Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Former Deputy Caught Robbing a Bank | FBI Fraud Stories

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

Former FBI agent Tom Simon shares a series of real fraud and crime cases, including a former sheriff’s deputy who robbed a bank, while breaking down how federal investigations, sentencing, and unexpected criminal mistakes can lead to serious consequences.⁣ ⁣ Tom's links⁣ https://www.instagram.com/simoninvestigations/?hl=en⁣ https://www.tiktok.com/@simoninvestigations⁣ https://www.youtube.com/@simoninvestigations⁣ https://www.simoninvestigations.com⁣ ⁣ Check out Marashellie's channel here - https://www.youtube.com/@UCw1OA-Ktvv6enz0Np_hPTNA ⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://www.insidetruecrimepodcast.com/apply-to-be-a-guest⁣ ⁣ Get started with Bitcoin on Cash App and receive $10 when you sign up using code BITCOIN10 and send at least $5 to a friend within your first two weeks. Learn more at cash.app/legal/podcast.⁣ ⁣ Get 10% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout. ⁣ ⁣ Shop my merch: https://www.etsy.com/shop/MatthewCoxCollection⁣ ⁣ 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Not so brave now, are you, lady? Oh, Fiona Rolfing! Like a dog market. What you want me to do? I come here every month, and we do a game show. In fact, I think we are the only true crime game show. Let's say that. Yeah, certainly the first true crime game show, and no one has imitated us.

What I do is I bring in 12 crime stories from an FBI perspective, mostly the FBI stories, because I was an FBI special agent for 26 years, and what I do is I'm going to tell you the stories, and everything I know about this crime story. And then at the end, every single one of these crime stories resulted in a conviction in a sentence, you who is an expert in crime and punishment is going to tell me what the sentence was for this crime, your best guess. And if you're within one year or a 25% variance of the actual sentence, you get a point.

And at the end of the show, if you have racked up 50% or more of the points that are available, you win. If not, you lose. It sounds so much more interesting than it is, really. And I'm so glad that you're prepared. I could never go through that, what you just said. You just said it perfectly. Well, we've only done this, what, 20 times at this point?

You're very good at it. Well, let's do the first story. I always like to start out with a story that I investigated because I can provide a little color commentary. And this story is a little crazy because I did something really bad in this. And it probably could have made me lose my job. Really? Yeah. as an FBI item.

And so I'm going to fill you in on that and to sort of give it to you unbleached and you guys can tell me if I'm a monster or if I try to do the right thing or whatever. You're a country music fan. You listen to country music radio. I do.

I do not. And I don't know anything about this guy but I think he was a big deal in country music back in 2014 or so. Josh Turner. Yeah. I know J.S.

of course. Interesting. Okay. Josh Turner. I'm dying to know how Josh Turner was involved in an FBI investigation. Well, we'll talk about it. Josh Turner did nothing wrong in this case. He's not the bad guy in the story, but he's kind of, he was a prop.

You're not into Hawaiian music, are you? You're not going to believe this. No, I'm not. Sometimes people are into stuff. Hawaiian music is its own style of music and has its own superstars. A couple of the legends of Hawaiian music were the Casamaro brothers. And it was two brothers, and they played kind of Hawaiian music. And they were very famous in Hawaii, made a lot of money.

This story, though, is about their nephew, a guy named Turk Casamaro. And Turk was kind of often tried to leverage his family's last name to make money. But he was sort of a failure in many aspects of his life. But then he had an idea that he was, because he's peripherally in the entertainment business through blood, he was going to throw a giant rodeo in Wimanalo, Hawaii, very close to where I lived, and he was going to bring in Josh Turner to perform at this rodeo. And so he puts together these flyers for, you know, Turk Casamero's big rodeo with Josh Turner doing singing country music songs at the end of the rodeo competition and all that.

Does Josh Turner have any idea? He's playing at this? No. So spoiler alert. Josh Turner's not in on this. but Turk finds a very nice little old lady in Kailua, Hawaii, where I lived, just a sweetheart of a lady who had some money, but she wasn't like a wealthy person. And he takes, how many does he get from her? I think he takes like $100,000 from her to make this rodeo happen as an investment. And he just does nothing with it. Just kind of spends the money himself. The rodeo is not going to happen.

He never even tried to book Josh Turner for this thing. Josh Turner was totally unaware, even though they were like flyers. and things like that kind of hyping the rodeo that were really created for no other reason other than to bring in investments. So I get the call on this thing. It becomes my case that this is an investment fraud. He had promised her substantial rates of return on her equity investment in this rodeo with Josh Turner. Is it just her to get other people? She was the initial victim. If there were other victims, they were relatively small. But she was kind of the focus. That was a problem for me because the FBI generally does not work single victim cases. But I felt bad for this lady when I went to go interview. her and I talked to her about, you know, I'll see what I can do. And so I go, and she was ruined.

Like she, you know, this was like her entire life savings that she pumped into this. And she did it because she believed in the Casamero name. And her, you know, like, you'd show up to her house to interview her to talk about like, you know, I need to get the emails that he sent you or, you know, the text messages you receive, get, you know, get shots of those. And the whole families around they're just terrified that they're going to, like, lose their house and stuff. like that. A lot of the families live multi-generational in houses. And so I begin investigating the case and eventually I get to a point where I go to Turk Casamaro. And I sit down to talk to him and he confesses that he took the money from this lady. He didn't really take steps. He used it,

he used the money to pay off some other obligations that he had to other people that he'd probably ripped off. And that he hadn't even really contacted Josh Turner. And while he would love for this rodeo to happen, you know, he never took any steps to make it happen. And I was like, well, that's a problem. Do you have any money to pay this lady back? Right. Because at this point, I'm happy to put Turk in prison. That either happens or it doesn't happen based on my investigation.

But I really wanted to see if I can make this woman whole. Because, again, I just genuinely felt sorry for her. And he's like, well, I'm working right now. And so I could maybe make installment payments to her. And I go, all right, well, and she did not want to see him again. Like she's kind of like nervous about him. He's sort of a big guy. Yeah.

And I go, here's what we can do. And I go, when you have money for her, I want you to call me and I'll meet you and you give me the money and I will give you a receipt for that money. And I will literally just take that money to her and give that money to her and have a receipt. And I go, I can't promise that this, I'm not promising you that you're not going to be prosecuted. I'm saying that if I was in your shoes and I had to go before a judge on this thing in the future, you're going to be in a much better position to ask for mercy saying that you're in the process of paying her back or that you have entirely paid her back. Right. And so time goes on, and every now, every week or two, I would get a call or a text message from Turk.

We would, like, meet in a parking lot. He'd hand me an envelope full of cash. I would hand him a receipt. I would give him the receipt, so he had a record of how much. I would then go to the victim. I would give her the money, and I would get a receipt from her, and I would write it up in the FBI case file to make sure that there was no implication that I'm pocketing the money or anything like that. And I'm making myself seem magnanimous here.

selfishly, the FBI agents are graded and evaluated on their statistical accomplishments. You get a statistical accomplishment for arresting someone, for doing a criminal complaint, for getting an indictment, for getting a conviction at the sentencing. And you also get one, and for restitution. You also get a statistical accomplishment for recovering money, right? So if I'm able to, like, you know, find, get money back. And so I'm also kind of milking this to kind of feed my statistical accomplishments, which makes me look more successful as an FBI agent rather than less successful.

And so time goes on, maybe six, eight weeks. I've collected probably $20,000, $30,000 from Turk. That's significant. Yeah, no, it was good. And the lady's thrilled. I'm happy. Turk is working hard to get paid back. But what I didn't do is I didn't, and this is where I screwed up, among many things in this case,

is I never really asked Turk and drilled down on what the source of the money was. And then the FBI gets a call. Oh, I didn't see. I didn't even think about that. He said he was working. Exactly. It's not my job to audit him. Right.

Right. And we get a call from a family saying, hey, I think we may have been defrauded in a case. We invested in the Vans Warped DJ tour. And I go. Which Josh Turner played playing. No, it was going to be Steve Aoki. He's a big DJ. Dead Mouse.

A bunch of these, yeah, Steve Aoki, I'm sorry, yeah, I think his name is Aoki. He's a very popular DJ in the DJ world. And Dead Mouse, you ever seen Dead Mouse? He got the big mouse head with the, oh, yeah, yeah. He's a famous DJ also. It's not my thing. So he's running another Ponzi scheme to pay off the first Ponzi scheme. Exactly, as it turns out.

And I'm facilitating this. I end up being the bag man and this other thing. Oh, my God. I know. My heart sunk, Matt Cox. I was like, oh, my God, I'm going to be in so much trouble. And what have I done here? I've basically shaken this guy down

and created the incentive for him to run an investment fraud scheme, ripping off another $100,000 from people. I'm sorry, at the end of the day, it will get into the math on this thing because you have to guess his sentence. He, I mean, basically, so first thing is, is there a Vans Warped DJ tour? There's a Vans Warped Tour where like punk band,

pop punk bands had played, and that was still happening at this window of time. I never heard of a Vans Warped DJ tour. So I call Vans, the company that sort of sponsors it. And I spoke to Mrs. Vann, the daughter of the guy who started the company. You know, Vans, the shoes? Yeah. Yeah.

And she was real nice, and she's like, there is no such thing as the Vans Warped DJ tour. And she said, we did hear from Turk Casamero, only years ago, wanting to kind of be a concert promoter for the Vans Warped Tour and try to get that to Hawaii. It just never really played out. But no, there is no such thing as the Vans Warped a DJ tour. Dead Mouse is not involved with the Vans Warp Tour, neither is Steve Aoki. And I'm like, and again, I'm like, oh, my God. And so then I start finding more victims of this thing. And then I start finding more victims of the other fraud.

And so getting back to the sentence, so I go to my supervisor with my tail between my legs. I like close the door. His name is Matt. And I go, Matt, I effed up. And he goes, all right, what happened? And I lay it out for him. And he goes, well, listen, you know, you didn't. steal any money right I go no and I go and I go I have receipts on both ends of this

thing the whole thing's documented in the file it's kind of like the it balances perfectly and I go but I shouldn't have been doing this I should not have been like you know trying to you know take money from this guy to pay this person back I'm not a bill collector and he's like you know he was he couldn't have been more compassion yeah pat for the show or don't worry about him man and so I go to the prosecutor on the case I tell him what happened he's like well this is really unfortunate but we're gonna you know we'll move forward with this thing we'll just have to disclose it but you get the evidence let's get this guy So I begin interviewing the people doing the math, getting all the numbers together,

eight victims, $857,000 from the two scams. Oh my God, that's way more than... Yeah, yeah. And again, I... That's way more than the numbers you were saying. Right, right. He's prolific. Yeah, so again, but he's got this name, which is famous in the music industry in

Hawaii that opened doors for him. All right, so I give Turk an earful, like, you know, as soon as... I found out what he was doing. Like, how dare you? How dare you use me to facilitate your fraud and, and all that? And so he ends up pleading guilty. Again, eight victims, $857,000, no recovery except for the $30,000 that I recovered for the little old lady. I'm surprised that the FBI didn't, or the prosecution didn't try and claw that back for the other.

I mean, that's, sometimes they'll do that. And then what ends up happening is you end up being victimized twice. Like they stole 100,000. I got 50,000 of my back. And then I thought I only lost 50. Oh, no. Now they'll come and take that from me. The dates matched up.

