Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - How Counterfeits Markets Actually Work | $500B YR

Episode Date: June 16, 2024

How Counterfeits Markets Actually Work | $500B YR

I'm a private investigator. I've stopped millions of dollars of counterfeit watches entering the U.S. market. There are two types of counterfeits. There are deceptive and non-deceptive. Purses, handbags, watches, and jerseys. Those are the four massive markets out there that everybody knows it's fake, but the deceptive is really where it becomes dangerous, and that's what people don't really know about.

I'm working cases where there are eyedrops, food supplements, stuff that goes in your body that is fake, And that market is massive. Yeah, so I was born and raised in Summers Point, New Jersey, right outside of Atlantic City. If you ever watch a show, Boardwalk Empire, and you see most of the time it's on an island called Atlantic City, obviously. Sometimes you'll see them in the woods with, you know, whatever, pulling off crimes, bootlegging and things like that. Well, I come from the woods. And my father was a New Jersey state trooper.

And while going through a divorce in 1981, my mother committed suicide and yeah that kind of threw us all for a loop so my father ended up quitting the state police and starting a private investigative firm and that was when i first started seeing my father work for the private sector and of course because of my mother's suicide you had four people in one house with PTSD that didn't know how to handle it so it was you know it was a very rough 1980s teen years for me But, you know, we made it through. My dad started doing the regular kind of stuff that people you would expect would be doing in Atlantic City, a sort of a mob city, casino town.

And this was the high time for the casinos in Atlantic City. The first casino license wasn't issued in Atlantic City until, I want to say around 75, 76. So the casinos were just being built. And my father provided security for the Playboy Casino that eventually was one of the first casinos in Atlantic City to be built. And he was working for the casinos, staffing the security, and also doing some anti-fraud, anti-corruption cases and things like that. And then one day in the early 80s, he got a call from PI, who was in New York City, big time PI doing work for Rolex and all the other brands. And then they asked him to start doing undercover buys and cease and desist letters and raids down on the Jersey Shore and eventually Pennsylvania and all that. And I grew up with him doing that and I never really wanted to be a part of the family business.

I actually wanted to be a stand-up comic. I decided after high school to go into youth ministries and I went to Bible college. after three semesters of that I realize love Jesus hate the rules I'm going to go to LA and become a stand-up comic just so why what makes you think you could you could like being a stand-up comic is hard oh man I know that's why I'm not one now so yeah so I went out there and I had a cousin that went out there cousins a year younger than me went out there to be a drummer so I followed a year later and when I did I worked for a movie survey company and a video store.

And then I met a girl, married her, still married to this day. But, you know, she said you should probably find a job where you can, you know, start helping to pay the bills, you know. So I asked my dad, I said, do you know anybody out in Los Angeles who does what you do, you know, hunting people selling fakes out in L.A. So he hooked me up with a job. And I start working for a place called National Trademark Investigations in Los Angeles. And that was when I started actually my professional foray into counterfeiting. Okay. So I have a question real quick.

Yeah. These corporations, whatever, these manufacturers, these people, you know, whatever, Rolex or Nike or whoever it is, they contact you guys and have you, they launch like an investigation. Why can't they just go to the local police and say, hey, we know there's four or five people selling fake, you know, Adidas. Can you guys look into it? Or they just like, they just don't, it's not a priority. you basically have to hand them the whole case for them to take interest or what is it? Yeah, that's a good question and good insight too because that is what happens.

And in some cases, the brands don't always, they prefer to go straight to the police because then there's no money out of their pocket hiring us first. A lot of times what happens is whether they get the lead, they would probably hire a PI to do the first test purchase at least, just to figure out if it's counterfeit and also scope out the location, possibly do some legal owner information, figure out who we're going to be going after. Because it could just be a booth in a swap meet. So you really got to do a little bit of research to figure out who you're going after. The cops aren't going to do that. And then what will happen is they'll either ask us to perform a civil raid or even kind of a raid light would be a

cease and desist letter, which in New York City, they just flip you the finger. But in Los Angeles, are a little bit more laid back and you can convince many of them to just give up their goods and avoid a lawsuit but if the client's lucky and it looks like a juicy enough target they might be able to get law enforcement involved and back in the 90s it was it was the wild west so lapd and la sheriff's department had some time where they allocated police to the garment district who did those busts with us but we would go in sometimes do citizens arrests where we would take a cop along with us and you know good thing for the cop we would end up typing the report so kind of cut some corners on the cops end but they still helped us on the heavy lifting like how does that progress

like let let's say i understand you're saying you're due a raid but i mean you guys have to in order to get the police involved do you have to type up an entire report before you know you make a buy you go to them and what if they're like eh you know you bought two pair of you know two pair of Adidas. Like, I mean, okay, they're fake. I mean, what do you want us to do? We got murders. We got this. You know, what, what, how do you coax them into saying, look, this is a big deal? Most of the time not. They'll either be interested or not. And, you know, they'll, you know, they often have, and is kind of a sidebar here that's very interesting because I'm part of a funded section of the Department of Justice where I work to consult on who gets certain

grants in the IP in the counterfeiting world so for example like when there there aren't grants this year but when there are grants for particular things like you know there's grants for AI now and all that other stuff but when there are IP grants for counterfeiting what happens is police departments will apply for those grants usually it's for like 400,000 dollars for the year and when they get those grants they have to allocate those hours those man hours to going after counterfeits. So if they apply for it, you know, it's overtime for a lot of these cops too. So that's a lot of times, especially nowadays, because you said there are murders and everything. So unless there's funding specifically for, you know, enforcing counterfeits, you aren't going

to see that much a police presence. So now to go into the raids, the way raids work, and a raid obviously is by force. I talked to talk about cease and desist letters, which is basically, you know, hey, why don't you give this stuff up? It's better for both of us. You know, you can you know avoid potential lawsuit if you give it up and sometimes they do sometimes they don't but to perform a civil seizure which is the civil version of a criminal raid would be we would have to we would have to hire the u.s marshals in order to do that so you would hire the marshals and also put up a rather sizable bond uh for the for the raid so and you have to to have you could also hire the sheriff's department in many cases but but in a lot of because

it's overtime work for them right but a lot of times it's the marshals just because there's federal jurisdiction if anything goes to haywire sometimes we've seen you know terrorism you know and stuff like that links in those things which is sheriff's department you know helps out with too the actual raid itself is where it gets kind of like a little disappointing to the to the the viewers here because you think of a raid as a lot of action and, you know, hey, run, go, go, go, you know, and cops everywhere and all that. Well, that's not actually how a raid should go if the enforcement team does their job properly. You see Dog the Bounty Hunter and there's always action, right?

You see these shows, there's always action. I always say if there is any action, the enforcement team probably didn't do their job right. There shouldn't be any. So what would happen in a typical raid is that we plan properly. We know when the guy's going to be there. We know when he's going to be off guard. We probably have an undercover, you see, setting up a buy or setting up some sort of a wholesale buy. So we know there's going to be some quantity there in case the warehouse is depleted.

And then we would stage at, say, like a Burger King parking lot or a hotel parking lot. And we would stage there with the U-Hauls that we probably would rent. you know, depending on how much we expect to get with the law enforcement, the marshals or the sheriffs, and we would give them all instructions on who the subject is, and we would plan all this. Then we would wait at the parking lot until the marshals have secured the location. So usually, as an investigator, I never see the action. We go in after it's secured, after they make sure there's no guns and all that other kind of stuff,

and the subjects are all in one particular corner of the location. If it's a house, probably the living room, you know, if it's a business location, it'll probably be either in the office or out in the, where the customers are. So we can do our business. And the rest of the raid is basically just doing inventory and discovering things. You know, a lot of times things are in hidden locations and things like that. But yeah, just do an inventory and hand them a receipt in the end, telling them that, you know, this is what we have. You want to check against it. Here it is.

You can go count everything and, you know, and claim it back if the case goes your way. Who are the typical, like, what are some of the big names like clients? Well, a lot of the raids, especially in my heyday, like I'm talking like, well, the 90s, the heyday was, especially in my days in Los Angeles, it was comic book characters. Believe it or not, Jurassic Park, Rugrats. Power Rangers, Batman, Looney Tunes, T-shirts, little toy wallets for kids, I mean, everything you could think of, toys, actual toys of Spider-Man, Batman, and those things. The 90s had a lot of that because it was an explosion, if you remember, between Batman and Jurassic Park in the early 90s, it commercialized so much a film that the world hadn't seen, really. So there was so much entertainment swag out there being sold counterfeit. So yeah, there was a lot of that, a lot of work for the studios.

And then, of course, the luxury brands. You know, the big ones we work for in those days were, you know, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Tiffany, Chanel, you know, and Rolex. Those were the big five. You know, then we worked for a lot of the others too, but they were the ones that had the budgets and, you know, the volume. But, you know, it's cool, you know, doing this for so long. You get to work for some of these brands that didn't survive either, like gotcha, you know, and Ed Hardy, you know, and these companies that just kind of are flashing the pad, but they have a counterfeiting problem. Most of this stuff comes out of China, right? Now it does.

