Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Exposing Modern Day Scammers | Brett Johnson (FBI's Most Wanted Cyber Criminal)

Episode Date: August 27, 2023

Exposing Modern Day Scammers | Brett Johnson (FBI's Most Wanted Cyber Criminal)

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Going it to the manager, she's doing this with the ID. Oh, that's, that's, am I, why am I sweating? They pull up your credit with that. You go, huh. And I go, you know, it's everything in me not to go, what? He realizes, wait a second. I haven't been sentenced yet. And he's like, I got caught, like, mid-act.

It was actually a Buccaneers cheerleader. I mean, what am I going to get a chance to hit a Buccaneers cheerleader? Buccaneers cheerleader. You got to. I mean, to me, that's like a, that's, you get a pass. I mean, remember, stranger danger. You know, I feel like that book will lose me a lot of people. People will read that and be like, you've got some issue.

Like, it's not. I mean, it's, it is hilarious, though. But it's, yeah, it's deserving to me. I watch. a video mine the other day and I thought damn you subscribed your own video exactly you're good you should you should be huge

yeah I feel like this should go on its whole this is not what we're here to talk about well okay so we're here to talk about the apathy I'm going through right now right yes the disappointment all that bullshit so so a few things man it's it's like you know me I'm the guy who who calls out bullshit.

I've made a career these days of calling out the bullshit that's going on, both on the bad guy's side and with companies and everything. And so recently it started with, it started before that, but it started with Blue Acorn and Wompley. So there's been a few reports that both of these fintech companies helped to facilitate. What is a fintech company? So not a traditional financial institution, which you are more than familiar with. Yeah. Okay.

So this is like PayPal, the people who aren't traditional banks, but do banking-type business. Okay. Would also like payday loans and where they cash advances? So you do have some fintech companies that do the payday type stuff that aren't brick and mortar. Okay. So that would be fiend-so it's more internet-based. Right. Okay.

So these two companies, specifically these two, there was a report that came out a few months talking about how they helped facilitate PPP fraud, the pandemic stuff, all right? The payroll protection program, whatever the hell of the PPP stood for. A couple of these companies, they processed, you know, 60,000 loans and profited like $2 billion. One of the companies profited $2 billion. The other company profited $1 billion just from processing the loans. And there's just an exorbitant amount of fraud that's connected to every single one of those loans that they process. So this company could go out and say, you know,

say, hey, your company is available, is, is, are they, were they actually soliciting business or were people going to them and saying, hey, I have a company, I need to borrow PPP money. Can you help facilitate that? So what happens is, is, okay, let's let's backtrack into stimulus fraud. What happened was is as the pandemic begins, we used to teach on shadow crew to never act out of desperation. When you act out of desperation, poor choices result, all right? The, the government did this. They realized the economy was going to go tits up, so they started to implement these stimulus programs. They did unemployment insurance. They did EIDL. They did PPP. Most experienced fraudsters went toward unemployment, all right, because it was instituted with such

rapidness that it was very difficult for the more experienced, skilled people out there to set up bank accounts, HM out, get traffic on them, everything else in time to get that $2 million loan that was coming through PPP. But it was still done, all right? What was going on on Telegram, on the dark web on some of the forums, you had the exchange of information. You have people saying, hey, we're doing this type of fraud. The easiest institutions to hit

right now are Wompley Blue Acorn. So it was known within those circles, all right? At the same time Wompley and Blue Acorn, they're not really good about KYC, know your customer. So they were allowing a lot of bullshit going through without verifying

a whole hell of a lot of stuff. Right. All right. Well, plus it's, for them, it's They make money on it. They're just brokers, right? Kind of like they're just trying to get the government's money. Yeah. That was really one of the main problems of all of this is you had banks that was processing it. The banks would realize, traditional financial institutions would realize it was fraud and see it, not their money.

Why worry about it? So they were allowing this to go through. Two of the biggest offenders, Wompley, blue acorn. All right. So report comes out about this. And this is where this whole apathy bullshit starts with. me report comes out it's issued on lincoln they talk about it across all the fraud channel you know good guy fraud channels and everything else nobody says anything all the fraud professionals out

there keep their mouth shut all the financial fintech companies keep their mouth shut nobody calls them out the report comes and goes all right nothing ever said i'm like i get pissed off of that i bitch a little bit about it two weeks ago well why do you think that is i think that you're dealing with a bunch of people, whether it be conferences, fraud professionals, or other institutions that were either doing the same bullshit, knew what was going on, profiting by it, blah, blah, blah, blah, across the board.

So instead of coming out and saying anything, they keep their mouths shut for fear of losing profit, losing contracts, losing clients, friends, upsetting somebody. Right. That's what I think. And I don't think I'm wrong on that. No, I was just thinking I got caught by like a Washington Mutual multiple times. Okay.

You know, and they, I mean, I got called by numerous banks. And they were like, you know, refinanced the loan, get us our money back or, hey, pay us our money back. And they never called anybody. Like there was never like, even if they threatened to call, it was always like, well, if you don't do this, we'll call the FBI. Sure. But in the end, you know, they didn't call the FBI. Now, why do you think that is? Because they didn't, you know, at the time, even if, to be honest, even at the time, I thought that they don't want anybody, no matter what, they didn't want anybody, the FBI looking through their files.

And at one point, I was actually had a guy with a bank called, it was Pinnacle Bank Corp. It was a small bank in Chicago. It actually went, went under. But the owner was the guy named Gary Bond. and he actually came down at one point they caught us with a couple million dollars in fraud they sold it to household bank okay um and they basically were like look is just promise me if these loans come back on us you'll help us get rid of them and we're like no problem because i don't have two million to pay you he actually came down a few weeks later and met with me and some of my brokers and during

that conversation he had a couple drinks that night he took us dinner um like didn't cut us off knows that we gave him two million in fraud like he's like keep him coming but you know you gotta watch this. So he comes and he says to me, he's like, look, to be honest, he's like, nobody wants the FBI going to their files. Sure. He's like at all. He's like, he said, because they're going to come in, you could give them these two files, but he's, but you don't know where that's going to end. He's like, they may say, well, look, we're subpoenaing all your files. He said, nobody wants to be in, in that position. Right. And he even told me, I really don't care about, he's, we're not so concerned about fraud as long as it goes past the one year clawback.

Now at that point, it was one year. Now it's like 30 days. Right. So he's like, as long as it goes past that one year and they can't come back on me, he said, I don't care. And it was, it was, I just remember being, I was just like, oh my God, I couldn't believe it. So, so, and that's my issue, right? Because I'm like this recovering alcoholic. Right. Okay. I am.

I don't say that I'm reformed. I say I'm reforming. Right. That the longer I go without committing a crime, the chances I'll continue to go that, even further without committing. All right. But as that alcoholic, as that now. reforming criminal. I'm also this black and white guy. Just do the right damn thing. I end my show with that bullshit. Just do the right damn thing. I can see it from the criminal side. I can

understand that bullshit. I don't understand people who actually sign on to a career of doing the right thing and then don't. Right. I don't get that. And it's fucking with me, man. It's fucking with me hard because not hypocrisy. Yeah, not three weeks ago the FTC and Florida, they come out with a complaint against a company called chargebacks 9-11. So say you

buy something from a merchant someplace, from a store, online, and the store charges you improperly or doesn't deliver the good as advertised. It's broken, what have you. What you do is you contact your credit card issue or your bank and you say, hey, I want to do a chargeback.

I want my money back. It wasn't as described. The bank then notifies the merchant, hey, we're going to get that money back from you. Right. They give them an opportunity. Right. That's what's called a chargeback. Now, that dispute sometimes is handled by the merchant. A lot of the times it's handed over to a third party company like Chargebacks 9-11, who fights that dispute for you. They'll send in the documents, everything else to the issuing bank and say, hey, we're disputing this. We don't agree with this and they'll fight it tooth and now. Chargebacks does that, all right? So the complaint against chargebacks 9-11 is they were using deceptive and illegal practices to fight those

chargebacks thereby defrauding legitimate consumers right all right and the way they were doing that is when when you would go on to sign on for like a free trial of something the consumer would see one screen however there was another screen that only the bank would see all right so what was happening is is chargeback 9-11 they wouldn't they wouldn't show the consumer screen that didn't have any of that bullshit at all they would instead take a snapshot of the bank screen, say the consumer saw this screen, send it to the credit card issuer, and win the chargeback. So they were using these deceptive practices to do this kind of shit. Illegal as fuck. Not only that, but chargeback's 9-11. See, what happens is,

is when you're one of these fucked up merchants that's committing this type of fraud, say new free trial fraud or what have you, you get a lot of chargebacks. Once that chargeback percent hits a certain amount, it not only raises your credit card fees, but Visa and MasterCard, they'll boot your ass out where you can't take through credit cards anymore. So what Chargebacks 9-11 was doing, according to FSTC, what they were doing is they offered what was called a value-added program. We've got this set of prepaid debit cards, and we'll allow you to run fake transactions

through these cards to boost up your overall transaction amount, lower the chargeback ratio. Right, right. Okay. Again, illegal as fuck. Yeah, yeah, they're manipulating the system so that you stay below that. 2% or 0.002% chargeback rate. So here I am.

It comes out clear as a day. All right. Now, there's tons of merchants, tons of what they call fraud fighters out there, everything else. I start bitching about it. Who doesn't talk about it? None of the merchants.

None of the fraud professionals out there. None of the conferences that chargebacks 9-11 is sponsoring. Right. Now, why is that? Well, it's because of fear of losing profit, fear of being fingered maybe you were a client of theirs maybe you knew what was going on everything else and that's that's this issue that i've got man is again i can understand this shit from criminal view i get i get the guys out there that are stealing money i understand that

right i don't understand these son of a bitches that signed on for a job to do the right thing and then don't right so that's what i'm struggling with um and i've been raising mortal hell about that i was i was going to say it it it I was going to say one I was going to say that it's funny because like yeah it's when people are like you know oh you know

where they always say like I'll say you know my name is Matt Cox and I'm a con man they'll go you know you want to say like reformed comment or do you want to say that you want to say and I'm always like I mean

you know not really because you know what I'm saying because because the truth because the truth is is I know something's wrong when someone tells me about a scam and then my first thought is nice serious

and then I have to catch myself and go oh wait hey whoa wait a minute listen you need to think about this you hear about the crime you start chuckling like yeah yeah that's good listen what I used to do

and it's like I'm gonna here I want to listen to this and then I think what are you doing exactly like bro you're this close to going back to president like what are you doing for and then you do this and did you do this this as well. Yeah, what did they say at the bank? So, you know, how'd you cash the cat? So, yeah,

but it just, it just, it just, it just reminds me when these, it's like these guys, like the credit cards, right? Like for, for like, what, two decades, they were saying, put the chips in the card, put the chips in the car. Right. You know, first of all, to stop fraud, which was funny because when they were doing that, I was actually writing Boziac's book. And, and I was in prison with John Boziac writing his book. And I said, yeah, but now all that's shut down because the chips, because of the chips, right? And he just started laughing. He said, you fucking serious?

He was, man, the fake chips were on the market before the people were getting the real ones in the mail. Right. He said, that's not going to stop anything. Plus, he said, it doesn't matter anyway. You can try it twice. And if the chip doesn't go through it, it says, oh, swipe the card. That's exactly right.

And I was like, well, I don't understand. I said, well, why the banks fought it, or the banks weren't even interested in implementing it because the banks had already calculated in the fraud. And we've got a calculation of fraud. built in so it costs us more to try and stop the fraud and the fraud we we then pass that fee those fees and those charges onto the customers so the only person that the cut that's being hurt from fraud is the customers which we really don't care about that's so why would we go out of our

way to take our own money and update all these systems that it's not going to cost us money that's in the end we can really just pass on to the customer see and and that's it you're getting it now right so so you're looking you're looking at going out and doing speaking gigs all right right right doing this for a few years. Yeah. All right. So, and again, it's, it started to fuck with me a little bit because when I'm talking these days, what I'm talking about is, hey, you know, you know what's causing the problem? What's causing the problem is that there's so much shit out there that you guys have been told to do and you're not. That's what causes this entire threat landscape that's out there. It's, it's not cyber criminals who are really sophisticated that are doing zero-day

attacks, all this other bullshit. It's 90% of all the attacks are known exploits the shit you guys have been told to do that you're not. Why aren't you doing it? Profit. You don't want to cause any friction. You don't want to scare a consumer away. You want to pocket all that money, walk away with it, and you want the consumer to eat it. And you're just going to pass those costs right on to them. That's exactly the problem. And it's like, you know, I've been saying recently that my outdate from cybersecurity, I'm 53, my outdate is January of when I turn 60. That's it. I quit in a little under seven years now. And I don't know what the hell I'll do,

but it won't be bitching about this stuff anymore because it's like, come on, guys, it's beating your head up against a wall every single day. You've got a select few people that call out bullshit, but most to everyone else, they're scared of losing their little piece of the pie. Right. And that's it.

So what are you going to do? Yeah. You know? I was going to say, like I mentioned that I'll, you know, talk in front of law enforcement. I was talking in front of the the financial crimes guys. And first of all, one of the things that shocked me, and I know you talk in front of these guys too,

is that some of the things I was saying when I was just explaining how I got like the DMVs of different states to issue the driver's licenses. And just as I'm kind of going through it, they're like sought like, like, they have no idea. Yeah, and I thought, like I'm stopping. And then somebody, and then I keep going. And when I mentioned that I got the U.S.

State Department to issue passports, they're literally a woman said, well, how did you do that? And I thought, yeah, and I sat there. I thought, like, you've been doing this 15 years. How do you know that, like, how do you not know it's this easy? How do you not not know the process? And so as we're taught, so I'm saying they're going on and on. But they were like, you know, well, when you were making the. synthetic identities. Like, well, I don't understand. I thought the, I thought like, well, how could

you stop something like that? Like what, they said, what kind of procedures could be put in place that could stop someone from, from, or the bank from going forward with the loan? I went, well, the procedures are already in place. They just don't follow them. That's exactly right. And they went, they go like what? I said, well, almost, not every time, but a good majority of the time when I would actually go, because a lot of times I'd go into the bank. The reason I go in the bank and show my face is because if I call on the phone, you're already thinking I don't know this person. But if I walk in, I give you my ID and I'm standing in front of you already don't think fraud. You're done. At that point, they're like, this guy is good. He came

in the bank. He's sitting here. So they would pull my credit right then. I apply right then. They pull my credit. I've got the W-2s. I got my pay stubs. I got everything. Oh, you bank statements. Yeah, I got my bank statements. Are these enough? Yeah, yeah, I got those. And so they pull my credit and they would go, and this is something you don't want to hear when you're sitting in front of somebody is where they pull up they're sitting they pull up the thing right you hear that and then they go huh like huh huh huh is not what you want to hear sit in the my first thought is how close did I park exactly they're typing they stop and it's like huh or yeah even worse when they grab your eye I've had them take the ID and go hold on a second

and stand up it's like oh my God you know you have to get that ID back I'll need that back He just walked away to my fake ID. He's showing it to the manager. She's doing this with the ID. Oh, that's, that's, am I, why, am I sweating? So, and then, you know, they, but they would sit down and they'd go, huh. Sometimes they, sometimes they pull up your credit without you go, huh. And I go, you know, it's everything in me not to go, what?

You know, and I go, what's up? And they'd say, well, it says that your, it says your social security was issued within the last year. And I go, really? Yeah, then I'm going, huh, can I get my ID? No. And I go, really? They go, yeah. And you know, your credit cards are only not, they're all about a year old.

And I go, right, right. And then I go, what does it say my date of birth is? Like, knowing that it's going to say the right thing because I'm the one to input in it. You know, when I applied for these credit cards, it populated it. It automatically created a credit profile. Right. So they would go, yeah, says you were born.

1970 you know I'm born in 69 but I always use like July 7th 19th so all I have to remember is 7th that's it 7s they go yeah it says 1970 and I'd go huh and they go this is your social your social security card and I your number and I go yeah they go have you always used this

and I would go yeah it's all my W2s and they would say then they have already have two so they look and they go yeah yeah yeah you know what I said hold on a second I always have one that was like five or six years old pull it out and I'd go here same thing see same and sometimes I'd even have 1040s like the actual tax rate I go I got my tax return from like 10 years ago pull that out and they'd go yeah all right and they go huh okay then and let's be honest that that's because if you'd have tried that bullshit over the phone no no they probably would have said let me get back with you let me check this but one I'm in person but two they're also thinking I want this to go through through because I make a fee like it definitely works on brokers. Mortgage brokers. I wanted

to go through. He's given me a reasonable explanation. It's an issue. I have the stuff. Maybe somebody else will catch it. Well, it just got through. You were the first line of defense. It just got through you. The next guy, you're giving him a package of all the stuff.

The likelihood that he's even going to recognize that little, that it said fraud in this one part is very unlikely, especially when you just gave him a full package. W-2's pay stubs. You gave them, I put money down. There's bank statements.

There's an appraisal order. Like, everybody thinks I'm legit. You've got a driver's license. Like, all he had to do was call Social Security. Or go on, it's a U.S. citizen, like, dot gov, I think, or dot stuff. You know, take the name and the number and the date of birth and put it in. It would have said it doesn't match. Right.

There's all these little things you could have done, but you saw a. fee. I gave you a semi-reasonable explanation. If you had any training at all, you would have known synthetic identity. Like you would have known, no, let me check. It's worth a call. But they didn't care. They didn't care. He's going to make $2,500 or $3,500 for a broker fee. Maybe he gets 60% of that. He works at a bank. Maybe he gets less than that. What is it matter? He still has a, he still has a close so many loans. If it's a broker, he's getting 50, 60% of a $3,000 fee. He wants this to go through. Sure.

So, but yeah, so, like, there's all these systems that are in place. They just don't, they don't follow them. They don't. So, so here's, you know. He wants Khan Bank of America out of $250,000, using nothing but a fake ID and his charm. He is the most interesting man in the world. I don't typically commit crime, but when I do, it's bank for all. stay greedy

my friends support the channel join Matthew Cox's Patreon so what year was this you were doing this I mean this was 2000

up to 2000 late 2006 okay but I mean that same system exactly it got easier after 2011 yeah I think

CBN fraud that was going on I was easier at that point I was going to say listen and now you can go online and just like I used to have to make my W-2s and paste I used to have to know some math

Right. Now you don't have to know anything. It's like, how much do you make an hour? I don't know. It was $30? How much does that come to? Oh, 40 hours a week. It'll populate everything for you. So, and I want to talk about, I want to move over into how criminals actually act in a little bit.

But what I wanted to ask you about is how do you fix that problem where you've got these assholes that care more about putting money in pocket. than they do about stopping the problems that are, in your case, literally right in front of. I would think some kind of a benefit to them. Like if you were going to make money on reporting that fraud and if it was prosecuted or even catching it, maybe they could make, they would, but there's no benefit for him to catch that fraud, that broker to catch that fraud or even, let's say the employees that knew what was going on in those, those companies that clearly see it, that they know what's going on.

For them to say something isn't beneficial to them. They lose their life or they lose their job, most likely. There's an investigation. It costs them tons of money to go meet with the FBI. They lose days at work. They lose all these things. They get labeled as a snitch or the person that brought this company down. The whistleblower laws are bullshit.

Like they don't, almost nobody's getting paid. Every whistleblower is always screwed over. Yeah, they're always screwed over. So if you actually utilize the whistleblower laws that are already on the books and gave people 10% and gave them this much money and gave them an incentive to turn to to actually follow the laws that are already there then I would think that people would start then I'd be looking for fraud well sure I want to find some fraud it's quick I get a check quicker for returning the fraud than I do with this loan probably loan might not even go through but I know I know

that's fraud but then you would have all the spouse reporting of fraud would it be false I don't know yeah Yeah, well, in that case, I don't know what else, what that other than that could be. You know, there's some stuff that I think it's just education. There's just no education. These people, some of these people just don't know. They don't. But, you know, it's like you said, the tools. Right.

It didn't matter whether you were back then doing synthetic like that. If you're, if you're current day doing CPN fraud or what have you, the tools to stop bank fraud have been in place. Yeah. They're there. It's just nobody's implementing the tools. Right. So it's easy enough. It's easy enough to walk into it.

a bank and set up this stuff. I did that with new account fraud all the time. Why do it on the phone? Go in with the ID, hand it to them. Yeah, I'm nervous as hell the first few times, but after you do it a few times, you're like, okay, we're good to go. What's even worse is when a little thing

goes wrong here, a little tiny things and you get past them, then I got to the point where I was walking the bank, I'm ready to argue. They're like, well, we're going to call the manager. Call them. Right. You've got $80,000 of my money in this bank. Raise a seat. And they're like, damn.

Like, yeah, I can be pretty upset about that too. You know, and you're saying this and you're like, I don't know who you need to call. But and they're like, oh, wow, Jesus. You know, just cut this guy check. Yeah, we, we, we, we, yeah, let's wait, wave that policy. Let's say, it's like, it's all right. Just get out of here. Yeah.

