Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - How Spencer Cornelia Went Broke Exposing Fake Guru's

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

How Spencer Cornelia Went Broke Exposing Fake Guru's

A lot of fake gurus exist in this gray area where they're big enough to make enough money to buy the lambos, the high-end properties, and flashy lifestyle to sell you on how you're going to get rich with them. But they don't make enough to really warrant the FTC to look at them. The legal game is really only for the wealthy and big corporations. If you're someone that makes 50 grand a year, let's just say the average income in America, like if you get sued, you're wiped out. But you still have to pay for a lawyer. I've spent $282,000 so far. Yeah, you want to talk about conmen, the legal industry. I want to be a slum lord. I want to have a hundred of these things. I want to be making a hundred to two hundred thousand dollars a month and I'm going to get a business card that says

slum lord on it. And when I'm driving around in my half a million dollar Bugatti, you could say there goes that slum lord. Hey, this is Matt Cox and I am going to be doing an interview. with Spencer Cornelia, which I'm sure everybody's familiar with, and we're going to be talking about just what got him into doing investigative reports and on scammers and YouTube and his background and what's going on with him right now, which is, I believe there's a basically a lawsuit that's happening right now. So check out the interview. Where, so I mean, just if you don't mind starting that kind of beginning, like, where were you born? Born in Kennesaw, Georgia?

which is a suburb of Atlanta, really nice suburb area. And so I grew up in Georgia, I lived there until, really, I graduated college from Georgia Southern University. I spent a year up in North Carolina playing baseball for Catawba College, small school. But I did graduate from Georgia Southern. Then I graduated a sport management degree. And that led me to down a wild path all the way out to Vegas. Oh, doing what? I was selling season tickets.

This was years ago. Yeah, I had a couple internships, and then I sold season tickets for the Houston Rockets. in Oakland Athletics. And then I changed careers in 2015 to tech. So I got into software engineering in 2015 when I was in Oakland and then got a job out here in Las Vegas, Nevada, where I am currently. All right. And what, so how did that progress to starting a YouTube channel?

Yeah, when I was in Oakland, I finally got the courage to start a channel. I haven't wanted to start one for a couple years. I loved YouTube back 2012, 2013. I saw it as like the next big thing. I was like, man, I got to get on this. And finally, 2015, I started a fitness channel. I was just doing fitness videos. And then I realized very quickly that I didn't have the skill set to match my competitors in that space at the time.

The bar was starting to get raised really high. And so I figured I could start making content about my coding boot camp. This was the boot camp I did in 2015 to learn software engineering. And so then I first started getting my 500 views on a video. People emailing me. I was like, oh, this is really cool. So I did that for a short period of time until it was over. Then I started doing videos about real estate and personal finance.

I didn't really have much to talk about. So my videos were kind of scarce. But then in 2019, when I started flipping houses, I realized that a lot of what you saw on YouTube and TV about real estate flipping, there was just so much they didn't share with you. And since I was going through, I was like, oh, I could talk about this. Like, I think there's shows that aren't doing a good job. And then there were seminars that I thought were scammy. And so that's where my mind was at at the time.

Then I saw this creator called CoffeeZilla, late 2019. and he was going after internet marketing gurus. And I felt like, oh, man, there's a niche here. I feel like I can give an objective look at a lot of these guys, see if they're as legit as they claim to be. Right. How long did you, how long did you flip houses for? Oh, I only did two.

I lost a lot of money out in Cincinnati. I can talk about all that can go wrong. And that's where I felt like these shows just made it so glossed over the reality. And I was running a meetup in Vegas at the time. Still am to this day. But I met so many beginners. A meetup? Yeah, just a real estate meet up and networking event.

Oh, okay. And I would meet people that were going to like fortune builders and some of these other programs and spending $10,000, $20,000 and at the end, still not moving forward in their real estate journey, but they would come to my networking events and they would learn just as much. And I was like, oh, man, I really do not like this form of education. So that's where my mind was at at the time. Well, I mean, all those, like I flipped a ton of house. Right? Like I flipped over 100. Oh, wow. That is a lot. Yeah. Well, I was in Tampa. So I own a mortgage company and I was flipping houses. And I don't know. You know anything about me? Yeah, yeah. I saw the concrete interview a couple of years back. Oh, okay. So, you know, I was flipping houses. And then even when I was, even when I took off, well, you know, after I lost my mortgage company, you know, I got in trouble and lost a mortgage company. I was, then I was flipping houses. And then I was flipping houses. And then I was, even when I was, even when I took off. Well, you know, you know, after I was, I was

houses all the time, too. But of course, that was fraudulent. But even when I was on the run, I was still flipping houses. Like, it was like something to do. You're like a profitable addict. Yeah. Yeah, if you can make money while being high on cocaine. Well, I'm going to keep doing it. I was, I don't even know that I was, I wasn't trying to do it to make money, but it was like, you know, like, let's face it, when you fix up a house and you sell it or you fix it up and you, you get, you step back and you look at it. You're like, wow. Like I, you feel it happening. Yeah. You know, like when they put in the new, you know, you do some drywall, you put in the new, uh, the new hardwood floors or it's a great feeling. So, and it was, it was fun to do. And it, of course, it worked to my advantage because, you know, I had, I was able to get a loan on anything. So I'm able to get it alone. I know I'm going to sell. I know I'm not going to lose money, which takes away all the anxiety. Um, but it's funny too because you watch these TV shows. And anybody, Grant Cardone, any, anybody. Grant Cardone, any of these guys and it's just like come on like you share like 20% of what you need to know right and it's

