months goes by, any sense or another letter. Hey, I was wrong about that. I actually do want you back. I want to fly you to Florida for two weeks. I want to show you where I live. And my mom did it.

She just, I was in 10th grade at the time. My sister's in 6th or 7th and my brother had graduated. She just left us. Like money for pizza on the counter, see you in two weeks type of thing. And then when she came back, the word was, we're moving. And she told my brother, I'm getting back together with your dad, and we're all moving to Florida. And my brother said, okay, I'm moving out today.

And he went home and packed his shit and left. And how old was your brother? 18. He had just turned 18. My mom did not care. My mom cared more about having her husband back than she did the safety and well-being of her own children. And so she was encouraging me to talk to my dad.

And so I would talk to him every few days on the phone or whatever. But at this point, so I stopped getting bullied by this point. I'd lost a bunch of weight. I had my first girlfriend. I'd start skateboarding. I had my first band. Things were actually going. Like, I had a job.

Things were, like, way better for me. And I'm actually, like, happy and comfortable. So my dad called me one night. And he was like, how are you feeling about moving to Florida? This is a couple of days after Halloween. So beginning of November. And he's telling me, we're not moving to Florida until next year. So how are you feeling about it?

And I'm like, I'm feeling really sad about it. Like, you know, all this bullshit that I went through. and now I'm not getting bullied anymore and life is good for me and I have friends and I have a girlfriend I don't understand why you can't move back up here because we have a whole life

we've been here for a long time and I was crying I wasn't being disrespectful I was very upset two days later it's a last period at school and I get called down at the principal's office

and when you get called down you're like oh shit well I did I did take that one thing I did write that one thing on that wall did they find out that was me I'm walking to the office going I don't know what I did I can't think of a damn thing that I've done that I could get in trouble for.

So I walk into the principal's office and there's a principal and there's my mom and there's my dad. I'm like, what are you doing here? I thought you were in Florida. And they had me sit down and my dad explains that he told everyone about the threats that I made the two nights before about how I run away. They would never see me again if I tried to force them to make me move and how I had threatened him and swore at him. And none of this is true, not even close. and I am just like, what are you talking about? None of that happened.

You're saying, like, in front of the principal. You're saying I'm a liar? And I'm like, yeah. Because the principal's here, so I think I'm safe. Yeah, yeah. I'm not safe. Basically, they send somebody to get my shit out of my locker and they remove me from the school and I didn't get to say goodbye to anybody.

I get home and three quarters of the house is packed up because they've had movers there all day packing stuff and we're leaving in the morning. And I am in shock. I cannot believe what I'm hearing. And I'm standing in the kitchen. I remember this like it was yesterday. I'm standing in the kitchen and I can't speak because I'm still processing what I'm finding out.

And my dad is like, say something. And all I could say was, I hate you for what you've done. And the next thing I knew, it was like getting hit by a truck. My dad was 6'4, 230 pounds, broad shoulder, just a massive man. And he slammed me so hard into that fridge and then threw me to the ground and was on top of me and I'm breathing hard and his hands are on my chest and I black out and I woke up to my mom screaming at him to get off of me. What are you doing? And I mean, you know, looking back, it's like here's the proof before you removed me from the state that this

wasn't getting better and you still removed me from the state. My friends had no idea what happened to me for years. They had no clue. I didn't reconnect with anyone until I had already graduated high school. And that's when I told everyone what happened. And they were like, we didn't know what happened. You were just gone. Like, we didn't know if you died. If there was an accident, like, and after a while, we quit asking. So yeah, so I'm in the moving truck to Florida, just looking at the next three years of my life, knowing how it was going to go. And it went worse than the five years before. I mean, the abuse was unbelievable. I know you're trying to keep this a little bit shorter, so I'll spare some details. But in Florida, he wasn't able to keep it.

