Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - FBI AGENT Reveals Untold Story Behind Dr. Love | Tom Simon

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

Matt & Tom unpack the wild true story of “Dr. Love,” a teenage fake doctor whose crimes spiraled until he faced the consequences and was forced to confront the path that nearly destroyed his life.⁣ ⁣ Tom's links⁣ https://www.instagram.com/simoninvestigations/?hl=en⁣ https://www.tiktok.com/@simoninvestigations⁣ https://www.youtube.com/@simoninvestigations⁣ https://www.simoninvestigations.com⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://www.insidetruecrimepodcast.com/apply-to-be-a-guest⁣ ⁣ F*%k your khakis and get The Perfect Jean 15% off with the code COX15 at theperfectjean.nyc/COX15 #theperfectjeanpod ⁣ https://theperfectjean.nyc⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Get 10% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout. ⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ Check out my Dark Docs YouTube channel here -⁣ https://www.youtube.com/@DarkDocsMatthewCox⁣ ⁣ 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⁣ ⁣ CHAPTERS:⁣ 00:00 - The Shocking Rise of “Dr. Love”⁣ 08:10 - FBI Agent Tom Simon Explains the Sentencing Game⁣ 12:55 - The Fake Offshore Bank CD Scam Exposed⁣ 23:05 - Romance Scams, Money Mules & Bitcoin Fraud⁣ 33:35 - The Stolen Antique Violin Heist⁣ 40:35 - Rugby Crypto Mining Ponzi Scheme Collapses⁣ 01:05:45 - Pipe Standoff & a Story of Addiction⁣ 01:12:15 - How Prison Became “Crime Grad School”⁣ 01:14:00 - Using a Teenager in an Armed Bank Robbery⁣ 01:21:30 - FBI Investigates Assault on a Spirit Airlines Flight⁣ 01:30:45 - Murder-for-Hire Plot Unraveled by the FBI⁣ 01:39:45 - The White Supremacist Influencer Taken Down Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Not available in all states. Have you ever wondered why songs on the radio are popular? Why does certain movies get made, even though the premise seems completely random? Why are concert tickets costing you $3,000, but nobody makes any money touring? Well, on my podcast, breaking down the biz, we answer all those questions and more. I'm Seth Schachner. I have over two decades of experience in the entertainment and the music industry, and every week I talk to insiders that lend insight and expertise on the media

you know and love, past, present, and future. Subscribe now on your favorite podcasting platform or watch us on YouTube so you never miss a beat. Let's make sense of this industry together. At age 17, he opened up a clinic and presented himself as Dr. Love. He's a brilliant con artist, but not necessarily a brilliant medical practitioner.

I was wondering what happened. Do you remember the story about a 17-year-old kid here in Florida who pretended to be a doctor? Yes. His name is Malachi Love Robinson. At age 17, he opened up a clinic in West Palm Beach, Florida, called New Birth, New Life Medical Center, and presented himself as Dr. Love. And he's 17?

During this window of time, he was 17, but he turned 18 during the course of his treatment, providing treatments. Not licensed to practice medicine. This is not Dougie Hauser. Yeah. Right? This is not, he's not some, you know, he's perhaps. a brilliant con artist, but not necessarily a brilliant medical practitioner. Real people, Matt Cox, walked through that door to get, and Dr. Love is there, checking their

vitals, giving them medical advice, and he positioned himself as a primary care physician. You know, like you remember, sign on the door and everything. He even made his way into a real hospital, Matt Cox, St. Mary's Medical Center, and he begins interacting with patients posing as a doctor at the hospital itself. After several treatments, the staff begins to look and it's like, who's this guy? And they question him. His credentials were checked and nothing matched, right? And none of it made any sense.

He becomes the focus of an investigation from the Florida Department of Health and Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office who investigate. And they confirm no medical license, no degree, no authority. But it wasn't just the clinic, Matt Cox. In his doctor-love persona, he made him. house calls to an 86-year-old woman and claimed he could treat her, and he sold her off-the-rack natural remedies, and then he used his access to steal from her. Oh, I didn't know all this. The elderly victim lost between $20,000 and $30,000 to young Malachi.

So he gets busted from... Did he help her? Well, the placebo affects a real thing. He gets... He's out on bond on his Florida case, right? Because it gets busted by the sheriff's department. And he sets his sights on Virginia. He goes to a car dealership in Stafford County, Virginia, and attempts to buy a Jaguar

using a different elderly woman's credit information without her knowledge. He doesn't get away with the car. He gets caught. He pleads guilty to state fraud and forgery charges in Florida. I'm sorry, in Virginia. Okay. Now, I'm going to tell you the sentence because this is just an interim stop on his tour. Then we're going to ask you to guess the sentence on the last scam. In Florida,

for pretending he's a doctor, he gets three and a half years in prison. Okay. Again, local crime. In the Virginia case results in an additional one year in prison. Malachi gets out of prison. You can't keep a bad man down, Matt Cox. After his release, he's humbled. He gets a job in Delray Beach, Florida. I hardly believe. I don't believe that. I feel like it's sarcasm. He gets a job in Delray Beach, Florida, okay? And working for a Florida shipping broker. And he launches an embezzlement scheme there, where he begins diverting incoming money to the shipping broker from their customers to bank accounts under his control. We tell these stories a lot when I come on your thing. He gets $10,000 from that company. He pleads guilty again, again in Palm Beach.

County, Florida, and the judge sentences him to a local prison sentence this time. Understanding the doctor scam. Understanding the old lady he ripped off. He does his time there. He gets out. Now we're talking a $10,000 embezzlement case. How much time do you think Malachi got or his third kick of the can? I wonder if he was currently still on probation.

I don't really know how it works. This is state, though. All state. Yeah. It's hard. We mostly do federal cases. and states, sort of weird thing, but the story was too delicious to leave on the, but it is Florida.

Like, they don't, they're not, they lose patience quickly. Malachi has been a thorn in the side of Palm Beach County for a while now. It's only 10,000. It's only 10,000. This is true. It's not the riches of the Orient. He was such a cocky young man, too. Like, he's in TV interviews.

Oh, yeah, he's doing, yeah. He looked like Gary Coleman from different strokes. Yeah, he's, yeah. I remember at one point, I think he was. He told, he was saying, I never told anybody I was a doctor. Like, it's like, it's on the, your plaque on your fucking. It's like a white lab coat in the mirror on his forehead. Like, it's, it's, it's, your plaques with the doctor.

Like, what are you talking about? MD. I don't know. I don't, I don't think he would have got much for the 10,000, even with the other stuff, because it's only 10,000. Maybe, like, 15 months? No, let's say, what, a year and a half? 18 months?

18 months. A year and a half in prison for embezzling $10,000. Exactly. 10,000. Even what I'm saying, 18 months because of the previous crimes. Right. What I'm saying,

what I'm saying? That's worth 18 months in prison. It's $10,000. I mean, unfortunately, it's $10,000. I'm not disagreeing with you. I just want you to be comfortable with your guess. Yeah, I think 18 months. But your final answer, man.

Yes. Okay. The correct answer is 28 months in prison. Fuck. Actually, I think in the year and a half, does that, I think that gets you there in the Colby rule within one year. It was in a year. Oh.

Yeah. Look at how upset. The best part about it is how upset you are. I'm not upset. I'm thrilled that you're doing well in your own game show. Colby. Malachi is a Florida man. This guy seems very getable on your show.

He has a story to tell. We tried. Had we? Well, we just, just the last month, I remember I sent it to you. And yes, should we have Jess try to find him? So. I think. If only you knew a great private investigator in Florida who could find him for you and provide you with his name, address, phone number, and email address.

Yeah, the problem is, so that a lot of times, like Jess will say, well, what about Tom? And I think, I don't want to, I don't want to bother you. I would like to see the Malachi love episode of Inside True Graham and Matt Cox so much that I'll do this one for free. How hilarious would that be for him. I'd be like, come on, what are you doing? Stop it. Stop it. This guy's amazing.

Oh, but you don't understand. But no, I understand. This guy's amazing. The delusion that you're going to be able to continue to get away with it. The problem is at some point, he's young, he goes in. He hasn't had a hard experience yet. He hasn't got a lot of time yet. So at some point, something will happen, and he'll get a 15-year sentence.

And he'll be like, I don't understand. I did this and got a couple years. and this and got a couple years. The pitch you do to this kid is you say, kid, you got an amazing story to tell. America has fallen in love with your story. This is the proper venue to tell it for you to get a book deal, sell your life rights, get a movie made.

You are a young Frank Abagnale, but your story is real. Yeah, exactly. And this is the place to make it take off because you've got a million viewers, and he just needs to drive two or three hours with his ankle monitor on. Yeah.

Yeah. Because, yeah, he's got. a problem. I'll find this guy. He has to figure out how to, how to redirect that, that energy into something else, because it's not like he's going to go get a fucking job at McDonald's. He might for a little bit. Anyone who Googles his name is not going to hire him now, especially after the embezzling. You can't trust him. Right. So he needs to monetize his historic stories, and, and you're the proper venue for him to do that. Hit me up. We'll make this happen here.

All right. Let's talk about the game show, because I know you're growing your channel, and it just keeps growing and growing and growing. And maybe this is the first time people have seen us together. You normally have people on your show who are either criminals or have a story to tell about crime and you kind of walk them through their story and you're very good at it. And you've developed a lot of a huge following for that. But once a month or so, you bring me into the studio and I'm a retired FBI agent currently working as a licensed private investigator here in Florida. And what I do is we switch it up a little bit and I kind of host the show and I come in with 12 different crime stories, true crime stories, most of which are from the FBI's perspective.

some of which I worked, others are other agents cases. I tell you the entire crime story from beginning to end, and then you Matt Cox need to guess what the sentence is for these bad guys. And if you're within 25% or one year, the actual sentence, you get a point. If you hit it on the head, you get two points. And the idea is for you to get at least 50% of the available points correct during the course of the show. If that happens, you win. If that doesn't happen, you lose.

I am not a contestant in this thing. I'm just hosting, and I'm not trying to trick you. I just want you to do well. That's a lie. That's not true. And on top of that, you're a professional because you just won a game show. I mean, you just won a game show.

I did. I was just on a game show on ABC television called The Greatest Average American, hosted by comedian Nate Bargazzi. It's now available streaming on Hulu. It's episode eight, if you want to watch. And I competed against two other contestants in a quiz show format to win the money

from an average American salary for one year, which is $67,000. Nice, right? Yeah, it was a good experience. Yeah, I guess. I guess. Have you watched my episode? No.

Do you have a Hulu at home? No, I don't have it. It's on Hulu? Yeah. No. Hulu's on by Disney. ABC's owned by Disney. It's a whole thing.

I used to have Hulu. When I was in half of the house, I had it. Listen, you get the real thing every month right here. This is the cash register. So don't worry about it. But I played really, really poor. and I still won. I love it much.

So the story that Tom told us off air was that when it started, he was like, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to rake up. I'm going to rake up. He said, and then you said, like, the first question you lost. Round one is four questions. I got the first three wrong. I was walking into the last question with zero points. The girls were kicking my ass.

He was like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. I'm going to lose this fucking thing. I thought that was funny. And then you came back. It was the most terrifying thing in the world. It was like a freight train was headed at me, three questions. And I had gotten all three wrong.

