Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - FBI AGENT EXPOSES MEGA CHURCH SCAMS

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

Matt Cox and ex-FBI agent Tom Simon expose real white-collar scams—Ponzi schemes, embezzlement, fake psych docs, and even a wild mega church scam that took millions “in the name of Jesus.” They ...break down how the cons worked and guess the prison sentences (some will shock you).Tom's linkshttps://www.instagram.com/simoninvestigations/?hl=enhttps://www.simoninvestigations.comGet 10% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout.Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://forms.gle/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7Send me an email here: insidetruecrime@gmail.comDo you extra clips and behind the scenes content?Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime Follow me on all socials!Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrimeDo you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopartListen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox Check out my true crime books! Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCFBent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TMIt's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5GDevil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3KBailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WXIf you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69Cashapp: $coxcon69

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Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Churches tend to be a haven for defrauders. He would pitch to the church congregations is chairman's fund that was actually endorsed by Jesus Christ himself. Over a two-month period, he embezzles $47 million. Hello, Matt Cox. Hello.
Starting point is 00:00:20 So good to see you. What's going on? Thanks for having me back. Got a dozen stories for you today. I'm going to tell you about the crime. I'm going to tell you the whole crime story. Some of them involved me, crimes I investigated, some of them involved me, crimes I investigated,
Starting point is 00:00:29 Some of them do not. And your job is to guess the sentence. Okay. Within how many years? We need to set a guy on. Yeah, because I'm never going to hit one on the head. Are we keeping score? I'm keeping score today.
Starting point is 00:00:40 Oh, okay. I'm keeping score. Let's say within three years. No, within a 10% variant. Okay. How about that? So you can be 10% right on, you know, number of months or whatever, number of years, on the upside of the downside.
Starting point is 00:00:53 It's close. It's pretty close. You want 15%? I think within 20%. Come on. 20% that's 20% so if it's a 10 year sentence he's got to be within two years fair enough we i can live with that i mean okay it's your show and we have 12 stories yes so what's a passing grade let's say i think 80% huh let's say eight
Starting point is 00:01:16 eight out of 10 is is i mean you don't ask me i mean there's money on i'm not paying you know this is just uh this is audience retention you know people got to watch to the All right, okay. Nine. So you gotta, you have to have nine. I've said nine. Let's say nine out of 12. Nine would be roughly 80%.
Starting point is 00:01:31 You're shooting for nine out of four. So we don't have an actual scoreboard up here against the red wall. Our first story is one that I investigated. Oh, okay. A fella named Kevin. So this guy got away. Nice, nice. You familiar with annuity investments?
Starting point is 00:01:43 Yes. What do you know about annuities? Um, annuities are where you, it's like an insurance product, right? Like you invest in like an insurance. Yeah. It's the only, it's the only investment product that life insurance people are allowed to Okay. Okay. And so life insurance people, you know, I term life insurance or whatever. If I croak, my air gets X dollar amount. There's also a whole life, which has like a built-in thing to it. But the real money in the life insurance sales business is selling these investment products called annuities. And what annuity is, you're going to pay certain amount of money either per month or a lump sum. And then when you hit some certain age, you're going to get a check every month like Social Security. Right. supplement your income until you die, and then the investment goes away. It has no value at that point,
Starting point is 00:02:27 which is why it's sold by life insurance companies, because they're all into the actuarial tables and how long you're likely to live and all that. Right. I don't like annuities as an investment. I think the problem is that when you're evaluating your investment choices, there's always a life insurance guy, since that's the only type of investment he can sell, and then really pushing annuities. And the commissions on annuity sales are insane, really high to the sales. person. This huge incentive to lie. When this baked into it, like a financial planner may not ever steer you toward an annuity, but your life insurance guy, who you know in trust, is always going to try to put you in an annuity. Kevin was an annuity salesman. Okay. Right. The life insurance
Starting point is 00:03:07 guy. Most of his clients were senior citizens and they loved Kevin. He was their guy. One day Kevin, many of whom were in Hawaii, he lived in Hawaii at some point. He had a lot of clients in Hawaii, senior citizens. He begins contacting his clients one week and saying, hey, listen, I think I can get you a better rate on your annuity. Can I have your permission to pull it from the current annuity? We'll cash it out and we'll put it into my personal program that I'm running. That's not a problem because the annuities, if you pull money out of annuities, you typically have like a, what do they call, a surrender fee or something? There's some massive surrender. Right. The cash value of these things are, is pretty poor.
Starting point is 00:03:49 right right it's a tough investment to get out of you have another reason why it's not a great investment right so if you put it you you you buy one for a hundred thousand dollars one kevin probably makes 10 grand and then two you have to keep it in there for 10 or 15 years for it to then start paying you back so for you to go in and say hey i want to pull my 50 000 out of the 100 well you just probably cost yourself 20 grand yeah exactly and but so Kevin reaches out to a bunch of his clients telling him, you know, who love him and trust him and says, hey, listen, I can get you a better deal. Let's cash out your current annuity. Put it with me. I'm going to manage the money and get the annuity squared away. And so 12 different customers give him cash out and he walks away with $400,000. Okay. Significant numbers for you when you're going to be making your guess later. And what Kevin does is he puts that money in his own Charles Schwab account. Okay. He doesn't even, he doesn't even, he's not even churning it. No. I mean, I, he may have paid out a couple people here and there, but a lot of these annuities have a, there's a tail. Like, if you bought an annuity today, you can choose what day you start collecting it, right? Because
Starting point is 00:04:56 it's all just a math problem in the world of finance. You could say, I want to collect this till I'm 60. So I don't, I'm, there's a while ago, for instance, I investigated this. I don't think he paid anyone any returns, but he takes all their money. And then, and then if at all on black, it's like you read ahead. When I teach classes to young investigators on how to do white-collar crime cases, I discussed the importance of timelining the fraud, right? Because when you're doing a fraud investigation, you have witness statements, you have phone records, you have bank records, investment
Starting point is 00:05:24 records, and all these things happening and it's really important that you put it into a timeline to see exactly what's happening. And so what I was seeing, when I timeline this, was money would come into Kevin's Schwab account, and then I would begin seeing ATM withdrawals in Las Vegas. And then at this particular
Starting point is 00:05:41 casino, casinos keep amazing records, because all these degenerate gamblers are, they joined the loyalty club of this casino. I'm on the Caesar's loyalty club, the Belagio loyalty club, so they can get like a free ham sandwich or whatever. And those guys, the casinos keep amazing records of every quarter you put in every slot machine. So I was able to see that Kevin was just gambling this money away. When you said he put it in his like his Charles Schwabigan, I thought you were going to say he bet. I thought you, when I was joking about betting,
Starting point is 00:06:06 I thought you were going to say he, he, you know, bought a whole bunch of whatever Tesla stock or something. Like, but I was just kind of joking. That would have been great because then he would have actually invested the money and had a shot at it. The Charles Schwab account was more of a symbolic gesture at some point. I mean, Charles Schwab wants you to walk away from your bank account and make Schwab, your Schwab account. My son just ordered a Schwab account. They sent him checked so he could write against it and stuff like that. And so, and I think maybe it made, I don't know if some of the customers knew that it was going to a Schwab account and maybe it gave them a sense of comfort that is going into something that looks and smells like an investment.
Starting point is 00:06:41 And I could understand that. That makes sense. Like I don't want to see it go to your personal account. Or at least if he has to show something, no, no, what are you talking about? Here's my thing. Look, here's where your $67,000 went directly to my Charles Spott. What are you talking about? Exactly, exactly. I then bought this with it. Right, but there's no significant investment, no investment activity whatsoever in this case. Okay. So I put it all together, interview the victim. Well, how did this come to your attention? What happened is at some point, some of the investors want their money back or want or are expecting to receive money. And he is just offering them lots of excuses. He's ghosting a lot of them. He's ghosting a lot of them. he's not returning calls. So a few of them called the FBI. I was an agent in Honolulu at the time investigating investment fraud. It landed on my desk. I said, there's something here.
Starting point is 00:07:24 And so I begin subpoenaing the bank account records, interviewing the witnesses, and again, timelining the fraud until I figured out what happened. Was there anything left? No. No, it was all gone. I mean, again, 400,000. 400,000.
Starting point is 00:07:39 What do you like to play? I'm trying to remember. I think it was like blackjack and slots. and roulette. It's just a degenerate gambler. So do you check in with the casino? And they're like, yeah, here's his card. Here's a spinning habit.
Starting point is 00:07:50 You see where he's gambling, like usually from ATM withdrawals or banking activity or credit card charges. And then you know that he's at the Bellagio. Most guys stay at once the degenerate gamblers. Again, they like getting the free benefits. I mean, comped room or whatever. How is this guy thinking?
Starting point is 00:08:06 I know. I know. So at the time, he was living in Carlsbad, California. And so I took a flight from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Carlsbad, California. You ever been there? No. Lovely town.
Starting point is 00:08:19 I'm sure. He loves seeing you come. Completely lovely town, yeah. And the local agent from the Carlsbad office of the FBI, they had a little satellite office there with a handful of agents. Picking me up at the airport. You know, I'm already in my suit. Let's go.
Starting point is 00:08:32 We head over to Kevin's house, knock on the door, a little apartment. And he invites us in. I sit down, talk to him. And an hour later, I had a sign confession from him. Yeah, he's been waiting. when you open the door, he opened the door, he's probably, oh, I'm waiting for you. Yeah, I mean, he, it took some doing,
Starting point is 00:08:49 you know, there was not, it wasn't a huge, it wasn't my hardest interrogation, but it wasn't like he just rolled over. Oh, okay. And there was a lot of, Kevin, I know you'd never intended for this to happen. I know that this is something that got out of hand. I know if you had a time machine,
Starting point is 00:09:01 it could go back and do it all over again, you would do things differently. Wouldn't you, Kevin? Yes, I would. Yeah, there's a lot of that. I'm like, you know, a lot of patting him on the shoulder. It's okay, buddy. We all make mistakes.
Starting point is 00:09:09 No one, Kevin, should be judged the worst thing they ever did. I've used that since you've said that. I've said that a couple of times in the comments responding to people saying, this guy's a scumbag. And I'm like, hey, nobody should be judged on their worst thing they've ever done.
Starting point is 00:09:25 Yeah, it resonates with a guy like Kevin. He was nice enough to sign the confession. We shook hands, had him on the shoulder, said, I don't know what's going to happen, buddy, I'll be in touch. And he was indicted shortly thereafter and pled guilty to fraud charges.
Starting point is 00:09:39 You know, order restitution. Matt Cox? So 400,000 a restitution. 12 people. 12 people. It's over 10. So a little enhancement. He pled guilty.
Starting point is 00:09:52 He timely. Gosh, I don't know. Senior citizen victims. Yeah, no, no. Yeah, yeah. But not addled. Not, you know, not rattled. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:10:02 You know, no dementia. Not more than a million from one financial institution. It is sophisticated. he's got no criminal history. He couldn't have had a criminal history to have the licenses to do what he did. One tip. Several of his victims wrote letters to the judges,
Starting point is 00:10:19 victim impact statements. Oh, did they? I want to say 24 months. Is that right? Is that your final answer? I want him to have gotten 24 months. Yes. 24 months is your guess?
Starting point is 00:10:36 24, yeah, 24. Yeah, 24 months. Correct answer. Are you serious? No, no, no. The correct answer is. Oh, you're so mean. Okay.
Starting point is 00:10:47 They got 46 months. 46? Yeah. I think the, my recollection, having been there at the sentencing, is that the, the judge was just aghast at the violation of trust. I mean, these were people who've known him for 20, 30 years doing business with him. And the idea that he just like, licked and pill. the people in his life who loved him
Starting point is 00:11:09 and trusted him with their money and also kind of stealing their future from these like 70-year-olds, right? This is how they're going to kind of live for the next 10 years. I think really offended the judge and so he gave him 46 months. And you went to the sentencing.
Starting point is 00:11:23 I go to all the sentencing. Really? I never missed a sentencing in 26 years of being an agent. Do you sit there when they do it? I'm a council table. Really? And you ever go,
Starting point is 00:11:31 I was rooting for you, Bao. I really thought you weren't going to get that much. No? I keep a poker face. I also don't get hung up on what the sentencing is. It's not like I get to keep the license plate that guy makes in prison. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm not a head hunter.
Starting point is 00:11:45 But it is interesting. My role there at the sentencing is to make sure that the judge probation and the prosecutor are up on the minutia of the facts. And there have been lots of sentences where the judge had a question and then the prosecutor turns to me and says, Agent Simon probably knows the answer, not to stand up and give the answer. and yeah it's surprising to me and this is just my impression that a lot of the judges walk into these sentencing completely undecided about what they're going to sentence this person I always feel like they're you know I would feel like they've read the I almost you hope that
Starting point is 00:12:18 they read the pre-sentence report you hope they read the pre-sentence report and my mind I mean I think feel like they have an idea they could get swayed a little bit one way or the other but they ever I think I feel like they would all have a pretty good idea like it's going to be around 20 years, but maybe during the course of this whole thing, maybe it drops to 18 years, maybe it goes up to 22, depends on the guy. Although I think that the judges are jaded when the guy gets up there and start saying, look, I mess. You'd have to really be able to sway a judge for the inmate or for the defendant to say
Starting point is 00:12:54 something to sway him. The ones that I like the most because it was clearly falling on deaf ears are the ones who, who during their elocution at the sentencing, just go on and on about how they found Jesus. And, like, yeah, yeah, well, since I've been washed in the blood of Jesus, it doesn't really matter what happens. You're going to be perfectly okay with this. Yeah, exactly. All right.
Starting point is 00:13:16 I was going to say, I think of a, when the victims get up and talk, like if a, I've seen those. I've seen, I've seen sentences kind of get jacked up a few months to reward the victims for their time. Well, I would think sometimes, too, like, I've seen the ones where you get somebody who stands up and says, like, look, you know, I forgive this guy for what he did. I don't think he meant, you know what I'm saying? And then it might go down. I mean, when I say I see them, I mean, these are like TikToks. I haven't been in the courtroom.
