Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - How Criminals Steal Houses!

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Starting point is 00:01:47 He was using the system against his victims. Middle class upbringing, mom and dad split. So of course, like, that's where all the shit hits the fan. Mom is a stable worker. Dad's a drunk. And, you know, when that stuff happens to a kid And they're like, he said he was a CPA. He's a CPA.

Starting point is 00:02:03 Is he, for himself? Or is he working for somebody? No, he's for himself here. But the reason he was for himself is because he couldn't maintain a job. So he opened a firm up when he was younger, had like a dozen CPAs working under him. Like he was really headed somewhere. But aging, psychiatric illnesses, alcoholism, all that kind of takes us told. Now he's working out of the front room of our house that we bought from an investor.

Starting point is 00:02:24 And my grandma put down a down payment and the house needs a remodel, but we don't have one. Right. One of those deals. But as a kid, you know, like you're in middle school and you're like, all my friends still have like their parents are doctors and lawyers. They got his money. And like I have a window unit in my room that doesn't work that good for air conditioning. And I'm hanging my clothes up to dry because of dry. So, dry it doesn't work anymore.

Starting point is 00:02:44 But you're still growing up with the rich kids. Yeah. Like we don't live in the part of town that's great anymore. But we're still in the same school. We're still all friends. You know, we're playing sports together and stuff like that. So, you know, all that stuff kind of changes who you are and how you see the world. But the interesting part is my dad was super bright, super bright.

Starting point is 00:03:01 super high IQ, all that. And he still had some decent clients. I don't know how. So I'd get to hear these stories. Mom being in the real estate business and sales, and dad being a CPA talking about doctors, how they earn money, what their net worth was. He would tell me about the people that show up in the fanciest cars,

Starting point is 00:03:17 usually had to lease money in their bank account, like all these interesting stories to learn about people's financials because he could see into them. And he actually had good financial acumen knowledge, just not practice. Yeah, yeah. So that's kind of where a lot of stuff happened. There was a time where we were, I was getting off the bus.

Starting point is 00:03:31 I'll never forget. And get off the bus. Sheriff's moving our stuff out in the yard. Dad's out there orchestrating. And I'm like, what the heck's going on? Every one of the bus is like, Logan, well, the house that my dad, my grandma put a down payment on that my dad bought on a seller finance note, not with a regular bank mortgage like a dude like us.

Starting point is 00:03:47 Yeah. Dad's not making the payments. Won't tell us, won't tell my grandma. We got foreclosed on. We're moving out in the yard. Had no idea. Yeah. So when all that stuff happens in middle school, you're just shaking.

Starting point is 00:03:58 Confidence issues. esteem issues, all this stuff. So that's kind of like early days, but, you know, I got into high school, got into college, and still can't figure it all out. So you start doing drugs, trying to, like, change how you feel, basically. Yeah. And it's still fairly socially adapt. Like, I make friends, you know, popularity, stuff like that.

Starting point is 00:04:18 But, like, there's just a lot going on here and here. I'm like, I don't want to be poor. Like, that's terrible. Yeah. So this combination of all this is happening. You're like, where am I going to go in life? So I'm in college and a fraternity, using drugs, selling to pay for. it, manufacturing some other drugs in the apartment.

Starting point is 00:04:33 Oh, I got, I got arrested in high, I actually got arrested in high school for counterfeiting. We printed out $100 bills and started cashing them in. God, I haven't talked to us. I'm listening forever. Wow. We're talking, we're going to be talking about deed fraud. Here we go. And so you and your buddies just decided to start making, you can't just make hundreds

Starting point is 00:04:53 with it. They're not good enough to pass. You'd be shocked how easy it was. Right. 25 years ago. Right. friend of mine's parents were a doctor and other friends, I don't know what his mom did, buddies forever grew up, go to his house one afternoon and he's like, hey, so-and-so's

Starting point is 00:05:07 has a really good printer and he's pulling out this money. I wouldn't connect him the dots. So he pulls out a sheet of paper that has three bills on it, $50, no, $20 bill at the time. And he's like, we can make these. I'm just kind of looking at it. And I have no boundaries. I'm a child, more or less. I got no money.

Starting point is 00:05:23 I'm 15 years old. I'm about to be getting a car soon. I'm like, how's this going to work? So I look at it. I'm like, well, how do these look? Let's cut them. Let's crumple them up. And they looked like dollars.

Starting point is 00:05:33 You held up next to a dollar. And it was not perfect, pretty good. So we were on a ream of papers through it and produce. But he had 20s. I'm like, let's just do 50s. Because more bang for your buck, right? Same amount of work twice the one, two plus times of money. Not quite as much scrutiny as 100.

Starting point is 00:05:49 Right. Well, you know, I hadn't quite thought about that. I was just like, let's go up one step. Right. So we print all these out. We divvy them up. And the guy that had the printer was like, like, nah, I'm okay.

Starting point is 00:05:59 Here's the smartest of us all. So we split these things up. I get a car not long after. It's kind of a crummy car. So I'm like, man, I need a new one. How am I going to get money? Let me start converting these into real money. So I'm going driving to Austin, which is 60 miles away on the weekends.

Starting point is 00:06:14 And I'm thinking, if I take these into like a gas station, they're going to figure this out. So I'm going, you know, there's people on the corner that sell flowers. Yeah. I'm like, okay, that's an easy one. They're not going to be sophisticated. So I would drive around and buy flowers. dollar the place, 50 bucks, $40 change, tossed the flour. So I start to convert that way.

Starting point is 00:06:32 Then I'm looking at small businesses. They're less sophisticated. I'm buying hamburgers or whatever. So I finally get enough to buy a car. Getting ready to buy the car. How much did you get? $500? A thousand? You get it to make a thousand? No, no, no, no. At the time, I'd spend three, four thousand dollars to buy like a decent car at that time. So that's what I'd converted. Okay. So I'm thinking, all right, I'm going to get this new car. Did it ever go bad? Nobody ever, did anybody get one and go? Oh, no, no, no, no. It never happened, like, face it. to face. During the transaction, no.

Starting point is 00:06:59 And I look back and I think like how crazy this is. Like today I double review my taxes. I make sure we followed every rule. Like it's just a completely different place, but that's where I was. So I'll never forget. Then a buddy mine, I give him some. He comes into my job. I'm working at a bike shop, idiot.

Starting point is 00:07:16 He comes into the job. He buys some stuff and I let him change some in. And then we split it. I don't know why I did that because I was already far ahead. But yeah. So I'm sitting in school one day. Just doing work. I like to smoke a lot of weed at lunch and take naps after lunch.

Starting point is 00:07:32 And you get this. They open the door, these two dudes and suits. Doesn't happen in a school very often. And they tell the teacher or something, she comes there and says, Mr. Flores, they need you in the hallway. And I'm like, I've never been in trouble at this point. What was your buddy's name? Clayton.

Starting point is 00:07:49 Sounds like Clayton may have done something wrong. You've been around this, too, you know? Listen, somebody knows. I'm more than willing to help you. You know, I knew something was wrong. I knew it. I think I got his phone number. Dude, so I'm like freaking out, right?

Starting point is 00:08:09 I've never been any trouble. Throw me in the back of this car. What do they tell you? Well, they just say, we've got some question for you. I'm like, all right. Is this secret service? Yes, that's who does fiduciary. I know.

Starting point is 00:08:20 I know that. Yeah. I don't know this shit. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know that yet. So these guys are in suits, and I'm thinking they're cops. They go put me in this car. It's a Crown Vic, unmarked.

Starting point is 00:08:30 We get in there, and they're based. They don't read me in my rights. And they just say, we're going to ask you some questions, take you to police department. All right, fine. They don't say anything to me. So I'm just petrified. Are you not saying, am I in trouble? What am I doing?

Starting point is 00:08:41 What's happening? I just don't know. And I'm like, you know what? Let me just see how this goes. I don't know what's happening. I'm not going to say anything. So we get there. They sit me down in this room and they start saying,

Starting point is 00:08:50 so tell me about your plans. a kid, I don't know what they're doing. They're manipulating the shit out of me. I'm telling them, I want to be an architect. I love glass houses. I'm going to go to UT and this is what I'm going to do. They're telling about all these plans. And then they're like, you're going to go to prison for counterfeiting money and you'll

Starting point is 00:09:06 never be an architect. And I'm like, fuck, now I know why I'm here. I was shocked. Absolutely shocked. And then they're like telling me all this stuff. And I'm like, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you in prison?

Starting point is 00:09:19 They didn't go that far. They didn't go that far. but they kept going deep, man. They're asking me all these questions, and they knew a lot. And I'm like, dude, what are you talking about? Yes, I know Clayton. No. Money?

Starting point is 00:09:30 Fake money? What are you talking about? Like, I had no clue. And they hadn't given me, they'd give me some level of detail, but not a ton. Finally, they're like, all right, let's cut the shit, Mr. Foremer. And they just laid it all out. How we met, when we talked about it, how we made it, like everything. I'm like, oh, crap.

Starting point is 00:09:46 Sounds to me like they've already talked to Clayton. They, my message. It sounds to me, you were not the first stop. Yeah, I was to stop two. So after that, basically I'm like, all right, I'm fucked. Like, I'm a kid still. I don't know that I need to call a lawyer. So I'm like, all right, draw the line.

Starting point is 00:10:04 I'll tell you the truth. So I told him what happened. Right. They're like, where's all this money yet? I'm like to my house. So we go to my house. A dad's walking. This is right after we got booted from the other house.

Starting point is 00:10:13 So now we're living with the neighbor across the street who just got divorced in the spare bedroom. My dad's got a separate room. I got this other one. My dad's walking out of the house. I'm pulling up in this crowned vic with two dudes and suits. He's like, Logan's there something you need to tell me? And I'm like, these guys will tell you.

Starting point is 00:10:28 One of them talks to my dad, the other one follows me in the house, go to the shoebox where the money is. God, I can't believe I thought like this back then. So I go in there and I'm like, there's a stack of it. I grab about two thirds of the stack and close it and put it back and give it to them. And he's like, because it's everything. And I'm thinking, that's real money? like how does he know where it came from?

Starting point is 00:10:52 Like all this has happened in my head. I remember very vividly when this is happening. I give him that money and then I give him the rest of the fake money. He's like, okay. All right, go out and talk to my dad. They tell me we're going to be in contact with you, blah, blah, blah. And I'm thinking, dude, how this is going to worry? My dad was so pissed.

Starting point is 00:11:09 You know, my dad's a licensed CPA, like, you know, 4.0 student, all this kind of stuff. He's a professional. He's a professional. Right. So I get a chance to talk to Clayton later, and he's like, yeah, we're going to turn ourselves in. They told us a date and a time, and they contacted my dad. My dad's like, you know what, let's just call an attorney. You know, my dad had been involved in professional services.

Starting point is 00:11:29 He knew a bunch of lawyers. So a lawyer says, hold on a minute. You're not going to go turn yourself in. Let me talk to these guys. Let me schedule an appointment. The other two guys turned themselves in 20 years federal, or the other guy, Clayton, 20 years federal probation, signs off on it, takes it. That's that.