Right. Back in the day, they were screen printing T-shirts and items here in the U.S. Because it was still, it was still efficient to do so. But as you're, as you're implying, the logistics operators. in China. And look, whether it's, you're talking about crime or genuine products, um, China perfected logistics, you know, with factories and shipping. So yeah, a lot of the stuff now, it just comes straight from China because it's just, it's cheaper. No one really needs to set up a factory here. You'll find one once in a while. But yeah, it'll usually come in,

come in through either postal, DHL or, um, through a container. Do people still set up like complete stores where they're selling like all counterfeit stuff and you know if they did like how long can they do that before law enforcement tracks them down or or i mean how could that how long is something like that go like do people set up like a whole thing selling nothing but Gucci and louis vatan and and you know do you know of any stores like that that have happened and then they're just blatant about it nowadays um you'll find places that have some counterfeits but a lot of other products too like again with the um you know with the uh you know comic and cartoon type of characters um that stuff you know whether it's hello kitty or you know batman or something like that yeah so for a lot

of the hobby items like i mean it's everything rick and morty i mean everything you could think of i mean there are bongs with those trademark characters on them you know south park all that kind of stuff and a lot of that is is peppered in with genuine product you know you'll have a store that sells whether it's like a hobby store in a mall that sells all those novelty items you'll find some counterfeits peppered in with those items as far as the counterfeit purses and things like that in the swap meets you'll still see them they're everywhere and purse parties all over the place like I live in a wealthy suburb here in Dallas and I'll be sitting at the bar telling somebody what I do whatever talking about it they're like don't you go after all these house

you know and stuff like that but the brands don't always have the budget you know so they don't they don't call me for that stuff I mean they may call someone else because I don't do a lot of field work anymore but but there's a lot of stuff still happening outside of like the major retail locations and malls and things like that you'll still find like if you you know do a search on local on local news on Google you'll still see shops and like there was a shop in Long Island that was selling a lot of fake handbags and things like that so you'll still see them but yeah it's not like it used to be where back in the day they were just openly on the streets because now they're they're you know you can get arrested for a

felony for doing that you know stuff like that it used to be a thousand pieces you would need a thousand pieces to quantify you know a felony or to qualify for a felony now it's kind of a cheat but they use the they use the retail price so one Rolex watch would be you know 10 times a felony. So it's cheating in a way. I always think, you know, every industry kind of cheats their, uh, their own, uh, you know, acumen or whatever you want to call it, their successes by saying, you know, around Super Bowl time, you'll always see one billion dollars worth of jersey seized in Chicago or something like that. Well, that's because each jersey they, you know, they use the retail price or the potential retail price at 300 bucks, you know, stuff like that. And

same thing with Rolex watches and stuff. So the numbers are inflated. So I always I always like to know how many pieces they got because to me that's important because that's really from an investigator, that's the booty right there is did you get a thousand pieces or you get 300,000 pieces. Right. And, you know, that's that's where you're actually doing some good, getting stuff off the street, you know, is taking a major warehouse down and stuff like that.

Is there like a whistleblower program for any of these where somebody goes and says, Hey, look, I know about, you know, I know where there's a warehouse filled with whatever. I know where there's a store and they're selling fake, Nike's, fake, you know, whatever, fake Adidas, fake this. And they got an entire store filled with it. And they're, you know, you know, you would think they would, there would be some kind of a, an association that gave away that did like a, had like, what are funds to try and turn people in. There are. There is not care. Well, I know it's funny.

It's hard to say whether they care or, and I can give you, this is my personal feet in the trenches. And again, we're kind of going through time back from the 90s through the 2000s. But, you know, as something you're very aware of, you know, the housing crisis, right? Before the housing crisis, these companies had millions and millions of dollars to spend on enforcement. Like, you would not believe because retail was going crazy. I mean, just like mortgages, you know, everything, everybody who's spending money like you wouldn't believe. So once when the retail budgets were up, we were out doing raids. I was flying all over the country.

I mean, we were doing raids everywhere. And then one day, I was 2008 or nine, I remember the paralegal, who was my point person at Chanel, called me up and said, hey, I just want to let you know the budget's been cut. They're moving our office from, from 57th Street to Jersey. the legal department and and she said we have to pay for our own tea in the break room now so from that point the enforcement the the budget for enforcement went to almost like really very little very little so since then and I'm not joking I mean since then like the last 14 15 years they just been cherry picking targets trying to find targets that they can you know use to set people, set examples for people and stuff. But scorched earth is over. You may have companies

that'll do like a sweep at Christmas time or something like that, you know, or like I said, the sports teams during finals, like, you know, like there's, I guarantee there are people in Dallas right now for the Mavs game doing enforcement, you know, for T-shirts and things like that. And I know the guys that do it, but I don't. But yeah, yeah. So there's still going to be sweeps and things and targeted but it's not like scorched earth back then I mean we were we were rolling in as as you know I mean everybody was back that right but yeah the the retail retail business has people spent their money carefully which meant they bought less luxury brands they bought less for their kids and everything else so it all shrunk and everybody's

budget got tiny so that's not like a whoa-was-me thing because it worked it worked out for me because you know my brother and I worked together but we're kind of the pioneers in, you know, the internet meets counterfeiting kind of thing. So, you know, they don't call every day, but pretty much everybody in the industry calls us once in a while. You know, then we have our everyday clients. But we're like, we're seen as like the special forces. So if they're regular guy in house, you know, hits a stopping point, you know, they'll call us and then we'll take them over the finish line. It's, it's funny because like I know multiple people that sell counterfeits like you know and I don't I don't read out people I meet in the streets

you know I would wonder whatever but well I was wondering so one I know there are YouTube channels that are dedicated to reviewing reps you know they call them reps like rep like Adidas or Nikes and they'll get fake shoes fake and they'll do a whole 10 or 15 minute little thing on hey it's a great product it looks like this that the the you know you can only tell this one thing and that's inside the shoe and it feels like they'll do a whole thing and on the shoes and I'm like and so I'm always kind of like how does this work how is it these people aren't going after these guys so this one I'm thinking about that's like one there's like five or six channels they've been doing it for years and they get hundreds of thousands of views every single um every single

review. So if you have a review that, let's say it's a 15 minute video and it gets 100,000 views, the guy probably makes a couple hundred bucks. You know, he's probably not making that much, but they're putting them out every other day. So their channel, plus they're getting residuals from the old videos. So let's say this channel's making a couple, a thousand, two thousand dollars a month. Plus they've got the shoes. Who knows if they're reselling them. Oh, I think they also typically will put like an affiliate link. I give you, buy the shoes. If you want these shoes, you can buy them here, which to me is now you've definitely crossed the line. Like me reviewing a counterfeit product, okay, so what?

I haven't broken the law. I can do that, but me putting a count, putting a link in saying here's where you can buy it and then getting a piece of it, now I feel like you've crossed the line. And that's just my own feeling. I don't know what the law says, but here's the thing, six months ago, a bunch of these channels got hit with this massive lawsuit where I was like Nike and I think a couple others like just sued all of these these um these creators content creators so that that's always cracks me up because prior to that i've had a couple of buddies who who and straight from china

like all of us from china and they'll literally have somebody they can contact in china for let's say sunglasses like oakly sunglasses or something and they're like listen i like them but you're giving me plastic lenses i'm gonna need actual like they're almost perfect except the lenses can you they'll tweak the lenses and can you give us glass lenses they have to be glass and they'll go back and forth to get the exact the product exactly the way they want it and then they just start buying them and i'm like if you're and what they'll do is they'll sell them like instagram or something and they'll put them up for sale and like you know at a discount you know say that they're supposed to be 800 bucks they'll put them up for 300 bucks and people you know come

out you know then they'll deliver them or they'll mail them to them or whatever it is and i'm like if you're going to be that brazen. Why don't you just start a website with a whole store? Like, why? I mean, you're pretty brazen anyway. They're like, nah, because this way I go and I drop them off. And if I'm afraid they'll track it back to me and they pay me cash or they'll do cash app and the cash app is in somebody else's name. And it's just like, bro, like, but they are making a ton of money because they're buying these things for like $17, $12 and they're selling them for $400. And they're supposed brand new they're like 800 900 yeah there's money in it but oh 100 percent but i keep waiting to get busted i've been i know this one guy like five years since i've been out of prison i'm like

how is he not he's selling these all the time i'll give you the whole inside scoop on why and how i mean i deal with the decision making process you know because obviously the born on July 18 get excited for the summer's biggest adventure i think i just smurf my pants that's a little too excited. Sorry. Smurfs. Only the date is July 18th. The enforcement, the more money I make, but their decision process. One thing I wanted to tell you, because you're talking about Nike's, I have 50 pair of counterfeit Nike stacked up in boxes right here in my office that I bought off of, you know, 50 different counterfeit websites. So one thing to address the website situation, there are a handful of law firms.

All they do is take down websites. So unless you have a massive email list that you can email every week and tell them, hey, our new site is this, boom, our new site is that, you're not going to be found on, you know, Google or anything like that. You know, advertisements, believe it or not, Facebook will still take advertising money from counterfeiters. that still happens but i don't know about i don't think google does but for the most part you're looking at you're looking at those massive mailing lists who have and there's maybe 30 or 40 of

those folks they're all based in china they're these massive mailing lists and their sites change every day but they're still sort of branded like style sneaks is one of them and you know they'll have a new site style sneaks dot co or style seeks nine you know and then believe it or not the counterfeiters often get knocked off too because they develop reputations as well right because really counterfeiting or infringement is is really just the concept of playing off of someone's good name or you know good name so um they'll have i'll just use style style sneaks as an example it's just a name to pop to my head but they're one of the counterfeiters out there but you could be a guy who's like well i'm producing counterfeits and you know i don't have a mailing list the same size as theirs but

You know, they have a great reputation. So why don't I just knock off style sneaks, you know, and go on Instagram and be like, you know, we're style sneaks and start using the Nike hashtags and all that stuff. And then you'll even see the counterfeiters saying, this is our real account. Ignore the others, you know, things like that. Like celebrities would or, you know, legitimate folks would. So there's a lot of that. And yeah, because of all the takedowns, it's kind of like from an extermination standpoint, once you kick all the rats out, of your house they start going to the sewers and things like that i'm not calling social the sewers

but they are in the sense that they're smaller like imagine going in the sewers it's harder for people to you know really do kind of a scorched earth kind of kind of situation where they're out there just taking things down a lot of social has to be done by mobile you know or using certain software you know and things like that and there are software providers that um that cost sometimes like hundreds of thousands a year to use to do the enforcement from your desktop, you know, that usually it's going to be a paralegal at the brand that would do that, or maybe a law firm that does it for a bunch of brands. What about YouTube?

Is it hard to, like what, like these channels are blatant? Yeah. And that's the interesting thing you say that because I didn't, I don't think I've noticed the affiliate links, but the, what I was going to tell you about the counterfeiting. Now, you have federal statutes really only apply to trafficking. So the sale of one or two items, you know, or even like an affiliate link, wouldn't be considered trafficking, right? That's why you always hear about the feds involved when something comes over by container, you know, or something like that. But there's state laws in most states that say the display for sale of counterfeits, which isn't as strong or the sale of counterfeits.