Because I'm also thinking to myself, like, in my case, like if the cops show up, like, I was so confident about it. Like, I have a real ID. Right. I have a real. Like, I don't, the cop's not going to show up to say, we're going to run your ID. Run it. Yeah. The DMV.

five miles away issued it. That's my pictures coming up. So if that's the case, but some of these guys are using, you are using fake IDs and fake this and fake that. But if they still were to walk in, you know, that you get so good at knowing

what their bank's procedures are. You know them better than, like I would know if I walked in and said, hey, if I asked for over $3,500, then on a new account that it had been issued within the last six months, I knew they had to call another branch

to talk to somebody to get clearance. even though I had $100,000 in the bank. And I would go in and I'd say, so I knew, I either walk in and I asked for $3,100 or I might as well ask for $9,800. You know what I'm saying? Go bigger. Exactly. So it's like, yeah, $3,100, why?

Because I got six more banks to do today. Or I'd say I got three banks to do today, $9,500. You know, I'll wait in 10, 15 minutes. Oh, you're going to make your call. Yeah, you're going to want my ID. you're going to want my credit card here's my social security number also you're going to want to know my home address

it's such and such you know like I knew what the questions were coming before they know all right so so I don't know who's interviewing who here man but okay so here's one of the things that I've noticed too all right so you and I

really good social engineers we know what the hell we're doing but the reason we know what we're doing is we're motivated for a completely different reason right all right the reason I mentioned that is is there's a whole shitload of gray hat or white hat social engineers out there. Okay.

That I don't really think they're worth much of anything to be honest with you because they're motivated for a completely different reason. If the shit that we're doing doesn't work, at the worst case scenario, we don't eat that night. I mean, at the best case scenario, we don't eat that night. Worst case, we go to jail. Yeah, yeah, you're calling somebody on the phone. Exactly. Put some money on my books. So, you know, the thing is is that, you know, when you're looking at security services

at these people who are giving the training, all right, and this is where you and I come in as being valuable to financial institutions, to merchants, to across all these different verticals in there, you take a security guy that comes in that's never done anything like that, who's trying to teach social engineering, you know, as a job. Right. Versus the guy who is a social engineer because. he has to be and he has to be effective at it where he doesn't eat or he goes to gelat end of the way.

There's a difference in the way that you approach that and the way that you train that. Yeah, the bar is at definitely a different level. So, you know, and that's one of the things that one of the things I've been bitching about. I bitch a lot on LinkedIn these days. You may have noticed that. I, a little bit.

But, you know, it's, you did a show on Frank Abingale. The fake criminal guy. Yeah, yeah. All right. we've got a lot of that bullshit that goes on. Yeah. You know, you know your shit.

Right. I know my shit. Boziac knows his shit. I was going to say, and if I don't know it, I'm more than happy to say, I never did that. I don't know. I don't, because I have people ask me, you know, hey, will you talk about, you know, stock fraud? Will you talk about, like, I don't know, I don't know anything about it. I can Google it.

Yeah. Like, I mean, I watched Wolf of Wall Street. I understand the basic concept. I was in jail with some guys. I would get Jordan if you want to talk about that. Yeah. But I couldn't, you know, it's so funny too, because you can always tell the guys that know it because suddenly they're talking about, well, you know, the first thing you got to do is you got to file for a such and such and this and that.

You got to fill this out. You got to fill that. You got to go to the like, I just start rattling that shit off. Yeah. And it's like, okay, I have no clue what's happening. So I don't talk about it because the thing is, you know, like, you know, a fisherman knows a fisherman. You know, so if somebody's, you know, look, it's just, it's like with the cops. for a cop to go undercover people think oh well they go undercut listen that's difficult it's dangerous

criminals talk in a certain way and drug addicts and drug dealers know they have a certain and they will know very quickly like oh man you don't know what you're talking about no you don't have a clue right so i remember when i started working uh when secret service brought me in i'd been there maybe three four days all right and they were like uh we don't want you to start reaching out we need we need credit card numbers i'm like okay dude so here i am I'm on my little laptop looking for credit card numbers. I'm talking to a seller. And I'm like, look, man, it's going to take some time to talk to this guy.

No, get the card numbers. You get the card numbers. I'm like, okay. So send him a message. It's like, do you have any card numbers? He's like, yeah, man. I was like, I'll take anything you got. And he wouldn't sell them to me.

No. I was like, and they're like, agents are like, what the fuck's going on? It's suspicious. Well, a week later, the guy's telling me, it's like, you didn't ask a goddamn thing about the names attached to them, the genders, nothing else like that. How are you going to use them? Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, you're right. You're absolutely right.

That's because I got two fucking agents behind me screaming in my ear, get them, get them, get them. And that's one of the things that you see on all these forums is you see some security guy coming in. You see some law enforcement guy coming in. And they'll start using this terminology that nobody in the fucking world uses. They'll use synthetic fraud. Well, nobody calls it synthetic fraud. They call it CPNs. CPNs is what they call it.

They talk about different things in different ways. And all of a sudden, you got the other guy that. comes in that's asked these pointed questions that nobody ever asked before right and it's like yeah we know who you are yeah go from there yeah um it's it's so funny too i was going to say i i know multiple guys that um literally like that they would come in they'd interest so you know you'd have a a drug dealer or something introduce another guy and they start talking for five minutes and the guy would say yeah he's a cop and they just walk away like they're walking away like how did he know you know How did he? He's like, I don't know what I said. I don't know this.

I don't know that. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Yeah. Or even if you said the right things, you didn't say it correctly. Right. You know what I'm saying? You're, you're saying for, you know, I need social security numbers. It's like, okay, well, nobody's going to say it over and over. They're going to abbreviate. And what are the abbreviations for all of these different things, you know? Just like if I talk to somebody in the business, like, or as a mortgage broker, you know somebody. because nobody in the mortgage industry says a mortgage loan application. You know, they call them 1003s because that's the form.

You know, hey, do you have a 1008? Do you have a 1003? They know the forms and it's easier to say and you're in the industry. You see it all the time and you hear it all the time. So, yeah, so you can. So you've got the commonality of the language and use that. Right. Because you use it so much, you've got that, it's no longer that formality of things

because you're communicating on the same level as everyone else. Right. So for you to go on and do that because I've talked to guys before because I wrote a story recently where and I talked to an ATF agent who went undercover for a long, you know, for a long time. Right. Multiple times

and he had explained like it's, you have to really be that person. Like he's like like I literally would let my beard grow. I wouldn't shave. I wouldn't shower for a day or two. I'm wearing the same clothes over and over again. He's like because he's said, you have a certain look with these guys in the gun community have, you know?

And he said, it's, it's, he's like, and they say certain things. And he said, so I had to hang out with these guys to get that down. He said, even then, he said, it takes a while before you're comfortable enough. He is because he's dealing in guns. Like, it could go bad. But, uh, but also he was, we were talking about how a lot of times they have to introduce you slowly and then they have to get rid of the main guy and then kind of hand you off for, you know, your, your, your credibility, you know,

there your credibility. So, but it's the same thing on Bozac was, it's the same thing when he was buying, uh, um, plastic and he was, you know, he has all these things,

how we had to buy this, how he had to do this, how we had to repackage this, how we had to put, because they would, you know, he'd bubble wrap this and he'd vacuum seal this and he'd stick in an invoice.

He's like, you know, he's like, you learn this stuff after getting caught so many times. I mean, that's so and, and okay, so you were caught to,

yeah, several times. and you keep getting away. It's the same thing with me, man. I mean, he's absolutely right. You get caught. This is how I got caught. So I'll fix that bullshit for the next time.

And it's a learning process over and open. And you know how you got to that point. Oh, yeah. Like I know, how do I know? Well, because one time this happened, but if it's an undercover and they say, how'd you figure that out, he better have a story, you know? Well, the CI told me this is how it has to be done. Exactly.

My guy told me. Yeah. He didn't walk me through everything, but he's, told me. Oh, man. I got, I, I, I just, what was the guy, the dark, what did you call him? The, the kingpin, dark web kingpin. Who was this?

This, this guy, listen to this. Actually, if I had a couple of these guys. Real guy or not? No, no, real guys. Real guys. Listen, I'm going to mention the, the, the ATM guy. Yeah. Okay.

So, listen, I have an ATM guy that contacted me. So he had from a Bitcoin machine. I didn't even know they had Bitcoin. We're cash machines, right? Like he had to explain it to it. I was like, oh, you serious? Yeah, then you get idiots that try to steal the damn Bitcoin ATMs. Yeah.

No, no, he didn't do that. But he was, he was the, he worked for Loomis. He worked for Loomis. Okay. So he's going and checking the ATMs. He checks the ATMs. He said, well, there was a problem with the Bitcoin machines. He said, you would, they never knew.

like the other machines they would say look you have to go refill the machine with you know here it's you know 300,000 or 200,000 and you put the package of it then you pull whatever the deposits were he's but they know it's out of money sure they know how much he's like the bitcoin

wasn't like that the bitcoins because they're like privately owned he said they go in and they're like hey check that machine see if there's anything in it he's like what do you mean see if there's anything in it he's like you'd go and I'd come back and I'd be like yeah there was nothing in it or I'd go and I'd say, yeah, there was like $20,000, you know?

And he said, so at one point, I realized, like, they, like the company knows, but the, my company, Loomis doesn't know. So one day I went and I swung by to check it. And he said, I took 10 grand. Yeah, stuck in my pocket. He's like, there's no, he said, there's a camera. It's over there. He said, but they can't, it can't see.

I just looked in the machine. I stiff in my pocket. I close it and I leave. It's like a week, like a week later, they call them in the office, can you come in here and he's like yeah what's up they're like so we don't really you know we're not we we feel like something happened there's an issue there's some money we feel there's a problem i think he said he didn't even really know how much money was they didn't never really said how much money was even missing he's like i don't even know that they knew how much money

was missing but anyway they basically said look um like you you you know you basically you can keep up so you can keep coming to work you know but eventually we're going to figure out something or you can just like he and he said basically i felt like they were saying they're going to figure out a way to fire me right he said or you can just leave and he said i was like yeah i'm just going to leave he is so he left so for 10 grand he just left for 10 grand right which is nothing but he never got caught he sends me an email says hey you want to hear this story he tells me basically the story and i was like sure so i talked to him on the phone i go okay okay and he goes um and i said okay I said, so what do you want to do?

He said, well, what do you think is a good story? He said, yeah, I think it's an interesting story. Do you want to come on the podcast and tell it? And he goes, yeah, I should I. Nice. So he came on the podcast and ran it himself out. And I told him, and I told, even before that I said, you know, I said, let me explain something. I said, I have a lot of guys.

This is what happens. They'll come on the podcast. And I said, I said, look, I said, I'm going to tell you right now. I said, if it's a, if it's a Zoom interview. I said you're looking at getting between 5 and 10,000 views. You know, if it's an exceptional interview, maybe 15 or 20, you know, if it's in person, I get about 40% more views. That's what I, and that's just my, you know, calculation, sure, based on really, very little. But I feel like I, probably right, right?

About 30, 40% more if someone's in person, generally, based on, yeah, very little. Periodically, you get somebody that just, they're here and just nobody's interested. That's right, right. But for the most part, I think it's about 30, 40% more. So I explained it to him. And I said, so here's the problem. I said, I've had guys come on. We do the podcast.

They say some things that they weren't thinking at the time. Like, they forget the cameras are there. I said, and then they end up, the podcast comes out. They then tell all their friends about the podcast. And then two days later, they call me up or they start texting me saying, hey, listen, I should have never said this about Jimmy. He's furious. Exactly.

or hey listen that's going to cause me problems at my work uh my boss said this or and i had one guy that went so far and i came back and i was like yeah listen bro i said like like i spent money to have you know a guy come here and and and and do this and so you know come and i's like that's a couple hundred bucks you know my i i have uh you know i have like i have an agreement with someone like i can't be putting stuff up and taking it down we had the conversation right and the only reason any of these people know about your like it didn't come up on their feed you called these people because you're nobody like your name's john john's you're nobody yeah i mean i'm not trying to be mean you did and then you're upset because you're like you know jimmy calls up and says

hey me you fucking use my name you said that fucked up shit and that we did and nobody knows about it so jimmy's in trouble with his wife and so and so now i might lose my job and then so this one guy literally got worse and worse and worse right uh like within a week he's calling me up saying you know oh he's talking about his kids are getting picked on he's he's gonna lose his job they pulled him aside and you don't think of any of that yeah and i sat there and i and i was like and i knew it was all bullshit like i'm like uh-huh uh-huh okay right right okay all right yeah i said look i'm not let me talk to colby let me see if i get it taken down i called colby i said yeah this is what the guy's saying colby's like you know look yeah we'll take it down we'll take it down so i call him back and i say

colby said no no he's a dick oh shit he's a dick i blame everything on Colby. I'm a nice person. I want to help. He said, no. I want to help you. He's unreasonable. I don't know what this problem is. He doesn't care about you like I do. He says the show's going viral. Everyone likes it. He said, you're a criminal.

He said, this could be a $500. He's going to be $500. Like, I mean, how much money do you have? No. He's shaking. I know. That's what I said. I said. Colby, we can't shake him down. So, yeah. So what happened with the Bitcoin guy?

So the Bitcoin guy. Yeah. I tell him. this whole thing. I tell him like, look, don't call me up later because of anything that you've said. He's like, that's fine. They chose not to prosecute me. They're not going to prosecute me. Yeah, they're not.

They've already, they've already this. He said, plus he said, it's a small town. I said, look, keep in mind, don't be calling all your buddies telling them. Fucking idiot. I said, no. So I told him, don't do that. I said, and he said, well, do you think I'll get charged? I said, no, I don't think he's charged. I think you might. No, he's, I still don't think he's going to.

But he did get upset. I would. I would say, I would. I would say no shit. fucking people in the comment section my guys are like what the one guy what's the top comment keep me posted on what he pleads to yeah keep me posted on what he pleads to it's the top comment but I mean guys are coming back going like bro so here he is he's he's got the hard on what and read the comments all the feedback of the first one let me know what he pleads to yeah yeah oh it gets worse it keeps like and there's tons of people go and then of course they're calling them names and stuff and so you know and they're calling them name you know and you know look

These are not professional speakers that you're talking to. So they're, people are mean. Like they're really mean like, you know, could this guy say, um, one more fucking time. Or this guy fucking, I can't hear him. Or he's this, oh, like nobody's going to recognize him because what? He's got his fucking sunglasses on. Who, what's this fucking guy's problem? You know, like they're going on and on.

Was he wearing sunglasses? He was wearing sunglasses. And it was dog. But, but so we, he goes on and on and I'm, you know, I come back. First he says, look, bro. You do me a favor. Oh, this was the worst. Somebody used like a spoof app.

Someone tracked out his phone number and spoofed him saying they were from Loomis's home office and texted him. And he's like, yeah, they texted me. I said, listen, Loomis is not going to text you. He's not, well, it says it's from Loomis. It says Loomis, you know, whatever, home office. And I said, bro, I said, call him back. Call him back. Tell him to email you.

I guarantee you he's not going to have a Loomis email. And he goes, okay, so he calls back and he goes, oh, it's like a Google number. It's like a Google, you know, I was like, okay, bro. He's like, yeah, I knew it was bullshit. I said, yeah, he did. So then it goes on. Then he comes back and he said, can you please blur my face on the thumbnail? No problem.

I blur it. Colby, we, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Then Colby, then another week goes by. So you're much more charitable than I would be. Oh, no. Typically, I would be like, like, if he started saying you got to take it down, I'd be like, no, I'm not taking it down.

Like I agreed to come on. Right. Like, you knew this. And we had a conversation. I didn't lie to you. We had a conversation. Anyway, so Colby. I told you how this would go.

Yes. And so he, he, he, so anyway, then he comes back and he asks, can you blur me, my whole face out through the whole video. Oh, wow. You can do that. Colby did it. Was it hard or was it a pain? So you, so you went that extra step of just blurring him out there too. Blurt, blurt his face out.

But then again, he did like put his name on the thing. You can't do both. You can't blur, can you? You can't blur and then cut. You can't like cut outside of a segment. Right. And people don't understand. Like, you could if he took the video down.

But he's not going to take the video down. Like, because it once is posted, if you take it down, you're reposting the video. It starts all over. And then I have to listen to a thousand people scream. This was on last week, motherfucker. Where's my comments? So, you know, I told me. And he's okay with it.

He's like, look, I'm okay with it. You blurred me out. You did this. You did that. I'm fine. I'm good with it. I appreciate it. I'm not trying to tell you how to run your channel.

that's fine well so that that's one guy that calls me second guy that calls me was put a little more forethought into it and this was uh this guy's name was colby too um this colby tells look some guys some guys in there are in the comment section are like you know like you can't tell a story the truth is he told a fucking phenomenal story you would love love it he's selling he's selling stuff on the um the dark web right he used Torah whatever he goes on a forum he becomes a vendor he's selling he's selling drugs on you know on a counterfeit you know counterfeit drugs so he's in any and the thing is now people are bashing them because it was you know I don't want to say you know it's it was I can say it can I say it the active

ingredient fentanyl yeah right okay we'll see we I'm worried the YouTube trust me we're constantly badly YouTube we say so I told him don't say it oh I said like you want to say it once or twice that's fine but then stop saying it just said and he goes no I'll just say the active ingredient and I said okay so he did say it like once or twice and then said the active ingredient then everybody's hammering I'm like oh this guy he doesn't want he knows

what he's selling poison he doesn't want to like I asked him but my comment section it's it's a sewer they're horrible they are vicious to people they hate them so were they mad that he was that it was selling drugs or just fake drugs

I don't think they were just fake drugs. If you're selling anything with that product in it, people... And that's a problem. Right. That is a problem. Well, people feel like you're selling, like you're trying to kill people. Like, to him is like, one guy's like, you know, he's killing people.

Listen, this is the U.S. government. If they could pin a murder on him or even, you know, they would. Like, there's no... And listen, he sent me his PSR. Like, I read his PSR. Like, the government never says anything about there being any deaths related to in any way. And if you're absolutely right. they could have they absolutely would right absolutely so we we have this long conversation he

and i have this conversation one about prison afterwards we talked about prison and what to do what to do um i i thought he would he does laugh a lot like he's very jovial guy right which is great right i'd rather talk to that guy like people make fun of that you know oh if he's always laughing and joking about what he did like come on he's just a fucking happy person yeah man i mean it's like i you know i laugh all the goddamn time right but the thing is is that people get angry cry they get angry about that but that's that's almost the defense mechanism it allows you to talk about stuff that you would never really be able to talk about unless you're sitting there joking about it at the same time right i'm not happy that i ripped off a shitload of people right i'm not happy

about that i was a liar and a piece of shit for years right i'm not happy that i had to do all that time in prison no i'm not happy about all that time in prison either people always forget about that walking the bathroom but two o'clock the morning you see four feet in the shower you're not happy about that shit no it's like where am I I was constantly

seeing stuff going yeah what did I do to myself what did I do um so yeah so anyway

that guy uh that video is actually doing great it's got like what over 30 000 oh that's nice

yeah in two days so in just over two days over 30,000 dude right on a on a on a

on a stream yard but that we did it like a month or so ago and then after like Just as we did it, he called, like, he, he, he, he realizes, wait a second, I haven't been sentenced yet. And he's like, and so I'm sitting there talking to him. Like, we were still on the thing.

I turned out the recording. Or did you hear that conversation or had I shut off the recording? No, I shut it off. He asked me. Yeah, I did shut it because I remember he goes, are we, you recording? I said, no, I shut up. He goes, yeah, listen, the more I think about this, he goes, can you hold it? hold this for a little bit and I was like and you keep in mind too as he's telling the story like

I don't hear the whole two hour story like I heard some pieces of it sounds good he sent me some documents I read them it looks legit let's go like I'm not you know I'm not Woodward and Bernstein here I mean this is a fucking YouTube show so I was like yeah let's do it so as he's talking I start to realize like he was raided they arrested him he got out he this he that and I'm like okay so what are you so so what did you get he's like oh I haven't been sentenced yet I'm so I'm thinking And here you are talking about this shit And we kept talking Because I thought

Something Something he's gonna say something Something's gonna happen I was like so you haven't been sent No no My lawyer saying I'm gonna get this much time And I was like okay When is gonna max your ass out

If I hear this Yeah when are you getting sentenced And then so once we shut it off He starts thinking about it And he goes Yeah listen I'm thinking about this Matt I'm maybe

Yeah can you hold this Now that I think about it And I was like he was because I would really hate to be being sentenced and they start playing this and I was like yeah that that might be an issue that might be um but he he ended up so it was so funny as he he ended up contacting me whatever two what a week ago yeah like a week ago this is so it had been like two almost three weeks and he contacted me he said hey I was sentenced and we're in blue guidelines no you got five years he got the minimum mandatory minimum. Like, keep mind, they couldn't. It's through the internet. So they had ordered some stuff from him, tracked it back, and rated it as off. Which is not difficult to do that. Right. So what he, he didn't think it was going to be as easy as it was. They never do. But he had a, you know, but then again, think about it, he wants to be sentenced because he had a much

longer run than they knew. Get it over with it. Yeah. Like, like, he's realizing, you guys got me for these packages. Like, I need to plead guilty. Right. To this. Exactly. You know, because if they really look into it like what if they end up finding out this is the run you know it was just right now it's just this and you can minimize it you don't have the stuff and so he played guilty got five years and then we know we talked about him going to going in and um and i you know and he's a big guy shaved head beard he'll be fine chubby and very he looks very soft so i was like listen do yourself a favor don't go into you're probably going to go in to low don't go in and say like Like, I don't want to, if somebody says, what are you here for?

Don't say, my lawyer said not to talk about it. Yeah, don't do that. Don't do that. Don't say computer crime. Yeah, don't do that. I know that for a fact. That's a mistake. Don't say that.