Like, he literally would go to someone's house, get an envelope full of cash for the vans tour, and then call me, meet me in a parking about 15 minutes later, hand me. I was just this sick feeling that I had, and I was seeing what happened. He pleads guilty. It was a big deal at the sentencing,

the judge, Judge Seabright in Hawaii, who I knew from doing a lot of cases. And he's a good man, and I like Judge Sebrite, but he couldn't help but bring up the fact that Turk was able to scam an FBI agent in this thing that came out of the sentencing, which I was thrilled about. Yeah, I'm starting to like Turk more and more. Yeah, Turk had a prior 2003 state conviction for duping victims out of nearly $200,000 in a highly similar securities frauds. Oh my, well, this guy, what a scoundrel. You know what's funny? For like

$100,000, you're probably not going to jail. You're probably getting probation. You might get a month. They've just to kind of let you know, hey, this is serious. You can't be doing that. Depending on probably how many victims, you know, how complicated. But now this guy needs to see some serious. So we have eight victims, $857,000, two schemes, plus ripping, plus duping the FBI agent on the case, who was a moron. How much time are you going to give, Turk? How do you? Eight victims. Eight victims, $857,000. But again, the prior thing also. And the, and again, it's really kind of two schemes sort of mashed together. One is the Josh Turner concert. The other is the Vans Warped DJ tour. What a douchebag. Yeah. How much time are you going to give him? Fuck. The judge was not pleased with him. Yeah. I, I, I, 800,000. I want to say 60 months. I want to say 60 months. Five years in prison for a nonviolent crime?

Yeah, it seems that... I think that seems excessive. That would be like the high end. But this is second time. Yeah. He, there's... You know, it's not... If it was over 10 victims,

you know, I probably could justify it my five years more if it was 10 or over, but it's only eight. But the fact that this guy was given an opportunity... The judge laid into him at the sentencing. You know, what a douche bad. And the balls on him that you're going, you're taking from that you're given to an FBI agent as if you're really you're just, you're duping the FBI to extend your more and more victims. Exactly right. Because I am, I am slow playing the presentation of this case to the prosecutor to help this victim out.

Yeah, I just couldn't. And he knew that. I think, I think 60 months. He's got to do 60. If they give him less than 60 months, I mean. because, you know, unfortunately, I immediately think he'll be in a halfway house in three years. I immediately do the math, right? But still, I think, I think five years.

He's a douchebag. If he got more, I wouldn't be shocked. You got less, I'll be shocked. But you're going to stay with the five years to say a six months, yeah. The correct answer is eight years, 96 months. Fuck. I missed it. I'm off.

Listen, I'm sorry. He, you know, even though it's not. I'm having anxiety right now, just remembering. You have no idea how much sleep. I lost over this one. I, you know, I just, you know, it's so funny, if you stole $20 million in a credit card fraud, and I understand that those people that were defrauded

had to call the bank, they'd call the banks three or four times, they had to file a plea. I get it, but they don't lose any money. And the fact that Bank of America lost $3 million and Chase lost two, I could give the fuck. But the fact that you're going to some old lady and you're okay with it, that's just fucking infuriate.

Even though the money amount is the same. And the victims are the same, really. I really think the guidelines should discern between individual victims and institutional victims. Because Bank of America... That would have played in your favor. Nobody in Bank of America lost a minute sleep. But that's not how they look at it. But yeah, because that's just...

And to take that money, look at this old lady. and just be. As people are judging me for what I tried to do in this case, please understand that I was just, this old lady was crushed. Your heart was in the right place. That's totally, that's totally. And I also, like, just like you said, I'm always trying to look at the angles.

Like he said, I have a job now. I thought, okay. Yeah, he's got a job now. But then again, the amount of money that he gave you within that time. Was astronomical. Was astronomical. At some point, but I'm thinking to myself, he's probably going to his family.

he's probably... I thought so too. Or he still had some money left, though, but I didn't ask the question. That was where I went, really went wrong, yeah. And you don't know who Josh Turner is. No, I feel, I mean, I...

You know some of the songs. Come on, give him an impression, man. Gun to my head, I can not. I'm not giving you any of the clips. Yeah, I mean, I know, no shade on the guy. I'm just not really up on contemporary country. The ones are like, baby lock the door. You know those songs?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got the real deep voice. No, he sounds delightful. You've never heard it? I haven't heard it. I don't listen to country music radio. I like Johnny Cash and Dwight Yoakam and kind of that generation of country music. Do you use Bitcoin?

It's one of those things that comes up all the time on the podcast. I've interviewed people that wish they'd held on to it years ago. The truth is, a lot of people are curious about Bitcoin. They just assume it's complicated. There are wallets, exchanges, private keys, and it can seem like there's a lot to figure out before you even get started. When you buy Bitcoin on Cash app, they hold real Bitcoin for you, one-to-one. And you can withdraw it anytime. No extra steps. No restrictions. Just access and control when you need it. If you've been thinking about learning more about Bitcoin, this is a simple way to get started.

For a limited time, new customers can get $10 added to their balance. Just use code Bitcoin 10 when you sign up. And don't forget this part, send at least $5 to a friend in the first two weeks. Terms apply. Cash app is a financial service platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash Apps, bank partners. Bitcoin services provided by Block Inc. For additional information, see the Bitcoin Disclosures at cash.app slash legal slash podcast. Okay, you ever want a cat?

You've always been a dog guy. I've never been a cat. What's wrong with these people? Oh, please. I'm a cat, Daddy. I know you are. I dare you. How dare you?

You ever with your dog, do you ever use a laser pointer to kind of let him play in the floor? Of course. There's nothing more fun. Is that amazing? Slamming them right into the wall. I love it.

The laser pointer, is the greatest invention in the world for playing with your pets. Did you know that it is a federal, against federal law to shine a laser pointer at an aircraft? Absolutely. You ever heard about this? Yeah, I've heard about it. Yeah. And it was so funny is that, you know, as a kid, they probably think, they don't even, I don't think they're even thinking.

But, you know, you're putting, you're putting people's lives in the dangers. Yeah, I mean, it's not. It's reckless and dangerous because the laser could temporarily blind the pilot. And that's a real thing, which could cause a plane to crash and significant loss of life. This is what this story is about. FBI just arrested a guy in post falls Idaho for doing just that. His name is Aspen Schaefer, 31-year-old guy. He's out with his friends drinking beer in a field,

and he sees the sheriff's department helicopter in the air, right? A bunch of good old boys sitting in the parking lot, a field, I guess. Copter flies overhead. Aspen pulls out his laser pointer, which he probably used to torture his dog, and shines the green laser pointer at the windshield, blinding the pilot and causing the helicopter to lose 1,000 feet of altitude.

Wow, okay. I don't know much about helicopters. I think you've got to stay on it, though. A plane could probably glide for a little bit more. You're like, ooh, but a helicopter, you've got to stay on it. The pilot regained control of the aircraft. We don't have to worry about this pilot. And he calls in the location that Aspen and his friends, his bros,

are hanging out at. The police track him down and find him, and they arrest him on the site. on site. And you'll be no, you'll be, you may be surprised or not because you've been around the block a few times, Matt Cox, that his blood alcohol level was point one-one at the time of his arrest. Right. He's pretty well lubricated. Police hand him to the FBI for, for federal prosecution, and he got sentenced.

And he had a really extensive criminal history for, you know, just probably a slew of stupid arras. But buffoonery. Yeah, yeah. I know these guys. Right. And I'll tell you that during the sentencing, the judge went on and on and on about his lengthy criminal record

and that this is a guy who just can't do right. And so with that very, very simple fact scenario, this is really everything we know. How much time are you going to give to Austin Schaefer for shining his laser pointer at a sheriff's helicopter and causing it to nearly crash? 24 months. 24 months in prison?

This is almost an act of terrorism. No. He's an idiot. Yeah, I'm going to go to 24 months. This is Idaho. I don't know what that means. I feel like in Idaho they take crime seriously. I think,

I feel like Idaho is just stocked with hanging judges. I'm not giving you a hint either way. I just wanted you to know that Idaho, I have a one year. I have a one-year variance, though. So I'm covered up to three years. So I'm thinking 24 months. You're going with 24 months.

I don't listen. One thing I've learned is I'm not being moved. You're manipulative. This will be a 20-minute episode then if we're not going to talk about your thought process. No, I think that he wasn't trying to crash the helicopter. You know what I'm saying? His intent was he's drunk. He's being silly.

He thinks it's funny. He's not thinking, I'm going to, oh, I'm about to kill everyone on this. He just thinks he's being fun. He's not thinking things through because he's he's drunk. Okay. And, um, oh, this is your whole theme, right? That anyone who drinks alcohol gets a free pass. Oh, see, I knew.

Oh, I forgot about it. Well, I think even if he was a, if he was a 19 year old kid and he did it, he was, he's not trying to, he wasn't trying to kill anybody. Mm-hmm. Although those kids that threw the, the, the brick off of the overpass, they kill that, that father. and oh my God. Yeah. But once, you know, that was just, see, but I think that was much, much worse. Not just because of what happened, but because, you know, you knew you were trying to cause damage.

I don't think he's trying to cause damage. I think he's an idiot with his friends. I don't think he thought he's going to crash a plane and kill two helicopter pilots or anything. Okay. So what's your guess? I think 24 months. You're staying with 24 months? I understand he has an extensive record, but he's an idiot.

I think if he didn't have an extensive record, he probably would have gotten 12 months. How bad is that record, though? 36 months. 36 months. Now you're going with 36 months. I thought you said you wouldn't be moved. 24 months. 24 months.

We're going with 24? 24. Well, either way you win, 36 months is right. Nice. Next question, and I don't know the answer to this, but I feel like I should because you and I are tight, and I feel like I'm finally gaining an understanding of who Matt Cox is. and the trials and tribulations of your crime spree. Did they forfeit anything from you? Everything.

Wait, mean, they forfeit. They took everything. Okay, that's my question. Did they go through the actual criminal forfeiture or civil forfeiture process on your assets? I walked into prison with, you know, nothing. Like, they took everything. Right. I didn't know how much you had depleted while you were a fugitive.

Or if you were still amassing assets during that window of time. I was, but keep in mind this is for someone like me, like everything. I owned was in different stolen identity's names. It's not like it was in Matt Cox's name. And of course they sat down and were like I hadn't made any money, any legitimate money to keep anything. So I really just signed everything over. Right. There's just nothing. There was nothing for me to argue about like, no, I made that money legally and I bought that house. No, they just everything. Right. Okay. But did they go through the legal forfeiture process? No, I just signed everything. Right. You voluntarily. You relinquished.

Correct. There was no, like a hearing. Basically, you're making your restitution on the front end to minimize the damage and hopefully lessen your sentence. As much as I can, yes. As opposed to having the government come in and seize your bank account and seize your car. And that's what, I mean, again, and so I'm glad I asked because that's what forfeiture is. Your stuff was not forfeited. Your stuff was relinquished by you. Oh, okay, okay, okay.

Right? Like, I've had cases where a bad guy bought, company bought a bunch of Ferraris with his money in an investment fraud scheme. He collected Ferraris. And I went out and went to the court and the judge, and I said, these Ferraris were bought with stolen money. here's my proof, here's my warrant, and then I show up at the guy's house, and I go, these Ferraris, they're mine now, and I take his Ferraris from him. That's forfeiture. Or when I go to someone's bank account, and I go to the bank, and get a court order,

I go to the bank, and this bank account here, it's now the government's bank account. And Chase is like, yes, sir, yes, sir, here's a cashier's check, and they empty it out. That's forfeiture, different process. What I'm just curious. You know what an advanced fee scheme is? An advanced fee scheme is the idea, it's a little different than a Ponzi scheme. What do you explain? What did an advance fee scheme is?