There's only four questions in round one. And I needed to put a point on the board to make it to round two. And I'm just watching my reputation as kind of a smart guy go down the toilet. Yeah, it was terrifying. Anyway, but let's not talk about that game show. Let's play our game show. When people talk about offshore banking, what comes to mind? What's the vibe?

trying to put out there. And is it a thing? It is a, you can offshore bank, you can send money to a bank in the Cayman Islands or in St. Kitts or whatever. I think people, the misunderstanding is that they think by doing that it somehow shields the money and that the government, the U.S. government doesn't, they don't even know you have the money. And they don't know, that's not true.

They notify them that, hey, he does have, there's a bank account. They might say not how much, but they'll, they'll, they'll, they'll, they'll, they'll, I think at the end of the year, they still say, hey, this is how much interest it generated or something. There's still a reporting criteria involved in having an offshore bank. So as soon as that happens, I immediately think, okay, well, then what's the point? And I do understand we've had a guy on here who would set up corporations and those corporations would open up offshore banks. And that was not in your name. And so he had a whole system, but he also, I think he got charged with money laundering.

So it's like, if you can get it to a point where it's not attached to you and all you have is, like the debit card, it ends up potentially being money laundering, you know. So I don't know. I mean, so that's my understanding where I just feel like, okay, I mean, shit, if that's the case, why don't you just open up a corporation here and open a bank here? Like, well, why do you have to go offshore? I trust an American bank more than I do some Cayman Island bank that could go under and just they take your money.

There's a revolution in some, you know. Yeah, it was Panama. Yeah. Yeah, I got $100 million in a Panamanian bank. And one day they say, ah, we're going to nationalize all that and we're taking all this money. It's not without risk. What do you do?

Right. But I think for a lot of people who are involved in crime or even investments, the idea of an offshore bank. It's sexy. It is sexy. It makes you feel like you're getting away with something. Yeah. Right. And that's exactly what Joseph Sullivan was selling to his investors.

He was a kind of a low-level grifter in Honolulu. And I was assigned the case to investigate him because what he was doing was he was going around to people in Hawaii who he knew and trusted, oh, here's an interesting thing. He was part of the Rotary Club. What do you know about Rotary Clubs? I mean, are there still Rotary Clubs? There are. And they're pretty benevolent.

They have a, you know, they're just like a bunch of businessmen that get together? Yeah, to trade ideas and try to see is this beneficial for all of us? And they have these credos and they raise money for charity and all that. So a Rotary Club, because there's so much trust and it's so built on ethics, becomes an opportunity for an affinity fraud, right? Where people trust fellow Rotarians. I've had several cases involving Rotarians, taking advantage of other Rotarians. That's not to say the Rotary Club's bad.

It just means that the bad guys know that that's a target-rich environment for them. And that's what Joe Sullivan does. He's part of the Hawaii Chi Rotary Club in Honolulu. And he began offering his fellow Rotarians and people that he knew investments in offshore bank certificates of deposit that paid 15% to 20% per year. Okay. And again, because people have romanticized offshore banks, whereas a CD, if you went to Bank of Hawaii and got it, it's going to pay 1% if you're lucky. CDs aren't paying much of anything these days. And so people are really excited to give him money in exchange for CDs from the First Bank of the Marshall Islands and other exotic sounding financial institutions from small little islands in the Pacific Theater. What they didn't know is that Joe was producing these CDs at home on his. his computer.

There was no first credit union of the Marshall Islands or anything like that. He would literally take money from a victim, go home, create a CD, and give them this piece of paper, as if it was something of value. Right. Don't lose this. Put this in your secure safety. This is a bearer instrument in your money's on deposit there, and it's earning 15 to 20% per year, which is pretty good investment.

Because if you're getting 15% on your money and it's compounding, you're going to double your money every five years. That's the way the math works on 15%. It's a magic number. When you've had a seal. Seal always makes it feel official. Oh, yeah, yeah. It had the bumpy seal. Oh, nice. Nice. Boss. Yeah, he went to office max, got the bumpy seal. And so when people started trying to get their money back and he's like, listen, you don't want to do that. The early withdrawal penalties are just too high. Eventually they contact the- And I have to go to jail. Eventually it lands on my desk. I look into it. There's no basis in reality. for this stuff. I'm looking at Joe's bank account. It's going in his personal bank account and getting

spent on just kind of living expenses and all that. But he was able to take in $1.8 million from victims over a couple years. You're very trusting in Hawaii. Yeah. Well, he's a Rotarian. They trust each other. And so I remember the day, and so I go to Joe's house. It's two little sub-stories before we get to a sentence. Go to Joe's house, knock on the door. He's not there. I leave my business card because he was living with some old. lady who was actually a victim of his, who put him up in her high-rise condo near Waikiki. He calls me back. I said, Joe, listen, I need to talk to you about just a couple of things. Can you come into my office? We'll talk. He comes in without a lawyer, thank heavens,

and sit down with him in an interview room, and I begin kind of leaning into him. I had my confession already written out that I wanted him to sign. And I said, Joe, listen, this is a real problem here, these CDs. I know that you're creating them and that these are. And he goes, no, these are real banks. He goes, but I've incorporated these banks on these island nations. And so I am the bank of the Marshall Islands. I said, yeah, but that's not how it works, man.

And he goes, no, no, they've given me the money. I am the bank. I owe them 15 to 20%. I'm not denying that, that I owe them this money. I just don't have it right now. I said, but Joe, when you tell somebody that they're buying a bank, a CD, it's, there's an implication that there's a brick and mortar bank there that's involved in banking business, like making loans and investing that money, because that's how banks work. What was he investing the money in? I was investing somebody like scratch off lottery tickets and stuff. I don't know what he was doing. He's just living large.

I got this shirt. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. My vehicle, I went to dinner last time. My credit cards got paid off. They're investing in me. Yeah. That's, that was his already. argument to me. And I go, okay, well, maybe we can agree to disagree about whether this is right, but I think we can both agree that you owe them this money. And do you intend to pay this money back sometime? He goes, yeah, okay, all right, well, I have a little statement here. And I take the statement and I turn it around. And I go, let's walk through this together. And it just went through

everything. You know, the money was given to me. I told them that I failed to tell them this and this and this and this. And so he signed the confession. And he goes, where does this go from here. I go, Joe, I don't know, but I, but this doesn't, this is not good. And I go, now you're going to get a very honest opinion. Here's what happens. I have this wise time confession. So I'd go to a photo, I say, wait here, I go to a photocopy machine. I make a photocopy of the confession he just signed. At the time, the FBI was in the federal building where the federal courthouse is in Honolulu. Eventually we moved to our own office. I go, come with me, Joe. I think what you need is an attorney. Do you have the money for an attorney? A defense attorney? He goes, no, I don't. I'm broke now.

And I go, no problem. Come with me. And I walk him to the federal defender's office. We knock on the door to the federal defender's office. We go in. I'm standing there with Joe. Now, the federal defenders all know me because I was making a lot of cases in Honolulu. And like, what's going on, Tom?

I go, this is Joe Sullivan. He needs a criminal defense attorney. And so I remember a attorney comes out and like, what do you mean? He's the focus of one of my investigations. And we've come to that point where he needs a criminal defense attorney to kind of walk him through this. And she goes, okay, I guess I can meet with you in my officer. And I go, one thing you need is this. And I hand her the confession that he had just signed.

The ink is still wet on it, a photocopy of it. She looks at it. She goes, what's this? I go, it's the statement he just signed. I think it'll get you up to speed on what the case is about. And you can see her face. She looks at me like, you are such an asshole, Tom. And she goes, thank you.

And so Joe now has a criminal defense attorney. And then one day I get a call. Again, in a federal building, it's lovely because everything's in one place. Yeah. There's the passport office on the ground floor. I get a call from someone in the passport office that I knew. We said, we got a weird passport application for a guy who wants a passport.

I think, I think there's something about it that doesn't look right. Can you come take a look at it? I go down there. Joe had gone to the passport office to get a passport under a fake name. And I'm looking at it. And his photo is there on it. And I go, I know this guy. I go, he just signed a confession a week ago to me.

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And so they call him. He comes in. He's sitting in a conference room, and I walk into the conference room, and he looked like, oh, my God, he got caught again. So this time we actually arrest him for the passport fraud. I thought you were going to sit down and have a conversation. So is that what happened? You're like, okay, well, I have a, I have a statement. No, he was going in, he was,

I think David Allen was the name on the passport. And he was explaining to me, it's not a fake name. It's my pseudonym. And he goes, I write articles for financial magazines and the name David Allen and I wanted a passport. I go, you wanted a passport so you could skip town because you know that you're in trouble. We put the cuffs on and we bring him to the jail. And so he ends up pleading guilty to both the investment fraud for the $1.8 million and the passport fraud for attempting to get a passport under a fake name, which kind of makes sure he's not getting out during this window of time.

And he had a decent criminal history for kind of small grifts, like bad checks and stuff. like that. So let's say criminal history category two, how much time are you going to give to one of my favorite con artists, Joe Sullivan, 1.8 million was the CD scam, plus the passport, plus a criminal history. I just, I really love the fact that he just was still trying to spin you when he's looking at, like, listen, the moment the FBI or the authorities walk in, like, I'm just like, it's over. That's the thing with you con artist, though. You think he could talk yourself out of anything because that's your skill. I have. I mean, I've, I've done it when, like, the detective came in, right? But I mean, the detective has no, he's calling me, when they

walk in, they're like, calling you Gary Sullivan. You're like, okay, I've got the biggest hurdle out of the way. So now it's just confusing the situation. But with him, it's obvious. You're like, I've got you. Yeah. I mean, 36 months? 36 months. Three years for 1.8 million. hours with no financial recovery. Yeah, 36 months. But you said he's got some minor thing. Is his criminal history? What's in criminal history category, too?

Oh. Because again, he had, he was kind of a con artist. I think his crimes were mostly like bad checks and forgeries and things like that, like state crimes. And I'm not saying 36 months as a bad guess. 41. I'll go 41 months. 41 months.

That's the most. 41 months. 41 months. There's no way against us any more than 41. months. Okay, so three years, five months. Yeah. Okay. So it's your final answer, Matt. Yes. The correct answer is 55 months. So I think you missed that by a couple months on the one-year rule. Or unless it's in there than 25 percent. So what's 80 percent of 55? It's 75 percent, right? Oh, you're right. So 75 percent of 55 is 41.25. But you guess 41. So unfortunately, you're off by

two months. Oh, no, not even two months, a week. A week. A week. This is some bullshit. When you hear the term money mule, what do you think? Someone who, you know, someone who moves money from one place to another with, for some illegal organization.

Okay. Like a money launderer? No, because I was thinking of that going through the bank. I think of a mule is like somebody who's trying to get cash into Mexico or, you know, or trying to get cash, you know, from whatever, from China into the United States. Like, they're moving physical cash. I don't think of it as, as. Yeah, yeah, that's what I think about.

Am I wrong? No, no, no. I think that's the history of being a money mule. Money mules have kind of changed as far as the internal FBI term money mule. Because a lot of people out there get ripped off in scams involving, like, romance scams or work from home scams, where their job is to receive money in the mail, cash in the mail from what they think it's legitimate business, but it's actually crime victims, and then to turn that money into cryptocurrency or go to Western Union and wire it to your

employer in Nigeria. But the middlemen, these money mules, are unwitting money launderers. Right. I was going to say, I feel like that's money laundering. It is, but they don't know that they're getting stolen proceeds because they think their legitimate proceeds from either their boyfriend or a work from home job. How can people believe that? Oh, my God, man.

