Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - How I Got Caught in a $183M Ponzi Scheme | Kim K, FBI & 28 Years in Prison

Episode Date: October 4, 2026

One thing to pack, five ways to power! Get 10% off @Ridge with code COX at https://www.Ridge.com/COX #Ridgepod #ad ⁣ ⁣ James Catledge shares how his rise in the financial industry led him into a $183 million investment scheme, the federal case and prison sentence that followed, and how he used the experience to rebuild his life and create a new mission around helping others improve their financial future.⁣ ⁣ James's links - ⁣ https://www.instagram.com/james_b_cat/⁣ https://insideoutwithjc.com/⁣ https://jamescatledge.com/⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://www.insidetruecrimepodcast.com/apply-to-be-a-guest⁣ ⁣ Shop my merch: https://www.etsy.com/shop/MatthewCoxCollection⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ Check out my Dark Docs YouTube channel here -⁣ https://www.youtube.com/@DarkDocsMatthewCox⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69⁣ ⁣ Chapters: ⁣ 00:00 - Introduction & Legal Trouble ⁣ 00:29 - Early Life & Mission ⁣ 03:59 - Sales Career & Mentors ⁣ 18:36 - Starting Net Worth Solutions ⁣ 21:40 - Caribbean Real Estate Deal ⁣ 32:00 - Celebrity Visit & Success ⁣ 35:09 - Financial Red Flags Emerge ⁣ 47:21 - Settlement & Federal Investigation ⁣ 51:11 - Meeting With the FBI ⁣ 1:06:42 - Plea Decision & Sentencing ⁣ 1:16:44 - Preparing to Self-Surrender ⁣ 1:20:32 - Adjusting to Prison Life ⁣ 1:41:15 - Mindset & Rebuilding ⁣ 1:49:26 - Creating Financial Scoring ⁣ 1:51:50 - Retirement & Saving Early ⁣ 2:04:27 - Financial Perspectives & Takeaways Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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going better. So he finds out from the Department of Justice in D.C., we're facing 28 years, according to the sentencing guidelines, if we go into court and loose, you will never see your kids. You'll die in there. Raised in Memphis, Tennessee, so really kind of a country upbringing, you know, southern hospitality, taught my manners, the whole thing. Terrible student, a terrible, 1.8 GPA for a lot of the years. I think as I matured, I got it into the twos and was very proud of myself. But really, I was not a good student. You know, it's interesting as you get through your life.

You feel like you're for a guy like me. I feel like I got smarter as I got older, but boy, I did not feel smart as a young man. I felt anything but that. No real direction whatsoever. ever. I would say it was a Mormon mission that gave me some degree of focus for the first time in my life, I would say, my Mormon mission. Where'd you go? Santa Rosa, California. They don't trust guys like me out of the country. You know, honestly, not raised in Utah. I was not part of the pioneer heritage, first generation Mormons. I think they try to keep us somewhat,

close to home. You went on the mission. What happens on the mission? You know, I think I began, honestly, I think I began to come into consciousness as a human being on the planet, on my mission. I do not believe I was playing much of a role in my own life up until that time. I totally believe that the mission oriented me to skills I had, maybe some gifts I had that I did not know beforehand. I began, I began to realize that I could teach and that people would listen to me and that people would hear me when I spoke. And, and that, that felt right. It felt like I could make a difference. And I think I was given some leadership opportunities, pretty, pretty significant leadership opportunities. And I, I, I did them well. And I left my mission after two years thinking, you know, maybe I can make

something on myself. I think I think I could probably build a life. I think I learned the skills. I assumed I didn't know this because I've never been in business before at this point, but I assumed these were business skills that may transfer. Right. And so I hoped, I hope that was the case. What, what, so where do you go from that? What do? Well, I had spent two years at Rick's College, which is BYU, Idaho. And then I go on my mission for two years, come back somewhat mature, feeling like, you know, I'm going to make a life. I'm going to do some good things. And so I finished at BYU Provo, studying communications and business. And I'm paying my own bills. I don't have any help from home. My mother's not got any money to assist. So I'm, I need to work

full time and go to school full time. Right. By the way, sorry, what's your dad at this point? Dad, parents are divorced. Okay. Dad lives in Florida. he's retired. He was a lot older than my mom. So he was 13 years older than mom. So he's already retired by the time I'm exiting college. But there are no resources available for me. So I need to kind of work at, you know, pay the bills and pay tuition. And I'm not a scholarship kid. So I'm paying full tuition. And so my job, I actually got a job I liked. I worked at a radio station as an account executive writing radio advertising and producing those ads. I would sell them, write the ad, produce the ad, and that was my, that was my profession going through school.

My job. Right. Yeah. So once you graduate, once you graduate with your degree in architecture. Right. Yeah, I lost the architecture of fantasy somewhere along the way. But when I graduated, one of my accounts for the radio advertising wanted me to work for them. This was Miracle Ear Hearing Aids. This guy owned several franchises in Nevada. And we had a great relationship. And I respected this guy. And he said, listen, when you graduate, I'd like you to work for me and run my Miracle Ear franchises in Nevada. And of course, I don't know anything about hearing or hearing loss or running a Miracle Ear hearing business. But he taught me. And, and, you know, and, you know, and mentored me in that.

And so I signed a nice contract. I was being paid pretty well, six figures that literally as soon as I graduated. And a bonus on every hearing aid sold. And audiologist or the people who professionally know how to test hearing, they reported to me. And somehow this 24, 23-year-old kid is running a miracle ear hearing aid setup in Nevada. How long does that go on? One year.

It was boring to me. Even though it paid well, I felt like I could do more with my skills. I just felt like I was rapidly learning how to lead, learning quickly, how to be accountable, learning how to make money, learning how to get others to respond to my leadership. And so my Mormon bishop recruited me to be in the insurance business. So I became an insurance agent. I've never owned an insurance policy at this point. I don't know that my family ever owned an insurance policy.

policy other than car insurance or health insurance. But I'm going to sell life insurance working for the bishop. And it was important to me because I already was making six figures. I was already making over $100,000. So I needed to know this could pay that. So we had long discussions about what it would pay. He takes me through a test, some type of aptitude test, which he thought was significant to determine whether I had an aptitude for this career. I did the test. Apparently, my aptitude was really lined up for this type of career. He brings me in. He mentors me, and I make $288,000 year one in insurance. And I found a home. I found my stride. All my skills up until that point, which are still new, still being developed, seemed to fit beautifully in the

life insurance business. Yeah. Okay. Well, and what, how long do you work there? three and a half years I worked for beneficial life insurance company the Mormon church owned that company it was one of their assets they own many assets but this is one of their assets and I just happened that's coincidental I was Mormon and I'm working for a company that's owned by the Mormon church three and a half years number one agent in beneficial life there's probably 600 agents our agency was number one one in the system. There's probably 30 agencies. And I'm learning fast how this business works. My mentor at this point, my miracle ear guy was a mentor for sure. My mission president was a mentor now. This insurance boss is my mentor now. He's making a great living. I assume he's making five, six hundred thousand a year. He's got the big house. He's showing up at 11 o'clock at the office, sweaty from tennis. And I'm thinking, my God, he's got the life, you know, that I would like to have one day. And so I realize the reason he has that life is he's got this team of agents

like me who are selling policies. And he doesn't have to sell as many policies because he's got a team. And I'm thinking, I need to figure out how to do what he's doing. Yeah, it's the, I love the TikTok, Jess and I joke about it all the time, where the guy, the foreman or the, the contractor shows up and all of his, he's driving a brand new $100,000 pickup truck. Yeah. And all the, all all of his workers are like, man, that's a nice truck. He's like, you like that? Bro, you keep coming in early and working late and working overtime and working through the weekends and everything else.

He said, a year from now, I'll be able to buy another one. Right. You keep up this schedule and I'll have another one of these. Right, right. Well, that's it. I mean, that's the idea, right? You know, great wealth is built by building great teams. And that's always going to be the case.

So I'm watching this. I'm observing it. And I'm good at working with clients. I really enjoy that process. I feel like I'm teaching, I'm educating, I'm enlightening. I feel significant. I do. I feel like I'm making a difference.

And I realize that I could probably train my mission buddies, my college buddies, how to do this. And so I enter into a negotiation with my boss, the agency manager, Chris is his name. And I said, Chris, I got a lot of guys that I went to college with who know I'm making a lot of money. And they're not making a lot of money. But I think they're at least as good as I am. Some may be better than I am. Can I bring them into the agency and work out some arrangement with you to be paid on their efforts? He goes, well, I'm the agency manager, you know, I'm the one that has the arrangement. What are you referring to? And we have basically a discussion. I said, if you don't mind telling me. Yeah, where's the incentive for me to bring all these guys in so you can make more money?

Right, exactly. And he knew what I was getting to. And I said, I just seemed too young to be having this level of a conversation. Yeah. But, but I don't feel too young to have it. I mean, I understood the dynamics here. And I asked him, I said, listen, what's the arrangement on the cases I close? What do you make on my sales? Right. And he said, I make 40% on everything you sell. And so I said, well, what if we split it? But if you make 20, if I bring the guys in, I train them. I keep track of them. I supervise. I hire them. You meet them, of course, because you're going to sign off on them, but we split the money. And I'll do the work and the agency will continue to be number one, and it'll be great. And he says, that sounds like a great deal. If they're guys like you, let's bring them in. And so I brought in three or four of my buddies, and they're selling. Some are as good as I have, some aren't. But we bring them in, and I'm now making real good money. And I'm not coming in at 11 sweaty from. tennis, but I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about it. Getting a racket. It's not tennis wet, not money, but it's not tennis. It's close. Right, exactly. But I'm thinking, but I'm thinking

I could have a life and I'm not going to have to kill myself here. I could actually have a lifestyle. So I'm settling in to this as a career. And at the end of three and a half years, something dawned on me, Matt, you'll like this. As I'm meeting with clients, they're asking me about things that I can't sell them. In my space, though, it's financial services. They're asking about things I'm not licensed to sell. And it strikes me that if I just had the additional license, I could solve all of their financial issues and actually pick up all the nickels in the couch. Right. And so I asked Chris, listen, I'm going to get the additional securities license so that when I'm working with my clients, I can help them with everything instead of referring it

away. He said, not so fast. You can't work here if you get a securities license. We only have have a fixed life insurance license. And we don't have anybody here with the securities license. And I don't think they want you to have securities license. It brings on additional regulations. And I said, but, you know, the clients need this stuff. And I don't like referring it away. It just made sense to me long term that if I'm going to gain the trust of the client that we would do everything they need. Right. And so that began to be a break in the relationship with Chris. I began looking elsewhere for independence. And, I ended up leaving and was recruited by a company out of Atlanta, Georgia, who gave me a contract

to sell all the products that I wanted to sell at full independence, recruit anybody I wanted to recruit. My spread was not 20. It was going to be 40, maybe 50 percent now on the people I bring in. And I could have my securities license. As a matter of fact, they encouraged it. So this was a natural transition for me. And I was now going to be independent. But the backing of a great company, The name of that company was World Marketing Alliance. This is where Patrick Bet David got his start. This is where I met Patrick. We're still friends today.

This is where Ed Milet and I worked together early on. We got to start together. Guys, today your audience made, these people, Jeff Levitan, Monty Holman, these are all the guys in that company that recruited me. We had 110,000 licensed agents there at the peak. And I end up growing a team because they, encouraged it and end up with 8,200-something people in my team, all licensed.

So it grew quickly from four. It took about five years to get the team to 8,000. Where are you located at this? In Las Vegas. I'm still in Las Vegas. I'm still, but they're everywhere. I'm in 33 states, actually. I have licensed agents in 33 states.

And I'm supervising. I'm running a team of leaders. The leaders are running their teams. and I'm making a lot of money. I'm making a lot of money. I'm making enough money. I'm not thinking of doing anything else for a living ever. I'm locked in.