Starting point is 00:11:45 I never get a call. They get a call again, so you want to schedule. We try to do some scheduling. Something happens, don't know. About a year later, the attorney calls. And I'm thinking, like, I'm still on pins and needles. I'm a kid. I'm like, am I going to go to jail?

Starting point is 00:11:58 The attorney calls and says, those two guys, read this newspaper article I'm going to send you, they got into an auto accident and died. The case was closed. It was such a small case. They already got the one guy. They put nipped it in the bud. They're not going to reopen it. They got a couple of convictions.

Starting point is 00:12:13 They're happy. Game over. Right. And he said also, when I went through the file, they didn't read you your rights. They didn't do this. They didn't do that. He's like,

Starting point is 00:12:20 they would have a much tougher time with this than they think. They let it go. Nice. Yeah. So that was that time of like growing up with no money, trying to figure it out. Here's an option. And you would think at that age,

Starting point is 00:12:35 that would be enough to say, all right, I'm done. Like, I shouldn't do this anymore. Well, there was money-making activities in college or, you know, drugs and all that stuff too.

Starting point is 00:12:44 But anyway, you know, I get out of college. I go get a, job, you know, go through rehab a couple times, two or three times at this point, detox. And I'll start using cocaine a little bit, start shooting heroin. That's what really worked. So that was like the thing.

Starting point is 00:12:56 Jesus, bro. I know. What's going on? That's a leap. But it works. Like, that's the thing. Like, the way addiction works with people is they're trying to change how they feel. They don't like the way life is. And a lot of times they don't have the coping skills.

Starting point is 00:13:11 Yeah. And that's what does it. Yeah. And I could go with it. It was a different, I wasn't the addict who's like, under the bridge all these people like waking up trying to find 20 bucks like I maintained a job I kept my usage low enough to like to satisfy me but the problem is you can't do that for life it slowly just goes downhill so I did wind up in rehab a couple times but there was a big

Starting point is 00:13:34 inflection point there at that point I wasn't like you know we're like manufacturing steroids in college in our in one of the rooms of our apartment I can and volume but like twice what we needed break it up and sell it like yeah petty shit. it. But after I get out of rehab, I'm like, man, I got to clean this up, dude. I'm 25 years old. My friends and I actually managed to graduate from college somehow. What did you get a degree in?

Starting point is 00:13:57 Business. Okay. Yeah. So I wanted to go accounting, but it was too much work because I was so high. Marketing was like, show up, take the test and pass. So that's what happened. Business management is what I finalized with. So once that's kind of done, I'm getting out in the world trying to figure this all out

Starting point is 00:14:13 and kind of stumble around through different jobs and stuff. But I wind up in the oil. field. And that was probably the biggest time where I was like away from life, all the bad people, all the bad influences, a bunch of hardworking dudes getting paid more than their worth. And they work seven days a week. And I did that for a couple years. That was probably the biggest change. At that point, I didn't need bad money anymore. Everybody needs a good pair of jeans. What I like about the perfect gene is that the moment you put them on, they feel like sweatpants. They don't ever pinch or bind up. As a matter of fact, they're super stretchy. There's never any point where you

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Starting point is 00:15:46 I started with self-confidence, esteem. And when all that started to happen, I'm like, all right, dude, I'm a grown-up. You know, I'm still a little bit behind my peers because they're, like, married out of college, have kids, a house, two cars, shit like that. And I'm living in a fucking RV in the oil field, just piling this money. I was going to say, but you're able to, yeah. Well, the funny thing is I got more money in my savings account than they do. So it was a weird way it worked.

Starting point is 00:16:10 Yeah, wow, these are, these memories are different, man. I haven't dug through these in a while. Yeah, but if you, I mean, at least during that time, you kind of put together like, hey, I may have to sacrifice. If I sacrifice, if you're willing to sacrifice for a couple of years and bust your ass, you could save a shitload of money. That was, there are two times in life that I got very far ahead. That was one of them.

Starting point is 00:16:26 Another time was when business really took off and I stayed disciplined. But that put me ahead of everybody. I had a ton of money in account. Everybody's laughing. I'm living in a 14-foot RV with a hole in the bathroom room, and I put a piece of plywood over it because I got it for two grand. And we get paid $1,800, $1,800 a month in per diem to get a hotel and split it. And I bought this crummy RV.

Starting point is 00:16:45 and we pay $400 a month to rent a RV spot. So I could pocket more, work, you know, all that stuff. But there came this time where I'm like, you know, all right. Oh, and a part that I forgot to mention is while I was going through all that addiction right after college, I inherited a shit ton of money. So that's nice. Grandma and grandpa were farmers, like, you know, me and my brothers and sisters earned a little over a million bucks.

Starting point is 00:17:08 We inherited that. That was part of what fueled the drug stuff for a while because when I got out of college and got jobs, they weren't super high paying. Right. So there was this period where, like, I'm doing all the drugs, inherit a ton of money. You know, I'm buying a Porsche car, house, lots of drugs. So the money's, you're working, but the money's subsidizing a lifestyle that you're,

Starting point is 00:17:25 you're not able to support yourself. Right. I'm earning 40 grand a year and I'm spending $100,000, $300,000 in those years. Right. Yeah, so, like, there are a lot of interesting mixes that cause all these, like, convergences. But when that oil field happens, the reason I brought that up is there's this epiphany that I had, man, I'm making $100, $150,000 here in the oil field.

Starting point is 00:17:43 But I was burning twice this a couple years ago. it's going to take me a long time to really build a life at this rate if I want something better than average. I remember thinking, how do people get rich? And I remember my dad would always tell me my mom would say this too. Real estate. Like all these people that had more money in the average person, most of them were from real estate. And I thought, maybe I'll do that. So that was like growing up childhood, grow up as a man, leave all the bad stuff behind and say,

Starting point is 00:18:11 I'm never going to do anything bad again. I don't need to anymore. Today I make more than almost any drug. drug dealer you could think of and I don't have trailing liability that leads to prison. Right. So yeah, that was that was upbringing. Well, so what was, what was some of the, did you just start like, did you start by flipping houses or did you start by just saying, hey, I'm going to buy a duplex and rent it

Starting point is 00:18:30 out? Did you, how did you start? Or do you start as a real estate agent for five years? And, you know, how does it, because everybody has a different, you know, kind of a different path into real estate. A lot of people, oh, I was a broker, and then it became this, or I was a this, and it became this or I had a couple buddies we started we started flipping houses and blew it up yeah no I remember specifically thinking like I'm tired of fucking myself basically and I went into it from I want to make

Starting point is 00:18:58 money that's why I'm going into this place but I've already burned like a million dollar inheritance I blew everything that I made like I don't want to get fucked I'm done fucking myself how do I do this and not take a lot of risk so I was looking more my downside than my upside like how do I get into these deals and not lose a lot. So I would go to San Antonio on the weekends because that's where the oil field in Texas is like this chain or this ring for or a moon from like a moon shape from Laredo to Midland, south to west Texas. Going out there working, earning money. And every three or four weeks, I'll get a couple days off and go to San Antonio, which is the biggest city near there in South Texas. And I remember seeing all these little vacant lots. There are five to

Starting point is 00:19:38 10,000 square foot. You have the central business district downtown San Antonio and you hop over the highway and you've got this crummy east side that's like lots are $5,000, houses are 30. And I remember thinking, this is a lot that has utilities and a street and curbs and gutters and it's platted. Like you can build a house on this thing. You can even have a water meter. For $5,000 you can build a house on this thing.

Starting point is 00:20:02 Or if you can buy it for $5,000, you can build a house on it. Like it works. So if I buy it for $5,000, which is what it's worth in the tax roll, how much can this go down? I don't have $5,000 at risk. I might have a thousand at risk. Maybe if I can't sell it for more and I just sell it for a thousand less, I only have a thousand at risk.

Starting point is 00:20:18 So I take the couple hundred thousand dollars that I saved in the attic in me is, I'm healed from like wanting to use drugs and change how I feel, but I still have those like impulsive addiction tendencies. So I'm like, this is the new plan. Go deep. So I buy a bunch of these vacant lots, knocking on doors, riding my bicycle. I cycle a lot. Then.

Starting point is 00:20:36 Yeah. So I'm like riding my mountain bike through the neighborhood, knocking on doors with contracts in a backpack talking to people. You got that vacant lot down there. It used to be your grannies, you inherited it. We sell it to me. And they're like, yeah, dude, I'm sick of mowing at paying the taxes. So this is a very common thing.

Starting point is 00:20:50 It'd be $5,000 in the tax rolls. How much you want? I don't know. It says five grand. I'll give you $5,000. No negotiations, just that's it. So I'd pay $1,000 off to the delinquent taxes or $2,000, give them the balance.

Starting point is 00:21:01 And I'd go to title company and close in a couple weeks and get a deed. So that's how I started buying these. Now, I won't say how it's sophisticated enough to plan this market, but the market started to just plow. upwards. This was 2000 and 13, 14, 15 range after we had that financial crisis. And we were in the seven largest city in the United States,

Starting point is 00:21:22 but it was significantly underval. You considered like a tertiary market, the one no one cares about, but it's a big city. Value started to climb. So when the values started to climb, I was getting calls from realtors. The first one I got, he said, I'll offer you 200,000 for this lot. And I was in it for 10 grand. Jeez. And I'm like, holy shit.

Starting point is 00:21:39 Like, this is it. This is it. This is it. So how long does that go on to, like, your current? Was there an evolution to what you're doing now? Yeah, so that didn't last long because I would go back and try to get more deals like that. They're drying up. Cats out of the bag.

Starting point is 00:21:57 Yeah. Now, what I did find is there were properties that didn't transact because they had ownership problems, title problems, missing owners, judgments and liens against them. So I would go to those people. I solved one of those. I shouldn't have, but I did it anyway. It was a wreck. A hassle took months and months and months. I had to call lawyers and get help.

Starting point is 00:22:12 But when I did it, I was able to still buy it cheap. And I thought, that's my shot to get valuable property for less money again. Okay. Explain that this is a vacant. These are vacant lots or are they houses? I started with vacant lots and then I started doing houses. Okay. So you got a vacant lot or a house and it's obvious. Nobody's taken care of this property.

Starting point is 00:22:34 It's been sitting there for abandoned. It's been there for years. I can tell there's an issue. So you find these lots. And we'll talk about that. but you find the lots and what is the problem with the title. I know they're all different. I'm just saying to explain to people that are watching because they see a lot.

Starting point is 00:22:51 They go like, oh, they can sell it. Well, not always. Yeah. That's a good point. So typically when people sell houses, like if you're going to sell the house you have or a lot that you have, you're going to get a realtor, put it on the market, get a contract, take it to the title company. And the title company will call you in a couple weeks or a month and say,

Starting point is 00:23:07 we have the title work back. The title is clear. Matt is the owner. And he doesn't owe any money. against it. There's no judgments and liens against Matt. And Matt got it from this guy who got it from this guy, who got it from this guy, who got it from this guy, that's all clean. Yeah, they can see a chain of title where everything was done correctly. Clean title, that's right. And then you go close. Well, the problem is if Matt didn't get it from this guy who this guy who this guy and has

Starting point is 00:23:29 clean title, Matt got it from his mom and his mom passed away without a will and Matt has six siblings and three cousins. And they all actually are owners because mom didn't leave a will. And the way the laws work, it kind of can split up sometimes, Matt can't just sell it to me. And to further complicate the situation, he can't sell it to me without all their signatures and agreement. And Johnny over there still in prison, Chris is in Venezuela because after he got out of the service, he met some girl and moved on. And Bill didn't pay his taxes, so he has a tax lien against him.