Don't tell them a whole bunch of information, but be supposed to, but do tell them exactly, this is what I'm here for. Yeah. I said, so that's it. And yeah, he's, uh, don't play Billy badass. Don't do that. Yeah. Yeah. Don't borrow money.

Don't gamble. Don't borrow money. Don't talk shit about people. Understand that there's a spot in the TV room, just can't go in there no start watching um he uh oh my god there was a guy listen let me tell you right now i tell you this i don't know if you had one of these guys we would have some guy show up i think i told you this we'd have like a white guy would show up a soft looking white guy would show up he's 50 something years old soft looking scared comes in he could they you know they come in around

just after like or just before count right right they come in and then they get their cell they still wearing their, their, their, their, their, their slacks and a white, torn up t-shirt and they're, they're looking, you know, so he's got flip-flops on and he's walking around. So they would, that, they would come in and then everybody just kind of ignores him. Right. And then they go to chow, they come back. They, they lay in their bed and cry. Um, you know, then the next morning, pretty much regardless of what, regardless of what crime you've committed. That's typically the first night in prison. You just lay there like, like, I slept like a baby. Well, you sound like,

I really. It sounds like you were sniffling a little bit. And then they then, or sometimes that night, usually that night when they come back and they lock everybody down, they start to work their way into the TV room. Right. Or the next morning. They would walk in the white TV. Right. And then they just car room. Yeah.

They come and they sit down and we had a guy. They called them Kenny King. And what's so funny is like his initials were like KKK. They were like, yeah. they were so it was like Kenny King so Kenny Kevin King and so Kenny would go the guy would come in and sit down we'd be watching the morning news waiting for waiting to leave

and all of a sudden Kenny would go and and we listen I knew I knew it so well when a guy would walk in and sit out I'd get up and leave because I thought I don't want to be here for this humiliation and he was always the same thing. He'd go, listen up, home boy. And the guy would always

and he's a, I don't know what you're here for, but if it got anything to do with pictures, a little kids, or looking at video, or touching somebody, you can't be in this room. You understand?

Oh, no, no, no, no, I'm here for Medicare for our. You understand? Look, you've got about three days to come up with something. that shows something and they'd be like oh no okay okay and here's the worst thing you knew if he was lying because he wouldn't even come back right like if he really was there for Medicare fraud or for selling drugs or something three four five days later he's walk he's got something in the mail he's walk around going boom that's what my charge is there you go you know I got 10 years for most of the time

they wouldn't come back right but if they really if they had nothing then they just don't come back You see, I was, I was the guy. So when I, when I got there, it was, it was, it was horrible. It was, I want to be in that position. I used to think, Kenny, you've got to be miserable. I was the guy. That was my job. Brett, go talk to this one.

So it was, it was that conversation. But I was tried to, I tried to be nice. I say, hey man, don't know if you're in here for something that's fucked up. But if you are, now's the time to tell me, don't care what it is. But if you lie, those guys over there, will fucking kill you. Yeah. I'm a nice guy.

I want to be, I hear you. I'm not going to, I'm not violent. It's society's fault. I get it. I got you. I hear you.

It's a horrible thing. But there's no rules. I can kill you. What's so funny is Kenny would come to me and go, he'd go, Cox. And I'm like, and it's not like Kenny was even a big guy. Kenny was tiny.

Kenny was like five foot five or something. He was tiny. He weighed probably 140 pounds. But he was just, it was just. hate bill and he would cox and I go cry what yeah Kenny what's up go talk to that guy over there

why? Because you know he's saying this well he because he would say he'd go he says it here for fraud yeah and I look over and I go fuck because if he said drugs then they don't ask me right they Kenny can talk to all the pedophiles said computer crime yeah and credit yeah yeah yeah fraud yeah I always love that I told you that I must have told you

when I went up to the one guy no oh yeah I went up to one guy I go up to one guy and I said uh hey bro I said, I heard you were here for fraud. He's like, um, yeah, yeah, I'm here for, uh, credit card fraud. I said, what we, are we charged? I said, that's what you were charged with? He was, yeah, charged with credit card fraud. I went, hmm.

What's the actual charge? That's the actual charge on your indictment, credit card fraud? He goes, yeah, it's credit card fraud. And I went, hmm, okay. At this point, Kenny's, you did the bank thing. Oh, huh, yeah. Hmm. So Kenny comes walking slowly, walking down the home, and he's walking up slowly.

And I went, so what did you do? And he goes, I was removing, I was removing money out of credit cards. And I went, no, I get that. It's credit card for all you. But how are you doing it? Like, did you, were you in like a position, like at a bank where you were able to charge the credit cards or did you work for, did you work for the credit card company or were you manufacturing credit cards?

Like were you using an access device of some kind? And he goes, oh, he goes, it's not a learning experience. And just then, Kenny walked up and I go, he's a chomo. And Kenny goes, I knew it. And I walk off. Kenny comes up. He goes, Kenny goes, how'd you know? I said, I've never met a fraudster in my life that didn't want to brag about how smart he was to let you know I'm super smart.

And this is how I did it. And I figured it out. I said, plus I said, there's no such thing as credit card fraud. I know, it's access device fraud. It's bank fraud. It's financial institution. There's a dozen, you know, it's wire fraud, something. I said, there is no charge that.

And I asked them three times and he said it over and over again. And I said, yeah, so no. And so then another, this happened all the time. I remember this other time, this guy was this, this is how good I was getting at it. This is how good I was getting it. And I felt bad, you know, I don't want to put somebody in a position where he's being. But you knew, the thing is, is you knew who the Chobos were walking off the bus. Oh, yeah.

And what's funny, too, was how they would congregate, you know, like they would group. And it was, and not just that, even if you had four guys that I knew all four, you were lying. You've actually convinced other people that it's not true. That you four fucking guys hung out together. You're always talking about how you hate shows. But you guys are all hanging out. And you're all lying. You said you're here for Medicare fraud.

You said you're here for wire fraud. You said you're here for pot. You said you're here for this. And you guys all hang out together. And you talk about the shows. So this one guy, one time I was sitting there, Kinney King comes up. And he goes, he says, got, see that guy over there? And I looked over and I was like, oh, yeah, yeah.

And he goes, says he's here for a, fuck, he said, some kind of scheme, a, a, I go, Ponzi scheme. He goes, and he goes, yeah, that's it, Ponzi scheme. And I went, okay. And he said, I want to go talk to him, see if he's a, see if he's a chel. And I go, no, he's a con man. And he goes, man, you just looked at him. Go talk to him. And I said, I'm going to talk to him.

I'm going to tell you right now. I said, that's a con man. And you could fucking, you, the look, listen. this dude not a big guy checking out everybody walking by his back is kind of

towards the you know in the corner kind of towards just checking everybody out not being a jerk but the look on his face was he was in a horrible

environment analyzing everything and confident not a big guy right's my height but I looked at that dude and I was like huh

walked right up to him said hey bro I said, you're here for some kind of a Ponzi scheme or fraud or something? I said, Kenny told me that you were, he's like, yeah, $57 million, largest proxies scheme. And immediately went into it. Okay.

Reading off his resume, did it for 15 years. But it just immediately starts bragging about it. I thought, yeah, yeah. Because that's what you do. Right. You have to give your rest. It's like, damn, I'm here for this. Bam, bam, bam, bam.

And I did this, bam, bam. And they called me this, bam, bam, bam. Starts telling me all the papers he was in, all this. It's just proud of it. How much gold he dug up, how much went. And I was just like, damn, like, you're overboard. Like, you're, you're as bad. Like, I thought I had it.

I thought I had you peg, but fuck. That's me. You know, yeah, good times. Good times. What's going on? What are we at? One, 18. An hour and 18 minutes?

That's it. That's not bad. Not bad at all. Not bad at all. So what did you say about Frank Abingnau? Since we're talking about crime And the fake son of the bitches Better out there

First of all You should talk to that guy I know him Oh you We're at the same conference in Next month He's an interesting guy Yeah right

I've spoken to him on the phone We had a Zoom meeting as well Did you do a A podcast? Did not do recording Did not I mean I'm just saying

I don't know How you're going to run your show But you might And I So what happened was Is the ACFE, last year, they were like, will you come in and keynote this? Like, absolutely, let's do that.

Because I love the ACFE. They don't pay shit most of the time. Right. Yeah, absolutely. You understand he's going to put this probably in? That's fine. I still love them, all right? But, but, so I'm like, absolutely.

So, didn't know who any of the speakers were, anything else like that. So about, this has been probably six weeks ago, the woman who brought me in, and she was like, I just wanted you to know that. Frank Abingdale is coming as well. And she sent me a note on LinkedIn. I was like, well, that means they were going to kick me out because Frank Abingnell refuses to meet me. So I sent her a note back and I was like,

hey, I understand if you're dismissing me. I understand completely Frank's a bigger draw and everything else. And she writes back. She's like, no, no, you're there with Frank. And I'm like, seriously, you know what I've said about this guy. Right. You know I'm going to bury his ass. And she was like, it'll be fine.

I'm like, okay. The whole industry, right? Yeah, right. So four days later, this Levere guy, he messages me. And he's like, I'm showing up at this conference, too. So I started, and he's on this pretend podcast. I'm like, holy shit. They're all planning on, Mary Jane Abingnell all of a sudden.

So Levere and I talked, or however you say his last name. We talked, he's a great guy. And he was like, have you watched my show? It's like, no, I've not watched your show. He's like, well, I've watched your show. And so he was talking to me, he was like, I'm planning on giving all my proceeds to the victims of Frank Abagnow. And he's like, what do you think about that? And I was like, shit, if you can do it, I can do it too.

Let's go. Okay. So, of course, two days later, Frank Abagnale, he drops out. Right. But, I mean, it looks like the industry is actually finally taking, you know, that to heart that he didn't really do anything. But now that being said, he's got to. He's done something. Yeah.

Like, I, you know, so first of all, I like to say that I read his book in prison. Same here. Not once, but over and over and over again. Multiple times. I can't say that I read it in its entirety. I probably read it in its entirety three or four times at least. Right. But I read sections of, if you add up all the sections, I probably read that book a dozen times.

Like, just to see how they condense things and how he, like, I really, really loved that book. And then I even read his second book. See, I didn't read the second. Second book was pretty good, too, although it mostly just talks about scams in general. The Art of the Steel. Art of the Steel. Then he has a third one they did with AARP, which he didn't write that one at all. Okay.

Oh, yeah, I didn't even know that. But, you know, and I always so, I had been on podcast where I talked about Frank Abagnale. And then guys were in the comment section were saying, no, no, he actually worked for, because I was saying, he actually did like all of his time. Like in the first one, he basically does. He gets turned down for parole several times and then he gets out on parole. And I said to the truth is people think, oh, he got arrested and very quickly based on the movie, they let him out to work for the FBI.

I said the truth is he actually did all of his time, got out on parole. Then he talks about how there were issues. In the second book, he talks about how there were issues on parole. He kept getting fired and, yeah, the PO or the PO would show up and get him fired. Another time he worked for. I remember reading about some of the issues that he had. Right. He worked in a grocery store, got dismissed from that.

Right, right. Like, the problem is, who knows if any of that's true anymore. And I liked the story. And so when Levine, I think it's Levine, I don't, whatever. When we talked, you know, he was talking about how all of these things, there was always one thing that bothered me. And it has always bothered me. And I kind of just shrugged it off like, okay, well, you don't. know you don't really know right so and it was always the the toilet in the airplane so when

he gets in the toilet he sneaks out through the toilet and he somehow another gets into the gear where the the landing gear assembly is and then he jumps out through the landing assembly and takes off and I always remember thinking well I would think it would be a close a closed system that would be separate right and I would think well maybe sometimes they have those those panels that have been bolted on i was like but it's not like he had a he didn't have like a wrench with him right and i'm sitting there going well obviously you know it's the suspension of disbelief like i see it i believe it i want to believe it my my my issue with him the entire time was the escape from atlanta because i know u.s marshals and they've told me

how that shit actually operates there was no forgotten paperwork as he claimed to that point no because you've got two marshals that deliver you there and you've got to check some back balances there. So Abingnell was claiming that the reason he was able to escape, they didn't deliver the paperwork. The marshals didn't. They had forgotten the paperwork. So he was able to social engineer his way out of the prison at that point. Right. He has the girl, he gets the FBI card and actually they call and he says, hey, I'm, I'm working with the FBI as a CI or I'm an, I'm an FBI. Let me talk to my partner and they actually let him go to the car to have a conversation. He jumps in the car and they go. Right. Like it's a whole thing. And granted, it's the same.

Like things were a lot more laxed But even when I was watching that It was but he would throw these little These little tiny These little tiny Details in there Where he said later In the newspaper article came out

Where they said that I had actually was a violent Escape that I'd harmed somebody Pulled a gun or done some things He said which was later disproven And it was like Like those are the little kinds of things That make the story seem more real Like he's a

he's an amazing liar he is absolutely is but uh... Levine the guy that I interviewed he was like he and the other guy

that had written the book because Levine didn't write the book he just did a podcast based on the book he was saying like he didn't understand why a documentary hadn't been made

why they didn't jump on it and he was saying it was like and I was like yeah right like so you interviewed Javier did you interview Havier yes Alan Logan too or not no just Javier

okay so he was saying he believed the reason people had not jumped all over it was because it was like being told that, you know, there's no Santa Claus. Like people don't want to believe it. They don't, and admittedly, like I had guys in the comment section before where I had talked on concrete, I talked on concrete about Abagnale and how he'd done all his time. And he did because people were saying, oh, you're like Frank Abagnale. Right.

And I was like, okay. well, no, because Frank Abagnale didn't get his sentence reduced. He did all his time. In the movie, they say they let him out, but he really did all of his time, according to the book. And in fact, he did all of his time because in general,

he just had a bunch of little tiny bits. But the point is that, like, I actually got my sentence cut for writing an ethics course, for working with the FBI, for writing these, doing two different courses and being interviewed. So and then this guy said that there was a whole, there's a

whole thing on where he's talking in front of like the FBI I think and it's on YouTube and he's talking about working as an undercover with the FBI and that is I've never heard that before my life no it's like you know he's getting more and more advantage right so the problem is is is you listen to that guy and it is it's disappointing that he's taken he's taken one or two small things that he did and he's ballooned them into these massive stories now I wouldn't blame him for what the movie did, for what Spielberg did. Like, I wouldn't blame him because they're going to do whatever they want to do.

Well, you know that now. I mean, you've talked to production companies I have, too. Once they buy the story, they do whatever the fuck they want to do with that. You have no say-so in that anymore. That's done. But the two books? Yeah. That's a problem.

Right. So really, he was just a low-level guy. He's been arrested for stealing a car. He's been... Oh, and Javier actually talked about how he had... kind of conflated two separate stories in the book where he takes the the stewardesses on this and that listen that scam in the book that's a great scam it is like I could see that working like like that's why I sat there and I thought wow that would work based on what he was doing

that was a great way to maximize what he was doing um but the point is is that uh Javier said that what really happened from his some their investigation was that Frank Abagnale at one point had worked at like a nursery. And everybody was saying, oh, we should all get, they were all kind of friends and said, we should do something over the weekend. And he took them all to Puerto Rico, flew them to Puerto Rico. And they said, like a couple days before they were supposed to leave or a day before they were supposed to leave or something, he something went wrong.

And he immediately was like, look, we got to go. We got to get on the plane. We got to get back. I got to get back. And he rushed everybody back there. And as soon as they got back there, he stole the station wagon. to the daycare or school, whatever it was, and left, and they never saw him again,

and they did a report saying, hey, this guy stole our fucking car. So that is kind of, and he also would go, he'd dress up like a pilot, he would go to universities, and he would interview sorority girls or college girls to be stewardesses for Pan Am,

let's say, I think it was Pan Am. They said he also would do physical exams, I read that bit. Yeah. Wow. Which none of that gets talked about. No, no. No, nobody brings that up.

Right. So, yeah, there was a bunch of stories that I was like, okay, so he kind of conflated the movie thing where he, and it's also in the book where he does this thing, goes to college and he interviews all these women, and he picks some of them, and he flies them all over to Europe. And then he gives them checks, and he also gives them reimbursement checks that they have to cash and give him the cash. So they're doing this everywhere they go. he's also not paying for any of the photography he's telling him to bill to bill paying him so he's running up photography bills all over europe the women are thrilled they get to go to europe for a month but they also end up making him like 20 30 thousand dollars in cash because they're cashing checks thinking it's just a part of how this works we cash this up we pay we have

to pay for our own fees but they reimburse us they give us a check we cash it give it to him um so so you read the book how many times 12 yeah let's say roughly six to 12 yeah and that's my problem with frank is that the reason i'm a speaker these days is frank abing oh oh yeah what because he's kind of paved the way that path yeah yeah you know when i when i was working for secret service that entire time i'm going to get out and i'm going to do exactly what this set of a bitch was doing i'm going to speak i'm going to consult well why doesn't he like why doesn't he want to be on the same so with frank and i i found that out when i started working for AARP.

Frank doesn't do Q&A sessions because... You don't want to answer in questions. He can't answer the questions. Right. All right. The book that he wrote for AARP, scam me if you can. He didn't write a single word on it. He comes to AARP and he's like, hey, you can have the book.

I'll give it to you free. Just hire me to work. And he charges AARP 20 grand a day. Jeez. And he screws him over. He did like, during that entire, he worked for him for, I think, a year, year and a half. and during that point in time he had two Q&A sessions and during those Q&A he answers the questions

about as bad as you possibly could He gives advice that no one on the fucking planet would do Doesn't support the advice Because he doesn't know anything he's talking about And it looks like what's going on these days Is somebody gives him talking points Right he gets up there he rehearses his speech He gives his story

Gives a few talking points at the end Doesn't really understand the damn thing he's talking about Walks away with his you know 30 grand for the speech and goes like that right is what's going on but uh the time the first time i was supposed to meet the guy he was doing a podcast for aARP um i forgot what the name of that damn thing was but um i was supposed to meet i flew into washington to meet him and he calls in sick that day yeah okay why because he did he just doesn't want to have a conversation with you that's gonna where it's going to be obvious i think it's that whole thing where a fisherman knows a fisherman

fisherman, knows a fisherman. You know, you know immediately. Are you full of shit or do you know what you're talking about? Right. And that's the problem. So he doesn't do anything like that. Javier, easy enough. Because they had Javier. So Frank Abagnale was going to be opening keynote. The next speaker was Javier. He would have walked in and just gutted him. Yeah, Frank would have to go on first because he's not going on second. He's not going on second. So first, second was Javier. And Abilenell was contractually obligated to it everything else for this conference violates the contract because it's like fuck no not showing up to that shit i i i i am you know what's okay sorry go ahead but you know i did my show so i i've spoke

about frank now twice about this fake criminal stuff first time i came down pretty hard on the guy the second time i'm like you know he still defrauded a whole shitload of people with this story yeah so he's very effective in what he's doing yeah who who who get listen Listen, who gets out of prison and says, and as a con, well, it's really as a petty criminal and reinvents himself as a con man to do, to do keynote speaking and get paid for it. Like that is, especially if you don't really have, you don't have the pedigree. Exactly. And that in an arguably more famous than Charles Ponzi. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

everybody knows Kesheme if you can. They might not know exactly Frank Abagnale, but a lot of people do. Right. So I'd say if somebody knows the movie Catch Me If You Can, probably 25% of them can actually say Frank Abickney. Exactly, exactly. But at the very least, he can say,

would you see the movie if you can? Oh, yeah. It's a good movie. You're the guy. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah, and you're right.

Like, just like I said, yeah, not everybody knows what a pot or what a posse scheme is. So he, he, small time crook to most successful con man ever. Yeah. With the Catch Me If You Can story. Yeah. But also, he actually does some good along the way, right? He's got 11 patents for check security.

Okay. Under his belt. So, and he raised awareness across the board on security for checks. Right. And Javier said, like, he came up with the, he's legitimately got like a securities company or whatever it is. Yeah. He was legitimately. And apparently it does decent work.

Like, he's like, there's nothing. He's like, they looked into that. He's like, there's nothing out there. that says that that's a scam like it's a legitimate company so how do you i mean how do you how are you supposed to look at that the guys he's built his his entire life on this foundation of lies but he goes off and he does some good and that's one of the things that he makes a hell of a lot of money doing it's easy to do good things if you're profit yeah yeah yeah but you know he actually said that in i don't know if you saw that uh that ambush interview that Javier did with him yeah i did

It was only, it's only like a minute, like 90 seconds. But, you know, Abingdale makes that statement. I wish that people would judge me on what I've done with my life, not what I did with it way back then. Right. Which I'm like, okay, dude, I kind of, I kind of get you. I kind of get you on that. Yeah.

I still don't know how to view it all, but I'm like, okay. I think, you know, what's funny is it's like cheating on your wife. This is another one of those rumors. So I give these examples sometimes. And like when we were not on camera, like you're like, yeah, don't go with that one again. Like I said something the other day, the other day, the guy made a comment about people with like a thyroid problem. Like, well, you know, it's not her fault. He was talking about like his sister like was super overweight.