to the family. My friends saw exactly who he was. He would just fly off the handle, start screaming at my friends. He pushed my mom in front of a bunch of my friends. He made me walk my girlfriend home late at night down a very busy highway because he said he would take me home at, take her home at 7 p.m. He walks in the room. He's like, you're ready to go. We literally have two minutes left of the movie. Be like, can we wait two minutes? It's almost over. Yeah, you can wait two minutes. And then he leaves the room. And when it ends, hey, we're ready to go. Oh, no, I said your ride would be at seven, not at 702, so you can walk her home. So maybe, I mean, her parents were furious. And I never saw her again. Like, I was forced to break up with her. So that kind of shit

went on for three years until it got to the point where when I was 17, I was bigger. And I would start kicking trash cans at him and I would get into it physically because I was bigger. So I felt like I could, you know. But I also, I had lost a ton of weight because I was under so much like stress and anxiety, I didn't even know what that was at the time that I just wouldn't eat. Like, I couldn't get food down. And then after you go a couple days without food and you're like mentally sharp, it felt good. So I would just keep not eating. And my mom ended up one day during my senior year, she came and picked me up and said,

we're going to go run an errand. I was like, all right. And she took me to a psychiatrist office. She sat me down with this guy and she said, I need to tell you this guy everything that's been going on in our home since your grandma died. and I was like, what? How much time do we have? Yeah, and I refused.

I wouldn't do it. So she goes, okay, will you talk about the last three years? I was like, all right, because he was doing this crazy shit where he would be in your face screaming and spitting and shove you and throw you to the ground. And then three hours later, he's keeping you up until 1 a.m. telling you about the benefits that he feels from three months of Echinacea Gold and seal supplementation. Like, I mean, just insanity. So, it definitely sounds like bipolar. It's something for sure.

So, yeah, I told this guy all that, and he didn't explain what any of it meant to me. He just told me to leave the office. My mom comes back in, and he's like, you need to remove these children. Like, what are you doing? So she did. We moved into like a little duplex a few blocks away, and my dad moved into the house that was next to the house we were living in. it was owned by this old guy and a bunch of bachelors were all living there like you get your own

room and you pay rent right and i went there once he he had begged me to come visit him and i walk in and it's like this guy's entire life is reduced to a desk that's like half the size of this one and in the corner he's got the monday through friday fast food coupons that inform where he's going to eat that week because he has no money and he's got his laptop and his excel spreadsheet and that's all he's got in his room it was very sad so when i was a senior i come home from school one day and my mom says, hey, your dad's landlord was here and he's looking for him. Like, what do you mean? He's like, he went to go collect rent and the laptop and the Excel spreadsheet and his clothes were gone. The desk was there, but everything else was gone. I was like, oh, that's crazy. And she goes,

yeah, so if you hear from him, you need to let me know. I said, okay. And then within a few days of that, I come home and she says, I need to tell you something really serious and I need you to not tell your sister. Okay. And she goes, the police were here today. They found your dad's car parked at a parking lot out at the bluffs with some personal items still in it. So we're not sure what's going on. What are the bluffs? The bluffs are just this like hiking trail that's right on the water where I live. Actually, the parking lot where they found his car is less than a mile from my front door. So I've been driving past it every day for two years. And it was only a few months ago that I even told anyone like oh you want to hear something crazy about that parking lot

and it was my now ex-fiancee and she was like why have you never told me that I was like it doesn't occur to me to talk about him right like it just doesn't you know unless I'm unless I give you know like hey you're going to hear some sad shit that I got to talk about which I don't feel like saying that ever so I just don't talk about him so so he fake like he's no note no note what the cops said were you know We found bodies out there. People decide to end their own lives. We might not find a body if he was in the water a shark could get. He might have left with someone, but these personal items are something you'd want to keep with you.

Plus your car. Plus your car. A big thing to walk away with. If you're thinking, I'm going to start my life over again, probably got to need a car. Yeah, you're not going to walk to that life. Yeah. So basically, they were treating it as a missing person. But me and my mom talked about it, and I was like, do you think he might have offed himself?

And she goes, honestly, at this point, yeah? He lost everything. The Gates thing didn't work out. The second chance that the marriage didn't work out. She had taken him to court for child support, and he had tried saying, well, I'm not working, so I'm not paying anything. And the judge was like, no, you will pay something. I will put you at minimum wage.

And in three months, I'm going to see you again. And you better have a fucking job. He didn't like that. It was the day after that that he disappeared. All right. Yeah. A classy guy. Right.