always like when i was locked up i i caught a real estate class for about 10 years and you know i would sit down and everybody wanted to flip houses and i would say listen i can't tell you how many times i bought a house for $50,000 i put $20,000 into it i sold it for $100,000 and everybody sitting there like shaking their head like right right and i'm like listen and you think i made $30,000 you know i'm like that's not what happened like you know the end you start explaining you know i'm giving people their part of their down payment or i'm paying their closing costs or you know or i'm i'm i'm also giving them you know an upgrade on on you know uh maybe a client's yeah exactly you know you're doing all of the extra things that are happening and and then it it sounds great

sounds like it happened in two months but it took almost six months and you don't talk about the time that the guy fell off the roof or how many kids through rocks through windows or how much time you had to file insurance complaint or insurance claims because someone stole two air conditioning units and you know you you don't all of that by the time you're done you kind of go this is insane and if you think you're going to make $30,000 and you make 20 you've probably spent in your mind 35 like you really feel like you got screwed out of a bunch of money and you and honestly you put in so much work even if you you're not doing the work yourself and it's not glamorous like the TV shows you know that it's like

exactly it's horrible and i used to always tell guys look unless you can be doing five or six of these at the same time and really know what you're doing like you're just you're just not going to make any money at this you know it's well and the problem is the risk the the upside is maybe 15 20k profit each deal especially if you're first starting you're lucky to break a profit but the downside risk is so great because if things go wrong, you're holding debt on multiple hundreds of thousands potentially. And so like you could get foreclosed on. You could lose money, a huge money in rehab if someone screws up and you got to redo it. The downside risk is far greater than the upside in my If you have a few hundred thousand sitting aside and perfect credit so that if things go bad,

you can refinance yourself out of the house and rent it out. Like there are some people that are in a situation that they can turn even a bad situation into at least a semi-winning situation where they rent it out for a few years and in three years from now they then sell the property right you know there's sometimes you could take that it's a losing situation that i've got myself into but i can i can still rent it out for a few years and yeah time will get you back in the black right but for the most part no it's it's it's it's a horrible horrible situation it's and let's face it in the end people are like oh well yeah i don't i don't have to do the work no no you're going to do some work you're there's going to be at some point there's going to be things that

just not meeting up you're i can't say i'm listen i remember i was married to my first wife i got her her whole family and a couple of my buddies and we had to go through the grass and pick up glass i mean inch by inch by inch because i'd failed two inspections because there was literally whoever had the house before me you know they just broken glass out of the windows or they'd thrown glass so there was just huge shards of glass Wow. How are you going to hire? You can't hire anybody for that.

Mm-hmm. What do you do? That's your Sunday afternoon. You know, there's just all kinds of stuff. I had a guy pour a driveway one time and some got into an argument with some guys on the street and just got frustrated. It got to basically like a fist fight, got into the truck and left. He left the, he didn't even smooth out the driveway completely. So you had raw lumps of aggregate all throughout the driveway.

Yeah, and think of that cost. What am I supposed to do? Yeah, it gets huge. It adds up and adds up. I just keep going and going and going. But yeah, it is. It's rough and they make it look so good. And it's just a horror.

You really need to have construction experience. You need to have some kind of a financial background, at least understand. you know basic lending you need to have a couple of hard money lender guys you should have some money in the in the at least a chunk of money in the bank when things don't close on time and don't go well yeah i basically hired the wrong contractor and found out at the end it was the whole long story but yeah things went south lost a lot of money um so then you you you did some videos or you did some stuff on that

and then you got in, you met CoffeeZilla? I watched him on YouTube. Yeah, watched them on YouTube and then I started releasing a series called Authentic or Charlottetan which is I just wanted to do a deep dive

into influencers, creators running these big ad budgets. I just was curious if they were, and it was personal curiosity at the time too because I was a much smaller creator. I had no subscribers, maybe 200 or 300 at the time. And so you could be,

you could venture into whatever niche you want because you don't have an audience. And so I was like, oh, this interests me. So I started making videos on the topic. And right away, I saw that there was interest in it. And I just started reviewing these guys. I was like, they don't cross me as legit. They're like when you say like, Dan Locke was the first one.

He's this like business guru, presents himself as a sales training guru. He started looking into his past. It's like the only real business he ran was he might have been like an affiliate marketer or a copywriter for a year. And then he realized you jump on the guru train. You make a million selling a guru course. and now all of a sudden you're a business expert. Robert Kiyosaki was the next one.