He was angry with this particular. It's a fraud that's happening. And he's angry. He's talking. And he shows picture of his sister. He is, you know. And I went, he was, you notice anything about her? And I thought, well, she's a, she's a, like, I didn't know what he wanted me to say,

but all I could think of was she's a bigan. She's a big, big, big girl. And he goes, it's not her fault. She has, you know, thyroid, something, such and such. And I said, yeah, I said, I don't buy that. I said, I said, because I said, I know for a fact that I said, in all the pictures I've seen of, like, concentration camps, there's never like one fat person that they say, yeah, she's getting as much food as everybody else but she has a thyroid issue so she can't lose weight like

i said i don't think that's the way it works and so anyway afterward he says to me probably don't want to use that example afterward he said you know he said i understood what you were saying it was funny he said but you might want to stay away from anything that has to do with skinny people in a concentration that's true and i thought let's edit that out like that's not i you took it wrong so um but yeah but frank uh uh uh i don't know where i was going with this Cheating wife. Cheating wife. Thank you.

So it's kind of like if it's like the guy, listen, people will like really a woman in general. And I think men for the most part, they will forgive like infidelity. But what they're more upset about every time I when I was when I was younger, not now. I'm an adult now. You know, but when I was, you know, in my teens or 20s and I would run around my girlfriend and get caught, the few times what I realized was when you just deny it it drags out for six months to you they never let it go right but if you just say yeah look okay I did this and this and we were having fights and we're not doing well and I thought we were going to break up and I saw your

friend Jennifer and she's always flurred with me and so yeah I went back to her place and I hit it yeah I met yeah yeah she's not a good friend to you by the way um you know you know if you just own up to it on her yeah yeah yeah yeah you know I said that's not a good friend of you yeah you know I said the whole time i said this isn't right um but if you just own up to it then it it kind of shuts it you know and if you're like look i just get it out i i got caught like mid act banging this uh uh uh uh literally mid act well no i'm not so i was you know going you know it was working out it was just you know it was a uh it was actually a buccaneers cheerleader i mean what am i going to get a chance to hit a buccaneers cheerleader

Buccaneers cheerleader. You got to. I mean, to me, that's like a, that's, you get a pass. I mean, I should have gotten a pass, right? Like, so, I mean, I'm never going to have this opportunity again. Yeah, I like you. We're good, but. So anyway, I love you, but it's the bus.

For God's sakes. So I'm, I'm just, it's just happening. And I remember, I'm, we're naked and boom. I'm just, you know, things are just going in good. And just then I hear, teet, and I thought, you know, the alarm system, the door opens. And I went, oh, God. I never got that key back from Jana. And I was like,

and I remember she was like, oh my God, is that, and the girl I was dating was a fitness trainer. And she was that, is that, the fitness girl? Is that, I was like,

ah, wait a second. I get up and go in there. And literally my girlfriend's got this chick's purse out on the, in the, dumping out her stuff, flipping it open, looks to the,

and starts screaming like she knows her. Like she's like, you barely even knows her. She started screaming, ah, this, start yelling in it. And so the girl ends up coming.

And we scoop the stuff back in. The girl's got her clothes on. She takes it. She runs out the back. I turn around. She's like, did you, you know, did you fuck her? No, I didn't. No, what I, I, look, I mean, I'm done.

I said, yeah, if you want to know the truth? I said, yeah, yeah. I was a little bit. I was starting. It was work, things were going. It was half. Yes, you, but you ruined it for me. But.

And I said, I said, look, you know, it's, forget us. It's over. Just, just go. Just go. She's, but I love you. And then I call. couldn't get rid of she hugged me and she stayed the night and we dated again for the next three weeks and we broke up again because we were always breaking up right the point is is that

listen for the frank all that but i'm bringing it back around i see that disappointed look that where's this going it's going so to me the denying or not addressing it to me one you probably get you get a lot more if you if abingale were to just say listen let me tell you what happened and you still want have to be that like you can say look this is what happened here this is what happened here you know this is what did you know when i wrote it with the stan you know reading or whoever i wrote you know when i wrote the book you know was there embellishment absolutely it's embellishment it just got away from me over the years got away it kept going i started getting the gigs i was scared that if i corrected it at that point i wouldn't get the gigs i was making good living i have a wife i have

four beautiful children did i mess up should i have corrected a long time ago absolutely i was broke. I was in a bad spot. Here's what I did. I didn't correct it. I'm correcting it now. My bad. You don't, you know, here's what I have done with my life. I mean, the dude's what, 75, 76 now? What do you say at that point? People are like,

nah, he didn't have to. What are you going to do? Still like the movie. Yeah, absolutely. That's what you do. Right. But to not address it, then what happens is it festers. It gets worse. It gets worse. It gets worse. And that's what happened. I mean, so Alan Logan comes out with his book. Nobody reads him. Let's be honest. Nobody read the fucking thing. but it continues to build traction.

Yeah. Until now you've got the ACFV trying to do a hit piece on the guy. Yeah. I mean, he's going to shut him down completely. I mean, luckily he's, I'm sure old Frank's got more than enough money to just kick back.

I hate that what he's making on residuals and everything else. I mean, listen, to be honest, at this point, you could kick back, do a video and laugh about the whole thing. He could mock the whole thing.

Yeah, that's what I did. And be done with it. You know, he couldn't even have to be apologetic if he didn't want to. He's like, I'm 75 years old. What are you going to?

do i got to ask we know that the women want men to be honest with them yes but do we want the women to be honest with i don't want to know yeah i don't either i don't need my deal is did you give him a blow job that that's going to end it right yeah i i you know to me listen i had a girlfriend this is um i i i remember her name i'm horrible with names too her name her name he said i remember her name yeah she was so sweet she was very nice i dated her for a little bit when I was in college, the first, like, year or so. And I remember she was going back to, I think she's from Wisconsin or something.

I don't know. I mean, she was going one of the square states up north. So she's going back up there for like a month or two and then coming back. And I said, listen, I said, I know your ex-boyfriend's up there. I know he's friends with all your friends. Right. You know, I know all this. Like, we've been dating like a year or so.

And I said, I know there's no way you're going to see your friends and not end up seeing him. and she goes probably she said yeah probably i said so if things take the natural course of nature i said and you end up sleeping with this guy said do me the favor and the courtesy of not letting me find out right and she goes and she said you'll never find out and i said okay because she knew what time it was she just laughed she says like something's wrong with you i'm just saying i don't want to know right like i don't want to know right like i don't want to know if something like, you know, nothing's going to happen. As a man, that shit eats at you.

Yeah, I don't want to know. Because I'm sitting there going, okay, you've told me this, but there's more. I hated it the whole time. Yes, I know. The guy's six foot two. He weighs 195 pounds. He's got a full head of hair. Right.

You hated it the whole time. All time. Okay. Now you're a liar too. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know.

I need to call Jess. I know. before I speak about it I like to drop by every once in a while just pull in real quick in my little chick Jeep there you go

and it bounces all over they've got this big thing and I bounce up and I pull up I jump out and well you know I ordered a Bronco did

are you serious they're fucking ridiculously expensive the sticker the sticker price is 40 they're selling for 95 I know so I so here's the deal I got

October I bought an Accura TLX type S fantastic fucking vehicle, all right. I bought that ostensibly for the wife. And then my Bronco was arriving in January, which it did. It just didn't have one of those Chinese chips in it? No, no.

My Bronco arrived the exact same day that... The tree fell? No. The exact same day that Arcos, the company that was paying me upteen amounts of money to be the chief criminal officer, they decided that the economy was going bad. And they laid me off. Yeah. So my Bronco got sold. It was black on black, the wild track sticker on it, 73K. I was like, fucking love it. How long had you ordered it?

It took nine months to get it in. That's what it took. So you probably, did you make money on the sale? No, no, I didn't get it at all. Didn't buy it. Oh, okay. I thought you like, I thought you already paid it and just arrived. No, and of course they marked it up 15K on top of course. I was going to say they probably sold it for 90. Yeah. So that's my Bronco story. but hey are you going to come on my show yeah okay yeah yeah you know I went and looked at bronco this is scary they're nice vehicles they're not because you know why online it said

it was like 38,000 dollars I was like this is great I actually listen I went so far I went and got a loan from my like I applied for the loan through my credit union look at the bad lands or what remember which which which version Bronco it was like the cheap one okay it was the cheapest one two-door. Two doors are nice. Mine was the four. Ragtop. Are they all rad?

This thing I had a hard top. They look like kind of a ragtop. Yeah, I've ordered the ragtop because at that point, the hard top hadn't been fixed. It was leaking. So you had to get the ragtop on it. Okay.

So I then drive out to the dealership. I get to the deal. I called them, by the, you know, you did the tax thing. Texting the guy. And the guy's like, yeah, I'm like, hey, I know the sticker price is this. Can you work on the sticker price?

He's like, and he's like, well we could talk about it when you get here so he's making me believe that the sticker price is a price like I didn't know what had happened right with cars I get out there they had added like they put it a little lift on it and put like a roll bar

in the back or something like stuff I don't want I don't need but I don't care it's there and somehow or another that extra $2,500 worth of bullshit they added on ended up jacking it up to 72 or 70 to 38 to 72 yes like $75000 $75000 something and I

I went, I was like, are, are you fucking with me? We were driving as we were driving, we were driving out of the place, right? So he's, the guy's taking me out. And he said, so why did you, so why did you decide to, you know, get the Bronco? I said, well, I mean, I couldn't beat. I mean, $38,000. I love these things. And he goes, oh, no, no, he said, that's sticker price.

And I went, right. He said, no, this has got the upgraded such and such. We put that on. He said, so this one's like 74, 74,000, whatever it was. And I went, what? And I said, bro, just turn around right, right here. Just. And he goes, you don't want to drive it?

I said, no. He goes, well, maybe we could talk about the price. I said, you ain't talking it down to $38,000. I'm ready to pay sticker. I'm not paying. He's like, well, we can, let's see what the numbers come to. What do you? What the numbers come to?

Do you special number? Do you find anything for a hundred years? Like, I don't care. I don't want them. I'm not doing that. Turn around. And he was like, are you serious? Yeah.

Did you on 96 months? You'll be all right. Ridiculous. So I had him turn around. I mean, I went in. I did let, they didn't pull my credit, but I did say, you know, he said, well, let me at least get to the numbers. I said, all right, bro, but I'm, so that takes 20 minutes.

And then after I got the first set of numbers, I said, yeah, I'm done. Give me my keys. Yeah. You know, yeah. Well, look, I don't know where Paul is. They're going to cut the shit. You, I know you got my keys. Come on, don't, don't make me get, don't make me get, don't make me be an asshole.

You like the Jeep. Um, my Jeep. Yeah. The little tiny baby girl Jeep. I've not seen your Jeep. I, it's in the, I'll have to look at it. It's a chick Jeep. Like, I mean, you hit it.

You punch the gas and it goes, it doesn't go, though. They're dope. Like, it's not like it throws your, like, Jess will be like, oh, did you hit the gas? And I'm like, that's me hitting the gas.

And she's like, oh, it's so bad. I'm like, alright? It's so bad. It's so bad. I,

I, we bought, we bought furniture for, for Jess's daughter. And I had to run a U-Haul. That U-Ha had more pickup than my Jeep. And I mean, I'm not even,

like, it's not like, I'm like, and caught him, no, you hit the U-Haul and it was, like you really, I threw you back a little bit. So you hear it now, kids, he needs to sell more of these. Yes. So he can get a more powerful vehicle. Yeah.

Remember, stranger danger. You know, I feel like that book will lose me a lot of people. People will read that and be like, you've got some issue. Like, it's not, I mean, it's, it is hilarious, though. But it's, yeah, it's disturbing to me. Can I ask you a question real quick before we get into it? Because this is a question I get all the time. I want to know how you answer it.

Well, I've got multiple questions I get all the time. Come on, shoot them out, man. You know what I'm saying? Like, these are the questions people ask me. And people always look shocked when I answer them. And I always think, oh, that's the wrong answer. Like, that's not what they expected. So one of those is, do you ever think about committing fraud?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm like, if people ask me that, I'm like, every single day. Dude, pandemic, it was like, shit, that's something. money. It's like, damn. I'll see a real estate commercial where they're buying real estate sight unseen. And I'm like, oh, stop it, bro. Stop. What are you doing? Like, oh, God, dear God, what are you doing, man? What's happening? Well, that, that criminal mindset never leaves.

It never leaves. It's always there. So I am asked that. I'm also asked, would I ever commit a crime again? Right. And they, you know, news or whoever's asking that want you to say no. And the answer is not no. It's never no for me. That's right. It's like, you know, I'm recovering. The longer I go without committing to crime, the chances are I'll keep going. But right now, I'm just recovering from all this bullshit. I actually told my probation officer. Well, I've actually told several people.

Did you take ARDAP? Yes, I took ARDAP. I almost caused a riot at Fort Worth Prison taking ARDAP. So I've told the doctor that was running the program this. And I told my probation officer, I was like, yeah, yeah, I know I'm going to bust my ass. I'm going to get a job. I'm a bus mask for the next year, hopefully pull some shit together, get myself on my feet. And I kept saying, I guess I said a year too many times.

And she goes, well, what happens if it takes longer than a year? And I go, if it takes longer than a year? And she goes, yeah, I go, if I'm, if in a year from now, I'm living in someone's spare room, I'm taking the bus to work. I can barely pay my bills like that. And she goes, yeah, I said, I go, I'm going to commit a massive, massive fraud. That's what I was about to say. Then fuck it, balls of the wall at that point. Yeah, if I can't feed myself in a year from now, then I gave it a good shot.

Okay. So that's, I mean, that is the answer, right? I mean, unless we've got, you know, I wanted to turn my life around. But if you don't have that support group, if you don't have a way to make a living, you leave prison with the exact same tools you go in with. So you're going to do what you need to do to survive. Yeah. I mean, that's a fact. Yeah. So, you know, that's what the justice system and family members and friends and anyone who interviews, they don't understand that. They're like, oh, no, no, I would never commit a crime again. No, no, no. Listen, listen, listen, you would. here's what I told the doctor, by the way, was I had said to her. I said, she says, well, crime is never an option. I went, oh, I said, listen, let's assume that your husband leaves you for his secretary. Let's assume the economy goes south, I said, which we all know it can. And it is. Right. Well, at that time, it wasn't. I go, let's assume that I said, they don't have the budget to hire, to hire people like you at $100,000. I said, and you go out and you try and get a job in a bad economy, and you can't. You find yourself, and you, your two kids living in your car with no support from anybody, I said, and there is a loaf of bread

four feet inside of the supermarket's front door. I said, if you steal that loaf of bread, your kids live another week. I said, you wouldn't do it? I go, the difference between you and me, I said, is my, the bar for committing crime for me, it's just lower than yours. Right. I mean, that's everybody will do it. Everyone will do it. That's a fact. And what, so, and of course, that's the argument. And what people don't understand is, okay, yeah, you'll steal that baloney, you'll steal that bread. But, you know, if you're going to steal baloney, shit, why would I eat baloney if I could have steak? Yeah, I don't have to, if I'm willing to do this, I don't have to live in my car anymore. That's exactly right.

My kids deserve better. So here's the other question is where, and this always kills me too, is they're like, well, man, when you were on the run, you must have been like, were you scared all the time? Were you worried? Was it horrible? And I always say, and I know this is the wrong one. I'm always like, bro, honestly, like the best, the best period of my life. was being on the run. I loved to be on the run.

Have you read Shantaram or not? No. So Indian guy, I'm sorry, Australian guy, a true story, but he novelizes it. He escapes from an Australian maximum security prison. Or no, I'm sorry, New Zealand, maximum security prison, makes his way to India and starts running black markets for medical goods, everything else like that. But he talks about that escape and being on the run and how every single day was like the highest day of his life because he's free, he's beat the system again.

another day, everything else. And so with me, it was, I took a road trip. I did the Route 66, Christ, and spent a lot of time in Vegas, a lot of time out in LA. But every single day, I mean, it was very lonely, but at the same time, it was like, shit, I'm beating the system every day. And I was okay. It's just you and your wits against everything.

There's no, there's nobody goes wrong. There's nobody I can call. That's it. So I've got no help. I have to figure out how to do every single thing by myself. And see, but that's the thing, right? I mean, we, when I, that criminal mindset, we are used to doing things on our own. And we have the will to do it, right?

And a lot of it, I was, I gave an interview just yesterday. I forgot who I was talking to, but it's just that sheer force of will that sees a lot of this stuff through. Yeah. Okay, so, so let's, let's rewind here. Where were you, where were you born? Oh, dude, I'm from, I'm from Hazard, Kentucky. So if you've seen the news lately, all those floods, that's the, epicenter of all the floods, and that's where I was born. I come from hazard. It's coal

country. My dad was a helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army captain. So I grew up overseas in Germany throughout the 50 states, things like that. My dad was forced out of the military. They did a downsizing. He was forced out around 78, 79, becomes a coal miner. And at that point in time, you were paid pretty well, except they were on strike all the time. So it was feast and famine. my mom so my mom was just kind of a fuck addicted opiates she cheated on my dad constantly this is a woman I talked about in my presentations but no shit man she would bring men home in front of him he would sit there and cry beg her not to do it and by God she'd do it anyway have these conversations with him you know hey I'm leaving you for him and

she'd get be gone a couple weeks come back and he'd take her back i mean this was my dad he was he was a good guy but you know if you want to call him a cuck you can call him that but he was overwhelmingly in love with this woman yeah and and and he grew up and they he grew up in a really good family a really good family when he went to tell his mom he tells me the story today when he went to his mom that he was about to marry my mom she literally passes out and uh don't do it ray don't do it not only that but when When he goes to tell my mom's dad, Paul, that he's going to marry her, Paul sits him down. He's like, Ray Jean, if you knew what I knew, you'd take off running and you wouldn't look back. And he wouldn't listen.

Right. So he marries her. She was definitely the criminal in the family. This is a woman, she steals a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer at one point. She takes a slip and fall in a store at another. This is a woman that used to go to the drug store. She'd get the empty capsules and fill them up. with bullshit to try to sell them as speed and amphetamines or everything else is i mean anything

and everything to try to get money um my life my first crime i was 10 my mom had left my dad let's backtrack so my dad my dad was a good guy because i've not told this story before but my dad was a good guy he never really he never really committed any crime on his own if my mom wanted to commit a crime he'd co-sign on to it right so yeah let's try that bullshit the two times that he tries to really go to commit a crime the first time was uh we won't do the first time the second time he's watching 60 minutes one night and they've got a show about the miami drug trade you know they're showing the stacks of cash the tables of coke and everything else and this man is just just focused on that damn segment and we're all sitting there kind of watching it like what the hell dad and my mom's looking at

my dad like ray are you okay so he gets through watching the segment turns around looks at her and he's like i think i need to go to miami and be a police officer and she was like maybe you do and his plan was to get down to miami become a cop happen upon some drug deal someplace keep the cash they keep the drugs retire and my point was won't they just shoot your ass and he was like i know it won't happen so they sell every single they sell everything they've got round up like i don't know six thousand dollars rent a u-haw head south on i-75 end up in miami the night the 1980 riots broke out in in Miami that same night. So city was exploding everything else. My mom's like, holy shit, we get in a day's in, right across the street from all these homeless people. She's like,

kids don't go outside. So my dad goes to cop school the first day. He comes back and he's like, I think it's going to be all right. Second day he comes back. He's like, shit, we got to get out of here. So it turns out the Miami-dayed cops, the real ones had burst into the training session, arrested like six people without standing warrants, and they all had the same idea of happening upon a deal and keeping the cash right so from there we had back up i 75 they're running out of money and they decide on panama city florida because when they were kids they had spent spring break there so go there my dad the only job he could get was has a 7-11 store clerk making 140 a week my mom was an lpn she gets a job in a nursing home keeps the job long enough to see my dad

off to work so she can start cheating on his ass again and we slowly go broke that that that that's a lot of the motivation for me over the years i mean when we're in panama city when i was a kid we would be without power without water we would literally be out in the backyard of the house we were renting catching water and buckets so we could flush the toilet brush her teeth shit like that how old were you at this point eight nine so my mom leaves my dad i was 10 denise my sister was nine moved back from moved back to hazard kentucky and at that point my mom was was just a fuck dude i mean just an abuse of parent was what she was. She would beat us, but that wasn't the worst. But the worst part was the

mental and the emotional stuff. You know, she had, this is a woman who tells us, I gave up my life for you and I'm going to leave one day and never come back and you'll find me dead someplace. You know, just constantly like this. So what happens is she moves us back to Hazard, Kentucky. We're living in an apartment underneath of her parents. And they were absolutely insane too. This is her dad. We couldn't eat upstairs. We didn't have any food. Couldn't eat upstairs. because they would always, you know, tease us and talk about how poor we were. He would make sure that when we bathe, we were allowed a bath a week, inch and a half, two inches of water. No more than that.

If he found that anymore, he'd raise absolute total hell, right? So we were living in that environment. My mom out partying all the time. Sometimes she'd take us with her, leave us in the car. We'd wait in the living room as she went in the bedroom and got it on with somebody. Most of the time, she just left us at home. And what happens is the crime, first crime ever committed. home for a few days no food in the house i'm the kid that used to you know i'd be scared mom wasn't

coming home that's the way i took it all you know she said it she's not going to be back so i'd post up at the window or walk out in the driveway denise nine years old angry as shit you know she didn't worry about that and to this day denise still has those angry issues but um my first crime no food in the house denise walks in one day got a pack of pork chops in her hand i'm like where'd you get that she's like i stole it i was like show me how you did that so she takes me over to a mp so shows me how she's stealing food. I'm like, good idea. And we get to where we're wanting a sandwich, man. And Denise had been stuffing the food down her pants. That's how we're getting the food out of there. Kmart across the way. And you can't, you know, you can't put a loaf of bread

down your pants. I looked at my sister. I was like, let me see what I can do. Walked into Kmart, 10, 10 years old, walked into Kmart, got a hoodie off the rack, took the tags off of it, put it on, wore it out, got out. And I was like, shit. So stuffed a loaf of bread down the sleeve, walk out A&P with it. Kmart, of course, starts stealing toys and games and books, blows, everything else. Mom comes home, sees the shit. Where did you get this?