So, yeah, believed that he had oft himself. And so after that, my mom pieced out. And we have no relationship. She didn't even try really to keep in contact with me after she left the state. What do you mean, peace? Yeah, pieced out. So we're in Florida. So my mom just decided.

So I had moved out and gotten my first apartment. My brother was in Indiana. So she's like, I'm out of here. I'm going to go to California. How old were you? 18. Okay. Sorry.

Did you just, did you say that? I missed it? No, no. I moved out very shortly after turning 18. Okay. So you're 18. Yeah. She just said, see you.

Yeah. I got my first apartment. She never even came to see my apartment. What about your daughter? I mean, what about your sister? She took her with. Oh, yeah. My sister's 14 at this time. So my mom spent the next, I don't know, year, two years, traveling all over California, putting my sister in school, pulling her out of schools, doing traveling nursing.

And I just had completely lost contact with them. And I didn't want contact with them because my mom was no better than my dad. My mom, when we left my dad and it was just her and me, she took over the role of him. Like, she was awful to me. And then would lean on me for emotional support when I couldn't even fathom what I was feeling, let alone, how do I tell this woman it's going to be okay? I don't think it's going to be okay either. So they leave. And for a few years, I'm great. Like, I'm happy. I went, I went to college. I got an education. I did a tattoo apprenticeship, became a tattoo artist. I was traveling around. But I was also partying a lot and I was drinking. I was doing a lot of drugs. So for me, I'm just like, oh, all this bullshit from my past is, over so my life is just good now. And ended up, and it wasn't good, because I turned into him exactly when it came to relationships. I had no idea how to be like a good or like healthier supportive partner. All I had was this like child abuse and abandonment trauma in me. So I could

meet someone and would legitimately be very nice to them and care about them. But the second they did, and it could be two weeks into a relationship or two years. The second they did something that felt like rejection or abandonment, I would lash out aggressively and just ruin that relationship. I did it to friends. I did it to girlfriends for a long time. So yeah, you fast forward seven years, and I'm living in Minnesota randomly because I've ruined every relationship that I have, so I just keep moving. I'm being my dad, basically. and all of you now I'm 20 right now

yeah 38 okay yeah so so seven years after he vanishes I'm 25 I'm living in Minnesota I'm making no money as a tattooer I'm desperate I'm living in the shitbox apartment I'm sharing a laptop with my roommate and I get on Facebook one day and there's a message

from this woman and it's hey is your dad's name right and it was and he's got a unique middle name, too. So I was like, yeah, that was my dad's name. Why do you ask? And she goes, oh, well, my name is blah, blah, blah, and I live in North Carolina. You say was because at this point, you genuinely believe he's dead. Oh, I never questioned it. I would tell people that he died of cancer

because people stopped asking questions when I said died of cancer, but didn't stop asking questions when I said I didn't know where he was or what happened. Right, or oh, we just found his car and he disappeared. Right. I think he's dead. So I just started saying, yeah, he's dead. And I, and I believed it. I don't know if I believed it because I truly believed her. If it's like what you said, you say it enough times, it becomes truth to you. But I never expected to hear another word about him in my life. And here's this woman. And she says, yeah, my name is blah, blah, blah. I live in North Carolina. Your father's been living with me for several years now. And he's in very poor health. And he misses his children. He doesn't feel that he got a fair shake. with his children and before he passes he would like to reconnect and I am just like what like are you kidding me and I click on the profile and the profile had just been made the day before and it had no personal pictures like one picture was like it looked like someone was sitting on their porch and they took a picture of like a lake and then another one was like a rocking chair and that was it and I read the message again

And I read it again, and I was like, this is my dad that wrote this. The language that he used was very specific. The term didn't get a fair shake was something. I heard him say a million times. The more I read it, the more I was convinced that this woman did not exist. So I get really drunk. Like, I end up walking to this bar, and I got wasted, and I walked back home, and I was like, I'm going to take care of this.