Ty Lopez. A lot of these guys. Using forgeries and bogus identities, Matthew B. Cox, one of the most ingenious con men in history, built America's biggest banks out of millions. Despite numerous encounters with bank security, state, and federal authorities, Cox narrowly, and quite luckily, avoided capture for years. Eventually, he could.

topped the U.S. Secret Service's Most Wanted list and led the U.S. Marshals, FBI, and Secret Service on a three-year chase, while jet-setting around the world with his attractive female accomplices. Cox has been declared one of the most prolific mortgage fraud con artists of all time by CNBC's American Greene. Bloomberg Business Week called him the mortgage industry's worst nightmare, while Dateline NBC described Cox as a gifted forger and silver-tonged liar. Playboy magazine proclaimed

his scam was real estate fraud and he was the best. Shark in the housing pool is Cox's exhilarating first-person account of his stranger-than-fiction story. Available now on Amazon and Audible. Robert, have you ever read Rich Man, Poor Man?

Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Yeah, it's a great book. It's a great book. Yeah, but honestly, the real estate, some of the stuff in real estate, like, it doesn't work. Like what you're saying doesn't. Oh, yeah. Yeah, his whole thing about buying on credit card, you could use a credit card for the down payment. I'm like, what lender would completely miss the fact that you're using credit as a down payment?

Well, first of all, you do understand that the fourth page of the 10 or three, the borrower loan application, one of the qualifying questions, that's punishable by, I think, up to five years in prison is, is any part of your down payment borrowed? If you said, if you say yes, well, then, okay, well, then we're done. Yeah, not getting the loan. If you say, no, well, now you've committed a felony. Mortgage fraud, right? Bank fraud, yeah.

Bank fraud, yeah. You know, listen, I could go through, I went through that book with a couple of guys. They're like, bro, you read this, you read this? I'm like, no, I haven't read it. They're like, check it out, listen to this. and they started going over it, and I was picking it apart. First of all, you have to have your down payment in the bank, depending on the lender, between 60 and 90 days.

So if you borrowed that money on a credit card now, and you're lying about it, unless I say you can't get away with it. Yeah. You know, so one, that's not correct. The other thing he talks about is buying a house like every year or two. Well, if every, and putting down like 5%, if you're putting down 5% on a house every year or two, then you're telling the lender,

you're buying this house as an owner-occupied property, not an investment property. I mean, there's so many different frauds that he commit. Interesting. I'd have to go back and reread it because I did enjoy a lot of the book. But anyway, my criticism, him is that my main criticism was that he was running these seminars. Are you familiar with the seminar business? It's kind of dead at this point because enough people have gotten slammed from it. But it was the scammiest thing.

You go out for a one-day pass that's free, of course. You get to learn all the secrets. and it's just an upsell into the weekend. They just happen to be there the next week, too, so they're going to upsell into the mentorship. And it's just a constant upsell, but the entire premise is that you're taking, you're extracting as much value

from the customers as you can before you give any type of value. I mean, once you know real estate, you can sit up on stage and say, I bought a house for $150,000, renovated it for $20, and sold it for $100. I made $30,000. And I did that 10 times last month.

And here's pictures of me at the vacation. And here's me. going to Miami and then here's the nice cars, you can make it look like there's so much money to be made and it's so easy. And everyone gets hyped because it's like the most, the most surface level of information. And if you keep it at that, then it hypes people up. Oh, you get the real secrets at the next thing, right? And then he was running these seminars. Dean Graziosi's another one. I despise anyone who participated in this stuff. I was going to say, do you, I forget the guy's name. He used to, he used to work. No, no. It was a corpus.

No, this was 30 years ago. He was one of those guys who was like, I was making, you know, $10,000 working out of a one-bedroom apartment. He ended up killing himself. He ended up getting like some prison time and killed himself. Like he didn't want to go to jail for two or three years. But there was another guy that used to do this whole thing on buying a house. Like, you know, you buy a house with nothing down. And no credit.

And guys would always ask me that in the class. Like, is that true? and I'd go, I've flipped probably roughly around 100 houses or so. And I said, and I have actually bought two houses with no money down. They were like, are you serious? I'm like, yes, yeah, here's what happened. And I'm like, legally, here's what happened. I had a hard money lender that had lent me money five or six times.

I'd never not paid him, always paid him on time, always got the money back very quickly. He was very happy. he called one day I actually spoke to my business partner and my business partner wasn't interested in the deal and then I said what's going on and he said oh that was the guy's name was Larry Baylam

and I said let me what is it and so he called I called them back he said I got two houses I foreclosed on he said I'm trying to get rid of them I said let me go look at him I went and looked at him I came back and I realized that the houses were extremely close to an area called Old Hyde Park

and although the houses weren't in great shape They were within half quarter of a mile to a half a mile of Old Hyde Park. So I knew they could appraise really high. My business partner didn't know that. He didn't understand how appraisals were. So I went, you know, here's what I'll do. I said, I'm willing to take them off your hands. And he said, I want $40,000 for both of them.

I said, I'm willing to take you off their hands. Take them off of your hands. I'll buy this one for $40. This one for $30. You have to owner finance both properties, 100%. And he went, okay, we go to closing. And because, and I don't know how it is in your county, but in Hillsborough County, taxes are paid in rears. So if during a certain point of the year, you have to get money back. So I actually went to closing and got back a check for like, I walked away with a couple hundred bucks. I walked away with a couple hundred dollars. The one that I got them to go from 40 to 30, I stuck on the MLS, sold it before the first payment was. do, made, didn't make a bunch of money. I made whatever, like six, six or seven thousand dollars.