I've talked to hundreds who believe that. They're mostly little old ladies. And I'm not saying they're smart. I'm saying that it's a real problem for us because they're moving a lot of money for bad guys. And they think they're doing it legitimately. So we created it at the FBI as a money mule letter where we would go to them, explain to them that what they're doing is illegal. Give them a letter and say, if you continue doing this, you now have the consciousness. of guilt. You no longer have the luxury of saying that you thought this was legitimate, because

we are notifying you right here right now that the activity you are doing is illegal. Okay. Okay. So there was a lonely Massachusetts lady named Betty. She found love, Matt Cox. Nice. It's nice to find love. Online with a guy named Charles.

Super handsome dude. Super charming, dude. Wasn't Keanu Reeves? No. And over the course of their long distance romance, Charles manipulated Betty with elaborate it lies to turn her into an unwitting money launderer. Charles created, this guy Charles, created romance scam profiles to charm not only Betty, but five other lady victims.

He remains back in Nigeria, working this lonely heart scam like a digital puppet master. Okay. The women, believing that they were doing a favor for their fictitious online boyfriend, it would wire money to Betty, to her bank account, and Betty, believing that she was helping her boyfriend with his business, would forward it to Charles in Bitcoin. You get the flow of money? Mm-hmm.

Okay. We're not talking nickels and dimes here, Matt Cox. Charles was able to extract $2.5 million from these ladies, and every dime of it was converted to Bitcoin by Betty, who sent it along as she was told. Okay. The banks notified the FBI who gains the cooperation of Betty. Okay, I've been, I've had dozens of those conversations where you're trying to deprogram these ladies and explain that this is not your boyfriend.

This is, this is a con artist who happens to be in Nigeria. It's not just Nigeria. I love Nigerians, best people. But this happens a lot with Nigerians. It also happens with Indians. It also happens with China and Ukraine and other countries. What Nigeria? Foreigners.

foreigners. There have been bad guys here in the U.S. who commit frauds. Maybe you know a few. They're misunderstood. I'm just saying that Nigeria is a very big country, and there's a lot of people out there who don't commit fraud who are saddled with this reputation, and it's not right. It's just not right. Oh, my God. All right. Two and a half million in Nigeria. Do you think this guy can just pull off this one-time scam and just live off that forever? Yeah, he's probably paying off officials. He's paying. off. But yeah. Oh, can you imagine what a million dollars in Nigeria is really? It's worth seven million. Having been on the agent's side of this, these cases are very difficult and frustrating because even if you figure out which Nigerian is behind the scam, Nigeria is hesitant to serve up their own citizens to the U.S. authorities for trial. Yeah. I'm not saying

that the Nigerian government, the Nigerian government realized that they have a reputational problem on their hands. They've become much better actually lately at enforcing these fraud laws. internally and cooperating with the FBI, but it's drinking from a firehouse. But the FBI agents are in working with our legal attache at the American Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, were able to identify who it was. And the bad guy was Charles, Uchena, Noadavid. His real name was Charles? Yeah.

Yeah. Why not, if you're going to be Charles, be Charles. When I was undercover, I was always dumb. Yeah. Feels like he was protected. He definitely felt protected. Yeah. The problem is Charles is safely in Nigeria beyond the grasp of the FBI, but they know who he is. So they put a warrant on the books for his arrest, should he happen to come to the U.S.

And gosh darn it, that's exactly what he did. Really? On his own, he flies into Dallas, Texas. Okay. To do, heaven knows what. No one's more surprised than, like, you know, immigration and customs at the border when they run his name and ID and passport. And they see that he's wanted by the FBI. They put the cuffs on him right there to lock him up.

He ends up pleading guilty to fraud and money laundering charges. Okay. What's interesting is that no money was recovered, and it's probably just sitting there in his Bitcoin wallet, a couple million bucks waiting for him to get out of prison after he serves a sentence where he'll be deported right back to Nigeria. Growing and growing and growing. Or shrinking and shrinking, however the value, whichever way the value of Bitcoin goes

over the course of his sentence. The question for you, though, is how long is that sentence? We got five victims plus... How is it? We have five victims plus Betty, the money-winning money launderer, $2.5 million.

Betty does not get in trouble, but Betty is admonished to never, ever do this again. How long before Charles gets to go back to Nigeria and enjoy his life as a Nigerian millionaire? How long do you, the American taxpayer, want to pay for his care and feeding

before we send him back to Nigeria. I need the guideline so I can actually find out with the low-win. Yeah, wouldn't that be a fun game or you just get to put together the jigsaw puzzle? I'm asking you to guess the sentence. But I know that I think, I want to say 51 months. He doesn't have a criminal history in the United States, but I'm sure there's an enhancement for stealing or having money while. I'm sure they hit him with some enhancements.

Well, you get hit by money laundering. I mean, not only fraud, I'm going to say 51 months. I think 51 months is reasonable. So 51 months is where you're going with this? Yeah. All right. Well, let's move this thing. forward, 51 months is your guess. The correct answer is 24 months. That is some bullshit. That's some

bullshit. I just think the decision gets made on how long, what's the goal here? What are we trying to do? I mean, the guidelines are, they're supposed to kind of help balance the fairness. I love the guidelines back when the judges had to stay within the lines. Yeah, the Supreme Court said they're just advisory. And all the judges said, hip, hip, hooray, we now have our authority back. And now the sentences are all over the map. I wonder what he was coming to America for. Was any of his girlfriends located in Dallas? We never found out.

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Fuck your khakis. Get the perfect gene. Do you have any musical talents here of growing up playing any musical instruments at all? piano or anything like that? I'm not. I have very, I'm not athletically talented. I am not musically and talented. You ever took piano lessons?

No. You never picked up a guitar and thought I'm going to meet some girls? No, no. Never tries? I mean, I think I've had buddies who had, when I was 14 years old, I had a couple buddies that thought they were all going to be in a band. They hadn't, you know, but I'm, look at my fingers. It's not possible.

I tried to do little, fat little chubby things. It's not. I got a guitar. And when I was in college, and I thought, this is going to be it for me. I'm going to be a rock star. And I bought it a Mel Bay book, which had the chords for like Beatles songs where you learn like strump.

I must be the biggest sissy. It hurt my fingers so much, putting those, pushing those wires down. I would get these like bruises on my fingers and they would cut into you. They have, you know,

they build up calluses. My goodness. I had no talent for that. Let's talk about violins. You had to play an instrument. Would violin be on your, how high would that be? No,

I don't think it would be violent. Be like a fiddler? No. Play a bluegrass band? No. Play the, what is it? The, is it the, oh man, what do they call it? The soap thing where they could, boom, boom, boom.

It's the, up, they flip a tub upside down. It's the boom boom. With you and your jug band? Yeah, exactly. The guy with the big, blowing in the jug. All right. Well, our subject is 50 seconds. It was tambourines.

I had it. Yeah. You're a background singer. Our subject is 57-year-old Mark Meng, M-E-N-G of Irvine, California. And he aspired to criminal greatness. They could be another great guest on your show. He claimed to be a wealthy collector of 200-year-old violins. And he contacted rare violin dealers.

He convinced the dealers, and I can't believe this is the way the industry works, to allow him to take the instruments home for a couple of days, to test them before purchasing, like when you're going to go drive a Chevy. And so they give him violins five in all with a cumulative value of these rare 200-year-old violins of $350,000. And Mark just bolts, just doesn't return the violins.

Steals the violins, okay? These are antiques. He takes them to Los Angeles. Where was he? He was in Irvine. So he goes to L.A., and he sells them to another dealer who was unaware that those violins,

were hot. Following? Okay. So the FBI has the art crime team. I was going to say our art, art is, it sounds great, but it's very difficult to get rid of, like, people like, well, go steal a Van Gogh. Okay, you're not getting rid of a van go, bro. You're going to have a real problem. Right, right.

I'm sure violins are probably easier to move, but it's just still going to be a problem. FBI is investigating. Mark learns that the feds are on his tail. He gets a call from somebody who knows. Hey, they're asking questions about you. So he decides to do what any logical person would do after you've committed a $350,000 theft, he puts on a mask, goes into a bank, and demands $18,000 cash from a teller with a note.

Perfectly reasonable, perfectly logical can move, right? I mean, 18? Not 19, not 17. I'm going to need 18. He tells the, he tells the teller to, one thing I like about it is that when he, in his bank, when he robbed the bank, he told the teller to be cool. be cool yeah exactly

so he's clearly a homie the teller did not have 18 grand in her drawer but she gave him what she could and he made his getaway in a white minibam now despite wearing gloves during the robbery

the police were able to develop a fingerprint on the bank robbery note that's where you go wrong right you write the bank robbery note you try not to touch that stuff yeah exactly

because it's pretty easy to bring a fingerprint up from paper and they match that bank robbery note to Mark, the police and the FBI go to his house to arrest him. They find him at home alone with the white minivan getaway car parked in the driveway. Okay. So Mark gets charged federally with wire fraud for the violin scam and the bank robbery itself. Okay. I feel like he could have been one of the greats. But now he's just another chump in a jumpsuit. Yeah. Right. So I'm curious,

though, how much time if you're the, do you think the judge gave old Mark? How much did he get for the violins? $350,000. And the bank robbery was some amount less than $18,000. Did the violins get returned? Yeah, I think they were able to unwind those. And does that matter in sentencing? It might matter for restitution, but not for sentencing.

Again, if I'm, it's sort of, the guy who bought the violins in good faith really is the one who got screwed in this thing. So I guess he owes restitution to that guy. Yeah. That's the guy you got 350. thousand bucks from. How much were the violence worth? Well, he sold it for $3.50. You know, these

things are priceless. Yeah, yeah. Like, it's... What are you going to go with? Yeah, we're going to go with $350. So it's really the bank robbery, is the problem. So let's say, I'm going to say... No weapon was brandished. Yeah, yeah, 41 months. 41 months in prison. Yeah, I know a guy that

robbed two banks with a note. He got 36 months. You're more offended by the bank robbery than you are the violin scam? Um, no, I just think, I, I think I have more, I think that they take the, the bank robbery more serious than the, because then the bank, than the, um, violin scam. Even though I understand it's a higher dollar amount, that 350,000, like, you could get probation for 350. You could maybe get six months at the most for 350. If you don't have any additional charges. And so let's say, so I'm saying he's, he's, He's under a year on the 350.

You know, anybody's pleading guilty. They'll probably run them concurrent. So I'm more concerned. I think that's more serious to the two is the bank robbery. He did use a note. So he's not going to get like five or ten years. He's going to get like three years. So, but you also have the other one.

So let's say, let's say 41 months. 41 months. Final answer? Yeah. Those of you playing at home, please lock in your answers. The correct answer is 46 months. Got it. Pushing it.

I know you. tweaked it a little, you threw a little tweak in there. You were trying to maybe... I did nothing to get something. I just wanted you, I wanted to, I like to hear your thought process, and I'm sure that the audience wants to hear your thought process. Whenever I feel like, well, I don't understand. What do you do?

I mean, what we tell a story? Does Jess will bring up the story thing? I'm like, and then I'll say, yeah, it's 36 months. And Tom will go, well, let me, let me hear your thought process on that. Okay, so there's 57 victims. Okay, okay, 17 million. And you think, and you're okay. Like, does that seem...