And I open up the laptop, and I fire off. off a fuck that guy. He chose exactly what, you know, he got the fairest shake that he could. He abused his children and abandoned them. We are not interested in reestablishing contact. I will just speak for all of us. And I sent it off and I went to sleep and the next day I woke up, hungover, and I went to see if there was a reply. Not only was there no reply, the profile had been deleted, so the message chain had been deleted. And no one has heard from him ever since. I've used his social security number to try to track him down

and his paper trail ends the day he disappeared except for a very brief time he was staying in a homeless shelter in Evanston, Illinois which would have been roughly five miles from where he worked for Raytheon but when you pull the background checks

the dates of when he had certain phone numbers and when he was at certain addresses were not accurate So I think that he was at that homeless shelter when my mom left him. Yeah, so I don't think it was recent. So maybe he is dead. Maybe some person was with me on Facebook, or he's out there alive. I don't know. It's a mystery, but I have not been able to find a scrap of a paper trail.

So he either changed his name and he's listed in a death registry under someone else's name or he's a John Doe or he's living somewhere. How old would he be? 71. And the last time that I saw him, he was not in good health. He had bad knees and bad shoulders. He would fluctuate between 300 plus pounds to 180. So he would get to 300 plus when he was at the height of being abusive and my mom would leave. So he dropped to 180 and then get her to come back because he's looking better and he's trying to be nice and all those things.

So don't know whatever happened to him. But the aftermath in my life was, I mean, I basically became him in a lot of ways. I don't think I would have scammed anyone for money. That was better hair. Better hair. Well, I've had hair. I've had hair transplant. No, you have not.

I've had five. Yeah. Bro, like what a. I had a really good surgeon. I'll show you the before photo when we get off here. Oh, I'm telling you right now, I need that surgeon. I'll give you his number. Because I need at least.

Yours looks great. stop. I need at least one more surgery. Are you just not happy with the density? I'm not happy with the density. I was supposed to have three surgeries. Yeah. And I had two. And then I got arrested by the Secret Service. Oh, they don't do it in prison. Oh. And they wouldn't let you out for a day?

I had a conversation. There was a no-go. I had a conversation. I mean, I felt like I made excellent points. Yeah. Well, when did you start to lose it? Oh. I mean, it started receding when I was probably in my, in my late, 20s. Oh, you had a great run then. Yeah, yeah. But he started recino. You know, it's like it's slipping off the back of your head, right? Oh, yeah.

So I got like an inch here and two inches here. Yeah, mine started in the back, which I would rather lose the front than the back. There's something about when a guy has all this but nothing in the crown, I'm just like, poor guy. But if the guy's got a full crown, but his hair line's just receding, I'm like, yeah, you look great. You know what used to bug the shit out of me is that he would shave his fucking head. And he's got a thick, full head of fucking hair. He's got that nice curly hair, too. too yeah that's in right now brother that irritate would irritate the shit out of me oh yeah no my brother we didn't see each other for like five years and when i was in or i was doing my apprenticeship

he came to visit me for like a week and i wore a hat every day because i was bald and on the third day he was like dude what's up with a different hat every day like where's your hair at and i was like i'm bald and he's like no way he rips the hat off and he goes oh let me see and he's rubbing it and rub me and he just goes man that is such a shame and i'm like yeah yeah And then the next day randomly, we're like at a bar. And he just rips my hat off. And he goes, such a shame. Such a shame.

And he did it every day. I was like, stop. So when I got the transplants, I didn't tell him. Right. And he went to do it? Do it? He went to yank it off. No, no, no.

I just showed up at his house. And they were fully grown in after my first two. My last three was like my temple peaks and my widow's peak. Like they weren't necessary, but I wanted them. Right. So after two, I had a full head of hair. And I went to go visit him And he was like, you look different

You look young He didn't catch it No, no, he's like, did you lose weight? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, a little bit He goes, no, that's not it He's like, something about you I don't know, I can't quite get it And then it was later that day

He's a big Harley writer So he's showing me as Harley He's showing me all the stuff that he's doing And he reaches down to grab something And I see that he's got a little bald spot in the back And I go, oh man, the crown's getting thin And he goes, yeah, it sucks And I go, it's such a shame, isn't it?