Starting point is 00:13:39 Like, this is like a TikTok where somebody got murdered and their family gets up and says, I don't want him to die in prison. It's always amazing to me. That's somebody who's, like, super centered who can, like, forgive a murderer. Yeah. I find that the people who lost actual money are, aren't just forgiving is the people who lost a family member. I wasn't really close to my brother.
Starting point is 00:13:57 He was kind of a shit. Right, right, but boy, boy, do I miss that $700,000? Oh, this is going to be a bad comment section. Okay, go ahead. You guys are laughing. Sorry, let's go to the next story. Let's do it. Do you have your answers folded?
Starting point is 00:14:14 I do. So last time, for those of you at home, Matt was taking the time to try to read the sentencing upside down on the paper so he could cheat on a game show on his own show. So I took the time. This is developed into a game show, by the way. I took the time eating a lobster roll in Zephyr Hills before I came here to fold down every piece of paper to hide so Matt can't look at my own paper.
Starting point is 00:14:36 I was really off on the last one too. Yeah, you're 0 for one. Yeah, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Once a con or once a cheater, always a cheater. All right. Next one. Yeah, you can look all you want. Our bad guy is named George George.
Starting point is 00:14:53 George George. His first name is George. His parents have a sense of humor. George. Middle name Vincent. So it's George Vincent George. And I investigated a piece of this case. I'll tell you what piece. But the story actually begins after the crime ends in any way. So he defrauded investors of approximately $3 million through a company called Well City, W-E-L-L-City. It was a Brentwood, Tennessee-based wellness social network that he was claiming to launch. But there was no real business behind it. He created false statements and was soliciting investments from people to get in because he said we're going public very, very soon and solicited investments ripped off $3 million from investors. The Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, the state regulators and the FBI team up to work that case in Tennessee.
Starting point is 00:15:44 He's charged with fraud and he's awaiting trial out with an ankle bracelet. And then the story in my mind really begins. Okay. He cuts off his ankle bracelet a couple weeks before trial and disappears and becoming a fugitive and a nationwide manhunt ensues. Sounds very familiar. Yeah. He did not want to face a jury with this.
Starting point is 00:16:07 Okay, so keep that in the back of your head. So $3 million in fraud damages. I don't know how many victims. That part of the case wasn't mine. It was a Tennessee agent working that. He takes off to Jacksonville, Florida. Right? Great town.
Starting point is 00:16:23 Right. You should come visit sometime. And he reinvents him. himself with some fake ID as Stephen Oliver. He's no longer George George. And his legend that he's telling people that he meets is that he's a Harvard-educated psychiatrist. Okay.
Starting point is 00:16:40 He started as he put out a shingle. We're getting there. My God. We're getting there. So what George George slash Stephen Oliver does, his first stop, you know, because, again, he only has enough money in his wallet to get away because he can't really draw on the George George money anyway. So he's got limited funds, but he's really, really smart and clever guy.
Starting point is 00:17:01 His first stop is a megachurch, an evangelical Christian megachurch, which he knows is filled with desperate, single women who are divorced or widowed or whatever, and he immediately meets a very good-looking woman in her 40s, maybe 50-year-old, and explains his situation. He says, listen, my wife and kids were killed in a head-on auto accident back home. they were killed they're dead and uh he leaves his wife and kids behind in tennessee to become a fugitive um and they were killed and you know i'm i'm coming to jacksonville to open up my psychiatry practice and i need a new start and uh you know gets lucky very early in the relationship and basically moves in with this girl this woman this is very much a dirty john story you know was
Starting point is 00:17:49 dirty john one of your uh guess no no no we well this the chick that killed the original the original The Dirty John got the story. Anyway, but there's a whole series based on different stories of these kind of con men that move in all these women. And so it's become kind of their dirty Johns. Right. So he latches on to her. And the next thing he does, which is actually kind of clever, is he latch, he finds kind of a,
Starting point is 00:18:12 I want to stereotype here, but a kind of hippie-dippy massage and yoga and healing practice run by a husband and wife in my hometown of Pontevideo, Florida. and he goes in to get a massage from them and he explains to them how, well, I have a fantastic idea. He goes, what if we created a holistic health company where you do your Reiki massage healing and you do your yoga and meditation training? And I'll actually do talk therapy with our patients. And I'd be happy to fund this, you know, once I get my finances all worked out. And the kind of holistic health types, those two, were super excited to like,
Starting point is 00:18:53 have latched on to a Harvard-educated psychiatrist. And he's like, we didn't even need to move. This is a beautiful area. There's lots of rich people in this town. You know, can we get the studio next door to be my office? And so we have my kind of conjoined offices in the hallway. They arranged with the landlord to extend their, you know, it was a vacant unit there. And so they're open for business.
Starting point is 00:19:14 Okay. And he says that his, you know, his license is being transferred from another state and all that. And they started, and so he begins. seeing patience, right, in this holistic health way. So like, and a lot of the patients were people who were already getting massages and, like, you know, spiritual, Reiki healing and whatnot in, or meditation and yoga. And they had, some of these people have personal and emotional problems. And now we have a psychiatrist here who's going to sit and listen to you. And I talked to several of his patients. Okay. He was a really good listener. I'll bet. Yeah, he was a really good listener.
Starting point is 00:19:48 But it's funny, the husband of the husband wife, kind of the massage therapist, he said, you know, looking back on it when I interviewed him, he goes, it was kind of funny because he was kind of overweight and not super healthy. And, you know, we're into like vegan, organic stuff. And he would sit there all day long just drinking diet Dr. Peppers in the office. And we said, when the patients come in, maybe you want to hide the diet Dr. Pepper because it's not really consistent with our ethos. And then I talked to some of the psychiatrist clients and like, Yeah, he was a good listener, but he mostly just kind of talked about himself. Right.
Starting point is 00:20:23 So all this would be very funny. That would be me. Well, you went to hear what happened to me. It's a bit of a one-upper. So Dr. Oliver, another thing about it gets a little tragic here. So Dr. Oliver's girlfriend that he's living with had her own psychological problems. had been prescribed by her psychiatrist, many different kind of medications, anti-anxiety drugs and stuff like that. He tells her that he went to Harvard and get to get off the drugs. And like,
Starting point is 00:20:56 he collects up all of her pills and has them for himself. Megachurch pastors are an interesting group of people. And I've had the opportunity to investigate some and work for others. And, and they love getting free stuff from their congregation. Like, there's not a single megachurch pastor who has ever paid for a haircut, ever paid for an oil chain. ever, you know, ever had his air conditioning not fixed for free. Right. They have these giant flocks, right? And these giant churches with, like, you know, bass players and light shows,
Starting point is 00:21:27 they get their stuff for free. This megachurch pastor knew Dr. Oliver, was a member of his congregation and also knew that his mother was suffering from some psychological difficulties. And he asked him if he would be willing to counsel his mother and do psychiatric treatments on the phone with her. Dr. Oliver said yes. So he begins treating the pastor's mother who lives in a district.
Starting point is 00:21:48 different state. And then he begins sending her pills to take from his, to see if that makes her feel better. Right. And so it didn't work out poorly for the old lady in any way. I don't even know if she ever actually took the pills, but it was a factor to think about. And the pastor was a bit embarrassed after it turned out after the FBI came and hauled him away later. But we're getting ahead of ourselves in the story. A sadder version of this, though, was there was a woman who was in the who would get her massage there and who learned that there's now a psychiatrist as part of the massage practice. And she said, my son is suffering from severe depression.
Starting point is 00:22:27 And so he charges the lady and gives her a bunch of pills to give to her son for his depression. There's a teenage boy. And the last thing, and we later learned that the pills were anti-anxiety medication. And the last thing you want to give someone who is suffering from clinical depression is anti-anxiety medication that brings them down even lower. okay you get that oh yeah yeah okay so it's not an anti-depression which would bring you up it's anti-anxiety which would bring you down and the uh the boy think you would learn that in harvard the boy takes the pills and uh and crashes and tries to end oh wow yeah so super serious
Starting point is 00:23:04 yeah you know he's okay now uh he he survived this but but this was um these were like back you know it's all hardy har-har when you're listening to someone tell your problems once you start handing out your girlfriend's pills and a kid almost dies it's more serious. He, I searched his apartment, and in his apartment he had, like, framed pictures of his wife and kids back home that he had told his girlfriend were pictures of his dead family, and he just does this to remember him. But eventually he makes contact with his family back home, and the FBI in Tennessee's all
Starting point is 00:23:37 over it, they figure out that he is in Jacksonville, Florida, and they arrest him and bring him in. Okay. And so, that's kind of intraclimactic, but okay, he made a phone call. well yeah made a bad call yeah I mean again yeah and so and it was and so my role in this investigation because I don't want to take credit for anyone else's work was to figure out to document and kind of get all the witnesses together for everything bad that he did while he was on the run okay all the damn he was just a human wrecking ball like you know ruining people's lives yeah anybody that crossed his path was yeah gonna have it might it's gonna have some kind of
Starting point is 00:24:07 issue yeah talented con man you've got to give it to him I mean go bigger go home right harbored a psychiatrist and but but the um but a lot of damage in his way. Yeah. Okay. So we have all the damage that he did as a fugitive. We have back at the original fraud of $3 million kind of investment fraud and he pleads guilty. Right. Sentencing comes around. Yeah. What are you going to sentence this guy to? Twelve years. Twelve years. Is that your final answer? That is my final answer. How much? 20 years. Get the 20 years. 20 years. He's still $3 million almost killed a kid. But almost.
Starting point is 00:24:51 20 years. 20 years. This guy's the worst. Oh, I don't think 20 years is. I mean, he's a scumbag. But 20 years, nobody died. It's $3 million. He was handing out pills to people pretending to be a Harvard.
Starting point is 00:25:03 He was trying to help them. You're acting like it was malice on his part. 20 years. 20 years. Wow. That's over. two. I know.
Starting point is 00:25:19 These are the white color crime ones. This should be your expertise. Matt Cox. Do you consider yourself to be an alpha male? I like to think of myself as one. However, I don't think about it a whole lot.
Starting point is 00:25:32 Have you met people who do though? Oh, absolutely. Who are like, you know, this guy's an alpha, this guy's a beta, this guy's a cock, and it's sort of like, that's their whole like personality is you know, like, this guy totally has low T and they're out there like sunning their scrote.
Starting point is 00:25:47 and it's like a part of their identity. I, well, I interviewed, um, uh, I interviewed, uh, I interviewed, uh, the, one of the guys from fresh and fit. And, uh, you know, fresh and fit? I don't. Um, what was, Myron, Michael, Michael, is it? Myron Gaines. Myron Gaines. Okay. Yeah. Myron Gaines. He was a Homeland Security agent, by the way, for like seven years or something. It was a while. Like, it was six or seven years. Yeah. And now he runs, he and his buddy, he and his
Starting point is 00:26:16 everybody run fresh and fit. And I thought it was really nice, but they're big on the whole red pill thing. Yeah. Yeah. And what? Nothing?
Starting point is 00:26:27 No, I'm just agreeing, yeah. I see a lot of. But yeah, their whole thing is, you know, is kind of, you know, alpha males, alphas, betas. What are the other one? What are the other ones? Alpha beta is.
Starting point is 00:26:37 This is not my universe. I've heard alpha beta sigma. Sigma. I don't even know what Sigma is. So Sigma is what, I think, just says I'm a Sigma because they don't have, although they're going to say this is wrong with it, because it's like they don't have to be
Starting point is 00:26:52 the leader. They don't mind being a little bit watching and being, you know, but they have the same qualities, but they don't have to be the guy out front calling shots. Okay. Something along those lines. So anyway. Let's see. The internet slang Sigma often refers to someone who is perceived as self-assured,
Starting point is 00:27:09 independent, and successful, but who also operates outside of traditional social hierarchies. That's That's me. That's all me. Sounds good. Listen, I'm glad you found an identity.
Starting point is 00:27:20 Something to latch on to. But I don't think about it a lot. Yeah, right. But so there's a guy named Jeremiah Evans. Nice. In Utah. He was a- Mormon?
Starting point is 00:27:29 Yeah. Yeah. He tried to be a walk-on at BYU's football team. He didn't work out for him. But he's a big strong guy. He was really, really focused on being an alpha male. In fact, he had a company called Alpha Influence LLC, and they hosted a convention, AlphaCon, an expensive conference for people who wanted to see speakers talk about kind of
Starting point is 00:27:52 alpha male stuff, right? Right. And if you Google him and look at local media in Utah, they said that he was the next Tony Robbins. Oh, nice. But he didn't want you to call him by his name, Jeremiah. He wanted you to call him by his nickname. Alpha? No.
Starting point is 00:28:08 The Bull. He was Jeremiah the Bull Evans. Okay. The ultimate alpha male. And he also sold investment contracts. And so he would set up drop shipping Amazon stores for you. You had to do nothing except give him $40,000 to run these drop shipping, you know, selling Alpha Mail products. And as you give $40,000 to Alpha Influence, he takes care of the rest.
Starting point is 00:28:34 Your only job, Matt Cox, would be to cash the checks when they come rolling in. I bet they did. Right. And so he began providing his investors reports on how much their stores are making. And the reports looked like everybody was getting rich. And are they getting checks? Or is this a Ponzi where they're getting checks from the next guy that pays 40 grand? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:28:54 Is anybody paying getting paid? No. No. No. No. 530 separate investors. Wow. Bros.
Starting point is 00:29:02 $21 million. Wow. Okay. And he spends it all. Really? He buys a white Lamborghini Hurricane Evo. Hurricane Evo. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:29:14 to pronounce it okay um other stuff it amazon was having none of this drop shipping bullshit right like you know he tries to set up a couple stores right now uh online they get shut down immediately um when investors complained they were just ghosted by the bull he uh he was not returning calls um enter the fbi in the utah division of securities who recognize this for what it was an investment fraud uh sparked by bad lies and information uh kind of fueled also by false reports And they grab the bull by the horns. Okay. And we don't know if he cooperated.