Okay. Yeah. I've got a great career. Hubert Humphrey, the guy that started this company, we became friends. And he does that with folks who are really good and following his system. He had a great system that if you followed it, you could grow an organization. And he was really good at mentoring. And so he and are flying around on the jet.

We're going to the Super Bowls. We're going to the Masters. We're having a great life because he's introducing me to things that I would not have been exposed to ever without this relationship. Right. And he's really taking me almost like a father figure, another mentor that's expanding my mind in a way that I had never, it would not have expanded the way it did without Hubert Humphrey. Hubert Humphrey made me see the world bigger, maybe see my role in it bigger. I'm sorry. I was just going to say this.

I get a little emotional thinking about it because I can sincerely tell you looking back across the decades that the mentors were all very important. Right. This one was significant. This one, this was as important as a parent. This changed my life forever. The life I have today, I attribute to the spark. this guy put in my head. Yeah. What is your mom saying? Because I know your mom comes up later. Yeah. What is your mom saying about all this success? She loves it. She's feeling like she's a part of it.

She's moved to Las Vegas. I've now gotten married in the middle of this career. We've got children coming. We've got, I think at this point, two or three kids. We've built our dream home. Actually, at this point, this is our dream home. We've hired an architect, bought a lot. in a prestigious community. And I mean, I, is this, are you living in the same place that, that, uh, Jess and I have been to? Remember, we, we went to the, um, late Claus Vegas. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I built that home you've seen.

Yeah, I know you've seen that home. Yes, yeah, Tiffany and I built that home and we were 28 when we moved into that home. So these things are happening fast. Significant house to be 28 years old and you live in that, that community. I know. Selene Dion is literally in our neighborhood. She's behind the same gates we're behind. As I look back, it seems also shocking, really, that it is happening so fast. Where was Patrick Bet David at this point? At the time, he was learning. He was learning. And so he was a guy that would come to me and some of the others literally to learn how to build a team and how to build a business.

And eventually he goes on and builds. He figured it out. He figured it out. Obviously, he figured it out. but Patrick's a good guy, and he had the same evolutionary experience I have with Hubert, where he was willing to be coachable long enough to change himself. You know, it's interesting that the same kid who had the 1.8 grade point average and didn't quite know his role on the planet and trying to figure out if there was any significance in me at all. The same guy, just a few years later, with some coaching, some willingness to change, some mentoring, and some real traction is a different part.

It's a metamorphosis. It's a completely different person. Well, it's funny because Patrick Davis says kind of the same thing. He was young. He was aimless. He's like, he's hooking up with girls.

He's bodybuilding. He's bodybuilding. He doesn't really know what he's doing. His family's like, what are you doing? Right. Exactly. And it wasn't until he got into this whole thing that he's like,

he suddenly became extremely focused and just. Yeah. I attributed to Hubert Humphrey's system. of training and there was a culture of achievement there. There was a culture of significance, a culture of you. You can make a difference here. And you don't have to bend around from the beginning to make a difference. You could come in midstream. If you're the person who's willing to change enough, burn off the bad parts and strengthen the good parts, you can become significant. And I believed it. I think part of it is the youth, the youth of my own mind. If you can get yourself

to believe something, even if it's a delusional thought. If you can get yourself to believe it longer, really believe it, not like fake it, but really in your core believe this is possible. Boy, the universe starts to bend itself in your direction. That was happening for me. I know what happened for Patrick and Ed and the others. Yeah. How long did you stay at that company before you? Eight and a half years. Eight years. I was there. Wow. Yeah. That's a long time. for a guy like me, who's always looking for the next great opportunity. That was a long time. And the reason I did leave, I'll tell you, Hubert Humphrey, my mentor sold the business. He sold it to Agon, and then they changed the name to World Financial Group. Your audience will know that

name, World Financial Group. They're still very significant players today. They're probably the biggest in the insurance space. So when they changed the name, I was there for the name change. I was in the room when we decided what the name would be. We redesigned the law. logo. So I stayed another year after Hubert stepped away, and it just wasn't the same for me. That same spark of entrepreneurship had left. It was more corporate now. It was more of a publicly traded company owned it. That zeal had been removed from the energy gone. And so I felt like from the mentorship with Hubert, I knew enough, or you always think you know it. You never know enough, but I thought I knew enough to start my own business in the same vein.

And so I did. I started net worth solutions. In the beginning, we called it impact net worth. We wanted to make a difference in people's net worth. We want to impact their net worth. And eventually it turned into net worth solutions, solutions that help people grow their net worth. And we moved a lot of our guys over into that company that were at World Marketing Alliance. They moved with us when we moved.

And a whole bunch of new folks came. And we ended up with another team of about. 8,000. And we're rocking and rolling. We've got insurance contracts. We're doing mutual funds. We're doing debt repair. We're doing a lot of mortgages. Mortgages are huge, as you know, during this window. And cash flows just to give you a sense for incomes. We left, Tiffany and I left the World Marketing Alliance, World Financial Group, at about $2.2 million in annual cash flow. So that's a significant amount to walk from and start again, right? So we negotiated an exit that would pay us out over a period of three to five years

on the business we had written there. So they would mail us money every month based on the book of business I had written under my code number. And we started our own business. And we quickly got it back. It's funny, once you know how to make $2 million, you can kind of figure out how to recreate $2 million. Yeah.

And then from there, it's new growth, right? it's new growth. So we ended up getting the business up to $5 million in annual earnings. And it probably took three and a half, four years to get there. But the team is doing great. Real estate became very, very important. You'll remember this is the 2000s where everybody's got a second rental property. Everybody's trying to pick up like monopoly pieces, trying to grab two or three, a portfolio of rentals. So we want that for our clients. We want them to be involved in real estate. So I had a group come and pitch me. This is, this is, I think, why I'm on your podcast. Yeah. This is where the inside true crime begins to occur. Interestingly, we think we're in the

insurance space. We think we're in the helping customer space. And we think adding real estate seems like a natural addition. Just seems natural to the flywheel of our offering. So this father, son team comes in, they pitch us on helping them raise money to build hotels in the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic specifically. I want to add real estate to the offering so that we've got an opportunity for our guys when a client says, we're thinking about putting some of our savings in real estate instead of your annuity products or instead of your mutual fund, I'd like to be able to have something I'm offering as that option. Right. And so my CFO, Jerry, comes to me, he says, I attended a seminar where this father-son team talked about their resorts

down in the Caribbean and how they're expanding rapidly and the opportunity is endless and they're looking for a financing partner and that was their pitch. And they were in Vegas doing that pitch and he attended it. He was there at a real estate conference looking for a real estate option for our firm. And I said, well, did you get their card? He goes, I did. And then I chased them down afterwards and had a conversation and they said that they wanted to follow up. So I said, we'll follow up.

So nine months later, a bunch of back and forth with Jerry, they come back into Vegas. They stay at one of the casinos. They take a limo out to where our offices are. We've got the conference room all set up to impress them. We've got the screens. We've got the bottled water with our company logo on it. And I'm trying to impress them because I want them to realize this is a distribution arm for them that could be significant. Well, he's got a father's got a cowboy hat on and he's got one of those blazers with the patches on the side.

He's wearing cowboy boots and jeans. It looks like a, you know, kind of a regular guy. Like, you know, you envision a guy like this all cowboyed up. Like he's probably just a regular guy, not all dressed up for this meeting. You know, it's just this is his, the way he enters the world. He's probably 70 years old, Fred, at the time. father and son roll in, Fred and Derek, come into the conference room. And I remember in my, I can just tell you now, looking back, I remember in my gut, something telling me that

there, this is hard to put in words because there weren't words that were coming to me. It was a feeling, a feeling in your stomach that there's danger here. And I'm putting words to something that I had as a feeling. But I just felt it, since the meeting set up, and they've come from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Plata, the Dominican Republic, that's where they've come from, flown in to meet with us. I didn't allow that feeling to do anything other than just pass. So we have our meeting, and it's very positive. And they've got a slide deck that's working on our screen, and they've brought it,

and they've got the clicker going. and they're showing us their resort, and they're showing us this sea world that's being built adjacent to their property. And they have to build more rooms to accommodate the international visitors to the sea world. And they're talking about Maxim, the magazine people, wanting to put their brand on their hotels and that they've got the licensing rights to Maxim Publishing for all of their hotels, maximum bungalows. And it's all very good, right?

Everything I'm hearing is so good. but like many things, you hear it and it may be too good to be true. So there was nothing about the meeting other than that initial little gut. I only remember that because I look back on it after what occurred, and that was ignored too quickly by me. So we have a great meeting. It's determined in the meeting that we're going to fly down to the Dominican, take a look at the property that's already built.

There's already one full-blown hotel there, terraced into the hillside, and we're going to get to see their property, and I'm going to take five of my top sales leaders down with me. And Jerry, we're all going to fly down, and they're going to pay for it for us to do due diligence. Now, I'm not a chief financial officer. I'm not trained in high-level accounting, but I know how to run a business. And I know the math of a business and I know the math of a deal. So we're down there to do due diligence, and we don't have a lawyer with us.

We're just down there checking their property out. We're getting a tour by Fred and his son all over this property, and it's full of promise. First of all, it starts beautiful. And then he's showing us all the future projects that are rendered and coming and happening. And it looks to me like whether we're involved or not, this is happening. Right. Because these renderings were done before they met us. This is underway.

So I realize while I'm there, if we're going to do a deal, we probably should verbalize the structure of it. So we began talking about what my clients would need from a product standpoint, and then what we would need to be paid to sell that product. We have that fundamental conversation. And it all makes sense. And so I realize I need an attorney. So we have a company attorney that we've not involved in the products before because it's always been insurance-based products. But we now need to have some to take a look at this. They have an attorney who is down there at the property.

we have these discussions over the next three to five months. We then kick off the launch of this product offering six months from the time they're in our building. We're now at a kickoff event in Vegas where all of our sales guys have come in. And the father's son team, their council, our council are all there to roll out what will be selling, how it will work, what the client's going to get. and the benefits of the relationship. We roll it out. We sell $63 million worth of this product in the first 12 months, which is more money than they had raised in their entire existence in that location.

They hadn't raised that much money to build the hotel they had already had. So this is an extraordinary amount of money being raised for all these rendering projects. They can't render fast enough. They can't buy land fast enough to a kind of. accommodate my client's desire for what we're selling. It's working well. They buy one hotel, a new hotel, renovate it, finish it, and we sell it out. We're selling, just so you have an idea, it's like a hotel condo. Room 101 that you stay in as a hotel is a condominium that sold fractionally 13 times. Okay. Four weeks times 13 is 52 weeks in a year. So we're selling.

a fraction for as low as $18,000. You can own four weeks in this hotel. Room number 101 is yours for four weeks. You use it and it's like a timeshare. Don't use it. They'll sell that room and split the revenue from people staying in the room. They rent it out for you. It's exactly.

It's like an Airbnb. It's like a rental property, but it's in a hotel managed by them, booked by them, reservations are controlled by them. So it looks like a built-in rental pool that you wouldn't have to worry about if you were if you had rental properties all over Vegas you'd have to worry about renting them and maintaining them well if it's in a hotel it's it's a far better experience because the hotel management company maintains all that so it's being sold well clients love it it's happening year two we sell i think 40 something million because it's year two we get five years into this

we've sold 183 million dollars worth of this product And they've got a third hotel that's under construction on an opposite side of the island. They've already completed the first hotel. In the second. Second one. In the second. So it's not like they're not building them. They are building them.

People are happy. People are going to see them. And when I go down, I meet with the builder. The builder who's on the team and has been part of this team from the beginning, built the original hotel. And this guy and I, Jay is his name, J-A-Y from Canada. I am down there meeting with you. I don't know construction, but I, Jay is updating me on this building will be done here.