And he was like, oh, your hair! And I was like, yeah, yeah. But no one's ever been able to tell. No hairstylist has ever called it out. The only person that knew from the beginning was my barber. He's been cutting my hair since before I got transplant. So we had to kind of learn how to work with the hair because, you know, you got the scar back here and all that stuff. Did they do a scar for every one of them?

For the first two, we did the strips. So I've got... That's what I did. I have two strips and I was told... Do you have two scars? Oh, you have two scars. I have one scar. Really?

Yeah. They removed my second strip right above where the first one was done and then created one scar from it. Yeah. They hooked me up. I didn't know what he was doing. Yeah. And then the following three were all done with the extraction method, yeah, which was incredible. Like after having two strip surgeries, that extraction, you don't even feel like you had surgery the next day.

You are comfortable with that thing. You have the staples in your head. It's pulling. Your head feels this big. It's numb. It's fucked up. But anyway. Sorry about that.

Yeah, no, no, no. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I had a couple long-term relationships that were great, women that I truly loved, and I just could not behave. Like, anytime there, one of them is a girl from Minnesota, and I've really struggled with self-forgiveness for it. We had bad communication, and we both had a lot of trauma. She had very recent trauma. Her best friend died. Right. And she had a lot of anxiety. And I had had anxiety my whole life, but I didn't. didn't know what anxiety was. I thought that was just how everyone felt. And we were all pushing through. So she would be like, oh, I have anxiety. And I'm like, get the fuck over it. We're at a

party. Like, so what? You know, like, very, very, very heartless. Yeah, I was going to say, not very, um, consoling. Well, it was like, we've been together for a year and you're still having this every time we go out. Like, why are you, like she's the problem is what I'm saying. When I'm the fucking problem. So I ended up moving to. Florida, I accepted a job at a tattoo shop that I knew I'd make good money at, so now I'm not struggling anymore. We were in this long distance thing, and I just completely destroyed her from across the country. She never moved. And then I immediately got with who is now my ex-wife and got her pregnant. So I am just bouncing from thing to thing with no control over my

emotions. I'm screaming at people. I would scream, slam the door and walk out and beg for them to make me come back. It was... You've been very well behaved today. You know, I want to get on your, I want to be on the internet. I'm single, by the way. No, I'm just kidding. What about your, what about your mom? Okay, yeah. So, well, yeah, all right. So my sister. And your sister, too. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, so I met, I met my wife. I got her pregnant in 2016. That happened. So in 2016, my sister was also getting married. So they live in Alaska. So I flew to Alaska. And yeah, Fairbanks, Alaska, not like Juno or Anchorage, like way up there. It takes an hour to get anywhere and it's all woods. Is that for nursing? Like, how'd she end up there? Well, my mom was

born and raised in Alaska and she was engaged to this guy, John. So when she was in California, she found John again, and they decided to rekindle 30-something years later, and she just moved my sister to Alaska. So that's where they were. So at this time, my sister also had no relationship with my mother or her stepdad. So I was told that she would not be at this wedding. And I'm like, great, because I don't want to see that lady ever again. And but I was told that my aunts would be there, my dad's sisters. And I did not know how to feel about that because it had never occurred to me that if my dad lied about everything else, then he lied about them too.

Right. They were part of the clan and I did not want any part of it. So, but it's not my wedding and I agreed to go. So I go, and the second day, my sister was like, hey, I'm going to go pick up our aunts from the airport. Do you want to go with? And I did not want to go with. But my sister had just found out she was pregnant, and I was the first person she told. So we were having this moment of being excited about being future parents of, like, breaking this generational bullshit that our dad had brought upon us.

Because his mother was terrible to him. Her mother was terrible to her. It was a generational thing all the way down the line. so I didn't want that moment to end so I was like you know what I'll go to the airport with you and we go to the airport and my aunts I see them from like down the hall and it's like I was so stupid of course these women are amazing and my dad's the liar all it took was seeing them walk towards me and I had felt so like a lost and I so lost and isolated for years like nobody's like me nobody's had the experiences I've had nobody laughs like me nobody talks like me like I'm like alone like and then And that increased my anger with the world and my frustration with myself. Well, my first time sitting down to have lunch with them, my aunt laughed. And I was like, there it is. There's my laugh.

