Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - FBI Agent Exposes the Dark Side of Mega Churches

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

Matt Cox and Retired 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 links⁣ https://www.instagram.com/simoninvestigations/?hl=en⁣ https://www.simoninvestigations.com⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Get 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/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do 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/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know the same way you can skip an ad? I get it. I'm Siaia and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll.

So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem. tend to be a haven for defrauders. He would pitch to the church congregations his chairman's fund that was actually endorsed by Jesus Christ himself. Over a two-month period, he embezzles $47 million. Hello, Matt Cox. Hello. So good to see you. What's going on? Thanks for having me back. Got a dozen stories for you today. Yeah. 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 do not. and your job is to guess the sentence.

Okay. Within how many years? We need to set a guideline. Yeah, because I'm never going to hit one on the head. Are we keeping score? I'm keeping score today. 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. 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. Yes.

Fair enough. I can live with that. I mean, it's your show. 20%. And we have 12 stories. Yes. So what's a passing grade? Let's say,

80%? Huh? Let's say eight out of 10 is passing? I mean, you don't ask me. I mean, I'm not paying them. Yeah, this is just audience retention. You know, people got to watch to the end. All right, okay.

Nine. So you have to have nine. I said nine. Let's say 9 out of 12. 9 would be roughly 80%. He's shooting for 9 out of 14. 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? 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 investment product that life insurance people are allowed to sell. Okay. Okay. And so life insurance people, you know, I turn. life insurance or whatever. If I croak, my air gets X dollar amount. There's also a whole life 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. So supplement your income until you die. And then the investment goes away. It has no value at that point, which is why 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 salesperson. So when that's 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 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, 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 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 is pretty poor. Right. Right. It's a tough investment to get out of, which is another reason why it's not a great invests. Right. So if you put it, you, you buy one for $100,000. 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, 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 it's all just a math problem in the world of finance. You could say, I want to collect this until I'm 60. So I don't, 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 if it's it 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 discuss the importance of timelining the fraud, right? Because when you're doing a fraud investigation, you have witness state, you have phone records, you have bank records, investment 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 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, or the Bellagio 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 Charles Schwab again, I thought you were going to say he bet. When I was joking about betting, I thought you were going to say he, he, you know, bought a whole bunch of whatever Tesla stock or something. 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. And he was 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, your bank account. I mean, my son just ordered a Schwab account. They sent him check 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. Maybe it gave them a sense of comfort that is going into something that looks and smells like an investment. And I could understand that.

That makes sense. Like, I don't want to see it go to your personal account. Yeah, yeah. 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 are expecting to receive money. And he is just offering them lots of excuses. He's ghosting a lot of them. He's not returning calls. So a few of them called the FBI. I was a, agent in Honolulu at the time investigating investment fraud. It landed on my desk. I said, there's something here. 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. What do you like to play?

I'm trying to remember. I think it was like Blackjack and slots and roulette. This is 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. 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 one, most of the degener gamblers. Again, they like getting the free benefits, I mean, comped room or whatever. How is this guy thinking? 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. 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. Pick me up at the airport. You know, I'm already in my suit. Let's go. 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 signed confession from him.

Yeah, he's been waiting. When you open the door, he opened the door, he was probably, oh, I've been waiting for you. Yeah. I mean, it took some doing. 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, 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. No one, Kevin should be judged the worst thing they ever did. I used that since you've said that. I've said that a couple 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. Yeah, it resonates with a guy like Kevin. He was nice enough to sign the confession. We shook hands, Adam on the shoulder or said,

I don't know what's going to happen, buddy, Bobby, I'll be in touch. And he was indicted shortly thereafter and pled guilty to fraud charges, you know, order restitution. Madfcox? So 400,000 restitution. 12 people?

12 people. It's over 10. So a little enhancement. He pled guilty. He timely. Gosh, I don't know. Senior citizen victims. Yeah, no, no. Yeah, yeah. But not addled. Not, you know, not rattled. 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, 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? 24 months. Correct answer. Are you serious? Not exactly. No, no. The correct answer is.

Oh, you're so mean. Okay. He 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, whacked and pillaged, the people in his life who loved him

and trusted him with their money and also kind of stealing their future from these, like, 70s. year olds, right? This is how they're going to kind of live for the next 10 years. I think really offended the judge. Yeah. And so he gave him 46 months. And you went to the sentencing. 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, I was rooting for you, bow. 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 or another. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I'm not a head hunter. 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, and not to stand up and give the answer. 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 they read the pre-sentence report. You hope they read the pre-sentence report. In 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 starts. saying, look, I mess. You know, you'd have to really be able to sway a judge for the inmate, or for the defendant to say something to sway him. I think that's... 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.

It's right. You're going to be perfectly okay with this. Exactly. All right. 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.