This building will be done here. This will be done here. This will be the spa bungalows here. And since Maxim's involved, Maxim is down. I've met the CEO of Maxim, Stephen Colvin. I mean, somehow I'm in meetings. This insignificant guy with a 1.4 grade point average is now in a meeting with the CEO of Maxim publishing discussing where we will hold the Hot 100 contest on our property.

Okay. And I'm in a meeting where they were asking me to be a judge on the panel. They want to know what type of amenities should be in the room. Should it be gilchrest and somme soap and shampoo? Should it be, I mean, I'm literally having discussions that I'm not trained to have. But because I'm a part of the financing and the partnership, you know, it's a significant opportunity for a guy like me. It's an amazing opportunity. It feels very good.

I've got nothing but green flags, green lights all the way through this. One little side note, because it's Maxim, Kim Kardashian was big with the Maxim magazine. They helped make her who we know today is Kim Kardashian. She was the cover of Maxim many, many times early on. This is 2005, 2006, 2007, 2005 to 2008. is, so just so you know, we end up meeting Kim. She comes downstairs at the property. Now, I'm there not to host her, but certainly there to meet her.

So the son, Derek and I are the same age, the son, the developer, and I are the same age. So we host Kim and her boyfriend, Reggie Bush, the football player, at the hotel. We have dinner privately with them where we're discussing their career, what they think of the property, what they think of Maxim. I mean, it's just a very interesting conversation. And, you know, looking back, it's like this is, it's so positive. It's so, from a business standpoint, things could not have felt like they were going better. I mean, we're at the top of the game, right?

Clients are winning. Companies winning. Maxim's winning. Of course, the Elliott's of the beneficiaries of all this success that's flowing into their properties. Well, in year five, we've got that third hotel under construction. And I get a phone call from the father, Fred, who says to me, we're not bringing in enough money. The sales team. We're the only money coming in.

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or our listeners can get 10% off at Ridge.com by using code Cox at checkout. Just head to Ridge.com and use code Cox, and you're all set. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our channel and tell them our show sent you. And we brought in 180-something million in five years. And that's significant. We know it's significant. It's more money than it's probably ever come into the island before from any investor

group ever. Right. So we know this is a little weird. It almost feels like maybe it just feels like maybe the money's not being managed right. So I have a meeting privately with Jay, the builder, the guy who spends the money to build the buildings. And he says his budgets are in line and everything's in order. And he's not feeling any pressure from a budgeting standpoint.

He feels like. Yeah. So why are they? He's funded more money. Right. And I don't think they know I'm close to Jay and they don't know I have discussions with Jay, right? He's become a friend. We're the same age.

We play golf together. And when I'm down there, I meet with Jay because it matters to me that this stuff's happening. It matters to me that this stuff's getting built. It matters to me that I can tell the people we've dragged to the Dominican Republic that it is as we have promised. So I tell Fred, hey, listen, we're doing what we can. there is a bit of a downturn now, 8, 9, 10. We've got the global economic crisis occurring. There's a liquidity crisis. A lot of mortgages. If you've got CNN, you realize there's a problem. And so that's affecting our clients, too. They've got liquidity issues, and they're not necessarily

looking to pour more money into an overseas real estate transaction. And so there is a little bit of, we're feeling it and the Elliott's are wanting to expand further. And they've got another property they've bought after the third hotel. There's a new property that they own called Meaches that they right on the ocean that they want to develop. And so there's this acceleration happening while the globe is slowing down. And we end up having an emergency meeting. This is what they called it. I had to fly to Toronto, which is their home city in Canada. Fred and Derek. live in Toronto. So I go to Toronto and I bring my CFO with me. And we sit in a room like I've never been in before, not the room, but the discussion. The discussion is intense. And it's about how

we're not doing our job. It's the first time the tone is shifted. It's turned into we're not raising enough money. It's not coming in fast enough. And this could be reflection on me. And if I don't speed up in the capital flow. They're going to have to find other alternatives. And of course, what we've done is miraculous. And we know it. And so it feels really disingenuous based on what's going on. So we take a lunch break.

This goes on from like nine till noon. We take a lunch break and my CFO and I leave and feel like we should call our attorney. We just have this feeling like, this is weird. It almost feels like a setup meeting. And so my attorney says, get a micro-casette record and record this meeting. The balance of the meeting, just record it, put it in your briefcase, put the briefcase near the table you're sending by, and record this meeting. I need this recorded. So he wants to hear the tape.

So we are now recording the second half of the meeting. It's that kind of weird, right? Yeah. It continues on in the weird way, and I finally decide I can shift the tone by agreeing with it. them. And if I agree with them, maybe they'll let their guard down and tell me what's going on. Right. If I just agree with them. So I changed the narrative a little bit and say, yeah, okay, we got it. We can hire more people. We can recruit more people. We can do a better job. I'll solve the problem. I just basically acquiesce psychologically to try to get them to show me the

cards. And they basically say they're out of cash. Okay. And this is all on tape. We get this all recorded. And it shouldn't be out of cash. We've sold all the units in this third hotel. And the hotel's probably got another 14 million in renovations to occur. And we're not going to pour 14 million in sales. They're sold. So, so yeah, you've been paid for the product. Yes. You just don't have the money. You used it elsewhere. You've used it elsewhere. Either you overspent on other projects or maybe the new land you purchased. Whatever, I don't really know the answer at this moment. I don't know the answer. I just know that we've sold all the door numbers.

Yeah. And there's worth the money. And there's 14 million short. And Jay has confirmed this to me. So I know, and this is one of those where the stomach drops right out of your body, right? Where you realize this has got epic consequences attached to it. And I'm thinking about the 700 people who have purchased units and they expect a return on their units. And they think they've got a door number.

think they're using it as a rental property for income, you know, and I'm thinking this may not be happening on this third property. Does it dawn on me that maybe this occurred on property one and two? They've been carrying it over the whole time. Right, right, right, that we may have just been upside down. And now with the global liquidity issues, maybe it's showing up that stumps are rising out of the river. It's just in real time happening, you know, as this weird meeting's occurring. So I convince Fred and Derek to fly in for a meeting with my leaders to express to them the liquidity issues. I want this in a larger audience. I want more people hearing this than just me and my CFO.

So they fly in. They have this meeting because I assured them that we could raise more money if they would have this meeting. So I let them say it. And I know it's a bit of a setup myself. Yeah. because my instructions are we're not selling anymore. Right. I don't know the answer, but I know we can't continue to sell into this knowing what we know.

Right. Because what we know now is there's danger for anyone we sell to. So I come up with a plan in my mind to sell the third hotel. In other words, if I could find a buyer to buy the third hotel, that may solve the problem and bail them out of their liquidity issue. and restore it for all these people who bought the units. They can finish off the renovations and then everything's good. Right.

So I know a guy who raises money in pools to buy big real estate projects. His name is Brent Borland. I don't know Brent very well. We're close. He's been down on the property for me to show off the maximum opportunity and everything. He's been down there to take a look at it. And so he says, well, I'd be interested in it. And he gives us a number that he'd be interested in buys like $20 million.

he would buy the property. It's probably appraised at $34 million, but he would buy it for 20, take over, restore it. And then ultimately, once it's done, it's probably worth $100 million sitting there. And he would pay $20. He would have a nice upside. The Elliott's would be billed out of their situation, my development partners. And I can save the clients that's in my mind. Well, I call Fred and say, I think we may have a buyer if you're willing to sell Wondolio, the third property. He says, well, yeah, I'll meet with somebody on that. And in my mind, he should jump on that in my mind because he knows he's got a problem. He knows he's got a problem he's not admitted to yet.

So Brent gets in there and begins to do due diligence with his legal team. He's actually equipped to do due diligence. Yeah, he knows what he's doing. This is what he does. So he comes back after 30 days of evaluating. And I think we're going to sell it, right? In my mind, it's green light, green light, green light. He comes back and goes, James.

He goes, this, the entities. that they had me do the research on are so structured, there's probably 19 LLCs in multiple countries with multiple jurisdictions, all with different balance sheets tied to this one property. He goes, I've never seen anything like it. He goes, this is the way a mob operation would work. This is the way, if you're trying to structure a deal away for criminal prosecution, yeah, criminal outcomes, you do this. If you're trying to hide malfeasance, this is what you would do. I said, why would they show you that? If you're doing the due deal, he goes, I don't know. He says, but I had to get into all of it. And I kept calling up with questions after questions after

questions after questions. And it got down to like, this is, this is probably fraud, James. I don't know how to tell you that I can't see fraud, but I see a structuring attempt that tells me they're hiding something that looks like fraud. He goes, I will never buy this. There's no way I can buy this. And I don't think it could be sold. He goes, because anyone that would buy it would have to do what I just did and they they wouldn't do it. There's no one who's going to throw good money at that. And now I know I got a problem. So I end up hiring a civil litigator out of Miami, Florida to sue my own partners. And this, I'm saying it kind of fast with you. This took a lot of thinking and a lot of, frankly, prayer and all sorts of terrible twisted decision making. But in the end up having to sue,

them. And it's, it's, it's, the decision's been made to put a little committee together on our side that could communicate with clients so they would know what was happening. But we're going to have to be offensive in our suit of my own partner, which means all cash flow will stop. So the client, all cash flow will stop to the project. All cash flow will stop, period, on anything to do with this development and probably permanently ruin this relationship, which we've been fruitfully involved in for years. But that's the decision we made because I didn't know how else to manage it. And so we end up in federal court, district court, in Miami in civil litigation.

The attorney we chose was an international law firm that could handle both Spanish and English. So they served the lawsuit in the Dominican, in Toronto, Canada, and in the United States. So it's served in three locations because all the structuring was in three locations. So we've basically got a legal expense, and I'm paying the freight on this of, it's about 140,000 a month is just the legal freight to, they need a verified lawsuit. So verified lawsuit means a private investigator team verifies the facts. You don't just go into a court making claims. They're verified facts with affidavits and PI testimony and everything.

So they spend 90 days verifying the complaint, filing in federal court. We then show up in federal court. It's 644 clients. And my team all on one side as plaintiffs and the Elliot's and their entities, which we learned about from Brent through the structuring, they're all sued on the other side as defendants. Six months of back and forth, the Elliott's defend themselves and say that, it's the salespeople that cause this because we're salespeople and that we probably missold it and we sold it inappropriately and we sold things that they didn't say we could sell and somehow we've created this issue and of course that's ridiculous but that's their defense right and the judge

is sensitive to that defense and tells the plaintiffs us i'm dropping this dismissing this lawsuit and each of you need to file separate cases six hundred 144 of you need to be separate individual plaintiffs, and you need to name your salesperson and the development company, not just the development company. Okay, so now you're fighting 600. Not all of them sued, because a lot of them know the story and know the truth and know the whole things, but certainly there's probably 300 of them are gathered together in about 15 different lawsuits.

Okay. Gathered as pools together with different law firms and different states. And now I'm in trouble. You know, this is a legal tsunami. And I'm not, yeah, we've already burned, I don't know, close to a million dollars just in that suit that just got dismissed. Now we're going to have to get back in to the pockets on defending these civil suits. And now the very clients I was attempting to defend are now aimed at me and the developer because their attorneys have told them, you got to go get your money back. Right.

Catledge certainly has made a lot of money on the project, so you should probably aim one of your arrows at him as well. You kind of got to sue everybody. Like, people don't really. That's right. You can't sue one person because if you sue one person. He can't have favoritism in the suit. Right. And then it gives them the ability to say, we didn't do this.

This guy did this. And you didn't even sue him. Right. No, I know. It didn't feel right at the time. But looking back, it made sense. Yeah. Looking back, it's the only logical conclusion.

And we did make our money. My team made their money. I made my money. The company made its money. You guys got your commissions. We did. We got paid. Yeah.