Um, advanced fee scheme is that, um, wait a minute, let me think. I think it's, uh, is that where they do the credit cards? Is it based on your credit card receipts? An advanced fee scheme is more of a broad, um, a broad term for, for you're going, like a lottery scam is an advanced fee scheme. You're, I got a million bucks with your name on it. All you need to do is pay, pay the taxes ahead of time. Oh, okay.

Yeah, I don't know. It's basically you are paying a small dollar. amount to unlock a much larger dollar amount, which is different than an investment scheme. Like the Nigerian Prince? Yeah, that's an advanced fee scheme. Oh, I didn't know that. I always called it the Nigerian Prince scam. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, there's a larger umbrella term for this. Chris Roglieri was a high-profile finance executive who ran a company called Prime Capital Ventures and the Commercial Capital Trading Group based in Albany, New York. He promised small businesses millions in funding. You're small business. You need some money to get you up and running. You need it, you know, whatever. I can get you the financing.

But what he's doing is he was charging advanced fees. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We can get you that million dollars in funding, but, you know, we need a $10,000, $20,000, $100,000 advance fee. Did you're American hustle? Did you see the movie American hustle? No. That's what the guy was doing.

Okay, he gets your $200,000 loan, but you've got to pay him $25,000 up front. Right, which is not the way the world works. No. If I had $25,000, bucks, I wouldn't need the money from you. He called the advanced fees interest credit accounts for loan, and the loans never materialized Matt Cox. Right? That's why we're having this conversation. Instead, what he would do is he would use their money to live like a king. He was also a guy who liked

Ferraris. He liked Rolex watches, private jets, and luxury real estate. So he's using the advanced fees for that. Then he's just stalling them. Like, yeah, we're working on getting approval from our financing. It's just a lot of stalling. No business funding. He very, very, very quietly pocketed $125 million in advance fees. And occasionally, when people would start getting really fed up and saying, well, my loan's not coming, he would take some of the advanced fees that he had received and pay back the people who are now insisting on getting their money. Basically, taking new money and giving it to old victims in what we call, say it with me,

that's a Ponzi scheme. It's a different time of policy scheme, though, right? Yeah, because it's not investment returns. It's basically cycling refunds. Yeah, same economic structure. And he's just doing that to extend his scam, he can keep going a lot further and further and further by doing it. Yeah.

But because Rogliere did, was out there purchasing assets like Ferrari's, Rolex, private jets, luxury real estate, the FBI got to work seizing that stuff and doing forfeiture warrants and taking those. So he's able to, the FBI is able to seize $55 million of his assets. which includes the mansion and his Rolex watch collection. The asset seizure, the money from the asset seizures, what they generally do is liquidate. If it's money, it goes into a fund,

and if it's assets, the U.S. Marshal Service, then auctions off those Rolexes and those Ferraris, and then all that money gets put into a pool, and it begins paying back the victims on a prorated basis. Right. Okay. That's how that works. Two of his top executives also pled guilty,

and the cooperated with the government against him, shocking. And Chris is locked up. He was awaiting trial. And then right the last minute, he decides to plead guilty. So we have, I wish I knew the number of victims. I don't. It's, but let's say it's dozens or hundreds. Oh, it had to be hundreds. Yeah, it had to be hundreds. And you said he's got a couple, but he's got people working with him. He's, he turned, it's not just him. It's a mill. Yeah, absolutely. And so huge number of victims, insane amount of losses, $125 million. But again, 55 was recovered through forfeitures. How much time are you going to give Chris Rogliere, the advanced fee guy who would get you alone?

Based on those numbers? It seems like he should never get out of prison, but he took a plea, so he got a deal. So it's probably, I'm going to say 18 years? 18 years in prison? Yeah, only because I think he probably pled to wire fraud. That's a 20-year max. but that was probably the argument was they probably offered 20 that he was about to go to trial. Maybe they said, give him something, you know, and his lawyer he got 18.

There's an argument to be made, though, by giving him a sentence like that, he's not going to get out of prison in any kind of reasonable amount of time to begin paying restitution to the victims. He'll never pay back that restitution. He'll never even come close to paying money. This guy can't. This guy's a fraudster. His only ability to make money is committing fraud.

I know several fraud. guys that got out, started a business, and started making amazing money legitimately. But they're few and far in between. And this guy, I don't, yeah, I'm going to say 18 years. 18 years. Yeah. And honestly, in his mind, I'm sure with his lawyer pitched it to him, like, bro, you're going to be out of here in like 14 years.

You're going to be, I understand it's a lot, but you've already done a year and a half. You see what I'm saying? Like it's like, oh, you're already whittling it down. You got 12 more years. You didn't think you were going to do a year. You didn't think you could do a year and a half. You've done it already. Yeah.

And you could always file, you know, whatever. Whatever the... Hard app or whatever. Yeah, you can do this, you can do that. You can, you know, or you can go to trial and I shit you not, you will get 30 years. You're a scumbag. They're going to put fucking 50 guys up there that say you promise them that they're a bunch of little old ladies you took money from. He took, he took, it's, I bet you it's 18 years, roughly.

Yeah. Okay. Is that your final answer? Yeah. How close? The actual answer is 97 months, eight years and one month. I mean, sign me up. Sign me up.

I'll do it right now. Are you kidding me? That's an incentive? That doesn't harm you. I would advise against that. He was also ordered to forfeit the $55 million in assets, including luxury cars watches and real estate. Come on. Yeah.

Come on. That is so, that is bullshit. That is. Yeah, I know. I got 26 and a half years. perhaps the banking lobby has more of a... I mean, my God. Yeah, yeah, I know.

What do you want from me? I mean, I don't even know who he could... I was thinking cooperation, but the other guys cooperated against him at the last minute. I mean, that is... Yeah. No.

I get it. Absolutely not. I don't know. It's a miscarriage of justice. I want to write that prosecutor a harshly worded email. Yeah. What do you think of?

Go to trial. I'll go to trial. You take a 20. I'll go to trial. I don't give a shit. I'll fucking put 14 guys up there that all say you. No. All right.

Let's lower the temperature with a doctor's story. Yeah, I know. I'm sorry, you're a little set. Yeah, I know. This is all personal to you. This isn't, for me, it's academic. For you, it's personal. Let's do a Boston story.

Brookline, Massachusetts, right outside of Boston. We have a physician's office, a doctor's office. Oh, they got that accent. Yeah. Pactica. That Massachusetts accent. You're going to go pack the car. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I can't do it. Like in this mass hole. I can't do it. Dr. Yu, Y, U. Asian female. Looks like a good doctor. I had a successful medical practice.

And she was beloved by her patients, Matt Cox. People just loved Dr. You. She even taught at the nearby Harvard medical school, right? Imagine the luck. If you're a doctor also taught at Harvard, you know that she knows her stuff. I'm already feeling like she's not even a doctor. Just based on.

No, no, my point, though, is that she's busy. Right. You're busy when you're a successful doctor, seeing patients, and teaching at Harvard. So what you need is an administrative staff. You need people behind you who are going to keep the engine of your business, your practice, running. And that's important to doctors, is to keep things going. And so she hires a woman named Kathleen Libby. And it was her job to manage the back office operations of Dr. U's office.

Okay, you may see whether this is going, including paying the bills of the practice. So the doctor could just focus on patient care and use that high wattage brain to heal people, Matt Cox. It's a healing. We're about healing. Yeah, I hear you. What the doctor did not know is that Kathleen hatched a very clever scheme

to steal from the doctor's practice. Kathleen creates a fake company called Medline Surgical Supplies and opens up a bank account and attaches it to a PayPal account. And she begins taking the doctor's money from the doctor's PayPal account and paying her fake company, Medline surgical supplies, stealing money from the doctor's office. And she did this to create the illusion in the accounting records

that she's purchasing gauze and other medical supplies for Dr. Yu's office. But she wasn't because she's not a medical supply house. She's just pretending to be that in this false vendor scheme. All right. Got it? All right. she wasn't done. She ended up placing,

Kathleen also had access to the payroll records and she places two of her relatives on the medical practices payroll, people who had never darkened the door of Dr. Yu's practice. I mean, yeah, she's creative. Yeah, and then she starts using

the company credit card to go shopping. She used the doctor's money to go shopping at Louis Vuitton, Bloomingdale's, Best Buy, and Target, as well as to go on some fabulous luxury vacations. How much money is this doctor making that she doesn't miss a few hundred

thousand dollars missing? A lot of doctors make a lot of money. So eventually though, the doctor figures out what catches wise, probably for that very reason. Like, I'm working so hard. I'm burning the mid-eyed oil here, seeing these patients, and why isn't there more money in the bank account? Right.

Begins looking into it, calls in the FBI to investigate. By the time the FBI agents quantify the loss, we're talking 650. thousand dollars stolen by Kathleen in these multiple schemes that we just discussed. She rolls over immediately. Kathleen has nowhere to go in this thing. She's not going to become a fugitive. She's not going to lie. She can't point the finger at anyone else. I don't even know if she could claim like a nitrous oxide addiction or whatever you're able to get sympathy from people like you. She pleads guilty to fraud charges for these schemes. $650,000. I don't get the impression she has a criminal history, but we are talking about a doctor's office run by a

very respected local doctor. How much time you're going to give old Kathleen Libby? 36 months. 36 months. Three years in prison. It was a non-violent crime. I don't know if I mentioned that. Yeah, you mentioned it.

All right. Three years? I think three years. For $650,000 bucks? No criminal history? Yeah, I think three years. Yeah. I mean, maybe 24 months.

Are you saying that she didn't? deserve luxury vacations? Yes, she didn't. And the Louis Vuitton purse? I mean, it's almost a human right. I think, I think 36 months. 36 months. Three years are going to lock this lady up.

She'll be fine. She's going to be out in 18 months. She's going to be in a halfway house in 18 months. All right. You sound like you're really digging in your heels here. Well, I also think it was a very sophisticated. I'm thinking about the enhancements. It was very sophisticated.

She wasn't playing, or she was very diversified. She put a lot of thought in this. This wasn't a... There's a lot going on here. Yeah. This wasn't like an impulse steal money from the tele drawer. This is, I think, 36 months. Three years.

Breaking rocks on the hot sun, huh? Not been to federal prison. Working on her pickle bowl game. Yeah, exactly. All right. So, that's your final answer? She's going to come out in the best shapes you've ever been. Kathleen's looking good.

Yes. Three years? Yeah. Okay, the correct answer is 21 months. Oh, so cool. No. Oh. No.

No. No, no. If it was 24 months, you would have been... Yes. Oh, I should have dropped it a little bit, but I felt you were trying to move me. I was trying to move you down to help you. I was giving you a little context, but you're so stubborn. You're trying to help me. This month, you are stubborn. I almost said 24 months, because I thought that gives me a pretty good range.

I don't know. But, yeah, I should have... When you said no criminal history, I was probably hot. I love this story because I think it could provoke a lively... conversation between us. Okay. And I went way down the rabbit hole on how this thing played out. You believe in psychics? Do you believe there's people out there who are psychics?

No. No. I mean, I believe in intuition. So maybe you could say that's, you know, plays into it a little bit, but that's, that's it. What about those stories about psychics helping the police solve crimes? No. No. No.

No. You're just completely skeptical about the whole thing? And I was contacted by a psychic, by the way, a few months ago. Wanting to be in the show? Yeah. Yes, wanting to be on the show. She had some interesting things that she'd helped the police several times and done this and done that. But I don't know.