I stand up. We found it. She's like, you didn't find this. Denise stands up. We stole it. My mom looks at my sister, show me how you did that. So she starts running us as little shoplifters,

calls her mom. So it's this intergenerational shoplifting ring of all of a sudden. We start taking these road trips. They go to JC Pennies and clothes and jewelry bullshit like that. I was the book guy, So I'd always stop at the bookstore and still a load of books and take them back and, you know, devour them. But first crime, I committed right there. And usually at that point in the present, and you know this, I'm sure you know this shit, too.

I don't know how old you were when you started crime. I was 10. And, you know, when you're a kid, you can't help what the adults in your circle do. You're going to do the shit they do. Yeah. But when I became that adult, you know, I chose to do that. Yeah. But I had that path laid for me.

my sister other than that shoplifting she's fine i mean well anger issues out the ass but uh denise is a parent she's a she's a teacher she works hard every day doesn't break the law anything else i was the guy that just kept on going and um so that's the first crime i committed right there and i found out quickly that not only my mom but everyone on that side of the family were criminals it's a whole whole whole damn thing so i grew up man doing uh insurance fraud you know faking accidents burning cars for cash, burning homes, faking accidents as well, trafficking drugs, growing pot, illegally strip mining coal. I was on the Lux Friedman show.

He got a kick out of that bullshit. But document forgery, I grew up knowing how to do that until I branched off on my own. I faked a car accident in 94, 96, got the money to get married, moved from Hazard, Kentucky to Lexington to go to UK. I was an English major and theater major. have a job during any of this time or is just one lick after one licks carrying it on to the next minor so that's that's a good question the first job i had my stepfather my mom gets remarried my stepfather he uh he was a coal miner she talks him into quitting his job going into the coal business and he was that's where the illegal strip mining comes in he couldn't afford to get the permits

the two acre permits so he does what's called wildcatting that's where you just go in and take the coal out you don't worry about reclaiming the land or anything else and that's how you make money a lot of people do that in that area so he goes broke doing that and we ended up living in a 40-foot trailer me my sister my stepdad my mom and a work hand we're in this 40-foot trailer for 18 months living off literally deer meat cornmeal and i remember saying to my sister i'll never do this shit again so another motivator all of a sudden but what happens is is i forgot your damn question no i was asking the the the If you had a job during this whole thing.

The job. So the first job I got is he finally rebuilds himself, starts logging. So he hired me. We didn't have any money. He's like, I'll pay you $20 a day to go out and log with me. So I logged 10 hours a day, $2 an hour, was the first job. The first company I worked for was Domino's, Domino's pizza, became a manager and ripped them off for probably $30,000 in a year until they found out about it. I mean, I was living pretty well and everyone got pizzas. So that was the first job.

The second job was I worked at Jay Peterman, you know, like from Seinfeld. Yeah, yeah. I worked the real Jay Peterman company for a while, ripped them off. Then I moved over to, I was at a deli assistant manager at Kroger for a while. Didn't rip them off because that was a corporation. They'd find that out. But I did eat well from the deli. Then I went over to, there was a place called the Lexington Diner's Club.

Gave you this discount. They sold telemarketing, this. discount um um card for restaurants you'd go in you buy one meal they'd give you another free i ended up stealing they sold those cards for 60 dollars a piece so one night i just did a b and e went in and stole like 300 of these cards and set up my own telemarketing shop selling them until they found out about it and i got charged for that so that was another one um i worked for the for the the Shriner Circus for a while. They ran the Shriner's Circus.

This company ran Shriner's Circus donations and Kowana's donations. So I set up my own Kowana's charity and would do telemarketing to get the donations to go in my pocket. Got caught, did three months on that. After that is when I find the internet. So that was all the little scams going up to that. So I'm online every day. I found eBay. like, shit, I like eBay. Didn't know how to make money on eBay. So I used to watch Inside Edition.

Idiot Bill O'Reilly. Riley, he was the host of Inside back then. And they were doing a show that night on Beanie Babies profiling Peanut, the Royal Blue Elephant. I'm sitting there watching like $1,500. Shit, I didn't find me a peanut. And I was really naive. I was like, well, you know, I'm in Kentucky. You got all these little rural stores and everything. I can just go around to all these stores and surely there's one in the bin. So six hours of that the next day, I'm like, no, there's None in the bin. Their asses are on eBay for $1,500. So what I did was they had the gray beanie baby elephant, the exact same elephant, just a different color. Had that thing for $8 and I'm like, buy the gray beanie baby elephant for $8.

Stop by a Kroger on the way home, pick up a pack of blue writ dye, go home, try to die a little guy. Turns out they're made out of polyester. Don't hold dye. You literally get them out and you see all the ink draining off the damn thing. So here I am. Try to dry it with a blow dryer so the ink's days and it looks like it's got the mange when you get through with it. And what I did was found a picture of a real one. Posted it on eBay. A woman wins the bid. As soon as she wins a bid, I'm like, send her a message because I want to put her on the defense of not me. So I sent her a message. I was like, hey, congratulations on winning the bid. We'll get this right out to you. The problem is that we've never done any business before. I don't know if I can trust

you. What I need you to do, go down at the U.S. Postal Service, pick up a couple money orders for $1,500. Send those. to me once I get those I'll send you your animal she believed that sends me the money orders I cash them out I send her them this creature in the mail immediately get a phone call I didn't order this my exact response was lady you ordered a blue elephant I sent you a blueish elephant and right there is that for me that was the first lesson of cybercrime right there delay a victim long enough you just keep putting them off a lot of them because they don't know who to report to anything else they get exasperated throw their hands in there walk away none of them complained law enforcement

right so first crime i committed got away with it kept going we got to where i was another inside addition they were selling autographed baseballs of sammy sosa mark maguire so i was watching that and i was like shit i can do autographed baseballs go down to academy the next day by a case of baseballs stop by that same croger pick up a sharpie go home start trying to sign it and i was like shit that doesn't look anything like their signatures so then i was like well okay So they're signing it at the field, certificate of authenticity. So I printed my own certificate of authenticity. Sold them all $60 a piece.

About three weeks later, knock at the door. Bam, bam, bam, bam. You know that cop knock, bam, bam. I was like, I was married at the time. I need it for you. Yeah, my wife, she's just looking at me because she knows what that knock is too. You know, you've never heard it before, but you know right there. And I'm like, okay.

Or they hang out with you long enough. They get to know. They get to know at that point. I opened the door, and the cop's name. He was Sergeant Pat Tingle from the Fayette County Sheriff's office. I opened the door. He's there with a detective. He's like, are you Brett Johnson?

I'm like, yeah, he's like, can we come in and talk to you about some baseballs? I was like, sure, come on in. So my wife, Susan, she's just looking at me. She stands up by this point. She doesn't even look at them. She's just looking dead at me. So they're like, autographed baseball. I'm like, yeah, and they're like, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire.

Not, yep, where'd you get them? Bought them off eBay. With certificates of authenticity. Yep. Off eBay. Yep. Mr. Johnson, we've got a sample of their signatures down at the office and it doesn't look anything like him. I was like, huh, that's weird. They come with certificates of authenticity. I was going to say, I have a certificate. They're like, Mr. Johnson, we think you printed those off. And I was like, no, sir. And Mr. Johnson, we think you signed those baseballs. I was like, nope, not me. So then they're like, you're going to send these people their money back or we're going to put you in jail. Do you understand? I was like, I understand that. So they leave. My wife, Susan. whole time she's looking dead at me finally i look over and i was like what and she's like you son of a bitch that's why you bought all those god damn baseballs and i'm like yeah so that was that was one there was another where a microsoft front page they were giving out free uh trial versions of

front page 98 so i had the crack that would turn it into the full version so i post on ebay i had the full version of like 30 bucks and uh there was a kinko's down the street so one night two p m i walk in and look at the guy behind the counter and i was like do you might have I take a few of these trial versions. He's like, dude, you can take all of them. If you want to him. I was like, yeah. He was like, yes, I just pick up the entire stand.

Walk out of the door with it. Go up, post them on eBay, sell them all for $30 a piece. That gets a knock at the door. Same deputy. Same guy. He came like four times, man. He would be like, Brent, come on now. But what was happening is they were all, everyone I sold the stuff to, they were all

out of state. Yeah. And they weren't going to come to Kentucky to file charges. And well, is he like who like at that point, you know, who the FBI, it's not like they're really used to this quite yet. Right. He wants Khan Bank of America out of $250,000 using nothing but a fake ID and his charm. He is the most interesting man in the world. I don't typically commit crime, but when I do, it's bank fraud stay greedy my friends support the channel join matthew cox's patreon

so those were the first little scams and i you know i kept going got better at it finally i start selling pirated software pirated software leads into mod chips first into gaming systems so you can play the pirated disc then i started putting mod chips into cable boxes so you can watch all the pay-per-view all the porn all that bullshit then finally

started programming satellite dsssscars so those 18-inch RCA systems, you pull the card out of it, program it on all the channels. Started doing that. Canadian judge, right as I start doing that. Connor's shaking his head. He's always disappointed. Like, whenever I tell stories, he always halfway through, he starts going like, what was, like, shit.

What are you doing? So a Canadian judge ruled that this was like 97, 98. Canadian judge rules that it's legal for Canadian citizens to pirate RCA signals. And his exact language in court was, RCA doesn't sell the system. here. So it's legal for my citizens to take those signals. So overnight in the United States, little industry pops up. You go down to Best Buy, buy the system for $100, take it out in the parking lot, open the system up, pull the system out, pull the card out, throw the system away, program the card, ship its ass to Canada, $500 a pop. Started doing that, making a lot of money,

had so many orders, couldn't fill them all quickly. And I mean, by God, quickly thought to myself, why do I need to fill any of the orders? They're in Canada. Five down here. Who are they going to complain to. So I didn't fill any of the orders, stole even more money. I was still like $4,000 a week at that point, making a pretty good living and was getting worried about things. I was like, man, I'm going to be looked at for money laundering. So I got it in my head. I was like, what I need is I need a fake driver's license. I'll use that driver's license to open up a bank account, launder the money through there, cash out of the ATM. No one will know me. I'm at UK. I have no idea where to go to fake ID. So I get online, look.

around, think I find a guy, send the son of a bitch, $200, send him my picture. He rips me off. You said you're a UK, what? University of Kentucky. Oh, okay. Okay. So, dude rips me off, and I got really pissed. My fuckers.

Scam artists. Scam me. So I got really upset and started to look around. Well, back then, the only real avenue you had for online crime was IRC, internet relay chat. Rolling chat board, no idea. who you're talking to, if you can trust them, if they've got a product or service, if they've got it, if it works, or if they're just going to rip you off because those channels were loaded full of fucking scammers. So what happens is, I first find, the only site that was out there

was called Counterfeit Library. And it was a tutorial site on degrees and had some bullshit identity stuff on there. You know, it was just not really good. What year is this? This would have been 97, late 97, early 98. So find this site. They had a forum that literally no one was using. I was like the third person that was registered on the forum. So I start going on there and the only thing I'm doing is just bitching every single day about getting ripped off and how I need this. Well, about the same time that I register, two other guys come on the scene. One is a screen name Mr. X out of Los Angeles.

The other one's screen name is Beelzebub out of Moosechaw, Saskatchewan. So we start bullshitting around every day. And I'm talking about my eBay fraud that I'm doing everything else like that. And one day, Beelzebub, he gets me on ICQ. That's how way we used to talk all the time was ICQ. He gets me on ICQ and he's like, you know, I can make you a driver's license. I'm like, well, shit, dude, do it. And he was like, no, but I'm going to charge you.

I'm like, yeah, you're going to charge me. He's like, no, I'm going to charge you because if you're going to do this kind of stuff, you've got to learn to trust people if you're going to be in this business. I'm like, well, by that point, I'd already established a pretty good rapport with the people who owned Counterfeit Library. they knew me i was emailing they were emailing back and forth all the time so i thought to myself i was like well shit he's going to rip me off i can at least get his ass booted off this site so i was like bet let's let's go so i sent him a picture sent him two hundred dollars two weeks later in the mail i get this

ohio driver's license from a guy named in the name of stephen schwecky turns out he's a real dude works to this day at adp payroll so i saw that damn thing now looking back at it that driver's license was not great quality. But I didn't know that. To me, it was the prettiest thing in the freaking world. So here I am. I'm running checks through check cashing places, setting up accounts, opening drop addresses at mailboxes, et cetera, all this other bullshit. So start using it extensively. And what happened was Belsabub, he made driver's licenses. Mr. X made a very passable social security card, which was very easy to do. And then I didn't really have any skill at all except eBay fraud. So Beelzebub said, hey, why don't you become the reviewer on this site? That way, any product or service that comes in, you get to look at it, get to see how it's used, learn everything that you need to do. And you're not selling anything, so you're more trusted than somebody like me that would review people. And I was like, let's try that. Well, that is really like the field of dreams for cybercrime. If you build it, they will come. And they did. Because the only avenue you had, other than that was IRC.

No one wanted to be on that bullshit. So they started to come on Counterfeit Library. Counterfeit Library, so the genesis of modern cybercrime, three sites. Counterfeit Library, Carter Planet, Shadow Crew. I ran both Counterfeit Library and Shadow Crew. Dmitri Golobov, Ukrainian National, builds Carter Planet. And the way that happened was he saw what was happening with Counterfeit Library. He liked that.

He was a spammer at that point in time, getting all these credit card details. And he thinks to himself, you know, I wonder if people would buy stolen credit cards. Turns out they will. So the dude picks up the phone, he's in Odessa. He picks up the phone, calls his buddies, they call theirs. They have a physical conference in Odessa. 150 these cyber criminals show up. And they launched the idea of Carter Planet.

And that's the genesis of all modern credit theft that we see today. So counterfeit library over the next couple of years, transitions over to Shadow Crew. The people who started Shadow Crew, Seth Sanders built Shadow Crew. Me and Kim Taylor, I was the head of Shadow Crew, Kim Taylor was a second in charge. Seth was the third, but Seth was just an ID guy. He never really liked the credit game at all, so he ends up kind of dropping out over the years. The first two guys that started with me, lucky him.

Yeah, lucky him. The first two guys that started with me, Beelzebub, Mr. X, X gets picked up in Las Vegas, cashing out cards. Beelzebub was hooked up with Mark. Engel up in Canada, big time pot grower, who then snitches on everybody. So Beelzebub goes back to growing pot in there. And at the end of the day, I'm the only guy left standing. So at one point in those forums, every single business transaction that took place went through me. That was the I was the trust mechanism. And what I said was is, hey, if I vouch for someone, if I give someone

a review, if you get ripped off, I'll cover you. I'll make sure that you're reimbursed or you get a like product that you can use. So that built trust within those environments. What happens from there is we get too big. By the time we actually transition over to Shadow Crew, I can't do it myself. So I sit down and over the space of a week, I come up with this review system that you still see in place today. So today, you know, we've got reviews, vouchers, escrows, things like that. So are you actually making money doing this? It's just something that's just, you're just loving, love and doing it you enjoy certainly you love doing it i was i was online uh anywhere from 14 to 18 hours a day i made or i said made i stole anywhere from 12 to 24 000 a month until the

credit card scene hits once the credit card scene hits i'm stealing profiting 30 to 40 000 a month so i'm doing pretty well um credit so so so counterfeit library starts out as an identity theft site identity theft, fake driver's licenses, eBay fraud, PayPal fraud, that. Once Dmitri Golobbath comes on the scene, I'm the guy that brought the Ukrainians in because they didn't have a way to cash out in their area. So once credit hits that scene, we transition almost overnight from that identity theft site over to a credit fraud site. And it blows up big.

And that's where we get in a lot of trouble and finally get caught. So what happens is we had this thing called the, they called the CVV-V-1 hack. a hack but that's what it's called we were spamming all these details and back then when you launched a fishing attack you could have 20 fields you know you could ask everything in the friggin world and they would answer it so we would get complete identity profiles just from one fishing attack because people weren't used to it at that time they had never seen any brand new thing right they have no clue what happened yeah you sent them an email it looks like it comes from bank of america and they think oh my bank yeah what's your account number social dL

mother's made and you'd get everything right there so we were getting card numbers and pins as Well, and we were using those card numbers to commit C&P fraud. So just online credit fraud. Right. For you to encode that on a counterfeit card, you have to have complete track to data. So on the back of that credit or debit card, the mag stripe there, there are three data tracks. First data tracks, the customer's name, second data track, the card number, 16 digit algorithm outside of it. Third data track, indiscriminate data, no one uses it.

What's sold is that second track. All right. Now, back then, we didn't have. that algorithm. We weren't doing skimming. We were just doing fishing is what we were doing. What we found out though, like I said, in order for you to encode that and take it to an ATM and cash out, you've got to have complete track too. Back then, none of the banks had implemented the hash, which means you've got the card number, you've got the pin.

You can take the card number forward slash and any 16 digits out beside of it. It would encode, you could take it to an ATM, start pulling cash out. We see it. We see it. started doing that. So up until that point, a Carter doing, what year was this? This would have been up through. So that CVV hack went on from 2001 through 0708. It was when it started to really die down. So 2001, none of the banks had implemented that hash. So an online Carter was profiting, a good one was profiting 30 to 40K. And that's working your ass off. Okay. 30 to 40K. month is what you'd profit at that point. Once that moves over into cashing out at ATMs,

that's 30 to 40,000 a day. That's just as fast as you can get the money out. As fast as you can pull the cash out. So you'd literally map out a route of ATMs, stand there until you feel bad and move on to the next one. Well, my forum techie, fucking genius that he was at the time. And he was. He was a really bright guy. Albert Gonzalez, he starts, he gets involved in this. We hired the guy as our forum techie. He goes into credit card sales under the screen name Scarface, does all this other bullshit. So he's in New Jersey one day, broad daylight, doing the CB1 cash out. Broad daylight standing at an ATM. 40 minutes, 40 minutes standing there, feeding one counterfeit card in, pulling $20 bills out,

stuffing them in his backpack. Forty minutes of that. This is in the document. Yeah, yeah. So just so happens. A couple of cops noticed the kid. One of them. Like, let me go over and ask him what he's doing. So he goes over, Albert falls apart, flips goes to work for the Secret Service. Now, the thing is, back then, law enforcement suffered from what I like to call FIS, fucking idiot syndrome. All right? They didn't know anything about cybercrime at all. Didn't know how to track you to anything else like that.

So we would see on the server side for Shadow Crew, we would see IPs coming in from DoD, Pentagon, FBI secret. We'd see all these IPs. So we knew what time it was. At the same time, you'd see local and state forums, law enforcement forums that would mention Shadow Crew explicitly. Not only that, but we had this kid named Enhance. So Enhance is the guy back in 2001 that publishes Paris Hilton's phone contact list. I don't know if you remember that bullshit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's this kid. He not only did that, but he intercepted text messages of the United States Secret Service investigating shadow crew. So all this was out, and I'm sitting there going, huh, this does not end very well. Now, Albert gets picked up. I had happened upon this thing

called tax return identity theft right before that. It'd been 2002. The drop. The drop. So 2002, I start stealing $160,000 a week, 10 months out of the year, committing tax return identity theft, basically filing taxes on dead people having everything deposited to a prepaid debit card. did that manually, would file a return every six minutes, do that for three days of the week, fourth day plot a map of ATMs next couple of days, cash out the cards. This is before there's any, so this is at the infancy of that scan, which is blown up now. Wide open, no security in place whatsoever. As a matter of fact, it took the IRS.

That was 2002. The IRS actually starts putting security in place 2011. So it took them nine years. to start looking at IP ranges, velocity of attack, all this other bullshit. So it takes some nine years to do that. I started doing that. Albert, and because I saw the writing on the wall,

I was the head of Shadow Crew, I'm sitting there going, and whether it was real or not, I was sitting there going, okay, I'm worried about Rico. I'm worried about I'm going to be charged with everything that everyone under me is doing. So I'm like, I quit. Deservedly, by the way. Deservedly.

It's not like I did a truck. and get me. They're going to try and pin that on me. No, no. They're going to. That's why guys like you are exactly why, well, and to a degree of me, are exactly why they, they, that law. That's why that's there. The, uh, um, CCE or, you know, uh, yeah, continued. And they're going to give you 25 or 30 years. Yeah. They're going to do that. So I'm like, I quit. So I stepped aside. What keeps me from being arrested on the shadow crew bust. So shadow crew makes the front cover of Forbes, August. 2004. Headline, who's still in your identity? October 26, 2004, U.S. Secret Service, 33 people, six countries, six hours. I'm the only guy publicly mentioned as getting away. A few other guys

got away just weren't talked about at that point. Right. What keeps me from being caught is I stepped away from Shadow Crew right before Albert Gonzalez comes back in. And here's what that story, what actually happened was he goes to work for the Secret Service. As I said, Secret Service had no clue about how to track these guys. So they literally looked at him. How would you catch these guys? And he was like, well, have you thought about a VPN? And they're like, what's a VPN?