So it made sense that they would do that. It just didn't feel right. You know, it just felt terrible. So at the end of the day, we end up entering into a global settlement where we end up putting our home, our family home, into a trust. And that trust gets, sells the house and distributes the money to all of those people, proportionate to what they had lost. And so we end up having with a global settlement with all those people. And in the middle of all that, the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Internal Revenue Service decides that they want to take a look. It's got such civil attention

and such large numbers of people involved. And frankly, the amount of money is significant. So we somehow end up with the Department of Justice, FBI agents. They've got the case now. And I realize I need additional counsel. I now need criminal defense counsel, which is different than civil counsel. And so I enter, do you get like a target letter or something? Not yet. Not yet.

I'm ahead of the target. That's coming. It's coming. And I didn't even know what that was at the time, sadly. Yeah, clearly Target is the exact right word. So I hire a criminal defense lawyer trying to be proactive, trying to get ahead of it. And I made a good selection. I hired a very, very good attorney out of Las Vegas.

David Chesnoff, anyway, David says we need to find out where the case is. We need to find out if it's in D.C. Or if it's in Vegas or where you're at or if it's in San Francisco, where is it? So he finds out from the Department of Justice in D.C. that there is a case. And it's in San Francisco where a large pool of plaintiffs exist. And they've been busy doing interviews and sending out surveys. This is out. This is happening. This isn't sitting on somebody's desk.

This is in process. That's right. That's right. That's right. The target always finds out later, right. I didn't have the windbreakers show up and bust through doors and take servers and, you know, break furniture and all that stuff. Thank goodness. No guns at the door, taking me down in front of my children, nothing like that. No drama like that.

Right. But it feels heavy. It feels very heavy. And it's, it's the undoing of a life. It's the undoing of a business. It's the undoing of a human being. It's the undoing of a life that's been built with good intentions. That's the difficult part of it is none of this, you know, What started as me attempting to defend the people we had sold to has now turned into me defending myself from them and defending myself from my own government, right? So we find out San Francisco has the case. They send a target letter to my attorney now that he's representing me. They go ahead and advance a target letter to him.

He shares it with me. We pay the fee. I pay up front 1.25 million up front to him. And the deal is it's not a retainer. It's not a retainer. I'm going to see you all the way through to the Supreme Court if it goes there. Whatever needs to happen, we're taking this all the way. And I was hoping that, you know, we could make a phone call and we could end this.

Yeah. You know, and if you needed 1.25 million to make the phone call and end it, maybe that's money well spent. Yeah. and maybe we could just get to that phone call. And so I end up having this weird conversation with my own attorney about, let's go see them. Let's go see them. I mean,

if you read the civil complaint that was a verified complaint in Miami, you'll realize what happened. It's all verified. We've got PIs that vouched for everything. We've got the Elliott employees have signed affidavits. They all know what happened. So why don't we just go see them? Whoever's got the case.

Let's go, you know. And he's told me, this is the craziest idea he's ever heard. He goes, you have no idea how this stuff works. You have no idea what you're talking about. He goes, you think you can talk yourself into everything and out of everything. He goes, that's just a way guys like you are, James. He goes, this is just, you're crazy.

This is just. No, but if I just explained it to them, they'd get it and they'd understand that it wasn't our fault. It was the fault of the developer. And they'd understand that they're looking at the wrong person. That's my thing. That's how I was thinking about it. I know now it's crazy, but that's how I thought about it.

Well, I convince him to go see them. And so we get to the federal building in San Francisco, and I get the unique name tag that's got red, literally red, sideways stripes on it with my name printed with a sharpie there. Everyone else has a regular name tag. So no matter where I go in that building, it's obvious who the target of the criminal investigation is. this is literally the name tag I'm Walker in the building I even told the guy

the FBI agent was using the Sharpie I said hey I think I've got like the end of the roll or something because there's stripes on my thing I tell the guy that he goes yeah exactly that's the one you're supposed to have just like that the way he said it and I said what do you mean is the one I'm supposed to have

see I don't know what he's talking about right I'm here to be helpful and he says you're the target of a criminal investigation that has 700 plus victims that has $183 million to account for, you're going to wear that name tag. And that's my first clue that this is crazy. Now, I'm now involved in some type of parallel universe. And so we walk in there.

I'm literally suited up in a suit like I'm going to church to have a serious meeting with them because I figure they want all the answers and all the names and all the people in the places and the dates and documents. I mean, I am ready to help them solve their case and like I was in Miami. Well, they play gotcha for 14 hours. There's a stenographer there that works for the FBI. There's a forensic accountant who works for the FBI. The actual prosecutor, the AUSA, who's in charge of this case, is in the room. And two FBI agents, I meet for the first time who are assigned this case. We're all,

and I was about to say their names, but that may not be appropriate. We're all in the same room, and then I have three lawyers on my side and our own stenographer. So it's a loaded room, and I just, it seems like a lot of formality

for a very simple exercise. Ask me questions. I'm going to answer them. There's not a lot of, you know, I don't have any concern or consternation about answering any question you've got. I'll tell you where everything is how it happened, how we discussed it, how it all went down. Well, they've, they know so little,

they're talking crazy. It's a crazy conversation that literally does feel like they're, they've got their wrong case file. Right. And we're having a discussion that's got nothing to do with what occurred. And so I finally, in that meeting, literally, this is called a proffer meeting. Yeah. Proffer. And I had to sign documents to enter that room. I finally, I didn't hit my handle the table. That seemed inappropriate. But I, in a very firm way, I said, guys, I am here to help. I came here and begged my lawyers who did not want me to be here. I begged them to let me come here and help you understand what occurred. So what is it we're doing here? I mean, this is literally the conversation I had. And that's when they talk to me like a schoolboy and, you know,

and let me know that they knew what I was up to. And they knew that I was a bad guy. And then I was trying to convince them of stuff. And we are not the type that could be talked into stuff like this. We are not the type. I mean, this is speaking to me. And I'm literally thinking, my God, this is so crazy. So we finished 14 hours.

We have a debrief over dinner. And I tell my attorneys, I said, How did you think it went? And David looks at me like I'm insane. And he says, you have no idea. You are in a different world. You're in a different world. They're out to get you.

They're trying to get you. And I believe you gave them the entire roadmap today to get you. That's what I believe happened today. I said, well, how, what do you mean? Get me. Nothing has occurred here that's wrong. That's illegal, nothing. Right. Yeah.

So what do you mean get me and roadmap? What are you talking about? Yeah, it's the, it's the, you're explaining that, that a normal transaction, I, I'm a real estate agent and this person was looking for a house. And so I then pulled up a bunch of stuff on the MLS for them. They told me what they wanted. And I gave them a house. I found them a house.

And then they went, they bought the house and then I closed the transaction. And I got, it was a $200,000 house and I got $14,000. And then they got in the house. And then once they got into the house, the house was on a sinkhole. And the house, half the house fell in the sinkhole. And then their insurance company wouldn't pay for the house. And now they're upset with me and they're suing me because of the sinkhole and because they're saying that, you know, that I knew there was, I should have known there was. a sinkhole here there, but obviously I couldn't know that.

No way to know. So you explain that to the FBI and the FBI's. Okay, so what, so you, what I'm hearing is, so you're admitting that you, you found these people and you brought them to this house and you, you convinced them to pay you to put them in a house on top of a sinkhole. Yeah. And they're now out, 200,000. but you just bought yourself a brand new Porsche.

That's what you're selling it. That's what you're selling it. That's what you want us to believe. And you're going, well, and you're comfortable with this. Apparently you're comfortable with this. I did, I did use the 14,000 to put down on a Porsche. But no, no, but they contacted me and you brought them to the house.

Yeah. You are the, and you're going, what fuck happened? Because you wanted a 14,000. Right. People don't see how they twist. Right. You don't see how they'll twist out. You're like, no, no, this is a normal transaction.

This is how things. This is how transactions work. Had that, I didn't know there was a sinkhole there. And how would I have known that? Right. You're a licensed real estate agent. You should know where sinkholes are. You took these people's money.

Right. They trusted you. And bought a porous. Right. Right. What's happening here? Right. What's happening?

And we've seen your airplane. Yeah. And we've seen your mansion. And we've seen how you, you've played golf 48 times this year. We have your USGA handicap card here. you apparently are frolicking around the planet with other people's money. I mean, this is literally the way they were approaching this. Yes.

People don't realize that. What happens is they've watched so much law and order that they think everybody's Jim McCoy. And he really just wants the best for everybody. Justice. Justice. And if he found out that you might not be involved or he made a mistake, he's going to wake the judge up at 2 o'clock in the morning and say, judge, we have an immediate motion. We put the wrong person in jail.

and we have to get them out right now. And the judge jumps up and he signs the motion. They rush down there with the keys. But the truth is is that he didn't give a fuck that he got the wrong person and he didn't give a shit and he's not bothering. And there's no McCoy in there. No, there's no McCoy. Exactly.

The truth is. There's no McCoy. There is no McCoy. I'm not madamecoy yet. No. So anyway, but I, so. No, that's right. So I end up having these.

I'm trying to get my mind around the idea that I'm alone in this. Matt, I'm alone. My legal team seems to understand this parallel universe that the feds understand and live in. They're all understanding this oxygen. They all get it. I don't get it. Don't like it. Don't understand it.

And it's almost like every time we have a conversation on the phone, my own paid counsel, my counsel, my advocates, it's almost as though they're convincing me to get into this parallel universe with them. because can't you think of anything you did wrong? I mean, this is one of the conversations. Can you just, James, for one minute, think of anything that you may have done wrong here? Can you not think of anything that, I mean, these are conversations we had. Right.

So you end up feeling very isolated, very alone, very self-advocating to the point where you feel, you know, no matter how strong you think you are, You feel your spirit slipping, man. You literally feel like they're getting, they're getting into my soul here. Not only are they not for me, they may be against me. Like, this feels transactional. This doesn't feel like justice.

This doesn't feel like we're solving a problem. It feels like you've got your mindset on taking me down and you're going to do that. And so, Matt, we spend eight and a half years. Arguing in the court. Fighting. Fighting. Me not allowing my attorney to settle this dispute with a plea agreement. I get offered 11 years in prison, 11 years in federal prison.

That's the first offer. They call me on the phone. My attorney says, do not speak. You're going to hear this. They're going to make you an office. offer. We want to hear it. We want to talk to you afterwards. Do not say a peep. We need you to process this. I now know this was conditioning for me. They were conditioning me to hear the consequences of this not going well. So this is about three years after the 14-hour meeting. Three years with this hanging.

A lot of back and forth, a lot of witness interviews, a lot of people calling me saying the FBI was just here. Here's what they were saying. Oh, my God. Are you okay, James? You know, literally going to church, going to the kids' school, going to all the kid functions and having to deal with this in the newspaper, you know, all the difficulty of this when there's no resolution. And you can't speak. That's the other thing. You're silenced.

You're not permitted to speak. Your attorney says you can tell no one anything. You can do no interviews. You can not tell the newspaper or anything, even though they want your response. You can not tell them anything. We saved that for the court. So eight and a half years later, I've been all. offered an 11-year deal. I've been offered an eight-year deal. By the way, they always promise it

will never go down. This is the best deal you'll ever get. So 11 years, then eight years, then seven years, then six years, these are all offers. And I believe these offers came down because evidence continued to stack up that the case isn't that good. Right. That you're going to have to find a witness to say something's not true. You're going to have to find, because in a courtroom, you have to have a paper and a witness to corroborate the paper. It's paper and witness. Prima facie and a witness. And you got to make up the paper in my case.

And you're going to need a witness to corroborate made up paper. So it's difficult to do that. It's no matter what type of threat you put on somebody, it's difficult to do that. Right. And so we end up. Especially when the paper doesn't exist. Right. No, we start twisting paper.