Starting point is 00:29:52 We don't we just know. I don't get anyone to cooperate against. He was just, he played guilty. Played guilty. Okay. And again, this is a big local celebrity there. And, you know, with a huge social media following. Again, one of these guys that we had that has like, you know, tons and tons of followers on Instagram and all that.
Starting point is 00:30:10 And he watched his Instagram feed. There's a lot of him, like, hitting the heavy bag and stuff like that. A lot of, like, you know, he's a big strong guy. Okay. A lot of hair care products going in to, you know, to oil him up for his, like, Instagram photo shoots. I mean, this is an alpha male. Right.
Starting point is 00:30:26 This is the bull. Yeah. Yeah. But the bull pled guilty. And then we have, you know, 530 investors. That's a lot. $21 million in losses. We don't know if he's got a criminal history.
Starting point is 00:30:40 Probably not. Probably not. No, this is the bull's first rodeo. so to speak now I'm thinking I'm thinking between oh I can't say between um I don't know it's the the amount of victims sophisticated means victims um 17 years 17 years is you guess yes you think you think the bull got 17 years I stop why do you drag it out 17 Eight years.
Starting point is 00:31:14 Eight? Ninety-six months. I'll do eight years for 20 mil. Well, again, and my assumption is that there's probably some forfeitures and seizures in there, too. I didn't work this case. I thought there was $21 million and loss. Oh, yeah, I mean, $21 million is the federal sentencing guidelines loss. That's why he got hit with 21.
Starting point is 00:31:39 Right. You don't get the seizures and forfeitures that the FBI might do. of bank accounts and your Lamborghini, that goes toward restitution. That doesn't lower your sentencing guidelines numbers. I, well, that. I mean, as a matter of law, that's true. Well, yeah, I was going to say it's rest, it goes towards your, what's your restitution numbers. It has nothing to do with the federal sentencing guidelines. Still, eight years, that's it? Eight years for a young man who's the next Tony Robbins is not going to do wonders for his career. This, this is horrible. And you guys painted me as if I was cheat.
Starting point is 00:32:13 last time and I wasn't and now that I'm blowing this one this is horrible that was that recent yeah he was just sentenced like a couple weeks ago yeah I've had the story in my back pocket to bring to this show for months now because the story fascinates me and I find these alpha male type just so reprehensible that uh that but I was waiting for the sentencing so I could bring it so did you already do it on your platform oh yeah and it's huge telling the story very stoically, as I do, without a whole lot of, like, judgment or anything like that, my, my followers go nuts on this guy. They hate this guy more than they've hated the childs that I've pro, they really can't stand this guy. And, you know, and I didn't do anything other than tell
Starting point is 00:32:56 the story about what he did, but this whole like alpha male, the bull kind of thing, you know, do the bull on your thing. Yeah, yeah, the bull. That's his whole thing. And this, for some reason, set a lot of people off among my Instagram followers. And I still look down, and I did the story like a couple months ago. I still looked out and every day there's a couple comments that are getting added to it. So, um... So the second guy got 20 years for
Starting point is 00:33:21 three million and this guy got eight years for... The same guy took off he was, you know, they don't like it when you take off. Changing Dersh, you didn't... And when you almost kill a teenage kid. I mean, I think that was a huge factor for that judge. It shocked the conscience. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:33:37 Um, yeah, I think that maybe the almost killing the kid, he didn't die. Sure, he's fine. Yeah, I feel like that shouldn't have been that much, maybe a couple of years extra. You're a monster. I knew his mother. It's a poor mother. I thought the sentencing guidelines were supposed to kind of help.
Starting point is 00:33:59 Make things more uniform? Yeah. The judges have a lot of leeway now. The Supreme Court did away with the sentencing guidelines for, as a mandatory thing. Now, they're just advisories. The judges have a little bit of leeway now to make decisions, whereas before they were really kind of trapped within the guidelines ranges. Yeah, I know. But still. Okay. I got like I was in the guideline when it was mandatory. This is what you're getting. Yeah, I get it. That's how I spent
Starting point is 00:34:23 most of my career. I was watching, you know, I can reliably say this guy's 18 to 24 months. This particular judge is going to give him 18 months. I was way better at the Matt Cox show game than you are. Let's talk about Dr. Cash. Dr. Cash. Would you invest money with a guy named Dr. Cash? It seems like he would know what he's talking about, right? You would feel like it, but I feel like his last name isn't, is his last name really, Cash? No. Okay. It could be.
Starting point is 00:34:51 Not, okay. There's Dr. Cash of Orlando, Florida, right up the street. He held himself out to the public as being the nation's number one business, money, and wealth coach. And he promised to share with his clients the secrets of the ultra wealthy. Okay. Right? And the people that he was going to be... He would. He would. He would. Now, he used the name. You hone right in on an interesting fact point here that he used the name Dr. Cash, because if anyone googled his real name, Terence, Chalk, they would have revealed that he was convicted of federal fraud offenses back in 2006. So best to stick to the Dr. Cash pseudonym. Yeah. Yeah. I get that.
Starting point is 00:35:32 Right. And so his market that he was out there marketing to were black churches. they would bring up Dr. Cash, and he would pitch to the black church congregations his chairman's fund, right? And this is a high, high-yield, low-risk investment program that was actually endorsed by Jesus Christ himself. Of all the endorsements you can have, this is one is going to appeal to this audience at the black churches more than others. Yeah, I can see that.
Starting point is 00:36:07 So a lot of the black church... I'm interested. Yeah. Well, you're not really the target market, but I'm sure he'd take your money. A lot of the black church members, many of whom were senior citizens, invested with Dr. Cash. Okay. He encouraged them to share their blessings with friends and family and refer friends and family, even if they weren't in church to him so they could enjoy this blessing as well.
Starting point is 00:36:32 And several did. He's doing God's work. Mm-hmm. Exactly. $4.8 million. he took in for from black churches yeah jeez a lot of these ladies you know have a they've stocked away a lot of money over the years you know maybe there's life insurance policy or whatever i mean you know not not every is this is this a is this a white guy no he's an african-american
Starting point is 00:36:53 oh cool i mean like i feel a little bit better i feel a little bit better fair enough yeah not you know now it's all that's all we need is another another now i could tell you're skeptical about this investment program. But a lot of these, most of them, almost all, began getting quarterly dividends. I'm going to go out of my way here and think that it's a Ponzi scheme, and that's just to further the scheme. All right. Spoiler alert. As it turned out, when the forensic accountants finally put on their green eyeshaves and started looking at it, the investment returns that the congregation members were getting were not being derived from any income-producing activity, were being kind of recycled from the investments of other investors in what we call
Starting point is 00:37:39 a Ponzi scheme. So what did he tell them he was investing in? Did it vary? I think it was very nonspecific about that. You think you'd want to, I'd want to know. My impression is that it was a, you know, a diversified investment portfolio. I mean, this is the chairman's fund, after all. And, you know, I think he would go wherever the Lord led him as far as his investments.
Starting point is 00:38:04 Okay, so the bulk of the money, though, you'll be shocked to learn, was actually spent by Dr. Cash. What did he spend it on? Do we know? Yeah, he paid off. He had extensive personal credit card debt before this. And so he paid off a lot of that. He had courtside NBA tickets. That's basketball, Matt.
Starting point is 00:38:24 A brand new BMW. To do the math, he spent $3.2 million of the 4.8 he took him. the other $1.6 million was recycled back into investment returns on the Ponzi schemes. Okay. Okay. So with the quarterly payment stop, because eventually he runs out of money, like all Ponzi schemes do, because eventually there's just so many people in the investment pool, he begins giving his investors just a mountain of lame excuses.
Starting point is 00:38:54 And eventually some of the investors call in the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission who do a kind of parallel joint investigation. and, you know, and then they arrested Dr. Cash. He pleads guilty. Okay. Okay. How many victims? I don't have that number.
Starting point is 00:39:12 I'm going to guess a lot, like hundreds, maybe thousands. I mean, like, I'm just doing basing that base on the $4.8 million. It had to be an astronomical number of victims. And he toured the South kind of black Baptist churches and evangelical churches quite a bit. What I don't know, and I wanted to know this, is if when you get booked by, the pastor to speak, is there a love offering that gets made to the church in exchange for getting, you know, you would call it a kickback. I call it a love offering. Because I have more respect for the black churches than you do. Yeah. Like can I pick, you go to the pastor and say,
Starting point is 00:39:46 look, I'll give you a hundred bucks or I'll donate. I'll donate 10% of everything that comes in. Right. Let me pitch the church. Yeah. So he's getting on stage. Like he's, yeah. Instead of the sermon today, we're bringing in Dr. Cash. Are you serious? Like, that's just fucking horrible. It is. That's horrible. These are nice church leaders. They have big hats. Listen, we went to, Jess and I went to church one time, and they got up, and basically, the whole sermon was about how they had started the church, and they were doing this, and they were thanking the pastor. He'd been here for 10 years, and it was an anniversary. And it was like, are you fucking serious? Yeah, they got to keep the lights on. Come on. I mean, these churches are not like, you
Starting point is 00:40:27 the Catholic Church that I grew up in, right? They have, like, bass players and stuff. They got, they do that bands. Yeah, light shows. Yeah, light shows. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a fall machine. Yeah, it's amazing.
Starting point is 00:40:38 Like, yeah, there's one, TikTok has found, this is an interest of mine. One of them that I went to has, like, like, cables attached to, like, the pastor, and he, like, flies around the audience, like an angel. Have you, uh, have you seen righteous gemstones? I have. My wife is watching that.
Starting point is 00:40:53 Yeah, yeah. I catch every few episodes. All right. So, Ponzi, scheme math for computing the federal sentencing guidelines is actually they do get a discount for the amount of money they pawns in that. Yeah, yeah, of course. Which is actually funny because it's still non-secured. Like, it's not like a, you know what I'm saying? It's not like it was security. At one point, you had the option. But I guess because you had the option and you didn't
Starting point is 00:41:16 take it and you gave it back. Yeah. I mean, before, it's before discovery of the fraud too, right? So it's sort of early restitution. So his sentencing guidelines number was not the $4.8 million he took from this, but it was the 3.2. Okay. You know, lots of victims, elderly victims of vulnerable victims. I don't know. Vulnerable victims are weird enhancement on the sentencing guidelines because the government needs to prove that they were mentally addled through, you know,
Starting point is 00:41:42 through dementia, Alzheimer or something like that. And so. Well, they didn't in my case. Really? They were just homeless people who were considered vulnerable victims. I would agree. What are you talking about? And I didn't take from them.
Starting point is 00:41:54 I gave them $20. He stole their identities. They weren't using them I'm not being judgey pal I'm just telling you what the law is I'm glad like my prosecutor I'm glad you're out Let's see
Starting point is 00:42:10 I think I don't think I still think I think five years No wait he's got he's He's got a previous 10 That your final answer Yes 10
Starting point is 00:42:23 I was surprised at this sentence myself you only got three years what the fuck is what is going on I know I know I know Matt Cox yeah when you were a kid were you a comic book kid I
Starting point is 00:42:36 you know what I was thinking tell me do you remember when you were a little kid he used to blow bubbles yeah yeah he still talks about it sorry I like that
Starting point is 00:42:50 I like that were you a comic book kid did you read comic books I was Were you a Marvel kid or a DC kid? Marvel. What were your favorite superhero titles that used to read? I would say it would be, although I think, I shouldn't say this because I think this is DC is, I was singing Judge Dredd, but I think that's D.C.
Starting point is 00:43:10 Yeah, but I liked, you know, Wolverine, you know, Iron Man. Okay. Like, those are probably the two. And I like Batman. I mean, I wasn't like huge into, into like Superman and all those. Yeah, that means DC also, but yeah, point taken, yeah. I was in a Daredevil, the blind guy. That was my favorite title, in the 80s.
Starting point is 00:43:33 They've never been able to turn that really into a great, into a good, they've tried several times. Netflix show's okay. Oh, well, the show, I don't know. I'm at the movies. Like, yeah, there's the Ben Affleck daredevil movie. I thought it was okay. It was fine.
Starting point is 00:43:45 There's actually the original one that came out, and they had a director's cut that's actually better. But there was a comic book company, an imprint based in St. Louis, Missouri, called Lion Forge. I never heard of them, had you? No. Yeah, but not as big as Marvel in D.C.,
Starting point is 00:44:00 but they had a loyal following and some popular titles. And there was a woman who worked for the comic book publisher. Her name was Sarah Tweedy. Tweedy. She was the head accountant for the company, but it didn't take long
Starting point is 00:44:14 after she was employed that she began stealing from the publisher in a number of different ways. All right, let's hear, what kind of ways? See, Sarah, it's important to understand, Sarah Tweedy had a long-distance boyfriend in Scotland. And she used the company credit card
Starting point is 00:44:31 for Lion Forge to make $138,000 in personal purchases and a lot of which, though, were first class flights to Scotland to visit her boyfriend. But she was spending money using the, you know, and she actually purchased a very sexy kilt to wear on the flight
Starting point is 00:44:50 to when her boyfriend picked her up at the airport, he would see the sexy. lady in a sexy kilt. And she's, and this is like a CPA or like an accountant? She's an internal accountant. I don't know if she passed the CPA exam or not at this comic book company, but she's got the company credit cards. You got access to it. And she's just banging it out, 138,000 bucks. She also probably making the payment. So she's able to, oh yeah, she's making the payment from the from their account. So she's able to really keep this going for a while. Yeah. Uh-huh. She, um, she had a corporate account and the corporation also had an account with
Starting point is 00:45:23 Amazon. And so she bought $6,400 in Amazon gift cards for herself that she then kind of, you know, and then she increased, she also did payroll. And so she unilaterally without permission increased her salary from $80,000 a year to $110,000 a year. Gave herself a raise without the boss's knowing. Okay. What were you up to? All in, $265.165,000 is what she steals. But she gets $165,000, and she starts getting that sick feeling in her belly. Maybe this is wrong. Not so much the moral thing, but oh my God, I might get caught. Right.