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 aren't just forgiving is the people who lost a family member. I wasn't really close to my brother. He was kind of a shit. 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. All right.

Do you have your answers folded? 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. So 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. 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 cheater, always a cheater. All right. Next one. Yeah, you can look all you want.

Our bad guy is named George George. George George. His first name is George. His parents have a sense of humor. 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 a many ways. 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 income 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.

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. 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. Right.

I should come visit sometime. And he reinvents 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. He started as he put out a shingle. We're getting there.

Oh, 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. 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 he leaves his wife and kids behind in Tennessee to become a fugitive. 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 dirty john one of your uh guess no no no we well this the chick that killed the original the dirty john got the story anyway but there there's a whole series based on different stories of these kind of con men that move in on 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, 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 Pontevide, 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 the with our patients and you know and I'd be happy to fund this you know once I get my finances all worked out and the the kind of holistic health types those two were super excited to like 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. 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 patients, right, in this holistic health. So like, and a lot of the patients were people who were already getting massages and like, you know, spiritual Reiki healing and whatnot 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.

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. Pepper's in the office. And we said, when the, 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, hey, he was a good listener, but he mostly just kind of talked about himself. Right. So all this would be very funny. That would be me.

Yeah. Well, you went out here 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 and had been prescribed by her psychiatrist, many different kinds of medications, anti-anxiety drugs and stuff like that. He tells her that he went to Harvard and to get off the drugs.

And, like, he collects up all of her pills and has them for himself. Mega church pastors are an interesting group of people. And I've had the opportunity to investigate some and work for others. 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 change, ever, you know, ever had his air conditioning not fixed for free. They have these giant flocks, right? And these giant churches with, like, you know, bass players and,

light shows, they get their stuff for free. This megachurch pastor knew Dr. Oliver, uh, was a member of his congregation and also knew that his mother was suffering from, um, 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 different state. And then he begins sending her pills to take from his, you know, 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 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. 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, 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. So it's not an anti-depression, which would bring you up. of anti-anxiety, which would bring you down. And the boy... You think he would learn that in Harvard? The boy takes the pills and crashes and tries to end... Oh, wow.

Yeah, so super serious. Yeah. He's okay now. He survived this, but this was... These were like, back... It's all hearty, 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 over it, they figure out that he is in Jacksonville, Florida,

and they arrest him and bring him in. Okay. That's kind of anticlimactic, 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 day 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 be it's gonna have some kind of issue yeah talented con man you've got to give it to him i mean go bigger go home right harbored a psychiatrist and uh but but the um but a lot of damage in his way yeah okay yeah 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? 12 years. 12 years? Yeah. 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. Almost. 20 years 20 years this guy's the worst oh I don't think 20 years 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 he was trying to help them I mean it's acting like it was malice on his part

20 years 20 years wow that's 0 for 2 jeez I know 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. Have you met people who do though? Oh, 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 scrotums, and it's like a part of their identity. I well I interviewed I interviewed one of the guys from fresh and fit and you know fresh and fit I don't what was

Myron Gaines 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 Run fresh and fit And I thought it was really nice But they're big on the whole A red pill thing Yeah Yeah And what?

Nothing? 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,

Alpha's Betas What are the other one? What are the other ones? Alpha Beta is this is not my universe I've heard Alpha Beta Sigma Sigma. Sigma that's what I don't even know what Sigma is.

So Sigma is what I think Jess 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 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, independent, and successful, but who also operates outside of traditional social hierarchies. That's me.

That's all me. Sounds good. Well, listen, I'm glad you found an identity. 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? 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 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, 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. 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 versus a Ponzi where they're getting checks from the next guy that pays 40 grand? Yeah. Is anybody getting paid? No. No. No. No. 530 separate investors.

Wow. Brose. $21 million. Wow. Okay. And he spends it all. Really? He buys a white Lamborghini Hurricane Evo.

Hurricane Evo. I don't know how to pronounce it. Okay. Other stuff. Amazon was having none of this drop shipping bullshit, right? Like, you know, he tries to set up a couple stores right now online. They get shut down immediately. When investors complained, they were just ghosted by the bull.

He was not returning calls. Enter the FBI in the Utah Division of Securities, who recognized this for what it was, an investment fraud. He sparked by bad lies and information, kind of fueled also by false reports. And they grab the bull. by the horns. Okay.

And we don't know if he cooperated. We don't, we just know. He had 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, and he, 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. And he watched his Instagram feed. There's a lot of him, like, hitting the heavy bag and stuff like that. And a lot of, you know,

he was 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. 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. 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.

I don't know. It's the amount of victims, sophisticated means, victims. 17 years? 17 years is your guess? Yes. You think the bull got 17 years? Stop. Why are you dragging out?