I start reading emails that had been sent over by the FBI to my law firm six years in. You can see James is negotiating for more commissions here. Yeah, these are the emails. Right. You can see he's putting pressure on the Elliott's for more commissions. Look at this email here. He's saying, you've got to pay my people. You've got to pay my people.

You can't not pay my people. See, see, he knew there were financial difficulties, but he had to have his money. See, this tells you the kind of guy you're dealing with here. That could just mean that my commissions are late. They were due on the 10th and they're being paid. It's a 16th and you haven't paid? This is the relationship. We raise the money.

You pay the commissions. This is the transaction we agreed upon. Now the email is being taken as though I have a corrupt heart because I'm demanding we be paid and I pay my people. So this is the way it went. And all of this feels terrible. Yeah, I know how I twist it. You do. You've done all the, you've seen all the interviews.

So in the end, I'm literally, I'm a consultant now helping financial planning for, firms, several firms have hired me as a consultant to assist them in what I know how to do well, which is build big teams and lead them. So I've got several friends within the industry who have engaged me from a consulting standpoint to assist them while I'm under indictment, which is just crazy. So I'm in Atlanta on a speaking engagement for one of my clients and my lawyer calls while I'm there to speak. Now, these are always very disconcerting calls when you see, because it means there's movement in the case. This lasts it eight and a half years.

So I see the call. I cannot deal with it before my speech. So after my speech, I leave the auditorium, dial the number in my hotel room alone, and it's David. And he says, I've got the other attorneys here. Now, that always means something significant because he likes them to chime in to convince me

of what we're about to discuss. Yeah, it's four against one. Because I've been resisting every single thing. go to trial, go to trial, go to trial, I like my facts, go to trial, I like my facts. Well, he says, James, we're two weeks from trial. This is on the phone. I got the other three lawyers on there. He says, I just want to explain something to you.

We've been at this a while. We feel like we know you. We feel like we're part of your family. We know your wife and kids. We feel like we're in this together. I just need to say something to you as a friend. not your lawyer. I'm the best trial lawyer you could have possibly hired.

And I'm going to argue on your behalf like you can't imagine. I was born for these theater moments. I'm good at this, James. I like, that's how I built my reputation is in the courtroom. I don't want to dodge a trial. But I'm going to tell you right now, you need to hear me clearly. And I'm talking to you as your friend. we will lose the case.

And I'm good, James. I don't like telling you I'm going to be defeated before we begin, but I'm telling you now we will lose the case. And here's where the case will fall. You made $36 million on this project. Your people made about $25 to $30 million on this case. The clients right now have the house that you gave, them and divided up the dough and have lost the rest.

It's not hard to find 10, 12 witnesses to climb in the witness box and say that you made your money. We now live in a cardboard box because he took us to the Dominican Republic. You have an airplane. You have a pilot. You live in a dream home. You live in a home that nobody else in that courtroom, especially not the jurors live in. they're not going to like you.

You're not a guy that they're going to like. You're a guy that they're going to say, he had to have known about the sinkhole. He had to have known because guys that are this successful are usually sneaky. They know stuff. They're usually sneaky. Yeah, right. They're usually sneaky.

That's the way a more simple mind will approach this. He says, I just need you to know. We know the truth. You know the truth. But we've lost that a long time ago. This is about getting you back to your family. We're facing 28 years, according to the sentencing guidelines. If we go into court and lose, you'll be in jail for 28 years.

You'll be in a U.S. penitentiary for most of that. And at a U.S. penitentiary, I'm pretty sure with your skills, you're going to convince everybody in there in a green jumpsuit that you're innocent. But you'll still be in there. And they're going to believe you. And they're going to tell everybody they know. You're innocent. And if that's good enough, we should go to trial.

But you'll be in a green jumpsuit and you'll be in there 28 years. And you'll never see your kids. You'll die in there. So we have to decide right now tonight. We're facing trial. You do have good facts. I think I can use the good facts to get you a five-year deal. And I think I can tell them that you'll take five.

And you can do five, James. You can do five. He goes, we'll get you in a camp. You can do five. My God, you've done eight and a half. You can do five. And we can end this. He goes, but I have to have your permission to do it.

And you can't be delusional. You cannot continue to believe that you're going to talk a jury into what you know to be the truth. Because they're not there to hear it. They're going to have witnesses with sad stories. They will have to believe. And so I just, needs you to let me go negotiate on your behalf for five years. And Matt, I can tell you, it was the first time in all that time that I felt like maybe I've got to let him do that.

Right. And it took everything in me to surrender to that idea of saying that I did something wrong because I'm going to now need to say I did something wrong because you don't just let him give you five years. You have to now say I committed a crime. You have to say I, committed fraud of some sort. You have to agree that you did something inappropriate, unlawful to separate these people from their money. You have to agree to that. That's what a plea is. It gives them the victory. And that's why they would be willing to do it for five, because I'm going to give them what they want. And so I said, well, can we argue for zero to five? Not five. Let's don't agree to five. Let's argue for zero to five. He goes, sure, I think I can

probably get that. He said, he goes, but they're going to argue for five. And we're going to argue for zero. And then the judge makes this decision. And she can decide, she's heard the whole case. She's read all of her emotions. She probably knows where you are. And so in the end, we go into court and change my plea from not guilty to guilty of one count of mail fraud. And it was probably the most difficult day of maybe of my life. Yeah. And. because it was the culmination of all of that. And then I think it was probably six months later, the judge brings us all in for sentencing.

And the decision gets to be made, whether we're going to do zero or five. We argue. We follow additional motions. And the judge says, this is all in the record. I don't like the deal. Don't like it at all. Not sure I want to take the deal.

Not sure I want to accept the deal. I'm not sure I need to accept the deal. I'm not sure I need to accept the deal. the deal. Mr. Catledge has a right constitutionally to put his facts before a jury. I'm a little surprised after eight and a half years. Somehow he's now interested in pleading guilty to something. I'm not sure why the government would let him plead guilty and get five years if there's $183 million missing. Not sure why you would accept five years. And I'm not sure why you would agree to go to prison if you're not guilty. So I don't like this. It's compromised to me.

this is the judge speaking. And of course, my attorney and the prosecution deal really worked hard to get this done and frankly to get me to go along with it. And I'm listening to all this and my family's in the room and all my friends. I probably got 50 people there.

They're all there to be supportive of whatever goes down. And my mother, my mother's there. And she's hearing the judge. And she's thinking, you know, a lot of my friends, of course, didn't want me to plead guilty to anything. They believe in things will be corrected in front of a jury. And so they're kind of, my mother's specifically rooting for judge sees it right. Let's go.

Let's get this thing in front of a jury. And so the judge says, I'm going back into my chambers with my clerks. We're going to research this. Find out if I have to accept this. You guys, I think you should go out in the hallway. You should discuss again, perhaps a different kind of deal. And Mr. Catledge, I need you to think about. whether you want to deal at all.

She's basically trying to tell me she likes my facts. Right. And she would like him in front of a jury. And so I'm a little encouraged by this. You know, it's a very difficult moment. We get out in the hallway and my attorney, he's never spoken more violently to me than in this moment. And the prosecutor's right there. It's the two of them and me.

And he says, don't even think about it. There's nothing to think about it. This is decided that judge is going to get you 28 years. Your facts are good, but not good enough to overcome witnesses who have lost money, James. I'm telling you, this is the best deal. And you need to take it so you can get on with your life. And I knew in that moment, that was right. As hard as it was, I knew it. As he said it, I could see it in his eyes. This wasn't a lazy man trying to not go to trial. This was a guy trying to save my life. And I literally felt it. So we go back in. The judge looks right at me. She's got her eyes locked right into me as I enter her courtroom. She says, come up front here, Mr. Catledge, what's been decided. And my attorney jumps in.

says, your honor, we'd like to proceed with the sentencing today. Our client has agreed to a plea. We're in agreement that that's the fair deal, it's the right deal. And we'd like to proceed. She almost doesn't make eye contact with him while he's speaking. She looks right at me. And she says, is that right, Mr. Catledge? I said, yes, that's what I'd like to do.

And she said, okay. very well. She said, why don't you come up front here? She says, you have anything prepared that you'd like to say or read or anything like that? And so I read my allocution there and very, very difficult. We've got people in the room who have lost money and then we've got my family in the room. And then she goes into a very formal procedure. Yeah, they know it inside and out, right? Yeah. She enters right into some Latin procedures, some format. slaps the gavel down and says, this is what you wanted, and thereby the court sentences you to 60 months in federal prison. So that's that's the legal side of this.

And so she gives me, as a courtesy, about three months, actually, which is very generous, to prepare to self-surrender to a federal prison camp. my attorneys were wise enough to ask for a specific place to be designated. She wrote that in her order. I got another courtesy, which I've come to understand is a benefit. It's a total courtesy to me. And so I self-surrendered three months after that sentencing hearing to federal prison. All right. So I know I've got to self-surrender.

And honestly, you'd think after eight and a half years, I would have done some research on prisons. Right. I never in a million years looked at anything about a prison. I just didn't think this was going to be me. I just didn't think I was headed in there's no way I'll end up in a prison. No, there was no way to do research. There was no need to look at prisons. I didn't know anything about them.

And so at this moment, I'm now interested in prisons and what they look like on the inside. I'm looking for internet images. I'm looking for satellite images. What do these places look like? And the one I'm going to, is there anything on the internet that would give me some visual. I actually met, you think this is crazy, but I actually physically drove to Taft Federal Correctional Institute set in the parking lot where visitors park to go in and just sat there about 45 minutes

looking at the facility, looking at can I live here? I literally was trying to decide emotionally, can I live here? And what would it be like to live here? And I was literally looking at the buildings, the housing units, what I learned was the visitation place. That's where I was parked. And I needed to skip my mind around the idea this was going to be my life for the next little bit. And so as fortune would have it, this is total fortune. I feel very, very lucky that this occurred. I have a very good friend named Jack, Jack Bernheisel, who was at that sentencing. And Jack had kept this to himself. Jack was part of the team that helped my lawyer know I should go to Taft. Because Jack knew something that I didn't know.

Taft is owned by the Mission Training Corporation, MTC. That's a federal prison run and managed by a private contractor. Jack, it belongs to Salt Lake Country Club where the MTC owner and president, is also a member of Salt Lake Country Club. So Jack asked me to have a golf round with this gentleman, the guy that owns the Taft Correctional Institute. Now, I didn't even know about owners of federal prison contracts or any of that stuff. Well, I get to meet this very nice guy in his 60s who runs a very successful prison management company and he's got contracts all over the world for prisons, both in the United States and overseas.

And Jack lets him know that I've been designated to one of his facilities. And he says to me, he said, it would be highly inappropriate for you and I to have any communication while you're incarcerated. He said, but I want you to know Taft's a great place. Taft is safe. The food is higher quality than you would get at other prisons. and I will come and check on you. He says all this.

Now, I don't know what he means by come and check on me. But this is the discussion. And I feel so relieved that, number one, that somehow in my circle and my friends, that this guy is in there somehow. So I self-surrender on the day I was designated to go. And I've called ahead and asked them what I should bring, what I can't bring. I'm getting all the details. And, of course, these are conversations they don't want to have with you.

but I needed to know. So we show up basically with my Bible, some clothes that I'm prepared to give away, because I'm not going to see them again. They're going to change me out into some orange jumpsuit. And my mother drives me to Taft, my brother's with us. And as soon as we go in,

where's the wife at this point? Divorce? Yeah, yeah, great. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, I should have communicated that in the timeline. the ordeal of eight and a half years was too difficult for Tiffany to endure. So we agreed on a very amicable divorce. We separated first for about a year and then we decided we should be divorced.