I forget exactly what it was. I actually paid a real for a couple grand to put it on MLS. The second one I renovated, refinanced, and then ended up selling it. So those are the only two deals. And I was like, but you have to understand the amount of confidence this guy had in me and trust, you know, that he had in me because I built that relationship. That's not going to happen by you just calling people or walking and you're not going to talk somebody into a hundred percent. financing. But people pitch that whole, all you got to do is convince him of this. Like, stop it, man. It's not that easy. Right, right. You guys make 10,000 phone calls to find one if you're lucky to find one. If you're lucky to find one. And even then, so even if the guy owner financed

the house for nothing down, you're probably upside down on the house. Right, right. Yeah, there's going to be some type of quirk. A house that needs major renovations. I've actually done a seller finance deal out here in Vegas. It's a fourplex. They're great if you can find them. Was it a 20,000 financing? No, no. No, not quite. $20,000 down. Bought it for $2.60 and it was worth about $300. So it was a good deal, for sure.

But you still need $20,000 down. Needed a few grand for closing. Well, you might need to renovate it. You might have a few grand reserves just in case. Yeah, it's not a joke. So, I'm sorry. Anyway, go ahead. So you went through a couple of these guys.

Yeah, it was pretty clear that the interest was there. At this time, I was still making videos on other topics. Because I've always wanted to branch out. I never wanted to just be like an exposed guy or some guy talking crap about other people. So I try to make videos on interesting topics as well. But it was pretty clear that the interest was there. And I felt like it was a need. Once I started making those videos, people would reach out to me in emails and they, oh, thank you so much for talking about this. You got to look into this person. He's scamming this person, scamming that person. And over the next year or so, I realized that that's kind of the need, the product market fit, if you will, from my style of content and what I can make and what the market demands. And felt like it was a good service for the public because I felt like there were a lot of people taking advantage of others. And a lot of fake gurus exist in this gray area where they're, they're big enough to make enough money to buy the Lambos, the high-end properties and flashy lifestyle to sell you on how you're going to get rich with them. But they don't make enough to really warrant the FTC to look at them. They're not big enough on their radar.

You know, these guys can make $2 million a year. And that seems like a lot of money, which it is. That's good money. But that's so irrelevant for some government authority, some little shithead on TikTok to make an 850,000 a year, but they're screwing over everyone. Well, and the other thing is that they kind of have it out. You know what I mean? Like, they know what they're saying is bullshit. Right. But they've provided the literature.

They've told the people up front. And then they can always shift it too. It's always, well, did you do this? What did you do this? And then it's like, well, you just don't know what you're doing then. They put the responsibility on the person, yeah. You screwed up somehow. I did it.

It's like, so now you're making this guy feel like, you know, like Grant Cardone will tell you you're a loser. Well, you're just a loser. It's like, are you serious? Yeah. So that's how, that's how a lot of these guys are selling. They use really hard sales tactics. And so anyway, I've tried to make a lot of videos about Ponzi schemes and fraud.

And I always wanted to have an element of education too. So my favorite videos are where there's some type of scam or fraud and I can tell you how to avoid it or at least share how to avoid it. So a lot of my biggest videos have been about sports better. this industry is popping off right now because sports spending has become legalized federally. And so you have all these guys that are going to teach you how to get rich betting on sports or realistically by paying them for their picks, for their expert picks. But anyone who knows the casino industry knows that these guys literally have a 0% chance

of winning, especially all it takes is about two seconds to looking at what they do. And they're charging significant amounts of money. And people are, of course, I mean, the flashy lifestyle is right in front of them. What is more flashy than the casino? know, you can pay a guy $1,500, you put $10,000 on a game, and he calls it a lock. I got the lock of the century, you know, we're going to win tonight. You can give the guy $1,500, you put down 10 on a bet, and you make 10 back. That's an instant ROI.

In three hours, you doubled your money, all for $1,500. Yeah, but there's no, but the guy pickings, there's no downside. Right, of course. Yeah, he doesn't, he's not placing the bets. He's just, he's just saying who to pick. Did you ever see the movie, two for the money? Absolutely, yeah, Matthew McConaughey. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, those guys are all over Vegas, and they're popping up now because this industry is blowing up. And so the amount of people, the amount of interest in sports betting has gone through the roof. It was always huge illegally. Now that it's public, these guys can go all over Instagram and share how much, quote unquote, how much money they're making. Really, it's from selling the picks. And it's a grotesque amount too. In some ways, I have to respect the hustle. Like, man, you made so much money, but a lot of people actually. believe it. Yeah. I always thought to myself, like if you're making so much, the guys that do the seminars, it's like, if you're making so much money, why are you teaching a seminar? Yeah,

teaching all the competition. Yeah, I think in real, there's enough money to be made in real estate that I don't think that totally applies. But yeah, you're never going to give away like the real secrets. Like you might give away 80%, but the 20% that kind of gets you over the hump, like the little things here and there on how you find deals or how you manage contractors, probably going to keep to yourself. Yeah, but I mean, having done it so many times myself, like, what is the real secret? I mean, the real secret is you, you just have to have a lot of knowledge. Like, you have to have some experience in. The ability to find a deal. That's going to be probably, because anyone, anyone could figure out how to flip a house. You just talk to a girl in your life. Most of them

have great design experience. They could walk through a house, like, get put here, put the paint here. And like, for the most part, you can get 80% right. I think most of us know how to at least design a house in the most rudimentary level. Just look at Zillow, look at the house down the street and do exactly what they did. But it's finding the deal and getting those numbers right. And of course, qualifying for a loan. You're a mortgage guy. It's not like a lot of these guys presented as it's so easy to just go get a loan.