17. Eight years. Eight? 96 months. I'll do eight years for 20 mil. Well, again, and my, my son. 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. Yeah, I mean, $21 million is the federal sentencing

guidelines laws. That's why he got hit with 21. Right. You don't get, the seizures and forfeitures that the FBI might do a bank account in your Lamborghini, that goes toward restitution. That doesn't lower your sentencing guidelines numbers. I, well, that. I mean, as a matter of law, it's true. Well, yeah, it, it goes, it's, it goes towards your, what's your restitution. 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 cheating last time and I wasn't. And now that I'm blowing this one, this is horrible. And that was, was that recent? Yeah. He was just sentenced

like a couple weeks ago. 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 types just so reprehensible that I was waiting for the sentencing so I could bring it.

Did you already do it on your platform? Oh yeah. It's huge. Telling the story very stoically as I do without a whole lot of like judgment or anything like that, 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 I didn't do anything other than tell the story about what he did. But this whole like alpha male, the bull kind of thing. Do you 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 looked down. And I did the story like a couple months ago. I still look down every day. There's a couple comments that are getting added to it. So the second guy got 20 years for. three million and this guy got eight years for I took off he was you know they don't like it when you take off changing durst that you then 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 um yeah I think that maybe

the almost killing the kid he didn't die sure he's fine yeah I feel like that's been that much maybe a couple years extra you're a monster I knew his mother it's poor mother I thought the sentencing guidelines were supposed to kind of help. 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. I get it. That's how I spent 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. 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. 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, Terrence 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. Right. 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 is chairman's fund. Right. And this is a high, a high yield, low risk investment program that was actually endorsed by Jesus Christ himself. Of all the endorsements you can have, this is going to appeal to this audience at the black churches more than others.

Yeah. Okay. I can see that. And 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 are senior citizens.

invested with Dr. Cash. 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. And several did. He's doing God's work. Exactly.

$4.8 million he took in. From black churches? Yeah. 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 every... Is this a white guy?

No, he's an African-American. Oh, cool. Like, I feel a little bit better. I feel a little bit better about it. Fair enough. Yeah. Now, it's all we need is 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, but were being kind of recycled from the investments of other investors in what we call a Ponzi scheme.

So what did he tell them he was investing in? Did it vary? I think it was very nonspecific. think 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. Okay, so the bulk of the money, though, you'll be shocked to learn, was actually spent by Dr. Cash. What do you 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. A brand new BMW. He's, he, okay, so to do the math, he spent $3.2 million of the 4.8 he took in. The other $1.6 million was recycled back into investment returns on the Ponzi schemes. Okay.

Okay. So with the quarterly payment stopped because eventually he wrote. 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. 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 then they arrested Dr. Cash. He pleads guilty. Okay. How many victims? I don't have that number. I'm going to guess a lot, like hundreds, maybe thousands.

I mean, like, yeah, I'm just doing, based on the 4.8 million, it had to be an astronomical a number of victims. And he toured,

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 past, the church in exchange, 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, 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. Oh, 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 source. 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 I was like, are you fucking serious? Yeah, they got to keep the lights on. Come on. I mean, these churches are not like the Catholic church that I grew up in, right? Yeah. They have like bass players and stuff. They go, they do that bands. It's pretty good. Light shows. Yeah, light shows. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's amazing.

Yeah. 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 seen righteous gemstones? I have. My wife is watching that. 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 pawnsing. 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 take it and you gave it back. I mean, 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, through dementia, Alzheimer, or something like that.

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. I gave them $20. They 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 my prosecutor. I'm glad you're out. Let's see. I think, I don't think. I think, I, I still think, I think five years.

No, wait, he's, wait, he's got, he's, he's got a previous 10. That your final answer? Yes, 10. I was surprised at this sentence myself. He 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? 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. I like that. Were you a comic book kid? Do 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 Dred, but I think that's D.C. I think Judge D.C. 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, like, Superman and all those. Yeah, Batman's DC also. But, yeah, point taken, yeah. I was into Daredevil, the blind guy. That was my favorite title. Okay.

The 80s. They've never been able to turn that really into a great, into a good, they've tried several times. Netflix shows okay. Oh, the show, I don't know. I'm at the movies. I meant the movies. Yeah. They never quite.

Yeah, there's the Ben Affleck, Daredevil movie. I thought it was okay. It was fine. 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, not as big as Marvel in D.C., 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 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 to the company credit card for Lion Forge to make $138,000 in personal purchases, 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 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 accountant, 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. And 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 had a corporate account, and the corporation also had an account with 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? $2.50. $165,000. $165,000 is what she steals. But she gets to $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. It's just a matter of time. It's not like this is Marvel or DC 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 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 they reach out to Scotland, 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 court appearances probably lasted upwards, of a year with her fighting her extradition. She finally loses that fight because Scotland and I,

you know, Scotland and the U.S. have mutual legal assistance treaties. They're not interested in harboring fugitives from the U.S. that 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, 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. Fuck. Oh, that's close.