Starting point is 00:46:03 It's just a matter of time. It's not like this is Marvel or D.C. or some giant company. This is an upstart comic book company. So she tells her boss that, listen, my boyfriend back in Scotland, he was in a terrible car accident. I need to go be with him. I'll be back. she goes to the airport, flies to Scotland. She didn't tell her boss that she had secretly received a visa to live in Scotland
Starting point is 00:46:28 and that she had no intention on coming back. So she leaves, doesn't come back, not entering her phone, not answering the text, not answering the emails. And then they begin taking a look at the work she'd done and they realize that this small comic book publisher is out about $165,000 due to her activities. So they contact the FBI. she's criminally charged with fraud here in the U.S. And she, and they reach out to Scotland
Starting point is 00:46:56 because they know she's there. And she's like, I ain't coming back. And she fights her extradition from Scotland. Fights it, I think the, you know, court appearances probably lasted upwards of a year with her fighting her extradition. She finally loses that fight because Scotland and I, you know,
Starting point is 00:47:13 Scotland and the U.S. have mutual legal assistance treaties. They're not interested in harboring fugitives from the U.S. they send her back. She pleads guilty. How much time do you give her? I feel like they would have been pissed at her for fighting the extradition
Starting point is 00:47:26 for the whole thing, but it's still such a small dollar amount. I still think it's like between two and three years, maybe three years? Three years, 36 months is your guess? The right answer is 45 months.
Starting point is 00:47:41 Fuck. Oh, that's close. That's close. Is it 20%? That's 20%. Come on. 36. I think it's 33% off. 2 is 7 months.
Starting point is 00:47:52 It's 33% off. 36 plus 7.2 is 43 months. And how many months did she get? She got 45 months. I missed it? You missed it by a hair, by a nose. Okay. That's upsetting.
Starting point is 00:48:06 They really don't like it if you fight extradition. That was a stupid thing to fight extradition to anyway. She's going to come back. I mean, you're a U.S. citizen. You stole from U.S. people. Yeah. I'm sure there's an... Best.
Starting point is 00:48:17 to take the path of least resistance, especially if your intention is just to plead guilty if you lose it and come back. Yeah, she probably could have got a couple of years. Put that behind her. But then, you know, she wouldn't be getting that Scotland love that she liked so much.
Starting point is 00:48:27 I wonder if he stood by her. I don't know. Somebody should, somebody should, something in the comment should find out and check into it, go on social media, see if that guy,
Starting point is 00:48:36 they're still together. If we only knew a private investigator. Yeah. Yeah, right. If you get one of those, wait. Let's see you. And let me use the bathroom.
Starting point is 00:48:45 Yes. Okay, I've been drinking these. I drink a cup. Go, go, go. We're good. We're in Story 6. Matt Cox.
Starting point is 00:48:51 Yes. You ever get one of those wrong number text messages from an impossibly sexy Asian woman? I don't get that far, but I'm actually, I'm assuming it's a guy in Nigeria. But I'm sure they're very friendly. And then. Yeah, I get him a lot. I get him on WhatsApp a lot. And where, you know, I get my number.
Starting point is 00:49:13 I get the text message. I get that too. I get that too. George? I get that too. Are you going to be there tomorrow? Quite often they put their picture of this impossibly sexy Asian woman
Starting point is 00:49:21 on Front Street because... No, I usually, if I respond, this isn't George, then I'll get the... Then I get the picture. I'm Jennifer. I'm new to the area. I want to be friends. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:49:31 These scams are called pig butchering scams. You ever heard that phrase? I have heard the phrase, but it sounds horrible. It does. It's a terrible phrase. And it actually comes from China, the idea that they're going to be literally just using weird.
Starting point is 00:49:45 We are the pigs in this story. And what happens, though, if you continue the dialogue with one of these impossibly sexy Asian women, it immediately turns to the fact that she's making a small fortune in a cryptocurrency investment program. Oh, okay. And if you want to just kick in a couple bucks, she could show you to the website and you can invest your own, you know, take a couple bucks out of your paycheck, put it into a coinbase, send it to the crypto wallet of this platform. You can see it. The trades online in real time. Anyway, that's the scam. And then eventually, the money is not, in fact, being invested in cryptocurrency.
Starting point is 00:50:23 And the screens you're looking at to watch your money grow is not real. When you try to get your money out, you have to pay more advanced fees to get your money out. And you'll be, I'm glad you're sitting down because you're never going to see your money. So that's shocking. That's the backdrop to a pig-buttering scheme. And actually, in defense of my Nigerian friends, this does not come out of Nigeria. It comes out of a... Right, Burma, China, Burma, Myanmar, they call it now,
Starting point is 00:50:44 in a lot of Asian countries. And so there's a guy, Shan Haynes. He was the CEO of Heartland Tri-State Bank in Elkhart, Indiana. Okay. He gets a text message from an impossibly beautiful Asian woman, and he begins a dialogue. And then he begins investing some of the money
Starting point is 00:51:07 in this cryptocurrency program. And then he, and he watches the money grow, and he wants to get some of the money out, but there's some fees associated with that. So he begins embezzling money from three different sources. Four different, really, but three to start with.
Starting point is 00:51:21 He was involved in the Elkhart Church of Christ, as I think he was like a board member treasurer in some way he had access to the checkbook. Yeah, I was going to say, how does he have access to? You know, on the board. Okay. $40,000 from them.
Starting point is 00:51:36 Not astronomical, but a lot of money for a small church of Christ and a small, Kansas town. He and his buddies were in an investment club together, where they kind of pool their money and invest in stocks and make a decision. That was in an investment club years ago. It was real good. Learned the stock market that way. He was the treasurer guy, right? Because he's a bank president. Takes 10 grand from his investment club. These are his friends, neighbors. He then takes $60,000 from his daughter's college savings to put in this crypto thing.
Starting point is 00:52:04 But it gets worse, Matt Cox. Oh, okay. Over a two-month period, he embezzles 40, $37 million from the bank that he's the CEO. He's literally descending wire transfer after wire transfer from the bank to into this cryptocurrency platform to try to invest the money and get his money back. This is nobody, I mean, this is pure CEO of a bank. This is pure stupidity. Right.
Starting point is 00:52:32 So you think, him, shouldn't he understand that this is clearly a fraud? Mm-hmm. Of all people, he should, right? Wow. Okay. The bank collapses. The bank cannot give people their money back, right? The bank, you walk into that bank to try to withdraw your money. This bank was completely insolvent due to his embezzlement. Is this FDIC insured? Yes, it was. So the FDIC takes the bank into receivership, and now the FDIC functionally owns this bank and they give all the depositors, their money back from the FDIC insurance up to $250,000 per account, which I think covered pretty
Starting point is 00:53:05 much everybody. But the bank also had stockholders and investors who now no longer own the bank because the FDIC owns the bank. And so the shareholders suffer losses of $8.3 million, right? But the FDIC, after kind of making every, you know, basically 47 million stolen from the bank, the bank is no longer is now owned by the FDIC and they've since sold it off. So just a lot of like a lot of little damages here and there as you kind of spread it among the people. plus the money from the Church of Christ, plus the money from the investment club. I mean, his daughter's college savings.
Starting point is 00:53:40 I don't know that that's actionable, but it's floating out there in the dialogue. He, FBI gets called in, investigates the case, you know, massive local bank failure. And he pleads guilty. So what is the total loss that he got hit with? It's a good question.
Starting point is 00:54:00 For sentencing guidelines purposes, I think the 47 million gets you there. Okay. Because, again, that's the money. stole from the bank, stole from the depositors of the bank, functionally. And again, the government stepped in and made most of the depositors whole. But now this is a bank that no longer exists anymore. Right, right.
Starting point is 00:54:17 We're, you know, in a relatively small community in Kansas. Shan pleads guilty. Wire fraud is what I think he probably pled guilty to. Probably. And the statutory maximum is 20 years. So I'd say you got the max. I think there were probably, I think, I think there was probably other things that he might have played guilty to as well. I mean, okay, so you're thinking, what is it, 30?
Starting point is 00:54:47 Is it? I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to, 20 is a perfectly reasonable guess. I think 20s. I'm assuming that he was charged with other stuff, perhaps. Because he got more than this, that's Troy maximum. I'm not saying that. That's for you to guess. We'll say, I'll tell you what that is soon.
Starting point is 00:55:04 Well, I'm going to stick with 20 because I can't, so I'm going to stick with 20, but it sounds to me like, because the maximum charge for bank fraud would be 30 years. Right. Okay. Yeah. So I actually, I think there's probably an argument to be made that this was bank fraud. I mean, just like objectively, regardless of the game we're playing. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:55:25 Yeah. Well, because I don't know what he did to get those wires. Like if he simply said, wire the money. Wire, hey, wire a million here. He's, he's embezzling. money from a federally insured financial institution. So you're saying bank fraud. I think it's bank fraud.
Starting point is 00:55:38 Okay. So 30 million if it's bank fraud, I'd say 20 if it's wire fraud. I'm going to say, I'm telling you it's bank fraud. Okay, well, then it's 30. You think he got 30 years? Yeah. You're you sticking with that answer? Now I think no, but yes, I'm going to say 30.
Starting point is 00:55:54 All right. He got 24 years, five months, 293 months. If I'd stuck with, I just wanted you to have all the facts. If I had stuck with, if you'd let them stop talking and let me go at 20. That makes for a good podcast, Matt Cox. Yeah, I'm going to give you that one. One for six. Okay, come on.
Starting point is 00:56:12 All right. I probably was close to both. I probably was pretty close within 20% of probably both. Maybe. 20, what, 24 years? 24 would have been a little bit more than 20% on 20, which I was wrong. 30 would have been less than 20. 20% would be able to be able to be 28, 29.
Starting point is 00:56:29 I'll give it to you, buddy. I miss both of them by a lot. little bit. I would have missed both. 24 years, and you guess 20? Yeah. 20% of 20 is... Four years? Four years. Here's the thing. But it was more than 24. It was 24 years, five months.
Starting point is 00:56:44 Oh, yeah, yeah. Over six. And then think about it. If it's 30, if it's 20% lesser than 30, would have been three, would have been... Oh, no, six years off. Oh, I was right. Wait. 20% of 30... Yeah, yeah, you're there. ...would have been 24 years, and we had...
Starting point is 00:57:02 Yeah. No, no. Okay, I'll give it to you. Is that right? 30 times point two. I mean, 20% of 30 of six years. So you got, okay. That five months. You're doing better math than.
Starting point is 00:57:11 That five months saved your hide. There we go. Oh my gosh. This is horrible. So what do you think happened to the person, the people in China? They got 47 million? Again, I don't know. I don't know that they're in China, but yes, in cryptocurrency.
Starting point is 00:57:25 Wow. Yeah. I don't think they do anything to anybody in China if they're stealing from Americans. Now, there's a whole. there's pig butchering slave farms in the country of Burma, which is now called Myanmar, where they've literally kidnapped people from China and other countries. They put them in giant warehouses. They're literal slaves, and they have, every one of them has five or six cell phones,
Starting point is 00:57:52 and they're just spending their time texting people in the U.S., and they have different people. This is the person who kind of gets the initial text going. Then they hand the phone off to the next person who's going to be. And they said that they can make an American fall in love with them in five days. And then they can begin soaking them for all their money. And it comes out in cryptocurrency. And Wall Street Journal's done articles about these slave farms. The Atlantic has done articles.
Starting point is 00:58:17 It is a serious human rights abuse and it's a serious economic problem. The FBI identifies billions of dollars in losses to these pig-butchering scams just in the U.S. every year. Wow. Every single one of them originates from a wrong number. So we can't hang this one on Nigeria. We can't even really hang it on China. These are Burmese slaveholders. I'm not sure where Burma is.
Starting point is 00:58:39 It's a next door neighbor to Thailand. Oh, okay. I kind of know where Thailand is. Yeah. Southeast Asia. Yeah. And Burma, it used to be called Burma. Now it's, it might be mis-prime.
Starting point is 00:58:50 Myanmar. Yeah, Myanmar. Yeah. And that's where the, that's where most of these pig-butchering scams are coming from. I just the name is horrible. Like, they have to work on that name. Pig butchering? It's horrible.
Starting point is 00:59:01 Or BMR. It sounds horrific. It is. It sounds way worse than it is. Yeah. And what's funny, well, in this case, they're carving the fat off the American pigs, is how they describe it. Yeah, the 47 million is outrageous.
Starting point is 00:59:16 But, I mean, I'll bet you if they could just get a couple grand from an American, that's a lot of money. I have so many clients who get ripped off in these things. And, like, it's astronomical. I got a client right now, you know, his wife died, inherited 150, grand went out the door in one of these pig butchering scams i just don't well here here so i'm not gonna you you know who the guy is by the way so i know a trucker who right now is has gone on a website for um uh god come on what is it the it's um uh who's russia at warworth right now ukraine ukraine
Starting point is 00:59:59 Jeez. That's a huge fraud factor, Ukraine. So it's a Ukrainian website to meet Ukrainian women. He's met a Ukrainian woman, but you can only communicate with her through the website, and you have to pay, you have to pay tokens. I have a client down at Biro Beach that happened to him. He lost a fortune. Well, this guy's only lost, like, he's only spent like $600.
Starting point is 01:00:20 But, you know, I was like, listen, this is a scam. Yeah. This is the, no, you don't understand. The women are so hot, and they're telling you that they're on the front lines of the war, want you to wire them money so they could buy um buy bulletproof vests and stuff wow and when like when the war's over they're going to come be your girl and move here and like kind of service you all the time and the women are just impossibly beautiful yeah and i'm like and it's yeah so we had this discussion but i've had this discussion before when he was being when he a year or two ago when it was
Starting point is 01:00:50 um it was facebook this girl on facebook i'm like stop it it's a guy it's not her no i saw a video it doesn't Stop. Stop. On the Asian pig butchering side, the women all claim to be in the fashion industry. It's kind of weird. Like, they design wedding, you know, I design wedding dresses for a living, but I'm really making my money in cryptocurrency. LinkedIn had, like, a wave of them out kind of trying to friend people, and they all
Starting point is 01:01:15 claim to be directors of marketing for Estée Lauder. Wow. They just latch on to different things that dudes might find, like, plausible and appealing. See, to me, that does it. It's more appealing if it's a, some waitress who's working in a small bar. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's like they're...