So he has to explain to him what a VPN is. And they're like, good idea. So I quit. He comes back in, takes over Shadow Crew, bans anyone who asks any questions. So that no paranoia is out there. Bands everyone and says, hey, in order to be safe, we need all traffic to go through this VPN that I've set up. That way no one can monitor us.

Well, the Secret Service owns a VPN. They capture like $7 million worth of traffic coming through, and that's where the bust comes from. So the bust is October 26, 2004. I'm picked up February 8, 2005. Can I let me interject here. So when you're watching these guys get cracked in the head, and there's an article here, a newspaper article here,

and newspaper article here, like you're seeing all this kind of circling around, you are like how are you feeling at that point are you thinking i'm good i'm gonna be good no okay no oh no so so what happens is i'm in charleston south carolina and i'm going through i'm going through the shit on my own on a personal life i was married for nine years my wife i lied to her all nine i mean took her three years to find out i was a crook the next six years were literally this story right here i'm going to stop i will stop she's trying to wrangle you in like if i can just get this guy it's like just a little while longer dear until finally it

became me looking at her and saying, hey, you like spending money, don't you? I use that one a lot. Yeah. Where do you think this money comes from? Where do you think it comes from? You knew what you were getting into. So she leaves me. And so my mindset mix my dad and mix my mom.

My mom, criminal mindset, my dad, that fear of the loved ones leaving. So my first wife, Susan, leaves. I go through this depression and get suicidal, everything else. roaming around the house in Charleston, South Carolina had a house on the river, everything. So roaming around the house, realize I'm getting suicidal, figure, hell, I need to do something about that. Pick up the phone book, call psychologist, cry to the psychologist on the phone. I mean, I broke down completely. She's like, come in today.

So I go in, tell her everything. She's like, for four months, tell her everything. For four months, I'm like, do you have to report anything that I might tell you? As long as you're not actively breaking the law, I'm like, okay. So tell her everything. She's like, for four months, she's preaching about how I need to go into real estate and not crime. And I'm like, is there a difference between the two? So what happens is I don't start drinking until I'm 34.

I was 34 at that point. I didn't never drank until that point. So I started drinking, had never been to a strip club. One night, I get lonely. I get horny. And I'm like, shit, why not? So I go to strip club and I'm literally that guy. I am that guy, dude, that falls.

of love with the first one that he sees i walk in she's she walks by i'm like that's the one i need move this chick in with me yeah yeah it's it's nuts move this move this chick in with me after i move her in with me find out she's addicted to coke not only and you know now you now i know all this bullshit not only is she addicted to coke but she's prostituting herself to support her habits and you know i laugh about it but the truth of the matter is i love the shit out of that woman I did. I absolutely adored that woman. And I get it in my head. I was like, you know, if I can fix her, we'll be together. You know, I keep feeding myself these tails.

So I used to take road trips for a lot of the fraud. It gets to the point where she stops Coke, quits her job, and she gets this, you know, just dependent, co-dependent personality, don't leave me attitude. So I can't take a road trip anymore. I slowly, I've got all my money overseas, go broke. All right? So where I find out about Shadow Crew, I'm in the grocery store one day, happened, just happened to walk past the magazine aisle. And I see this article about identity theft on the cover.

And I'm like, huh. Might be a good article. So I open it up and it's like Shadow Crew. And I'm like, oh, fuck. So go sign on to Shadow Crew at that point under a different name. And the response on Shadow Crew was it was initially this, fuck yeah, we've made it, followed almost immediately by a, oh, this ain't good. Yeah.

So that was the response. Of course, four months later, August, two months later, shadow crew gets popped. Okay. So the day that shadow crew gets popped, by that point, I'm monitoring shadow crew. Because I know something's going to go. All right. So I'm monitoring shadow crew almost every day. Go to sign in.

And of course, the secret service has altered the face of the website, saying, you know, you're no longer in the shadows. They've got to change the screen on it. you could still access the site at that point. And there were a couple of other sites by that point that had been set up. So I'm going over to these other sites to see what the news is. And no one really knew at that point what had happened. Of course, John Ashcroft, the head legal guy in the U.S. at that point, Attorney General, at that point.

He comes on CNN, and he's talking about Shadow Cruz. I'm sitting there watching all day and I'm like, shit. God. I'm just a fucking old. I'm just a country boy. I'm from Kentucky. Yeah. Wow.

I'm the only guy that was publicly mentioned as getting away. The other guys. Not you, but you're like your screen name, right? The screen name. Okay, okay. Gallum's the only one that got away from that. Okay. What no one else knew, there were other guys that got out.

For example, the Secret Service, literally in the air. They timed everything for like a Sunday at 7 p.m. Eastern is when the bust happened. Because that's when most people were online at that, but they wanted to get everyone at the same time. Some of the guys that got away, one of them was named Tron, and this kid was over in the Ukraine, and he was very effective about getting into Bank of America, very effective. So they were in the air to arrest him. They called the local PD in the Ukraine saying, hey, we got a warrant. We're coming down and arrest him.

Local PD is like, oh, yeah, come on down and get him. So they get in the car before the Secret Service gets there. They get in the car, go to this kid and say, hey, they're coming to get you. We're going back to the station. And the kid takes off on the run, gets his ass down. South American. He's a few years getting caught at that point. But there were different guys who got away that weren't mentioned. I was the only guy. They picked me up four months later, February 8th of 05, Charleston, South Carolina. FBI picks me up Charleston PD. Within 45 minutes,

Secret Service comes in, takes over the investigation. What happened was, is I was being interviewed, 45 minutes in the interview, door opens up, two agents pop in, just sit down and they're like, we're, you know, we're U.S. Secret Service. We'd like to talk to you about some credit cards. And I'm like, fuck. So they let me sit in a county jail for a week. Okay, wait a second. Sorry.

I, maybe I missed something. How did they get to you, though? Exactly. Did you just explain that? No, no, I did. Okay. So what happens is I go through, I was. Like, were you one of the guys that went through the VPN that was set up by, oh.

I was in love with a stripper. Right. All right. I go through all my stateside cash. Like I hear you. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? You're not wrong.

I'm not wrong. Okay. So, go through all my stateside cash, can't get over to Latvia to get the rest of it. So when Shadow Crew is busted, the way tax season ran, it ran from January 15th through October 15th. The bust is October 26th. So I'm not filing taxes to get any more money. I can't run credit cards because the forums just got shut down. I don't know who to trust anymore.

So what I'm left with is running counterfeit cashier's checks. Bam, bam, bam, bam. looking for COD orders, cashing out bullion, stuff like that. Of course, that's a go-to move. Of course. And it's stupid as fuck, all right? Because I used to preach that. I was like, don't do this shit.

You're going to go to prison. So what happens is they identify that some guy in Charleston, South Carolina, is doing this. They reference the forums. They're like, oh, it's this guy. So they set up a controlled delivery. They knew I was cashing out Tiffany diamonds at that point. So they set up a controlled delivery for these, like, like it's like a $30,000 order. for Tiffany, engagement ring, not engagement, wedding bands of all things.

But FBI does that with controlled delivery. Charleston PD does that. Secret Service had been notified. I was going to be picked up. So they were all ready to go. So they picked me up on this controlled delivery. What happens is UPS driver pulls in. I had a drop address.

UPS driver pulls in. I pop out of the car, walk up and I was like, you got a package for me, don't you? And like, yeah, you got an ID? I was like, yeah, show him my ID, give him a counterfeit cashier's check for 30K, turn around 30 people in the fucking parking lot all cops i'm like oh so get popped there i got popped february eighth three weeks before i was scheduled to be married my stripper girlfriend had no idea what i did for a living so she finds out at that point they let me sit in a county jail for a week

two agents could fly in from new jersey because that's where albert was arrested the The centralized location for all cybercrime investigations was out of New Jersey at that point. So two agents flying from New Jersey pulled me out of a cell and they're like, we got your laptop. I'm like, yeah, you got anything on your laptop? Yeah, well, you're going to be charged for it. I figured. And then they looked at me. They're like, anything you can do for us.

My exact response was, you let me get back with Elizabeth. I'll do whatever you want me to do. So then they're like, we're going to get you out. I'm like, good. They let me sit there 90 days to get a taste of everything. Yeah, oh yeah. Got to get a taste up. So they popped me out after 90 days.

First person I call, by this point, my sister has disown me and everything. First person I call is Elizabeth. And I'm out, and she's like, I'll be there. So this chick, midnight, I'm standing in the parking lot of the Charleston County Detention Center. This chick pulls up in a limousine. No shit. She had a friend on a limousine company. She pulls up in a limousine.

Me and the agent are watching this. trunk pops open. She gets out, walks around to the trunk, gets out these two plastic storage containers that have my clothes in them, comes over, drops the clothes in front of me, hugs me, call me later, gets in the car, drives away. I'm sitting there crying. Oh, yeah. I thought she's like, they're like, come on in, baby. I'm sitting there crying. Agent looks at me. He's like, is that your fiancé? I'm like, yeah. He was like, man, I am so sorry. I'm like, yeah. So I had $30 to my name. The agent has to pay for my hotel room that night and pay for my food that night.

So he checks me in. Soon as he leaves, I've got $30. I'm like, time to start. So walk my ass to Walmart by a prepaid debit card that night so I can get back into tax return identity theft. And long story short is I continue. So the 90 days wasn't a good enough taste. Not a thing. Okay. So I call Elizabeth. I beg her to get back with me. She does. Start breaking the law. Break the law for the next 10 months from inside secret service offices with them in the room with me. So yeah, until they find out about it at that point. They revoke the bond. Judge reinstates the bond. I go on a cross-country crime sprees still $600,000 in four months, make the United States most wanted list, go to Disney World, get caught,

get arrested, escape from prison, get caught again, serve out my time. So how is it escape from prison? Is that a camp? You went to a camp? It was a camp. You know, I'd like to be a helicopter, a gunfight, that kind of shit. But it's always a camp, right? Yeah.

So my dad had. Yeah, because I've been in mediums and lows and you're just not getting out. Like, it's like, unless it's a helicopter. Well, you know, you say that, man. They sent me to big spring prison after that. And the week before I got there, these three friggin' idiots, they had, I guess they'd got some dental flaws or whatever the fuck they had got. And they had cut the bars from the culverts that led out of the prison, had climbed through the culprits, got outside of the fence.

And they were supposed to have a ride, didn't have a ride. They're like, well, we need to go back in and call. They get caught coming in? Yeah, yeah. Caught cop coming back in. So you can get out. But the way I escaped, my dad, I hadn't seen the man, hadn't had a conversation with him in like 20 years. He shows up at my sentencing, stands up in front of the judge.

I want to make sure Brett gets a good start. He can come and live with me when he gets out everything else. How much time did you get? Initially, 75 months. Okay. Okay. So, Jesus, that thing. My guidelines were 60 to 75.

And I had told everyone in the pod and I made it known that if I got any more than 60, I was not staying. So day of the sentence. So the counselors. and SIS, everybody already knows this. Oh, he's not staying. No. So what happens is, they have sentencing. Dean Eichelberger was a prosecutor.

He stands up and this dude is screaming at this point. He's like, Johnson has manipulated the Secret Service, the prosecutor, and today, your honor, we want the upper limits of the guidelines. I'm sitting there going, so judge looks at me and she's like, I agree, 75 months. Well, I'd never used drugs before. I got arrested in Orlando. Guy in Orlando takes me in under his wing. He's like, you know, the only time you get off is the ARDAP part out. And I was like, I don't have a drug problem.

He's like, well, you can find a drug problem, can't you? And I was like, I can find a drug problem. So they give me diesel therapy on the way back. Stop at all these county jails. Every county jail, I'm like, cocaine and alcohol. Get back to Columbia, South Carolina. I get a psychological evaluation order. Psychologist comes in, four-hour evaluation about halfway through.

He's like, use any type of drugs? I'm like, yeah, what do you use? Cocaine? Smoker, snort? How much? An eight ball day. He looks at me. It's like, that's a lot. And I was like, yeah, you got any trouble out of that?

Yeah, I can't get an erection. And he looks at me. And I looked at him. And I got that shit from watching Boogie Nights, that money shot at the end where Mark Walberg just can't stand to attention. I'm like, that's got to be right. So I'm looking at the psychologist. And finally, we're both sides of it.

And I'm like, is that right? Right. He looks at me. He's like, it could happen. Is it still happening? And I was like, no, but not that I want it to be all right right now. So that makes it into my pre-sentence report. So the judge, she gives me 75 months.

I looked at my lawyer. I was like, can you get the drug program for me? So he's like, I don't know. I'll ask. So he stands up, Your Honor, you order the drug program for Mr. Johnson. She's like, no, but I'll recommend he gets evaluated. I looked at my lawyer. I was like, what does that mean?

Well, you're probably not going to get it. My exact words were like, how soon can you get me to the camp? And he's like, if you don't appeal, I can get you there pretty quick. Exact words. Fuck the appeal. Get me to the camp. I'll take it from there. He looks at me like I'm the biggest idiot in the world.

Six weeks later, I'm at Ashland, Kentucky. I had had family and friends research camps that weren't supposed to have a fence. Get to Ashland, 14 foot fence, a razor wire on top. And I'm like, shit. Go in through processing, look at the guard. And I'm like, any jobs outside of the fence? And he's like, well, you can work in the national forest. And I'm like, no, I'll die out there.

He's like, well, you can do landscaping. And I'm like, I can run a weed eater. So I go into about a week later, you know, once you process through it and go through all that bullshit, walk into the guards office, behind his desk, the entire walls, this aerial photo, the compound blown up with the outlying area. So I can literally sit there, plot the escape. As I'm talking to him, my dad starts to visit about. the third visit in he's like you know i've been reading about you online i'm like yeah he's like yeah he's like

that's a lot of money you've made i'm like yeah he's like you think you can teach somebody how to do that and when i used to tell that story i started out lying i said that you know i thought my dad was back in my life and he wasn't the truth of the matter was my dad hadn't talked to me in 20 some years he and i really believe that he saw me through the frame of my mom that criminal mindset and i think that's the only way he thought he could talk to me like that. And I manipulated the man and helped me escape. He had $4,000 cash to his name, got that, got an ID, a change of clothes, and a cell phone, and ran off. I was there at the camp for six weeks, left U.S. Marshals at campus a three-state area, find me hold up in a hotel, and I get another, so sentencing on that, spent eight months

in solitary, a day of sentencing, go in, secret service is there, prosecutor's there, prosecutor stands up and he's like, Your Honor, you should consider that when Mr. Johnson was arrested, he was arrested with a laptop, prepaid debit cards, he stole that identity information, looks like he was involved in this stuff yet again. Judge looks at him and says, no. If you're going to charge him with it, you should have charged him with it. Because it comes to find out, they came in the room, took the shit without a warrant, just scarfed it all up. Didn't, weren't able to use that as evidence. So the judge says no, because the escape happens so quickly, after the initial sentencing, they use the exact same PSR.

So the judge starts going through the PSR, looks at me and he's like, Mr. Johnson, it appears that before you got involved with all these drugs, you were a pretty good citizen. I was like, yes, your honor. Yes, I was. Yes, sir. So then he looks at me, he's like, so what I'm going to do. You need ARDAP. Yeah.

You need RDA. I do need RDA. What he does is he's like, I'm going to give you 15 months on the escape. I'm like, okay. And I'm going to order the. drug program for you. I'm like, all right. So 15 months extra, but Ardap gives you what? 18 months with that six months out. So I ended up by escaping prison. I got out of prison three months earlier than I would have without the escape. He once got plastic surgery

because he didn't like the photo on his wanted poster. His legend precedes him. The way indictments precede arrests. He is the most interesting man in the world. I don't typically commit crime but when I do it's bank fraud stay greedy my friends support the channel join Matthew Cox's Patreon so that's what happens but like I said I did eight months solitary confinement until they sent me to Big Spring Prison Big Spring Prison is out in West Texas it's a disciplinary medium low converted Air Force compound so hot no shit Matt so hot that warnings would come on the radio telling you you couldn't drive on certain streets because the asphalt was melted.

It got that hot there. Went in and, you know, at a camp, it's completely different, completely different. And when I got there, that's when you realize that guards don't run things. Yeah. The inmates run the shit that's going on there. So I met at the, as I get processed out going up to the barracks, treasurer of Aryan Brotherhood, he's standing there. I'm the first white guy walks up and he's like, hey, how many more white guys came in?

I'm like, shit, I don't know, four or five. next question what are you in here for my answer computer crime big smile on my face he looks at me like thinking they thought you were a show yeah yeah so he goes against his buddies because they thought i was a child molester they circle around what you say you're in here for so i'm sitting there trying to tell them the shit and they're and end of the day they're like sounds good can me see something yeah you need to see something well by that point nobody's letting you travel with bullshit all right all right So first 30 days, everyone thinks I'm this child molester. Until Wired magazine hits the compound, I'm in the magazine.

It's about Max Butler, all those other bullshit. I'm in the magazine. I'm like, shit, I've read the article when I was locked up. There you go. I'm like, shit, I'm good to go. Until I get to that one line that says, Brett Johnson, comma, secret service informant. So those magazines hit the compound at 4 o'clock mail call. Chal call, they're already talking about it in the hall.

so next morning the entire compound gets shut down Brett Johnson Warden's office so I go in they've got SIS there Is this at a medium? This is at Big Spring disciplinary So it's a medium low discipline is what it is So Warden brings me in First question is out of his mouth of SIS counselors are there First questions did you give an interview to Wired Magazine

I'm like yes sir He's like when at Oklahoma detention Without going through the public What do they call it, the public information officer? Exactly. How did you do that? In 15-minute increments, sir. Yeah.

So he was like, don't you know they'll fucking kill you in here? I was like, so then he's like, do you feel safe? And, you know, I knew by that point you tell them, no, they're going to throw you back in the hole until they transfer your ass. So I'm like, completely safe. So he looks at me as like, he's like, if anything happens, anyone says anything to you, you need to come and tell us. I was like, got you. they do a locker search try to get all the magazines off the compound a couple days later i walk into the barracks there's nick sander for the treasurer he's got the magazine reading it i'm like

fuck so i walked up to him i'm like hey nick what you doing i just doing some reading anything interesting it's getting there let me save you the trouble take the magazine point the line out to him he looks at me he's like man i already knew i was like are we going to have a problem he's like did you snitch on anybody that's on this compound i was like no Until someone gets here, you told on, we're going to be okay. I was like, all right. But I had a couple jobs I had to do. So the first job I got, you know, you have to work in feds.

So I got a job in education teaching a lit class. All the Aryans sign up for the lit class. And we taught fraud every Wednesday, 6 to 8.30 p.m. So that was the first job. And then I was, you could call me the liaison between the white chomos and the Aryans. So I would be the guy that as they come off the bus, you know is what? as I do. You know who they are. As they come off the bus, I would be the guy that would have that conversation. Hey, don't know if you're in here on some sort of fucked up charge, but if you

are, it's best you tell me, because if you associate with these guys later on, they will fucking kill you. Yeah, they're just going to swing on you. That's right. So at most of the time, it would be, man, I just want to do my time. And you knew, you knew at that point. Okay, you're not allowed in the TV room. Yeah, yeah. You're not allowed to talk to anybody. You talk to your own kind. Somebody wants to extort you. That's the way this shit goes. You're on your own. You're on your own and understand.

And that's how I got out. You know, it's funny. I used to get the guys that all the shows, when they would just ask them what they're there for, fraud. Which used to irritate me because I would, I would be like, you know, you can't pick another fucking, you can't pick another crime. It's got to be fraud. And then, of course, then, so what would happen is some guy would come in the unit, some white, it would be some white guy, fucked up looking white dude. he'd say, oh, I'm here for a credit card fraud. And then they'd come to, then the guys would come to me, they go, Cox.

And I go, yeah, they go, go, go talk to this guy. And I go, why? He says he's here for fraud. He don't look right to me. And I'd look over at him. And I'd go, yeah, I'd walk over and I'd go, hey, bro, what's going on? I heard you're here for fraud. He'd like, yeah, I'm here for fraud.

And I'd go, okay, what kind of fraud? Credit card fraud? I go, well, they charge you with credit card fraud? Yeah, they charge me with credit card fraud. That's the charge, right? Yeah. Well, there's no credit card fraud. And I was like, okay, well, what'd you do?

And they go, you know, I took money out of credit cards. Well, did you work at a bank? Did you like, how did the fraud work? I'm here for fraud, too. And they go, well, it's not like a learning experience. And I go, okay, he's a chow. And then I just walk on and it's like. So you had that basic same job.

Yeah. Oh, well. Because you're a fraudster. And I taught the real estate class for 10 years. Now, at the medium. Now, when you taught the real estate class. So at the medium, when I was at the media, medium, you could say anything.

You could say, look, here's how, you know, so you get the money, the down payment, say what you do is this, this, the guy gives you money back, start a company and you get the money back here. Like, I'd break it down for exactly how to get your down payment back, how to do everything. Get to camp, can't pull that bullshit. No, you can once. Right. Like, then you get the talk.

That's it. Are you telling people how to do things fraudulently? No, someone said that? That's crazy. Who would do that? I'm in here for fraud. I would never. So then I realized like, fuck, I'm going to have to.

really fine-tuned my class here. And so I did that, taught GED also. You know, I taught game theory, public speaking, and then the lit class. Right. So you do the things that the sharp guys do, that give you credibility, that make you an important person of value. That's what it is. And then nobody bothers you.