That's close. Is it 20%? Is that within 20%? Come on. 36. I think it's 33% off. 2 is 7 months. 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. Ah, it's upsetting. They really don't like it if you fight extradition.

That was a stupid thing to fight extradition to anyway. She's kind of come back. I mean, you're a U.S. citizen. You stole from U.S. people. Yeah. I'm sure there's an expectation. Best 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 years. Put that behind her. But then, you know, she wouldn't be getting that Scotland love that she liked so much. 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, 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. Yes. Okay, cool.

I've been drinking these. I drink a coffee. Go, go, go, go. We're good. We're in Story 6. Matt Cox. 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, I'm actually, I'm assuming it's, it's a guy in Nigeria. But I'm sure they're very friendly. And then... Yeah, I get him a lot. I get them on WhatsApp a lot. And where, you know... I get my number. I get the text message.

I get that too. I get that too. Are you going to be there tomorrow? Quite often they put their picture of this impossibly sexy Asian woman 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. 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, that the, you know, that they're

going to be literally just using, 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 it's, you know, the money is not in fact being invested in cryptocurrency. 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 butchering scheme. And actually, in defense of my Nigerian friends, this does not come out of Nigeria. It comes out of a... China, Burma, Myanmar, they call it now, and 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 in this cryptocurrency program. And then 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. 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 would say, how does he have access to? You know, on the board. Okay. $40,000 from them, not astronomical, but a lot of money for a small church of Christ in 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. Learn the stock market that way. He was the treasurer guy 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. But it gets worse, Matt Cox. Oh, okay. Over a two-month period, he embezzles $47 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 the CEO of a bank.

This is pure stupidity. Right. So you think him, shouldn't he understand? that this is clearly a fraud. 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 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, like, a lot of little damages here and there as he 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. I don't know that that's actionable, but it's floating out there in the dialogue.

He, uh, in best FBI gets called in, investigates the case, you know, massive local bank failure. And, um, he pleads guilty. So what, what is the total loss that, that he got hit with? Um, it's a good question. For sentencing guidelines purposes, I think the 47 million gets you there. Okay. Because again, that's the amount of money he 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? We're, you know, in a relatively small community in Kansas.

Shan pleads guilty. White, uh, um, uh, wire fraud is what I, I think he probably pled guilty to. Probably.

The fact statutory maximum. 20 years. So I'd say he got the max. I think there were probably, 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? Is it? I don't want to, I don't want to gildo lily. I mean, 20 is a perfectly reasonable guess. I just didn't want, I, I was, 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. Well, I'm going to stick with 20 because I, 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. Yeah.

Well, because I don't know what he did to get those wires. Like if he simply said, wire the money. Hey, wire a million here. He's embezzling money from a federally insured financial institution. So you're saying bank fraud. I think he's bank fraud. Okay, so 30 million if it's bank fraud. I'd say 20 if it's wire fraud.

Let's say, 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 sticking with that answer? Now I think no, but yes. I'm going to say 30.

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. All right. I probably was close to both. I probably was pretty close. Was it 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 28, 29. I'll give it to you, buddy. I missed both of them by a little bit. I would have missed both. 24 years, and you guess 20?

Yeah. 20% of 20 is... Four years, but it's... Four years. Here's the thing. It was more than 24. It was 24 years, five months. 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. Ooh, I was right. Wait. 20% of 30...

Yeah, yeah, you're there. is would have been 24 years and we had yeah no okay I'll give it to you right 30 times 0.2 yeah I mean 20% 20% of 30 of 6 years so you got okay that five that's five months in hands that's that five months saved your hide there we go um 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 oh 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 have kidnapped people from China and other countries. They put them in giant warehouses. They're they're they're actual slaves and they have every one of them has five or six cell phones and they're just spending their time texting people in the US and and they have 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. 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-buttering 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. It's 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 misplanned. Myanmar. 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. Or me 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. The $47 million is outrageous. 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 big 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. 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 tokens. I have a client down in Beiro Beach that happened to him. He lost a fortune. Well, this guy's only lost, like, he's only spent like $600. 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 and they want you to wire them money so they could buy bulletproof vests and stuff. Wow. And when the war is 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, it was Facebook.

This girl on Facebook. She cut. I'm like, stop it. It's a guy. It's not her. No, I saw a video. It does. 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. 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 claim to be directors of marketing for Estee 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 some waitress who's working in a small bar. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's like they're... A lot of guys want their intellectual equals, right? They think, like, you know... I don't.