You always want to be able to get a buy. Like if I were to put a case together against one of these YouTube folks, I would click the affiliate link. and obviously show screenshots of the entire process. And I would take the affiliate links and probably, you know, take apart the link so I could show this is the affiliate account number and blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff from the long affiliate link. And then I will go ahead and show that it led to the website, make the purchase, receive the goods, and put together something like this. This is just a sample of what I provide to the client. This is for a Nolan Ryan jersey, Go Rangers. But I put together something like this with what I would call a lit pack and this is a buy report summary here and I would send that on to the client and this is what they would take to court and then they could say if they were to go after one of these YouTube folks, they could say, you know, our investigator went to that YouTube channel, was instructed to go to that link and da, da, da, and here's the goods, you know, so they could do that. I don't know. I haven't heard of any clients doing this.

that yet. But that would be the process. That would be the process. And that's how, if they asked me, that's how I would go about that. Right. Well, I was going to say a bunch of these YouTubers got sued because, like, there was a couple of articles about it. Um, what are other questions that I have? Okay. So what, what are some of the bigger cases that, like, when you first started or throughout your career, like some of the bigger, more interesting cases or, or even tracking these guys down that can't be is that easy or is that hard like i think it probably harder now back then it was probably easier no no or am i got it i got it backwards no actually it's just that um humans adapt so you know the hard ones are always hard to find no matter what you know

nowadays it's easier in the sense that um because of google earth i don't have to hire a guy in Cleveland to go check out an address as often you know what I mean I can do that but on the same hand privacy on the internet is so easy for the layman now you know that it's it's a lot harder to track people than it was back in the early thousands you know what I mean things like that right so it's kind of you know it kind of goes back and forth on that but but yeah if you're selling a physical product you're always going to have a logistics chain and and also a financial chain. So if I can't, you know, and I always work from an open source standpoint, you know, I'm tracking this guy based on the data that I get from him. You know what I mean? And if I can't

track him down using, you know, my 30-year bag of tricks, then I'll provide the subpoena info to the client and say, well, here's where you can take it further. And they can go to the registrar for the domain or to YouTube for the user info, things like that. And even to the banks for, the credit card charge and all that kind of stuff and you know it's interesting and I know we could talk about so many different things because again you're very familiar with the financial side of it the Chinese folks now they you know and I'm talking well first I want to tell you that there are two types of counterfeits there are deceptive and non-deceptive okay the deceptive counterfeits are really the danger non-deceptive counterfeits are really the danger non-deceptive

I don't care what anybody says, child labor and all that stuff. And I'm quoted because they're industry talking points. I'm quoted saying, yeah, there's child labor and stuff. But even legitimate companies are accused of child labor in China. Right. But the non-deceptive are, like I say the big four, you know, purses, handbags, watches, and jerseys. Those are the four massive, you know, products and massive markets out there that everybody knows it's fake. They know they're getting something on the man and they're getting a break.

break on something. You know, even athletes I've heard, because I know guys at some of these brands, you know, athletes who are represented by the brands and they say, well, they don't make this color. You know, you guys don't make this color. I have to buy it off the China sites, you know. I know a guy that sells fake, well, fake watches in general, but he's like, look, he's like, you'd be shocked how many buccaneers. And he calls them like high-end fakes. He's like, you know, understand you can look at this and it's almost impossible he's like to tell he's almost identical yeah he's like he's like and you know this is a an eighty thousand dollar Rolex or a hundred thousand he's like that and he is listen granted it's 4500 bucks he's but he's and I you've got

buccaneers players who are wearing these 4500 dollar Rolexes that looks like an 80,000 dollar Rolex but nobody can tell he's like and you know you'll see them photographs of them talking with this Rolex and he's like I sold that that's fake yeah you know even to go out outside of the counterfeit world. My wife loves jewels, but she, you know, she had told me there's a guy, a shout out to him. I believe he's like Harlem, Harlem Jewels or something like that on YouTube. You know, old Jewish guy and he talks about, he's like, don't buy real diamonds anymore. Nobody could tell the difference. You know what I mean? Of course, he's selling his stuff, but he shows all of his clients and they're celebrities and athletes and stuff. And because I work for the brands, it wouldn't be for me to tell you it's okay to buy that stuff right but but you know i can tell you that you know buying that stuff the non-deceptive um you're only stealing from the brand you know what i mean you you know these the non-deceptive it's all wink wink nudge nudge from a consumer standpoint right but the deceptive is really where it becomes dangerous and that's what people don't really know about

because you hear about the watches and all that stuff but man i'm working cases where there are eye drops food supplements, stuff that goes in your body that is fake. And that market is massive. And that stuff makes it into not the CVSs or the Walgreens, but the mom and pop shops. And believe it or not, the online marketplaces like Walmart.com marketplace, Amazon, all these places, you'll look and you'll see, like you go to Amazon and you'll see where it'll say whatever vitamin brand. And again, I don't want to get too into the brands because some of these cases are open. But you go to the brand, and it'll see that brand's name store on Amazon.com, right? But if you look to the right of who you're buying it from, they're individual sellers.

Right. You're not buying it from Amazon or from that brand. You're buying it from, you know, whatever, Dr. Cannabis or whatever their names are, you know. And that person may or may not be selling genuine goods. So, again, it's the non-deceptive of makeup. up. I mean, imagine the kind of stuff if it's not, you know, it's not put through the regulations and the health department and all that kind of stuff. What kind of stuff you're, you know, your teenage girl is going to be putting on her cheeks and, you know, lips and all that kind of

stuff. So that's really where it's a safety issue and where people just don't give a crap about, you know, about the customer. Now, here's something too. I always use, are you fan of like old films? I'm old. So, yeah. Well, there's an old film from like 1940. What I say what really bothers me is when someone would tell me, oh, that's a classic or, man, that's so old. And I'm thinking I saw that in a theater. Yeah, when I was an adult. Yeah, exactly. Not old.

Yeah. Well, there's an Orson Well's film called The Third Man from around 1940. One of their greatest movies ever made. But the character's name is Harry Lyme. He's a con man. And Joseph Cotton, forget the character's name, but Joseph Cotton goes to Vienna looking for him because he turned He supposedly was dead, but there was no body. So anyway, he finds him, and Harry turns out to be a crook.

And this is during World War II. And what Harry's doing is selling counterfeit penicillin to children's hospitals and rerouting the genuine stuff to other places, you know. And there's a famous scene in the Ferris wheel where they go up in his old-fashioned Ferris wheel where you go up, other people get in, then you go up and other people get in. So they're at the top of the Ferris wheel. And he goes, listen, old chap, look at those. ants moving down there he's referring to people yeah he goes what if I gave you

30,000 pounds for every one of those ants or dots maybe he said that stop moving would you really care and to me that's the best example of you know someone who gets something over on you know the consumer and the further you distance yourself from the crime the more they just look like ants or dots right now as these children are dying in of hospitals and things. Anyway, I'm not trying to give a sob story on that, but I've always thought that that was the greatest example in my business for people who sell the deceptive fakes. When people think that they're taking diabetes medication or, you know, cancer medication turns out to be

saline and things like that. That's actually, believe it or not, much more common than the watches and the t-shirts and all that kind of stuff. I was thinking about the movie. I forget that I think it was called the box. or something where there's a hypothetical situation where these this guy shows up at your house and it's basically a box with a big red button in the middle of it and he says you'll receive if you hit the button you will receive like one million dollars but somebody that you do not know will die exactly that kind of concept yeah i don't know this person no bam and they hit the button right and if i recall that film doesn't it doesn't isn't there something ironic about it

where someone dies or someone you know or something eventually you know or something horrific will happen to somebody that you don't know well the problem is is obviously it just continues and eventually something horrible happens to you or right you know something like that but yeah it was uh i think it was a what's his name night night lan shiling or so i forget his name and night shaman i don't know if it was movie or not but yeah like it was but anyway okay yeah yeah yeah exactly that's one of his style movie yeah um um So what, so what are some of the more interesting raids or interesting cases? Well, how long have you been doing this?

Professionally, uh, since, at my adulthood, since 95. Yeah. So about 29 years. It's got to be some, some interesting, like how do you track them down? How do you? Yeah. I mean, some of the older cases were really fun, uh, because again, the factories and the warehouses were all in the cities, you know, in the city you're in. So we're in Los Angeles. And L.A. is a major garment, you know, a producer. Right.

So even to this day, a lot of brands make their stuff in the USA. They're in L.A. County there. So we were working a case, I believe, was for Calvin Klein. And there were Calvin Klein jeans being sold in all the stores in the downtown area and some of the other mom and pops in the suburbs. And we started tracing back, you know, one location at a time, you know, following first making buys from the different locations and realizing that, okay, wait, we bought something from here, bought something from here, bought something from here, they're all from the same

supplier. So let's figure out where they're being made. So then we would trace things back. A lot of times we would pull the garbage from these folks. And even though the cops can't pull your garbage in most cases, a citizen can, and private investigators are citizens. We're just licensed to accept money for investigations. We're not given any special privileges.

So a citizen, as long as your, as long as your trash is considered abandoned, which is not on your property, or a commercial business, as long as the dumpster is available to the other businesses, unless it's exclusive to you and it was closed, you know, that would probably be considered trespassing. But as long as it's, as long as it's available to others to throw trash in, then anyone can go in there and take garbage. So we would take garbage and look for labels, shipping labels. We would, believe it or not, we would put together shredding. And, you know, back in the 90s, thank God there wasn't cross-cut shredding. So, you know, we would have these big bags of just shredding, you know, or like, you know, kitchen-sized bags of shredding. And the method we would use was, you know, for the most part, you would have all these white pieces of paper,

tons of white paper and stuff like that and there was so much of that but we would look for the post-its and the shipping labels and put those together because post-its typically have the most important information in your office or on post-its you're not going to have it on a big old white piece of paper right so we will put the postis together we would put shipping labels back together like FedEx labels that you decided not to use or whatever and we'd have those and we would start assembling potential targets potential warehouses and And, you know, also, you know, looking up corporate records and property records for the owners and things like that to see what else, whether are corporations they own and also, you know, does this company have another location? It's a warehouse.

And we would keep doing that. We would trace it up. And then we would put the surveillance team on it. And once a surveillance team is on it, we got to see the different steps in the process. And I'm thinking about this particularly, this one massive, this one massive Calvin Clarendon. Klein case where we actually followed them and we located all of the parts of the process, including, you know, once the denim came into the U.S., I believe from Mexico, the denim would come in and it would go to a cutting shop, a shop that just cut the pieces.