Starting point is 00:24:02 All that can clog up and congesting. It clouds the titles, what it does. Or if they're all splitting it, if they're all splitting it, then some people are saying, I want more money. I've done that where I've gone. There have been like three siblings, and you're like, okay, well, you know, everybody needs to sign here.

Starting point is 00:24:18 And they're like, well, I deserve 10,000. I'm the one who took care of mom the last two years of you. You're like, that's exactly what they say. That's exactly what literally. Yeah, I was her favorite. Or you didn't talk to her for the past five years. It suddenly becomes this whole fucking thing. It's like, come on, what are you doing?

Starting point is 00:24:34 Let's just 33% everybody across the board. There are nobody's talking each other. You can't have them in the same room. Dude, you know, you know. So that's an opportunity. That's where I started to see, okay, title company won't close this without a bunch of work. They don't get along. I'm not even going to try to get them to get along.

Starting point is 00:24:50 I would just go to each person and say, this is a wreck. You can't sell it. We all know that. You all know that. I'm not going to give you $100,000 for this. They're 10 people. You have a 10% stake to make things simple. I'm going to give you $500.

Starting point is 00:25:03 If you want it, take it if not, I could care less. I'll go somewhere else. Yeah, they're not running out of properties. Right. And sometimes people would say, well, you're taking advantage of them. But what I started to do is explain to him. They can fix it? Well, that's exactly my point.

Starting point is 00:25:16 So what I would do is say, look, I want you to know before I make you the offer, I want you know what it takes to fix this. I'm going to hire a lawyer. I'm going to get affidavit airships. I'm going to go do a probate or an administration. In the courthouse, this is going to take six months or a year. He didn't pay the IRS. I got to call them and negotiate your judgment or lean down because that's

Starting point is 00:25:30 congesting your title, clouding it. This other guy got, your other cousin got foreclosed his car from Toyota Motor credit. and they got a deficiency judgment against him. I got to settle that. I got to go do all this. And if one person backs out and they don't all sell to me, now I got to deal with them.

Starting point is 00:25:47 And it's a big problem. So I'm not buying 10% of the property. I'm just taking your seat. Yeah, I'm just giving you 500 or something you can't possibly do for yourself. Yeah, and I'm going to take a shot at it. That might not even work for me. Right. And you may be 30 or 40 or $50,000 in before you even figure out,

Starting point is 00:26:05 I'm fucking stuck with this vacant property. I got to start mowing. Bingo. They're going to start putting fucking leaves on my shit. I'm mowing your fucking lot. Those conversations are dead on, like you say. So that's how I would go back and find the properties that couldn't transact. And that was the way I could get a valuable property in a time where property values were rising for an extremely discounted rate.

Starting point is 00:26:27 Because I'd flipped a couple houses over time and chase contractors and done all that work. And I'm like, no, I'd rather deal with these kind of folks with small dollars. because, you know, at the time, I was starting to turn some money back around, but ultimately if there's still risk, a lot of times in real estate, people use a lot of debt because it's expensive. In this case, I wasn't using debt. You know, you can go earn, if you can figure out how to save up $10,000, I literally buy $100,000 property today for like $10,000.

Starting point is 00:26:52 Right. Get your hands on $10,000. If you can't do that, that's your problem. Far from your cousin, take it off your credit card or something. But that's how I was able to find an upside. And then from there, I said, well, this works. This is better than everything I've ever heard of. It's a hassle that nobody wants to deal with.

Starting point is 00:27:08 Like I can't imagine there's a ton of competition because most real estate professionals are like that they see that issue. They call the title company. Title company says here's all the issues. And they immediately fucking say, okay, yeah, I'm done. I'm out. Like I'm not, I don't want to wait 18 months to hopefully be able to sell this for $300,000. And I don't want to invest 30 or $40,000 into this and not have a guarantee I'm going to sell it. Like at any time something could go bad.

Starting point is 00:27:34 Dude, that's 100% it. Right. So I don't see a lot of people lining up to be jockeying for your spot. They haven't. Right. Now, house flipping and house wholesaling and all those things have gotten tougher over the last five years. So I'm starting to see people like listen to us and kind of come this direction. But I don't know anybody that's built like a real business and did just this like us ever anywhere.

Starting point is 00:28:00 I think we're unique in that way. So we met because you have a, you have a like a real estate. Well, it's not just real estate. It's not, you have a podcast, kind of a business minded podcast. It's a little different, but it's, and you had me come on. And so then I suggested you come on. But as we were talking, we were talking about like how you were coming across different, all the different fraudulent things that have happened or you've come across over the years.

Starting point is 00:28:29 Yeah. And I was like, you should come on. And we should talk about that, like all the different types of real estate fraud that are out there that occur that you've, you know, you've come across. And you were like, you'd come across actually the way you'd come across, you said, yeah, yeah, I've had a few of them. And then you said, let me reach out because I'm sure some of my guys have. And then you called me back like two days later. You said, I had no idea how many problems there are. You're like, I've had some problems.

Starting point is 00:28:54 I've come across some fraud. But boy, I've got some of these guys have horror stories, like really serious, serious fraud. not like somebody signed a document, like all kinds of stuff's happening. People are selling properties out from each other underneath each other, all kinds of stuff. Oh, yeah. So what, and so you said, I'll come on and you said you had some of them. Yeah, so the way that worked is I ended up building an office. You have 25 people, three attorneys, two private investigators, a genealogist,

Starting point is 00:29:19 and then folks that basically are back office. So we have six people that do acquisitions are seven now. And they call, find these problems, bring them in, we solve them, make the financial transaction and then go sell it, make money. And throughout that process, it's shocking. If a, like, your house, you're not going to see any fraud on it. You live there. You occupy. You pay the taxes. Pay the mortgage. When your mortgage is paid off, you stay there. You probably produce a will. At some point, it goes to children or whatever. Like, that's a very common thing with most homes and land. But a lot of, you'd be shocked. If you drive around downtowns and look at the vacant

Starting point is 00:29:54 dilapidated properties, when people forget about the property, that's when stuff starts to happen. ownership drags on and it's easier today to do fraud than it ever has been because of just the technology and the data and the information and people are going crazy they'll see those properties that nobody pays attention to or deals with and they'll say I'm going to take that property and they think about and they say no one's come to the property for 10 years I already asked the neighbors no one's paid the taxes in five years there's a tax lawsuit on the thing there's no mortgage because it's so old ownership no one cares about it and they'll just literally go steal it And there's an intersection of my business and that

Starting point is 00:30:32 where we're looking for property that has all those same situations, but we want to go fix those problems. Those guys go fake the fix. Yeah, they'll come up with, they'll forge a deed, a transfer of the deed from the original owner to themselves. They'll forge that. They'll go record it in public records,

Starting point is 00:30:48 and now they own the property, or somebody they know owns a property. You know, some person that may not even really know exactly what's going on. Yeah, I'm in layers to that. Yeah. So I'm going to, You know, Colby and I are going to do, Colby, man, I got this piece of property. I'm going to put it in your name.

Starting point is 00:31:03 We can sell it. And, you know, I can't sell it. I've got some problems with the IRS. Like, there's any number of reasons where I could explain I need to put it in Colby's name because Colby would be like, okay, that makes sense. Like, yeah, I'll put it. And then Colby feels secure because Colby thinks, well, it's in my name. So he can't take the money.

Starting point is 00:31:21 It's in my name. Well, really, he, these are the best scams. When you think you're, they think they're getting over on you. And you're actually getting over on them. It's got a straw man. Right. So I give it to, you give it to Colby. And then you go in and you find out like, oh, there was a mortgage on the property that was obviously paid off 10 years ago.

Starting point is 00:31:41 But nobody ever filed a satisfaction of mortgage. And you can't. So in your case, you'd go find that owner who had some hard money lender or something or private lender that had lent the money and got paid off but just never filed the actual satisfaction. In your case, you have to go find that person to get the satisfaction. Or their errors if they're dead because it's old. Right. In this case, I just create a fake satisfaction, backdate it 10 years, and say, yeah, they mailed it to me. I never filed.

Starting point is 00:32:11 They didn't even know I had to file it here. And they go, oh, yeah, you're supposed to file. That's crazy. And then they record it, and it wiped that out. So now Colby's got this piece of property in downtown Tampa. You know where they get hung up, though? Where? When that mortgage satisfaction is supposed to be done 10 years ago, it'd be suspicious if it was

Starting point is 00:32:27 just done this year. They might record it this year, but they'll date it back then, right? Yeah. But how do they get a notary stamp that's 10 years old? They don't. And they freaking stamp it with current notary stamps all the time. I would never. I would get the notary.

Starting point is 00:32:39 I'd go into public records and find a satisfaction from 10 years ago with a notary. And I'd take the notary off and I'd put it on there. See, that's more sophisticated than the guys I've been dealing with. Oh, no, I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. But then now Colby owns this Peter's property. we can put it, you can list it, not even put a sign on front, especially if it's vacant, like if it's just a lot, somebody will buy it.

Starting point is 00:33:04 Like, nobody's ever really going to go out there. No neighbor's going to be like, hey, that's Tom's property. Why are you walking around the property? They're probably not going to know. There's about a 99% chance you get away with that, that scam right there. Yeah. A lot of people inherit and don't even know it or someone else, like a business person dies and it gets willed to somebody and they don't even know.

Starting point is 00:33:24 So the probability of them coming back. to find property that they didn't know about is like zero because they don't know. There's a deal I ran into two in Austin. We're looking at delinquent mortgages and taxes because that's where problems arise where red flags go up their problems. We're talking to a family member and he says, mom and dad owned this property. They both had kids from prior marriages. So the way it worked, they didn't leave wills.

Starting point is 00:33:46 But when they passed away, dads went to three of his prior kids and moms went to me. So we figured all that part out. Probably just worth like 500 grand. Crummy house, but it's a nice vacant lot in an area. that values are going up, new homes everywhere. It's like, all right, let's do this. There is a tax lawsuit in play, but it's not close to foreclosing. So we have time.

Starting point is 00:34:05 So we go to this person and say, we're transparent. Things worth 500 grand, get 100 grand in taxes, 400,000 equity. You own half. Somebody else owns half. We're going to give you $10,000. I got to scrape the lot. I got to do all this work. You get anything to go wrong.

Starting point is 00:34:18 And I got to scrape the house off the lot. I have to repackage the whole thing. I got to sell it. I got to pay real estate. I got to pay for it. And I'm glad I didn't pay more because this thing took a freaking left turn like you wouldn't imagine. What happened? So I go and tell them 10 grand.

Starting point is 00:34:32 We buy it for 10 grand. 10 grand from each person? No, 10 grand from the one person that owned half from. It was mom or dad. I can't remember. And the other people get what? 33. They each own, well, it's 50, about about 2.