Fair enough. So, you ever go on Amazon or eBay and take a look at just basic consumer items that you could get at Wind Dixie or Publix? And scratch your head about why it could be so much cheaper on Amazon or eBay. No. See, I have a side story. I'm like addicted to bubbly water, like, like, carbonated water, club soda and all that. I was spending a fortune on like Perrier and San Pellegrino water and then I got myself a kegurator at home, right? What's going on? No, stay with me. Stay with me. A kegator. Do they still make, they still make,

caeserators? Celser water or whatever. They like that. Yeah, bubbly water. Like club soda, Tulsa water, same thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I make... My wife drinks at once, yeah. Really? Yeah. Yeah, sir.

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?

Lemonade meo. 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. well hydrated as a result. It's expensive, though. A little thing of Mio costs 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 is stolen. It's file off a truck. Dorell Waters, 41-year-old from Pittsburgh. He had a success. successful business selling consumer items on eBay and Amazon at discount prices. I'm talking shampoo, makeup, vitamins, over-the-counter medication, 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 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 it's getting stolen goods or something that we're selling them. You're on the right 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. Yeah, he's kicking it in his warehouse. Yeah, he's just buying stolen goods. Right. The boosters would fence their stolen goods to derail. How much do you think he was paying as a percentage of the retail price of these things?

20%. 10%. 10%. 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 them for what, a 50% discount, 40%? Whatever he can get. Okay. Whatever he can get. And you're buying them. Well, yeah. And now I'm wondering. I'm wondering if my lemonade Mio is coming from from bad guys like that or if Mio 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 Ghostbed can help. As the makers of the coolest beds in the world,

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You'll answer a few questions and get a personalized recommendation. Even better, our listeners will get 10% off for a limited time. Just visit ghostbed.com slash Cox, and use code Cox at the checkout. That's ghostbed.com slash Cox and use code Cox for 10% off sitewide. 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 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, Dorell figures, you know what, you will never, ever be able to prove at trial 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 testify 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. 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. 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 yeah this makes no sense at all these you're i think you picked these cases no i mean these because they're so i start with the crime and i'm often quite surprised myself on what the sentence is you 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 he

history, 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, it wasn't 15, but 12, like four, 12. Mm-hmm. Ridiculous. I get it. I agree. I agree. There's no justice in this world. This is making me look bad. The, the lost episode, it's 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.

It was all. Take that. I came here to take Matt Cox down a peg. All right. One for seven. Let's just shoot for 50%. All right. You need to run the table here.

Yeah, you got to go six for 12. All right. Matt, let's talk about vacation sex. Okay. Not you and I, but just the concept. 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 figure out that his wife had died?

I don't know. The sex was the same, but the dishes piled up. 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. He's looking to have some action.

horrible. He hops on the... Passport, bro. He hops on the gay dating app Grindr. Okay. He's familiar with Grindr, right, Back on? I've heard stories. Okay, yeah.

And he meets a nice guy named 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

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 you know put up fake pictures or pictures that are kind of putting their best foot forward

but Sebastian was everything he promised to be so so Sebastian picks him up and while they're driving down the road On 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 and he'll only be let free if they wire transfer money to a Dominican currency exchange. 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. 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, I guess he, maybe his passport was back of the, they send him.

back home. 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. 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. And the Dominican Republic, to their credit, they do a joint investigation. Yeah. The lesson they want is for the United States to start advising Americans not to go to the debate. 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. company. So they subpoena grinder and it was the guy's photo. And so 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 they 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. Right. They do not, they never, even to this day, identify who Davy's friend was in the backseat 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, and 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. Davy takes it to trial, a two-week trial, and the jury found Davy 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 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 yeah because I don't have a lot of experience with a kidnapping cases But it doesn't matter. I've experienced with all these other ones, and I can't get those either.

So, but I, I'm going to say, I want 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 say 30, you do have a higher, your 20% is, is more years. I, we're getting tactical now. I feel like 20. You could bid $1 like on the prices, right?

Let's go 25. I'm going to go 25. 25 is your answer? Yes. Matt Cox? The 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.

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.

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. Right. 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. Eventually a friend of Cree's 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. 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. 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. What is you? Yes. I think he went to trial. I think he has priors. He's got a criminal history.

I don't know how much criminal history. Let me plead devil's advocate. Isn't there kind of a no harm, no foul argument to be made here? He, but he didn't. He, he, he, he, but he did. 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, a, uh, in possession of a firearm. He's clearly already a felon. I think 15. 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. I don't think you can, I don't think you can, I hope you win. I hope, I want your viewers to like you.

I think it's 15 years. I'd give, I'd be up, listen, it's like burglary. Mm-hmm. 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. 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. 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. You get more for that for lying to an FBI. agent. Yeah. Which you should never do. No, what? No, 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. 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, booboo, but, cut that out. Come on.