Oh, and then I asked her, I said, you know what might be interesting. What was a woman who's her mother's missing? We talked about it the other night. Guthrie. Guthrie. So I asked her about that case. And then she sent me this. She said, let me look into it and think about.

what this i have to tune in she had to tune in she had to go hold some crystals and sit in her room in uh you know with her legs crossed indian style um as she came back she wrote a whole thing on it but then when i said hey this might be interesting to have you on she said well it's not something that publicly i would want to discuss because i and she had some ethical reason and or something exactly and i was just like i was like okay we're yeah we're done because that's the only thing i could think how to get her on the show because it was a trending subject and if she could talk about it for We could talk about that for 30 minutes and other stuff. That'd be an hour and change.

But no. Well, you have other con artists on. Yeah, so we're not going to have any great debate here because I'm 100% with you. There is no such thing as psychics. It has been tested again and again and again. I can prove that there's no psychics because there's, well, the James Randy Educational Foundation, J-Ref has a million-dollar trust that they have. If you are a psychic or claim to have any supernatural powers,

you can literally go there for testing. And if you show you you have any psychic ability whatsoever, they'll give you a million bucks. No one has collected in 40 years. There's a canard that many of you watching believe that psychics have in any way, shape, or form help the police or the FBI solve crimes. Like, here's the body of the kid and the police go and find them.

That has never happened in the history of the United States. It is a pure canard. Not unless they place the body there. It's a good point. So the Committee for the Scientific Exploration of Claims of the Paranormal is an organization of scientists and investigators who investigate claims of the paranormal. Like, hey, we're open to the idea. Let's walk into this with an open mind and see if this thing holds up to scrutiny.

And it never has. And they did a study to find, if you're looking at criminal cases and psychics claims, because many psychics out there, probably at CrimeCon, have claimed that they've helped out in these cases. And sometimes you find naive and stupid police officers who are willing to actually engage with those psychics and hear what they have to say. And there have been two or three cases where the psychic told the person exactly where the body was. And every single time the psychic was the murderer.

Oh my gosh. And so the committee, which I've been, which I like, and they produce a magazine called The Skeptical Inquirer, and they're good and honorable people trying to just get to the bottom of this and debunk it, bunk it, but walking into it with the skeptics mindset of, I have an open mind here. Let's look at what the evidence is, and the evidence has never held up. And I've had several clients who've been ripped off by psychics, who've been absolutely just financially gutted by psychics. And I always feel a little impotent because I can't really help them too much, because these psychics have some, you know, very real protection where they're, where, you know, their claim, it's like religion. It's almost a

religious thing. Like, well, you know, you're not going to go after the faith healer at the evangelical megachurch. Why are you going to go after this person sitting here on the street corner claiming to be a palm reader? Right. You know, bilking money out of people. I guess the last thing I would say is when I have this conversation with people and they're more, and they're kind of more dug into their incorrect position, they all was they say, well, the CIA did employed psychics, and that's absolutely true. The CIA had a program where they brought in like hundreds of people and did experiments with them to see if they could use them, like, remote viewing or anything like that. Yeah, yeah.

And they spent a fortune of your tax dollars and my tax dollars on it, and it bore out to nothing. Right. And there's a great book by a journalist named John Ronson about this called The Men Who Stare at Goats that was made into a movie. The movie was kind of silly, but the book was amazing because it's actually a very serious, although he's kind of a funny author, their journalistic effort to understand the CIA program and what happened. And he talks to the people who were in it and the people who were doing it. And it was, and again, the CIA walked away from this scratch and saying like, no, there's just nothing to it.

And so that's why we can establish that this is nonsense. But the burden of proof is not on skeptics like you and I. It's on these psychics who say this is real or the true believers. So with that, Patrice Gunner, Patrice Runner is a guy. He's a Canadian and French citizen who sent millions of letters through the snail mail to Americans from psychics, claiming to have personalized visions about the recipients who are often elderly or infirmed. You get a letter in the mail, you know, I'm a psychic. I have had a vision about you.

And Patrice gathers the names of these vulnerable people by purchasing sucker lists of people who've been ripped off in mail fraud operations. Isn't that weird? If you've been a victim, you are more likely to be a victim. You are now marketable as a commodity, right? And the letters promise the recipients to achieve great wealth and happiness or overcome illness, but you paid a fee to have these psychics help you with these things. If the victim makes the initial payment, some little old lady here sends their money to Canada to Patrice and his people,

they're bombarded with dozens of additional letters from Patrice and his cadre of psychics. Some victims were directed to send $50 to receive, and this was the key to the whole criminal case, supernatural objects. Like for 50 bucks, we can send you a supernatural object, like a charm of some kind that's going to keep the spirits away and bring you wealth and happiness and all these, like, good things. The supernatural objects they received were actually cheap, mass-produced trinkets. Others paid for personalized astrological studies that never materialized. And so the problem is that Patrice will have this great built-in defense saying, well, I think I'm psychic. Right.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service ended up doing the case. They charged Patrice with mail fraud. He was captured in Ibiza, Spain, and extradited to the U.S. for trial, along with four co-conspirators. The trial was, and he actually did take it to trial. It was fascinating. at the trial. The numbers here are astronomical. $175 million in money that he took in

over between 1994 and 2014. He'd been doing this forever. Yeah, right? So what's that? 14 years plus another six. So 20 years. Wow. 1.3 million victims in the U.S. sent him money.

Okay. we're talking 56 million letters sent out over that 20-year period. I mean, this was a mass marketing operation. The trial is fascinating. The way the government made the case is they were claiming that the psychics were not actually providing the services being sold. The mailings falsely implied direct involvement by famous psychics. Like he would cite, like, you know, famous psychics out there

who were working for him, did not exist. People paid for magic. Okay, the defense was people paid for magic, whether magic exists isn't my problem. The strongest evidence was proof that the millions of letters claiming, I had a special vision about you, which was generated by tens of thousands of times. And so basically, he was convicted at a trial. And it's the first big case I've heard of where a psychic is being convicted for claiming to be a psychic and ripping people off with this false claim. Well, he turned it into a mass marketing operation as opposed to just the gypsy on the street corner reading palms. Right.

Did you ever see the movie The Gift? I don't think so. I think it was called The Gift. And it had, who was in it? I forget the woman's name that was in it. And she's a psychic. But in the movie, obviously, she's a real psychic. Boy, it's good.

It's so good. Sounds good, yeah. I love this stuff. I have a real passion for this. Like the idea of claims of the supernatural and all that because I'm the ultimate skeptic and I just think that the work that the committee for the scientific exploration

that claims that paranormal is doing the James Randy Foundation, these are the real heroes in my world to kind of debunk nonsense. Right. Yeah. Anyway, so he's found guilty at trial. The guidelines are just weird on this

because how do you really calculate it? But the raw numbers, 20 years of this, 1.3 million victims, 56 million letters, $175 million came in. at the trial, which ended up going to appeal because of all the religious freedom-type stuff and all that, but he ends up getting sentenced to a prison sentence, and what would that prison sentence be? Did you meet any psychics in prison?

No. No. They should have seen it coming. Nothing to compare to. You imagine the sentencing judge. And so I've thought about this a lot, and there's one chance for you to get out of this. I have my hands. I have exactly.

What do you think? You have to be within 25% or one year. Right. Yeah, I think I'm going to say 16 years. 16 years in prison for pretending to be a psychic for 20 years and bilking the elderly. Final answer? Yeah. Stop.

Come on. I just want you to be comfortable. I don't want to cut this short, but this one is a long story. We spent a lot of time. I think 16, I think, what year was this? And where did he was arrested in 2000? It's a good question. I think the trial actually happened somewhat recently, but it took a long time to kind

of snake through the system. This was within the past five, ten years. But the evidence, I'm confused about it. The reason I'm double clutching on that question is that the evidence was that the that was focused on the period of 1994 to 2014. don't know how that was tried. I don't know. Maybe that was just when they had the evidence for to establish the quantities of it. But I do know that there was a trial in recently, like within the past five years. 18 years. 18 years. Okay. We're at 18 years now. Yes. All right. And you're

comfortable with that answer. And come, come good. Would that be your final answer? It didn't sound confident at all. But yes. All right. But you clearly are not psychic. No. Because the correct answer, 10 years in prison. This is so wrong what these people are getting. I love this new hang-in-judge Matt Cox, who wants to see people in prison for longer. I like this. This is a new Matt Cox.

We did a live broadcast recently. For you and I, it was last night. For the viewers, it was probably a few weeks ago. Yeah. It was fun. Yeah, yeah. I like the idea of coming in and knocking that out when I come busy you.

And at that, you talked about a time someone you knew who had a court appearance in Ocala, Florida, and you went down there to watch the court appearance. Yes. Right. Was that your first time in Ocala? No, I've been to Ocala. My wife's, my wife was raised partially in Ocala, and she has family there, so we've been up there.

Oh, cool. All right, yeah. Do you like Ocala? Yeah, it's nice. I like Ocala. Yeah, yeah. I like Ocala a lot. You know, who else lives in Ocala?

We're right outside. John Travolta. Oh, right, the airport thing. He's got this, quick story, because not the crime story. I got right when I retired, I was hired, I was paid to write an introduction to a reprint of a book called Ticket to Hell by Harry Whittington, a fantastic author from 1960. They were reprinting it and they wanted me to go down to Ocala and the publisher and kind of, and the whole idea is Harry Whittington was the king of paperbacks. He wrote something like 400 like kind of hard-boiled crime, Mickey Spillane type paperback books. from Ocala. And no one remembers who he is. But he sold so many books in the 1950s and 60s and into the

70s. And I'm a huge fan of his work. I'm kind of a student of his work. And so I went down there and as a private investigator, basically, to talk to bookstore owners and library people and, like, see where his old house was and ask people, what do you know about Harry Whittington? You ever heard of Harry Whittington? And no one had heard of him, which is weird because Ocala is a small town and this kind of like, you know, local boy made good should have been known. And that was sort of, and so I wrote this introduction, but I wrote it as if it was like a hard-boiled crime story, like I'm a private investigator on the case.

And so I was really proud of the way it turned out. And as part of that, I tried to go find John Travolta. And I went to his subdivision. And basically, it's super lockdown. Yeah. And but I found an open gate, drove through it. It just kind of kept driving. And it's a aviation community.

So think of like nice big houses, but every one of them has a garage big enough to fit a jumbo jet next to it. Yeah, I've seen like the aerial views where there literally there's like the house that the planes are pulled up. You can to your house. Right. You've seen it. You've got to look at it. It is amazing.

It is amazing. Yeah, so you drive, you literally like can land your plane. You could get in your taxi right up to your house. Get into your garage, which is a airplane hanger, pull the plane out and then drive it down the street to the runway and like take off a, in your 747. Right. I did not find John Travol. But security found me. Did they?

Told me to get the hell out. Did you look around and say, gate? I didn't see a gate. Signed. Yeah, he goes, what are you doing back here? I go, my wife and I are just looking around. This is lovely. And he's like, you can't be back here.

And I go, the gate was open. And he's like, that's not how it works in a private community. There's signs. And I go, all right, well, tell me how to get out of here. I'm in the middle of everything. And so I never found John Travolta to interview him. You didn't say you were a former FBI agent? No, I had been a, I had retired a week earlier.

and it felt like it might be a, I don't know, I just felt like there's no upside of me trying to like throw my weight around. And do they give you a badge that says, it's still a badge, and it says, but it says retired. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I used to get out of traffic tickets all the time. Oh, sorry.

My FBI bag fell. It's way more subtle than that. It's officer. I have a weapon in the car. It's important to be, I just want to make sure you know that. Oh. And, you know, I'm a retired FBI agent. And they go.