And so we got divorced about a year and a half before I was sentenced. Okay. But I stayed very active, obviously. When you're indicted, you're not as busy as you were before you were. So there's plenty of time, you know, to spend with the kids and all that. stuff before I went in helping them understand that dad is about to go to prison which is crazy conversations but so I self-surrender they send my mom out one door my brother out the same door and then they basically you know asked me to

change out of my clothes they bend me over they have you cough so they make sure you're not bringing anything into the facility D-A sometimes you cough and like a 22 will drop out or a couple of cell phones you know a couple of my bad Choose the couple of cell phones. Yeah, right. Sorry, I didn't realize those were in there. Right. But, but, yeah, so we get through all of the call. My wife back my bag. I didn't know. I had no idea. She put those in there. So we end up getting the DNA swab. I get my housing unit assigned and, you know, I end up wandering into the facility. And I got to tell you that's, you better have

some self-confidence wandering into a federal prison. Right. You better, you better have your self-confidence It's screwed down tight. So we're all looked the same, but this is a scary day. Your first day in federal prison is a scary day. And I remember making the walk from the basically registration or check-in down to the housing. It's probably 100 yards of just straight through the courtyard, shoulders back, head high. I'm here. I'm going to live here.

This is, I'm in here with you guys. None of us are going anywhere but here. And not knowing who I'm going to meet the whole thing. I remember leaving the surrender location where they searched me. That's up front at a larger security prison where they call it a low. It's a little higher security. They've got towers. They've got the barbed wire.

They don't have that out back at the camp, but they certainly have that up front where you check in. And I get in a truck with a corrections officer who's going to take me back to the camp. This is one of the prison trucks. And when I jump up front in the truck, this is a big burly guy. He looks like a ZZ top lead singer. He's tattooed. He looks like he may have been an inmate. But I don't think so because he's a correction officer.

And he's somewhat friendly. When I get in, he looks over. I think he senses the moment. He says, are you okay? He says that, dude, to me, are you okay? And I can hear in his tone, he's sincere in his request to know if I'm okay. And I said, yeah, I think I'm okay.

He goes, well, I want you to know something about that camp. I've been here 27 years, he says. The finest guys I met in my life are back in that camp. He says, you're going to be fine. I'm at the camp every day. The guy that runs the camp reports to me. He says, you're going to be fine. And so that was kind of, you know, a touch of humanity.

on the way to, you know, my destination. So when I get back there and I travel through the front door, now I'm out in the open where all the inmates are working their way through the yard, headed to library, to the kitchen, wherever they're headed. I'm not even oriented yet to the facility. But I'm headed to my housing unit to find it. 33 low is where I'm headed. 33 low.

So this is going to be like a cubicle with a bunk bed and another solo bed inside this cubicle. And as I enter the door of the housing unit, it's a two-story building. I'm in the lower floor. A guy comes ripping through the door, real friendly guy, and he says, you're a new guy. And of course, probably everybody, they're new. I was a new guy. But he says it. And I said, yep, today's my first day. He goes, well, where are you headed? And I said, 33 low and it's on a piece of paper. He goes, okay, come with me. I'm going to show you where 33 low is. And honestly, thought this was like an orientation guy. Right. I thought this must be his assignment to do this. I sense learned this is just a friendly guy. Right. Trying to be helpful. So he takes me back around.

And that's kind of my experience, Matt. A lot of friendly guys trying to be helpful. Yeah. It's not a- Well, they all know how shitty it is to be in there. Exactly. They all know that. Yeah. Yeah. It's not, it's not at all what you would imagine. It's kind of a very humane existence. The, the inhumanity is occurring in the correction officer's behavior. Right. The inmates kind of become part of the family. They're looking after each other and really protective of one another. I found that to be quite enlightening. So this guy takes me back to 33 Low, introduces me to my roommate.

They all know each other. And then he says, you've got to get some stuff. You got to get the sheets. You got to get the pillow. You got to get the stuff from laundry. He goes, you know where laundry is? I said, no, I'll figure it out, though. He goes, I'll show you.

So he's walking me around, introducing me to people. and I'm really feeling like it's your first day of school. You know, that's what it's feeling like. Well, I settle in and I end up, frankly, having kind of a good experience. I mean, I get myself into a nice routine. I'm working out in the morning. I find a group to work out with. We're walking the track.

We've got this nice track we can walk. You know, we end up walking many miles a day. There's a library I can read books. There's, you know, anyway, I find myself in with a nice group of guys who, are very accomplished and have done some big things in this world, and they're just, they're stuck there like I am. And we end up having this, this nice friendship. And I bet you, it's probably 90 days in. And I'm completely comfortable 90 days in. I mean, I feel I'm playing I play tennis.

There's a, there's a racquetball court. You know, so we're basically filling our days with activities. And I get over the loudspeaker. When somebody calls over the loudspeaker, it's either visitation day and they're calling you up front to see your family or if it's midweek and it's not visitation day and they call your name over the loudspeaker, you see me you're in trouble. Yeah, I was just that you're in trouble. You're in trouble.

Right. And so James Catledge, St. camp control, James Catledge to Camp Control. You're probably going on the show. That's what you're thinking. Right. And so my representative for the group that I'm kind of hanging with finds me and he goes, hey, dude, what's going on? I said, I don't know. They call him up to Camp Control. He goes, I'm going with you. He's a friend, right? So we're going up there. And he goes in ahead of me. He goes, what's this about? What's this about? What do you need Catledge at Camp Control for?

He's like speaking on my behalf, like very protective. And it's Greg. Greg's doing this. And they said, Greg, get the hell out of here. Nobody's asked you to come up here. Get the head back to the housing unit. Catlett's come over here. He goes, do you know so?

I'm not going to use the guy's name. Okay. The guy that owns the facility. Right. He goes, do you know so-and-so? Bob is his first name. Do you know Bob? He said, yeah, I know Bob.

He's a family friend. And so the guard, the camp director says, a family friend. I said, oh, yeah, yeah, we know each other. What's up? He goes, well, he's here. And he's headed back to the camp and wants to meet with you. I said, about what? It was, I have no idea.

I want to know how you know the guy. I said, well, I'm just telling you, we go back. You know, what do you want me to say? We're friends. And he goes, well, I'm going to be. We've skied in Vail. Yeah, yeah. We go to the beach house where I'm, if I was you, I'd pack my bags personally.

This guy looks concerned, and I'm just now calculating that why he may be concerned. Yeah. And I'm thinking about the warden, who's a female warden, and she's really kind of rough around the edges, kind of very not well thought of by the inmates. And kind of mean, mean-spirited ladies. She's not there to help us. She's there and really kind of push us down a little bit and created an unhealthy environment, I think. And I know she's concerned because she's now back at the camp. And I've actually only seen the lady once.

And her reputation's terrible. Is she there? She is there. And she's there with Bob. And so I'm not going to use her name either. But she comes through with the associate warden, the captain. of the prison and kind of all of our COs, all of our correction officers for that shift are all escorting Bob, who's in a tie, no blazer but slacks. And he comes through, he sees me. He's got eyes on me.

We're in the hallway. I'm probably 30 feet from him. He goes, James! Now, you know the rule in prison. You cannot touch an inmate. Yeah. If your staff, you cannot touch an inmate. He comes over almost like running, grabs me like a father, holds me like an embrace. How the hell are you? How's it going? And then he turns around and says to the warden, do you have a place he and I can meet? I need to catch up with him on a few things. Is there a place she said alone? And he says, oh, of course. Yeah. Yeah, James and I are going to meet alone. She says, would you like one of the COs with you, sir? He says, Bob, and I need a CEO?

No, no. Just give me a private spot here at Camp Control. And okay. So Bob and I peel away privately. And he says, tell me how it's going. I said, it's going fine, dude. It's going really good. It's good to see you.

What are you doing down here? He goes, well, I'm showing some investors at the place. He goes, is everything really good? He goes, what do you need? What do you need? I said, I don't need anything. I said, it's really going to go. And in my mind, I'm thinking, the last thing I need is to give him some type of list of needs.

And it gets to the warden and now, you know, it's a problem. He goes, no, no, no. He goes, there's got to be stuff broken. Tell me what's not functioning. I said, we got a dryer out in Unit D. We've got a dryer that's been out for months, months. He goes, a dryer out. We got dryers in the warehouse.

I said, okay. Then just tell me, get out of the warehouse. He goes, okay. What else? I said, well, we need a couple of microwaves. Some of the microwaves are out. Okay, microwaves in her drawer. What else?

I said, well, we've got TVs. This sounds like a complaint. I'm not trying to complain. He goes, no, no, no, what? I said, the TVs are analog, not digital. I said, these flat screens are sold digital, but somehow the signals. You go, what? We've got digital processors in the, in the warehouse.

Why aren't those on the TV? Sir, I don't know. He goes, okay. Thank you. He goes, let's walk around. We get up from this private thing. They're all waiting basically outside the door to find out how the meeting went. He's got his arm around me as we leave camp control.

We're walking down through the yard with the whole group's moving. Everybody's seeing you walk around. Everybody running the bucket place. You know what this looks like. Yeah. Right. Okay. So I am walking with the guy that's running the job.

that's running the joint. Now, no, these other folks may not have ever figured out who this fella is, but it's going to, they're going to, they're going to figure this out quickly. Yeah, the, the, uh, the, uh, the gossip or the, what would they call it? The inmate.com. That's it. Yeah. Inmate.com.

Yes. Within 30 minutes, 90% of everybody knows. Well, here's what starts happening. We've got now forklifts moving equipment around in the warehouse. Right. We've got people pulling equipment into the housing units. We got dryers being installed. We've got all sorts of repairs happening.

And I probably 12 guys I've never laid eyes on inside this camp before have come to my unit, to my housing address. This is after you peel back. I peeled back. They've come to my housing address to say, who was that guy? Right. So I think he owns a place. How do you know him? family friend.

He said, what are the odds of that? I said, I have no idea what the odds are, but he's really a good guy, and he's trying to be helpful. And he wanted to know, you know, what's going on here with the staff. He said, everyone he's got to go, you know, he hires a staff. If there's something not going right with staff, you've got to tell him. Because we got bad staff. I said, well, I really didn't get into any of that. He's a friend.

I didn't even want to burden him, but he asked me about, busted equipment, so I started telling him. And I think they're going to fix our TVs, and I gave him the whole list. And all that stuff started happening now. You know, you got a counselor in there. Right. Okay. My counselor pulls me aside and said, how do you know Bob?

So I tell her how I know Bob. She said, you didn't tell him, I'm a problem or anything, did you? I said, I wouldn't do that ever. You're great. I mean, you'd be great with me for the beginning. No, no. I would never say anything like that. She goes, okay.

All right. That's good. That's good. did you by chance say anybody was not good? I said, no, no, no, we didn't get into that level of conversation, no way. But I sense from that second forward and never, for the rest of my time there, ever, did I get any word at all from any staff other than what do you need? What do you need? What do you need? What do you need? It was very helpful. I can imagine. It was crazy. The odds of this. And Jack, my friend, my friend, my friend,

friend who attended Senate scene and was there through the whole time knew that, that, you know, maybe this would be helpful. Right. Right. This is, this is a difference between, um, uh, Chris Christie's experience and his wife's experience. Like his, true, true experience was was prison's awesome. I got this, like I've fucking, I got everything I want.

They're bringing stuff in. They're bringing stuff in. Right. And his wife who's going through fucking hell like she was. Cracking rock. Exactly. Working the chain. Right.

Right. They did have a very different experience. He's like, what are you talking about? This is hell. I love their show. I love listening to their show. But anyway, I actually ended up being released after 14 months because of COVID. They released a lot of us from prison.

I think I was on a list to go home early because of the COVID-19. How much time did you do? 14 months. I was given 60. I was given 60. I was given 60. and I was released after 14, Matt. I can't tell you how lucky I feel.