Starting point is 00:34:43 So it's 16.67% all through each. So they own 50% collection. So they have 16,700 bucks a piece. Well, this girl got 10 grand. They would get somewhere around 3,300. No, no, you're right, 16. No, no, no. You're 10m.

Starting point is 00:34:57 And I was going to give them 10, so that'd be like 3,300 each. Okay. Because the ownership is divided total. Yeah. The sales price is divided by half. So, but sometimes they'll want more, so we'll renegotiate, whatever. So I get this one. Now we have to do some, we have to set this lady up with a lawyer so that she can do

Starting point is 00:35:13 affidavit of airship because there's no probate. And the affidavit airship is a document that it's a statutory document. What is an affidavit of? It's an affidavit of airship. Airship. Okay. Y'all don't have them in Florida. They're in Texas in some states.

Starting point is 00:35:25 But certain qualified property doesn't have to go through probate. And this allows you to clean up the break in the title chain from dead mama to alive children without having to do a probate. Just a big document. Everybody fills out all these facts of genealogy. So she does that with a lawyer. It gets recorded in the land records so that it's good. And then we record our deed from her. So now we own half, me and the guy I'm doing the deal with.

Starting point is 00:35:50 Now we go to the other three people. We want to get in the game. We're in the game. Now we get the other three people. One of them turns out he lives in the house. We didn't know that. We thought it was vacant. He doesn't want any part of this.

Starting point is 00:36:02 He doesn't want any part of this. He's got free rent. And he's, yeah, he's been out of prison a couple years. He's probably in his mid-60s, not gainfully employed. There's no utilities on the house. It's a junker, but it's better than sleeping under the bridge. So that's where he's at. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be.

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Starting point is 00:37:55 So I say, profile these people. Who are they? Where do they live? How do we get a hold of them? And then we decide how we're going to approach them because, you know, you're going to talk with a dude who's living under a bridge much differently than you are like a plumber or, yeah, I don't know. Just different people.

Starting point is 00:38:07 You handle them differently. Their situation. So we taught one of them, we never actually have ever been able to get a hold up to this day. The second one, we do get a hold of him. And he's like, just very flippant. It doesn't really care. I'm like, guy, a little bit of money is better than no money, right? He kind of shrugs us off.

Starting point is 00:38:23 The dude in the house is like wanting to play ball because we tell him we'll give him meaningful money because he's our big issue. If we can get him out, at least the place is vacant, we can scrape the house. And we figure if he falls, he's the most likely because he could care less and he's definitely not going to fix it. Maybe the brothers will start falling. So we start working with him. Well, around this time, we start to see, we're running title searches frequently because new judgments and liens will pop up from not mowing the grass. sometimes the lawsuit that's going to cause the foreclosure, new filings will happen, so we're watching. And all of a sudden, the deed pops up from the dead dad who's been dead like 10 years or something.

Starting point is 00:39:03 And it gets recorded, but it was dated 10 years ago. I'm like, hold on a minute. What the heck's going on? What is the deed is transferring it to who? The deed is transferring it to some dude. Oh, well, you don't even know. None of the three guys. No, yeah, no interested or related parties.

Starting point is 00:39:21 Okay. So we're like, something's, what is this going on? So then we look and realize the guy, so this thing was, this deed was backdated. Ten years ago back when the person who, the man, the husband who died and his three kids inherited, it was bag dated before he died. So we're like, huh. Okay, we've seen this. Like people have given deeds and they put him in the closet and they don't transfer him later. And we're like, oh, crap.

Starting point is 00:39:44 But we realize that person didn't understand. understand the title chain, he thought that deed because the dad, the dad was the title holder and the mom had community property interest, but she wasn't on the deed. She's still an owner, which is why we do that our afternoon airship. But because he, dad was only in one on the title, this fraudster, who we found out as a fraudster, thought he got the whole property with that deed, not just half. Right. So we do a little Googling. The dude, his dad is a lawyer, his dad's dad is a lawyer, and they all three have the same name. Senior, June, you're in the third.

Starting point is 00:40:19 Like, hang on. Then the next thing is inspect everything, question everything. Then we look at the deed and realize notary stamps are good in our state or in that state for four years. We realized the notary stamp expired after the deed was signed. And it was more than four years. So we realized there's a timing issue.

Starting point is 00:40:41 He did this in present day and used a notary stamp that was older but not old enough. Okay. What is it? Big F word. Well, it's fraud. It's fraud. It's fraud.

Starting point is 00:40:51 So now it's a leverage game. What do we do? District attorneys, you know, police, they don't like to prosecute this stuff because it's a hassle. It's hard. They're trying to solve murders and robberies. So we're like, all right, do we call the dad and pretend like the dad, we think the dad did it? Because the dad's a lawyer. He's got a bar card.

Starting point is 00:41:08 Like, this dude's probably a little bit better than the son. So we're thinking we'll just call him and threaten him. Yeah. And he'll make the son go clean up his bad deeds. Maybe let's do that. Well, we need to get this family on board because technically. technically we don't have standing. Like, we on the other half, not that half.

Starting point is 00:41:23 We can't be making threats to this dude. He's encumbering our title. Well, here's what's also interesting is that even though you know it's fraud, you feel you can prove it's fraud, maybe, you know it's fraud, knowing it's fraud and being able to prove that in a court of law are two different things. And one, knowing it's fraud and going to the authorities and getting them to prosecute because a lot of times they'll say, well, that's a civil case. No, it's clearly fraud.

Starting point is 00:41:51 No, no, it's a civil case. It's no different than me going and getting the state to issue a title to your vehicle, which is paid off and getting in your car and driving off. Same thing. Would you, officer, if I did that to your new Mustang, would you think it was a civil matter if I drove off? You'd call the police. You'd say, that's fraud. This guy just stole my car. Same fucking thing.

Starting point is 00:42:10 Just because the property didn't move. Doesn't mean a fucking thing. But what's funny is that, so real quick, so I'm just, this is really for the sake of everybody else. is that you going to the attorneys and trying to kind of get them, scare them, like they might be able to go and scare the son and say, the fuck did you do? The son's obviously his two father and his father and grandfather attorneys. He's trying to pull this kind of a scam. He's probably pretty sophisticated.

Starting point is 00:42:38 He did slip up. We all slip up. But it's funny to have to sit there and argue with the guy that you know. Because even though all of that, take all that into consideration, it's fraud. It's obvious fraud, it's fraud. But the fact that you can't necessarily convict him or get the police to take you seriously means that really, even though it's fraud, he's still on title. And it still makes him a legitimate, illegitimate yet semi, but in the eyes of the court,

Starting point is 00:43:07 a legitimate fucking owner. He's now on that title. I really need to deal with him now. He's got more standing than these other guys, even though it's a fraudulent document. And the problem is that most people that look into this, they think. No, he can't do anything. Don't you understand? When you take that, you go, it's fraud, and here's how I can prove it.

Starting point is 00:43:23 And you go to the police and they go, no, we're not going to do anything. He's on the title chain. How are you going to get him off? Right. And then you go, well, I'm going to, I got to, what, sue civilly? Bingo. You know, so I got to do a whole civil lawsuit. How much is that going to cost?

Starting point is 00:43:35 Is that going to be $10,000 or is it going to be $50? Is he going to fight it because he knows that the law won't enforce the fraud? And a guy like that probably knows, I believe. Yeah, he's got to, he's got the lawyer. Hopefully, if the father doesn't. doesn't know what he's doing, the father would probably put pressure on him. That's what he hoped. I was going to say, to me, if the father does kind of know what's going on, he's not going to

Starting point is 00:44:00 fucking do it. He's going to be like, he'll push back. He'll push back. Like, I don't think they're going to do anything. That's so unfair, but the justice system does the best it can, I guess. Yeah. So we're in this situation now. We're trying to figure out what do we do.

Starting point is 00:44:13 Next step is let's go back to the three brothers and tell them what's going on and tell I'll tell you what, don't sell to me for a cut rate deal. Y'all still have a couple hundred grand in equity. Let us solve the problem, and we'll just take half of your half. We'll take a fee or we'll take a split. But this guy is trying to take everything you got. Yeah. Let's see if we can cut a deal.

Starting point is 00:44:32 Same thing. Now the brother living in the house starts changing his mind. It's like, you know, I don't know. I kind of like it here. And I'm like, dude, this tax lawsuit's coming. Like, you don't have that much time left. Right. Well, you know, it's cozy.

Starting point is 00:44:43 It trumps all that. When it war closes, it gives. It wipes out everything. Yeah, the way the statute's written. our state, it says, good title. Good title. It gives good title. There is no other words you need. Those two. Good title. Done. So we spend some more time. We still never locate the third brother. Going back to this guy's house, we start sending him letters, we call them, we try everything. And finally, we see a news story that's talking about another property on that side of town

Starting point is 00:45:10 that a builder committed fraud. He bought a property that was supposed to be just one lot, and he bought three lots, bulldozed a house, or old house and built new houses on him. And the guy's on the news. He's like a clean cut dude, got like a real business and office. And this woman's like,

Starting point is 00:45:29 he stole Mammy's house. Well, it turns out they start pulling up the documents and put him on the news story, and I see that dude's name. Right. I'm like, that's our guy. So next step is like, uh-oh. Well, now you've got a,

Starting point is 00:45:44 now law enforcement. might be interested. Possibly. It's happening over and over and over again. Yeah. And time's starting to elapse at this point. So I'm talking to guys in the office. You have new deals coming in.

Starting point is 00:45:55 This one has way more hair on it than normal. At this point, we're like 18 months in. And sometimes you say, well, I don't spend huge amounts of dollars to get into some of these because they're very hairy and complicated. And I know if it takes a long time, I can let 10 or 15 grand ride for a couple years. It's okay. It's not like you bought a full property for $400,000. You can't let that ride.

Starting point is 00:46:15 It's riding. it's riding. We get a notice for the tax lawsuit that says, we're going to be foreclosing. We're going to get a, more or less, we're going to get a final order. We're going to foreclose. It was like in a couple months. And in this particular state, there's what's called excess proceeds. So let's say the taxes are owed $100,000, and the property is worth $400. When it auctions for the foreclosure, it might sell for 300. So 100 less than it's worth, but still $200 more than the tax debt. The $200,000 delta, the difference, that's called excess proceeds.

Starting point is 00:46:46 It goes to the court registry after the auction. Owners can show up in petition to get their money because that's their money. Their property was auctioned. So as I think through this, I'm like, I got other better deals in front of me. I'm done messing with this fraud guy. My title chain is clear. I got half. If he wants to go deal with his excess proceeds, I might go and make a claim in court.

Starting point is 00:47:09 I'm going to go get my excess proceeds. And if he shows up, I might make a claim against him there because it's very low-barrier. lawyer fill out $1,000 form send it in, and I'll stop him in his tracks, and maybe I'll get his proceeds. Right. And I wonder if the, can the, with these other knuckleheads, could you get their proceeds? Because they have to file a form. You've got to note it. So when you send out the notice to get the proceeds, you have to notify them. If they don't come get it, you can get it. If they do come get it, they get it. Nice. So I thought, we'll just send them. They're never to get the one brother. Right. These other two knuckleheads, that guy will be thrown out of the house. Who knows if they can track him down. Yes. So what happened?