Starting point is 01:01:33 A lot of guys want their intellectual equals, right? They think, like, you know... I don't. Fair enough. So, uh, you ever go on Amazon or eBay and take a look at just basic consumer items that you could get at Win Dixie or Publix and scratch your head about why it could be so much cheaper on Amazon or eBay?
Starting point is 01:01:55 No. See, I have a side story. I'm like addicted to bubbly water like like like carbonated water club soda and all that and I was spending a fortune on like Perrier and San Pellegrino water and then I got myself a kegurator at home all right what's going on no stay with me okay a kegarator they still make they still make cagerators salcer water or whatever they like that yeah bubbly water like club soda is it's something yeah yeah yeah and so I make my wife drinks at once yeah really yeah Yeah. Okay. I'm making my own at home now, though. I got a five-gallon keg and a tap. It looks like a beer tap. I pull it and I get like ice-cold, perfect bubbly water. Okay. It's fantastic. Any of what I like to put in that bubbly water? You know what meo is? No. Put a couple drops in your club soda and it has different flavors. You can buy a fruit punch. You can buy a blueberry. I like the lemonade kind. I drink that stuff like crazy and I'm very well hydrated as a result. It's expensive though. A little thing of meat.
Starting point is 01:02:57 cost four or five bucks, but I can hop on Amazon or eBay and get it way cheaper in like, you know, packs of 12. Okay. How does that occur? How are they, how is, are these Amazon and eBay sellers able to sell stuff at like below wholesale prices? That's what this- stolen. It's file off a truck. Dorell Waters, 41-year-old from Pittsburgh. He had a successful business selling consumer items on eBay and Amazon. at discount prices. I'm talking shampoo, makeup, vitamins, over-the-counter medication,
Starting point is 01:03:34 toothpaste, razor blades, you name it. Dorel was selling it. And he was able to beat the prices of like your local grocery store. We're not talking nickels and dimes here, Matt Cox. This guy brought in $4.3 million in eBay and Amazon sales
Starting point is 01:03:53 selling normal, perfectly legal consumer products. the question is how is he getting the stuff so cheaply this sounds like some kind of a not shoplifting ring but something where like they go into Walmart and they change the they change how much it's $20 and they're buying it for $2 and they're something like that somehow he's getting stolen goods or something that you're on the right
Starting point is 01:04:19 track he had the items were all shoplifted by organized gangs of kind of high volume shoplifters in the greater Pittsburgh area, they would basically invade retail stores and steal everything that wasn't nailed down. Dorel's not stealing anything. Dorel's kicking it in his warehouse. Yeah, he's just buying stolen goods. Right. The boosters would fence their stolen goods to Derell. How much do you think he was paying as a percentage of the retail price of these things? 20%. 10%? 10%. Yeah. 10%. So he's paying 10% of retail value, which obviously lowers his cost of goods sold and allows him to sell it at a discount so he can move these items on Amazon and eBay. And he's selling him for what, a 50% discount,
Starting point is 01:05:00 40%? Whatever he can get. Oh, okay. Whatever he can get. And you're buying them. Well, yeah. And now I'm wondering. I'm wondering if my lemonade meo is coming from from bad guys like that or if Mia was just having a fire sale. How do you sleep at night? I know. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. Whether you're having trouble falling asleep, you're waking up sweating in the middle of the night or all of the above. That's where ghost bed can help. As the makers of the coolest beds in the world, ghost bed is your go-to for cooling mattresses, cooling pillows, and cooling bedding. From their signature ghost ice fabric to patented technology that adjust to your body's temperature, every ghost bed mattress is designed with cooling in mind. So whether you want a plusher
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Starting point is 01:06:27 What's the problem with using addicts to supply your inventory? They eventually get caught and they cooperate. Bingo, Matt Cox. You've seen this show before. It's exactly what happened. FBI and the IRS opened an investigation on Dorell Waters. And eventually they charge him with money laundering and conspiracy charges for, you know, for selling all this stuff. You know, the dollar amount in the FBI and IRS's mind is $4.3 million, right? You know, that's how much he's taking in from the stuff he stole. I don't know that they took the time to reverse engineer what the retail value of every item was, but they certainly have access to his bank accounts. Now, Darrell figures, you know what? You will never, ever be able to prove at trial
Starting point is 01:07:13 that I knew these items were stolen. Oh, man, he went to trial. Takes it to trial. That's a mistake. Takes it to trial. And the government just brought in a parade of like filthy shoplifting addicts to test against him. And the jury deliberated for five whole hours and came back guilty on all counts. Okay. So it's time to sentence derail waters. Yeah. Okay. And again, people may say this is no big deal in the comments. I can almost see the people saying in the comments. Well, who cares if you steal from Walmart? But here's what. Every time I have to go to Walgreens and buy a razor blade or buy something and I have to go get someone to take me behind the plastic to get it. That's because of the Durrell waters of this world. So screw this guy.
Starting point is 01:07:58 Yeah. Well, I'm thinking he went to trial. He went to trial, which was a mistake. Yeah. So he loses a lot for going to trial. Plus it's four point, whatever. Plus I'm going to assume he didn't he didn't come up with this and he's got a record. So I'm going to say 12 years. 12 years? Yeah. That's your final answer? Yes. The Rail Waters is sentenced to five years in prison. What is going on? This is ridiculous. Five years?
Starting point is 01:08:27 Yeah. This makes no sense at all. I think you picked these cases. No, I mean, these are so... I start with the crime, and I'm often quite surprised myself on what the sentence is. He goes to trial. I know guys that stole three and a half million and got four years, and they played guilty, and they had no criminal history.
Starting point is 01:08:47 They didn't, they didn't go, I mean, you go to trial. I usually triple whatever you're going to get. Because I was thinking for maybe five years. I get it. So I figured, okay, let's triple it. So let's go to close to, but it wasn't 15, but 12, like 4, 12. Mm-hmm. Ridiculous.
Starting point is 01:09:02 I get it. I agree. I agree. There's no justice in this world. This is making me look bad. The, the lost episode, is never going to see the light of day. The difference in the reactions from last episode, Matt, looking to the camera and being like, Oh yeah
Starting point is 01:09:18 I was all Take that I came here to take Matt Cox down a peg Yeah All right One for seven Let's just let's just shoot for 50% All right
Starting point is 01:09:30 Yeah you need to run the table here Yeah yeah Yeah I go six for 12 All right Matt let's talk about vacation sex Okay Not you and I But just the concept
Starting point is 01:09:39 Right A lot of people like to go on vacation With the sole purpose Of kind of getting late On that vacation Did you hear about How did the 90 year old man and figure out that his wife had died.
Starting point is 01:09:48 I don't know. The sex was the same, but the dishes piled up. Nice. Really trying to up that women viewership. Catch your demographics more balanced. All right. So we got an American guy named Chad. He goes down to the Dominican Republic on vacation.
Starting point is 01:10:11 He's looking to have some action. Horrible. He hops on the... Passport, bro. He hops on the gay dating app, Grindr. Okay. You're familiar with Grindr, right, Pac-Haw? I've heard stories.
Starting point is 01:10:23 Okay, yeah. And he meets a nice guy named a good-looking guy using the name Sebastian. And they're going to get together on a date. Mm-hmm. Okay. And Sebastian says, and this part was true, that he's a Venezuelan national living in the Dominican Republic. Okay. It was
Starting point is 01:10:44 Sebastian goes to pick up Chad at his resort And Chad was so pleased to see That Sebastian looked just like the guy from the dating app Because quite often on these dating apps, I'm told People have put up fake pictures Or pictures that are kind of putting their best foot forward But Sebastian was everything he promised to be So Sebastian picks him up
Starting point is 01:11:11 And while they're driving down the road, out of nowhere, Sebastian pulls over his car, and one of Sebastian's friends hops in the back seat, takes a serrated knife and puts it to Chad's throat. They steal Chad's wallet and cell phone, and they make him call his friends back in the USA, friends and family member, and say that he has been kidnapped,
Starting point is 01:11:36 and he'll only be let free if they wire transfer money to a Dominican currency exchange. Okay. Which his friends and family members do. I don't know the exact dollar amount. They drive to the currency exchange, they take the money out, and they dump Chad out on a random Dominican Republic street with no money and no phone.
Starting point is 01:11:57 But he survives. He lives to tell the tale. Okay. He goes to the U.S. Embassy and who says, we have two other tourists recently who had the same experience. They set him up with the, you know, I guess he, maybe his passport was back, and they send him back home.
Starting point is 01:12:13 Chad gets to go back. FBI opens a case on it because it's illegal to kidnap Americans overseas. It's a crime in the U.S. Okay. Right? So they actually investigate it.
Starting point is 01:12:26 Oh yeah. Yeah. And they begin putting pressure. Again, they have three victims who have the same story to tell. And they begin putting pressure on Dominican authorities to kind of help out.
Starting point is 01:12:36 And the Dominican Republic, to their credit, they do a joint investigation with the FBI. The last thing they want is for the United States to start advising Americans not to go to the defense. Exactly. That's a big deal. And meanwhile, they have some good data in the U.S. to work on, because I believe Grinders are a U.S. companies. They subpoena grinder, and it was the guy's photo, and they're able to kind of figure it out. And they identify the bad guy playing the role of Sebastian as Davy Delgado, a Venezuelan National living in the Dominican Republic. And that's good news for the FBI because the Dominican Republic is thrilled to deport a Venezuelan living in their country, whereas they may be a little more hesitant to deport a Dominican, one of their own countrymen to the U.S. to face justice.
Starting point is 01:13:22 Right. They do not, they never, even to this day, identify who Davy's friend was in the back seat with the serrated knife, but they do a search warrant of Davy Delgado's home and find the serrated knife. Okay. And actually, I take it back. They found it in his car. They searched his car. It was the car that the guy was picked up in and all that. So he's extradited to Washington, D.C., to face kidnapping charges.
Starting point is 01:13:49 Davy takes it to trial, a two-week trial, and the jury found Davey guilty of taking Americans as hostages abroad. Okay. Okay. So in a twist to the current immigration problem, we've actually imported a Venezuelan to the U.S. as opposed to sending them away. How much time and understanding that as soon as Davey gets done with his prison sentence, assuming he doesn't get probation, he's going back to Venezuela or wherever.
Starting point is 01:14:18 How much time does Davey get for kidnapping three American tourists and holding them for ransom? I feel like that's 20 years. 20 years? Yeah. I feel like it's 20 years. You feel that. Is that your answer, though?
Starting point is 01:14:33 Yeah, because I don't have a lot of experience with a kid. napping cases, but it doesn't matter I've experienced with all these other ones that I can't get those either. So, but I, I want to say, I'm going to say, I want to say 20 years. 20 years. Yeah. And he went to trial. You went to trial, lost. It's probably closer to 30, but let's say 20. Are you talking yourself out of 20? And you're going to, I'm saying 20. I'm going to go with 20. You're going with 20? That's your final answer. It's like a range. You know, if you, if you, if you, if you, if you say 30, you do have a higher, your 20% is, is more years. I, we're getting tax.
Starting point is 01:15:06 Now I feel like 20 you could bid one dollar like on the prices right and let's go 25. I'm gonna go 25 is your answer yes Matt Cox answer 25 years nice nailed it see I guided you right into it Colby guided me 25 years what an idiot Colby what's the scoreboard it is two of eight it's ridiculous okay we might need a you know Maybe next time we give you a little bonus for riding the head, right? We'll have a whole rule book next time. All right. We're going to Greensboro, North Carolina for this story, Matt Cox. All right.
Starting point is 01:15:48 I've been to Greensboro, North Carolina, by the way. What do you think? It was a small town. It was a very small town. Yeah. There's a 33-year-old guy who lives in that town named Cree Simon. I bet he's stuck out. No relation.
Starting point is 01:16:00 No. Cree, K-H-R-I-Y. Okay. Okay, Cree, Simon. One evening, Cree is driving around in his car, and he sees two women sitting in their car in a parking lot. It's a nice evening. He parks behind them and blocking their vehicle in, and he approaches the women wearing a tactical vest and carrying a gun. He identifies himself as a DEA special agent, which he is not.
Starting point is 01:16:32 Right. He says that these two women, he says that these two women, resemble two people suspected of drug crimes and murder. He makes them get out of the car, and he says he needs to search their car for evidence, which he does, finding nothing. He continues to detain the ladies, repeatedly saying that he is DEA.
Starting point is 01:16:54 Eventually a friend of Creeze drives up. He's like, yo, bro, what you doing? And Cree gets nervous, hops in his car and drives away, letting the women go. Okay. The women call the police about this bizarre experience, and the cops immediately say, that sounds like Cree, Simon, who had a long history of robbing, robings and stabbings and gang activity in Greensboro.
Starting point is 01:17:23 Okay. And, you know, I'm assuming they do a photo lineup or whatever. They call in the FBI because he's impersonating a federal agent, which is a crime. Right. And Cree goes to trial on the charges of impersonating a federal agent and come back with a guilty verdict. How much are you going to sentence Cree? 15 years. 15 years in prison.
Starting point is 01:17:50 What is you? Yes. I think he went to trial. I think he has priors, right? He's got a criminal history. Right. I don't know how much criminal history. Let me play devil's advocate.
Starting point is 01:18:02 Isn't there kind of a no harm, no foul argument to be made here? But he didn't. He said he was an FBI agent. DEA. I'm sorry, said he was DEA agent. He's a, he is a criminal holding a, in possession of a firearm. He's clearly already a felon. I think 15.
Starting point is 01:18:20 And I know you're, I know you're, it's probably less than that, no harm, no foul. It's less than that. I'm just being devil's advocate here. I have no dog in this fight. I hope you win. I want your viewers to like you. are. I think it's 15 years. I'd be up, listen, it's like burglary. If somebody breaks in the house and they steal a TV, you could say, okay, so what? It was $300. You broke in a house.