Yeah. They go, they go. Are they hiring? I get a lot of that. Anyway, this story takes place in Ocala. It was a normal day at the TD Bank in Ocala when a suspicious woman entered the branch. She was wearing a hoodie and sunglasses

and a COVID-like surgical mask and a glove on one hand. And she passes the bank teller a note demanding $50,000 in big bills. The note also said, I have a gun and will shoot if any alarms or die packs are enclosed. But she misspelled enclosed. She spelled it with an eye, Matt Cox.

Okay. But the teller wasn't about to correct her spelling. In public schools, what are you going to do? And the teller stuff's $5,000 into the bag, but hidden in there in one of the rolls of cash was a small GPS, okay, a tracking device. that was triggered automatically as soon as she crosses the threshold of the door out of the bank. This lady thinks she got away with it. She gets into her getaway car, and it only took a matter of minutes before the Ocala police,

track her down and pull her over while making the getaway at the arrest. She gets arrested, and her immediate thing that she said was that she is a former sheriff's deputy with Marion County. I'm a former sheriff's deputy with Marion County. It's okay. Go ahead. Like me trying to get out of a traffic ticket. Right. It's true, but it seems like a bad plan.

So the police did not grant her any professional courtesy that day. And they did not let her off with a warning and a promise to not rob any more banks today. They did not. Her name is Christina Thaggard. And inside her car, the cops recovered the loot and the disguise and handed her off to the FBI for further investigation and ultimately federal prosecution. because the deposits in a bank are federally insured. Had she done this at the liquor store down the street, the FBI wouldn't have cared.

Christina pleads guilty to bank robbery. No gun was ever recovered, but we have to remember, for sentencing guidelines purposes, she had threatened a gun in her note. Okay, right? In her note, again, it says, I have a gun and will shoot if any alarms or diepacks are enclosed. And pleads guilty.

And so how much time you're going to give Christina former sheriff's deputy. That's a hard one. That's hard. Because if she just had, because she said she had a gun, you would think she'd be smarter than that, to shoot,

that you'd think she would have known. You think she's up on the federal sentencing guidelines? And when she's planning this operation, she's taking a look at them and reverse engineering it. Looked into it. I mean, if you're, if you're former law enforcement,

you should at least kind of look into. But obviously she didn't. I think, yeah, I would just say, see, I know I'm going to be, I think I'm going to be high if I say seven years, but I'm going to say six years.

Six years for a note job? She said she had a gun. She said she is. There's no gun. She can say she's the queen of Mars. It doesn't make it true. I hate this. I hate this.

If she hadn't said the gun, I would say three years. Because I know lots of guys that Rob Banks. She didn't brandish a weapon. She's a writer like you. I think six, I'll go five years, five years. Five years for a note job. Yeah, it's, it is nothing to do. She got like 400 yards away from the bank.

I know, five years. First of all, I don't, and, you know, it's funny because some people are like, she got $5,000, it's not about the $5,000. It doesn't matter she got $100. I don't care about that doesn't mean anything. You can't walk in. I mean, she got shorted, too. She asked for $50,000 in big bills and only got $5,000.

You have no simple. That doesn't create a sympathy? No, it doesn't. I'm going to say 60 months. 60 months? Five years. I just want to know. Yes.

All right. You're sticking with that? Yes. Final answer? Come on. Final answer? Yes. I just need to hear it.

24 months, two years. That's some bullshit. That is some... What is going on? I'm trying to help you in these clues. She's a woman. That's what it is. There's really good video of her being arrested from the body cam.

Really? Yeah, well, she gets out to it. Hey, Sheriff's got... former Marion County Sheriff's Department. And so, yeah, the footage of her being arrested was amusing to me. Not so brave now, are you, lady? Such drama.

Okay, here we go. This is what I saw. They don't play in Okama. Step back here. Step back here. You can bring her back. All right, face away from me, face away from me. Face away from me. Come back. Come back. She's a cop. She knows the drill. What are you doing?

Yeah, yeah. You did this 100 times with the Academy. when you had to play the bad guy. I got it. Sir, what? Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, Oh my God, what is going on? Excuse me? He'll be dead when you get there.

Yeah, how stupid are you that you think what? You're going to go, oh my gosh, I'm sorry. You had to know that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. My condolences. My deepest condolences. What's what you need to do? Several years.

Yes, you're going to have to do several years. A lot of irrelevant information. Yeah, yeah. If you're innocent, you're asked a question, you give an answer. His dad's house is a ground. His house is around. house right there on 17th Street and I stopped by there and I'll be honest with you they wanted to go that's another tell I'll be honest with you if anyone ever says that they're not being honest with you

so at this point as someone that's interrogating someone who you know you believe is obviously guilty like from the law enforcement side is there any inside yeah so what he's trying to do he's he's basically establishing to her that we know you're lying we know you're not telling the truth the evidence in this case is pretty overwhelming. So we need to get past the idea that her denials about going to a party, her nonsensical story about how she gets into her car and there's a bunch of bank robbery money and the bank robbery mask and gloves are in the car. It's purely coincidental and someone must have put that stuff in her car at a party. That's her story. It's preposterous. Within the 11-minute time frame. Well, you don't want to do a full discovery of every piece of evidence in the case. It's important that the

police convince her that they know what's going on. And then you shift the conversation from why, rather, did you do it to why do you do it? Right. We know you did it. Let's get past that part. I'm trying to understand what was going on in your life. Or was anyone else involved. And so that's where this police officer, who, by the way, is doing an excellent job is headed. And Tom, or not Tom, but Matt, from this point, what are the mistakes that this lady has made? Is there anything that she could have done to make this situation better? I don't, I mean, this case? Yeah. No, you're done. You know, the smartest move she could have made was said, listen, I'm going to talk to a lawyer. Because you're done. You're done. I mean,

this is, at this point, this is only benefiting the police. You know, and it doesn't even matter benefiting the beliefs is you're already, you're just done. It's over. Get a lawyer. What is my sentence going to be? How can I, I mean, I'm sure Tom has a different take. He's, you know, wants you to be cooperative, but to my, there's no, I don't see a benefit to her at this. It ends the same way. It ends the same way. At this point, she's just giving them more and more information. But it doesn't matter.

And she's providing an alibi that is going to be so easy to poke holes. Right. And she's looking worse and worse and more. You're looking more and more like a liar. So if God forbid this has to be presented to a jury, this is not going to bode well for her. No, no. Let's hear. Let's see what this peak is.

So when you left that bank, that tracker tells us when you're walking, what speed you're going, when you go. You never stop. car never stopped from the moment you left that bank. Only times it pauses is the stoplight, the stoplight, and then you show you one. It must have been a glitch. He's making a glitch. Yeah, he's making a mistake. So he needs to stop trying to convince her to say, yes, it was me and switch the conversation to, listen, something must have really gone sideways in your life to make you get to this point. You know, did you do this because you had someone, you have, is it debt? Is it what's going on here? And so he's trying, he gets caught in this cycle, which is why he's

doing this for two hours. And he's doing a fine job. But the, yes, you did it, no, I didn't. Yes, you did it, no, I didn't. Does not get you closer to a confession. Switch this focus of the conversation to from whether you did it to why you did it. What was going on in your life? You're not a bad person. You're a law enforcement officer like me. You could have been my partner. I'm wondering what went sideways in your life that brought you to this day. Were you abused by somebody? Did someone treat you badly and make that the focus of the conversation as if you're offering her compassion, empathy, and understanding as opposed to this back and forth debate, which gets you nowhere. Are you thoughts like me to jail based on that?

100%. You are. Here's the thing. You've got, you have the video, the tracker, we can now track that that tracker into your vehicle. Your vehicle is then tracked to two stoplights where you stop. in your vehicle, they're following the tracker, they pull up to that vehicle with the tracker, and they stop that vehicle, they ask the person to get out of the vehicle, that person's you.

The chain of custody is perfect. It's perfect. It's flawless. There's no gap in the, there's no blank space. Right. The no, no, I was drove from, I happened to drive through that intersection, you guys confused me. No, no. We've got the track, and the tracker was in your car.

Did the person drive by in an identical car to you that looked just like you and sling it out the window? you should have started with that if that was what happened. Because that's not what happened. And then, of course, once we get your car, and we look at your, the black box information is going to tell us how many times you stopped. It's all going to link up. She's Merrill Street, isn't she? Like, she's baking it, yeah.

She's trying to get taken to a hospital instead of jail. I've seen this ploy. Are you serious? She's trying, because, again, she wants to go to a hospital rather than the jail. That's embarrassing. As a criminal. I'm embarrassed for her. I have never made a woman scream like that.

I was going to say. Oh, and the boots. Oh, wow. Okay, all right. Yeah, all right. Something for the boys. What you want me to do? Let's also remember she pled guilty.

Yeah. There's an engineering software company in St. Louis, Missouri, that employed a 49-year-old woman named Debbie Steinbaker. She was a payroll clerk for the past eight years. Eight years of this company handling the payroll. Her authorized salary

was $58,000 a year. Now, her employer did not know this, but Debbie was having difficulty controlling her spending and living within her means. Okay? And so Debbie has this idea that's going to change her life forever, Matt Cox. Remember, she's the payroll clerk.

What if she just gave herself a raise? Would anyone notice? I mean, normally the bosses give the raises, but what if she gave herself a raise? Because you know what? She has access to that ADP system. Yeah. Okay?

And that's what she did. In addition to her normal salary, she started paying herself bonuses. Because you can do that. Right. You have the ADP steering, the steering wheel. And a couple thousand here, a couple thousand there. No one noticed.

She started getting greedy, then started giving her regular, bonus, giving yourself regular bonuses in the amount of $13,000 sometimes. And good deal. But these bonuses eventually start depleting the bank account of this software company. And they start having cash flow problems as a result. And so the bosses are like, what's going on here? I mean, we're working hard. Why is our cash flow so bad? And they get some CPAs in there to do an audit. And the accountants saw that the payroll was all out of whack. and they identified that the problem was Debbie.

And they identified $305,000 in unauthorized bonuses that Debbie gave herself. Software company fires Debbie, calls in the FBI. And Debbie, the FBI, just sit Debbie down and begin to kind of lean on her a little bit. Full confession. Right. Comes into court, pleads guilty to wire fraud. $305,000, payroll clerk embezzlement. I don't think Debbie had a criminal history.

history, but she had a spending problem. How much time you're going to give old Debbie? 18 months. No, I don't know. 18 months? 18 months? Maybe, well, I mean, it's $305,000. I'm going lower than 18 months. Go, you can do that.

I'm thinking 14 months, 14, 14 months. Let's go 14 months. 14 months. She may have only gotten a few months, be honest. She may have gotten six months. Matt Cox, if you and I took out an ad on Craigslist. and said that you get that we have a job and you get to spend 14 months in prison in exchange for $305,000, we would have a line around the block of people taking that deal.

I know. So you think that's justice? I'm not, I'm not. 14 months. 14 months. Just sticking with that? Yes. Final answer?

18 months. I'm going back to 18 months. 18 months. All right, all right. Final answer in 18 months? No, no. 14 months. I'm back to 14 months. 14 months. 14 months. 14 months.

All right, so 14 months. Is that your final answer? Final answer. Don't talk to me again. But if you hit it on the nose, you get two points, right? Yes. All right, answers 18 months. I still get a point, just not two points. Right. Oh, my God.

so frustrating. We've talked about this before on your show, but I want to underscore it with a few stories right now, all of which are interesting, but functionally the same crime. This problem of sex distortion. Yes. It doesn't seem to be letting up, even though where men are often meeting a woman online,

sending them pictures of their junk as if a woman wants to see that. And the next thing you know, we find out it's not a woman, and the person gets blackmailed. And it's happening to a lot of young people. I feel like I'm talking to more, rather than fewer young people who this is happening to and kind of guiding them through this process. What I always tell them is that do not pay the extortionist. They'll never ever stop.