Then another shop that would dye the denim. And another shop, it was, you know, it's exactly how the jeans industry works today. It's just with counterfeits. And then they would go to a shop that does the sub. sewing and the finishing and then you know the place that has you know all the buttons and all the little copper rivets and all that kind of stuff and then once we did that we would decide you know with the client it's the client's product they're paying for it who we would raid and you know in these cases we raided in this particular one is because it was it was my first raid too and i

believe it was 95 or late 95 early 96 first raid i ever went on and um it was uh it was uh huge warehouse I mean we had probably 100,000 pair of of CK jeans and it was in one warehouse and then we also went to the other locations and took we went to the other locations and actually don't know what happened to the other ones because I was at the again I was in my early 20s but I was at the main location and we were taking all the jeans we took them to a warehouse right this is this is it's not funny but again you know you and i we've kind of been through the ringer and all these things we've had we have so many stories um the uh the jeans it was in two two very large uh like

tractor trailer size but the size of the that size uh public storage right it was only a few miles away from our office um it was stolen the night afterwards do you think they had the people had anything to do with it i think no i think there were probably a gang affiliated folks that worked at the public storage unit because also the camera wasn't working that night oh how coincidental yeah but we have no idea how what what happened to it wasn't all of them but it was a good portion of them that were stolen probably whatever size truck they could bring um i mean that's just the tip of the iceberg as far as stories but that was my first raid and i was very voluminous when you think about the amount of product because usually you do a raid and

you know you have a thousand pieces two thousand pieces we get a hundred thousand that's a big that's a big find yeah but i mean isn't it is it more about getting that product off the street or is it about getting the people that are involved in this like i it's funny because i did a live last night with a couple of guys youtubeers and somebody asked in the comment section like what is the most profitable with the lowest risk crime out there counterfeit Yeah, well, I was saying, I was thinking, because I hadn't talked to you and I was going to get into this, but I said counterfeiting money. And they were like, why. I said because I've met a guy one time, I met multiple, well, a few count, not a lot. Like, listen, I had 13 years, you know, drug dealers. I couldn't tell you how many, you know, bank robbers, a little bit more, you know, a little tighter group, but counterfeiters or hackers, I met like one hacker as far as, you know, and then actual counterfeiters that really knew what they were doing, not some idiot with a, a, you know, a copy machine that they looked like crap i mean where they were passing the notes and they were going straight through probably two or three and i remember this one guy who'd been he'd been arrested

for it three times yeah and he was like and he'd been doing it since he was in his early 20s and he was probably in his 40s and he was saying listen man he's like because i talked to him i said well what are you going to do when you get out of here and he goes go back to counterfeiting i'm like bro why he said is you have any fucking idea how much money i make because you have any idea what's waiting for me there he said i'm not one of these other idiots he said he's a man i i got i got property i got houses i got cars he is and i think he had gotten i think he'd gotten like six years this time but typically he's like the first time i did like 11 months he's the second time i got three years and i did like 25 months he's like i got like six years this time but they only got six years

this time because i think he had a gun and he's like so it was the gun and it was this and i tried I went to trial. Whatever the reason was he ended up getting six years. He was, which was a fluke. I could have taken four years or three or four years because I didn't. He said, this is so profitable. It's worth risking going to prison for. He's like, he's in, you'll go 10 years, 15 years, never getting caught.

So I was saying that that was one of the most profitable. What I'm saying was in your case, in the counterfeiter's case, like isn't it more about getting that guy, those people off the street? Because to me, they'll probably go right back out and start again. if the punishment isn't stiff enough. See, that's the interesting thing is that what we learned throughout the years is that, you know, the cops aren't going to stick these people in jail, you know, hardly. I mean, I've done investigations on MS-13 members who selling me stolen goods,

which is a whole other story, but, you know, selling me stolen goods who literally were just, just let out of jail the night before that should have been still in jail, you know, committing violent crimes and things like that. So they're doing that to those folks. You know, I mean, guys are selling counterfeits and stuff, you know, they'll, they may have some restitution to pay. But where it really gets them is through civil judgment. And we've gotten people, I mean, we've taken people's houses, man. I mean, like a guy, I remember one time, I felt bad.

All I was was the bringer of bad news. You know, the client was the one that sued him. And, you know, of course, I checked his assets and stuff. They're not going to sue a guy that doesn't have any assets. Right. But, you know, if you have a house with equity in it, you know, you could probably pay a 70 grand or a hundred grand, you know, or something like that. Or at least going to be judgment on the house. Someday you'll pay it. Yeah. But also even just with a settlement, take out a mortgage, take out a second mortgage and pay us or we're going to go for a default. You know, a lot of times these people don't show up, you know, and you'll get a default judgment. It's whatever we ask for. And the crazy thing about a default judgment is the client now asks for.

I forget what the amount is now, but they'll ask for a certain amount per trademark. So for a Louis Vuitton bag that has 50 trademarks on it, that's 50 times a thousand or whatever it is. That's one bag. Right. You know what I mean? So they'll quantify that to the point where it's so ridiculous that you're paying them for the rest of your life. You know, I've seen that. I actually, you know, I've been a part of seizures where we've been to people's houses.

This one in particular, you know, it was sad. I mean, we even, I don't think we actually took the parrot, but we took everything but the parrot, you know, the television, left the underwear, left the Bible, but pretty much everything else we took and, you know, gave it to an auction house to auction it off to settle some of that. So are you saying that none of these guys go to jail? I'm not saying none of them do. I'm just saying that I haven't seen many of them go to jail. And again, it's partially because the allocation. I mean, you know, especially I'm in Dallas now. But when I used to be in L.A. County, I mean, they don't have any room for those folks.

They don't want to throw anybody in a jail. But I'm saying if it was like New York City or something, like, like what, and what kind of time do they get? I don't know. I mean, some of these guys, if you can get them on trafficking, the federal prison, uh, stint can be long. You could do five, six years for. trafficking charges, but a one-time misdemeanor or felony, probably not so much, you know. But again, again, if you keep on going, the brands will sue you. And then, you know, and again, it's really just like picking.

It's like speeding. You know, most people don't get caught speeding, right? And or even selling drugs and things like that. A few of them do. It's just if you're that one, then you're screwed. You know, and it's always the case. It's always the case. That one, he's the one that the example is made out of.

everyone else gets off scot-free but you know it's always a matter of you know what I'm saying it's always a matter who's you know who's the one that gets who's the one that is still holding the bag in the end so what are these products do they typically look like I mean are a lot of these products easily identified or do you ever grab would you grab stuff and look at it and be like listen this looks just as good as Nike's you know Air Jordan whatever hey this for all I know these are Rolexes um I'm going to and grab them and look at them and be like now that you know they used to be with the Rolex a little it would tick or it wouldn't tick or you know I guess all I know

yeah yeah well actually the the the ticking situation ended in the 90s I'll show you a watch here this is a believe it or not this is a Rolex that I purchased off the internet for 12 dollars so I get out of the light there okay 12 bucks And this is a kind of watch that from 10 feet away, it probably looks like a Rolex. But once you start feeling it, it's pretty flimsy. This one has the single tick. But if you start spending, say, $300, you know, the nicer, they're like the mid-level counterfeits, those will have the sweeping hand.

The mid-level counterfeits, though, to a trained eye, will still be found, you know, found to be counterfeit. You know, there are little things like, well, this, again, this is a $12. one, but you'll see the word Rolex being written inside the very inside of the bezel. You know, well, that's not lined up properly. You know, there should be an R or an X next to each of the time points. Now, the ones that cost more than 800, and that's what you were saying, they go up to into thousands, those, many of those, they call them superclones or soups or even Epic.

I've seen Epic recently. You'll see, and they have to keep changing the names because of the keywords and the brand using the keywords. So that's, you know, kind of why the names keep changing. You'll see one colon one a lot as well, just because it's a really easy way to say one-to-one replica, like a one and a colon, and the number one afterwards. So often you'll see that because that's hard to, that's hard to pull up everything that says one-to-one on the internet. So people will often include that. And it just means, you know, one-to-one replica. And they're claiming that.

It doesn't mean it is. But yeah, the higher-end ones, they're Swiss movement. They're not Japan movements. Like a lot of these, these are all Japan movements, the cheaper ones. Then the ones that go into the thousands are Swiss movements. And those, even the bands, the bezels, the glass, the little Cyclops, where the data is, all of those are made perfectly so much. Again, we're only talking about a very small level of these fakes, but they're done so well that you would have to open it up, pop it open, and look at the movement. And I've been told by some of these folks that even the movement in some of these like $4,500 watches take some real scrutiny to develop and figure out what's, you know, if it's fake or not, you know.

So I was going to say what's funny is that I've owned a couple Rolexes. none of them kept good time like none of them i wear a casio now i and i'll tell you i had my lucky ever since pierce brosnan was james bond i bought a i bought an omega c master for like 1300 bucks that was my watch but then every time i took it off for two days you know i'd have to reset time and then every other month you got to reset the date you know and then it was just like last year where i was like why am i still wearing this watch i'm not wearing a fitbit anymore let me just get a watch. This Cassio is $100 and it's going to keep perfect time for 10 years. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah, I think a lot of those analog watches are really, in my opinion,

they're just jewelry. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I've been doing this for so long. And you can air this as far. I've been doing this for so long. You know, I'm not really afraid of losing my clients. Everything I say is ethical. But, but even if I'm a little cynical about about the industry and about, you know, how society works in general. You know, I'm just being frank. You know what I mean? I'm not, you know, downing my clients. I love my clients. But the way society works, you know, there's only so much anybody can do. Well, also the likelihood that a client watches this video is very minor. Nobody watches my videos. So, you know, you don't really worry about that. Oh, well, you never know. Suddenly you get, you know, two days from now, you get, you know, 50 phone calls,

you know, what, Matt Cox, you know, what you say? Um, But it was really funny. I did a podcast on another channel a while back, just a 20-minute video about a month ago. And I got a text from the Rolex attorney. Well, one of them, but Rolex USA in America, their attorney. And a text saying, hey, are you going to be at this particular conference? You know, the conference we always see each other at. And I was like, that's weird. The day the video dropped, he asked me if I was going to that conference. I haven't seen him in a year. And I was like, yeah, I'm going, blah, blah, blah. And I thought like, man, is he setting me up to serve me with papers or something like that. Then I see him at the conference. And he's like, no, I didn't know anything about the video. Coincidence. So what are some of the other cases? There was a major case in mid-2000s in when spam.

In the mid-2000s, there was a time when every single spam you saw was, counterfeit watches, replica watches. And this is in the early to mid 2000s. And it was just the replica watch spam was out of control. And make it into your inboxes, in your spam boxes. Spam boxes weren't even very good back then. You know, spam filters, I mean. So every day you're waking up and there's, you know,

buy Rolex watches, Chanel, you know, every kind of brand watches you could think of their advertisements for it. Here's a fake Chanel watch too there. It was purchased around that time. So what we ended up doing was, and again, we get our assignments from the client. We don't do anything on spec.

So a client will send an email over, hey, can you buy blah, blah, blah from these five websites? Then we'll make five buys. And we received the goods and we put all that in a package like what I mentioned here and send it off to them. Then they authenticate it and then tell us, okay, this was fake. Can you tell us who this was, you know, track them down?