I'm not trying to change your mom. And then I said, then I doubt it and I go, okay, uh, uh, yeah, yeah, 56 months. And I, and then he turns to go to go to the next one. I go, well, wait, how much was it? And he goes, 36 months. And it's like, everybody's like, ah, and it's like, he's, he just, my bride finds this delightful as well. Jess finds it hilarious.

Yeah. So we've done four questions. How was he doing? Uh, two of four. All right. You're at 50%. Oh, you're in the league. This is much more fair.

This, this new system. Oh, with, with the giant amount of time that you're allowed to be wrong on it? Yeah. Maybe we'll do a multiple choice some show. All right. I know you were not a big athlete, but do you have much contact with rugby people, rugby players in the sport of rugby? I could confidently say there's a 90% chance. I probably even never met a rugby player. Rugby's culture is very unique among sports. RBC Training Ground has discovered potential in over 20,000 Canadian athletes and counties. Your story could be next.

If you've got the drive, they'll help you find your path to the Olympics. Let's see what you've got. Sign up for free at rBC training ground.ca. They're rough guy, rough and tell me. Yeah, I would have liked rugby because it's not, it's very violent. There's a lot of hitting. There's not a lot of pads. There's a physicality to rugby that's attractive to me.

I just never had an opportunity to play rugby. It's more European thing, right? It's bigger in Europe, but it's also kind of very big among colleges. And then there's kind of like rugby clubs. Okay. Weird, and this has nothing. We're going to talk about rugby as an affinity fraud and like rugby people trusting each other.

There's a weird cultural thing with rugby. And I'd love for people to weigh in this in the comments if they're like involved with rugby. I went on a spring break trip during college that was like one of those prepackaged spring break trips with like a cruise and you're all staying in a resort together and all that in the Bahamas. And the Clemson where I went to college rugby team was also there. And they were hooking up with a bunch of other.

rugby teams. Rugby dudes, they party hard. Yeah. Right. And, um, and nice, nicest guys in the world one on one, but they party really hard and get really rowdy. But there's something about rugby culture where they like to get naked and streak during parties. And like, like, we went on like a booze cruise with the rugby team and they were all like, within like an hour and a half, absolutely naked with their dongs out, jumping off like the top deck of the boat into the ocean. And they just love getting naked. I've never heard this. Yeah.

So this is part of the rugby culture that I would not have kind of latched on too because I'm sober. But Shane Moore was a former semi-pro rugby player. I guess that's a thing. I don't understand what semi-pro means. I feel like either you're getting paid or you're not, but it's a thing. Anyway, and he began soliciting investments, including from rugby players, which makes it kind of an affinity fraud because people trust people in their affinity group. Yeah. offering huge investment returns of 1% per day in his investment program, which involved

crypto mining. Do you know what crypto mining is? Yeah, they buy these, what are the processors or whatever? It sounds like a supercomputer that uses a lot of energy that does the kind of math behind Bitcoin. And as a result of doing that, you know, it's a lot of energy costs involved as well as the hardware. It creates a bit of Bitcoin. You're creating Bitcoin for yourself.

It's called crypto mining. And he said he would be using investor funds to buy these high-powered crypto mining computers. My brother has one set up in his house. Brother, don't get me started. That would generate consistent Bitcoin profits. Okay, so 1% a day. Pretty good investment, right? Wouldn't you like to make 1% a day, Matt Cox?

Yeah, that's great. Here's the problem. And the shocker, he never bought a single Bitcoin mining machine with the money he took him. He raised $900,000 from $400,000. from 40 different victims. Wow. Many of whom were in his rugby community, but some were family members,

some were friends, across five different states. And he used new money to pay off the old investors at their investment returns in what we call a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme.

That's the definition of a Ponzi scheme. Then he's also taking a good bit of that money because there's plenty left over for himself. Right. Works for a while. Expensive apartments. He was into designer luggage. What is that a thing?

It's a thing. Some people got expensive suitcases. He liked his luggage. Fancy electronics. I don't really know what that means. I'm a really good iPad. Only the best for Shane. Shane is,

he likes the best. So what happens with Ponzi schemes eventually? Eventually, it collapses. Why do they collapse? It collapse because you can't pay back the old, You can't collect new investors fast enough to pay off the old investors. And eventually it's just kind of mushrooms and collapses. Exactly what happened.

And then what happens is the victims who aren't getting their 1% per day returns as promise begin calling the FBI, my former colleagues, in Seattle, Washington. I feel like rugby players are not the guys you want to owe money to. He's just some tough dudes. They're like they're physical people. They don't need pads to hit you really. Shit coming over to your house, Shane. Yeah. And so, yeah, so the FBI does their investigation.

They realize that there was no real crypto mining business, and he was just using the funds to bankroll himself and pay back other people. So let's talk about the Ponzi math, because that's significant for you. So he takes in $900,000, but he returned, but investors only lost $400,000 because he took $500,000 of that money and used it to create the illusion of investment returns. So the net loss to investors is $400,000. Make sense? Right, yeah. Okay, because that's, and that's how the federal sentencing guidelines are computed. I disagree with that.

I think it should be computed. The 900? I think the gross should be it, but I don't get to make those decisions. The Supreme Court has ruled on this, and they never asked my opinion. So you think it, because of the potential loss? No, because I have stolen $900,000 from you. Just because I decide to kind of continue this fraud by giving some back to you, I shouldn't get credit in my sentencing for that.

I should be on the hook for the entire dollar amount. But nobody listens to me. Who the hell am I? Yeah. That's how I feel. By the way, because that's when my sentence was... It was the gross loss. It was a gross loss.

And, of course, my lawyer tried to argue, Your Honor. A lot of that money went right back to his co-defendants. They went to pay mortgage payments and went to buy other property. And the judge's like, yeah, I think he got the line share of it. Yeah. I know. You got screwed, dude. So wrong.

Yeah, so he only got to enjoy 400,000 of this money. That's what the sentencing guy. were based on. That's what the judge considers that sentencing. I will give you a clue before you guess the sentence. At the sentencing hearing, the judge went on at length about the emotional and psychological damage Shane caused to his victim investors. This wasn't just about financial harm for the judge. How many victims? Forty victims. I have a question. When it's an infinity fraud, that's kind of when it's like their group of trust. Yeah. Now does that enhance any sentencing? No. And then what is the ranges, like, victim-wise?

Like, is it zero to five? In the sentencing guidelines? Yeah. I think it's 25 or more than 100 or more. Okay. I think it starts at, like, five. I think it's like 10. I think it's zero to 10, and then it's 25, and then it's 50, and then it goes up to 100.

And then it's... It's been a while, yeah. I could be wrong. And then there's another enhancement if you're using mass marketing to market your investment fraud, but I don't get the impression he was. But we have 40 victims. It needs to. He's got the club of guys. One guy tells another guy.

40 victims over five states who ended up with a net loss of 400,000. Psychological damage, emotional damage, Matt Cox. How much time you're going to give Shane Moore the rugby guy? The fact that the judge hated his guts is, you know, tells you. He might have been on a cruise where rugby guys were jumping around with their dongs out. Maybe, I don't know, do you play guilty? Did he have trial? Maybe 24 months?

24 months? Two years? You think that's, you think that's too much? I'm just asking. Yeah. I mean, this is, I mean, he took, he took $900,000 under false pretenses. He gave some of it back. The guidelines say 400,000.

I get it, but we're also talking 40 victims. And emotional and psychological damage. That's not an enhancement. I'm telling you. The guidelines are advisory. Oh my God. So you're saying he got hammered. I am saying that I want you to consider the facts before you make your final answer.

41 months. 41 months in prison. For Shane Moore. Yes. Is it possible you can start a rugby club in prison? Do they allow you to play physical sports like that? No, they don't. They do have football, but it's flag football.

Oh, yeah. Pickle ball? Probably these days, right? They probably do now. They didn't back then. They had handball. All right. So your guess is?

Let's say 41 months. Final answer? Boy, if you moved me off 24 months. You know what? 24 months. You go out of 24 months? I'm going with 24 months. I think you should trust your answer.

Okay. Let me pull myself together. What's your real guess? 24 months. 24 months. The correct answer is 30 months in prison. That's within a year. You got it.

I think we talked once about the fact that you may not have spent much time in Philadelphia. Have you ever been to a town called Pittston, Pennsylvania? Pennsylvania. I don't know if I've ever been to Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is a world. weird state, because it has two very distinct major cities that could not be more culturally different, different, right? Philadelphia reminds me culturally more like New Jersey, New York, right? Kind of a very urban, kind of gritty town. Then you have Pittsburgh on the other side,

which is really Appalachia, right? Steelworkers and people like that. And with, and they both have these rabid sports teams. And they're just, that, that state is strange bedfellows with each other. Like the Steelers or something? Yeah, yeah, the Steelers versus like the Eagles on the other and, yeah. Jess has been to Pennsylvania several kids. She has family up there. There's a church in Pittston, Pennsylvania. The first Baptist church of Pittston, Pennsylvania.

The history of this church, I looked into this because I thought it was fascinating, goes back to 1769. This church has been around. Wow. With the kind of continuous operations. And the back office of this church for many, many years, was handled by a woman, a 62-year-old woman, Gail Nassavage. One thing that impressed me about this church is that it's integrated very nicely.

Like the communities, African American and white, and you don't see that a whole lot in churches. Probably the most segregated hour of America is when everybody goes to their different churches. But this church is really, there's a place. People liked this church. It was a good place to be. Anyway, Gail, in her capacity, is the church administrator. She had access to the accounting records of the church, as well as the church's bank account and credit cards. What's wrong with that, Matt Cox?

She has, it's too much, too much responsibility or power in one person's, because they're able to write the checks and oversee the checks and nobody's questioning them and cover it up in the accounting records, right? Yeah, yeah. It's too much. You need to have somebody to double check everything. You're 100% right, man. This is a dangerous level of control to enlist in one person.

But Gail was trusted, Matt Cox. She was this trusted, blue-haired, lovely lady. And that trust ended up costing the church some big money. We'll talk about why. So the mechanics, Gail ran a fraud scheme. Pretty unsophisticated. She uses the church's credit card for her own expenses, and she begins cutting unauthorized payroll bonus checks to herself.

She covers up her embezzlement in the accounting software, making these look like legitimate expenses of the church. Okay. Same story we've told before here. How she spent the money was kind of interesting, though, a little different. Over a 20-month period, she used the church's credit card for $34,000 in personal purchases from Amazon and to buy flowers and to rent movies online. She'd like movies.

I like movies too. There did not appear to be any extraordinary need for money here, right? She's not doing this to feed an addiction or anything like that. It was a crime of opportunity. Now, the check fraud side of this thing was a lot bigger, and it brought her total embezzlement up to $184,000. That's the number you want to keep in your head. Oh, over how long?

20 months. Okay. Okay. But the majority of the money that was from the, the, the checks was going to sports gambling on fan duel and draft kings. Right. She's betting on sports. Probably the Pittsburgh Steelers. What the hell? How old is this woman? She is 62. This is old, blue-haired church lady. Church lady out there gambling. I think you're misunderstanding the depth of Steelers fandom. Pittsburgh Steelers fan. I know, I know people who are like FBI agents who have like Pittsburgh Steelers like tramp stamps on the back and stuff like that. Like Stevers fans are way into it.

Eventually the pastor discovers this theft, calls in the FBI. When confronted, Gail provides a full confession and she agrees to begin attending Gambler's Anonymous meetings. However, even after discovery of the fraud, she declined to voluntarily pay back any of the money from the holdings in her Roth IRA or her cryptocurrency wallet. She's a very young 62, the cryptocurrency wallet and betting on Fandul and stuff like that. He doesn't want to pay it back. I'm not paying it back.