Okay. I was thinking about leaving it. He likes it when I look like a, If I look like an idiot, Colby's like, we live in that in. 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. But in all fairness, there are plenty of weirdos and bad people on the far right and the far left to 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. 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. Okay. And it's 3.35 in the morning after a long night of plastering stickers. He plants an improvised explosive device. That went sideways.

Against a building. Okay. The building was the offices of an Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall. Kyle lights the fuse and scampers away. The device explodes 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 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, you know, there's only one guy walking around downtown Montgomery at like two, three in the morning. 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. So what did the judge give, Kyle? I think he, I think 10 years. Yeah?

Yeah. Yeah, 10 years. 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. 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 it. It sounds like you don't believe in yourself. I don't believe, 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 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 the segment? Yes. Correct answer? Nine years. You did that on purpose. I just want to know what your final answer pal? You did that on purpose. Okay. Okay. So I feel like that was a... I give it to you. Oh, thank you. We're giving that to him. Let's go to University of Alabama, Matt. Let's do it. Student there, Aidan Yeager. 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, on TikTok and meets a 15-year-old girl named Sandy. And he, tells her that he wants to sponsor and support her social media career by sending her money

to make her 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. And so she's super excited. The 15-year-old girl, Sandy, readily agrees. Aiden 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. 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, Aiden sends 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 100 pictures of me, uncensored. Yeah. Annie. This guy. Aidan's a bad dude. 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. And thank heavens for the FBI. They launch an investigation.

The agents conduct a search warrant of Aiden'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?

I mean, 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. Oh, well, yeah. You know what? It's not funny, but there was a German guy. And I mean, I mean German like he was in the U.

I mean, straight from Germany. Got it. Doesn't, like barely. Well, he does, he did speak English. It was, it was better than my German. But, you know, with a German accent. So he was in Germany where it's not a crime. It's talking 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, um, adventurous boy, which turned out to be a pissed off 45-year-old FBI agent. Yeah. And he gets off the plane in Germany and, and, wait, in the U.S.? In the U.S. Right, okay. I'm sorry, not in Germany. I'm sorry, he gets off the plane in the U.S.

Right. I don't know where he landed, ultimately landed in Coleman. And, uh, 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. And so the whole time he was there, he's pleading to 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 with people who say with absolute certainty that this guy is going to be just killed in prison, unaligned in prison or whatever. Yeah. 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, there's two different things. One, let's say you physically got a hold of a child

and you were charged in the state. Those tend to be state charges. And so those guys have a really hard time, but they also typically put them into areas or prisons that cater to them. And so although they may be brutalized in prison, they don't typically get very seldomly, more so than in federal prison.

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. Yeah. So they go to the lows and there's more and more of the mediums are getting filled up with these guys.

And do the other prisoners know what they're in for? Yeah. 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, on the phone, or they'll go to their kind of core links, which is their email system, and they'll tell a friend or their family members, they'll Google this dude for me. 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, um, you know, child, what do they call it, uh, you know, for CP or for this or that, whatever the charges are. And, you know, a lot of times these guys have, uh, there was a small article written. Or they were, Broked 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 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 since she was like seven.

or eight years old. It'd been going on for like, filming it and like, filming it. Selling the footage for, basically. And the daughter's now like 12 or 13. This has been going on 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 inmates do not face harm in prison. Typically, they are. So do they face harm? Yes. There was 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 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, you know, I'd like to play on the softball team, they'll be like, no, you're not playing on softball team,

you're not doing this, you don't do that. Some of them, they have trouble finding people to socialize with while they're inside. Well, they, And 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, 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? It's like they can sense it. They can smell it on each other.

Exactly. They just kind of congregate. 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, what are you here for? 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 on.

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 I we and this this has this gives defrauders a bad name. It does. And this happened over and over again. Yeah. Yeah. And where these guys, the white guys would come 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 charged you with credit card fraud yeah I go is that the name of the charge not a crime yes not a crime and they go yeah it was charged credit card fraud and I go okay well how'd you what had you what'd you do or defrauded you know credit card companies well yeah but 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 and they're like this one guy I always tell this one story because it was so funny because the the white guy the white guy named Kenny king was sitting right standing right right here. There's probably a couple guys behind him, but, but Kenny's staying there. And I go, so what did you do 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 chow. And I turn around, walked off and Kenny goes, bingo, like that. And he followed me. Kenny's like, how do you, How do you know? How'd 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.

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, 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 plant, 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. Well, most of them just walk in. They ask 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 up to the guy and he just looked at me.

And I said, hey, so what do you hear for? He goes, wire for all. And I went, oh, I said, oh, you might 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, that seems credible. He said it with like, pride.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. $102 million, $57 million in loss. And I was like, nice. Fist bump. Yeah. You want to sit in the TV room? Yeah. You want to do aerobics with me?