And, you know, back then, it was even easy to track down people in China. You know, it was just people, there was a lot less privacy tools back then. So, you know, we were tracking all these folks down. And then what happened was after, say, 20 or 30 of these buys or maybe more, we started seeing the same payee on everyone. And it was, I think it was I think it was I replica with a 415 phone number, which turned out it was a, you know, VOIP number, fake phone number, but it was usable.

It was a customer service number. And the products were all being shipped from China. But that customer service number was answered by an English-speaking female with an American accent. And I got on a phone with her and just started chit-chat and, you know, as a regular customer. But part of my job, as you can tell, I like to talk. So, you know, I can engage these bad guys into long conversations and start talking about the weather and then all of a sudden we're talking about the dogs and everything else.

And then I got this really long call with her. And she worked in a trailer park in the, you know, I think it was Asheville, North Carolina. And she was telling me how she found the job. And it was her friend that told her about it. And her friend does it too and all that stuff. And it gave us kind of a good snapshot of how they were working their customer service. And then the next step was to start tracing back the websites. So we're, or we're importing our jobs to China and, you know,

India and Pakistan to answer phones and they're transporting their jobs back out to Americans to answer for that, you know what I'm saying? It's funny that they want, like, you know what I'm saying? Sorry. Well, the funniest part about that, though, that you bring up is that the bad guys were all Russians and we found that out later on. So it was the Russians sourcing to the Chinese and using Americans for customer service. And also for other things. Now, the way we traced back up to this, We started with, again, with the packages in China. We figured out where a lot of that stuff was going. And then we started tracing, we started tracing IP addresses and the ISPs, which, you know,

are the service someone would use to connect to the Internet and start finding commonalities within all those cases to find out how many parties we had. And we could, you know, link say, okay, these 17 emails came from this particular mail server and continue things like that and then we will collaborate with there's a there's a group called spam house which is spam h a w h a u s and they're a nonprofit and they have a repository for a lot of these similar complaints and things like that and i worked with them and some of their volunteers as well to put together profiles for some of these folks and figure out where these guys were and we did now one of them was a guy who was doing their um this is a guy i

caught um working with oh no i was working with the missouri office of the fbi and we were working a case specifically following this one guy who was doing search engine optimization for those folks and back then this is like 15 to you know 15 or yeah 15 16 years ago the russians and the chinese they really didn't know how to optimize for americans yet for website and things like that so they would hire americans to do the search engine optimization for their products so i was able to trace their guy and it was the first case in any federal court where someone used google analytics numbers you know and a lot of times for your viewers that don't know what those are if you if you write

click on a website, you can click, you know, an option says view source. Then you look at all this jumbled code. Inside that code is primarily what it takes to create what you see on the outside, the visual, you know, the nuts and bolts, but there are also tracking codes in there so that people can count how many visitors go to their website, things like that. So back then, Google Analytics gave a number for you, like an account number, And every one of your sites was dash one, dash two, dash three, dash four. And I was able to link like 30 some odd websites, like 36 websites, all with dash one,

dash two, dash three, all the way up to like 36 and present them in federal court forensically to say these are all related. And that was how we were able to take that one group of sites and link it to this one guy. And he was also acting as an accountant because a lot of times they use, they use, they launder of the money. First, it comes to the U.S., and then it gets laundered out. So they use this one guy who was located in McKinney, Texas, of all places, which is just north of where I live now. When I started this case, I was still living in L.A. I moved here in 07. But by the time I moved here, the raid was just a couple miles from my house, which I didn't attend. But, but yeah, so he was

bus. His name was Jody, Jody Smith. This is a Russian? No. He was working for the Russians. Oh, okay. So we got Jody Smith. And you can find this, you can find this as a good Wikipedia page. If you look up a guy named Oleg Nicolenko, you'll be able. Yeah, and he worked for the Russian business network, RBN, which is also known as the Russian spam gang. They were mafia. So Jody Smith was working as an SEO, search engine optimization guy, and also a pass through for a lot of the money. So they raided him and he flipped on, he flipped on Oleg. And there was another guy named Lance Atkinson that was a part of this too that I didn't work on. I think some of my work product helped, but it was Lance Atkinson in New Zealand. But anyway, that all led up to this guy

named Oleg Nikolenko. And he was in Russia, Scott Free, and he decided to go to Vegas for some odd reason he went to Vegas for i don't know what show it was if it was for defcon or some you know conference but he went to Vegas and got busted by the marshals that's how he got caught so that was basically how we went from spam being your inbox being more spam than regular emails and all counterfeit watches to being tameable and having a lot less of that stuff in there it was that raid and that FBI action that I helped with that basically tamed the spam world to a livable volume what happened to the the Russian did what he get did he get any time no I never know the end of the story I would have to follow up I'd be writing these little stories down his well I

bet you some of that's in his Wikipedia yeah some of that's in his Wikipedia I just work so many cases that they start to just kind of pile on top of each other. You know, I'm working a big one now. And, you know, I don't even know if I'm going to know where that guy goes because, you know, the case is, you know, I'm on to the next case before court. Yeah, the resolution. Yeah. Because it takes forever for it to resolve. Like, you might be done with your work.

And then they have to plead guilty and then they have to be sentenced and all that takes. Yeah. If they do it quick, it takes six months to a year. That's quick. Yeah. And if I do my job right, I'm not going to have to testify, you know, in most cases. I mean, obviously, you have lawyers that are going to be a pain in the behind and make me testify anyway. But for the most part, my evidence is stipulated because I do a good job.

And even the opposing counsel really can't poke that many holes in it. So they'll just stipulate my evidence. And yeah, I just won't hear anything. And then maybe one day, you know, they say to me, this has happened. Hey, can you come to whatever, Memphis or whatever it is, show up in court, you know. Like a sentencing, like you show up a sentencing to, you know, testify that, anything like that ever or typically just trials yeah well i've i've shown no never test never sentencing because that's more for victim impact so and i'm not part of that that section usually

they would have someone who works at the company to come up and say well here's a you know whatever here's what the bean counters said that we lost you know but yeah never in sentencing um but i have had a counterfeiter text me from sentencing once well what was that she was she was When you talk about crazy femme fatale characters, this woman takes the cake. This was, again, this was probably 2005. This was in the peak when, again, there was clients had budgets. And this was a case where it was called Hollywood Accessory. And they were blatantly advertising in, like, Star Magazine and National Inquirer

in the back of these magazines with fakes, right? And they would blur off the logo. those. But they were advertised. So Hollywood accessory was a big one. And we started making purchases and we started identifying, okay, this person, blah, blah, blah, where they are. We did. And by that time, we stopped, we stopped doing, providing field investigations for ourselves because our intel operation was really what was most efficient. So we had local Los Angeles investigators go out and, you know, try to serve her and things like that. They couldn't. So I ran her DMV so I could figure out. what her birthday was at the time. That was how I found out her birthday. And I was like, oh, wait, wait, her birthday's in three days, you know, go back with with balloons and flowers on this day and she'll open the door. Nice.

She did. Yeah. And also, coincidentally, she lived two blocks from where I used to live in Beverly Hills. There was a little walk-up, a little walk-up apartment in Beverly Hills. And she lived like two blocks to where I used to live. to the point where we may have overlapped and seen each other in the grocery store before this case started. So, yeah, they served her and she kind of went crazy, you know, and all this stuff. Well, one of the things that they did was they moved right away.

They moved and left the location. And I want to tell this chronologically, but the funny thing is I've learned so much since then. And it's funny to mention the apartment they were in where they serve them, her and her husband are in an episode of that show called, what's that addiction show? Intervention. Okay. Her and her husband were in a show called Intervention. And one of his college buddies, they had the intervention in that apartment with the counterfeits, right? And they had a warehouse where they were shipping and all that stuff. But there's a scene where the guy. guy is calling for help at her computer desk with all these boxes of counterfeit Gucci sunglasses behind it, which is hilarious. So then anyway, the case continues, and they move. They move where they live.

They move the warehouse. And we ended up getting lucky with both because, again, you know, my boss, my initial boss in the 90s, she talked like this. She was a small little stout woman. remind you a throw mama from the train you know or the the mom from mama from goonies right but um but she always told me she said it's better to be lucky than to be smart you know but sometimes they don't necessarily fall into your lap but you can find gems if you sit back and wait you know like fishing and uh we had two interesting interesting breaks one we had informant a former employee who

ratted the mountain told us where their warehouse was which was towards downtown los angeles and then we also So my brother, he was like, you know, it might as well call because there were no arrests, but we might as well call or none that were filed to the county, you know. But my brother was like, why don't we just, you know, I'm going to call Beverly Hills police and see if there were any incidents. And there was an incident where she was beating up her husband, a domestic dispute at a house in Beverly Hills. And this house was much nicer than the other one.

This was like a $10, $15,000 a month house, which, you know, $20,000. 20 years ago, that's probably a $40,000 month house now, you know, in Beverly Hills on Swall Drive near Wilshire. And so we found out where that was, found out where the warehouse was. And the problem is enforcement, as you may know, because they've chased you. And, you know, we're chasing her. Enforcement works at the speed of like a turtle, you know, if they're lucky, right? So they file the, they refile the case or, you know, file an update on the case.

little do we know she's got an alert set up on pacer and which you know for your viewers who don't know what pacer is pacer is a database publicly accessible that shows every court filing in the united states right and you can you can create alerts for your own name or a country or a company or even someone you're you know one of your cases so she just set an alert for her case anytime anything was new as filed they just picked up and left she left that house on so and it took six months for the client to do this anyway. I mean, this chase between me and her went three years. And it was all, it wasn't because I couldn't just put my neck, my hand around her neck. It was because the client had to file. And then, you know, we would have to, you know, work with the police,

you know, with this case, the marshals and deal with four different brands, because we were doing this for Gucci, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Tiffany. So it's literally decision by committee. And even though we were nimble enough to maybe pull something like this off, We had to wait. So anyway, by the time, by the time, you know, we're doing surveillance on her moving from here to here. We never caught her with the goods. And in the meantime, clients were like, okay, we're ready, let's go. And I'm working other cases by now.

You know, there's months going by since the last time we spotted her there. And so we're like, okay, let's refresh the information. I have my, I have an informant down. For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGriffithels with. a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants.

Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. Hey, so what did you want to talk about? Well, I want to tell you about Wagovi. Yep, Wagovi. What about it? On second thought, I might not be the right person to tell you. Oh, you're not? No, just ask your doctor. About Wagovi?