Starting point is 01:18:46 Right. But you know, you said you were a law enforcement officer, right? Way over the line. Right. There's a gun. Yeah, there's a gun way over the line. You move those people out, which in my, in a sense, is kidnapping when you take a victim and you move them from one place under your direction to another I think it could be higher than 15 years you're talking me into it I anyway 15 years it's probably 25 but 15 what's 20% of 15 years 20% of 15 years is three extra years so it'd be either 18 or 12 yeah because it certainly doesn't cover the 33 months he got are you fucking serious 33 months that's ridiculous I agree I agree
Starting point is 01:19:29 You get more for that for lying to an FBI agent Yeah Which you should never do No What What? No, I can't
Starting point is 01:19:39 I can't I'm trying to Send this somewhere And it's not doing it Trying to What I'm trying to Okay Sorry
Starting point is 01:19:45 You need a minute No I'm trying to hit the Can I call you later button So it's stop ring Because it's not that it's ringing here But it's connected to my My computer And you can hear it going
Starting point is 01:19:55 Boo-bo-boo-boo-bo-oo-oo-oo-oo. Yeah Cut that out. Come on. Okay. I was thinking about leaving it. He likes it when I look like an idiot. Colby's like we live in that in.
Starting point is 01:20:08 Matt Cox, let's get controversial. Okay. Let's get political, right? This is going to light him on fire in the comments. 27-year-old Kyle Calvert of Irondale, Alabama. He thought of himself as a culture warrior. But his particular side of the culture warrior was the left. Okay.
Starting point is 01:20:29 But in all fairness, there are plenty of weirdos and bad people on the far right and the far left who do stupid, dangerous things. So one night, Kyle drives to Montgomery, Alabama, and begins plastering stickers on downtown buildings in the middle of the night. Let me read you what some of the stickers say. Okay. Support your local Antifa. Anti-fascism is community self-defense. Topple all hierarchies. defend nature
Starting point is 01:20:58 feminist action eat the rich and friends don't let friends become cops sticking these stickers all over windows and doors and stuff like that in the middle of the night in downtown Montgomery, Alabama and it's 3.35 in the morning
Starting point is 01:21:18 after a long night of plastering stickers he plants an improvised explosive device That went sideways. Against a building. The building was the offices of Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall. Kyle lights the fuse and scampers away. The device explodes
Starting point is 01:21:40 and creates some property damage, but no one was hurt, some burns on the wall or the door or whatever it was, and no one was hurt. Thank heavens. FBI investigators come in to kind of piece together, I don't think what Kyle thought this through because as he's kind of wandering around downtown Montgomery
Starting point is 01:21:59 in the middle of the night putting stickers like every business has a camera so he's all over it. His face is covered but then they begin taking a look at cell phone tracking information and find Kyle like there's only one guy walking around downtown Montgomery at like two, three in the morning
Starting point is 01:22:14 and it came back to Kyle. He was charged with malicious use of an explosive device. He pled guilty. At his sentencing, he told the judge that he is not, in fact, affiliated with Antifa. But the judge didn't really care about his politics because, you know what? It's his conduct that matters.
Starting point is 01:22:33 So what did the judge give, Kyle? I think he, I think 10 years. Yeah? Yeah, yeah, 10 years. 10? 10? 10, no more, no less. I mean, arson's usually 10 or 15 years, and I would feel like this is in the arson.
Starting point is 01:22:51 malicious use of an explosive device. Oh, for God. Was his charge. 15? I'm not trying to talk you out of 10, buddy. I just want to make sure you're comfortable with that. It sounds like you don't believe in yourself. I don't believe.
Starting point is 01:23:01 I don't have, the only experience I have with arsonists, they tend to get about 50, with arsonists, is they get 15. Those aren't an explosive device, but I feel like this falls in that category. I want to make it abundantly clear. I am not trying to talk you off of your first guess of 10 years. 15. You sure you don't want to stick with the 10? we've got mowers no we got edgers these are edgers i know the difference should we finish
Starting point is 01:23:25 this segment yes correct answer nine years you did that on purpose i just want to know what your final answer is pal you did that on purpose okay okay so i feel like that was a i give it a thank you we're giving that student let's go to university of alabama matt let's do it student there aden yager he's in a lot of trouble. He's in a lot of trouble for a college kid. Sitting in his dorm room there at University of Alabama, Aiden goes on TikTok and meets a 15-year-old girl named Sandy.
Starting point is 01:24:02 And he tells her that he wants to sponsor and support her social media career by sending her money so she can make videos and be a real live influencer. Sounds nice. I got to tell you, though, these teenage girls, they all want to be influencers. It's like an epidemic here.
Starting point is 01:24:22 And so she's super excited. The 15-year-old girl, Sandy, readily agrees. Aidan then discloses that he will pay her money, but only if she sends him naked pictures. I feel like that's not appropriate. Inappropriate. Agreed. You can't do that. Sandy's hesitant at first, but then Aiden makes it seem glamorous and said, no one's going to find out.
Starting point is 01:24:45 And so she begins sending him intimate pictures of herself via the app Snapchat. And he sends her money via PayPal, basically buying these pictures from her. This continues for a few more cycles of photos and payments until Sandy got that sick feeling in her stomach that this isn't right. She shouldn't be doing this. And she tells Aiden that she wants to stop doing it. And Aidan says, if you stop doing it, I'm going to send these pictures that I took of you, everybody you know, on your contact list, all your friends on social media, all your followers. Sandy is afraid of embarrassment, and she continues to send him a total of 100 pictures. Okay. In explicit poses. Aidan sends
Starting point is 01:25:29 her $700 for these pictures via PayPal. Aiden isn't a significant amount of trouble. It gets worse. Okay. So Aidan hops on Reddit pretending to be Sandy, claiming that she is an 18-year-old girl, and here's some naked pictures of me, Sandy. But if you want to send me money, I'll give you the pack of a hundred pictures of me, uncensored. Yeah. Annie, this guy. Aden's a bad dude.
Starting point is 01:25:58 Again, he's claiming that she's 18 to not violate Reddit's terms of service and all that. But he's selling this complete portfolio of Sandy's naked pictures to Reddit users, and he begins making a small fortune. Now, eventually, somebody with, like, knowledge of Sandy's absolute nightmare, calls in a tip to the FBI. Okay.
Starting point is 01:26:17 And thank heavens for the FBI. They launched an investigation. The agents conduct a search warrant of Aden's home, his dorm room at the university, and they gather all the digital evidence they need to show that he had not only done this to Sandy, but to six other girls as young as 13, and who all had the same experience. And so he gets brought up on charges of sexual exploitation of children. pleads guilty what does he get sentenced to
Starting point is 01:26:46 um i mean he gets i think he gets 15 years and he has to register for the rest of his life right your guess is 15 years i think 15 years yeah he has 25 years oh my gosh college kid 25 years what an idiot what an idiot i know like his fingerprints are all over this i mean he wasn't even pretending to be someone else well yeah okay you know it it's not funny but uh there was a german guy and and i mean
Starting point is 01:27:20 don't mean german like he was in you i mean straight from germany got it doesn't like barely well he does he did speak english it wasn't it was it was it was better my my better than my german um but uh you know with a german access so he was in germany where it's not a crime to what he thought was a boy, like a 13- or 14-year-old male, you know, a young boy for several months. It turned out, so, you know, he ends up flying from Germany to meet this 13- or 14-year-old boy. You know, he thought he'd fallen in love with a young, adventurous boy, which turned out to be a pissed-off 45-year-old FBI agent. And he gets off the plane in Germany and... Wait, wait, in the U.S.?
Starting point is 01:28:14 In the U.S. Right, okay. I'm sorry, not in Germany, I'm sorry. He gets off the plane in the U.S. I don't know where he landed, ultimately landed in Coleman. And the whole time he was fighting his case, trying to get, like, moved back to Germany. Because in Germany, the age of consent was like, it's like 13. And in most of the European countries, it's very young.
Starting point is 01:28:34 And so he, the whole time he was there, he's pleading to the, The consulate, he's pleading, and the Germans, nobody's trying to help him. Like nobody. And he really just wanted to say, look, move me back. Let me do my time knowing if he goes back, they're going to cut him loose. And he could, I mean, and he got, he got like 25 years. Right. So every time I do a story about child on my Instagram feed, the comments are swarmed
Starting point is 01:29:04 with people who say with absolute certainty that this guy is going to be just, killed in prison, unalived in prison or whatever. And as soon as you go to prison, everyone hates people who abuse children and they rip them to shreds. He's not going to make it out of the shower his first day. Is that true? No, that's not true at all. They'll be, he'll be sent to, so if you physically got a hold of a child, so there's two different things. One, let's say you physically got a whole of a child and you were charged in the state. Those tend to be state charges. Right. And so those guys have a really hard time, but they tend, they also put them, typically put them into areas or prisons that cater to
Starting point is 01:29:46 them. And so, although they may be brutalized in prison, they don't typically get, very seldomly, more so than in federal prison. Yeah. They are, they may get, you may end up getting unalived, but very seldomly in a state prison facility. And it almost never happens in a federal facility, because the lows are flooded with them. They can't go to a camp. So they go to the lows, and there's more and more of the mediums are getting filled up with these guys. Do the other prisoners know what they're in for?
Starting point is 01:30:19 Yeah. How does that information get to the prisoners? I mean, guys will look them up. They'll just say, hey, there's a new guy here. They'll go on the phone, or they'll go to their core links, which is their email system, and they'll tell a friend or their family, And Google this dude for me.
Starting point is 01:30:37 Google this guy. And a lot of times, it's not hard. Like, they very quickly figure out to, yeah, he's there for, you know, child, what do they call it, for CP or for this or that, whatever the charges are. And, you know, a lot of times these guys have, there was a small article written or they were roped in with 10 other guys who were on a website or 50 web guys. There was a big one where droves a guy showed up within a six-month period of time, probably 50 guys. where there was a they were all members of a web subscribers of a website where they were paying several hundred dollars a month to be a member of this website where there was a father who had been molting his daughter yeah since she was like seven or eight years of it had been going
Starting point is 01:31:24 on for filming it and like filming it selling the footage for basically and the daughter's now like 12 or 13 this has been going for five years and these guys are they're talking about $200 and there was like 200 some odd guys that were paying this like and those and those inmates do not face harm in prison typically they're they are so do they face harm yes there is a better chance of them getting smashed than a normal guy yeah if they keep their head down they're overly respectful they don't go in the tv rooms they don't like they're they're not subject they're they're not allowed to go in certain places and go where other inmates are allowed they're not you know like if you say hey I want to go I you know I'd like to play on the softball team they'll be like no you're not
Starting point is 01:32:16 playing on softball team you're not doing this you don't do that some of them and some have trouble finding people to socialize with while they're inside well no but they they click up together and they get what's so amazing about it is we're talking about within within days these guys will get there and lie to everybody and say oh I'm here for a fraud an embezzlement yeah yeah embezzlement Yeah, embezzlement, fraud, tax evasion, whatever, or I don't want to talk about my case. And we're talking about within days, you'll see them walking around with six other guys. They're all there for CP. And you're like, how did you find?
Starting point is 01:32:45 It's like they can sense it. They can smell it on each other. Exactly. They just kind of congregate and they, but I think I've told you this. I mentioned this the other day on the podcast where the guys, so a white guy would show up, right? A lot of these guys are white guys. they show up and they'll walk in and they'll say, hey, other white guys go, oh, what are you here for?
Starting point is 01:33:09 And they're like, usually that they say, oh, my lawyer told me not to talk about my case. Right then they think, show them. So, or they'll walk in and they'll say fraud, which always bothers me. Like, why can't you say, can't you pick arson, bank robbery? They'll say fraud. So we, and this, this has, this is, it gives defrauders a bad name. It does. And this happened over and over.
Starting point is 01:33:31 over again. And where these guys, the white guys would come up with me, they go, Cox, do that guy over there? I'm like, yeah, he got here yesterday. Okay. Go talk to him. Why? He says he's here for fraud. You know, I don't like the look of them. And I'd be like, fuck. And so then I have to go over to the guy, and I'm like, hey, man, what's up? I hear you're here for fraud. And they'd be like, yeah. And I go, well, what kind of fraud? Credit card fraud. And I go, okay, well, they charge you with credit card fraud? Yeah. I go, is that the name of the charge? Not a crime. Yeah, not a crime. And they go, yeah, I was charged credit card fraud.
Starting point is 01:34:03 And I go, okay. Well, how'd you, what'd you do? Or defrauded, you know, credit card companies. Well, yeah, but how did you do it? Like, did you work at the bank? Did you have access to the credit card numbers? Like, I don't understand it. And they're like, this one guy, I always tell this one story because it was so funny because
Starting point is 01:34:19 the white guy, the white guy named Kenny King was sitting right, standing right here. There were probably a couple guys behind him. But Kenny's standing there. And I go, so what did you do exactly? Exactly. And he goes, oh, oh, he goes, it's, I'll never forget what he said. It's not a learning experience. And I went, oh, okay. And I go, he's a cho. And I turn around and walked off and Kenny goes, bingo, like that. And he followed me. Kinney's like, how do you, how do you know? How did you know so fast? I said, I've never met a fraudster that didn't want to brag to you about how brilliant he is. What he'd done and how smart he was and how he figured it out. And I said, it's not a learning experience.
Starting point is 01:35:05 Who the fuck talks like that? I said, that guy, if he was really here, I said, on top of that, kidding, I said, it would be access device fraud. Yeah. Wire fraud, bank fraud. There's no such crime as credit card fraud. I asked him three times. He should have at least said, well, no, I actually was charged with it. I think he would have thought it through before he came up with the, you know, you plan, like when you go undercover, you spend a lot of time practicing your legend as far as who you are and where you come from.
Starting point is 01:35:30 Listen, most of them just walk in. They asked their lawyer, what do I say when I go in there? Just tell them your lawyer said not to talk about your crime. That's going to go so long. It's like, that's not going to go well. Or I'd walk up. I had one time I walked up and I walked right up to the guy and he just looked at me. And I said, hey, so what are you here for?