I'll plead guilty, though. She pleads guilty, and she gets ordered to pay the $184,000 in restitution to the Baptist Church, which will happen in drips and drabs. It would be a garnishment of wages. And my guess is that she's not going to get a position of trust

ever again. No. But how much time are you going to give Gail the church lady? She's an old lady. $184,000. An old lady with an addiction problem. Yeah. I know you have a soft spot near heart for gambling addicts to get out of jail free card for you.

It is not a get out of jail. It should be taken into consideration. She refuses to pay it back, though. She's got the money. She has the money in a crypto wallet and in a, was it Roth IRA? Yeah, Roth IRA. So she's all the money in the... It's not the problem is, okay, this is a lesson for the viewers.

You can't seize and forfeit the money unless it's proceeds of the crime. Okay. Right? You can't substitute assets in forfeiture law. And so she's sitting on a big pile of money in her Roth IRA and her cryptocurrency wallet. She's been putting away a little at a time for 30 years or 20 years. Exactly. But that's not the money she stole.

The money she stole was pissed away gambling and used to buy, on Amazon to watch movies. It sounds reasonable then. You can't make her liquidate her retirement fund. You should be able to. Should not. Absolutely. I disagree.

We'll go round and round about that. Because money's fungible, Matt Cox. So I think that it, bottom of mind to see it, the reason she's not drawing upon her Roth IRA, which she's allowed to do at age 59 and a half to pay for her fan duel, is because she doesn't have to because she's using the church as her ATM. This law is bullshit. And yet people in higher positions than you have determined otherwise. I agree.

This is not the United States of Tom Simon. It seems to be the United States of Matt Cox. So how much time you get to give her? God. A year? Twelve months? Yeah. Did I mention that this is a Baptist church that's been around since 1769?

We have a pretty sympathetic victim. It's one victim. integrated church? Ten months? I'm joking. Twelve months. Twelve months in prison. Is that your final answer?

Yes. The correct answer, you're doing good today, is 15 months. Yes. Yeah, I feel like, yeah, I felt like you were close when Tom's rebuttals were, the church has been around. The Baptist church has been around since it's. Like, that didn't even matter. Like, that's not an enhancement.

It's an older church. It's an integrated. None of those are enhancements. I'm telling you. Judges consider all the facts these days. And a sympathetic victim is going to result in a higher sentence than a non-sympathetic victim. It's one church. They didn't go under.

Yeah. There were 20 months? Were you like a carpenter or something like that? Or were you a tradesman at some point before you got into the mortgage industry? I mean, I was more like a handy man, but yeah. Okay. Yeah. You swung a hammer?

Yeah, probably for a couple, probably a couple years. Of all the... I built all this stuff. Yeah. No, you're talented. Of all the trades. I'm serious, your studio is beautiful. Lack of sincerity is overwhelming.

Congratulations, but I'm very proud of yourself. Very impressed. That's good. Where I'm going with this. Of all the trades, which one do you think is the toughest? Or the most miserable. Oh, gosh. It's got to be like roofing.

Yes. Yeah. That's the answer I was fishing for. Oh, okay. Yeah. I agree. I can't imagine I would not want to be a roofer. Especially in Florida.

That's what I'm saying. Like it's, that's miserable. I mean, it's 110 degrees in Florida in the summertime. And then you're on top of the asphalt, like working into the sun with no shade. Like, I look at these roofers. I'm like, whatever they're paying these dudes is not enough. And they have to cover up completely. You ever see these guys?

Like, they're not walking around in shorts and a shirt. They have to cover the whole bodies because they will just blister. So now I have to be in the 100 degree heat and I have to be fully covered. because the sun is so damaging. I agree. Yeah. I agree. Totally miserable.

The largest roofing and waterproofing manufacturer in America is a company called GAF. They employed a 56-year-old guy named John Lasko in Sarasota, Florida, just a little bit south of here, as an engineering manager. Okay. And they are the big boys when it comes to making roofing materials. Okay. As part of his job, John would go out and solicit bids for contractors to provide the raw material. and for GAF, and then he would ensure those contractors were paid for the work they did. In order to steal from his employer, what he did is John went out and incorporated a bunch of companies,

companies that really had no function. And then he awarded the contracts to those companies to supply the raw materials for the roofing, to make the shingles that GAF made. Make sense? Yeah. And so, for example, let's do an example. Let's say that GAF needed 100 tons of asphalt to make shingles. John incorporates a business, awards himself the bid at $200 per ton.

He goes out to find an actual asphalt dealer. I was just thinking that. Yeah. He's just skimming off the top. To sell him the asphalt for $100 a ton, and then John pockets the $100 per ton difference between the actual cost of it and the cost that he's charging his employer. Pretty clever scheme. It is.

So he keeps us going for a while with GAF. paying his fake companies that he controls $1.3 million. Wow. Before his bosses learned that John was the contractor that they are paying for the asphalt. Now, to be clear, John's profit from the $1.3 million is the gross. His profit was only a few hundred thousand dollars off of that from the skim. So that's what his dollar amount is, right? Yeah.

You want to hit him for the whole $2 million, even though his intent was never to keep the $2 million, only to get a couple hundred thousand. You should be a defense attorney. You should go back to school, go to the law school of hard knocks. And sadly, I don't have the exact dollar amount of his profit. But yeah, what we're really talking here is the scam of a few hundred thousand dollars was the number which came out. One victim. GAF calls the FBI who bust John on fraud charges.

Here's the thing you need to think about, though. John has a massive rap sheet for different frauds and swindles. Okay. Okay. Which makes me think the GAF should have hired me as a Florida private investigator to maybe screen their people. Yeah, you can't give that much power to one guy. But they did figure it out at some point. So something went wrong.

I wonder what went wrong. Yeah, not sure. But that's pretty much the story. And so, again, it was $1.8 million of gross that he took in for this thing. But his profit was only a few hundred thousand dollars, but lengthy rap sheet for this kind of. Bezum and skimming scheme. So what are we saying his loss amount is? Could AI help you do more of what you love?

Workday is the AI platform for HR and finance that actually knows your business. We help you handle the have-to-dos so you can focus on the can't-wait-to-dos. It's a new workday. 100,000. Yeah, say 200,000. Let's say 200,000 and 300,000 and 300,000. But he's got, he's on category 5 or something. It's out right.

It's through the roof. Like, this guy is a frauds and swindles king. You look at his rap sheet. It goes on for pages. There's not enough toner to print it out. 120 months? 120 months? 10 years for a financial crime. You said his, you know, there's not a bunch of enhancements.

I like the new Matt Cox. It's actually looking to put this guy away. Well, it's not that. It's not that I think that that's fair. It's that I think that I know that very quickly, like, during category, you know, category two, it's, you can almost, you know, almost double what you would have gotten, right? If you're in category three or four or five, like, I mean, it starts increasing. The law discriminates against people with a rap sheet.

It increases rapidly. So I'm thinking if he didn't have a rap sheet at all, I'd say he's probably looking at two years for, well, no, no. Oh, wait a minute. I'm sorry. I'm still thinking of the one point, seven, uh, let's say it's $300,000. Okay. You know what? Yeah, I'm sorry. Let me think about this again. Take your time. Let's say, I don't know. And I'm not saying that the guidelines was based on the profit. I don't know. The judge had all these facts and the judge gets to decide what numbers to use. But there's an argument to be made that the, you know.

72 months? 72 months. 72 months. Yeah, I kept, I was thinking one point seven. Seventy two months. 72 months. I said that's six years in prison. Yeah. Okay. And you feel that's just also? Yeah, I think that would be. Like when I said 10 years, I was thinking that's high. Okay.

But I think, I think, yeah, I think if this guy's like category six or seven or five, six or seven, I think that's reasonable. That seems fair. Okay. Because you get to a point where it's like, man, listen, like, you just can't keep doing this. Okay. So your guess is 72 months. Yeah. And is that your final answer?

Yeah. Okay. Do you feel that I moved you from the 120 months to the 72 months, or you came about that decision by your own free will? No, I think I had made a mistake. I had focused on what, even if right now it's 120. I think I made that on my own. The correct answer. Yeah. 96 months in prison. Damn. What's 80% of 96? Yeah. Why do you keep saying 80%? 70%. 75%. 120. Sorry. Exactly 120.

What's 75% of 96? Oh, sorry. I was going the wrong way. 96 times 0.75. What did you guess, Matt? 72 months. 75% of 96 is 72. 0.00.

Oh, you've seen another couple weeks. No, 0.00. I'm good. Oh, I hit it. I'm ahead. Well, you got 75%. All right. Take your point.

You're doing good this episode. You know Bruce Springsteen? Yeah. Yeah. Bruce Springsteen wrote a song. He recorded it, but it was never a hit for him, but it was a hit for someone else. From Small Things Big Things Come. One of my favorite songs.

Really? Yeah. Who is it? How does it go? From Small Things Mama, Big Things One Day Come. I think it was recorded by Dave Edmonds as a hit, other people as well. And then when Bruce Springsteen released one of his box sets with like unrecorded songs, it was on there. But I think about that a lot, from small things, big things, kind of like the butterfly effect.

Yeah. where, and this is a story about that, because sometimes in law enforcement you stumble upon in situations that are clearly just the tip of the iceberg for something much bigger. It happens all the time. You know, what was his name?

Oh, gosh, we had him on. He was a detective. It was a good interview. It should have gotten more views. It really was a good interview. Theo Vaughn had him on. And he had said, something a lieutenant of his had said,

he said, focus on the misdemeanors and the focus on the misdemeanors and the felonies will come. Yeah. He's like, so you pull over a guy for a broken tail light. He's like, and then you get up to the car. And now you're like a hooker in the trunk. Yeah, you find out there's a dead body. Yeah, he's like, you focus on.

He's like, because that's the thing about people that he's like, like real criminals. He's like they're very seldom are they savvy enough to take care of all the little things that will get them. It's the little things that get them caught, right? You don't get caught because you're driving because you're driving because there's two bodies in the trunk. You get caught because you're driving with two bodies in the trunk and a broken tail light. Yeah. You know, or you're speeding. Or you're, you know, it's like, you know, it's the, the front, you know, it's stupid. It's like, you were fine. Why were you speeding? You know, with 300 pounds of, I know, age and the, like, what do you think? But that's how the criminals, their, their minds work.

They don't. If they get smart, we've got to work a lot harder. That's why I always, that's why I always say, like, I'm not an idiot. I was never driving around with a broken tail lot in a body in the trunk. Like, you pulled me over. I got my driver's license. I got full coverage insurance. The car's in my name. A winning smile.

Yeah. You're not, nothing's going to look out of place. Right. Well, we have John Nelson, January, Jim Nelson, 40-year-old in Onarga, Illinois. Never heard of Onarga. I'm from Illinois. There's a lot of Illinois outside of Chicago, evidently. The cops had a, he was one of these guys who, when the lights go on with a speeding ticket,

he was able to successfully obeyed the cop. but they get his license plates. And so they know it's Jim. And so they just warrant for Jim's arrest. And so the next time they come upon Jim, they successfully pull him over, and they ask Jim to get out of the car. Okay.

You know that Jess has outrun the cops twice. Yeah. Did you? I knew that Jess was a real successful outlaw. And that you talked to him. She tells me these stories, and I'm always like, what were you sick? I don't know.