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We run the utilities on that location, and the phone still rang, still was answered by her customer service person. And the phone company still said it was in that suite in this warehouse, right? It was on the second floor. And her house, forget it. She was gone. She was gone. So we had to figure out how a mother of two and a husband, wherever they went, we know where the warehouse, where the phone rings, but it doesn't, you know, we went there.

It was just dust bunnies in this warehouse. Right. Okay. So again, time goes by. We're still collecting the data off the website and finding things. But she keeps moving. And every time we figure out where she is, the client, again, moves in a snail's pace. and you know we get to move in okay so things start things start shaping up and then we get a call

from another pissed off employee right this off employee says she's out in i want to say like apple valley california which is in a middle of nowhere in like meth country okay so um picture breaking dad you know that's kind of where this this area was so we're out there um you know we have our guys do the undercover and all that stuff we saw. And it was a much smaller, it was a much smaller operation at the time because, you know, usually, you know, criminals, they spend money to escape. So, you know, their assets were a lot smaller, but she still had the warehouse and still had the active website. Then by this time I was living in Dallas. So this is 0708. So I was living in Dallas. So I had to fly to L.A. and then drive 100 miles to go to this house.

in Apple Valley, California. And I'm sitting there in this gravelly dustbin place in my Gucci loafers and, you know, walking into this place, an absolute mess. Like they were on the run. It kind of reminded me at the end of Goodfellas where they're stirring the pot of spaghetti and, you know, the house is not what you would expect for someone who had made that kind of money. Right. And they had a garage where all this stuff was made from.

And that was the day that we did the raid on her, or it was, you know, was sold. And believe it or not, that raid was not, well, we worked with the, God, I think San Bernardino County sheriffs. And we also, what we did was, so we didn't have to do this twice, we did our judgment collection on the civil seizure the same day that they arrested her. So we did the criminal and the civil seizure of assets on the same day. and we were there with the assistant DA and a bunch of the cops. By the time I got there, they already carted her out.

Her name was a vet Barreto, okay, and her husband, Marcos. So they already carted her out. Kids were out of the house, and we were doing, we were conducting the raid. And when I got there, because she already figured out who I was because I was chasing her all this time, right? She said to the cops, and the DA, who's now a judge, said to me, he said, I think, we're going to have to put some people on you tonight because she's she's coming after you right and i was like oh man you know what am i got to do so anyway i only stayed in l.a for another day or so and i went back to dallas back to my office and um i was sitting there one day looking on a computer

and back then it was my space right so i'm on my space and i see her ispace page and i said well I do have one superpower. People can get mad at me, but they don't stay mad at me. Right. So I just decided to poke the bear and friend her on Myspace. Right. So I got a message on Myspace saying, hey, fellow, Leo, how you doing? Because they're both born in August.

So then we started talking and we got in all these chats back in forth and it was like the um and when she knows for sure it's you oh yeah oh yeah like it was literally like she was the type of person didn't mind playing with fire either right she just thought it was just as thrilling talking to the guy who caught her as me she was my most difficult person to catch she's like my hannibal lector you know throughout all these years she's the one i still say is that even though i've you know had some other crazy good opponents but she was the one because she impressed me so much with her ability to adapt and move and again move her whole family and all that stuff so we're just chit-chatting and things that we stay in touch throughout the process of her case then um

she texted me while she was being sentenced she actually told me and again i mentioned a couple things i mentioned earlier tied to this case you know she text me and said oh hey i got two years of community service and blah blah blah and she told me that i knew the sentencing before my clients because their clients, the attorney that was there didn't send the news to the clients yet. So that was kind of cool, you know. But yeah, so I had this kind of inside scoop to her. And we just kind of established this little kind of like once in a while. Hey, how you doing kind of thing?

She called me when she was drunk, you know, and things like that. And I just took it in stride because, hey, if I ever make a movie, you know, this is going to be part of it. So that kept going. And of course, you know, all my other work, you know, I'm just doing my regular work managing my life. managing my life and then I was a part of a department of justice program where like I mentioned earlier about the about the grants you know when these police got these grants what we would do is the DOJ would send kind of like a pep rally team out to kind of give them some training and show

these people in different police departments and sheriff's departments and prosecutors on what to look for for fakes so I go out and give my hour talk and there'll be someone else So it was a whole like one day kind of thing, workshop that we will put on. And there was a National White Collar Crime Center, NWC3, that I was, you know, they were the contractor for the government that I was helping with. And they called me up one day and they said, hey, do you know any counterfeiters? We'd love to do an interview as an educational video. And I believe this is on my YouTube channel.

So I told her, I said, yeah, I might know somebody. So I called her up and I said, hey, would you, would you do this? It's an educational video. It's a chance for you. She loved the limelight. She's like, is there any money in it? I was like, well, my fee for the day was like a thousand bucks. I was like, we'll split my fee.

She's like, all right. So I fly for this, you know, I fly out from Dallas to Los Angeles. We met at Factor's famous deli in Beverly Hills, which a lot of people, if you know, L.A., it's kind of a hot spot, especially on the south side of Beverly Hills. where a lot of the Orthodox Jews hang out and stuff. Sometimes a lot of celebrities come in there. But I was right down the street from my old office. So I'm sitting there waiting for her.

And the sun's coming in. All of a sudden, I see this beautiful woman with beautiful mane of hair, Chanel sunglasses, perfect veneers, like a movie star, right? Had you never seen her before? Didn't you know what she looked like? I've seen pictures, but they weren't all flattering. You know what I mean? Yeah, they mugshots or something, right?

exactly those things um but um i was and especially after all this you would think she'd be all stressed out and smoky looking and everything you know but she just looked like wow like a like a cindy crawford or something so anyway she comes in she's like oh give me a hug it's so nice to see you and everything so she sits down at the booth and we spend the next hour or two over omelets just talking about how you know different things that we didn't know about the case. Right. You know, like there was, because I was working the Russian mob at the same time, I received a funeral arrangement threat to, to my personal address from one of my undercover IDs because she conducted, she had all the credit card information from my

undercover identity, one of them. So I received a funeral arrangement. I thought it was from the Russian mob, right? It said, I'm sorry for your loss, right? So yeah, I thought, it was them she goes oh how'd you like the funeral arrangement that was you i thought i was the russian mob this whole time i mean there were so many things that happened throughout that time you know like you know somebody it turned out it was her but used uh used a bunch of my credit cards to uh purchase uh inappropriate well porn but really really crazy porn um so that somebody would find them on the credit card bill you know so there were all these funny, dirty tricks and things like that. And it was her. And then we just talked about

all these different times. And she told me when I mentioned earlier about how the warehouse was empty, but the phone was still ringing there, she told me how she did it. She decided to, she was making so much money at the time, to continue renting that warehouse that was empty, rent the warehouse that was two floors above, wire her phones, her electricity, all that stuff, up the elevator shaft to the fourth floor. So the phones still and all the utilities went to this empty warehouse.

That's how she did it. I mean, you got to remember, this is a housewife in her 30s doing this, not a major drug lord with advisors and other people who were able to help her. She figured out all this on her own and adapted to us. So I found it very,

interesting and then and then you know it was a fun situation and then uh and then we went across the street to i think it was the marriott residence in and they set up the little studio in a hotel room and they shot this training video which was used to train law enforcement after that and people are always amazed when she tells the story going from one selling one item on ebay that she bought downtown to you know selling two hundred thousand dollars a month worth of counterfeits so yeah that's that's just one of those cases i call that because i've written about it here and there i call that breakfast with my nemesis because you know it's all about sitting down with her having that one like like heat moment you know

where you have the the good guy and the bad guy sitting there and just finding common interest and you know and stuff like that so you're yeah that was a really fun one you're mori moriarty yeah she's my more already and once in it once about a year she just call me up out of the blue hey how you been this is and all this stuff it's usually not good but at least i could be there for therapy she still is she still doing stuff or you think you're you don't know i don't think so because she's she's so destitute right i think she's pretty much you know yeah i mean i don't know how her life is you know but i can i kind of read between the lines that she's not doing great but yeah but on therefore you know from a humanity standpoint

chinese counterfeiters now are using shell companies here in the united states for a lot of purchases so if I'm buying and again these are some of the non-deceptive counterfeits like jerseys and sneakers and watches and things right almost all of them are working through what's app right now which is you know owned by Facebook and they're also using we chat which is owned by Tencent which is a Chinese company so they're mostly working through chat and not email as much anymore especially websites because credit card companies are constantly

shutting down the merchant accounts on the websites. Right. So what will happen is you go to a website and you'll see this massive catalog of products. The shopping cart doesn't complete with payment and you'll see all the contact information, you know, contact us via WhatsApp or WeChat. And so you go on there and you tell them which product you want and then they give you a price. You give them your address and all that, give them a price, and then they'll give you an account to pay. And it's often, well, it can't, the easiest way to pay is by PayPal, right?

And what they'll do is they'll have rolling PayPal accounts because my clients, what they do is they have me make purchases so we can get the payee information so the client can seize the money that's in the account. Right. Right. So what they do is they have these rolling PayPal accounts. So if the one gets seized, they have some other employee or a brother-in-law and they're constantly creating new PayPal accounts and pulling the money out, probably on a daily

basis or a weekly basis. But many of them aren't using PayPal anymore because PayPal's very cooperative. And some of these other companies are too, but they're just, they just don't have the wheels as greased as PayPal does as far as like an in-house enforcement compliance center because it all has to do with your enforcement compliance. If you only have one guy who's handling every subpoena, you know, it's going to take forever. But PayPal's pretty for a while, for a long time. They've been really responsive and good. So then you start having these like Excel, right? Zell payments, which, you know, I can do straight through my Chase app, but you can pay by Zell.

Well, you have to have a bank account to use Zell. Right. So what they do is and what I've been finding, and this is, this is again, this is, this is, I want to say insider because it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not confidential. But on the same hand, you're not going to find it. You're probably not going to find anybody in my industry mentioning this right now because there are very few of us out there. who know about all, like exactly what's going on now. But what they're doing is they're creating shell companies in different states like New York and Wyoming.

And they're getting bank accounts for those shell companies. So they'll have someone here in the US who'll open up, who'll provide, say like a mailing address for that New York Corp. But you don't have to verify a corporation for a year. In some states, it takes two years. Like California, I know, because it's, that I incorporated there before, you don't have to file your first statement of information

for a year. Okay. So you can get a bank account before then and commit tons of fraud. And then, you know, once that year comes, you just create another corporation. So then what happens? The corporation becomes inactive and they shut the bank accounts down. Okay. Exactly.