I mean, and it frankly, the guys I met during that 14-month stint, yeah. Incredible. Yeah. They're in the fraternity. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I love these guys.

I mean, I am still very, very close. Probably 50, 40, 50 guys. I mean, they're my friends. Yeah, we would do anything for each other. So, I mean, obviously, it's difficult to be away from your family. It's difficult to be incarcerated. It's difficult to have something said about you that isn't true. It's difficult to have your friends have to come visit you with a package of quarters

that don't want a vending machine and eat a sandwich from a plastic wrapper. Yeah. Did they have a, is it a, no, Biggie burgers. Yeah, yeah, of course, we had a biggie burgers. Yeah, have my mom have to go and make a Biggie Burger and she would take apart because it would be holding them. She'd take it apart and heat it up and put it. She was like the best Biggie Burger heater upper in like the building. She's a chef.

Yeah, she was like. Biggie Burger's chef. Right. But I'm sitting the whole time like, this is horrible. Oh, it's bad. I was having to come see me in prison. This poor woman. Exactly.

What I put her through. Exactly. My mom would come whenever it was appropriate to come. Like I think once a month was the rule. Is it, is it, not weekly, it's monthly, because you had so many points in federal. You can only see them so often. So I think it was weekly. She was there two days in a row once a month.

Right. Once a month, two days in a row. I'll tell you something sneaky mom did. I'll just because it's kind of funny now looking back on it. So my mom knows I'm going to have a sweet tooth. Yeah. She knows that in there, you don't get. Was it sugar free?

No, but our place was, Coleman was sugar-free. No, we weren't sugar-free. The vending machine had M&Ms and, and, and, maybe, Maybe recess and a snicker bar. No, that did. I meant commissary. Oh, yeah. We had no, no sugar.

No sugar on commissary. Of course, when you go there, it's like, give me sugar. You're going crazy. Yeah. Okay. So my mom, she knows I like to cracker barrel and their old-fashioned candy. Okay. There's some specific candies that I like.

Right. So she would buy them on her drive from Vegas to Taft, California. And then she would sneak them in in her bresier. Honestly. And we would get the M&M package. She would empty the M&Ms on the table and individually stuff from her bresier, all of these individual candies in the Eminem bag. So I'm eating out of the M&M bag the hot, illegal, inappropriate candies.

Yes. And she found a great thrill in doing those kind of things to make my stay a little bit better. Yeah, your mom is funny. Your mom's, we were, Jess and I, we all went to dinner. Yes. And she's like, we were laughing. She's the boss. Mom's a gangster.

No, she is a gangster. At that time, she was 80 something or 70. She's 82 right now. So she was probably 79, 79, 78, 70, 70 first met her. And you were, and we went to the restaurant and we go in and you're like, mom, let's sit. You said, let's sit outside because it's less noise. No, no, I want to sit in here. Well, you'd be, you know, with your hearing, it's better to sit outside.

No, no, I want to sit in here. No, but mom, it would be better if. And she looked at you. She said, no, I want to sit in here. I'm sitting in here. I'm sitting in here. Right. And you were like, okay.

Like I was like, damn. Yeah. She's not taking eating shit. She's fucking running. She's still running the show. This is what I want. This is what we're doing. That's right.

And she was there waiting on us. And we were on time. Yeah. She was early. Yeah. She was something. The whole, the whole. And when she sat down with Jess and I, she went, she said, so where did you do your time?

Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Right. She's 80 years old. Where'd you do your bid? Yeah.

Where'd you do your bid? Where'd you do your bid? She probably did. She was hilarious. No, she's funny. And she considers those 50 people I keep up with her friends too. Because in visitation, you arrange your visits so you can meet your inmates' families. Right.

So you try to coordinate that. So we end up getting to know all these families. And she still considers a part of her family. Yeah. It's great. It's great. Anyway, I can't say it was a bad experience. I mean, had I known it would have been so good, I wouldn't have waited eight and a half years to do the deal.

Right. I'd have gotten home with it. Yeah. But I just, you know, anyway, things work out for the good. A couple of thoughts, if you've got people that listen to this channel who may be facing this right now, you know, they're dealing with this right now. They're in the middle of their eight and a half year window. They should get it over with quickly. Right.

They should plead guilty quickly. if you've been accused of something by your government, they're going to get you. They're going to prosecute you. And they're either going to do it with a jury or they're going to let you do it with a plea. But you need to get it over with quick and navigate a way back to your life.

You need to navigate a way back to your life. And then try to keep a positive mindset. One of the things that I had to keep telling myself, and it was just a hope. I didn't really know this to be true. I just hoped it would be true. And I can tell you now it is true. the hope was that if I just remain positive, just remain optimistic, just treat people right,

make decisions as though I could look back and be proud of them inside, inside, where there's a tendency to want to be sour because you're at the bottom of the barrel, man, it's over. It's destroyed. Whatever's been built, it's been crushed. And so you're in a total rebuild mode. You get to decide what the rest of your life's going to look like, right? I made the decision in there with the hope that if I did it this way, it would work out on the other side. And the decision was be positive, remain optimistic. Don't be a victim. Don't feel like a victim.

Don't think that the government had it out for you. Don't think, don't these things we're saying today because you know, you want to hear the story. But those are not thoughts I could run free with in there. Those are not thoughts I could allow to linger. Yeah. Because they would destroy me. Yeah, they'll fester and kill. you.

Yeah. Destroy me. That, what is it? Yeah. You know, want to, uh, which you need to take those thoughts and put them down, bury them down, and push them down. Eventually, they'll turn into cancer and kill her. Exactly.

Yeah. That's right. So I never pulled that thread. And, you know, there's plenty of temptation. Because I know guys. The whole time. How horrible. How the government this.

Yeah, to get me. And the, the snitch did this. And the agent lied about this. And the U.S. attorney said that it's like, You know, stop, bro. Yeah. You're still getting out in an amazing country that will allow you to rebuild.

And some bad things happen to you. Bad things happen to people all the time. People get hit by cars. They end up losing their legs. They end up being in a wheelchair. Like, none of those people brought that on themselves. People get canceled. Cancer.

People, all kinds of horrible things happen to people. And, you know, so, you know, you're lucky. You're healthy. You can rebuild. You're in a great country. And don't let the rest of that, you because horrible things happen to horrible happen to people all the time so it's obvious it's horror it's in inside you you do have that choice you get to choose to be a destroyer or a creator

almost everybody i know that had a horrible that had a horrible attitude inside and that left with that horrible attitude has already gone back to prison or they they cannot get themselves traction back on their feet yeah no traction they're still they're they're everything about their lives is just complete chaos and just destroyed and it's trash and they cannot get themselves back on track because they have a horrible mindset. Made a horrible mindset in prison. That's right. That mindsets are track and chaos.

Everybody I know that got out that thought, hey, this was, this was, it is what it is. I'm going to get out. I'm going to do this. And while they were inside, they were thinking about the things that they want to do. All those people have bounced back. That's right. All of them. That's right.

I mean, you did the, you did the kind of, well, I had more time to think about it. But you did the same thing where, you know, you kind of, you put together a plan on when, when you got out what, what you wanted to do. And it's funny because, you know, I had like five plans. Yeah. And I thought, one of these will work. Yeah. One of these just, this is what happened. Many plans.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I was working on a few of them simultaneously, right? Sure. Like I was writing. I was painting. And I was kind of doing this hoping maybe it would work out. out and this is the one that kind of took traction.

And I was like, okay, so then that's what this is what it is. Had it not been this, it would have been one of the other two. And you've got not pads full of plans. Oh, yeah. Yeah. If you get to your prison box, your writing is full of these plans, these creative energy ideas. I know a guy that came up with an app that helps contractors. Basically, with all of their different job sites.

and invoicing and tracking their tools. Okay. And he's got a whole thing. Like basically it's their whole business. Yeah. That's right now kind of parceled out all over the place. And now they keep track of it on an app. And I think he's raised probably a million or so dollars because it doesn't take that one.

But it's a million or so dollars. He's got like seven or eight employees. Like he's been kicking ass ever since he got out. And this app has taken up. Dave, he's had multiple offers from other companies, trying to buy the app. There we go. And, of course, I'm thinking, you know, sell the app.

And he's like, no, no, no, it's more than that. So it's worth more than what they're offering. Yeah. You got this guys, these people are offering you $5 million, $10 million. No, no, no, no, this is big. You don't understand. Like, I don't understand. You're right.

He's amazing. And he thought, he wrote, he literally, how he designed his app. Yeah. Was the yellow. Yeah. The yellow, a legal paper. Yeah. Yeah.

Looking out of window. Yeah. Coming up with just plans. Yeah. It's either creative energy or destructive energy. It's one or the other. You get to decide. And you don't need to be in prison to decide this.

You decide this every day of your life, creative or destructive. I'll tell you, let me, I mean, we're six years since I was released now. And I had lots of plans, right? Lots of plans. But the one that I think mattered the most to me is the one that I thought the government took from me. This is interesting. I loved being a financial advisor. I love the idea of turning the light bulb home for a client.

I felt like I was a good teacher. I felt like I could really help people. And that's where I felt the most significance. Because all these thousands of agents that work for me, the reason they were successful is because I was teaching them what I was teaching the client. And they too became successful because they were simply replicating what I taught them, a system. So I thought that license, was forever taken.

And because of what happened with the government, I thought my very gift, the very thing that makes me feel significant has been revoked. It's like, I can't, what will I do? You know what I mean? That's the thought, right?

You've taken from me the very thing that makes me happiest professionally, right? And so in there grinding on that, I came up with the idea that, that may, it's not an app, but maybe I could take, my mindset and create the what we call a needs analysis where a client, if I interview a client, I have 27 questions I ask them so that I know what needs to be known to help you best.

And so I wrote those 27 questions down. All my agents over all the years used those same questions, but it was manual. It was like a fill in a blank thing. Yeah. knowing I could never do it again, meet with a client and do that, I would not be able to do that again, leaving prison as a fellow. I would not be able to do that. I thought, what if I automated it and put my mindset into those questions because those questions have meaning, like how much money you make and what your credit score is and how much you're saving and what's in your IRA and your 401k and your brokerage account, those answers tell me whether you're you're making, whether you're not. You're your position for retirement or not. Those answers tell me if you're going to make it or not financially.

Those answers have weight. So in prison, I wrote an algorithm, a mathematical algorithm that had every answer equal a score. And we call it financial score. Financial scoring today is a massive company that actually scores Americans all across the country. You can go right now, you get your score, get your financial score.com. Those same questions, every American can ask themselves and self-score. And then I connect those answers to a financial advisor who knows the score and what it means and how to help that client. I connect financial advisors now to clients who scored themselves all across the country.

And so that's the idea I came up with in the quiet hours of my incarceration because I thought it had been taken from me. And I wanted to make sure that the way I help a client could be done for every American, not just the ones I could get in front of. So that's what I was able to do, leaving. Financial scoring is a real business today, but lots of employees and lots of people, lots of revenue. And that's how I spent my time today. So the company, have you rebuilt like the agents that you? No, no, don't need the agents. What we have now are subscribers who subscribe to the platform that gives them access to what they do with a client. It's all digital with AI now.

So if you're a brand new insurance agent, just entering the career, you can basically have me with you at the appointment by just asking the questions and the AI spooled up in real time to give you the recommendations based on what the client's answer to the questions are. and then their score is spooling up to the right side of every question. So clients think, this is interesting, Matt, clients believe, no matter how much money they're making, you know, many clients make a lot of money, $50, $75,000 a month. You would think it's enough to be successful in retirement. But if you're 45 years old and you're going to retire in 20 years, let's say it's 65, you're going to live from 65 to 85 with no income stream other than Social Security and the investments you've managed to pile up.