I mean, you don't just show up to a lender and he goes, oh, yeah, I'll just lend you money on this house. Now, they're going to underwrite the deal. They're going to underwrite you if it's your first time. So that's another variable as well. Yeah. Well, yeah, you always love the guys that like they don't have, they've been on, or they quit their job to do this. You quit the, yeah, I'm going to go to the bank,

and you quit your job, you're going to go to the bank, you think they're going to lend you money. Yeah, I'm going to flip houses. I'm going to stop, stop. That's not going to. And then I don't have a money to credit. You don't have enough money.

You can't prove that you can make the payments. Right. But when I tell the house, stop. You have no experience flipping houses. You know, so. Anyway, I try to be the guy that is, I try to be kind of like the middleman, where you've got popular influencers and you've got the general public.

I try to just be the middleman. I never wanted to be the guy that's just, like, ruining people's reputation. I just wanted to look at something, mostly the marketing and advertising used in the guru space. I wanted to look at that, analyze it, and present it as an educational moment to the general audience, just saying, hey, this is why you should stay away from this, or this is what you need to look out for. Here's what you need to avoid. I did the best I could. So, so great, you're doing great and everything's over, and then that's it.

We're done, right? I mean. Not quite. No, I'm still in the space. Coming on. Yeah. It's all worked out. No, we're just getting started, my friend.

Bailout is a psychological true crime thriller that pits a narcissistic con man against an egotistical, pathological liar. Marcus Schrenker, the money manager who attempted to fake his own death during the 2008 financial crisis, is about to be released from prison, and he's ready to talk.

He's ready to tell you the story no one's heard. Shrinker sits down with true crime writer, Matthew B. Cox, a fellow inmate serving time for bank fraud. Shrinker lays out the details, the disgruntled clients who persecuted him for unanticipated market losses, the affair that ruined his marriage, and the treachery of his scorned wife, the woman who framed him for securities fraud, leaving him no choice but to make a bogus distress call and plunge from his multi-million dollar private aircraft in the dead of night. the $11.1 million in life insurance, the missing $1.5 million in gold. The fact is, Shrinker wants you to think he's innocent.

The problem is, Cox knows Shrinker's a pathological liar and his stories of fabrication. As Cox subtly coaxes, cajoles, and yes, Khan's Shrinker into revealing his deceptions, his stranger-than-fiction life of lies slowly unravels. This is the story Shrinker didn't want you to know. bailout the life and lies of marcus shrinker available now on barns and noble etsy and audible so what um so how's it going yeah uh it's an interesting space to be in i've i've made a lot of videos and uh i've made a few enemies unfortunately um i want to say i've interviewed him shoot he's in you might know he's

He does the seminars, or he does a channel. His last name is Wint, I think. Okay. I can't believe I can't remember his name. Shoot. Anyway, I wish Tyler was here. He would remember. Anyway, he does the, like, he actually goes out to the seminars and videos them and

he's been sued and sued. And then actually took his channel down for like six months. Always Marco? No, not always Marco. I've interviewed him too. Okay. He's in Canada, right? I'm not sure.

No, this guy's in the UK. God, I can't believe I can't remember it. It's something like, it's not Mark Wynn. Mike, win it. Mike, thank you. Thank you. I interviewed him and he was like, listen, he said, you know, personally, he said, like, you have no idea the amount of lawsuits, threats, letters that he gets from these guys.

He's like, I mean, you're threatening their livelihood. So he said, and he, he, that's why he kind of took his channel down for like six months and just restarted, and now he's doing a much more benign version of his old investigations. Yeah, unfortunately, and this is what happens is these guys can leverage legal matters. And here in the United States, it's so easy to silence criticism because the legal game is really only for the wealthy and big corporations. As I'm going through it my first time, I don't know how, if you're someone that makes 50 grand a year, let's just say the average income in America, like, if you get sued, you're wiped out.

completely wiped out. There's no way to defend yourself in a costly legal matter unless you somehow figure out a way to, if the lawsuit is just a simple, simple frivolous case that can only be held in state court and it only needs 20 grand of litigation. But even then, like, there's some studies showing that the average American can't afford a couple grand, or, you know, $500, whatever the studies are, $500 on your car payment or an unexpected $1,000 bill would wipe out 60% of America. I mean, $1,000, that's what a lot of lawyers start at that. That's like the, a two hours of their time. I was going to say, yeah, unless you want to try to fight it yourself, which means you basically

have to put yourself through law school. Yeah, a couple of people have reached out to me about that. And I have massive respect for anyone doing that, but I just don't think that's a reasonable option. I mean, the law's legal field is just so full of complex terminology. And at the end of the day, you still need to win. Yeah. The risk is still there.