Starting point is 01:35:46 He goes, wire for all. And I went, oh, I said, you mind me ask you, what'd you do? He goes, I large, I ran the largest Ponzi scheme in South Carolina history. And I went, yeah, he's a con man. He's good. Yeah, I mean, just sort of like, like, that seems credible. He said it with like, pride. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 01:36:06 $102 million, $57 million in loss. And I was like, nice. Fist bump. Yeah. You want to sit in the TV room? You want to do aerobics with me? So anyway, yeah. So Aiden Yeager, the Alabama kid we just talked about who did this.
Starting point is 01:36:24 I mean, this is a form of extortion. And sextortion, but it's unique because they are able to get their hands. on an actual guy, but extortion is right now a massive crime problem in the U.S. And a lot of it is coming out of Nigeria and that part of Africa where these young guys, he's 15, 16 year old kids, meet a girl on Instagram. Next thing you know, she's asking to see his junk. He sends a picture of his junk on Instagram, and then they turn around and say, say, we got you.
Starting point is 01:36:51 You know, we're going to send the pictures of your junk to all. We have taken screenshots of all of your, the people you follow, all the people who follow you. we're going to be sending it out to all of them unless you send me money. I've been sending them out all the time. They're going to recognize me. We can laugh about it, but it's terrifying for these teenage boys and teenage girls who do that. And several, you know, dozens a year, well, alive themselves. Oh, okay.
Starting point is 01:37:15 Yeah, you know, and stuff like that. So it's, you feel like a dick. No, no, no. It's a terrible situation. But I hear from these kids, right? Because I do these stories. And so I want to, it's a public service here on your show. If that ever happens to you, you can't turn back the hands of time. The only thing to do
Starting point is 01:37:31 to survive this thing is to block the person and do not respond to them at all. The last thing in the world that somebody who's being extorted should ever do is pay them money. Because once you pay an extortionist, they're never going to go away. Yeah, yeah. Now they're all over. Never going to go away. They will bleed you dry. And obviously don't harm yourself. If you block them and don't respond to them and do nothing and do nothing thereafter, the odds are overwhelmingly in your favor that they will not in fact release your photos right and if they do you can just say it was photoshop it's a i whatever yeah but it's so and so i i spent a lot of time with no money on me and for me advising young people on what to do under these circumstances because they contact me
Starting point is 01:38:09 because they're scared and they have no one else to go to so you know it's what's really to me funny about that is that to a young kid that is the end of the world absolutely and to me or you we'd be like well go fuck yourself send them to him i've been screenshot a couple you know i can't yeah yeah yeah how was the lighting on that one i can't remember did you get my face is um but i mean you know i'm saying because like it's it's that whole thing you know as a young kid their lives are going to be ruined like i'm going to be so embarrassed i'm not going to get into yale yeah and you're so worried about your being embarrassed or what people think about you and you know you get to to our age you're like give a fuck what them anybody thinks about like it's like and you realize
Starting point is 01:38:51 that even if people think messed up things, like people are still friendly to you and funny and nice and it just, you know what I'm saying? It means so little, but to a kid, it's the end of the world. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I talk to these kids and they're like in tears, they're freaking out and some of them are thinking about self-harm. So yeah, it's sad. But, you know, and I advise them all the same. And I often hear from them back saying, you're right, nothing happened. And thank God. Most of the things in life that we worry about will never happen. Well, yeah, you suffer more in your mind than you do in reality. You know, the problem is they're narcissistic enough see if i if i were more narcissistic they they would never like the idea of me
Starting point is 01:39:27 being embarrassed to the point where i'm going to harm myself no way yeah i mean you've been to the ringer yeah i love me nothing nothing's pushing me to that point exactly so did he get this last one did you get it right well oh i was way i was off you said 25 oh yeah it's 25 you said 15 yeah i said 15 yeah i've already put three of 11 okay see to me in that specific that particular one to me one i didn't realize that these these guys were you know deleting themselves right so i didn't realize that that would because to me that's not even something i could consider like the idea that someone got to that point is foreign to me and you know so to me it's like this is a stupid crime it's cruel it's mean but the fact that that's what
Starting point is 01:40:15 it's leading to yeah okay well that's different then yeah i get i get 2025 yeah and this jackass you know these guys go to try and they're just fucking stupid. Okay. All right, for this last story, let's go to Florida City, Florida. Never heard of Florida City, have you? No.
Starting point is 01:40:30 I'm surprised there is such a place, but evidently there's a place called Florida City, Florida. We've got a mail carrier, the U.S. Postal Service lady. I'm going to call her Bernice. Okay. One day, Bernice is walking up to a house,
Starting point is 01:40:41 two-story house, toward the front door delivering a package. A guy opens the window on the second floor, and he hangs out the window and says, stop, stop, stop. She stops in her tracks. The guy is 43-year-old Charlie Holly. The package is coming to him.
Starting point is 01:40:59 Charlie yells to Bernice that he wants her to open the package in the front yard while he watches from the second floor. All right. Bernice says, I can't do that. That's against postal rules. Charlie becomes enraged. He says, do you think I'm playing with you? He pulls out a 45 caliber pistol,
Starting point is 01:41:19 points it at Bernice. and says, and Bernice is like, F this. She throws the package down, turns and starts running, and he starts firing at her. Holy Jesus. He's nuts. Not much of a marksman. Okay.
Starting point is 01:41:34 Misses her. Bernice understands the importance of cardio. Right. Makes it back to her truck, takes off. Escapes unharmed. The bullets do strike her truck, the postal truck. She calls the police who, have a two-hour standoff with Charlie, and finally they get the weapon. The ballistics match,
Starting point is 01:41:59 the bullets that had gone into the mail truck. It was him. Police hand the investigation over to the FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Charlie then, Carly goes to trial, and the jury convicts him of assaulting a federal employee and a firearms charge. Do we know what the issue was with why he was? wanted her to open? This is what's so fascinating. They never had probable cause to open the package. So to this day, no one knows what was inside the package. It's sitting on an evidence locker somewhere, or evidence just, I don't know. There's no probable cause to open the package. And I mean, who knows what it was. I mean, so is he got mental problems? Is that
Starting point is 01:42:42 well, okay, so this wasn't Charlie's first offense. He shot and killed his own cousin back in 2014, and pistol-wipped another cousin in the same altercation, but those local Florida charges were reduced to a small firearms offense at the time. Florida. But I'm going to go on a limb to answer your question and say that maybe Charlie has some issues. So we went to trial. He lost, shot at the male lady, hit the truck.
Starting point is 01:43:08 I would say. So, okay, so here's what we got. Yeah, so we got Charlie, he's lost his trial, has the prior issues involving guns. shot at a nice male lady who hopefully has continued her cardio training. I'm more concerned about what's in this package. I know. I would x-ray it. Can't we x-ray it?
Starting point is 01:43:27 If someone knows what's inside the package, it never made the official record of the case. This was not my case. Okay. Make a call. You could just call like a buddy and it'll be like, hey, can you get me in? What was in the package? What's in the box? Yeah.
Starting point is 01:43:40 What's in the box? 20 years. Is that your answer? 20 years. 20 years. You think Charlie's worth 20 years in prison? I think it was a tempted murder. I think he tried to, he shot at her.
Starting point is 01:43:53 I think if he hit her, he could have killed her. He's not opposed to killing people. He killed his cousin, right? Or did he shoot his cousin? He shot and killed his own cousin back in 2014. Yeah, Charlie's the, and he's a felon, and he went to, yeah, I think he's 20 years. And the low end, 20 years. On the low end, 20s?
Starting point is 01:44:11 Yeah. So it could be more than 20. Yeah, it could be 25 or 30, but yeah, let's say 20. You're going with 20? Yeah. Matt, congratulations. The correct answer? 16 years.
Starting point is 01:44:21 You just made it within the 20%. I'm going to go with, come on. 16 years. 16 years for shooting at his mail carrier, something that we as a civilized nation frown upon. Did you post this on your Instagram, the story? Did the comments speculate what's in the package? Everyone wants to know.
Starting point is 01:44:42 I want to know. Matt wants to know. Well, I would think as, I would think, I mean, who else can we ask? I mean, you're the perfect person to find out. You've got an end. You're a private investigator. You're a retired FBI agent.
Starting point is 01:44:55 Like, you could easily make a call. I could. I'm going to make a TikTok about that and build it up, build it up. And then it's going to be like, it's going to be a cliffhanger. Like, what was in the package and see if, see how it does. What do you think was in the package? Something stupid. That's what I'm getting at.
Starting point is 01:45:13 There's no satisfying answer. to this right something stupid yeah i mean charlie's a jackass i suspect that charlie it was probably just a random package from you know i'm wasn't amazon because he's done an amazon delivery lady but from somewhere and he got it in his head it was going it's you know the voices in his feelings were trying to kill him he thought it was a bomb or something like right i mean he was probably having a paranoid episode i'm also going to be a stereotypical and say that maybe he was involved with drugs or something like that yeah he could have been up for four days that were impacting his mind. And so I think that the answer to the question would be wildly disappointing.
Starting point is 01:45:51 Yeah. And so I think it's best for it to live in our minds as a mystery and for me to actually provide you with the wildly disappointing answer. You know, it's so funny, I'll watch a movie with Jess that I've seen. And the whole, she's horrible. She's the whole time, does he kill her? Does he? I'm like, I don't know. She's like, you do know. Watch the movie. And what I'm not going to tell you. I won't tell her. I never tell her. Do they find her? I'm like, I don't know. I hope they do. And she said, you know what if they find her. I'm like, well, you'll know too in five minutes. So we'll never know. Yeah. Kobe, what's our final score? How do you do? Four of 12. Four of 12. Man. We'll have to tweak the, tweak the rules of the guidelines.
Starting point is 01:46:37 Yeah, this makes me, I think, yeah, I feel like this is rigged. I felt, we don't really, I didn't really see how much we didn't really know if those are even the right answers i say 15 he goes 25 if i said 25 in my but like 10 yeah look no i'm gonna let it i'm in my mind you cheated we're gonna let that we let that live in my mind there's no upside for me to make you look bad on your own show these are your fans watching this not my fans so i want you to look good i want you to seem like a genius i'm bringing up this question because i might be titling this video around this or packaging it Do you find that a lot of financial crimes are tied to religious, like, churches or, like, people? It seems like a lot of your fraud stories, people are pulling money from the church, or, like, they're church members.
Starting point is 01:47:26 Yeah, I think that the churches tend to be a haven for defrauders, which doesn't mean that church is a scam or Christians are a scam or any religion's a scam, but I think that defrauders tend to turn to that, one, to be able to tell themselves that maybe, they're going to be forgiven for their actions, but two, also to harvest victims knowing that people of faith are often good and trusting people. Okay. I would say maybe, or also it's, it's probably, it's a good end with them, right? Like, oh, we're both Christian. We both go to the same thing. Right.
Starting point is 01:47:56 It led us up to an affinity fraud, right? Like, you and I both go to the same megachurch. There's no way I would rip you off. So why don't you give me your money and I'll double it every 90 days? Right. We both love Jesus. Yeah, we have that in common. These guys.
Starting point is 01:48:09 Hey, at this point, it's two hours. Nobody's watching. Yeah, yeah. Well, actually, what's going to play after this is going to be the conversation we had before the podcast, which is interesting for anyone who has enjoyed this podcast. Oh, yeah. Yeah, well, maybe someone can come to our rescue, make us rich. Do you think there's a market out there for us, if we could find someone to promote it and sell tickets for you and I to do this in five cities and do a live version of this? dude the reason to mention this online we on this um do yeah i was guess you know what's funny
Starting point is 01:48:41 is i mean if the right person does it you do i mean if the right person does it you do you it's like everything right like if you have the right guy that can promote it and do it yeah absolutely there are did you ever see the movie or movie there's a podcast called it's two comedians two female comedians and they do um my favorite murder yeah right right you ever seen them I'm just not a fan of that type of show, but I have seen that they tour live and they do live podcasts. They're filling theaters. Yeah. Massive.
Starting point is 01:49:09 They're filling theaters. Right. And so, and we're better than them. Yeah. On our worst day. Yeah. And if you come up with kind of a skit and you do the skit over and over again,
Starting point is 01:49:21 you're going to get better and better at it, right? We got the bit. You can do this. Every single night I can come to the table with 12 new crime stories that I would tell and then you guess the, you guess the sentence and the audio. audience way, blah, blah, blah, blah. Maybe you do something. You're not going to come up with 12 a night.
Starting point is 01:49:36 Oh, you mean like if we do it once every two weeks or something. I have a thousand crime stories in my back pocket that I've done in my social media that I just, when I do your show, I go through it. Oh, that was a good story. Oh, this one's good. Mom, Matt would like this. This is going to work for his audience. Well, if we did a 12 city tour, I could come up with 144 stories. We just test it. Test it once in Tampa. Just do one, just try one. Here's the problem, Colby, is that neither Matt nor I want to actually do the work to sell tickets. I was thinking, you put more work into this podcast than I've ever put on my best day. I've never prepared as much as this. Well, again, in all fairness, these are stories that I've done on my social media feed.
Starting point is 01:50:12 So I'm just kind of recycling stuff that I've already done and repurposing it for you. You're, your, the TikToks and the stuff that you put out that one minute or two minutes that you do, you put more every one of those you've got, you've done more reading, more research into every one of those that I've ever done into a podcast. You're, you're very guest focused. It's important that out my audience. their eyes just be on the cash register. I love Jess when something will happen and something will happen. I'll be like, hey, hey, hey, hey, and she'll like almost swing at me or something or almost hit me or I'll cut myself shaving and she'll like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, she's, don't fuck up
Starting point is 01:50:48 the moneymaker. Yes, exactly. Hey, hey, hey, hey, I'm like, hey, the moneymaker. Exactly, exactly. How much you think it costs to run out of theater? Like, I don't know. How many? How do you want it?