It's a long time. It's a long time. Especially since they don't want to just sit at home, they'd like to be able to spend money. They'd like travel. They'd like to see the grandkids. They're going to probably not have the same house that's 30 years old. They're going to upgrade the house.

Probably going to replace the cars. Right. So people have this illusion that they're going to spend less money in retirement than they did during their working years. It's actually more money. It actually is more expensive in retirement. medical, all the medical bills. Plus, you do need new cars.

You can't just continue to have the 20-year-old car. Or it just keeps breaking down, breaking down. You're either paying for repairs or you're paying for payment. That's right. One of the two. You know what we're finding with scoring this is fascinating because we're letting customers score themselves now. Consumers are scoring themselves, Matt.

And when they score themselves, they're now without an advisor, they're scoring themselves. And they're realizing the guy who makes 50, thousand a month. That's a lot of money. He or she thinks that they're going to be cool at retirement. But you know what you're knocking at retirement? You spend less than you currently make. You're going to spend 35 to 50,000 a month in retirement. Do you how much money you have to have saved to be able to have that kind of money? You owe the IRS about 35% of what you bring in, including if it's your investment money. So as you start to withdraw from the 401k, half that money belongs to the IRS.

So if you need 5,000 a month to live, you've got to pull 10 out to give five to the IRS. It's not been taxed yet. Right. But they have Social Security. To pay the light bill and maybe the groceries. That's about what it pays. So we're finding lower scores than we thought we would see. The average American score is 68 at Financial Scoring.com.

68's the average score. We need you in the 80s and 90s. That means you're diversified right. Your risk is low. You're taxed efficiently. You're saving enough. We're not seeing many people at all in the 80s and 90s. They're all well below that.

And the people who take financial scoring and actually do the self-score, they think they're well off is why they're doing the score. Poor people don't do a financial score. It's like, who do you think does IQ tests online? What, smart people? Yeah, dummies don't do it. They know. They already know. They don't do the IQ test.

They know that the average IQ of a person who takes the IQ test is 128. Wow. Now, the average IQ is 100. 100 is the number. Right. But the average person who takes an IQ test is smart. Right. They're 128.

So dummies are not taking the IQ test. Same with financial scoring. People who are taking the financial scoring. are not poor. They're actually saving money, making money, paying off the house, got a good credit score. And so we're finding them surprised. That's what the comments are. We're surprised how low our score is.

So I think if the audience, I mean, you've got, you know, what, several million people that listen to your show, they should probably go. We have over a million subscribers. I'd like a couple million to watch this show. But Napa a nice. Is it a million two, three, three, four. What do you got to mean? So it's one point, it's one point two, but it's probably, we're honestly two months away from

probably being at one point three. We have one point three already on on Facebook. Okay. That's awesome. That's exciting. That's awesome. And that's an older, an older age bracket. Do you think, what do you, this would be interesting.

If they all went and scored themselves, what do you think the average score of your audience is? Oh, that's interesting. I think it's probably low. I think it's probably low because I hate to say this because I, I have, it's funny because I actually communicate with a lot of people. And a lot of those guys are like, you know, multi-millionaires. Sure.

But I'd say the bulk of the guys, because I read the comments, right? Yeah. These are truck drivers. These are guys driving forklifts. These are school teachers. School teachers. Yeah. Drywallers.

You know, blue collar people. Some of them are educated. But, you know, what's funny is that to me when you're in your late 20s, early 30s, or let's say in your 30s, 40s. Yeah. that one, what I hear people say, and I don't know why I've talked to Jess about this. I'm like, I literally would have people say, what kind of stocks you think I should buy? Like, I don't know anything about the fucking stock.

I don't give advice because I don't know anything about it. Yeah. So, but what's funny about that is while I talk to people about retirement is that they think, and I literally, they'll say this. They're like, well, I'm going to have Social Security. and I'm like, are you serious? Like, Social Security was a system that was set up, you know, what, 80, 70, 80 years ago. And it was, and it was designed for you to have paid for a house. Yeah. And so you have your vehicle paid off and a house paid off.

And that's really what it was, it was supplemental, right? Utilities. You're supposed to have four or five kids and some of those kids are going to contribute and help you. Like, this is not, if you're thinking, retirement is going to be there for you or help you. Like, you're sadly mistaken. The other thing is what people don't realize is the younger you are, if you invest young, you will have so much more. So the real purpose, the smartest thing to do is say, okay, do I wait till, because most people also wait until their late 40s before they start thinking about retirement. It's like, okay, bro,

now you're really going to, now you're really going to have to invest. Your crunch time. Yeah, it's crunch time. It's going to be tough. Has you thought about this in your late 20s or your 30s, you would have been putting away a few hundred dollars a month that now in your 50s, you have to put thousands. That's right. That's right. And thousands, and you're probably still not taking a lot of trips. Well, it's easy if you think about it in the doubling.

Like, how quick does it take for money to double? That first double is from $1 to $2. Not very big. Second double is 50%. I mean, I mean, that's 100%. That's huge. is $2. So two to four, still not significant. When you do that 20 times, that last double is a million 48,000. If you take a dollar and double it 20 times, the last double is a million

48. So if to your point, it seems almost impossible. It does seem impossible, but that's the numbers. So if you do it, like you suggested, in your 20s, it's that doubling at 65, 70, 75, we're several million dollars is now compounding. And you don't need to worry about things. Right. But if you didn't do it in your 20s, you're really in trouble. That's what we're seeing in the financial scoring. When you do, by the way, if you don't mind, I'm going to tell the audience,

get your financial score.com or get my financial score.com. Both will work. It's both the survey. It's free. Go there. Take the thing. Let Matt know in the comments where you stand. I want to know what your average audience is.

I want to know what the score is. The average American is 68. And we'll leave the link in the description box too. Perfect. Perfect. The average American is 68. Be interesting to see if there was a way. And maybe there's a way if they comment, maybe they can put a comment when they do it.

Because you can put a comment at the end of your survey. You put Cox. Cox sent me or whatever. Inside True Crime, whatever. And then we could do, I could give you some statistics on your audience. Right. Be fascinating. They could be better off.

Because it really isn't about schoolteacher versus rich guy in Silicon Valley. It's about how much of the income are they saving? Yeah. Because you're going to live, if you're a school teacher, you don't want to retire and live on half. You're going to retire and live on what you're used to living on. Right. So you've got to save enough to replace that income from 65 to 85. So that's what this is.

You're going to start immediately. The problem is most people think next year, next year, I'll be fine. When the kids are older. I'll do that. Like, bro, you could do, you could do so much, you could start now with so much less than you will have to start with in five or 10 years. That's right. And that's a problem.

Like, I'm too old. I'm going to die in poverty. It's fine. It is what it is fine. But yeah, if I was, if I, if, yes. Jess is going to be rich. Maybe she'll help me. Jess is going to be fine.

She'll be, she'll, she'll, she'll, she'll, she's locked. She's, yeah. I'll, I can probably stay in the shed. Stay at her place. With her new, her new husband. Right. They'll put me in the back in like a detached garage or something. In a grandpa apartment.

Yeah. Right. Right. I'm sure he'll be a nice guy. I don't mind having the whole guy in that check on him every couple days. Right. No, but you got it. And most people don't think about this until they're in their 40s, and sometimes even the 50s.

But they think, oh, God, I probably ought to think about retirement. And I think the reason we used to have pensions, Matt. People used to have a pension associated with their job. Yeah. Where you got a fixed amount of money based on the years. of work you did there. Well, that's all gone now. It's now 401ks and IRAs. And either you're plowing it away or it won't be there. Yeah. I mean, and guess what? We're not living less. We're living longer. So we've got people living and we're talking about my mom was 92. And they're living in

the 80. The 85 is about the average mortality right now. So you're talking about 20 years of a income that there's no job to support. You've got to have a pile of money big enough to feed those 20 years. So. And that's assuming, well, what is the assumption that you're going to be healthy the whole time? Because listen, my mom died. She was made, well, my mother was making about $80,000 to $90,000. This is with Social Security, with my father's pension, which doesn't exist. That's right. All those. Bringing about 90,000 had a, had a condo that was paid for in a retirement community paid for. And what's so funny, what's amazing about that is that when you pass away, they take that, by the way. Yeah. They take the condo.

They keep, people don't even realize how it works. I was in, I was shocked. Like, you just paid $350,000 for a condo that if you die in two days, they keep it. Or if you die in 30 years, they take it. Yeah, that's how they, that's how they have their staff and they're able to staff it. So she's living there. It's paid for. She's making $90 grand a year.

But the problem, and she had about a million dollars. Yeah. When she retired. Yeah. Right. So guess what? She did great. She's kicking ass. She's living an amazing life.

And then when she was. 87, no, 80, yeah, I think 86 or 87, massive stroke ends up in a wheelchair. Yeah. And that money over the next, suddenly it's 24 hours care. Yeah. They don't pay for that at the retirement. No, no, it's very expensive. Even though she got some subsidies, some, there was some, some help.

It was over $100,000 a year. Just in, no, it's a couple hundredth. It was like almost $200,000. It went in five or six years, that million, all the way down, literally when she died, we were in, we were, my sister, thank God, was talking about they were going to move her from her condo to the place where she'd be sharing a room with like four other people. Like a prison.

Yeah, yeah, but it was, it's not a prison. But a nursing home. Yeah, it's a nursing home, you know. Shared, shared housing. Right, because that's all we would be able to afford at that time. And it's like, oh, my God. I could not have imagined being able to retire in a better situation than my mother. Right.

But because she made the mistake of walking three miles a day and her heart was good. Yeah. She didn't die fast enough. Right. She lasted past the stroke. Into the 90s. Yeah. And man.

Those last seven years literally killed her. Yeah. And had she not passed away, she would have been stuck in a bed, in a room. in a room with three other people, miserable. Yeah. Yeah. And people, they don't even allow themselves to think that. No, this is the plight of most Americans.

Yes. What you just described is the plight of most Americans. And what we're trying to do, man, that's, that's, I'm so grateful that, you know, the government took a lot from me, but they didn't take my ability to solve this, solve these type of problems for people. Right. Which is, you know, why I'm able to still feel significant and feel like. like I've got something to contribute to society.

We're trying to score every American so they know early. I want the 20-year-old scoring themselves. I want them to know where they stand. I want them to know they're not ready. In your 20s, how easy. We're talking about a couple hundred bucks. A couple hundred bucks a month. Yeah.

If they saved a hundred a week, it would be crazy. You'd be a multimillionaire if saved a hundred a week. Saved a hundred a week. Shit. You'd be a multimillionaire if you saved a hundred a week. Conservatively. Not in cryptocurrency, not in SpaceX. Yeah, yeah.

just conservatively. You just have to start early, earlier than you think. How cocky would I have been if I knew I was going to be a multi-fucking million in my 20s by just throwing away 80, 100 bucks. That's it. Oh, I'd have been. 100 a week. You couldn't have been around me.

No. It had been way worse than that. It was tough. It was tough. It was already tough. Yeah. Right. Right. Hey, man.

It's been good, man. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. Thank you. I'm glad you. You came on. In a couple years. Yeah.

A couple years. I'm glad you came on a couple years ago. Yeah. Love you, brother. Thank you. I love you. Hey, you guys. Really appreciate you watching.

Do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button. Hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this. Also, we're going to leave all of James's socials in the description box. So you can click there, go there. He's got an Instagram. He's got Facebook. He's got all the social.

Also, we're going to leave James's website so you can go over there and you can take your final. financial scoring test. It's 13 questions. It takes all of 45 seconds so that you can know where you stand. It's a great tool. I love it if you guys would take it. Thank you very much. I really do appreciate it. Shoot on over there. See ya. My rec league goalie says he plays for the love of the game. You gave up six goals last week, Steve? Maybe play to win, huh? Like with Bet365, I get paid the second my team goes up big with early payout and can cash out at any time before the game ends. Come on, Steve.

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