These are my people. And at that diner, we told them what they had done to us since moving us out to Seattle the whole way through. I mean, they're crying. We're crying. Everyone's crying. And they just, they had no idea. They had no idea what was going on.

so the next day was the wedding and my mom just decides to come anyway and just crashes this freaking wedding and I see her and I don't know what to do so I just play it cool you know and after the ceremony was done me and my aunts we go find like a table at the far end of the reception hall like hopefully she won't see us and she won't come over here like they don't want to see her either no oh god no so she sees us and she comes over and she walks up and oh hi oh it's so good to see you too oh how long's it been just fake just so fake since the last since you abandoned me well no she hadn't seen them since the 90s yeah she hasn't seen me i saw her briefly in 2010 and you just can't listen to your mother tell you what a disappointment you are because you didn't

become a doctor and that you should do your little tattoos on the side and go back to college and become the doctor you were supposed to be and you know i was going to pay for your college if you went to medical school but you decided to waste your time on music that kind of shit you can't have a relationship with somebody like that she's got she's a narcissist yeah she's got a yeah there's she takes no accountability everything is everyone else's fault so she sees me we make eye contact and she turns to my aunt and goes that's crazy Kyle looks so grown up my cousin's name is Kyle oh shit yeah I don't look like Kyle right I've never looked like Kyle if I didn't My daughter is seven.

If I didn't see her for the next 20 years, I would know exactly who she was when I saw her. You know your children. She knew I was sitting there. And instead of, you don't have to apologize to me for anything. Just, oh, my God, I wasn't expecting to see. We're at a wedding. I'm going to be nice. Right.

But instead, I'm going to hurt you because you hurt me by kicking me out of your life. So I'm going to pretend I don't know who you are. Right. That's what she did. And everyone at the table was like, And my aunt's like, that's your son. How do you not know that that is your son? And my mom looks over and goes, oh, you're so big and so strong and so handsome.

Oh, my God, I didn't recognize you. I look exactly the fucking same. That's the last time she saw me. It's six years later. I already had all this. So it's not like you can make the argument that I got my neck tattooed and I look different. So she forces this big hug on me. And then she goes, this is where you tell me how good I look.

I'm like, you'll look great, mom. She goes, I understand you're engaged and you have a baby on the way. And I'm like, so you know everything about me, but you have no idea what I look like. Right. Okay. And she asked to come to the wedding, and I said, no, we're all full. And she goes, okay, well, I have a present for your sister in my car. I need you to help me carry it. And while we walk out to the car, she goes, how long are you in town? I said a few more days. She goes, do you have my number?

I said, I've always had it. And she goes, well, tomorrow you're going to come to my house. And I'm going to make us lunch and you're going to sit down and tell me what I did. That was so terrible that my children want nothing to do with me. And I was like, yeah, I'm not doing that. I've just never going to sign up for that. And I grabbed the quiz and art mixer that she got my sister. And she left.

She didn't even stay. She was like, I'm not. I'm out. And she left. So that was the last time I ever heard from her, saw her, spoke to her, any of that. but the following year was when my daughter was born and that was the big shift in my life was I was scared to have a kid I had avoided relationships with people who wanted kids because I don't know how to be a parent I had a horrible childhood and I realized when my daughter was born that the

marriage that I was in was toxic and would result in a very similar situation for my daughter and I had I had to leave so I left her and you know, know, I don't want to get in the details of the divorce because she is my daughter's mother and we have a better relationship than we did. But that divorce was two and a half years long and it was, I mean, you've been divorced. You know how it is. Both sides get angry and they start accusing the other of crazy things. I did not accuse her of anything, but some things I was accused of were really hard to deal with. And I was worried about how this was going to affect my kid. My kid wasn't even one yet, which I was banking on.

She'll never remember it. But I need the tools to handle this freaking woman in the future so that she doesn't ever see it. So I ended up going and seeing a child psychologist. I'm just like, hey, I want you to spend time with my daughter and me. I've gone through this crazy thing. Maybe give me some parenting tips and some tools and blah, blah, blah. And they were like, yeah, no problem. Here's a bunch of paperwork to fill out and we'll come and get you.