Starting point is 01:50:59 Like, you need a guy that can do. that. Well, I mean, my year is we do it and nobody, like, there's four people, 25 people show up and it's supposed to be 300 people. Maybe we do it at the back of a bar one night for a hundred people. We get to go to the comedy club at the, at the, at the, at the AMC theater. Yeah. Comedy Club. Yeah. You run. I feel like you could book a hundred people. He's got a lot. You probably have metrics. My number one city is New York. What's yours? Oh. Wow. I mean, we have the analytics.
Starting point is 01:51:35 I mean, that's my point is. I think it goes by country on YouTube, though. YouTube is country. Where are you getting that number? I think TikTok and Instagram will break it down by city. My number one, my number two city is Lagos, Nigeria. I think we should not do that. Nigeria would have been a big one for me. I get a lot of Nigeria. Yeah, I do. Matt, love from Nigeria. Delightful people. Delightful people. I love their fan. I think the cost of getting us there might eat up a little bit of our problems. Yeah, we love you on our breaks at the in the phone room. We like to listen to your.
Starting point is 01:52:07 You're terrible. You're terrible. They're the best people. At least don't kill me. Yeah, I'm trying to, I'm trying to see the insights because it just says YouTube just has my country. Okay. But I bet you can find your Instagram or TikTok and see what it is there. God.
Starting point is 01:52:25 But again, to your point, Colby, I don't. Other than the back room of a bar with 100 folding chairs, I don't want to be in the concert promotion business. I'm happy to be in the content presentation business. Yeah, I want to, I just want to be the talent. Well, see, here's my thought. You have any idea how much stuff I pawn off onto him? I get it, no, I get it.
Starting point is 01:52:43 I'm trying to, I'm doing the same thing with my... I can't even look over there sometime. But here's the thing, what if we found that those making a murder ladies or whatever, or any of these podcasts, like these true crime podcasts that are like touring the nation and packing it in, there's a lot of like kind of female comedy podcasts with like mommy humor that's just packing them in as well, lots of catch phrases and stuff. I'd love to maybe if we went into their website and figured out who is doing their promotion. Right. And like who, like, okay, you got a,
Starting point is 01:53:14 you got a successful making a murder tour with these two ladies. Who's the promoter behind this? Who, who, who are they hired to do it? And that's pretty much getting, like, I'm pretty sure I could call three people. You know, you're pretty much three, three phone calls away from probably the president, you know, with three phone calls. Like if I call Johnny Mitchell and say, hey, who does this kind of thing for so-and-so? He's going to be like, I don't know that guy, but I know this person and they know that person. Okay, well, let's get on that. You know, within three phone calls, we could probably find out, you're probably
Starting point is 01:53:44 talking to one of those chicks from Make a Murder. And she'll be like, oh, Joyce does it. Let me get you in charge. Let's call on it. Call it what is I can get their home phone number immediately. Yeah, what am I saying? I mean, yeah, if that's the goal to give the good ladies a cold, call. That's, that's a very doable thing. You know who you need to get on this is Tyler. Okay.
Starting point is 01:54:01 Yeah. I mean, you, are you, is your booking guy? Yeah. Oh, yeah. He's, he's all up in my stuff. Yeah, he's, he'll, he's an enthusiastic. He'll be right up his alley. I mean, he's trying to get Matt to stay on the corner with a sign. Oh, yeah, he's got insane ideas. Ask a con man. Um, but yeah, I think really, ask a con man's line. Oh, yeah. Because there's a lawyer that does it. I've seen him. Yeah, yeah. Very good. Um, you know what's so funny is people give the lawyer shit. Everyone's no mean to that guy. Yeah, they're mean to him out. He's like the nicest guy in the world, he seems.
Starting point is 01:54:31 He's trying to be helpful. I'm trying to be helpful and you're giving me shit. Like, what are they going to say to me? I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. He always starts out of saying. Yeah, but I mean, I have no problem with that as long as, you know, it's somebody who's competent and professional. We're not going to get out there. And plus, I wonder how, do you, are you ever get nervous?
Starting point is 01:54:50 No. Not public speaking. I'm fine today. I'm, after about four or five minutes, I'm fine with it. And initially, I feel, even though Jess has seen me speak and people, people like, man, you were great, you were there? And I'm like, I was really nervous. Were you? Listen, I feel nervous. The first five minutes, I feel nervous. Listen, the, many of the most nervous I ever was, I spoke in front of probably 500 law enforcement officers. Listen, I think it was probably 30 minutes into it. I was needed a Blues Brothers where they're performing and the cops are just filing in. Frembling. And yet, Jess was there. Jess was like, you were great. I was like, I don't know why I was. I was. I don't know why. I was. anxious, so anxiety-ridden.
Starting point is 01:55:30 But yeah, I mean, I would have no problem with that. We just need to figure out who to talk to. Right. Who could put it together and who could hype it. I mean, you and I both have platforms to hype it. That's easy enough. You don't think everybody would be coming would be most 90% of people we think would be someone who already follows you or knows of you.
Starting point is 01:55:47 You think you're... I don't know. I mean, well, I think so, yeah. I mean, obviously it's going to be people who are like super into Matt or follow me. Yeah, you don't think marketing on your own socials. Like, hey, I have this event coming up in August. I feel like that you're in the right city though, right? You know, come to Topeka, it's going to be sort of embarrassing.
Starting point is 01:56:03 Yeah. But if you guys can figure out, I mean, the problem in New York is that there's a lot of competition on any given night for people to do stuff. But it's a big. I also feel like the people that are, you think, oh, you've got a lot of views. Really? Like, this is nationwide. You know what I'm saying? Exactly.
Starting point is 01:56:20 Like, so what do I have in, like you said, Tampa, Florida? We're getting 15 people that show on. The upside of doing Florida. is that you and I wouldn't have as much overhead. Yeah, it's easier to test. Yeah, and I can drive down to Tampa. We did this, if we found it one night in Tampa and some comedy club on a night where there's nothing else going on there, you know, the house maybe takes the bar.
Starting point is 01:56:43 It doesn't charge us for the venue. I feel, seriously. I feel like what they would do is they would, we'd be the first show. Wouldn't be just us. It'd be, what the better bet is you have, we go up first. front of the guy that brought in all the people or you think it's bringing in our people that know us. I think
Starting point is 01:57:03 that there is a market out there for live podcasts. For, okay, or you and I live are. Yeah, this is to be the Matt Cock Show Live featuring Tom Simon. I feel like this is something your wife could look into. She's very big on ideas. It's the execution.
Starting point is 01:57:21 She's a very competent lady, but she's never promoted a concert or something like that. No, no, I I don't mean promotion. I mean tracking down the person, the promoter. That's the big thing, is tracking down the person that can say, they could look at our stuff and then say, this will never be anything. Or look at it and go, wow, this could be huge. Let's do the math. We sell a thousand tickets at average of 30 bucks a ticket. Yeah. What's that? He'll be the math. $30,000? $30,000. Right? Right. So, yeah, but you have to think, we're not making
Starting point is 01:57:52 30. How much to the promotion? How much the promoter get? Figure, you and I walk away with 10 each, and there's 10 for the overhead. But we're not walking away with 10 each. You don't think so? No. A thousand people in a room. I mean. Do you think we could sell a thousand tickets?
Starting point is 01:58:08 Well, I think it would be more than $30. It'd be more than $30. They're not going to, I mean, I don't think anything's $30. It's going to be like $49.99 or something. Who the hell is going to pay $50 to see you? Trust me. But, and I, because I think you have to think the promoter takes half. Right.
Starting point is 01:58:25 He wants to act. You guys are the promoters, though. Your socials are the promoters, though. Your socials aren't. Bro, you're kidding me? I tried to do a course on, what do you call it, on credit repair. Building credit and repairing credit. I tried to do that.
Starting point is 01:58:41 I think we sold fucking like 10 of them or 15. Like that was it. You know, we pushed it. We dropped it in a few different things. Like, it just didn't take off. And that's people, and it was super inexpensive. It was like $2.99 or something. But that's different, right?
Starting point is 01:58:56 Because that's an auxiliary product, right? We will be offering the same product that is time tested, that people like it, that hundreds of thousands of people every time I come on the show, watch your show, to do our, you know, our crime story, what's the sentence bit? Right. Riffing off of each other. That is a road tested thing that people seem to enjoy. Right.
Starting point is 01:59:16 Are people going to pay 30 bucks or 50 bucks to come out and see that live? I mean, I think they'll pay, you know, 50 bucks. I definitely think they'll pay. My problem is 50 bucks and you still have to. pay a promoter you still have to pay for the venue you know granted we can run promotions but they really need to run promote they'll the promoter would run promotions on the radio state and none of that really cost that anything you know but it's it's it would be they'd ask you and I to do some radio stuff yeah get on the venues uh you know website they get you
Starting point is 01:59:50 halfway there yeah every yeah they're going to be on social media targeted ads and Tampa That's a good point. It's like, hey, we're coming to your city, blah, blah, blah, you know what I mean? So they want someone to do a whole that. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. But they would know how to do all that. But the problem is they know how to do all that.
Starting point is 02:00:05 They're going to charge half. But they say we want half after we pay for the video this and that. So you and I end up doing it and we make five grand. Maybe we make 10 grand apiece. Which I'm okay with five or 10 grand on a test because to me we go in. It's five grand. Now you know. Right.
Starting point is 02:00:22 Then the guy says, whoa. Proof of concept. Now we can, guess what? It was booked. You guys did great. And we think that we can now run out this one for $5,000. Like now I'm ready to do one for five in Orlando or... Well, that's my next question.
Starting point is 02:00:37 Do you think Orlando or Tampa's a better market for something like this? Orlando, I would think. Orlando, we didn't have people flying in. Yeah, flights are cheap to Orlando. Oh, okay. I was thinking... I was thinking... I was like Tuesday night at a comedy club when there's nothing happening there,
Starting point is 02:00:51 we may get the venue for free. Sell the booze. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the comedy clubs actually try and promote it, too. Yeah. Because they want you to come in and buy their shit.
Starting point is 02:01:01 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but I mean, I don't know. I can't, what are we doing? I mean, we can do this on the phone. Let's do a show. I'm sorry. This would be at the end of the episode anyways. But I mean, it's something to think about.
Starting point is 02:01:14 People can leave their comments. Okay, there's a, the other thing. Tampa, Florida offers a variety of various sizes. Let's see, 2,600, 1,000, 300 250 so
Starting point is 02:01:27 you could sell out a 250 but 250 but 250 guest auditorium at what for a test
Starting point is 02:01:37 what's 50 times 250 that's a question probably should know that 250 250 times 50 12,500
Starting point is 02:01:46 right now we charge actually for the meet and greet afterwards yeah C sign autographs they have a t-shirt
Starting point is 02:01:52 that's always horrible T-shirt canon um we had the comedian we had that carl remi yeah yeah carl and i text him he'll call text me right back uh like he's obviously got promoters and knows people i mean and he was working it yeah i understand but he knows he's very funny very funny guy i like him but uh but we saw that show and it wasn't really wasn't wasn't wasn't standing room only exactly yeah yeah it was in a movie theater
Starting point is 02:02:19 yeah they closed the theater down i wonder how many seats are in a in a movie theater It's probably 100 But it wasn't 100's 10 by 10 It's way more than that It's more like 1,000 Oh okay I'm 500 or 700 or something
Starting point is 02:02:31 Yeah 10 people like 10 people But it wasn't This was a big theater Yeah But it wasn't packed Was that one packed? No
Starting point is 02:02:37 No, not at all I've been to one since then By the way We went to go see Oh gosh What's his name John Candy Is it not John Candy
Starting point is 02:02:46 What's the other guy that died He was like John Candy He was more rude Chris Farley Chris Farley's brother Oh he's doing stand-up now Yeah Any good?
Starting point is 02:02:54 I thought it was funny. Actually, what's bothered me about it was as he was talking, I was thinking of better things that he could have followed up on or things he could have done better, done another joke or, you know, when I'm sitting there improving on your, on your act, it's like, it's not good. Like he's, but it was funny. It was, it was worth the menu in the movie theater or, yeah. But it was packed. That was packed. Farley last name, man. Yeah, just the last name.
Starting point is 02:03:24 the whole thing. Right. And yeah, it was good. It was good. I guess even if it didn't work out perfectly, as long as there's no downside economic risk to us. Yeah. Right. Right. So that's my, that would be what I would want to want. We'll promote the shit out of it in our social media. We'll show up. If no one else shows up, our egos will be hurt for 12 hours and we'll go on their lives. You know, and then we'll go, then we'll go talk to 100,000 people on YouTube. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't have a problem with that. I just think I'd like to know somebody who has more experienced than you and I. Well, without question.
Starting point is 02:03:56 This is nothing that I'm happy to take on myself. Yeah, that can say, this is a thing or you guys don't have a prayer. Something to chew on. Right. All right, so we're doing this. We're going to bring in more than Remy brought in. We have bigger followings than him. He's not a very nice guy.
Starting point is 02:04:10 I liked him. He was a funny show. He should be doing more on his social media to promote himself. Yeah, you know, we had him come on here. So this will be at the end of the episode. So, Matt, if you want to go ahead and sign off and just ask the people to to let us know their thoughts on this whole concept. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:04:27 Let us know you're in the comment section. Let us know your thoughts on whether or not Tom Simons and I should do a show. A live show at maybe a comedy club or try and get a larger venue or Madison Square Garden. Madison Square Garden. I don't know. That sounds really big. The Hollywood Bowl. Something.
Starting point is 02:04:52 Something. Raymond James Stadium. Is there still Raymond James that said? Is it still Raymond James? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Let us know what you think.
Starting point is 02:04:59 And we're going to leave all of Tom's links in the description box. Please go to it. Please go to all of his social medias and follow and subscribe. Also, thank you very much for watching this show. Appreciate it. See you. See you. Nice.
Starting point is 02:05:17 You know, you could even test. Yeah. He could even test a lot. Like, I don't mind. Let's just. Just say it. Che on it. Chew in it.
Starting point is 02:05:24 All right, are we doing a show? Yes. Showtime? Yes. Hello, Matt Cox.

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