I was. So they pulled Jim over, tell him to get out of the car. And Jim, we've seen these videos on TikTok or whatever. He grabs onto the steering wheel and says, I ain't getting out of this car. And that always ends really well. Yeah. You sometimes, yeah, a lot of times the cops will just be like, well, okay. So the officers reach in and start like trying to pull Jim out of the car.

As they're doing that, he reaches into the backseat and pulls out a cylindrical metal object and tells the police that it's a bomb. I got a bomb. I got a bomb. The cops back off a few steps, right? They're not looking to get blown up. And Jim gets out of his car holding the bomb like an NFL running back and begin sprinting down the street away from the cops with the pipe bomb under his arm like a football. Is he on drugs? I don't know. Like somebody who's on The cops

Keep a safe distance And chase Jim to a house Where they learn that his mother lived Right? So he runs to mom's house For eight hours Jim barricades himself Inside his mom's place

While the police attempt to get him to surrender No dice Jim ain't going nowhere He's got sanctuary In mom's house with his bomb So the police breach the door And send in the canine biting dogs They search

the house and find Jim hiding in the attic, cradling his pipe bomb. The police safely arrest Jim, and no one was hurt. Thank heavens, Matt Cox. The explosive squad determined that it was, in fact, a very, very much live bomb. Oh, wow. Yeah. And that everyone involved with the events of that day are just lucky to be alive. Now, possession of an unregistered bomb is a federal crime. Okay. So the police hand off the case to the FBI. ATF may have been involved. I don't recall that. and the FBI takes it across the finish line with federal charges of having an unauthorized explosive device to which Jim pleads guilty. The big unknown that we never really learned is what was Jim up to? Was he some violent revolutionary or just a redneck looking to blow up a stump?

We never found out. There was no additional finding of facts in the court records about what Jim was up to. His position was that he was addicted to drugs, Matt Cox. you called it early. And he made the bomb to scare off the coyotes that were menacing his employer's goats. He was a goat herder. And there were coyotes,

bugging his goats. And so he makes a pipe bomb. This is what he says to the courts. Seems like a bad plan to me. But I live in the Florida suburbs where both bombs and goats are not part of my HOA's vision of my community. So good news is,

while he was in federal prison or whatever, the Metropolitan Correction Center, wherever he was, awaiting his sentencing, he got involved with a sober living program, to get himself straight. And I hope that Jim gets his head straight and continues to live a productive life because I think he could probably still be quite a good goat herder. But the question is, how long is it going to take for him to get that opportunity again?

How much time is he going to do in prison for this, series of events and the charges of having a unregistered bomb? I'm going to say, I think that there's probably the mandatory minimum of like five years, but I'm going to say 48 months because I'm still, I'll be within that, you know. So you're playing it tactically instead of actually guessing what you think the sentence will be? Yeah, I think it's probably five years, but it's, let's say 48 months. 48 months? Yeah.

Okay. And that's your guess? I mean, you think it's five years, but you're saying 48 months for the sake of the game. Yeah, 48 months. Okay. Well, either way you got it, because the correct answer is five years. Oh, it must have been a mandatory minimum. Yeah, yeah, must have been.

So I have a, when I was 17 or 18, I had a friend, you know, hesitate to say friend. His name was David. I can't even remember his last name. I used to know his last name. And he was, he was about 16 or 17. I was probably 16 or 17. I had a car. He didn't.

I worked out with his uncle. And he was a troubled kid. Like, like, not to me. You know what I'm saying? Like, he never caused me any problems. Like, we had hung out several times and worked out together. And, but, and I didn't realize, like, he was a problem. Apparently, he'd, he'd burglarized the house one time, like, broken in somebody's window and stolen some stuff.

Like, I didn't know anything about. I'd learned this later. But one day, I got a phone call from my mutual friend, Trent Coulta, who told him. called me and said, hey, you know, David, I wish I could remember his last thing. Anyway, he goes, yeah, he goes, you know, he's dead. He died. And I go, what? He goes, he said, yeah, bro, he died. What happened? He was making a pipe bomb. Oh, my. Blew off his hands. Oh, my gosh. Like, they said literally, like, it, like, out of what, it hit, like, of course, your, um, your arteries, like both it, like, they said he bled to death.

He was dead. They said he bled to death within, within a minute he's dead. But he, but when they found him, he literally was like holding his hands, just crawled up in a ball and it hit, like, you know, we're talking about it, it hurt the artery in his leg. And it's just every, how old was he? He was, I want to say he was, I want to say he was, I want to say it was 16 or 17 and I was like maybe a year older than him. Yeah, it was just a horrible, horrible situation. Because I, yeah, it's, where it was just something that was like, so stupid. Like, he's not trying to hurt anybody. He's just a silly kid. Sure. The kids are stupid. They're doing fun stuff.

I'm sure if you told him, is there any way this could go, it would have been like, absolutely. He would have been like, no, it's fine. You know, you don't realize. I'm not even going to light it with a match yet. Yeah, you don't even realize how dangerous things are until it's too late.

Terrible story. There's a perception in the public that prison, especially federal prison where people like you go, that it becomes a bit of a kind of crime grad school. That was a dig. Or people like you went. Like people like you used to be where we should be keeping you. No, no, no.

I'm so thrilled you're out, Matt Cox. What I'm saying is that you spent, I mean, this is terrible. You spent 13 years of your life in prison and you're my friend. And I hate to think about that. I hate to think about you suffering. I hate to think about you not being out there being Matt Cox. But there's a perception that when people who got involved in crimes, like you got involved in crimes serve a bunch of time in prison, that prison actually serves as a bit of a crime grad school.

for them and that prisoners sit around coming up with schemes and scams on how they could get away with it once they get out. Is that a thing or is that just a misconception? It's so true. Really? So some of the best hours I had was Zach and I sitting around talking about different scams and coming up with different scams and what if you did this? And then the other thing is like, you know, my biggest problem was like I can get a million

dollars in a bank account. That's not hard. Yeah. It was getting the money out. And Zach's issue was like, how do you get a, like, how do I, I have to find somebody with a million dollars in a bank account to get the money out. He'd had tons of ways of getting the money out. So we had two different problems. So once we met, it was like, wow, like if I had known you on the street. Yeah. Like the slowest part of my scam was going into the bank, getting into the bank, getting into the bank, getting the, $5,000, can I have $5,000? Can I have $5,000? Can I? Like, it was just, you know, take, going to ATMs, draining them. It's like, it just took forever. Getting the money in the bank was the easiest part. The prison is sort of like a crime grad school. Yeah, I used to say, I went in with a GED, and I came out with a master's degree. It's so funny.

So we got 32-year-old Mike Pringle in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was a planner. He was a planner. He wanted to rob a bank, but he knew that bank robbers almost always get caught and go to prison for a long time, disproportionate amount of time to the amount of money that they get. So he had a brainstorm. Mike knew a 16-year-old boy that we're going to call Jamal. And he tells the boy that he has a foolproof plan to make them both wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.

You see, Mike knew that there is no federal system of juvenile criminal justice. And so maybe the trick to getting away with crimes would be to use teenagers and minors to help you get away with it because they're like, it's foolproof, right? So Mike drives Jamal to a Wells Fargo bank in Pineville, North Carolina. He gives the teen a loaded pistol and sends him inside the bank to rob it while Mike waits in the car. What could go wrong? Right? These teenagers, you can't touch him. So for his part, Jamal does as he's told.

He goes inside the bank. He walks up to the teller. He raises the weapon and says, put $20,000 in the bag right now. He hadn't even been through puberty yet at age 16 in this story. The teller puts $18,000 into the bank thinking that Jamest, may not be really good at math, and Jamal runs out of the bank to Mike waiting in the getaway car. He hops in the car and the two drive away. It worked, and boom, the die pack goes along.

They got the money. It didn't take long, though, before a description of Mike's car was all over the police radios in Pineville. And the cops pull over Mike and Jamal while they're making their getaway. The police pulled them out of the car and they look into the back seat and what do they see in the back seat? $18,000 to spill out everywhere over the back seat. Like they're throwing the money over their shoulders. They're making it rain in the car. Yeah.

This is the probable cause the police need to search the vehicle, recovering the loaded Glock pistol in the driver's side doorwell, where Mike was sitting. Both Jamal and Mike were placed under arrest. Mike is handed off to the FBI for federal investigation and prosecution. There's no kids court in the federal system. So Jamal was actually charged by the state for the robbery in the local juvenile system. And I don't know whatever happened to him because the juvenile records aren't public.

But let's talk about Mike. He pleads guilty to aiding and abetting the bank robbery. That was the crime. Aiding and abetting a bank robbery. Weird. I think it would be conspirators to commit bank, you know, or bank robbery or so they're saying. I think it's probably the same thing. For sentencing guidelines purposes, it's the same thing.

Like I said, I don't know what happened in Jamal. I think he probably missed the junior prom. Don't know. I want to hear from you, Mike, a planner, much like you. How much time you're going to give him in prison? And you said he already has a – he already has like a rap sheet, right? He's already been in prison, right? I don't know – I don't know his criminal history, unfortunately.

I know that's very pertinent to the situation. But we are talking about a bank robbery that he facilitated with a live gun and recruiting a teenager into it. I think this would have played out the same way either way for him. Do you think involving, like, the kid to do it makes it worse? Voluntary may be an enhancement for vulnerable victim, but I think he hits the mandatory minimum of having a gun and the whole thing of 10 years anyway. So I think he's probably at 10 years. But again, he's only at aiding and abetting.

Like, he's not, I'm just being devil's advocate here. I know. I still think it's 10 years. So to me, I feel like you go into a bank with a gun. That's 10 years? Might be five years, honestly. There's like a kind of a mandatory, you know. The gun was brandished and threatened, but not fired.

Yeah. Or used. Oh, so maybe that's, maybe if it's fired, it's 10 years. But anyway, I'm still going to say 10 years because in him, like, he might as well go on in the bank. Like, I love the guy in the car. I don't care. He might as well have gone.

I love that. Oh, no, no, I, you guys, FBI agent, I know where there's, I, I know these guys have been robbing the banks, all these banks. Well, how do you know? Oh, I was driving the getaway. like, okay, you're robbing the banks. You might as well go in. You're saying there was a flaw in this plan.

Yeah. 120 months. I think that's reasonable. Okay. Is that your final answer? Yeah, you have me feeling uneasy about it, but I'm still, I'm going to stick with 120. I don't want to make you feel uneasy, buddy.

I want you to be happy with your answer. No, but, um, okay. Yeah. So, I doubt your sincerity. 120. So mean. 120 months, 10 years in prison. The correct answer is seven years in federal prison.

Oh, man, come on. He's just a getaway driver, man. Okay. What is the most successful story we've ever done together on social media as far as number of views? We've talked about this a couple times. Oh, the prison, or not prison. The plain freak out story was I think it was plain freak out. it was 71 million

What was it about? It was 71 million It's on TikTok And the podcast video itself Yeah yeah Is that what you meant? Yeah People like our airplane stories

I have a feeling this one's I'm just sitting here I got an airplane story for you, Matt Cox Was that 71 million one Was it about the kid Or was it about just the person freaking out Does probably remember the kid? The kid climbing in

Yeah they climbed in And he climbed in and he climbed the wheel well Yeah yeah yeah yeah that's right huh Yeah People were like you and he would have died and turns out that there's like one or two percent of population that's the that's the airplane story that uh did so well i think because i remember i remember when it was doing very well i just kind of you know once they get to like

15 or 20 and then they'll they'll kind of taper off i kind of feel like they stop gaining momentum but apparently it continued it's continued to gain like it had another rebirth or something ended up at 71 million views on ticot of you and i telling the story yeah is that the one i'm just sitting here i'm not telling you I'm just wondering, yeah, that's a good point that you're just sitting there and I'm the one telling the story. Because 71 million views must generate a lot of income for us. I mean, I, yeah, it's not my department. I keep running to the mailbox looking for my check.