I can sue anyone for $5 million. And if they don't defend themselves, I could theoretically win a default judgment. So at the end of that, you still have to defend yourself to the best of your ability because you don't want the judgment. So what happened in the case that you're facing? In December 2020, I started receiving a lot of messages on YouTube comments about a popular guru named Derek. At the time, I was still doing the series called Authentic or Charlottin. I would give an objective look at popular gurus, and I was receiving a lot of messages about people, and that's how I would dictate who I would make a video on.

So I'd received enough about him, and I figured, Oh, that'd be interesting to cover this guy. And there was another YouTuber name John Anthony Lifestyle, real name John Mulvill, who was making videos about this number guy. And John had personal experience with Derek. And he was a former intern at a company Derek worked out as well. So I figured this is a perfect source because I can interview him and get the truth about this guy. And so I interviewed John for two videos.

One released December 2020, another release February 2021. So we're talking over two years ago, two and a half years ago. And I essentially interviewed John. he shared a lot of a lot of information that he was given from sources connected to being former employees, former customers of his. And we essentially just used the emails that we were given and sent. And I interviewed John. John said things in the interview. And Derek believed that some were defamatory. And so he filed the lawsuit against me, June of 2021. Bizarre, right? I'm a platform. I didn't say anything. Yeah, I literally did not say anything. I mean, even in the

deposition, my attorneys ask, please show where my client said anything defamatory. And his response is, well, he published the video. Thankfully, I have not, I am not held, I will not be held liable for anything defamatory, because I just didn't say anything. And everything that was said could be corroborated to some degree. And so we had reason to believe everything was true. I mean, our sources were clients, customers. We alluded to public court records. And, yeah, unfortunately, I was the one that got sued. And I'm still in litigation right now. I mean, it's insane how long it takes. I mean, when you say you're still in litigation, I mean, so it hasn't gone, it hasn't gone to trial.

They haven't. Correct. Correct. It has not concluded. Yeah, we filed all our dispositive motions end of March of this year. So it took quite a while. He eventually sued John Mulvahill. So we're co-defendants in the case. And we're now in a waiting period. We're awaiting the judge's decision to either dismiss the case or determine that it needs to go to trial. I'd be shocked if it goes, a trial personally. I mean, I think this is such a frivolous case. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, what about, you know, what about your First Amendment right to? Yeah, I mean, thankfully, thankfully, there's nothing in the case that alludes to me possibly being liable for defamation. I mean, if the judge wakes up that morning and adheres to the law to the best of his ability, I don't see any possible way that he looks at my case and determines that it needs to go to trial. We thankfully went through a bunch of discovery. We found a lot of things about Derek and, uh, I feel very strongly that this case will get dismissed.

So, but you still have to pay for a lawyer. I've spent $282,000 so far. Yeah, you want to talk about con men, the legal industry. Yeah, it's a big stomach punch. Of course, many people have reached out and said, I've gotten screwed. This is my first time, so I don't know. I don't know if that's an accurate amount, if that was me getting taken for a ride. The problem with lawyers is by your attorneys?

Yeah, of course, because they're they billed by the hour. So complete conflict of interest, right? Of course they're going to keep billing you. And I don't know what emails were necessary, how much strategy was necessary. I mean, when you hire people and they need to look more into the case, what does that mean if they spend three hours? Well, at their rate, four or five hours is a significant amount of money to me. Wow. Yep. So very, very costly. And in my time, we're sitting here May 29th. It's still on my mind. I got sued June of 2021. This is coming just a shy of two years that it's been on my mind. And the first six months were fine. I didn't expect it to get this, to be like this. And so the first six months weren't much. But really, the last like 16 months have been absolutely brutal on my mental health. Thankfully, I've been able to earn enough money where I've been able to get to this point not being bankrupt. But over the last six months, my income has dived probably 90%.

And my legal bills were still, I mean, I was paying about four times per month. I was paying four times more than I was making. If you can imagine that, that's a liquidity crunch weight in a habit. Yeah, yeah, I was going to say that doesn't, that can't last long. Is your video still up? No, no, no, no. I took it down right away. June of 2012, I received an email from his attorney just saying, hey, we believe that some things were defamatory in the video.

I said, no problem, I'll take the video down. The thing is, the thing that upsets me the most is the plaintiff in this matter did not ever reach out to me. He never emailed me and just said, hey, I believe some things were wrong in your video. Do you want to interview me? The new Bimo, V.I. Porter MasterCard is your ticket. to more, more perks, more points, more flights, more of all the things you want in a travel rewards card, and then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMO ViPorter MasterCard and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit bemo.com slash

ViPorter to learn more. Clear the air, which I absolutely would have done because I'm all about truth and finding the truth. He never reached out to me and just said, hey, can you take the videos down? He just immediately went to a lawsuit. He has no interest in being reasonable in this case. I was going to say, like, you know, some of these guys, they have so much money. They essentially have a lawyer on staff. And it's almost like it's something for him to do. Yeah, it's a business expense because when you make, he makes significant money selling courses. He sells $5,000 courses and with real estate investing in how to beat the stock market, which I would be curious about your opinion on all these guys because you've seen it all, I'm sure.