The odds of them releasing your photos is pretty low. I'm not going to say it will never happen, but pretty low, but that's out of your control anyway, to block them, freeze them out and just make them think that you died in your sleep. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. When you're not resting well, everything else feels harder. Your focus, your mood, even your recovery. Ghostbed is here to help you fix that. They've spent decades perfecting how to build a bed that's comfortable, durable, and designed to actually help you rest. Every ghost bed mattress features

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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 site for details. That's my advice to these young people. Let's talk about some cases here. This one's a Nigerian guy. And I like Nigerians, actually.

People think I'd be up on the Nigerians, but I don't. I have friends who are Nigerian, I have clients who are Nigerian, I've had doctors who are Nigerian. But Nigeria has a fraud problem. Let's call it what it is. And we have a violent crime problem here in the U.S. I'm not casting stones. But there's a story about a Nigerian name Omar Uwee Uweida. He's a 28-year-old Nigerian man living in Chicago.

He got off on terrorizing gay men. That was his whole thing. He would use the gay dating app Grindr. You're familiar with Grindr, right, Matt Cox? Not for the reasons you would think. He uses Grindr to meet young guys and solicit sexually explicit photos and videos from the fellas. And then once he had their info, he'd begin extorting them for money and sexual favors. And sexual favors.

Yeah. Yeah. Which, I mean, if you're on Grindr and connecting with people, I don't know why you've got to blackmail them to do that. Anyway, he threatened the victims, many of whom were not out to their families as being gay, saying that if you don't pay me or meet me for gay sex, I'm going to send these photos that you sent me to your parents and tell them you're gay. Yeah. And he followed through with his threats, actually.

When an Ohio state student failed to either pay him $200 or meet him for sex, Omar Ui created false social media accounts in the kid's name that said, this guy is gay. See his picks for evidence. And that's how the kid's parents found out that their son was gay. he did this to dozens of young men around America. Eventually enough victims who either paid him off or got him off called the FBI and launched an investigation. And the results were better than usual because Omar Ui was in the United States and not in Nigeria.

Following, he was charged with 22 counts of cyberstalking and extortion, and he pled guilty in federal court. How much money did he? You know, it wasn't an astronomical amount of money, but it's not a a fraud case. So let's say, I mean, he's charged with 22 counts. It sounds like he was shaking this guy down for $200. So the dollar amount is going to be so small. It's not even, but it's not a factor because he's not being charged with fraud. So the sentencing guidelines for fraud are irrelevant. But we have 22 victims who are willing to testify against him, some of whom

he had sex with, others he got money from, but always at the tip of a sword with this threat. He pleads guilty in federal court. How much time are you going to give Omar Ui in Chicago? I was going to say, did you ever, and I think we've talked about this, the, gosh, it was called the Angola scam. Angola, it was run out of Angola State Prison back in the early 80s. So there was a magazine called, I want to say it was out and about. I haven't received it in a while, so I don't remember. And it was basically, you know, obviously pre-internet, pre-everything, right? So there were several prisoners.

because John Grisham actually wrote a book emulating this. Okay. Called the Brethren. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was that about the judges who were locked? About the three judges that were locked up. So, and what in Angola State Prison, and this is true, actually would be an amazing story, by the way, to do on that channel we were talking about, Colby. Is that these three or four prisoners got together and they, with the help of a crooked lawyer.

Okay. On the street, they started writing letters to, well, first they put an ad in, out and about. Okay. That they were a young 22-year-old who was locked up in a drug rehab or something along those lines. Yeah. And they had like a photograph or something of a young man. And so through their lawyer, they would receive mail correspondence, and then they would give that to the prisoners, and they would write letters. Right.

And they'd include a photo of the kid, this young boy, when really they're a fat, bald, 45-year-old man. And then they would, they would, the people, the men that responded that were clearly still closeted, those are the people they focus on. If you were some other, you know, if you're out and gay. Yeah, oh, I'm unopently gay man. Well, then they would, they would discard that. So, but they slowly started hooking people in.

And I mean, we're talking about like dozens and dozens of guys. And then once they had said enough horrible things about having to be married to a woman they despised and their children were disappointments and all the things that they would confide thinking very soon they were going to be. They're connecting with this guy. Right. They were going to be connected. And they were going to physically be connected at some point when this kid got out of rehab. Once they did that, they would then write the letter saying, I need you to send me $10,000, $50,000. These guys literally ended up like with $1.5 million.

Was the money going to the lawyer or there's the money going to the lawyer or there's money going to that? It's going through the lawyer, but it's going to an offshore Cayman Island account. It's an extortion scheme. It's just using snail mail. Right. Well, yeah, because they didn't have the – but eventually what happens, one of the guys gets – he leaves prison and ends up somehow or another getting mixed up in a, like a murder or a murder for hire, and he gets caught. And so as – once he gets caught, he says, listen, I've got something for you.

Like if I – Here's something in his back pocket. He could flip it to a while. Right. And he explains, this is what these. guys are doing. Now, what was amazing about that was that when they, the FBI went out to all these guys and tracked down like 40 people or something like that, only like three of them were willing to testify. Everybody else was like, I'm not testifying. I don't care. They can keep the 100,000

they got from me. And these, and they were, and they started small, but then they'd keep going and going and going. It's got to be terrifying, you know, to, you know, especially in the early 80s. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, these, yeah, back to Omarui. Okay, sorry. No, it's still. It was really that was pertinent. So same situation, right? 22 victims. How much time are you going to give him? Yeah, I mean, I think he can sit back to Nigeria at the end of this thing, too.

I don't think he's a U.S. citizen. I think 36 months? 36 months? Three years? Yeah. I think. How many victims? 22.

Again, I want to... I don't think it's that sophisticated. Some of them he forced to have sex with him. Oh, I forgot about that. part. Right. Okay, so I don't want you to think about that. I'm not, I'm not trying to sway you. I just want you to make sure you're fully informed. 120 months? So 10 years. Yeah. Big jump. Yeah, well, I totally. That's how much gay sex is worth. I completely, completely forgot about that. Yeah. I mean, it's probably more than that, but. Yeah. So course,

course of sex plus money. But I also think that these people are not, they probably do not want to testify. They do not. You know, he has some leverage. on his side. Yeah. Like if I'm sure, I'll go, you're telling me I got to do 20 years, and then we'll go to trial and we'll put everyone in these guys and I will embarrass the hell out of that, you know, they'll be embarrassed. And so I'm 120, 120 is probably.

Okay. Is that your final answer? Yes. Okay. Correct answer is 51 months. So, split the difference between your two guesses. Mm. Mm.

Gosh, 51. And these, he's extorting these people to have sex, too. that seems very low. You live in Wesley Chapel, Florida, right? Yes. You get a lot of missionaries coming door to door, knocking on your door? We got a lot of guys trying to get me to put solar things. Or wanted to spray my house for bugs, and I don't own my house.

I mean, missionaries, though. Like, not salesmen. Like Jehovah's Witnesses? No, but we do get people, just church people. I've had church people come by. Yeah. Well, that's a missionary, right? Yeah.

Are they inviting you to go to their local church? Yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I think they would identify themselves as missionaries. Okay. I don't think of it. Sometimes you get the Mormons coming.

You're right. You're right. The Mormons trying to give you the watchtower with their ties and they ride bikes. Yep, never had those. But I have had. And you don't get Jehovah's Witness? I don't think these people were. I didn't talk to them enough about, you know, the problem is, is that they immediately, you know, are you whatever, following Jesus Christ?

Do you have a church? What do you do? What's your approach? I mean, my approach is that I go to, you know, I go to Bridgeway Church every Sunday. I'm already, you know, I believe in Jesus Christ, I was raised Catholic. I'm good. I'm sure your church is wonderful, but I'm solid, I'm good. You guys look like you've been out here a while.

Can I get you some bottles of water? And then they say, yes, and then I go get them, because they're always going to accept the water because they want to keep it going. That's their foot in the door. Yeah. So I give them the water. then, you know, they try and spark up a conversation. And I'll talk to them for a couple.

Unless I have something pressing, I don't mind talking to you. But I'm all very, very upfront, very like, look, I understand what you're doing. You're trying to get in the door. You're trying to talk to me, have a little conversation, make a contact here. And I get it. And I'll have a conversation with you real quick. But the truth is, I said, I'm going in here and I'm not going to your church. But I hear you, and here's your bottle of water.

So I give him the bottle of water, like, I'm not an asshole. But you're not going to convince me. I'm good with Bridgeway. So I say that. Doesn't work. Oh, it does work. A lot of times they'll kind of thank you very much for the water, really appreciate it. Like they've knocked on 50 doors and nobody said to you. It is hot. And with somebody's one time these guys were walking away, they were leaving. They were leaving. I was, I've had them ask. I think it was the same time. They were like, what do you do for a living? Oh, you're doing? What do you do for a living? I was like, I actually run a YouTube channel, True Crime. They're, oh, how did you get into that? I said, I wish I really did 13 years of federal prison. I said, I got out of you. So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm. I'm. I'm slowly making myself less and less attractive as I'm for killing a door to door sales right that's going to be the next one um but I did that and so as I talked to these guys they were like wow that's super interesting and they turn turn to leave I remember so I have an American flag in my

front yard and they turned to leave and they said um I noticed the American flag are you ex-military and I said no no and he said oh but oh okay I just saw the flag I said no I said I'm a patriot and he goes okay and he smiled and walked off. And I remember Jess when I walked in, she said, what did she say about the flag? And I told her what I said. And she goes, I love that. And I was like, yeah.

That's nice. That's good. That's good. That's good. That's good. Then I don't feel bad. If I give them a water, I don't feel that. Right.

Right. You give them a little more time than I do. I'm polite to them. As soon as they start, I go, I need to stop. And I go, I understand that this is a numbers game for you and you're trying to get as sucked as many people as possible. I am not buying what you're selling. And I'm not really interested in hearing the pitch.

but I also want to be respectful of your time because I know that, because I do not want to waste your time. So I'm going to end this conversation now and let you know that I want you to have a great day, but I'm not the proper target for what you're selling. But, you know, good luck in the neighborhood.

I hope you're very successful and I hope you have a great day. Be cool. I just put a no soliciting sign. I'm like, Colby goes, did you read this? Yeah, well, yeah, when they see that, they lick their chops because they know

that you're a soft target. Colby answers the door with the gun tucked in his belt. In his tidy witties. Did you see that? It was tidy witties. That's how you'd need to answer it. In your tidy wits, hey, come on in. No, no, come in.

I was just masturbating. He thought you'd want to join me. Muhammad Rana was a 32-year-old missionary from Ontario, Canada. He traveled throughout North America spreading the word of God. I'm assuming his version was Islam, because his name's Muhammad. but who knows. But he also had a secret life, Matt Cox, that no one knew about. He would go online.

He would travel with a laptop as he would travel throughout America doing his missionary work. He'd go online and he'd pretend to be a teenage boy. Online, yeah. See, that does not seem very Islamic at all. I feel like I know what's coming. He would trick into sending him nude photos. He also captured videos. of some of these girls changing in their bedrooms

when they inadvertently left their webcams on after chatting to Muhammad online. And then he would threaten that he was going to post the videos and pictures on the internet unless the girls produced additional, more graphic photos and videos that he wanted sent to him via email. So he's not shaking them down for money.