Starting point is 00:47:46 So now we see the sale day ticking and then we get a notice that the sales reset. Something happened. These law firms that do these are slow. It can take years and years sometimes. And I'm just like, come freaking on. Dude, I want to get this off my balance sheet. So we call the tax lawsuit and ask what happened. They said they couldn't find the brother that was living in the house.

Starting point is 00:48:06 They did public notice to the one they couldn't find, but they had to do public service to one that was in the house or personal service. So we go back and say, let me help you. Here's your title chain. Here's all the affidavits. Here's all the deeds. Here's the name, email address, phone number, physical address of every owner, except the guy you already got service on. Go notice everyone to get this foreclosure done quickly. Can you get this done quick?

Starting point is 00:48:30 They're like, oh, thanks for doing our work for us. 60 days foreclosure happened. Then we go back and get our excess proceeds. And the sad part is we should have helped them deal with that guy, but the other 50% owners wouldn't even help us go get that guy. Now the police are on him for other stuff. And last night, me and one of the guys in the office were researching before I came here, dude, the guy has a string of these.

Starting point is 00:48:56 Like, you know how no one gets caught the first time, right? Yeah, yeah. Except me and that fake money. But. Well, what happened with the excess, how much excess was there? I have to remember now. I didn't pull that last night when I went to look. It was actually less than we thought because the market had cooled at the time.

Starting point is 00:49:11 Right. We thought we were going to wind up with like a couple hundred thousand. I think it was like less than half that. Okay, so 100,000 for a $15,000 investment, but it did take 18 months, right? Right, yeah, yeah. Or two years. Yeah, it took a couple years. Typically deals that we do like this, we can turn them in three, four, five months if it works right.

Starting point is 00:49:29 You know, that's two-thirds of them. Some of them get out of hand and take longer. So I taught the residential real estate class when I was in prison. I do, yeah, I remember that part. And there was this one guy they called him, did they call him text or they call him? He was from like Austin, I think they called him Tex. Tex was older black guy, probably in his late 50s. He'd been locked up for like 20 years.

Starting point is 00:49:53 Very smart guy. He used to just sit. He signed up for my class once. And then he just would sit in the back of the class. He sat in the back of the class for over a year, maybe a year and a half. He knew the class so well. And he was reading real estate books, that sort of thing. He knew it so well that I would be up there saying, you know,

Starting point is 00:50:13 they're talking about different types of owner financing and I'd say well you know there's a standard owner financing of this where there's no mortgage on the property they simply owner finance the property to you they place a lien on the property and I explain it and then I'd say you also have what's called a he it's when they have a mortgage and they and he goes wrap around mortgage I go right a wrap around mortgage where you I mean he literally would like as the classes would go he'd throw out stuff he'd be like and they they'll have a 10 foot he'd give setback I'd go 10 foot setback when you're building. You know, I started explaining, you know, he'd say water runoff.

Starting point is 00:50:49 I mean, he knew he was really, really good. So just before he was getting out of prison, it was like three, four months, he explained to me that his mother had died while they were, while they were, while he was incarcerated. He had two brothers. I'm trying to remember all this, if I get it wrong, but, you have to excuse me, but he had two brothers. one of the brothers had died and had a son that was a crackhead. And his other brother was trying to sell mom's property. And I was like, and he's like, you know, and I say, are you worried about it?

Starting point is 00:51:24 Or he's like, no, no, no, I know, I know he'll, you know, we're going to, he said, we're going to sell the property. He said, he's not going to take the money or anything. I said, okay. And, you know, it's his. So I said, okay. and he said, what I'm going to do is, so his brother was like, yeah, man, he's been trying to sell it forever. And he just can't sell it.

Starting point is 00:51:45 And I was like, he's like, yeah, how do you sell it, man? Like, do I have to get a real estate agent? I go, has he put a sign in the front yard? I was like, how good of his shape is this property? And he said, she lived in it until she was dead. He was not great. It's not a great property. It's not a great neighborhood.

Starting point is 00:51:59 He said, but she did live there. It's not raining inside. He's not, I haven't been there in 20 years. He said, but for as far as I know. raining inside. Right. He's like, it's not, you know, it's not falling down, but my mom lived there till she died. Like, it's, it's livable. Like, I know the water runs. I know she would come see me. She didn't have tabitable, yeah. Yeah, she's not saying the tubs falling through the floor or anything. He's like, but it's, I'm sure it needs to be cleaned up. And I said, okay, I said, so it's livable,

Starting point is 00:52:24 so it's probably worth whatever, 100,000. He said, maybe, maybe 50 or 60. He said, he's trying to sell, he said, but he can't sell it. He goes, he's trying to sell it, though. And I said, well, tell him to go to Home Depot, get a fucking sign, put his phone number, put a four-sale sign, and then just put his phone number, his cell number on it. So on a call? Yeah. I said, they're investors scouring that neighborhood all the time. I said, someone will call.

Starting point is 00:52:46 They'll offer him some money. And he's like, okay, so it literally takes his brother, like, he's calling out every other night for three weeks to, before he finally goes to home depot and plants the sign. And so anyway, it turns out that like a, he said, like, yeah, no, people are offering me 10,000, he ends up having a friend. He's like, well, my brother said he knows a guy who said he'll buy it for like 30 grand. Maybe it was 20. Whatever it was, you'll get 10, I'll get 10.

Starting point is 00:53:15 And it was like. But what about the Rockhead? Well, they're thinking he's dead, right? I'm they're thinking no big deal. So anyway, what ends up happening is he does schedule a closing. And he explains, I have my mom died, you know, she's died. my brothers and I, we got the property, one of my brothers is dead. And so he comes back and he says, yeah, we can't sell it.

Starting point is 00:53:42 And I said, why? He said, because the title company is saying that, you know, our nephew has to sign off. And I went and talked to my nephew, and my nephew said he wants like 40 grand or something. Oh, I want 40 grand. He's like 40 grand. Fucking property, we're selling for like 30. What are you talking about? This doesn't work.

Starting point is 00:54:00 Right. And so I said, I said, well, you could always just change title companies and tell them that there were two brothers or there were three brothers. I said, just say there's three brothers. My one brother in prison, me and my other brother, he died, give him the death certificate. And when they said, did he have any errors? Say, no, he didn't have any heirs. And he said, he's like, so he comes back. This is going on for this. This is how things go in prison. You say this. Two days later, you get the response. Two days later, I see him. And he's like, okay, my brother said, no, no, they knew. They already

Starting point is 00:54:32 know. I said, right, you're changing title companies. He said, no, but they're going to, they're going to do a search and they'll find out. And I went, no, they won't find out. I said, your brother told him. He said, no, I told him that you said, he told them. He said, he didn't tell him. I said, I'm lying to you. Right. I said, I assure you, there is no way that the title company is going to know that your brother that died had a son. Your brother told them and now doesn't realize he told them. I said, change title companies and tell them this. So I'm explaining. And don't tell And don't tell them that you have a nephew. And besides that, look, you know, as far as the nephew, you give that nephew fucking five grand, himself.

Starting point is 00:55:11 He's, you know, just like a guy who's hooked on ice and you give him here, I'm going to give you 10 grand. He's dead. He's a dead man. Whatever it is, they're dead. They're drug addicts. So, and he was talking about how he's living on the street. Took him like a week to find him. He didn't know if they were going to be able to show up, even if he would.

Starting point is 00:55:29 So the point is, is basically. text just waits. He's like, I'm just going to have to wait. My brother, he's incompetent. His brother had a job, but he's like a janitor. He's just kind of a low IQ guy that's work. Not everybody, not the janitor's low IQ guy. But this guy is, you know, he lives in a rental. He's just not a go-getter. He just goes to work, comes back, gets drunk. He's basically a functioning drunk. So text waits until he gets out. He said, I'm going to do what you say. I said, okay. So I actually called him once or twice. Explain, he's okay, what do I say? Here's what you say. Okay. He comes back a few days later or a week or two later, and I call him a week or two later. He said, hey, we got a closing. Yeah, they have no idea. I told my brother, just shut your fucking mouth, come in and sign the fucking documents. Oh, and by the way, he never put the sign in the front yard. He told him, finally told him he did.

Starting point is 00:56:19 But really, his buddy wanted to buy the property. Tex went and got the sign. Put a sign in the front yard. They sold it for like 60 grand. Oh, my God. Might have been 55. It was in the end. He did better.

Starting point is 00:56:30 Way better. And now it's just him. Now it's just the two of them. That would have been like a deal of mine all day long and I would just found the crack kid and paid him. Right. So he's getting like 10 grand. I mean, I'm sorry, he was getting 10 grand. Now he's getting like 25 or 30.

Starting point is 00:56:43 Big difference. So he goes, they do that. They close. He sends me a letter. Hey, boom, walked away, got $26,000, whatever it was, blah, blah, blah, blah. Did he put like $500 in your books? He put $50 on my books.

Starting point is 00:56:55 He is one of the only people that has ever left and sent me money and actually put $50 on my books. Good for him. You know. Now, granted, I did make them, I did solve a huge problem for him. I should put like 500 or a thousand on that. Yeah, but that's okay. But I always look at it like this, like you don't really owe me anything.

Starting point is 00:57:11 Like technically it's 50 bucks. You know, he didn't owe me anything. You know, we didn't have an agreement. But yeah, he's a, but it's the same kind of thing. And I've had, and I'll go over something else with you too that I've kind of figured out while I was incarcerated. Like, you know, we can keep going. But I'm going to tell you something else has happened while I was incarcerated.

Starting point is 00:57:30 That I think you'll be like, holy, shit yeah so um but but let's let's let's you want to let's do the next one just remind me to tell this one thing because i'm going to tell you something that happens that is shocking that i always thought it basically could be a fucking business model oh my god you know you might want to ask a lawyer about it boy it's it's an interesting it's interesting so another one we had um we have a pretty big network of like lawyers judges just professional services because we deal with them a lot. So we get calls all the time.

Starting point is 00:58:04 Hey, I got this problem. Hey, here's this thing. Nowadays, they're like, hey, you want to buy this for my client? My client knows the problems. I understand the problems. It's going to cost this amount of work and this amount of time. And frankly, there are times where it makes sense. I've actually sold properties for less than their worth

Starting point is 00:58:21 because it doesn't fit my model. It's not worth my time. Or there are issues to solve that I think I should be doing other things for more money. So I just sell a discount too. So all walks of life sometimes are discounted sellers, not just the folks in these situations. So attorneys will call me, rightly so, and say, my client's got this issue with the property. They'll sell it to you for this amount of money. I know this attorney for quite a while.

Starting point is 00:58:41 He calls me and tells me what a problem is, and we say we'll take it. One of the guys in my office should have probably done a little bit more research. I don't think he did. So we give them like $5,000 and take the property subject to the issues. We buy the contract on the property is what it was. The lawyer's client. was an investor who was going to close on a property that had a contract on it. They sell us the contract.

Starting point is 00:59:04 So we give them $5,000. They walk away from the contract and we take their place. Yeah, they assign it to you. Right. So now we're the buyer of this property. So we run a title report and we see there's another guy on title. And we think we're just going to be dealing with a couple property owners, but it's a different person altogether.