But one of the claims we made is we had a guy who essentially was hired to create the course, his real estate course. And he told us privately that he is aware that a 19 year old kid in a foreign country just Google searched how to real estate invest. And that's what was the, that was the components of a $5,000 real estate investing course. Someone who's in the real estate space. I actually have my own course on real estate investing. I've hosted a meet up here in Vegas for seven years, all for free, I've mentored a lot of people. I love this community. I love the real estate space. It's so collaborative. It's so community, with community driven. And yet I see, when I see guys try to sell $5,000 courses, and they don't even invest in real estate. When I,

when I was first sued, we did a check, like a background check on this guy. Couldn't find any real estate he owned. He eventually owned. He owns about eight condos now. So he does own real estate today. But when he first sued me, he didn't own any real estate. So it's just, it just, It's so frustrating that these guys can get away with what they get away with. And I'm just the guy trying to make videos on it. And unfortunately, I've gotten hammered with one lawsuit. Have you ever done it? You've never done anything on Grant Cardone?

Not really. I try to stay away from speculation. If someone came to me and showed his mortgage loans, which I have received an email showing, I think at least three properties of his are in trouble, meaning they're underwater right now and he might be in trouble in next couple years, then I could make a video if someone was willing to allow me. to show that publicly, but I try to stay away from videos like I'm speculating that he's committing fraud because I don't have the full proof that he is or isn't. I really try to wait until

something breaks. That's, I think, where I might be different than other people is I do my best to wait until there's some new story that I can react to unless I have inside information on something. So to answer your question, no, I have not. Okay, so you're waiting for the judge. For Cardone, or for my case, for your, yeah, we were told six months is probably an expected wait time. Could be longer, could be shorter. That would put us September, October, November. And, yeah, that's going to be a big day when, because basically, are you familiar with SLAP lawsuit, SLAPP?

I thought that was basically when someone doesn't even put up a fight. No, so a slap case is, slap stands for strategic litigation against public protection. And this is a new motion put into the court system, I think recently. Not all states have it, but it's essentially used for people that are trying to leverage the legal system and bully critics. Because for the longest time, you could. If you had enough money, you could just shut someone up. If they write something in the newspaper or they put out a video being critical of your operation, you could just sue them and shut them up. Well, a slap lawsuit is essentially what this is. So there was a motion, an anti-SLAP motion, which we filed.

Thankfully, Nevada has a very strong anti-SLAPP motion, and that allows us to get our attorney's fees back in the event that the judge grants it. And so that's like the big moment, which he should, because this is the epitome of a slap lawsuit, someone who's just filing a lawsuit trying to sound criticism. I mean, think about this. The way I word this is that here's a guy who is a big influencer, who's probably spent double what I have because he's had to pay his lawyers.

He has to pay for the lawsuit against the other. guy. And in the event that the anti-slap is granted, he's going to have to pay for my legal fees. So this could be a $500,750,000 decision for him. So he has to, he has that risk on his plate. So he's willing to put up that risk to silence me. So what, what am I sharing that he's willing to put up half a million or more to silence me? Right. You think of how valuable that is. Right. Um, thankfully what he's got exactly what he wants too, because now someone starts to look into him, they're going to see videos like this. Yes. Thank you. hey, this guy will sue you. Right, and they'll stay away, which is exactly what a slap lawsuit is.

It is strategic litigation to avoid public participation to criticism. It's very, very, very unfortunate. And YouTube is not, a lot of YouTubers aren't businessmen. We're not running a million dollar business where we have a lawyer on retainer and it's just part of running a business. A lot of us are sitting in a studio. We might make decent money, but if you make 100 grand a year, that's good money. But if someone comes at you with a huge expensive lawsuit, that might really damage you to the point where you just stay away from criticizing that one person, which is exactly what slap lawsuits do. I don't want to criticize him.

I think he's doing great work. I think he's doing God's work. Yeah. It's just about people helping people. That's what it's about. Okay. So what else is happening? Yeah, that's what you're working on.

That's been my biggest challenge. I do have a real estate portfolio. I've got four houses out here in Las Vegas. So I've got an Airbnb and then three rent by room. So I do with a house hacking strategy. That's what my course is in, which is basically rent by the room. So I have 18 tenants that I manage plus an Airbnb. So my net cash flow is about three or four grand a month.