He's shaking them down for more content. Girls from Maryland, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Washington, New York. They were trying to hit every state. They were terrorized. by him almost daily for months, some for over a year, demanding more content and more content. Well, these demands for explicit content, you know, it fits the statutory requirement for the production of materials, right? And it was his email address that proved to be his undoing, because he's having these girls send stuff. The FBI traces the email address back to Muhammad

in Canada, which is where he's based, even though he's on the road a lot. And it was actually the Toronto police who arrested him. And they extradite him. And they extradite. him to the U.S. to face these charges because most of the victims were from the U.S., which, again, for your viewers, is a good reason why you want to have an honest and open conversation with your teenage kids about internet safety and the appropriateness of this type of behavior because it's just a nightmare for these kids. He ends up pleading guilty. How much time are going to sentence Muhammad to? But he is a missionary, so he's doing God's work also, so in mitigation. I'm sure they took that to consideration.

now we're departure. Islamic missionary, so... What's your final answer? 144, 12 years. All right, the answer's 30 years, and I kept talking to you about how awful this was to get you higher. I was never going to get to 30. I was never going to get to 30.

You were going to get to 20, and then at least not embarrass yourself in your own show. Let's go to Hawaii for this next one. I was an FBI agent in Hawaii for seven years, and you get some pretty crazy crimes there. It's actually fairly low crime rate in Hawaii. But stuff happens. I know I've asked you 100 times, but I never know the answer. You've been to Hawaii? Yeah, yeah.

Maui. And I obviously went to Hawaii, the Big Island and Maui. You mean Honolulu, right, where Oahu is to transfer. Do you go to the Big Island or not? The Big Island's a different thing. The Big Island is the island of Hawaii, which is super confusing. Right, I've been to Hawaii and then Maui. Okay, you did not go to Oahu where Honolulu is as part of that flight.

Probably. Like, Waikiki? You ever go to, like, that's sort of their tourist district? I was 15. Okay. I know it's a long time. I don't remember exactly. You're a man of a certain age.

33-year-old propellers on the flame. Yeah, right, exactly. 33-year-old Gerardo Montez lived in Hawaii. Gerardo met Amanda on Reddit. You do much spend much time on Reddit? No. I should, but I don't. Apparently, it's very popular.

Yeah. And they begin getting to know each other through private messages on Reddit. How are you today? How are you today? Is she young? Inappropriate. They're just getting to know each other.

Inappropriate. So judgy. So judgy. Gerardo was able to turn the conversation sexual over time. You'll be surprised to hear. That's shocking. And he convinced young Amanda to send him topless photos of herself.

Does she know he's 34? Yeah. Yeah, 33. 33. Sorry. Over time, Amanda decides that she's not into him, and she tries to stop the conversation. I'm just not comfortable doing this, Gerardo. I love the fact that we're both Redditors.

We have these nice conversations, but sending you pictures of me is just, I just feel weird about it, she says. Gerardo wasn't having it. He responds by threatening to post the nude photos of her on various social media sites and send them to, quote, every school in the state, end quote.

He demanded more pictures, providing a detailed list of what he wanted, and tried to get her to film herself engaging in sexual activity with her family dog. What? People are so strange. I know. They're so, so sick.

Good news is Amanda did not comply with that request. She shared her distress with a friend who then contacted the FBI. And so my former colleagues at the FBI in Honolulu worked the case. They paid Gerardo a visit. And during the interrogation, he admits that he would go on to teen-focused groups on Reddit to meet young girls, and that he had successfully solicited nude images from children in Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas, and Colorado. The FBI arrest him on federal sexstortion and illicit images charges, and he pleads guilty. How much time do you think he got for?

his activities. I feel like it's almost the same thing. I just feel like the other guy, I'd say 25 years. 25 years? Yeah. Final answer there? Yeah. The correct answer is 20 years, so I think he got it.

40-year-old Ramanan Panamanathan. He would pose as a 14-year-old boy living in New Jersey. That was his undercover identity. And he would befriend boys and girls. Using his fake profile, he would flirt and seduce the kid. convincing them to send pictures and videos of themselves. Unlike most extortion scams that are about money, he's another one of these guys who just wanted more and more content.

He wants to build up his video library. And he threatened the kids and said he'd expose them to their friends and family unless they continued making content for him. So the FBI identifies 145 in the U.S. exploited by Ramanan. And he built this basically giant library of content. of like super explicit content on his hard drive in Toronto. And the FBI works very closely with Canadian authorities

and a joint investigation with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who I worked with jointly on investigations and their top notch to make the case. He's charged with transportation charges in Canada. Okay, you'll appreciate this. I'm going to give you a little clue here. He gets charged in Canada and sentenced to 12 years in Canada.

And then they ship him to the Washington, D.C., to face the similar, charges in the USA, and he pleads guilty. And so he gets sentenced in the USA to how much? That's the question. I think, I think 30 years. Do you think this guy's worth 30? Yeah. The correct answer is 33 years. Oh, nice. Yeah. So, yeah, you're within three years. Well, let's find out what the score is, because we're going into the last story. Four of 11, so you need to hit this one on the head. All right. I believe in you. You like Netflix crime documentaries? I love them. I do. I do. too. Talk to me about what some of your favorite ones are, do you know?

You know, I mean, obviously, recently I did watch the crash, which everybody did. I did too. I just watched that. Yeah. Do you like that one? A little psycho. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was pretty good. I thought. My problem with it, there was no twist. I kept waiting for some twist to happen, but it was exactly what it looked like. Yeah. And listen, I've never been so irritated watching, like, her parents. I was so... They were so tone deaf. Yeah, I was so...

And then, so what happened is, we ended up doing a thing on the murder man. Johnny Mitchell and I did a hour and a half. On that case? On that case. Oh, cool. But the problem was, is I also watched the Hulu one. Oh, there's a Hulu of the same case.

Oh, interesting. And I watched... Does the girl cooperate and get interviewed for that as well? The girl who did it, the murderous? Uh, did she? I think she did. I think she did. And the other one that was the, and then I went down, I started listening to these videos where they're, they've heard.

It's after she's been locked up, an hour and a half of just prison phone calls with her mom. Her mom is so over the top delusional and the dad. It's the weirdest dynamic of a family. And her parents absolutely contributed to. I guess for the viewers who have not seen this, it's about a girl who basically one night has her boyfriend and a, dude friend in the car and she literally just drives in at full span like 90 miles an hour into a brick wall on the side of a building and she survives the other two die questions was this an accident or was this a deliberate act spoiler alert she's you know in prison yeah she's found guilty and

yeah she just just just just just insanity yeah the parents were frustrating i my hate was reserved for her female best friend who refused to cooperate with the police or the prosecutors in this case but was more than happy to run her mouth on to the Netflix documentarians? Yeah, yeah, just, listen, not everybody,

but there were so many people that just behaved really badly and just did stupid things. Now, okay, do you believe her? Do you believe? I don't believe her at all. Her thing is that she has no recollection of this. I don't care.

You did exactly what you had threatened in the past, even if she didn't threaten, you know, because they really only have one person who kind of establishes, that this is something she's said before, nobody else but that one person. Even if you said, hey, well, you know what, that person probably said that just to help the prosecution. Okay, that's fine. Let's get rid of her. I still don't believe her in general.

The black box, the video, yeah. Yeah, there's the fighting over the wheel. The wheel is being yanked around. There's somebody trying to pull the car out of gear. It keeps shifting back into gear because it automatically does that. You can't pull it out of gear. The whole thing says there was a huge struggle over the wheel. that she did this on purpose.

And they have all these videos of her. Like, threatening to do this. Not just starting to do this. They have videos of her where the boyfriend had locked her out of the house because she's physically attacking him. And he's got his recording,

because this has happened multiple times, he's recording her, and she's still threatening him. She's calling him name. She's doing it. Listen, just the way she spoke to him. Volatile. The fact that your father raised you

thinking that you could talk to a person, the way she was talking to, and the fact that he didn't do. Listen, we'd have been done so quick. So quick. Anyway, that whole thing upset me. But, I mean, I loved, like, the Tender Swindler. Yeah, I have that one down here is one of my favorites. Did you see Unknown Number, the high school catfish?

Yes. Don't spoil it. That one was amazing. Because that one had a twist, right? That one had, like, a solution to the mystery. And when you find out who the bad guy is, wow. Did you see, don't fuck with cats? Yeah, have that down here.

to talk about. That was amazing. That was so good. They tracked and triangulated. These people can find. These are the people. The FBI needs to go in and you to hire all those people. Yeah, they were great.

The crowd fund, not funding, but the crowd sourcing. Crowdsourcing to track people down is phenomenal. I see people who do that. The other one I wrote down that I really liked was evil genius, the pizza bomber. I was locked up with the guy. Really? I was locked up with the short, fat guy. He died in prison.

And I talked to him one time because I was, everybody was like, you got to talk to him, bro. He did the pizza bombing. He was one of the guys. And you got to write a story on him. So I went and I had a conversation with him. A book had just come out. And as I was talking to him, he used to sweep up. And he, and he went and I talked to him for like 10 or 20 minutes.

And he was like, well, I didn't know anything I really did anything wrong. It was really the police's fault. He said, they didn't get there fast enough. They didn't get there. They could have disarmed it, but they got there. By the time they got there, they wouldn't approach him. They could have disarmed the bomb. It's not my fault it went off.

And I'm thinking, it is your fault. He didn't make the bomb. And pretty much everybody in the case had died. He was the last person. He ended up dying in prison shortly after that. Interesting. Yeah, crazy. I remember when that originally happened.

Just what a crazy story that was. It's like something out of saw. The movie saw. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Okay, do you remember one? And this is what I'm going to talk about here. Do you know what that is?

Colby with the pizza bomb? But they put a device around a guy. neck. But he's involved in it, by the way. The guy was involved in the whole thing. But so he put, they put a device around the guy with a, with a bomb. And they have him rob a bank. And so he robs the bank. And the whole theory is, if he gets caught, he'll be able to say he was delivering a pizza. And he got kidnapped. He got kidnapped. They placed this thing on him and told him, go rob a bank and then meet us here and give us the money. So he'll be able to, he has a plausible kind of deniability that I had nothing to do with him. He got kidnapped. He got kidnapped.

is I, he's able to deny the whole thing. This wasn't my fault. The problem is they put a real, the device worked. And then it's on a timer. Yeah. And so when the cops, the cops do stop him and he gets out, he's like, I've got a bomb on my name. And they're like, stay there. Stay there.

And they call the bomb squad. And they, they quarantine off the whole kind of area. And he's screaming. I think they put a, didn't they handcuff him? Yeah. They've handcuff him, but they realize it's a bomb. Stay there. And of course, he's terror.

terrified telling them take it. He's like on his knees in the street. Yeah, this is going to go off. It's going to go off. And it does go off. And it just, bow. The head just gone. Yeah. But the whole thing was initially, it was like how horrible for this man. But very quickly, they realize, his story. His story's not what it seems. He was involved. It was, it was like four people that were involved in this. And he was one of them. Yeah, that was bananas. It was really that, the woman, there was a woman. Yeah, she was the brain behind. brains behind it. Yeah.

Listen, unbelievable. She's the evil genius. Yeah, it really, yeah, exactly. It really is an evil genius type of plan. I don't watch it, Colby. Did you see one or hear of one called Chiefs O'Holic Wolf in Chiefs clothing? No.

Okay, that's the story we're going to talk about today. And this is what? A documentary? Oh, I've never heard this one. Yeah. Kansas City Chiefs, their football team in the NFL. Okay. Right?