So anyway, so Aiden Yeager, the Alabama kid we just talked about who did this. I mean, this is a form of sextortion. And sextortion, but it's unique because they're able to get their hands on an actual guy. But sextortion 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, these 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. 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. Sending them out? I'll send 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. Yeah, and stuff like that. So it's, maybe 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, right, you can't turn back the hands of time. The only thing to do 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 extortion is, 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. And if they do, you can just say it was Photoshop, it's AI, whatever. But it's so, and so 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 because they're scared and they have no one else to go to. So, you know, it's, what'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 them. I've been screenshot a couple. You know, I can't give a fuck. How was the lighting on that one? I can't remember. Did you get my face? But I mean, you know what I'm saying? Because like it's that whole thing, you know, as a young kid.

Their lives are going to be ruined. 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. think about you and you know you get to to our age you're like give a fuck with them anybody thinks about like it's like and you realize 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 it's the end of the world yeah yeah and I mean here from 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 but you know and I advise them all the same and I often hear from them back and 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 not narcissistic enough. See, if I were more narcissistic, they would never, like the idea of me 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's pushing me to that point. Exactly. So did he get this last one?

Did he get it right? Oh, I was away. 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 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 it's leading to, yeah, okay, well, that's different.

Then, yeah, I get 20, 25 years. And this jackass, you know, these guys go to trial 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. I'm surprised there is such a place, but evidently there's a place called Florida City, Florida. We 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, 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 Holly. The package is coming to him. 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, 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. Misses her. Bernice understands the importance of cardio. Right. Makes it back to her truck, takes off. Escape's 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 the bullets that had gone into the mail truck. It was him. Police hand the investigation over to the FBI in 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 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? Is he got mental problems? Is that what?

Well, okay, so this wasn't Charlie's first offense. He shot and killed his own cousin back in 2014 and pistol whipped 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. 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 know such a bit. I would x-ray it. Can't we x-ray it? 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, you can just call like a buddy and it'll be like, hey, can you? What was in the package? What's in the box? Yeah. 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. 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 a felon. And he went to, yeah, I think he's 20 years.

the low end 20 years. On the low end, 20 years. So it could be more than 20. Yeah, it could be 25 or 30, but yeah, let's say 20. We're going with 20? Yeah. Matt, congratulations, the correct answer? 16 years.

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.

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, you're a private investigator. You're a retired FBI agent. Like, you could easily make a call.

I could. I'm going to, 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, uh, see how it does. What do you think? was in the package. Something stupid. That's what I'm getting at. 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, it wasn't Amazon, because he's done an Amazon delivery lady,

but from somewhere, and he got it in his head. It was going, you know, the voices in his feelings were trying to kill him. He thought it was a bomb or something like that. I mean, he was probably having a paranoid episode. I'm going to 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. 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. You do know. I'm like, watch the movie.

And what I'm not going to tell you? I won't tell you. I'll never tell her. Yeah. 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. Yeah. This makes me, I think, 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, you'd be like 10. Yeah.

No, I'm going to let it, I'm in my mind. You cheated. We're going to 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. 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, also, 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. 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. Hey, at this point, it's two hours. Everybody'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? The reasons mentioned this online. We on this. Yeah, I was going to, you know what's funny is, do I? I mean, if the right person does it. You do you see what I'm saying? 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 a podcast called, it's two comedians, two female comedians and they do my favorite murder. Yeah, right, 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. 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, 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 audience way, blah, blah, blah, blah. Maybe you do every night. You're not going to come to.

of 12 a night. 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. 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.

So I'm just kind of recycling stuff that I've already done and repurposing it for you. You're, 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 done more reading, more research into every one of those than I've ever done into a podcast. You're very guest-focused. It's important that out in my audience, their eyes just be on the cash register. Right. I love Jess when something will happen and something will happen.

And she'll like almost, almost swing at me or something or almost hit me or I'll cut myself shaving. And she'll like, whoa, whoa, whoa, she's, don't fuck up the moneymaker. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Hey, hey, hey, I'm like, hey, the moneymaker. Exactly. How much you think it costs to run out of theater?

Like, I don't know, how many. And how do you want it? Like, you need a guy that can do that. Well, I mean, why you have you. 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 with for a hundred people

we get to go to the comedy club at the at the at the AMC theater yeah comedy club yeah you run I feel like you could book 100 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. 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, you do. Matt, love from Nigeria. Delightful people. Delightful people. I love their fan. We love your stuff.