What, where's us? What is the us? My goodness. Slavery was outlawed. All right. Well, I have an airplane story for you. Maybe we can, maybe we can. Why is it taking so long for Colby to find this?

Because it's not, I don't know if it's on our page. It's on the, it's on. Our TikTok, so if you go to TikTok, right, it's the very first one. You guys pinned it. You pinned it right there. First one, airplane freak out, 71.6 million. That is, that is 87MB. That's the size of it.

That's the size of Ohio. The megabytes, not the views. You dope. I didn't know. You can edit this out, right? I mean, I've never seen it. You told me we were in Fort Laudanette this week. You told me we had 75 million.

I'm like, the population of the U.S. is $325 million. Yeah, MB. Bottom of mine, though, is our airplane stories tend to do very well. That's kind of where I was going with this segue. Hey, so tell me about this. Tell me how that's a plane story. Okay, cool. So we got a woman named Tiffany.

Good looking lady. Would it matter if she wasn't good looking? No one deserves to be harassed, but she happened to be. good looking lady. So she brought it on herself. I hear what you're saying. No, no, no, no, no. She's flying on Spirit Airlines from Los Angeles to Philadelphia. And she's seated in the middle seat in row 27. Okay. She sits down next to a stranger who's sitting in the window seat. She later learns that he is 41-year-old Vernon, New Jersey. Can I guess the sentencing? I'm going to guess zero time service. Where's this coming from?

Well, I mean, she's an attractive woman on an airplane. This guy's going to do something creepy, and he's going to get like something like a day. That's my assumption. We'll see. All right. Well, thank heavens. You're not the contestant.

But thank you for weighing in. So whoever's assigned the aisle seat never showed up. So it's just Tiffany and Vernon sitting next to each other. I don't know why she didn't move over. Yeah, I'm moving. But she doesn't. Doesn't. During takeoff, Vernon is trying to chat up Tiffany. Okay. Asking her her name, where she's from. Tiffany's not into it. Okay. At first, she begins answering

politely, but then she puts in her earbuds, kind of the international signal of leave me alone. Right. And starts watching TV shows on her iPad. Vernon taps her on the shoulder and asks her if she has a boyfriend. Tiffany said that she was in a relationship and Vernon responded, that doesn't matter. Tiffany stays Creepo. Tiffany stays laser focused on her screen and Vernon keeps talking to her

in her earbud ear. She's trying to ignore him. The flight attendant gives her a bag of pretzels. Taps her on the shoulder. Says, can I have a pretzel? And so she gives him a pretzel just wanting this to stop.

Then Vernon taps her on the shoulder again later in the flight, and he has his hand down his pants. And he's stroking himself. And he says to her, do you know how hard you're making me? Wow. Tiffany is dumbstruck, and she tells Vernon that she's not into guys. Wrong answer. He starts taking care of himself even more vigorously and says, that turns me on. I want you even more. Let's go into the bathroom together. Tiffany decides, she declines this invitation. They're not going to believe this, Byrne.

Yeah, and she tells Vernon that she's, yeah, okay, she declines his invitation. Vernon then, I'm going to be polite about this phrasing, whips it out. Wow. To show her his state of arousal. He grabs her wrist and forces her arm to touch him down there. With his other hand, he begins cupping her chest.

What the fuck, bro? He reaches down, unbuckles her seatbelt, and starts trying to untie her yoga pants. Not good, not funny. Tiffany breaks away, runs to the back of the plane, hysterically telling the flight attendants what happened. They let Tiffany sit in the back with them for the duration of the flight. The pilot calls ahead to the FBI. Why? Because the FBI is in charge of investigating any crime aboard an aircraft.

Automatic FBI jurisdiction. The plane lands in Philadelphia. Vernon is taken off the plane by the FBI agents and brought to a room in an interview room. He's Mirandized. Vernon, you have the right to remain silent. They ask him what happened. Vernon says that he made a, his words, smooth pass during the flight to Tiffany, who was giving me a vibe, he said, and he admitted that he grabbed her breast, but he said it wasn't forceful. When the agent said, why did you think this was appropriate?

Vernon said, this is from the court transcripts, that's how black folks make moves. His words, not mine. Vernon pleads guilty to abusive sexual contact on an aircraft. How much time, Colby and Matt, are we going to give Vernon for this halacious crime? I mean, that is how you make moves in prison, maybe. I mean, what, you know? Like, you know, but, you know, we've had this discussion where it's like cruise ships and airplanes, you know, it makes it very difficult to prosecute people, which clearly old Byrne knew. He sort of confessed, though.

He did some research. Well, he kind of also admitted to the conduct, right? Yeah. Because I don't know that there were a whole lot of eyewitnesses. Yeah. You know, the flight attendants can describe how terrified she was and she ran back. He didn't deny it. It's not like he said I.

I mean, this is how he makes moves. He, she was giving him a vibe. He made a smooth pass, in his words. How much crime, how much time are you going to give this smooth passer? I mean, because he should obviously get a lot more time, but I'd say 24 months. 24 months? Two years in prison? Colby said zero.

Colby's ready to give this guy the key to the city. Colby has a little. And a universal pass on Spirit Airlines. Great Airlines, by the way. You know, they have like the best service record. You know, the government's getting ready to buy them. I know, I know. But still.

Well, Spirit Airlines is on the bird, is either declared bankruptcy, is about to declare bankruptcy. And so the Trump administration and the DOD is going to take an ownership stake in Spirit Airlines. This is the proposal and use it as the designated airlines to move service members from base to base, basically. Like my son, when he joins the Air Force, if he has to be up in Maryland to report for duty after this school to go to that school, Spirit Airlines would be the designated carrier. That's the theory. I don't think it's a terrible idea. No.

I hate to see an airline go under. I don't like the nationalization of private companies. I'm just sort of against that intuitively. But the idea of putting Spirit Airlines all the way out of business as a flying Greyhound bus that it is. Yeah. Anyway, so how much time we're going to give old smooth pass vernon? and Baker. And honestly, I don't want the people that fly Spirit on my Delta flight.

I just don't want to keep them. Yeah. I fly spirit all the time. They have a lot of routes where they're only one way there, one way back. Especially Vegas. And you know what? I'll drive before I do that. I don't want to get.

I don't want to get dittled by Vernon. Right. Let's say 24 months, 18 months. 18 months. I'm going to go with 18 months. 18 months. 18 months. year and a half.

Yeah. I mean, you heard about him on tying her yoga pants. I understand, but he's still on a plane. We've had this discussion. Okay. So I feel like it's, you know, yeah, is it assault? Colby, have you looked it up already? No, I'm assuming some type of probational thing.

Zero times. How much? 18 months is your guess? The correct answer is 25 months in person. Either way I nailed it, but I was right at 24 months. And he moved, he was trying to move me one way or the other. You're filled with conspiracy theories.

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Just go to ghostbed.com slash Cox and use promo code Cox at checkout. That's ghostbed.com slash Cox, promo code Cox. upgrade your sleep with ghostbed, the makers of the coolest bed in the world. Some exclusions apply. See sight for details. What do we know about hitmen when you hire a hitman? What are some of the pitfalls in that? A lot of times they're FBI agents.

Yeah. I was an undercover FBI agent and did lots of undercover assignments, but because of my look, I was always like Tom the banker guy or Tom the investor guy. Or, you know, sometimes I kind of went beyond my comfort zone and tried to become something else. But we had a guy in Chicago who was the hitman. He was an undercover FBI agent. He'd been a hitman for like a dozen cases, certified undercover,

and he sort of had the beats down. Which is funny because he didn't look like a thug. You look like a college professor, but he was just really good at playing a hitman. So, yeah, your instincts are right, though. If you hire a hitman, there's a decent chance that it's an undercover cop or an FBI agent or inform him. So let's tell the story.

Let's go to Sacramento today to Shaminter Sandhu. It's his name. No idea what that is. I believe it's of Indian ethnicity, but that doesn't matter because I don't see race. He was looking for a hitman to settle some scores with his enemies. And so one of his buddies said, I know a guy who's a flesh and blood hitman. And so they all met at a Starbucks in Manteka, California, to discuss the job. The client, Shameder, and his buddies agreed, we're going to do a test run.

And our first target is this guy that we all hate. We don't like this guy. So they paid the hitman $6,000 to rough up this guy that they didn't like. Okay. Don't kill him, just rough them up. And sure enough, what happens, Matt Cox, a couple days later, the hitman comes back with a photo on his phone of their mutual enemy, all battered and bruised and covered in dirt. This was like a gift from heaven, right?

All they needed to do was pay this hitman, and their enemies would be vanquished. Can you imagine? It's like a... Who has enemies? that need to be vanquished. Like who are these guys? Evidently. Are they in the mob?

No, no. They're just part of an Indian community in California. That's just how they run it. That's how they do it in India. There's some grudges out there, man. There's some grudges. I mean, this is the, he's got a, he's, oh, he thinks he's big shot. He's got a 7-Eleven.

And I'm not stereotyping, but it might involve retail. It might involve restaurants. It might involve blood feuds going back to generate some level of disrespect. I don't know. I don't know what the... From the old country? Could be. Could be.

I think you're painting with a very broad brush. And I love Indians. I like non-bred. Sheminder agrees... So now the hitman has proven his worth. Yeah. So Sheminder agrees to pay the hitman to kill a different enemy. But they wanted this hitman to handle the murder, dismember the victim, and transport his body parts in different suitcases to mex.

for disposal. This is very elaborate. It's, it's, this seems like an easy, even if this was real, that's a sure way to get, you're sure way to get,

get caught. Yeah, what are you doing? Like, let me kill this guy. This hitman is all about customer service, though,

okay? Like, he's got, his Google ratings for five stars across the board. That would be very expensive. I'd want it.

As a hitman, I need a lot of money. This is the team who have hitman. He's willing to do this job for $10,000. $10,000. He's willing to do it for 10 grand. You can imagine Sheminder's surprise after they pay the hitman

when the FBI comes to arrest him a week later. Because are you sitting down, Matt Cox? The hitman was actually a paid FBI informant who was recording the conversations. You can't trust anybody. And you know that guy that they roughed up earlier for the six gram?

Turns out that was just FBI like makeup and kind of special effect. that they did at the FBI photo lab. The dude wasn't even punched in the nose at all. They just go in and say, look, did you know a guy named? Oh, yeah. We're enemies.

Can you lay on the ground and let us pour some ketchup on you? Take a couple photos so we can get this guy. I had a case like that in Chicago. I told the story once a long time ago. How much time are you going to give Sheminder for this murder for hire? You know what bothers me?

A lot of times these guys get no time. They get very little time. Typically they get, I mean, I'd say typically they get a good chunk of time. But I'm going to say 10 years. He wanted the guy dismembered. I know. That's what I'm saying. And brought to Mexico.