And just move on. And that happens a lot. So that's what they're doing now. They're moving on to Zelle and cash app and some of those. Just because they're a little bit more obscure though. I mean, obviously, you want to use the most nimble and the most commonly used. Everyone has a PayPal account, so they prefer to use that. But you also want to get shut down.

Yeah, as you chase people into the sewer, they go to the less used services and things like that. But yeah, those are some good cases. I mean, I've gone against the Saudis. My father's gone against the Vietnamese mafia. I found dead bodies in my backyard when I was 15. How'd that happen? What was that? The dead bodies?

Yeah. Okay. So this is after Hurricane Gloria in 1985. And I was cleaning the backyard. It was a mess everywhere, you know. It was wet and leaves and tree branches everywhere. And we lived in Summers Point, New Jersey, which is just outside of Atlantic City. And the house we rented was the prior tenant.

And we didn't have a lot of money. We were lower middle class. The house we rented was previously rented by the Pagan's motorcycle gang, which is, I believe, is the largest motorcycle gang on the East Coast, like the Hells Angels, but over there. They were the previous owners. So we had seen bullet holes in the wall and, you know, and my father found some drugs in the attic and things like that. But, you know, that was just some, and camera mounts on the trees, things like that from them, you know, trying to evade the police. But that was about it. And then, yeah, like, we were living there probably two, three years at the time.

And I was clean in the backyard. And I found these bricks that were kind of like wobbly in the backyard. And I was like, and they were kind of rectangular shaped. It was like a curiosity was, you know, let me see what's back there. And, you know, even a 15-year-old kid wants to see if there's any buried treasure, you know. So I started pulling up these bricks and I found my way to some bones. No joke. So I went in and told my dad and he said, you know, he came out and looked at it and everything.

He said, all right, you know, thanks for telling me, Robbie. You know, go inside, get cleaned up and everything. And that's the last I heard of it. So years later, we moved out of that house in 88. So, you know, three years go by or so. And he tells me, and I'm 17 or 18 at the time, he tells you, well, you're old enough to know now. We're moving. But I wanted to tell you what that was in the backyard.

Did you not realize it was a dead body? I did. But I didn't know. I guess, I guess really he was just telling me the end of the story kind of thing. Even though they're, it's really wacky. You know, he had all cop friends, you know, local cops, the state troopers. I don't know who he called, probably one of his state trooper buddies. And this shows you how law enforcement works in many ways, too.

I mean, and they're just human. But my dad called one of his people, and he said, you know, there's at least one body in the backyard here. And he was advised by his cop friend. He was advised. He said, you know, don't report it because we know who it most likely is. There were two college students, two young men who were, that the murder was already pinned on two of the pagans, right? They already went to jail for it. They just never found the bodies.

So the crime was solved and everything. He just said, don't report it because basically you'll be inconvenience. They'll dig up, they'll be looking for more bodies and all that stuff. So I think it's funny because the way law enforcement thought was, ah, bodies, it's Jersey. Did he ever call, though? did he then call and say hey no because his cop buddy told him not to he's like once you were moving well that's the funny part is once in a while i look on uh you know i look on google uh street view or you know google maps and i look down on it i'll see that part of the yard

appears to still be there it's not like anything else is built on top of it and once in a while i think you know i wonder if anybody's dug him up but yeah there's two dead young men their family might want to know where their bodies are yeah but again it's funny how law enforcement works you'll be inconvenience so don't do it you know but yeah you're right you're right and i've never actually gone back to figure out you know link that to the real case filing or anything but um yeah for all you know they're completely different bodies like they aren't those bodies like we don't know who the bodies are like you know who knows right can be completely wrong they might pull them up and be like oh these are two these are two former you know pagans or two

women or so, oh, this person was, you know, disappeared in, you know, 1972 and it's completely unrelated. You're right. I'd make a call. I mean, I'm my God. I don't know. The limitations is, you know, pretty long. I mean, there may be some guy out there wandering around. He may have, who knows. It was always bothered. He spent some time in Philly in the early 70s. Yeah, it always bothers me when law enforcement gets something wrong. um or not that they get something long but wrong but like i've interviewed guys where they

they basically pinned a murder on on this guy and the guy goes to prison and it takes them you know 15 16 years to prove hey that's not my DNA or i wasn't involved then he gets out then they they run the DNA and they find out oh it was this other guy but he did get caught he's in prison right now but the problem is when you pinned it on this guy that guy ended up kill and murdering someone else in the meantime and that's why he's in prison like had you said something or or not pinned it on the wrong guy you may have prevented that murder right or even you know to add to what you're saying a person could go to jail as an innocent man and be exonerated but come out a murderer you know because of the time he spent in jail i mean i've never

been in jail but i'm just saying you the jail could actually you know maybe turn someone into someone who would do something worse now it seldom makes you a better person right you know yeah for some people it it might create correct their behavior like i'm not doing that again like i'm not going back to prison you know but i don't necessarily know that it makes you a better person you know not for most people but very seldom like i certainly wouldn't wouldn't add in oh no no we're going to fix these guys nah you might deter them but you're going to fix very few people yeah but back when I was in Bible college, I actually had one of my college jobs in Philly. It was in the Langhorne, Pennsylvania, in Bucks County. And one of my, one of my jobs was my roommate,

or my dormmate asked me, said, hey, you want to make eight bucks an hour doing whatever, you know, doing something working at the youth center over here. It's like, sure, it was right across street from our dorms. Eight bucks an hour is a lot in 1990. And yeah, so I go over there, he's telling me, you know, you're going to be collecting urine from a guy's on probation, right? And this is, I don't know why I brought this up, but oh, I did. Oh, because what I found was, and my job was to watch them pee and then to handle the evidence afterwards, you know, and make sure it got to the right refrigerator and all that. But the reason I mentioned is because that was, you know, my kind of eye-opening experience,

seeing people who purposely went back to jail because that's what we would start to see. Like people just, they had a better time in there than they did on the outside because I would get to know these folks. Right. you know as it'd be in there once a week so yeah i've never been i was arrested for drunk driving about 13 years ago and i spent about four hours in the clink that was enough for me yeah um well listen yeah how do you feel you feel good about this or you anything else you're okay i'm enjoying talking to you i mean we can talk forever whatever you want i mean we still have another hour or whatever i mean if you know we don't we can wrap it up now yeah okay i'm happy

unless you have something out another story or something that a better you know or one that you'd like you think it's plenty of them but i'd give you too much fodder to chop up but i mean are there are there things that you want to ask people in my industry because i mean i've i just i mean that's we spent the first hour i was there were all these things i was curious about because i see all the counterfeits you know all over the place and i just can't you know to me if you spend I don't know, not that somebody's, I guess the argument is if someone bought this for 400 bucks instead of 800, like, hey, you guys just lost an $800 sale, but in reality, they're not willing to spend $800. You were probably never going to get that sale anyway. So, you know, those are the kinds of things that I am curious. And I was always curious, like, is there a whistleblower program? And is there, you know, and if how serious law enforcement. enforcement takes it, you know? Yeah.

There are whistleblower programs. I mean, there's like stopfakes.org, I think is the big one. And all the brands, for the most part, all the brands from sneaker companies, you know, printer manufacturers, bicycle companies, all the way up to, you know, the luxury brands, typically have a page where you can report counterfeits, report fakes. So there are programs for that. And that information usually goes into a repository where, there are all other, you know, locations.

Oh, I'll give you another anecdote that's funny as far as whistleblower programs. Part of my job when I worked at my original location where I worked in L.A. Detective Agency where I was a young employee, part of my job was to answer the 1-800 Dino Cop hotline. Okay. And it was for Jurassic Park fakes because Universal was on a massive Jurassic Park sweep in the 90s. I mean, Jurassic Park T-shirts, I don't know if you were a member, but they were everywhere.

So they had the, and someone else had like the Disney hotline on their phone, but I was the one that had to pick up and say, 1,800 dino cop and then actually take leads, and we would have a binder that we would write it down, oh, this swap meet, this time and all that kind of stuff. And occasionally we would get the occasional like morning show calling and pranking us and stuff like that because it was such a funny, a funny thing, 100 dino cop. But yeah, yeah. So they do have those programs. But again, it's a matter of taking action. And they have to have the time and the budget to do it. And they don't always have the budget to hire us. Like I usually get the big cases. The little ones, you know, usually don't come to us. Oh, here's another thing that that goes in the way. I don't know speaking out of school or not, but I think it's very interesting is that the more expensive the item, the less likely the brand is going to do a test person. purchase. Really?

Why? Because they don't have the budget. Yeah, you think the more expensive... Oh, you think the more expensive... The more expensive the counterfeit is. The more... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're selling fakes for, you know, it's like fakes for 20 bucks, right?

Yeah, they'll pay it. We'll do plenty of sample purchase of that. But then you got a guy over here selling handbags for 900. You know, the client's going to think twice because it's too expensive. too expensive right because their budget depletes with the buy budget you know it would only cost them a couple hundred bucks for us to make a buy and send them the sample you know plus buy money and shipping but when you include one buy you know my fees just a couple hundred bucks but one by equaling you know a thousand bucks you know it's going to be it's going to take a lot less

you know a lot more enthusiasm for them to go do that even though you would think that the more the higher end ones are more deceptive, they're also the ones that don't get the attention because, again, it's money. Right. Yeah. So, no, I thought it was really cool to talk to you, man. I've seen a bunch of your videos, and I rarely,

I think this is the only time besides you vet where I've actually sat face to face with somebody that has, you know, spent some time in jail or, you know, in a financial crime like this. I know plenty of guys. I go to bars, so I know plenty of guys who spent a year in jail for, you know, other stuff. But I'm talking like big financial crimes, you know, it's kind of an interesting thing, yeah. Well, that's, okay.

Well, that's, I feel bad for a vet. I wish you'd get her shit together. You know. She might be. She might be. I had, yeah, something like that. It's about two days, a couple days ago, I interviewed a, uh, another, actually, he's an investigator.

his name his name is um tom simon he's a he's a four he's a retired fbi agent and i do interviews with him sometimes and he'll come and he'll just tell different different stories from you know working 25 i think he worked 26 years for the FBI and um it was funny because as he's telling these stories like this and this and then you know he's like and then i arrested the guy and he he he went to prison for like you know five years or something i was and i was like five years like and he would go you know and he'd go well yeah he's stole four million dollars from 80 victims or whatever and i'd been still he seemed like he was all right and he's like he was a nice person but he has to go to jail and then the next person he told me a story

the next one he told me the story and i was like and he went to jail like how how much time did he get he was like this much time and i was like man he was like 70 years old like that's a lot of time and he goes he and he goes he said your empathy for these criminals is irritated he said is really upset. Oh, yeah. Still, he was old. He was, he's like a nice guy. He wasn't doing anything wrong now.