If you have value, you're absolutely right. If you have value in that system, you're okay. If you don't. You can do pretty much anything. Like, yeah. Yeah. Well, because what happened with me was, I was in the medium and the St. Petersburg Times came out.

Now, keep in mind, the St. Pete, I'd already been on Dateline. But when I was on Dateline, I had just been arrested. So I haven't even done anything yet. I was interviewed later, but I'm not cooperated. I'm not doing anything when I get first grabbed. But then what happens is once I get sentenced, get to the medium. I'm at the medium. And suddenly St. Petersburg Times comes out.

front page article where I've been talking with a reporter about a politician that I had had bribed and that's what to do in it yeah and in it it talks about how I cooperated with the FBI and the secret service for like seven or eight days where this is my lawyer saying that oh he cooperated more than anybody I've ever had 15 years I'm like wow don't hold back he just sang and saying he wanted to work some more with him I desperately Straight to the fucking shoe for 45 days. I'm telling him, look, I'm fine. I'm fine.

Put me back out. Because they're not going to do anything to you. No, no. The worst that happened was I had a guy come up to me and say, one of the white guys, comes up to me, he goes, hey, Cox. I'm like, yeah, what's up? And he goes, look, who was the guy's name was Bubba. Bubba was the guy who ran, he was a shot collar.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he goes, he was, Bubba wanted to let you know, wanted me to tell you, you can't walk the yard. And I went, what? You can't walk the yard. And I went. And I thought, and I already kind of come to my conclusion, like I was like, either I'm going to, one, there was two, multiple things. One, shut my, because I got a slick mouth. Right.

So I'm going to shut my mouth. Right. I'm not going to shut up for 20 something years. Right. So you shut your mouth for 20 years. Or you just run your mouth and say smart ass shit and you're going to get slapped every once in a while. I'm five foot six. I'm not beating the shit out of some six foot tall biker.

So you're going to get slapped every once in a while, but you're going to have a good time. Right. And two, you're either going to get beat, you know, guys are. going to beat you up or you're going to spend all your time in the fucking shoes. So you know what? I'm just going to get beat up everyone's while. So I looked and I said, well, listen, bro, I'm going to be out at the yard tonight after chow. So if Bubba wants to talk about it, he can talk about it then. And I walk off trembling. Sure. Sure you do. I go get my cousin, who happened to be there. And we get a couple

other guys. And we go and we walk the track for about an hour. And they see me. But nothing happens. But they say nothing. Right. And that was like there was one other small episode where he told a guy that was talking to me in line. That guy's a confidential. informant. He didn't even call me a rat, which I appreciated. That was nice. You know, didn't say snitch. I was called the rat. Said confidential event. I thought that was very, that was very, you know, nice of Bubba. And told the guy, you know, you keep talking to him, you ever need our help? First, you're not going to need his help. But you ever need his help. You won't, you can't rely on us. So the guy who goes, okay, blah, blah. And right, walked like 10 people back. And I'm like, that was pretty much it. Like, I never really had a problem. You get the smile comments. But that's it. Yeah. My problem with Aryans, there was this one kid.

who was, who was trouble with them anyway. His name was Adam, and he was the only one. He'd catch me in a crowd, and he'd just start running his fucking mouth, you know, trying to get somebody to get me. And so one day we're all in the unit together, and we used to, you know, we'd bullshit together. I'd bullshit around with the arians. And Adam was running his mouth, and I looked at him.

I was like, Adam, I want you to know. I'm getting scared of you. And he looks at me, he's like, good. And I was like, well, the way this is going to work out is you're going to be asleep one night. I'm going to stab a pencil in your eye. And he looks at me and he's like, telling you the truth. man so the next day they make his ass check in he's causing problems you know they don't want

problems you're getting a routine and your time's going good and you know they didn't want any problems yes so uh and and the head guy there his name was farmer big fucking Nebraska boy i mean huge dude and uh i still remember man this this this guy he was talking about uh i'm sure you saw it to you take the domino right and you'd shave the domino down are you serious you know let look look You know, Bozziak knows. And we talked about that the end of the day. And they fucking cut the penis. Shub the domino in there.

Pack it with ointment. And it wheeled up. So that was the first thing the dude did. And we're like, shit, we ain't doing that. So he comes in one day. He had been talking about getting a tattoo. And he wanted the punisher symbol right on the head of it. So we're like, you're not going to do that, dude.

We got to be pretty close. Yeah. We're like, no one's going to do that. So he comes in one day. And he's like, got it done. And we're like, no. And he's like, anybody want to see? And all of us at the same time, fuck, yeah, we want to see.

So we're gathering around. He drops it. I was like, that is the Punisher symbol. So, yeah. Oh, man. You know, and that's the thing. I mean, it's, you're right. You can, you can, you can, you can shut your mouth or you, and, you know, I talk a lot too.

You can shut your mouth or you can just be you. And as long as you got, you got value, not every day. is horrible. Yeah. I found, I found happiness and had fun every friggin' day while being scared to death sometimes. Yeah. No, I get it. Um, how much time did you do? Total. Seven and a half. Seven and a half year. You did what, 20? No, I did 13. 13. That's the hell of the taste. Yeah, but I got 26 and four months. So you know, it wasn't game time. No, no. It was not. It was, it was, yeah. Did you go initially to a max or medium or what? So, you know, first of all, I, I, I went. in with camp points right even though I was on the run like I never got an escape or anything so I was

on the run I got I had like two I had like two uh two points okay to you know I should have gone straight to a camp but you got 26 years can't you know unless you're under 20 you got to go to a medium go to a medium I'm there three years because you have to do 23 then I go then I go to the low um but I cooperated the problem is in the cooperation it was at the beginning of the financial crisis. So they were like, look, these crimes are three, four, five years old. We've got him for the stuff he did. And these other people, like, fuck, we got banks that are going under for, you know, $800 million or half a billion dollars. Like, these are bigger crimes. And so they just never really went back and grabbed these people that I cooperate against. Well, so now

I'm screwed, right? Like, I've been locked up. Then what it ends up happening was that I had been asked to do Dateline, NBC. I'd been to be interviewed. I was interviewed. They said they'd consider it substantial assistance. Well, the U.S. attorney said, we did consider it. It's not. So, oh, no, it gets worse.

It gets worse. Then, then American greed comes to me. They come to my lawyer. Code, the U.S. attorney, U.S. attorney says, look, I want him to be interviewed. I will definitely consider this substantial assistance. Great. I do it. I'm brought into the lieutenant, to the war.

Gordon's office for two days of interviews. They have my me on there. They run the program. We go back. We say, okay, you said you'd consider substantial assistance. She goes, I know we did. It's just not enough. I'm sorry. Then I have this guy that runs the national mortgage brokers like education program in the United States. And all mortgage brokers have to do three hours of ethics and fraud. So he comes to me, he says, you actually own a mortgage company. You were a FHA lender. You were like you're the only person that's hit every. Sure. I'm not. on the mortgage spectrum, and you were a broker and a loan officer, I mean, you owned a company, mortgage company, could you help me write this course? I said, yeah, he flies. I say, you got to get, go to the U.S. attorney, flies to Atlanta, get on paper. I do the course. They start using the course. We go back to them and we say, you said you consider it substantial assistance. She goes, it's just, it's just not enough. Jesus, dude. I know. So finally I have, I end up getting a guy who files a 2255 for me and we go back and forth back and forth and eventually the government

offers me one level off my sentence but they will allow me to go in front of the judge and argue for more okay they fly me up there I argue for more I get three levels off that ends up being seven years did you plea out or go to trial I plead yeah okay so did you get the three points of that for the plea yeah yeah I did still in it about 26 years Jesus man so I get seven years off my sentence, then I come back. I'm at the low. I come back. I'm walking around the compound. There's a guy on the compound who did a $57 million Ponzi scheme. And he likes me. He's cooperating. Of course he does. Like I'm openly telling people they're like, hey, Cox, how much time you got? I'm like, well, I got 26 years, but somebody might fuck up and tell me where they was body buried and

I'll be out of here next week. And they would go, they'd look at me and say, damn, it's like that, Cox. I go, it's exactly like that. We're not friends. I don't care what happens to any of these fuckers. Jesus. We're not breaking bread when we get out. And now I'm at the low. You know what I'm saying?

Like you could be pretty cocky at the low. You could run your mouth. So I'm walking around with this guy and just a vicious character all the way around really reminded me my dad. He liked me. He was cooperating as some other guys. We're walking around one day. And he's telling me, man, they're not going to give me anything for my cooperation.

I go, why do you say that? You might testify. Who knows? And he goes, yeah, I know, I just don't think so. He goes, they think I hid Ponzi's skis. money. And I go, well, you didn't, so don't worry about it. Right. And months and months go by, he mentions it a couple times. So finally one day, I look at him and I go, I go, bro, I said, you keep mentioning that you hit, that they think you hit Ponzi scheme money. I said, if you didn't,

they won't find it. So don't worry about it. But he did. And he looked at me and he goes, he was, can I trust you? And I went, I said, I said probably not. And he started laughing and he goes, I did put some money away. And I thought, ah, you're fucking up. So he, he ends up telling me a little bit of the money. But this guy got, like, my brother got like 30 grand, my ex-wife, or soon-to-be ex-wife got like 150. I'm afraid they're going to turn it in. And I, you know, because my ex-wife found out I was having an affair, you know, blah, my brother's just scared. They do tend to frown on that. Yeah. So what ends up happening is, I don't actually say anything. I'm actually disappointed in myself because I waited months,

months for I happen to be talking to my lawyer and everybody's like dang gross so you really struggled no my struggle was I didn't say anything because I thought they didn't want to give me anything the first time right why would I tell when it's not going to work be worth it yeah and so it just happened I was talking to my lawyer

she said hey everything going on what's going on I was like nothing and she happened to say this is a woman who never wanted to help me she was a weird thing she goes she said anything going on in there and I went like you didn't give a fuck when you were representing I was like, no, not really.

And she has nothing that you want to talk about. I thought, it was just weird. And I went, well, you know what? There's a guy in here named Ron Wilson. And I tell her, a week later, I get called into SIS. They put me on phone with a secret service agent. I get him on my email. I start telling him what's going on with Wilson.

He starts asking me and ask him this, ask him this, ask him this. No shit. Oh, yeah, this goes on for six months. And he's asking me questions, some of the questions I'm going back like, bro, you want to get me killed? Yeah. Like, I cannot. How am I going to bring that up? Right.

I've never even heard of this person. So, anyway, I work with him. Eventually, they file for, you know, they re-indite Wilson. They indict the brother, the sister. They get one, they both basically get, they get probation. Right. He gets six more months. And I think that, but they recover half a million dollars.

Okay. And I think, they're never going to give me nothing for that. So I end up, they never do. They say, we don't, they even said, we don't even know what Mr. Cox is talking about. We didn't know, we don't have no idea that he's even worth. working with the U.S. Attorney. I mean, working with the Secret Service. Anyway, the point is I had an actual email from them. So I sent them the email. I had multiple emails. So I sent him the email. I hired that. The same guy, this guy, lawyer, uh, ends up representing me again. He's

in prison with me, was in prison. I end up getting my sentence. He gets my sentence to reduce again five more years. By the time that hits, I'm gone like a, like a year and a half later. I walk out of prison. I mean, and listen, it was. And when that one hit, too, same. thing. Listen, everybody knows I'm cooperating. Everybody. And I'm just, you know, you're either it just, to me, it is what it is. I mean, I get into, I get guys that are like, oh, you fucking snitch, okay, will you be a stand-up guy and do 20 fucking six years? You're not going to do that. Oh, I never said nothing. I never said. I understand that you got a DUI and you did fucking 10 days or I understand you got fucked up and you went to jail for 18 months. Okay, but you weren't

looking at 26 fucking years and you don't fucking know me. And first of all, I, I never thought I could get 26 years. That's insane. is it's crazy for filling out paperwork right but it's the same thing it's like look bro i'm filling out paperwork i didn't break into someone's house right i didn't i'm not carjacking people meanwhile you got the child porn guy doing 10 if that you got the child porn guy doing 10 absolutely absolutely you've got you got to me bank robbers that are zip tying people and taking over banks and getting away with granted no money but right you're terrifying people and they're getting six years seven years so you got out when I got in July 2019.

All right. So now when I got out, I was in three years of probation, couldn't touch a computer. Oh, wow. Yeah. Had job offers from Deloitte, from no before, payment processors. Actually had offers and wasn't allowed to take them. Got to where I was trying for fast food. Well, that cash register, that's a computer.

No. Next thing was, what about a waiter's position? Computer and credit cards? Fuck no. So couldn't get a job. So what kind of trouble did you have trying to get a job? And I'll tell you what happened to me after that. I mean, my judgment commitment, you know, says that I cannot work or consult and any, in finance, real estate, development, or construction for some reason.

Ooh. And so. So you can't even consult? No, I had to take, for one year, I had to take a behavior, modification. class where you meet with a psychiatrist once you know once one hour a week right of course i have the financial where i have to fill out the form but i also have to fill out of paperwork every month to tell them how much money came in to come up with my restitution i still owe like six million okay i'm good for it yeah i know you are um so have they charged that off we're just

going to take your tax returns for the rest of your life oh yeah no no they're going to take them forever um but i other than you know obviously i can't i have to do the piss test and i can't travel or doing anything like that. Although I have traveled, I just had to get permission from the court. Okay. Um, had to get my passport back. Now, keep in mind, two of my charges are passport and, uh, well, one was fraudulent application of a passport and one is actually use of a fraudulent. So you bought one or someone else's name for renewal or something. No, I had like 24 passports. Nice. I had two dozen passports. I say that. I shouldn't say that. I still, that's pretty fucking nice. Pretty good, right? 27 driver's licenses in seven different

States from the DMV. That was the next question because we had we had a contact out of Knoxville that would shoot us real Tennessee ones. Real ones. Real ones. But the problem was is when that guy got popped, they just pulled everyone that he had issued driver's licenses to. And I just went out from there.

Just went in. Yeah. And we were doing that to a degree. Find a little rural one someplace and going like that. Yeah, I would go, you know, as long as, I mean, as long as like I get your information in South Carolina, I can go to Tennessee. Right. Because they didn't have reciprocity.

They don't, yeah, they don't have, they can, they work on a hub system where they can request, immediately they can request like the data, but they can't get the photo for like 48 hours or 72 hours and it's like, okay, if he gives me the ID, I'm good. You know, if there's a question, they just don't give you the idea. They're like, I don't know, something's not right, but it wasn't not right because I would walk in with the real social, the real person to do, the real this, the real that, I registered to vote, I got this, I got this, I got the register to vote. I mean, that's, right?

That's one of the steps. You got to do that. It's good because these are all real documents. So you're sitting there like, I'm ready to argue. You have a problem. I'm ready to argue because I know everything's good. So how did you get 27 passports? Through the State Department, they don't ask for it.

This is pre-9-11 or after? Oh, no, this is all after. This is after. I remember that night of that. Everybody always says, oh, they ask for your fingerprints. No, they don't. As a matter of fact, I just got my passport a year ago to go to Amsterdam to do a show called Inside the Mind of a Con artist.

Okay. I got my passport then. No fingerprints. I did get stopped on the way. Yeah, we were doing the way we were doing passports was filing for renewals on people who had never been issued a passport. And they were shooting passports out like that. Yeah, these guys had never had passport. I was getting homeless people.

So I'd go and I. Not bad. Not bad. I like where your hands are. Not bad. You see? That's what we like. We like that outside of the box thinking.

I actually had, I made a. a statistical survey form and it looked so good and it was a couple pages it was like 17 questions and I would go out to where the homeless people were I made a Salvation Army badge and I walk out there

and I'd say hey can I talk to you real quick and they'd look at me like they'd go oh yeah what's up I go listen I work for the Salvation Army we're trying to figure out where we're going to put our next indigent our next homeless shelter so you like crackers I got some crackers I gave 20 bucks

you know know, I'm not, $20 or mad dog, what do you want? $20 and then would go and borrow like a million, million, $1.5 in their name. So, you know, maybe not fair trade, but still, they were happy. I had nobody said, I, well, they couldn't have done it themselves. No, no. There you go. And so I would just say, hey, by the way, 20 bucks were trying to figure out, you know,

where to put our next homeless facility, just a survey. And they were like, yeah, what's up, man? I'd say, okay, just quick, real quick. I'd give them, you know, here, let's do this, name, data borough, so secure number. Mother's made name, you know, where you live? Or last known address? Where did you live? You ever been a member of the military?

Do you get Social Security disability? Have you ever had a U.S. passport? Have you had any any identifications? And if so, in which states? Yeah, so basically you're just fishing in person. What high school did you go to? Because you can get their high school transcripts. So I get their information.

I then order all their information. Right. Get it all in. And then I know he's had an ID here and here or driverized here. And then I just go two states over. It's going to be all right. walk right in, say, listen, I just moved. I lost my license and the move.

I don't know what you need. And you start, I know what you need. Well, says here you're a 5'4 black man. I know, but I identify as a black man. Yes, yeah. With a good pair of shoes. So, yeah, so I would get, they would just go in and they give me the ID. Then you turn around.

You immediately go and fill out for your, I would immediately fill out for my, you know, my passport. Go get the passport photos. Walk into the U.S. Post Office. where they have a passport control you walk in there you sit down you do your little boom boom boom they go okay great they sign off they give you your stuff they take your birth certificate they mail it back 10 days later used to be if you paid extra within about six weeks you got it now it's like three months before you get it right uh but yeah i would get them and i just get them and i've been in and out on the run i went to greece Croatia bermuda Mexico Jamaica uh Italy um I just already say Greece

Right. So yeah. So I was, you got called stateside. Yes. Yeah. How'd you get called? Girlfriend. Girlfriend. You know. Stingray. Yeah. Stingray. Oh, yeah, yeah, the stingray. Yeah, that's what got me. So, yeah, state side. Okay, so I guess I'm turning in an interviewer. No, no, wait, but okay, but you were saying, so that, those were the constraints on me. Like, I was ready to work at McDonald's, by the way. I was okay with that. Did you have trouble getting a job or not? I got lucky and a buddy of mine owned a gym and hired me in the halfway house. And then by the time I got out of the gym, I was being asked to go on different people's podcasts. And I'd written a book. Okay.

So I had published the book. I'd written like seven books. So I started publishing books. Self-published you have a publisher? Well, so one of them was published by a publishing company. Okay. But I mean, I got like a, like a, you know, of course I was in. prison, you know, like a $3,500 advance, barely make any money on the thing. And I got made more

money publishing on Amazon, self-publishing. No kidding. Then I've ever, oh, way more, way more than I ever made on that. You know, but I also had optioned the film rights to some guys I got him in Rolling Stone magazine, optioned film rights. Nice. Got out optioned a couple more film rights. So I got out. So I had a little bit there coming in and I had and I started painting. You saw some my painting. I like it. For those who don't know his work is outstanding on Patreon. Yeah, exactly. That's where you need to go. So I managed, moved into somebody's spare room. And, but I wasn't. Like, I had all these job offers. And every time I call my probation officer, it was no, no, no, no. Right. Right. And so, yeah, it, I would have been back into real estate

very quickly or finance or something, but I'm, I'm, I'm restricted from doing that. For how long? Five years. Five years. And I can't get off probation, early because I owe $6 million. Yeah, you're not going to get off that early. Right. Unless you violate, then they may kill it. Yeah. Which is what happened with me.

Oh, is that what happened? You violated? Dude, so, yeah, I'm out. I can't get a job. I'm out in Panama City, Florida. No money. Literally cannot get a frigging job. No money.

I'm bumming money from my dad and my sister. I've got a roommate taking her half the rent, getting food stamps so I can friggin' eat. And, you know, I guess they gave you the same speech. You know, when you get out, find some. you care about and a job and you won't recidivate so shit i can't get a job what i cared about had a little cat and uh had the money to feed my cat i didn't have money to buy toilet paper man so went to the dollar general store bought the cat some food on the way out kiosk there

toilet paper and i'm like first crime right there and uh of course you know it dovetails quickly from that point but uh my wife now michelle so my turnarounds my sister had disowned me she comes back in my life after the escape the uh my wife michelle she uh i ended up meeting her right after those thefts like that move in with her because i was getting ready to get kicked out of my house uh moved in with her finally got a job and uh the job the only job we could get was pushing a lawnmower that was it uh 10 hours a day 400 dollars a week was the pay on that pushing a lawn more busted my fucking how old were you geez i was uh 42 at that 43 at that point 10 hours a day pushing manual on more and uh busting my ass i'd come in so tired of

a night literally fall asleep wake up the next morning take a shower hit it again um and i was happy doing it though i was doing so you know i was finally doing something yeah and uh job ends you know grass doesn't grow when it gets cold i'm in north florida grass isn't growing those four months so job ends and that that reason i commit crime you know i got to show michelle i'm worth it I'm like, well, I can bring food in the house. Get on the dark web, get credit card details, start putting food orders in. And, of course, again, it dovetails because you're like, okay, food, kids need clothes. Christmas is coming up.