It's a pretty specific order. You know, I was locked up with a guy that got like 25 years. On a murder for hire? Mm-hmm. With an FBI? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And by the way, it was the person that they were going to kill was the, the prosecutor and he was also very specific. He wanted her boobies cut off and like mailed to somebody. Oh, it was horrific. It was horrific. That's a thing, yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, he got like 25 years. He was good. He was in trouble anyway for other things like a, but he would have never got 25. He was sort of like a running. He was a partner in like a Ponzi scheme. Yeah, I think going after an officer of the court is probably, yeah. a bigger deal. So what about Schimender, though? This is just a guy with enemies. I know. He's just such a... Maybe the enemies were asking for it, Matt Cox.

Still, I think you, you kind of get a discount for being just kind of a retard. How deep of a discount? Like, I think significant. I'm going to say 10 years. 10 years in prison. Yeah. For paying to rough someone up and then paying to kill and dismember someone else. Yeah, he was, he was absolutely sure about it. I mean, like, it's not like he wasn't, it's not like it's, You know, sometimes it's like, hey, you're having a conversation. But this guy clearly thought this was possible. Yeah. He paid.

He already paid to have one guy roughed up. This is his second time. Now we're positive. I'm giving you the money for sure. He knew what was happening. Yeah. But I also am always shocked that they don't get as much time as I really kind of think. So I'd say 10 years.

Okay. Ten years? Final answer? Yeah. Okay. Correct answer? Seven and a half years. So 90 months.

So your guess was 120 months. What he got was 90 months. 90 times 1.25. It is 112. Yeah. A little short. Here's an interesting little angle on this case. One of his buddies, the buddy who actually made the introduction,

got nine years for setting the whole thing up for kind of making the introduction to the hitman. So he must have... Yes, I don't know why Sheminder got a better deal than the... Because Shiminder's the client. Yeah. But the dude who's like, I got a hitman and goes out and kind of like brings the hitman in for him.

He was probably already in trouble for something else. Shiminder? No, the first guy. Maybe, but he got nine years. He got more time. I understand he got more. He may have been facing 20. He ended up with nine because he said,

oh, I don't, no, no, no. I don't think there was another case prior to this. Jag, Ninder Bopari, the other guy, I don't, my impression is that he thought this was a real hitman also. Oh.

Right. I don't want to confuse this. Yeah. Maybe he had a criminal history then. Yes, it had to be something like that. Okay. So we're on story 12 now. Colby, why don't we update? Because I think Matt's pretty close. Matt's doing real good. So what's his score? Seven of 11. Really? I've got seven of them. Yeah. Oh, this is good. Great. So this one's a freebie. You won either way.

Which is how it should be. When you were in prison, was there like an Aryan Brotherhood prison gang and like hardcore white power people who gathered together like there isn't like those TV shows about prison? No, I wasn't really that kind of prison. There were guys that were, So they don't do that. What they do is they call them Odinists. Odin, like the Viking god? Yeah, of course, absolutely. Thor, the hammer, everything.

Actually, a lot of them would wear like a little hammer around their neck. Yeah, and so they're, and it's a religion. Odinism is religion. So they also get to do what's called the sweat lodge. In prison? In prison. Same thing where they, it's kind of like the Indian. The peyote.

Yeah, and they get, they, I think they get, because they're just making this up on, as they go along. They're getting, so they're super religious before. Yeah, they're able to get some, it's supposed to be like nicotine-free tobacco, and they're, so they're able to smoke tobacco. But they're like white power guys? Yeah, but really, it's kind of a subtle, because there's no black guys in the group. There's like, there'll be like a dozen of them, and they all get together and they get to have a special meal. And they get, so they get a lot of religious stuff. So, yeah, it's kind of that.

It's not really like a B's or Aryan Brotherhood. Okay. And you think that's more like a state prison, penitentiary type thing? I also think it's penitentiary. The worst I was at was a medium. But they're in the medium and they're in the low. Yeah. Okay.

So there was a fellow by the name of Kyle Christopher Benton of Seattle. He gets tossed out of the U.S. Army for threatening to kill his wife, 29 years old. And life's not going great for Kyle, but he reinvents himself as a, white supremacist, online influencer under the screen name LiftWaffle. The world's so weird. It's a weird world. Lots of corners of this internet. So Kyle operates multiple social media accounts where he posts violent extremist content,

neo-Nazi propaganda, anti-Semitic materials, and he begins developing a massive following. You know a thing or two about massive followings, Matt Cox, because you're really famous. And so Kyle is sort of like a white power Matt Cox. in many ways. Thanks. Put that out there. Thank you for that. As you know, Internet fame can be an intoxicating drug,

and Kyle begins organizing rallies, hate rallies in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho that were where very well attended. So he's not limiting his scope. He's got this lust to be the center. So the next step in his evolution as a white power leader is to buy some land. Well, it's to leverage his own military training to lead workshops. for aspiring neo-Nazis, including firearms trading

with weapons from Kyle's own arsenal. Okay. He's also a motivational speaker egging on his students to engage in ethnically motivated violence. Get out. That's, for you, that's... You probably were...

Closer and closer to the line. You're skating the line before this. Right. But again, none of this is illegal yet, right? But it creates a vexing problem for the domestic terrorism agents on the FBI who have a keen understanding that Kyle needs to be stopped before bloodshed happens.

Right. Right. So, yeah, he's not doing anything. Everything is still kind of First Amendment protected, but... Can you send him a letter? Like with the old ladies? Right. A money mule letter?

Kindly knock it off. The mechanism they used to stop Kyle in his tracks were the firearms he was using for training his followers. You see, he was teaching his students with a fully automatic machine gun. I'm not a machine gun guy. It used to be of a license. Yeah. A device used to use.

called an auto seer. To my understanding, it makes a gun, a fire like a machine gun, and it's, you know, a adaptation. We're going to get in the comments, I'm not claiming to be a gun guy.

Okay, so you can educate me, but don't come down on me. I know they have like mag feeders. Yeah. Where it's a mag, that magazine actually pushes that rounds into the gun. His training also involved

two unregistered rifles with barrel lengths under 16 inches, which I guess is significant. Right. Okay. Possession of these weapons with these specifications are violations of federal law, that I'm sure of. And they were enough for the FBI to obtain a search warrant for Kyle's house in Snow Homish, Washington. And these weapons were seized by the FBI agents.

Okay? So the FBI charges, they arrest Kyle and charge him with unlawful possession of a machine gun and possession of an unregistered firearm. and he pleads guilty in court. Okay? While at his sentencing, Kyle writes a letter to the judge disavowing his white supremacist's views. Just kidding, Judge. Or I've seen the light.

I'm now way into black guys. Whatever. I don't know what he said. But he's no longer a white supremacist, he says, in his letter to the judge before his sentencing. And I hope it's true. I hope it's true. I hope he's comfortable living in a plural.

realistic USA like you and I are. Nevertheless, the judge has a decision to make. The judge understands, again, pretty simple firearms charges, but the context for these is all being presented to the judge about what this guy is all about. How much time in no criminal history, but, you know, he's thrown out of the army for threatening to kill his wife, not no Bueno. He's 29 years old. How much time you're going to give Kyle Benton? So you can't have a, like there is a mandatory minimum, I think, for firearm, for like, for like,

machine guns, but I kind of feel like, I don't know why I want to, I feel like that, that applies to, I would think of that as applying to people that aren't supposed to have them, right? Like, if I'm not supposed to have a handgun, if I'm a felon and I have a handgun, these are almost regulatory crimes, right? Then it's three years. Because I have a felon, it's three years. And then if you have, okay, yeah, but when we caught you, you also had drugs.

So then it becomes five. And then I think for like a machine gun, it, or defaced weapon or, or something, it may be 10 or it may be, so I could say, I don't know. Unlawful possession of a machine gun and possession of an unregistered firearm. I believe you are thinking about felons in possession of those things. That's what I'm saying. He ain't a felon. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

That's my experience is felon. But if you remove the felon, then now I'm like, I've no idea. Like, how much trouble can you get in for having a machine gun? We're about to find out. What's your guess? 60 months. 60 months. Five years in prison.

for a simple possession of guns that you're not allowed to have? Does the judge consider the white power and the revolution and the go out and kill the minorities thing? I wouldn't. Really? You would just disregard that? I disregard that. I feel like that's... Because it's all First Amendment protected?

I do. I feel that's... So I'm not going to take that consideration. I'm going to go with whatever the guidelines say. So it's not... You don't think the judge should the judge consider that? I mean, I don't think he's... I think that's your opinion and you don't think you should...

You know? Yeah. No, I don't think so. I don't think so. That's like me taking into consideration that the guys, you know, you know, oh, you know, your honor, you know, he's a Muslim and he had, you know, Al-Aqabar or something. You're written on his walls or he was a member of a site that was talking about this. It's like, okay, well, but that's not illegal. I mean, I personally not have an issue with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not how you roll. I get it. Yeah. So.

Okay. So how much time? I was saying five years. but you already make me think that's wrong, but I'm going to say 60 months. Well, six months is five years. Yeah, that's not.

I'm just doubling down. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Final answer? Yeah. Correct answer is 24 months. 24 months?

24 months. I wonder if that was a mandatory minimum was like two years for having a, you know, a machine gun. Because you're allowed to have a machine gun, but you have to have a license. It's a whole thing. You can be licensed.

Like, it's like, because in Florida, because you know, Devereoli, Debroli, the guy from Wardogs, the kid from Wardogs, I wrote his memoir. He had a concealed weapons permit, which you needed one at that time in Florida to have it concealed. You don't now. But he also had to go, you had to be 21.

He had to wait until he was 21 to get his machine gun license to actually have a machine gun. I still don't know if it was fully automatic, though. I would think it would be fully automatic. That would be something, machine gun, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so he actually got that license. So, I mean, I know you have to have a license. So I guess five years was extreme.

I'm still thinking about being a felon. Like, you're not supposed to have it. So, yeah. That's fine. Don't beat yourself up. Call me final score? Seven to 12. Seven to 12.

Can I shake your hand, sir? Thank you. I barely made it. It's been a long time since you've won this game. Yeah, it is. This might have been your best score ever, actually. He's close. All right.

All right. That's all I got for you. So where can people find you? I'm already like, Kobe. I forget the cameras are here. I have that effect. Yeah. It's like two dudes hanging out.

Yeah. People, like, because of where the camera is, people think I'm always like playing the camera. I'm really just looking at Colby. Yeah. He's irresistible. Wait until he gets a full head of hair. Yeah. It's a dream boat.

Where can people find me, you ask Colby. You can follow me on Instagram at Simon Investigations. I'm also on TikTok. and YouTube and Facebook and LinkedIn, for that matter, if you want to connect with me there. If any of you are part of a group or organization or club or have an employer that brings in outside speakers, I would be so honored if you would connect me

with the person that hires outside speakers because I'm on the speaking circuit now. I have a fantastic speech that's been knocking people's socks off on how to use FBI behavioral science techniques for business and personal success. And I would love to come visit you and talk to you about that. Any Matt Cox viewer who wants to get a, who needs a private investigator.

I work in all 50 states. I'll do free consultations on the phone. And I'll always make time for your referrals. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful, wonderful day. And thank you, Matt Cox, for having me on. All right. Hey, you guys.

I appreciate you watching. Do a video favor? Hit the subscribe button. Hit the bell so get notified of videos just like this. Also, we're going to leave all of Tom's links in the description box. So you can click on there. You can go over and join his Instagram and his TikTok. We're also going to leave the link to,

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See ya. Be cool.