Starting point is 00:59:22 That's not who signed the contract. Who's this guy? Well, let's go talk to our seller and ask who this guy is. to do some interviews. We can't find our cellar. We thought our cellar lived at this house. We go to the house. The electricity's off.

Starting point is 00:59:37 The yard's tall. We're like, oh, it's abandoned. So we walk in there. No. They're like half a dozen people in there shooting dope, smoking. Like, this is a flop house. This is where people go to use and sell.

Starting point is 00:59:49 I'm like, that's it. So we're like, okay. I mean, I've been around places like this when I was younger. All right, whatever. Let's deal with this. So where's John? We need to find. John, guys. Where's John? Oh, we don't know. We don't know where John is. I don't know. He'll be back

Starting point is 01:00:04 later. That kind of shit. So we go start scouring the neighborhood, knocking on doors, asking people, we don't find John. Fine. So we go back to the title company and say, all right. Let's see what's going on with this other guy. And they're like, oh, we sent you, we sent a company-wide email a year ago that said, we will never insure a transaction from this man or any of his companies. Logan, I told you to stay away from them. And I'm like, what do you mean? He was like, that's this guy. We're like, why? He's been convicted of real estate fraud, been to prison, gotten out, still on probation. He's been through multiple fraud transactions recently.

Starting point is 01:00:38 We now will not insure any of his transactions, even if they're good. Like, oh, we got our hands full. I feel like there's one of those out there for me. It wasn't your name, Matt. Good news. So we started Googling this guy. He's in his mid-60s. He's missing a leg.

Starting point is 01:00:55 He's rolling in a wheelchair, carried a little chihuahua. that's in some of these pictures on the internet. Nice. It's great. He's Dr. Evil. Yeah. Is this like a comic book character? In his wheeled.

Starting point is 01:01:09 Yeah. But the LLC is named like Mustang Sally. We're like, he's a character. What is this? So we call Pride Investigators. Y'all need to tell me who Mustang Sally is and who this dude is. They come back to us in a couple weeks and say, okay, we've done surveillance. We've done all the research.

Starting point is 01:01:29 Mustang Sally is his girlfriend. He calls his hot little mama Mustang Sally, but he can't take title into his name, and the title companies won't allow it, and he's a convicted fraudster. So Mustang Sally is the real estate girl. So she's acting as a straw man. She's like, yes, she's the 26, 25-year-old Hispanic gal

Starting point is 01:01:46 running around to the bars, like Sugar Daddy situation, but she's willing to sign documents to make his deals happen. We find all that out. Okay, now let's see. We know enough about our opponent. We're going to have to deal with this guy. Let's go back and find our crack head.

Starting point is 01:02:03 Well, we don't know he's a crack head yet, but we think. We finally find the dude, literally the next time we pull up to the house to try to see if he's there, interview neighbors again, he's walking down the street in the middle of the street talking to himself. With one leg or is he hopping down the street? He's on the wheel chair? This is the legitimate cell. He's got two legs. Oh, okay. Sorry.

Starting point is 01:02:20 He's got two legs. He's talking to himself walking down the middle of street. And I'm thinking, this guy can't sign documents. He can't testify. like the dude's out of his mind. So we get to talking to him. Here's what he says. He said,

Starting point is 01:02:33 Mustang, Sally, and her dude came over here months ago, maybe like a year ago. I wanted to buy my property. They said they were going to give me like 50 or $100,000, a big number. But he said he could only give me $5,000 now

Starting point is 01:02:45 and I had to sign all these papers and I get paid later. So like, did it look like this paper? He's like, yeah, that's what I signed. I was like,

Starting point is 01:02:51 you see what says? General warranty deed. You just signed it. You just, you just sold your property. And he's like, well, But that guy said that I was going to get more money.

Starting point is 01:02:59 And I'm like, was it in writing? He's like, no. I'm like, do I trust the criminal? Do I trust the crackhead who's out of his mind right now? I'm already in this thing, five grand. I probably don't want to walk away. The purchase contract for me to buy the contract that I bought for five grand was somewhere in the neighborhood of like $30,000.

Starting point is 01:03:16 So if I'm in it for $30,000 plus $5 or $35 and this thing's worth double that, I'll make $30,000. So I'll fool with this for a little while. So at this point, we're probably still at stake to making maybe $30,000 or so. So now we go back. There's like this cycle where you talk to the seller, you talk to the fraud guy, talk to the title company,

Starting point is 01:03:33 try to get through it all. We hadn't talked to the fraud guy yet. One shot last, we talked to the seller. It takes us two weeks to find him this time. But when we finally talked to the guy, he said, we ask him,

Starting point is 01:03:43 has anything else happen? He's like, yeah, I talked to Mustang Sally. He keeps calling, the seller keeps calling the dude Mustang Sally. He didn't even remember his name. I talked to Mustang Sally.

Starting point is 01:03:52 I told him, you need to give me my extra 80 grand or whatever it is. I'm like, well, what do you say? He said, He's decided he's going to come back and kill me. I'm like, oh, now we're dealing with that kind of fucking dude.

Starting point is 01:04:02 No one's talked about that yet. This is the one-legged guy? No, no. Yeah, the one-legged guy says he's going to come back and kill the Cracket. Right. I feel like I can take a one-legged guy. A 65-year-old one-legged man, I feel like I can take. Yeah, him and the Chihuahua, we can do this.

Starting point is 01:04:16 Yeah, exactly. I'll kill your Chihuahua. Get the Chihuahua and a headlock. So, but we start hearing these things and we're like, you know, oh, we're dealing with people like that. So I was like, so what are you going to do? He's like, I'm not going to go back after it. He's going to come back and kill me.

Starting point is 01:04:33 And he's terrified of this old guy. Really? Yeah, I would think it'd be, you know, the crackhead guy would like go after him. Yeah, my money's on the crackhead. Yeah. Yeah, not one-legged guy. So now we realize, all right, we know we're dealing with. So we go, we do with him and say, look, if we can solve all this?

Starting point is 01:04:48 I know you're supposed to, you're supposed to get some money from this girl to. Look, if we can we give you 10 grand? And he's like, yeah, I'll take it. I already got five from one-legged Sally, Mustang Sally. I'll take your 10 grand. I'm fine with it. So at least we get this. So we get that in writing with the guy.

Starting point is 01:05:05 Now I call Mustang Sally finally. I finally actually have his real name. Call the guy, talk to him. And he says, no, uh-uh. I'm not giving you anything. I'm like, dude, you realize what I'm going to do is you have a deed. And I don't think it was, it might have been signed by this guy. It might not have been.

Starting point is 01:05:23 But we also, I think if I remember correctly, now the girl might have been the notary and she can't notarize her own documents. That was kind of a wrinkle. So I remember telling the guy, like, I'm going to call the district attorney. I'm probably going to subpoena Mustang Sally's notary book, which means your transaction is going to be no good. And I have a feeling you don't want to be in front of the DA. I don't think you're going to like this is the way this is going to work.

Starting point is 01:05:45 And then he's like, you're not going to do that because I'm going to kill you. I'm like, oh, fuck. All right, Mustang Sally. Right. So at this point, I'm still being diplomatic. I'm like, look, Mustang Sally, you don't want to do that. This isn't where this should go. Let's try to work this out.

Starting point is 01:06:03 You know, he's being a jerk. Well, we get a little bit more information. So apparently he owns a bar. He spends his time at the bar and a card house. And the 26-year-old Mustang Sally trails him around with the Chihuahua in his wheelchair with the one leg. Like, that's kind of their lifestyle. So finally, I'm like, well, fuck it. I'll just take the guy down.

Starting point is 01:06:20 So I call Mustang Sally back and I say, dude, I've gone through your rap sheet. You've been to prison twice for this. You're currently still on paper. I'm going to take all this to the DA. I'm going to sue you. Your ass is going to be, I'll get fucking pissed at this point.

Starting point is 01:06:33 Like, I'm going to call him guy. But when you get to that point, I'm like, I'm about to blow 30 grand to take your ass out and fuck my whole deal up. I'm going to take you down. Fuck you. This is about the money anymore. I tell him all that.

Starting point is 01:06:42 He says, I'll be at your office to sign the release tomorrow. The guy Mustang is so tough. Okay. Well, I don't want to be at the office. So I send a title girl over there. Oh, you're sitting in the 110-pound girl with a notary stamp. I mean, these are kind of people that come up with a gun. They might bring a knife, like, yeah.

Starting point is 01:07:01 You're not helping you, so you said to send the 110-pound girl in? But he's got no problem with the title girl. He got a problem with me because I told him I'm going to take him down. I get it. And I still don't mind doing that. Yeah. You're willing to risk her life. I feel like.

Starting point is 01:07:13 And we're not real. She and I aren't close. So, guy shows up. What we get him to sign is a cancellation deed, because, I don't want title going through him because he's got all the bad stuff. Nobody will insure him. Right. So instead of getting a deed from him to us...

Starting point is 01:07:28 You don't even want his name on it. Uh-uh. But by signing a cancellation deed, it goes back and cancels the deed he got from the other guy. And then we go back and have the seller signed the cancellation deed. We go give the crackhead the $5,000 in a cashier's check. Okay. And I know that's kind of a problem because he's going to figure out to convert that to cash, but that ain't my problem. Listen, the crackhead, they can do anything.

Starting point is 01:07:49 They can do anything. You're right. You're right. I believe he figured it out. Then we had to go back a couple weeks later with constables and enforcement and lots of people to get all the people out of the house, board the dang thing up. When it was all said and done, I still think we ended up making like $20,000 or $30,000 on it. But I did.

Starting point is 01:08:09 It was a lot of work for $20,000. It was a lot of work. I did read Mustang Sally. He was brought up on new charges. He's been doing this many times. We didn't even end up turning him in. We just cleared out the deal with the title. That dude's probably going to go back.

Starting point is 01:08:22 to prison again at this point in his life for his third go-around of real estate fraud. Was it federal? Were these charges that he was getting clipped for? Were they federal or were they state charges? I actually don't know. We'd get a report from the private investigators that would outline everything, but I can't remember. You weren't paying attention.

Starting point is 01:08:41 I don't remember if it was a state or federal docket or even county. I know the article I read was Bear County Sheriff, so that's probably county. Yeah. Yeah. County state. So it ends up in state prison, yeah. Yeah, so that dude's going to be done, man. But it's amazing to see, like, we've made a business model out of, like, basically

Starting point is 01:09:00 unfucking bad things that people did. And there's no way, like, we're so far behind. There's the backlog of this stuff because technology is getting better. People are getting more aggressive. People can hide money better these days. And it's just getting harder to catch them. You're getting folks, realtors getting ready to go to a closing table of like a million-dollar land deal on the loop, like that last big 20-acre vacant lot on the loop out there.

Starting point is 01:09:21 Realters are coming to the closing table ready to. close and the title company does some research and finds out that seller isn't the seller. It was all done virtually. The seller basically is a fraudster that finds a realtor online and engages them, has them list of properties that's not theirs. They create fake documents. And they're literally getting ready to cash a million dollar check. A lot of them do it, actually.