And I'm like, great. So I'm filling out the paperwork, but the paperwork's about me. And it's, do you ever think about killing yourself? Yeah, yeah. Do you have these thoughts? Did this happen when you were a kid? And I'm thinking, well, yeah, but this is not why I'm here, so I'll just answer these questions and, you know, they'll throw it away because this has nothing to do with why

I'm even here to begin with. And then the next thing I know this gorgeous, blonde receptionist comes out. She goes, Jesse, I said, yeah, she goes, follow me. I follow her back to the room, except she's not the receptionist. she's my new therapist. And I'm just like, this ain't going to work. So, but I'll try it out. And okay, so why are you here? And I'm like, well, this and this and this happened in the divorce. I want a professional advocate who works with children that knows these things that I can work with. You know, I want to make sure I'm a good father. And I want to make sure that if these things keep

happening, I know how to handle them both in front of my daughter and not in front of her so I can be a healthy dad because I had a horrible dad and she goes yeah no problem looking through your chart though I think you're about a day off from killing yourself I'm really worried about this I think you need to come see me like for you we'll do the stuff with your daughter but like you you are this scares me so I ended up in therapy by accident for like two years and that was hugely helpful with shifting the perception of who I am because when you're abused and abandoned you're used and abandoned just think you're unlovable. You know, those are your first relationships are with your parents.

Right. So when they show you that you're not worth anything, no one else can convince you that you are. And I, and I, yeah, I felt worthless. I felt unlovable and I think I was angry and that's why I was lashing out so much. I was because that's how I felt. And that's how everyone made me feel, even though nobody really made me feel that way. It was all my own bullshit.

So I did talk therapy for two years and I've been in somatic therapy for two years. and my somatic therapist was the one that I first told this story to. He encouraged me to tell my friends. My friends encouraged me to tell it on. They were very specific. You need to go on a podcast for this. They actually said I needed to make a podcast. I'm not going to make one just to tell one story.

But we all vacationed about, I guess it was like five or six weeks ago. And they were all up on me about what are you doing with this story? Because I had an idea for a book, too, that I could bring it into the story of the book. And I was like, yeah, maybe a podcast. And they're like, well, whose would you do it? And without even thinking about it, I was like, inside your crime, Matthew Cox. Because it kind of fits all of it, you know? Like a lot of the criminals that you've had have had abusive childhoods the way that I did.

And, you know, the scam part is insane and entertaining. And then there's like the rehabilitation. And it was a huge part of your life. It informed every decision that I made following. Yeah. But without the tools to understand what even happened. Yeah. but the whole distortion of and manipulation of Christianity from your dad is also super,

like almost like a, I mean, it's obviously, it's a subplot, but it's also like a, I mean, obviously that's also kind of an abuse and a scam in and of itself. Like the fact that he mixed them two together. Could I plug my therapist? Yeah, yeah. All right. His name's Acedeen. Super awesome guy.

And his website is thebodybefriended.com. The body befriended.com. Yeah. Yeah, we need to. By the way, I know a couple of, um, a couple of investigators. We need to see if there's a way we can figure out if your dad's alive. So literally, my uncle and I were just speaking about we would split the cost of private

investigator to find out what's going on. I give you the name of a guy. He may just be able to go to like, because you understand when you're, when you die, they report it on social security. Right. To get a death benefit. Right. Even though it's only like 350 bucks.

Yeah. Yeah. Any funeral home, anybody, the state, anybody will automatically say, I want the 350. This guy just died. so it may just be as simple as paying this guy to call and check or do whatever he may be able to run so I don't know what he can do well and I've heard that private investigators have access to all kinds of databases that the law enforcement doesn't have and I've got I've got two of them I'll give you one the guys that'd be great yeah that I give everybody his number he's a great guy former FBI he's

actually helped a bunch of people already I'm like people will call me and or reach out to him so he's been on the program a few times excellent hey I appreciate you guys watching do me a favor if you like the podcast please please share the video click the light button leave a comment subscribe hit the bell so you get notified videos like this and please consider joining my patreon it really does help me thank you very much see you