She could use some stuff. I get popped. Controlled delivery on a food order. Michelle had no idea what I was doing. Go back to prison. At my sentencing for that, U.S. Marshals, prosecutor, probation officer, me and Michelle, Michelle stands up. She's like, he's a better dad.

of my kids and their actual father is. I'm sitting there crying. Prosecutor stands up. Prosecutor, we think he's a good guy. We think it's just a one-time thing. Probation officer, same thing. Judge, one year. Probation officer stands back up,

says, Your Honor, if you'll give Mr. Johnson a year and a day, he can get the good time, get back to his family. Judge amends a sentence to a year and a day, so I do 10 months. They send me, yeah, yeah, I mean. It's a whole different group than I had. Lucky as fuck. So go back to Texas for 10 months. and have this big awakening moment.

I'm like, you know, Michelle didn't need me for the shit I could give her. She just needed me for me. Yeah. So do my 10 months, get out. They kill probation because I violated. They kill probation at that point. I can get a job. Get married to Michelle.

Can't get a job, though. You know, I'm the guy that steals everything. Yeah. So can't get a job and I'm sitting there, you know, trying to find work at doing anything, can't. And I guess you may be the same way. I know what my triggers are. I know what gets me back into crime. Back then, it was, I know I'll go so far before I'd do it again.

So I looked at Michelle, I was like, let me see what I can do. Signed on to LinkedIn, reached out to this guy named Keith Milarski, FBI out of Pittsburgh. He was involved with all of these arrests back in those days. And I sent him a message. I was like, hey, you did a great job, no hard feelings, a lot of respect for you. I'd like to be legal. Dude responds within two hours, man. Takes me under his wing, references everything else.

From there, identity theft counsel does the same thing. the CNP group, Card Not Presidents that are for online credit card fraud. They hear about me, hire me to be a keynote speaker. From there, Microsoft hears about me, hires me to consult with them, and that lays enough trust in the industry

where today, you know, I've got my show the Brett Johnson show. I speak at Quantico. I'm ambassador for AARP. This year, Arcos Labs, they started this new sea level position called Chief Criminal Officer, the first one on the planet,

all those other stuff. I'm talking to Ridley Scott, all these people about doing the show. And I'm, you know, I'm serious. And I want to ask you about this stuff too. But I leave a very blessed life these days. And I don't deserve it, but I'm damn grateful to have it. And the question I have, you know, we've laughed a lot about 27 passports, shit like that. But it's, you know, we can laugh about that.

But at the same time, there's, with me, there's been this. this just shift in the mentality. Yeah, I think about breaking law all the time, but I'm not going to do that. And where did that shift come with you? Good question. So, well, it's not a good question because, like, I've had such a good interview, you know?

And it's been fun, and we've been laughing, and... And then we get sober. Right. And the problem is, is emotionally, when I start to talk about it or think about it, I tear up like when you're like when you're like, you know, I cried like that, listen, cried like a small child at my sentence. I mean, just like, yeah.

And when I think about the person I was and the person I am, although I laugh and I love that time in my life and I love doing those things, but I think about, like when you went to jail. Right. The one thing I know when the one thing you never once laid in bed and thought about was, God, I miss that nice car. God, I miss that nice car. You don't think that shit at all. All you thought about was, I miss Michelle, I miss my fucking kids, I miss my cat, I miss, like, that's it.

That's it. That's it. All I ever gave a shit. You don't worry about that material stuff at all. Absolutely. And that's exactly what happened was I went to prison, angry, pissed off, furious, didn't deserve this much time. These piece of garbage, they did this. And I did, and I was reasonable. I was like, you know, yeah, okay, I broke the law, but I didn't deserve this much time.

And even to this day, I'm like 26 years. It's a lot of time. It's a lot of time, but it's like you don't get to choose. Right. So, you know, you're putting yourself at their mercy the moment you do that. So, you know, I think that I started thinking that way. Met a buddy in mine. He got like 30.

He actually got 40 years. And, you know, we started talking. And one of the things he had told me one time was, you know, you can't go to prison. and continue to think in the same manner that led you to prison and leave prison and not expect to come back. Right. And I was, you know, and that's more than just, oh, no, no, but I'm not going to commit crime.

He's like, it's not the crime. It was your thought process. Yeah. So, and you'll eventually commit a crime, you know, if you keep thinking like that. So what happened is, you know, went to prison, wrote a memoir, my memoir. Okay. And when I was writing that memoir, I ended up writing the first draft, which was horrible had to rewrite it read several books about how to write right right and ended up

writing this little tiny book and i wish i could remember it and the woman was like look you need to look into your life one of the things you need to do is look in your life and figure out what the key moments were that helped create the person that you are today so that it will explain to the reader it will give the reader reasons what helped craft you sure and i used to hate to think about to complain about my childhood or anything you know i don't want to say that because you you meet, I mean, you meet guys that were like chained to fucking, they were locked up in the basement or their parents beat them almost to death or they, you know, horrible things. Right. That it was like, I didn't have that. You know, my dad's an alcoholic, you know, and it's like, what am I crying about? Daddy didn't love me enough. Like, but the truth is, I rewrote that book. And as I wrote that book and really started focusing on that, I started realizing that there were definite things that led me to be the person that committed those crimes.

and then the other thing I focused started realizing was like what a selfish narcissistic prick I am and I fight it today I fight it to this day like guys are like well if you if you know that about yourself

you can you know at least you can help change that and like I try I mean I like being an asshole sometimes I agree I and that's the worst part it is like you're trying to change someone who just loves himself that's hard Yeah.

But one of the things is like, what really started bothering me was I took ARDAP. Did it do you good? It did after for me. I think it did great for me. Although I had learned most of these lessons by the time I got in it. Right. But I really felt like it helped me really kind of figure out what my issues were. And I remember, I didn't notice it so much about everybody that talked to me on the phone.

I talked to my ex-wife. And then five minutes in, she'd be like, okay, what's going on? Yep. And I go, what? She'd go, we've been talking for five minutes. You know my kid's names. You're asking how Nick is. You're not just focusing on you.

Yeah. You haven't fucking said, you haven't told me what's going on with you. And I've asked twice. And I'm like, I mean, nothing. I'm here. I'm doing whatever. I was just wondering whatever happened with, you know, with Ethan. I know he was sick.

She's like, what's going on? So, because the truth is, when I have most conversations, I am typically barely listening. And most of the time, I'm really just waiting for an opportunity so that I can turn the conversations that I can talk. about me. Right. And that is such a selfish, fucked up thing. And, and when I see myself telling myself at the beginning of a conversation, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. And then 20 minutes later, I realized we've been talking about me for 10 minutes. And I think, you're a fucked up

individual. I mean, we are. Right. We are. But, you know, that's the thing, though. So even today, like, I took this nine-hour drive to come down and talk to you today. Which I appreciate. Which I even asked Tyler over. I was like, he's driving? He's driving. First, it was he was driving. Secondly, because when he was saying to me, when we were talking, I was like, you're telling me, Pat Johnson's going to come on my pocket. He knows I can't pay him, right? He knows I'm broke, right?

Did you tell him? He didn't ask for any money? No, no, you need to make sure. Nothing? Nothing. You know, and he, yeah, I was. No, and the reason why, I try, I do every podcast for free. I don't ask for cash on that.

Because it's also a type of therapy for me. You know, I try to find out something new about myself every single time. I wanted to talk to you because we've got that South Carolina relationship. You have that U.S. most wanted thing, too. So I was like, this will be a good conversation. I wanted to ask you that question that I just asked you. I took a nine-hour drive, and I do these long-ass drives because I used to walk this track when I was in prison. And I would think every single day about my life, the people I had fucked over, everything else.

And on these drives, I get to do that again. I get to consider everything, work through these issues, everything. it's not surprising me what you were talking about you know writing that that's that therapy again where you if you're truthful which like I said the first time I wasn't right I wasn't and that was a problem but if you are I mean you you really sit there and you examine yourself and you get these answers that sometimes you don't want but by God they're there and you can't deny them what's around and you know what's funny too because I've anybody watching this is watching like I've probably said this a thousand times is that you know had millions all the money i needed in the world before

a prison i'm on i'm on uh uh zan i'm not well yeah i've got a prescription for zanax um paxil uh i'm miserable i'm unhappy i've got i got a girlfriend and a girl my girlfriend's got a girlfriend i've got tons of money i got great vehicles i've got i'm traveling non stuff stop. I'm living great. I'm not concerned about being on the run. And even prior to that, when I wasn't on the run, I was just committing crime. I was just miserable, unhappy. And then I get out of prison with nothing. And I used to love to tell people that I wanted, they were like, what are you going to do when you get out? I'm like, I'm working at McDonald's. And because, and they were like, why. I was like, because I want to work at McDonald's. I want to live in

someone's spare room. I want to start at the bottom because I was so much happier in prison. and so much happier getting out of prison than I ever was prior to that having everything I ever fucking wanted because to me it's like I'm so like you know it is it's the whole I hate the term I'm blessed you know but I am blessed I'm thrilled I'm happy I have people around me that like me

because they want to be around me not because I'm going to make them 300,000 next month or they're getting 50,000 here or 100,000 here or they're just hanging out with me to fucking hang out me. Yeah. Yeah. Like, like, you know, because when you get arrested, you find out that those friends ain't. Oh, no. No, the more money I made for people, the, the quicker they hung up the phone if they picked it up at all. The people that I never made any money for showed up and came to see me, would come visit me, would send me, would look stuff up for me, send me books, would,

it was such a reality fucking check for me to go to prison. You know, with me, and I'm really no different on that it's uh if i would have gotten out and immediately went into you know the speaking the consulting the bullshit i do today i wouldn't have appreciated any of it any of it but i didn't do that it took me years to build up the the trust in that industry and you know applying this you know 16 18 hours a day of bam bam bam you mentioned before you know you wake up you work 80 hours a week i work 80 hours a week now i wake up working i go to sleep working and um you know i It's that, the ability to build yourself up from nothing to that success in a legal way screams. Just, I mean, it's just by God, yes.

At that point, I've done it. I did it without doing anything wrong. And it's me. And, you know, yeah, you were a criminal. I was, I was too. But to show that we're able to succeed in, in a legal lifestyle as well, talks about the character of the person. And I, you know, I'm giving myself credit too. but you too man i mean it's it's it's really there aren't many people out there able to do that you

think of everybody comes out of prison you know at least you know under 40 you're an 87 percent recidivism rate right now most of those guys are going to go back they don't have a support group they don't have the uh the ability to turn their lives around and it's just the circular thing and and we're very you're right we're very blessed that we've been able to do that we've got that support group people that help us and then what else can you say in that Yeah, you know, it's funny, the support group thing because, like, I used to, like, I can't mess up. Like, like, if you had a support group, I think it would almost be detrimental to me because I'm like, I'm like, I had nothing. I can't, you understand, I cannot screw up.

I cannot. And listen, it was so bad. I think I told Boje at this the other day, was somebody, I was at work and somebody said, like I was saving every penny. Right. I had. Somebody goes, hey, Matt, I'm going to, where are they going? whatever a sandwich shop we're going to the sandwich shop you want me to get you something and i went um no i'm good i got i got a bag lunch from the halfway house you know right right right peanut bird jelly or mac or whatever it was

bloney and um i said no i got i got a bag lunch and and and it his name was lian and leon he goes she said um do you matt she goes it's come on you eat that every day she was get get a sandwich from jimmy johns and i went no no i said i'm good she goes come on and i went she was i said honestly i don't have any money i don't have money to do that and she looked at me and she said it's fine i'll get it for you And I went, okay, listen, Leanne, you're not understanding. Let me be perfectly clear. She was there. My boss is there.

Another employee is there. And I said, if out of the goodness of your heart you want to buy me a sandwich, I said, I said, that's fine. I'll take it. I said, but if you're expecting some kind of a reciprocation from me, I said, like two days from now, I'll give you the money back or next week I'm going to buy you a sandwich. I said, I am not in a position to buy you a sandwich. I will not be in a position to buy you a sandwich.

years possibly at the rate I'm going and I said right I'm going I said so if you want to give me a sandwich that's great I will take it if not I have a bag launch thank you and she looked at me and she went I looked around and everybody and she goes I'm going to get you a sandwich and I was like I was just that I was that like I bought $300 worth of clothes from Walmart in the halfway house I still have blue jeans that I'm wearing to this day and I could afford but it's just like the materialistic stuff just drop down to nothing for me. Like, I don't want it. Everything I buy is from Ross or Marshalls or that's it. Like, I'm not, I'm not, I couldn't, I don't think I physically could, would be able to pay like 150 bucks for a shirt now.

And back then I was paying three, four hundred bucks for blue jeans. It's like blue cheese. They sell them at Walmart for $29. Are you serious? What was your brand back then you're paying $300 for? Oh, they were diesel. Of course. Diesel. I don't even know if they're still out. Like, I know nothing about clothes now. I barely knew it then. But the girl I was with, she's like, oh, these are diesel. You have to get diesel. Yeah, my stripper fiancée, she likes sevens. That's what I remember. She tells me, how, I'd never done anything like that.

You know, I was paying like 80 bucks for the luckies back then. And she looks at me one day, I need some jeans. I'm like, where do you want to go? Sacks? And I'm like, we walk in the sacks and she goes over to this counter. And I'm looking at shirts. I'm like, shit, that's two, 300 bucks for a shirt. I'm not going to buy that bullshit.

So I look over at her. She's at the gene section. he's just taking one pair after another is bam bam bam bam bam i'm like holy fuck so i walk i'm like how much are those oh they're 230 dollars a pair i'm like how many pair you got that was it man i'm like shit they're expensive they're expensive they're expensive they're expensive strippers i mean yeah they're expensive yeah they're expensive yeah they're expensive they they have high tastes she was a from what i understand she was able to turn her life around so i'm I'm thankful about that, but I mean, Jesus Christ.

So now you're doing the, you're doing the channel and I've got, so speaking gigs. I've got the speaking. So for those who may be interested, we've got the Brett Johnson show on YouTube, tune into it. But I, I'll put the, we'll put the link in the, put the link in the description. I appreciate that. Yeah. I've got, speak across the planet. I mean, I literally travel all over the damn place speaking.

I mean, got the documentaries in the work, I'm talking with North South productions for a Discovery TV show, which is basically Brett Johnson scams you, is what it is. Okay. So talking about that, got a book in the works. I'm actually talking to one of the guys that's responsible for the Irishman. Talking about it was Friday on that. Chief Criminal Officer of Arcos Labs. I mean, I, dude, I'm doing all right. Yeah.

I'm doing all right, you know. It's funny if you just try and just kind of, it sounds so hokey. I hate to even say that, you know, you just try and do the right thing. It's like, like good things start to kind of happen to you. It does. And, you know, my motivation these days, and it really is one of these wake-up calls when I talk to somebody and they finally realize it. I'm like, don't give a shit about money. Yeah.

It's about doing the right thing. And I'm going to call it out. Don't give a shit who it is. I'm that guy typically piss off somebody every week about calling out a company or something like that about doing wrong. But that's who I am these days. Are you? Well, we're going to. Thank you for coming on.

Thank you for driving. Thank you. Okay. And what am I? What? Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Sorry. Hey. Hey. I don't know if I can. But if you like the video, do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button. Hit the bell so you get notified videos like this. Share the video.

And please share the video because people leave comments like, I don't understand why your channel doesn't have more subscribers. And I don't understand why you don't have more viewers. And it is specifically because you did not share the videos. to your friend and family that's why I don't have more subscribers it's because of you not because I'm not amazing it's right you are outstanding

I watched a video mine the other day and I thought damn you subscribed your own video exactly you're good you should you should be huge what's happening so leave me a comment in the comment section I try and respond to most of the comments

and also I wrote a whole bunch of true crime books when I was locked up Colby's gonna play the he's gonna play a bunch of trailers that I made. I made the trailers myself. So if you say, hey, who did your trailers? I did them. And all the links to my books are in the description box. And we're going to leave the, we're going to leave a link to Brett's channel. It's the, it's the Brett Johnson show. It's on YouTube. We're going to leave a link on that. And I appreciate you guys watching. See you.

Using forgeries and bogus identities, Matthew B. Cox, one of the most ingenious conmen in history built America's biggest banks out of millions. Despite numerous encounters with bank security, state, and federal authorities, Cox narrowly, and quite luckily, avoided capture for years. Eventually, he topped the U.S. Secret Service's most wanted list and led the U.S. Marshal's FBI and Secret Service on a three-year chase, while jet-setting around the world with his attractive female accomplices. Cox has been declared one of the most prolific mortgage fraud con artists of all time by CNBC's American Greene. Bloomberg Business Week called him the mortgage industry's worst nightmare, while Dateline NBC described Cox as a gifted forger

and silver-tongued liar. Playboy magazine proclaimed his scam was real estate fraud, and he was the best. Shark in the housing pool is Cox's exhilarating first-person account of his stranger-than-fiction story. Available now on Amazon and Audible. Bent is the story of John J. Bozziak's

phenomenal life of crime. Inked from head to toe, with an addiction to strippers and fast Cadillacs, Boziac was not your typical computer geek. He was, however, one of the most cunning scammers, counterfeiters, identity thieves, and escape artists alive, and a major thorn in the side of the U.S. Secret Service as they fought a war on cybercrime. With a savant-like ability to circumvent banking security and stay one step ahead of law enforcement,

Bozziak made millions of dollars in the international cyber underworld, with the help of the Chinese and the Russians. Then, leaving nothing but a John Doe warrant and a cleaned-out bank account in his wake, he vanished. Boziak's stranger-than-fiction tale of ingenious scams and impossible escapes, of brazen run-ins with the law and secret desires to straighten out and settle down, makes his story a true crime con game that will keep you guessing. Bent. How a homeless teen became one of the cybercrime industry's most prolific counterfeiters. Available now on Amazon and Audible. Buried by the U.S. government and ignored by the national media, this is the story they don't want you to know. When Frank Amadeo met with President George W. Bush at the White House to discuss NATO operations in Afghanistan, no one knew that he'd already embezzled nearly $200 million from the federal government,

money he intended to use to bankroll his plan to take over the world. From Amadeo's global headquarters in the shadow of Florida's Disney World, with a nearly inexhaustible supply of the Internal Revenue Services funds, Amadeo acquired multiple businesses, amassing a mega conglomerate. Driven by his delusions of world conquest, he negotiated the purchase of a squadron of American fighter jets and the controlling interest in a former Soviet ICBM factory. He began working to build the largest private militia on the planet,

over one million Africans strong. Simultaneously, Amadeo hired an international black ops force to orchestrate a coup in the Congo, While plotting to take over several small Eastern European countries, the most disturbing part of it all is, had the U.S. government not thwarted his plans, he might have just pulled it off. It's insanity.

The bizarre, true story of a bipolar megalomaniac's insane plan for total world domination. Available now on Amazon and Audubord. Pierre Rossini, in the 1990s, was a 20-something-year-old, Los Angeles-based drug trafficker of ecstasy. and ice. He and his associates drove luxury European supercars, lived in Beverly Hills penthouses, and dated Playboy models while dodging federal indictments. Then, two FBI officers with the organized crime drug enforcement task force entered the picture. Dirty agents,

willing to fix cases and identify informants. Suddenly, two of Rossini's associates, confidential informants working with federal law enforcement or murdered. Everyone pointed to Rassini. As his co-defendants prepared for trial, U.S. Attorney Robert Mueller sat down to debrief Rassini at Leavenworth Penitentiary, and another story emerged. A tale of FBI corruption and complicity in murder. You see, Pierre Rissini knew something that no one else knew. The truth. And Robert Miller and the federal government have been covering it up to this very day. Devil Exposed, a twisted tale of drug trafficking, corruption, and murder in the city of angels. Available on Amazon and Audible.

Bailout is a psychological true crime thriller that pits a narcissistic conman against an egotistical pathological liar. Marcus Schrenker, the money manager who attempted to fake his own death during the 2008 financial crisis is about to be released from prison, and he's ready to talk. He's ready to tell you the story no one's heard. Shrinker sits down with true crime writer, Matthew B. Cox, a fellow inmate serving time for bank fraud. Shrinker lays out the details, the disgruntled clients who persecuted him for unanticipated market losses, the affair that ruined his marriage, and the treachery of his scorned wife, the woman who framed him for securities fraud,

leaving him no choice but to make a bogus distress call and plunge from his multi-million dollar private aircraft in the dead of night. The $11.1 million in life insurance, the missing $1.5 million in gold. The fact is, Shrinker wants you to think he's innocent. The problem is, Cox knows Shrinker's a pathological liar and his stories of fabrication. As Cox subtly coaxes, cajoles, and yes, Kahn Shrinker into revealing his deceptions, stranger than fiction life of lies slowly unravels. This is the story Shrinker didn't want you to know. Bailout, the life and lies of Marcus Shrinker, available now on Barnes & Noble, Etsy, and Audible.

Matthew B. Cox is a conman, incarcerated in the Federal Bureau of Prisons for a variety of bank fraud-related scams. Despite not having a drug problem, Cox inexplicably ends up in the prison's resident Drug Abuse Program, known as Ardap, a drug program in name only. Ardap is an invasive behavior modification therapy, specifically designed to correct the cognitive thinking errors associated with criminal behavior. The program is a non-fiction dark comedy, which chronicles Cox's side-splitting journey. This first-person account is a fascinating glimpse at the survival-like atmosphere inside of the government-sponsored rehabilitation unit.

While navigating the treachery of his backstabbing peers, Cox simultaneously manipulates prison policies and the bumbling staff every step of the way. The program. How a Conman survived the Federal Bureau of Prisons cult of Ardap. Available now on Amazon and Audible. If you saw anything you like, links to all the books are in the description box.