Starting point is 01:09:43 It's getting crazy. And the real estate agent hasn't done anything wrong. They're just doing what they do on a normal basis. They think it's a real person. So they're being duped. They're being duped into helping this person. Yeah. And they're getting like education and training and classes about this. So title companies are looking out for it more. Realtors are looking out for more for more. And it's still getting through the system all the way.

Starting point is 01:10:02 Well, I've mentioned one that. So I work with a company called a home title lock. And we've kind of gone over this with with them. There was a guy in New York who had done this. He'd been doing it for like, we're talking about like a decade where he's going in. He would go in. He'd find a piece of property. maybe be an old, what are they called, brownstones, redstone? Oh, yeah, Brownstones. An old Brownstone. The row houses. Yeah, or maybe it just be a vacant piece of property. And they would go put a, so let's say they'd find out, it's a 75-year-old woman.

Starting point is 01:10:33 Her husband owned a bunch of real estate. She now owns it. He's been dead for 10 years. It's abandoned. And they would go in and they'd place a lien on it. So this property is worth a million dollars, let's say. they or then they would place a you know a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand dollar lien on the property oh kind of like an old mortgage sort of right like it's a

Starting point is 01:10:56 brand new mortgage because they're recording it right now and then they would wait three months and then they would go and they would go to a lawyer who's in front of the judge all the time in the court all the time he's a foreclosure attorney or a real estate attorney goes in they say listen man we lent this woman money We lend her $200,000. She's never made a payment. I mean, it's not fraud because we are a private lender. And then they go, okay, well, what do you have?

Starting point is 01:11:24 I have all the documents signed. They show, I have the lien on the property. I have, here's the wire. Here's the title that she signed. Here's the notary. It was notarized. They don't. So they got a straw person to stand in.

Starting point is 01:11:37 Her place to sign. No, they don't even go to a title company. Well, they create all this out of thin air. You could show up at the house. And I can do all this at your house. So they've got a not that not the notary has to show up. She's 75 years old. So he explains it to the lawyer and the lawyer goes, oh, wow, okay.

Starting point is 01:11:54 So I'm going to start foreclosing. Right. And it's investment property too. So you have a lot less rights on an investment property. So they start the foreclosure process. The old woman, a lot of times these old people, they just ignore whatever they're getting in the, like they know, like I didn't take out a lien. Like, oh, what is this? Maybe they've got a son that will look at it.

Starting point is 01:12:12 Maybe they've got nobody to look at me. They're trying to ask their caregiver to look at it. They're like, I don't know. It sounds like you have a piece of property. I don't really know what this means. Even if they do. And they make some phone calls to the attorney. The attorney is going to say, you took out $200,000.

Starting point is 01:12:30 You never paid it back. And they're going, oh, I didn't do that. I don't. What are you talking? Oh, the building on 120. I haven't been there in 10 years. are, you know, they don't really know what's happening. I can see that.

Starting point is 01:12:44 And so even if they show up or their kid shows up or somebody shows up at court, the lawyer is the one doing the arguing. They're saying, Your Honor, my mother says she'd never borrowed this money. The lawyer who's been in front of the judge all the time on legitimate, he's known him for 20 years. He knows he's never been,

Starting point is 01:13:05 there's no fraud involved. These are all normal transaction. He's saying, Your Honor, we have the closing statement. we have the wiring statement. We have them signing her signing this. It's all notarized by so-and-so. We've got a sworn affidavit saying that she went to her house and signed and, you know, we this, we that, we that, everything's, and he was just handed these documents by this,

Starting point is 01:13:24 by this guy. He didn't talk to the real estate age, I mean, to the, he didn't talk to the, to the, to the notary. He talked to one person. He's now swearing to the judge, all of these documents are true. She took the money out. She's an old woman. maybe she has dementia. I don't know what the issue is. She's showing up with her son. She's obviously

Starting point is 01:13:44 can't do this herself. And so they're then told to go get an attorney that they can't afford. Oh, they showed a pro se. And then the judge just said, go get a lawyer because we need to be like. So what happens? Some lawyer says, yeah, give me $30,000 and I'll go to court and I'll represent you. But the truth is, you have all these. You signed this. I know Todd, the other lawyer. I've known him for five years. Seems fair. He said this. This is what's happening. You're saying it's not. You have no documentation.

Starting point is 01:14:13 He has documentation. Dude, that's elderly abuse. That's a much escalated crime. And they take, they've taken one problem. Listen, so eventually, after like I said, 10 years or so, they eventually got this guy for $5, $6, $7 million that they could find. He's doing it in different companies names, opening companies doing two or three, closing it down, opening another company doing different.

Starting point is 01:14:36 Dude, he's a heck of a lifestyle pulling two deals, one deal a year. And keep mind, these are 75, 80, 85 years old. Maybe they're in a home. Maybe they're in a home and they never get served, but it looks like they got served. Maybe he's, so he might be categorizing those people just right to know this is the fact pattern and the profile. I do that. Right.

Starting point is 01:14:53 And how hard is it, you hire Tom Simon to track down, like you said, you've got to track down, you know, you look at 50 properties or 20 properties. You're going to find three of them where somebody's living in a home. And if you have a notary, you don't even need a notary. you need the notary stamp to say that that person was served or they did so that person did sign the signed the paperwork you give them an address so that if they go to get served they never get served they don't have any clue they're living in a they're living in a in a retirement home somewhere yeah so this guy apparently has been doing this for like 10 years or so and he eventually

Starting point is 01:15:29 yeah the FBI came in and arrested him oh that's serious and uh but you know that's the kind of thing that happened what did he get time i don't know i just i just read the somebody sent me the article where he had been arrested. What I found so interesting is that he was using the system against his victims. And his victims

Starting point is 01:15:50 were not in a position. Like he's targeting his victims and they're not in a position to put up a fight. Do you love true crime? Then it's time to experience it on a whole new level. Inside True Crime has launched

Starting point is 01:16:03 a brand new documentary channel, Dark Docks. And we're taking our best, interviews and transforming them into powerful one-hour documentaries. With cinematic reenactments, and he just looks me dead in my face and he says, I'm gonna fucking kill it. Immersive music.

Starting point is 01:16:20 They pulled up beside us. And cleaner storytelling. You'll see these cases like never before. Subscribe now to our brand new documentary channel where every story takes you deeper into the criminal underworld that we know you crave. Yeah. And so I thought that was, I always thought that was interesting.

Starting point is 01:16:39 I don't know what happened. But it's funny because you always think it's always some sleaze ball with one leg and a little dog and Mustang Sally pushing him around. You think it's some guy a career criminal. But the truth is this was a highly sophisticated operation and was able to do it for 10 years. I'm sure what happened. Eventually, he just crossed the wrong person. He got cock. He crossed the wrong person.

Starting point is 01:17:03 Eventually they brought to the correct authorities that said, okay, I can see a pattern here. You know, another way to look at that is we do everything right. We've got lawyers in the office. We know what we're doing. Like, we, I mean, we're pretty good. Yeah. There are times where we make mistakes. And, like, it just happens.

Starting point is 01:17:18 It's what humans, someone else did the work for you on this one, whatever. A guy like him doing it for 10 years, all he used to do is screw up once or twice, not even realizing it. Boom, game over. That's probably, that could have been what got him. Yeah. Oh, yeah. There's no, no doubt. You can mess up.

Starting point is 01:17:31 I've messed up multiple times, you know. And I like to think I'm pretty sharp. So when I was incarcerated, I came across this. I'm wondering, I feel like I told you this. I don't think, I think you're like me. You get so much info that you start saying that's irrelevant. You start discarding certain things. My brain only holds on to like core.

Starting point is 01:17:51 The moment you said text, though, you called the guy text? I was like, oh, I remember you calling him text. Like that stood out. So here was something that I noticed that happened multiple times. So over the course of 13 years in prison, and people would come to me with real estate issues. Yeah, you're the expert. Right. So, and sometimes they would come, listen, I don't mean just the inmates.

Starting point is 01:18:12 I've had guards pull me out, like after lockdown, pull me. It's like Shawshank Redemption where they pulled me out, and I'm standing at 930. The whole compound is closed. I'm talking to four or five guards, and they're telling me about real estate deals they're involved in. What should I do? And I'm sitting there like, this is fucking surreal. Yeah. This is insane.

Starting point is 01:18:28 I'm in the middle of a prison. You know, it doesn't look good for me. The other inmates are like, what's he doing? What the fuck is doing out there talking to the guards? So, but I also would have the inmates. And something that I noticed slowly, this was interesting, was that as a matter of fact, you know who this happened to, Red Bull. Red Bull was one of these people. His name's not Red Bull.

Starting point is 01:18:57 Oh, I was like, no. He was Indian. No. Andrew Levinson. I should have asked him about that when he was here. I could still text him. a problem asking, but he had told me about, so let's say, and I'm sure I'm going to get the numbers wrong, but this is a good example of what happens. You get arrested for fraud of some kind, okay?

Starting point is 01:19:16 You live in a house that's worth $1.5 million, but you have a $400,000 mortgage on it. Okay, okay. Not a grand in equity. Right. So you get arrested. They have you sign a forfeiture agreement, right? Like you forfeit everything. In Andrew's case, his wife was living in the house. She lived in the house. He's her, she's saying, I got to go get a one bedroom or two-bedroom apartment. He's saying, stay in the house. She's like, what are you talking about? We're not paying the mortgage you're up. Right, but it'll take six months for them to foreclose. Stick around for a while. Stick around for us. You're not in a hurry. She's like, no. She's like, she, I don't want to deal with this. She goes and gets a two-bedroom. Okay. So he's waiting for the government,

Starting point is 01:19:59 for the foreclosure to happen and the house to get sold. He's also assuming that when the house gets sold, if there's any additional proceeds, the government will get that. That happens over and over again because you signed a forfeiture agreement. Everything is ill-gotten gains. You take it all. Right. So you're not going to make anything, right? Now, here's what I noticed over the course. So in his case, eventually that property was sold. And whatever happened to the excess, I don't know.

Starting point is 01:20:35 All right. In his case, I should ask him that because I, but regardless, but I can't tell you how many times there were guys that they had a $2 million house. They owed $800,000, let's say. They signed the forfeiture agreement. They go to prison. And keep in mind, these are in the newspaper. In the newspaper, it tells like, hey, you know, John Barker convicted of $18 million in fraud, goes to prison for, 10 years, and you could go online and just look up. He owns this house. He owns a house that's worth $2 million. And then you can go online. He owes $800,000. Now, what they assume is the judgment places a foreclose, they place a lien on the property. And that when it gets sold, if it sold for more than the $800,000, they'll get the extra $100,000, $200,000, whatever it is.