We went to a lot of Super Bowls recently, a very big deal. and their fans are like bananas, a radical fandom, I would argue beyond what even someone does. And so when you would go to the games, there'd be a dude dressed as a wolf in like this crazy outfit who was just a fam who would take pictures with you

and kind of act quite crazy in the stands. He was known as the Chief Seaholic. Okay. Right? Like, he was a beloved social media star. Everyone loved the Chiefsaholic. Just one of those fixtures at a game. He doesn't work for the Chiefs.

That's nothing to do with the organization, but he'd show up dressed in like this giant wolf outfit. Colby can show it to you. He cultivates this online persona. And so meanwhile, smash cut through 2022, a series of unsolved bank robberies throughout the Midwest that were vexing law enforcement. The same ski-mask guy robbed banks in Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Kansas. It's very rare. most bank robberies, let's call it what it is, are just like, functionally homeless people stumbling or addicts stumbling in there with a note. But this guy was more professional. He would

show up with a ski mask on, hand notes to the tellers, threatening to shoot them unless they complied. He made $850,000, this mysterious bank robbery in 11 different bank robberies and credit union robberies across seven states. That's a lot. The average bank robbery, it's like $3,500 or something. This guy was more of a Hollywood-style bank robber. He knew his stuff. But the FBI is using cell phone tracking analysis to determine that the robberies were all conducted by the same man. And his name was Xavier Babuda.

Further investigation by the FBI finds out that Xavier was laundering the stolen money at nearby casinos, turning the loot into chips. And that's how he's, and then cashing those chips in to make it look like he had won money gambling. At one point, he used to. He had a hand, he had what appeared to be a handgun, threatened the bank employees with it. He pressed a gun against a teller's body at one point in Nashville and threatened to put a bullet in your head if he, if a die pack came. So he has a gun or at least claims to it at one time. But I guess one nuance is that it turned out it was not a real gun.

It was a BB gun. But, you know, he's threatening the gun. But the shocking twist is it turns out that Xavier Babuda is the chief Saholic. No. Yes. Yeah. So this beloved, like, super fan that everyone, like, knows, like, you know, was at the parades and stuff like that. This kind of de facto mascot of the chiefs is actually this, like, this John Dillinger bank robber traveling around.

So he ends up pleading guilty. He gets some state time. But, okay, so we're talking to 11 bank robberies across seven states laundering the money through casinos. He did get some time in Oklahoma, but let's leave that aside because we're talking federal here. Yeah. How much time did he get in the federal system, the old chiefsaholic? I'm going to say 15, 180 months, 15 years. 180 months, 15 years.

You know he was a beloved mascot. I think that's probably probably will be worse, right, than they make it worse. Guy's kind of a pillar in the community, sort of a big deal. Not a pillar in the community. I think you're not accounting for the amount of joy he brought people on Sundays. He'd pose for selfies with him. I don't even know that he would charge. Could you imagine that that was part of his sentenceing?

Your honor. In mitigation. They're showing the picture of him with a little kid. All right. Okay. Another argument. The gun was a BB gun. It doesn't matter.

You know, it doesn't matter. Okay. The person that had it stuck against their head, I promise you thought it was a real gun. And it's terrified. It's funny that he put it against the belly and then threatened to put a bullet in his head, so he is an anatomy issue. No, you can't. Yeah.

Okay. What was your guess? 15 years, 180. Okay. The actual answer is 17 and a half years. Nice. I think you got it. Are we tied?

Am I tied at least? No. No. No. 12. You're one short. One shot. Interestingly, he got 32 years in Oklahoma.

The sentence is running concurrently. Oh, okay. But we talk better here on this show, as you know. And so final score for young Matt Cox? Five of 12. Five of 12. Oh, you missed it. I was close.

I don't mind me close. You had that one where you were vacillating between 14 and 18 months. Yeah, I know. And I kept trying to stop you at 18 because I want to help you. Yeah, I know you were trying. You're so good to me. I'm so curious about CrimeCon. You went this year with Colby.

I was unable to make it. You guys went to Vegas. Was it like the hangover? It was, you know, it was better this year because I knew what to expect. Okay. The first year we went, we thought there was going to be a bunch of criminals. We thought like Jordan Belford would be there signing books. And we thought, you know, we just thought there was going to be all of these big criminals.

And we thought we were going to make a bunch of contacts. And it was really a bunch of, this is horrible. It was a bunch of 45-year-old divorce women that are running a, podcast. Or they're looking for missing persons or their, uh, were you mobbed by fans? No, because 90% of the, uh, of the, the attendees are women. Oh, I see. This is, which isn't necessarily your demographic. And I would say the 10% that left over that dragged their, the only 10% were there of men were men that had been dragged there. It felt like they'd been dragged there by their girlfriends, you know? I thought it was going to be like a Matt

Cox convention. I was home all weekend thinking, like, I'm missing out of this is the one place I might get recognized, but I thought it would be so cool too. But I got, I had what? Maybe 10 people more than 10. You got to recognize. I really thought it was going to be like, oh my gosh, oh my God. And it wasn't. It was. I get a, I get a better result walking through the, walking through the airport. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Atlanta airports my, is my headquarters for the center of fame. I had the best experience in, in Austin. The people, like that was it. There's like, one airport that's like wow and then the another one you go to nobody says anything i'm like i've lost it yeah all right so um you were you gonna say we were you gonna say the people that did

come up to matt they were almost shocked that he was there remember those two kids he's like oh those listen there were two kids that were just i mean it was we did see kids what do you mean i mean they were probably in their 20s and i mean they were the one kid was just like women or men couldn't no two guys and but they were just i can't believe this i can't believe this Can't believe in a true crime podcast or is it crime? Right, but he was, he was so over the time. And I was just like, it was almost to the point where it's like, listen, this is too much. I love it.

It's too much. Like, you're really drawing attention at this point. And then at that point, everybody's walking around looking at me. Who's this guy? Who's this guy? What about the lady who walked up to us? We're talking to somebody. She just walked up the mat and she just starts explaining.

Exactly. We're in a full-blown conversation with something. Me, Colby, and it. and Hollywood Wade was there. So we're talking to this. She walked right up. I mean, I mean, we're talking about uncomfortably close. And I was just like, oh, oh, and just started talking.

Like about, I, oh, not even high. She just walked right up and she said, I've stopped over 200,000 pounds of contraband going in, coming into our schools. So she may be in the spectrum of some kind. Yeah, and it was just, I go. And when she was done doing rattling off her elevator pitch, I was like, okay. and I look at it Colby like I'm like am I the only one who's freaked out? Do people, are you in a booth or something of that?

Do you have a sign that says that you're wildly famous? No, you're just two dudes walking around. We're just walking around. And what we want to do next year is get a booth for the murderment. Because that seems what it's about. You know what it was odd about it? These 45-year-old ladies don't want to hear about Ponzi schemes? Yeah, exactly.

I know it's sad, right? And then the few people that were there that were white-collar-based, like there was this one, these two women that do a white-collar-based show, and they had a podcast, they had a booth, they were never there. For two days straight, they were never there. We're talking about hours when people were leaving notes. I stopped by. I've stopped by several times. And where are you? And so we thought the murder men, because it's clearly serial killer-based. Help me understand what is the upside for a podcast, even a popular podcast or an aspiring podcast? to set up a booth there. Is the idea that you're going to get 500 new listeners? I assume that's what it's got to be because most of these people when you... So you have two kinds. Are they selling books also or some sort of collateral materials? Lots of people have books.

That's a big thing. Like, well, a retired detective wrote a book because he was the head or on the task force that broke whatever mob boss. And so he's selling a book. And maybe he'll be there with two other guys that are all selling them. And those are cool because you can get those guys and now you can get them to come on the podcast. And they always make good or typically make good guests. So they're selling books or it's a podcast that doesn't have any reviews or any subscribers.

And they're trying to go from zero to 500. I guess so. Yeah. Or you've got massively huge podcasts. It's kind of like there's no. Does you feel like that? There was no in between. It was you've got 500 subscribers or you've got.

Well, you're a long crime. Yeah, you're a long. you've got 12 million. And so for them, for them, this feature, this became a meet-and-grreet, way to meet the fans. Or you solved the Zodiac killer and you're trying to sell books. Oh, of course. There was one guy. Oh, my God, bro.

It's like, here's the thing. There was a Zodiac guy. So there were two people selling Zodiac books. I mean, there were several, but there was, and they literally, one guy is directly across from the other guy. The one guy. Both claiming to have killed Bin Laden or her. Right. Well, they both know who he is.

So one guy I show up and they've got, or we walk by it, it's professional. Their books look great. They have backdrops. They've got banners. They have it's all decked out. The other guy is sitting at the booth that they gave him. And his foot's kicked out. Half the cloth in front of it is sideways because he's got it like he didn't realize he's pushed his suitcase out through it.

He's sitting there. He looks like he is a home. person. I mean, he's a 65-year-old guy. Hair is all a mess. The shirt, it looks unwatched, sitting there and he's going like this. He spent $5,000 on a booth there. He's furious. He's furious because the guys across from him. We're selling the same book. Or selling the same book. But nicer. And there's got to be 15 people standing around them talking to them. They've got almost a presentation. And he's sitting there with his six books. And he's, you know, and when you go over there, He's not wrong either because when you go, we walked over,

you finally walked over, we were just like, what's going on with what's happening, bro? We felt bad for him. Yeah. Go over there. Because I could, we could tell. What do you say? I said, how's it going? Not good.

Not good. These guys over here, they're selling this, they're crackpots. They don't know what they're doing. I've solved the whole thing. And these guys over there, they, and they're telling people not to come over here. Oh. And we're sitting there like, no. And we, so he starts getting into that and we're thinking, yeah, you're sounding more

and more crazy. but the truth is Colby glances over at the other guys and they're like, Colby tells them, I go, are you serious? He's like, yeah. It's like the whole time I glanced over, they go, it's like Macy's and Gimbals. That poor guy. He opened, I go, so you saw him?

So who did it? Well, and he opens up the book. He's got all these weird coincidences that are connected to him. Yeah. Again, want to talk. about a couple things to kind of give my end of the show pitch. One, if any of the Matt Cox fandom is in need of a private investigator, you can contact me through my website, Simon Investigations, give me a call. I do free consultations. I work in all 50 states. My

specialty is fraud investigations. If you are not following me on social media, I would love if you did that. Also, Simon Investigations on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etc. If you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, I'm happy to do that as well. And lastly, if you're part of a group or organization or company that brings in outside speakers, I would be thrilled if you would connect me with the person who hires those speakers at your organization. I'd love to come talk to you. I have a speech right now that I'm giving around the country on how to use FBI behavioral science techniques for business and personal success. It's really funny and really fun. And you walk away actually learning something and being a better employee,

a better manager, a better salesperson, and a better person. So thank you so much. And thank you, Matt Cox, for having me on your show. Thank you for coming. Hey, you guys. I appreciate you watching. Do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button. Also, we are going to leave all of the links to Tom's social media in the description box so you can go there. You can contact him. Also like to mention, could you do me a personal favor and go to Marischelli, Crime and Curls? It's a YouTube channel. She, it's, this is my stepdaughter.

She's got a YouTube channel and she's trying to get monetized. And if you could go over there and follow her, really appreciate it. She's also got Instagram and everything. but really YouTube. Go there. We're going to leave the link in the description box. You shoot over there. Please subscribe.

Please watch her stuff. Really want to get her off of my payroll. Thank you very much and out of the house, to be honest with you. Thank you very much. I really do appreciate it. See you. Be cool.