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. Terrible. You're terrible. They're the best people. Please 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. But again, to your point, Colby, I don't, other than the back room of a bar with a hundred 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. I get it. 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, and 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 podcast 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 you got a successful making a murder tour with these two ladies who's the promoter behind this well how

who who are they hired to do it and that's really 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 can probably find out, you're probably even 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. 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 call, cold call. That's, that's a very doable thing. You know who you need to get on this is Tyler. Okay. 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. That'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 sign. 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 so mean to that guy. Yeah, they're mean to him. He's like the nicest guy in the world, he seems. 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? No. Not public speaking. I'm fine.

Really? I'm, after about four or five minutes, I'm fine. with it. Initially, I feel, even though Jess has seen me speak and people like, man, you were great, you were there like, and I'm like, I was really nervous. Were you? Listen, I feel 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. Like I seen the 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

fucking, I don't know why. was so anxious. So anxiety-ridden. 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. Yeah. 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 you. 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. 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. Like, so what do I have in, like you said, Tampa, Florida? We're getting 15 people that show off. The upside of doing Florida is that you and I wouldn't have as much overhead. Yeah. It's easier to test. Yeah.

I can drive down to Tampa. If we found one night in Tampa and some comedy club on a night where there's nothing else going on there. Right. The house maybe takes the bar. It doesn't charge us for the venue. Seriously. I feel like what they would do is 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 in front of the guy that brought in all the people. Or you think it's bringing in our people that know us. I think that there is a market out there for live podcasts. Okay. Or you and I live live. Yeah. This is to be the Mattcock 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. She's a very competent lady, but she's never, She never promoted a concert or something like that. No, no, 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? Nobody do the math. $30,000? $30,000.

Right? Right. So, yeah, but you have to think we're not making $30. Right. How much did this? How much for 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 1,000 tickets? Well, I think it would be more than 30 bucks. It'd be more than 30 bucks.

They're not going to, they're, I mean, I don't think anything's 30 bucks. It's going to be like $49.99 or something. Who the hell is going to pay 50 bucks to see you? Trust me. But and I, because I think you have to think the promoter takes half. Right. You think so. You guys are the promoters, though.

Your, your socials are the, we're the socials are good. Bro, you're kidding me? I tried to, well, 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. 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? 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. 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. The promoter would run promotions on radio state. And none of that really costs that anything, you know. But it's, it would be, they'd ask you and I to do some radio stuff. I think, yeah, get on the venues. website, they get you halfway there. Everything is going to have a mailing.

They're going to be on social media targeted ads in 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. They're going to charge a 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. Then the guy says, whoa. Proof of concept, yeah. Now we can, guess what?

It was booked. You guys did great. You know, 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. Do you think Orlando or Tampa's a better market for something like this? Orlando, I think. Orlando, we had had people flying in.

Yeah, flights are cheap to Orlando. Oh, okay. I was thinking. I was like Tuesday, 9th. at a comedy club when there's nothing happening there, 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. 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. 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, 1,300, 250. So you could sell out a 250, 250, but 250, 250 guest auditorium at what? 50 months a piece? For a test. What's 50 times 250? Good question.

What's the gross? 250 times 50. 12,500? All 5. Right. Now we charge, actually, for the meat. you can greet afterwards. Yeah.

See sign autographs. They have a t-shirt. That's always horrible. T-shirt canon. We had the comedian, we had that comedian. Carl Remy. Yeah, Carl. And I text him, he'll call, text me right back.

Like, he's obviously got promoters and knows people. I mean, he was working it. Yeah. I understand, but he knows somebody. It's very funny, very funny guy. I like him. But we saw that show and it wasn't really, wasn't really, wasn't, wasn't standing room only exactly.

No. Yeah. It was in a movie theater? Yeah. They closed the theater down. I wonder how many seats are 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. Yeah. 10 people had 10 people. But it wasn't. This was a big theater.

Yeah, but it wasn't packed. Was that one packed? No. 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, is it not John Candy. What's the other guy that died?

He was like John Candy. Chris Farley. Chris Farley's brother. Oh, he's doing stand-up now? Yeah. Any good? 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 act, it's like, it's not good.

Like he's, but it was funny. It was worth the same menu? in the movie theater? But it was packed. That was packed. Farley last name, man. Yeah, just the last name. Packed 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 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 with our lives. You know, and then we'll go talk to a hundred lives.

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 experience than you and I. Well, without question. Yeah.

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. I liked him. I 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 let us know their thoughts on this whole concept.

Yeah. 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. Something. Raymond James Stadium. Is there still Raymond James? Is it still Raymond James? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Let us know what you think. And we're going to leave all of Tom's links in the description box. Please go to all of his social medias and follow and subscribe. Also, thank you very much for watching this show. Appreciate it. See ya. See ya. Nice. You know, you could even test. Yeah, he could even test a lot. Like, I don't mind.

Let's just, just let's just go on it. Yeah. All right, we doing a show? Yeah. Showtime? Yes. Hello, Matt Cox.