Starting point is 01:21:31 Because technically that overage should go. You're saying they, the feds. The feds. it should go to the owner, but because there's a forfeiture, it would go to them. Here's what I found out and realized after,

Starting point is 01:21:43 you know, whatever, five, 10 years, multiple of these guys, is that the feds, 90% of the time, they would,

Starting point is 01:21:51 when they get the forfeiture, they would not place a lien on the property. Oh, they wouldn't file in the land records. If there was a mortgage. It's not part of the title. Right. Well,

Starting point is 01:22:00 yeah, if there's a, yeah, but only, and not always, by the way, because I know one guy who had a piece of property,

Starting point is 01:22:05 He was worth nothing. It was like $30,000. And he was, he told me about this property, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, okay, he said, yeah, he said, you know, the taxes hadn't been paid in like three years, whatever. I told him to have his mom go downtown and check out the property. She checks out the property. Came back and she said, yeah, yeah, it's behind. And I, and I, but when she was going down, I said, find out if, if there's a lien on the property because I've noticed something that's been happening is that the feds are not placing liens on properties. In his case, he owned the property free and clear. but they never placed a, they never place a lien on it. I guess if there's a mortgage on there, they don't want to hurt the lenders by encumbering the title, so they don't record it maybe? I think that they see the mortgage and they think. There's no equity? They think there's no equity.

Starting point is 01:22:50 Oh, they don't even do the math, maybe. Because let's face it, 99% of the time when a mortgage company forecloses, they lose about 20%. Yeah, it's not profitable. It almost like people think, oh, if they make more money, they'll give me the excess money. They don't make more money. almost always lose. Tax foreclosures, they make money because there's no mortgage. Taxes. That's a minor.

Starting point is 01:23:09 That's tiny. But mortgage, you're right. But mortgage, you're right. Wipes out the equity. Right. So they're all, usually they're losing 20%. So I think that what happens is that these guys that get this foreclosures, they end up, they end up with, they end up with this, sorry, these guys that have these forfeitures, these fraud guys, they get a forfeiture. They have a mortgage. The property ends up selling. And let's face it, and so they never placed the lien on the property. So I remember me and this other guy, fraudster. He forfeited, but the remaining wife could probably sell or even him jointly and get their money because above the mortgage. I agree. And I actually think I suggested that to him. And I think he might have suggested it to his wife.

Starting point is 01:23:55 But his wife is absolutely not interested. She's not like him. She's not, I'm not pushing that issue at all. I'm leaving. I want nothing to do with this. That's why I kind of don't, we don't really know. what happened. And it also took, like, it was in foreclosure and then it took, it was sat on the market forever. So I don't think I ever followed up with it because it was so long because I was

Starting point is 01:24:13 telling him like, I'm almost sure that they did not place a fucking lien. And he, you know, his wife's not, he's not, he go downtown and she's not interested. Yeah, she's like leave me a lot. Right. So because it sounds, technically from the outside, it sounds like, is that like, if you've been through a federal investigation, wives, friends, family, they're all like, it sounds like you're trying to get me involved in something. It's like, I'm not trying to get you involved. They have, they have a period of time to place a forfeiture on this property and they didn't. So what I was thinking, me and this other guy who was a fraudster in prison, who was in real estate fraud, I remember telling him, I said, listen, you know what you do. He is what? I said, you start a

Starting point is 01:24:52 company, you go out there and you start every time somebody gets any of these, go across the country, find out everybody that's been arrested in the last, you know, six months ago, whatever. I said, you find out if they own property. Cross-reference it with data you pull from a tax assessor in the jurisdiction. Do they have a mortgage? Find out once they were sentenced if there's any liens placed on those property, any forfeiture liens placed on those properties. I said if they have mortgages, they most likely didn't.

Starting point is 01:25:21 Now, you could then go to those guys in prison and say, hey, you just got locked up. I'll give you $10,000. Just quit to claim deed the property over to me. And the prison guy's like, well, I get nothing anyway. I'll take your 10. Right. I'll take your 10. He may even be thinking I'm fucking you over. This guy's going to give me 10 grand. He doesn't realize I forfeited that. No, I understand you're forfeited. So sign here and you give me the 10 grand. Here's your 10 grand. Okay, great. And you know, and you can send, you can talk to this person and then you can just send a notary to the prison. And, you know, it's like 45 bucks or 90 bucks. And they'll just assign the document. So you don't have to go. So they'll go. They have like, live like, one day a week or one day a month where they actually have, there'll be like six guys that'll show up to have stuff notarized. So they get it notarized. And so they get it notarized.

Starting point is 01:26:05 Now, now you just quit to claim the property to me. I can sell that property or I just the mortgage just pays off when it sold and you keep the difference. Or you could maybe, you could even maybe go to the mortgage company and say, hey, it's $800,000. Let me negotiate with you to just take over. I'll just take over the mortgage. But this guy's got a forfeiture or everything. Now I'm in complete control of this property. I can now sell it for the $2 million that it's worth.

Starting point is 01:26:34 And that's it. Like, it's not my fault that you didn't place a fucking lien on the property. He quits claim deeded it to me. I own it. Well, technically, that's true. You know how those boys play ball. I mean. And I won't come near that line because I don't want to be up against a federal government or anywhere near it.

Starting point is 01:26:51 While someone can go make money, that ain't going to be me. I mean, I think. I believe someone can make a lot of money doing that probably. I think it's, it's, but they better save their money because when the DOJ sues them and comes after them, they're going to have to have a lot of defense to win. I didn't forfeit anything. I just took over the property. He signed it over to me.

Starting point is 01:27:07 I don't know whatever your agreement with him is, he was, whatever overage he was going to get, you should have get, he owes you 10 grand. It sounds to me like he owes you 10 grand. We did a title search. There was no title. What did I do wrong? Anyway. So, yeah, I think that's a, that's a, it's a risky business model, but it's, yeah, it's

Starting point is 01:27:24 questionable. I'd rather chase down Mustang Sally to be looking for the DOJ behind me. It sounds a lot more fun. Mine is, I think, really, and you don't even have to do the research. You just have to pay these guys that do the research. Right. At the end of the day.

Starting point is 01:27:38 The research would turn up what you're doing because you'd use Google, the land records, and the assessor's office. That's the three pieces of data you'd need. And you basically cross run them all. Nice. Nice. Just saying.

Starting point is 01:27:51 Or to get ahead of that, without having to do all that research, you call somebody who you still know is in there and say, Hey, put out at lunch, anybody who got a forfeiture agreement, they'll buy your ship for 10 grand. And you go back that way because you know that there's a higher probability of that, so you don't have to run data across all these different counties. You get the leads from them and run it the other way.

Starting point is 01:28:11 It would be faster. Could you imagine if you just bought out the mortgage and then just sold the mortgage or sold the property for less? Or for clothes. Yeah. Buy the more. If you can find out without having to pull all this data and find where they cross, if you could find those type of mortgages, buy them from the lender and just foreclose on them, the foreclosure would happen.

Starting point is 01:28:32 Yeah. And that would be a time where a lender probably wouldn't lose 20% because you know there would be equity because you check it up front. A lot of interest, a lot of, a lot of possibilities. A lot of possibilities. I'm going to bed to Mustang, Sally, for now. You tell me how that works out. What are you doing now? You're putting together seminars or is it an event?

Starting point is 01:28:55 What do you got? You don't want to say seminar? Is this a seminar? I usually call it like a training or an event. An event? Okay. What do you do? So now, I mean, today I run the real estate business.

Starting point is 01:29:05 We do this, a couple hundred transactions of this a year. You know, we're tens of millions and annually on this. But we've actually had so many people reaching out to us to start talking about the internet. We started doing trainings and like formulated in like a day event. So January 31st in Scottsdale, we're going to do a full eight-hour training on what these leads look like, how to find them, how to read. research them, how to make these unique offers, because most people don't know how to do that.

Starting point is 01:29:30 Right. And I've got a couple attorneys that come in and talk about these type of transactions, how they work in different states, and then how the ownership issues work. Then we do case studies. So it's like a complete day training. So that's actually, that's the next thing on our agenda. Do you stick around so they can call you and do you offer some kind of service like to that they can, or they get the training one day and they're on their own?

Starting point is 01:29:51 You know, we got folks that come from outside the real estate business, inside the real estate business and you know a lot of these real estate speaker events you go there's 10 different people talk and they all sell you all this different stuff our goal is to make it educational informational who we're not just trying to sell you 50 things that's not how we do it so it's a it's a full day of education they get to meet like some of the top professionals that have started doing this in the United States show up there so awesome people to work with afterwards we do a ton of jv deals so one of things we explain to people is if you can understand what these look like a joint venture okay so like So like let's say you show up, Matt, I'd love to have you come.

Starting point is 01:30:27 Let's say you show up and you leave, you're a smart guy, you know what's going on. You look through this all and you're like, oh, I know how to size these up. And on Saturday you spend the time researching and calling some of these. You can get the offer teed up, but there's complexities that you don't know how to solve or you don't want to spend the next three months learning at all. They bring those to us and we say, all right, we'll split it with you. We'll take half. You take half.

Starting point is 01:30:46 We'll finish fixing it. We'll use the money to pay for it. And then we're done. We'll give you 50, 50, 70, 30, whatever. or do a ton of JV deals with folks. Right. It builds a massive network of like operators. So that's why we do it.

Starting point is 01:30:58 Eventually, once they see a few of them go through, they must, they probably build some confidence and they probably feel more confident doing it on their own. And yeah, absolutely. Like we're completely cool with that. We do that too. We found some people that say,

Starting point is 01:31:11 I don't want to build a whole business because we've built like a financial system, a legal system, we got project management. Like we've got an office that like facilitates this. Some people say, I just want to, I've got a prolific deal

Starting point is 01:31:22 operator right now. I have 70 JV deals with this guy at this moment. He says, I want to research, make the calls, get the contracts. I don't want to build the financial side of it. I don't want to do the project management. I don't want to have to deal with selling it. So for him, it's perfect. He does the front end. We do the back end. And he just gets distributions. He doesn't actually have to manage the finance side of it. So he's going to build half a business. Right. And we manage other half. So there's some people that take it to that extreme. But yeah, it's a fun day, dude. It's crazy. We have case studies on stuff like this. Yeah. So I'd love to see some more people there. So what if somebody wants to go to the event, who do they contact? Do they contact? Like,

Starting point is 01:31:57 is there a website or? Yeah, best if they'll go follow me on Instagram, Logan Fullmer, just type it in. It's easy. We'll put a link down there too. But if you go find me on Instagram, I've got a ton of stuff about it. We do trainings every so often. We've got a ton of cool materials. And then we also post videos daily about the deals like we've been talking about, but we do hundreds a year. So like literally a new video every day about what's the most effed up thing we did. Somebody did this month and we fixed. Okay. Is this something you do in all states or just a few states? Yeah, I'm in seven states right now. And we train people to do it across the United States.

Starting point is 01:32:30 So the laws change a little bit and that's the unique training. But the concept is the same. You're looking for delinquency problems and then you've got to make an appropriate offer and solve it. So it works across the United States. Hey, you guys. I appreciate you watching. Do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button to the bell to get notified of videos just like this.

Starting point is 01:32:46 Also, if you go into the description box, we're going to leave the link to to Logan's Instagram. We're going to leave it to his website and any other links that he feels are appropriate. We're going to leave so you can just click on those links and shoot over there and you can easily get in touch with him. I want to thank you everybody for watching. And if you want to be a guest on the show, we're also going to leave a link to our website so you can go there, go to the Be a Guest page, fill out a short forum, leave a short video. We'll get back with you. Thank you very much. See you.

Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - How Criminals Steal Houses!

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