And he's like, he was on the run for 20 years, you know? Right. We were laughing so, I was laughing so hard because he kept getting, it wasn't upset, but he was just like, he stole $14 million. I'm like, still. Well, that's nothing to you. No, just kidding. Well, you know, you know some financial crimes, because again, most of my cases come to

me because of some sort of infringement or impersonation of a client, you know, outside of counterfeiting. Right. So there are some financial crimes that are real sad when you deal with the victims. And you ever heard of these crimes? Well, I'll kind of explain how the cases come to me, is that whether it's a bank or a company like Pepsi or, you know, Apple or someone like that, they'll come to me and say that there is an employment scam going on where someone would put out an application.

ad saying earn you know earn three thousand dollars a month working from home okay and then the person will answer the ad and then they'll receive a check and the check will be for like like five thousand bucks right and they'll say you know and what they'll do is they'll work with the customer or work with the with the victim make them go to the bank and text me from the bank go in the bank deposit the money okay then go to the ATM and withdraw as much as you possibly can or go to another bank and withdraw as much as you possibly can right depending on how much is available it's 2000 available you got to go to another bank and do it because you know you could find out from the receipt how much is available to withdraw in the person's account you would go there and then

they would have the customer do the the victim do this then they will go to a money grammar or Western Union and wire the money to a stranger, right? And then that money was supposed to be for office supplies, like a computer, a vendor. I forgot to mention that earlier, but the ruse was that we're going to supply you with a desk, a computer, and everything you need to do the work for us and have their home office. And that's what that was for. So we send you the check for the vendor. And then you send the money to someone who you think is the vendor.

and then nothing ever happens. And all of a sudden, you know, a few days later, you get a call from the bank saying you passed a counterfeit check. Yeah. And then you're out exactly the amount of money you withdrew and sent over to Western Union. And I get those all the time. And the sad thing is, is that, you know, from an investigator's perspective that a lot of people don't talk about, because you see some of these guys revealing these scams online. But from an investigator's standpoint, it's really disheartening.

because the money behind it is always going to be the brands. And the brands really, all they're trying to do is make sure that they're not being infringed upon anymore. You know what I mean? So what the bad guys will do, they'll imitate Pepsi for a few months, right? And then after a while, they'll just imitate Caterpillar or some other 4,500 company.

And they'll have rolling victims. When I say victims, I mean the financial victims, which are the ones with money, because they're a victim also, the one who's infringed upon, and they'll have a case and then they'll pass the case onto the FBI, but the FBI doesn't have any evidence that they're connected to these 6,000 other cases. So it never reaches the million or 10 million, depending on which FBI office, you know, the threshold that they meet. And the person who sent the money is just out the money. Yeah.

And I know anecdotally from all the reports that come from my clients and I have to, my job's to be the sucker. So I end up doing those things and following the scam. But one time I had a call from a brother of a friend. It was before Christmas and he was out of work and he fell for that. And he was out like a few thousand dollars and it meant it literally meant his kids. It's Christmas. And I was just like, oh.

So those are the people you really feel bad about are the ones who, you know, the working class folks who get scammed out of a few grand, you know, that's, that's really sad. And I see those. And it was sad for me to tell them, you know, that you're not going to see that money again. Yeah. Well, you know, so I have an Etsy account. It's a cox pop art.

It's like artwork that I do and I just have on Etsy. And I had somebody who contacted me and they're like, hey, how much is this painting? And it was like, whatever, 800 bucks. And I said, yeah, I can ship it to you. And I forget the exact, I'm probably, because I think I've told the story before, I'll probably get in all the numbers wrong. But the person said, okay, and I was like, yeah, it's $200 to ship it to you, whatever.

And they came back and they said, okay, I'll, I'm going to mail you a cashier's check. I said, okay, you know, because they're like, oh, I don't have this or it's my uncle and he's mailing the check for me. And, you know, okay, yeah, that's fine. So they mail the cashier's check. Well, then I get an email. They said, oh, my gosh, I just found. out that my uncle made a mistake and he made the cashier's check for, you know, like, yeah,

like 20. It was like, it was like $2,700. It was like eight, an extra 800 bucks. And like, oh, my gosh, you know, I'm so sorry that money was supposed to go to my brother. Could you do me a favor and just deposit the check and then wire the extra $800 or extra $300, whatever it was, you know, I forget. Yeah. It was extra $1,800 or, and it wasn't like that. It was like, let's say it was $1,000. I was supposed to get $1,000. They're supposed to get $800. So why are the $800? I'm sure I have the number wrong. And I remember I read, I was, we were sitting in Starbucks drive-thru with my wife, and I read it. And I go, I go, listen to this.

And I read it. And she said, she was, wow, she's like, that's pretty trusting of them, like to let you deposit the check. And I went, no, baby. I said, it's a scam. She goes, how's it? How's it a scam? You have the money. I go, it's not a real cashier's check.

Well, and that's the interesting thing. Yeah, it could be a counterfeit check. But there's also, there's also another scam where it's actually laundering. real money so okay those can also be the case as well where they have you you're one of the money you could be one of the money mules that's that's mulling 800 bucks to another guy central repository somewhere who's got you know who's in england or dc or wherever else where he's getting all those eight hundred dollar payments and assembling them and moving them on so yeah that's it's it could be one of two different scams yeah well i kept in this one i kept email

the woman who is probably probably a Nigerian a male Nigerian but I emailed her and I was like hey I and she's like did you get the cashier's check and I no I haven't got it yet and then two days later she's like they said they delivered it I said oh I said I haven't checked the box let me my wife will check it when she gets home and the next day did she did your wife check it and I was dragging her and dragging right and then finally I got to the point I was like I got the cashier she oh we're going to deposit it tomorrow oh she's like she's like well you could always just you know take a picture of it and direct deposit it using your phone i was like oh i know my wife going by anyway and then like the next like oh

did she do it i said oh she forgot she's gonna do it tomorrow and that when she comes home from work you know at some point she's like they start saying listen i feel like you're giving me the run around i said really because i feel like you're trying to get me to deposit a fake check right right and i you know and then they came back and they were like laughed and said like oh ha ha ha ha oh well you know you know i was like like hey good try and they were like well yeah it's a good try you know i was like all right good luck and that was it and i even took the cashier's check and i i'll do these speeches in front of a law enforcement will have me like county law enforcement they'll ask me to come and talk to

their financial crimes detectives or investigators and i'll and i actually called my contact there at hillsborough county i was like listen this was going on i said can you do anything with this check he's we're never tracking that first that's not we're never going to be able to do that Because you have to have a, you know, there's a certain threshold, you know, where that particular crime has to be linked to a million or $10 million worth of fraud, you know, and that's a sad part. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's a sad part because you can't justify a $5,000 case, you know, spending $20,000 in man hours for $5,000, you know, and that kind of stuff.

Right. My cases, a lot of my cases never see the end because I cost money. You know, I charge hourly. So sometimes my clients, I'll send them a report saying, this is how as far we got, you want to authorize more money and they'll say, oh, we'll let you know, you know, and I'm not curious enough to keep going, you know, I'll wait for them to. And then I just sit on it for a long time and maybe not do anything. Because again, you know, people have to budget their time. Companies do too. Right. Yeah. I would definitely not recommend committing any crimes or buying any fakes. I have to use that. despite the fact that it's probably a pretty it's probably a pretty lucrative crime um um okay well listen i i appreciate you you know taking the time to talk with me yeah that was nice um do you have anything you want to plug or anything i don't think many of my client or any many of my uh viewers of you know are going to hire an investigator that does yeah you know i i don't take cases

from the public anyway you know i work for big companies but if they people want to find me just find me on homes p i on any platform homes p i h-l-m-m-es-p-i and you don't do any any um like the guy tom simon which this kills me that this is how things work now because you have to think when i went in facebook had just been out like a year like i'd never been on youtube it had just come out like people were uploading their home videos to youtube you know for like a year or two before anybody ever said hey podcast you know the word podcast wasn't even invented until 2019 or, sorry, 2009, I'd already been locked up like three years by that point. So, so, you know, when I got out, I had no idea what this was, the platform.

So, um, so the fact that a legitimate person kind of advertises on Instagram, right, to me is bizarre. Like, you're a legitimate, they're like, oh, go to my Instagram and you're like, Instagram. Like, isn't that for like Facebook? And they're like, no, no, it's not. It's more than that. And his, he has like 200 and something thousand followers. Every time he comes on my show, he ends up getting two or three different. Yes.

Former FBI. And his TikToks, every day he does a fraud TikTok where he talks about different types of, different types of fraud. And he broke down the last time we talked. He broke down. He's like, no, he said every morning I go on the Department of Justice or the FBI website and I look at, I look up all of the, um, press releases and I see which ones have our press release about a resolution.

Yeah. You know, because they'll do multiple first when they catch them. Then like maybe another one midway through and then they'll do what one about like the sentencing because I typically read all of them. And then I come up with like a one minute or a minute and a half video put my camera down. I say, you know, there was a guy named John Smith. John Smith lived in such and such and such and he set up a company that was. invest your money for 18% every single month.

Well, that's turned out to be a Ponzi scheme. You know, and he goes to his whole thing. That's a special talent to be able to put together content like that. He does. And he lives over 200,000 followers. He's great. Every video gets 20, 30. Sometimes they get a million.

Wow. Yeah, he, but he also, as he gets a ton of clients, he's got client stories. I don't think he's told me any client stories. They've all been FBI. He's got 25 years of FBI story. Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, all my clients are trademark attorneys, you know, either in-house or outside.

So I have a real kind of small customer. I don't even advertise my website much places because any, very rarely do I get business for my website, you know, it's meeting people in person and referral, you know, and stuff like that. So, you know, I get calls from the public. I'm like, you know, just give them, give them some kind advice and send them on their way. Hey, this is Matt Cox. I really appreciate you guys watching.

Do me a favor and hit the. subscribe button if like the video hit the bell so you get notified um also please consider uh joining my patreon it's ten dollars a month we're going to start putting uh special videos or specific content for patreon on the patreon 10 bucks a month really appreciate it leave me a comment share the video thank you very much and see you