That's been covering my personal expenses for the longest time. And then now I'm trying to figure out kind of the next strategy for YouTube, kind of figure out how to grow, how to get back into the positive momentum. I was going to say, what's going on with your channel? you're not so you you weren't you didn't continue to post videos after this or no no i have been i have been um it's just my upload frequency has dropped quite a bit i've been i've been burn out for over a year easily um but unfortunately with the pressure of the legal fees i've been kind of forced into making videos non-stop and so i i just haven't stopped

um i started to go fund me recently which helped tremendously which is like the biggest blessing in in the world it's allowed me to slow down a little bit but uh yeah i essentially started uploading about one video a week as a put i used to do three and i think i think interest in this niche has dried up a little bit or the the barrier to get views as as increased because there's a lot of great creators now and so i used to get 100 000 views 2021 i was getting 100 000 views by posting really any video i didn't even need a great thumbnail a great title or for it to be a great video i could i'd get 100 150 000 200 000 views and getting that many views i could make enough from ad sense to to to make 10 15 20 grand a month and then some sponsors for to come in

I'd be thrilled with 100,000 views. Yeah, it was great. But now it's just, my videos are objectively better now than they were a year, two years ago. However, just the competition is so much greater on YouTube such that now I'm getting 50,000 views. Well, I'm just not making enough to justify the expenses in order to make this style content. So I'm just trying to figure out what the next move is. She said rent by the room. Yeah.

I think that's a slightly disrelevant. respectful term, which I'm not, I'm not insinuating that that's your, that's why you use that word. But yeah, it's not really that. I live in nice houses. I live in nice houses. I live in a nice suburb. And I have a pretty good opportunity for affordable living. I mean, I listen, I actually have two videos about rooming houses. Nice. Nice. I just, I've had, I've had a few people like who try to disrespect me. Oh yeah. They use that term. You're slum lord. You're just renting to slum. You're just like, you're, it's disrespectful of my tenants. Anyway, I didn't mean to insinuate that's what you were saying it. But I'll put with tenants. You can't offend me.

Yeah, okay, good. You know, think about it. You got to think about all the things I've been through. Yeah. I can't be offended. Good. Good. I wish more people had that.

I used to have a correctional officer when I would go to visitation, ask me to strip naked, turn around, spread my cheeks and cough. Like, I can't be offended. I'm beyond that. call anything. Good. Good. Good. Um, no, I used to say even in the video I mentioned, I said, I talk about the, the negative connotation of the word rooming house. I'm like, so if it makes you feel warm and fuzzy, what you need to do is call them eco-sweets or we could call them microloft or, um, you know, eco-units or I'm like, like, you can call them, well, you can make it sound trendy, you know, but in the end, that's what it is. And there's nothing. wrong with that? Like, if the place is, like, I'm not talking about buying a piece of junk in the middle of, you know, the hood that's, that where the roof is linking, not that I haven't owned those. But, you know, because that's actually the first, the way I got into renting rooming houses because what I owned were slums. They were horrible because I bought them that way. Like, I actually,

one time I bought a house, it was a house and a duplex on two lots. Oh, nice. And I mean, 14 rooms. That's a home run for me. But it was, it was, it was, it was a horrible neighborhood. And I only bought them because we were planning on scraping them off the lot and putting into new houses. So I went to the closing and it was an old Cuban guy. He'd owned the place for 40, 50 years.

And so we signed and everything. I had never been in a house. I drove by the house. But we were built, we owned houses all around there and we were building new house. houses. So anyway, and he said, you want to follow me? And I went for what? He said, well, it's rent day. I'll introduce you to everybody. You can collect the rent. And I went, I said, that's right. This is a rooming. These are rooming houses. And he's like, yeah, yeah, come. I was like, all right. So I went out there and I collected about 1,100 bucks, 1,200 bucks,

because these places ran out for like 75 bucks a week. But one guy, we, yeah, one guy had given me, gave me like $350, that was his social security check because he got social security disability because he had some mental issue. They, everybody said he, we, they called him two face. They said he was, he had, um, schizophrenia. He had like a double personality. They said he's, he, you never knew who you were talking to. And I was like, okay, well, I don't, bizarre. I'm not going to have that much, uh, that much, um, interaction with him. But he gave me a check for like 300. It was like 350 or 375. And he said he only gives that once, once a month.

That's it. I was like, okay, so he gave me that. I ended up getting like $1,100. And when I walked out of there with the check and close to, you know, the combination of that check and everything else was cash. And I went to the guy, I said, you're telling me that you get this every week. He said, almost every week. He said, I get about $1,000 a week.

Wow. And I went, I remember walking back to the guy. I bought the house, but to the guy, I had a development company. doing with it. I go, we're not selling that place. And he goes, what I said, you got to, are you, and I showed them. I said, this is what I collected. I said, like, think about, we bought it that the whole place for $80,000. Our payment, taxes and insurance, um, sorry, uh, PITI was about $630, $640. It was like, I can't sell this place. We're making it a cut to $3,000. After we pay the electric water, everything, we're still making a couple thousand dollars a month. Yeah, you made like

the average income in the area. one deal. Yeah, it was insane. And I remember what we did was the problem was the electric bill was outrageous. It was like $1,000. So we went and put timers on all the lights, which goes, one day I'd gone to collect rent on a Friday. The guy wasn't there. I get everybody else was right. He's not there. I come back on Sunday and he had just walked in. But I realized that when I went there Friday, his fan was on two lights were on the light on the fan was on the you had three you had the fan and three lights and an air conditioning unit going all weekend and you weren't there mm-hmm and I went oh no that's got to stop so we we put timers on

all the light switches put low you know they weren't LEDs back then they called them pigtails they were fluorescence mm-hmm and we put low flow toilets in everything I dropped all the price everything went to almost at half and so then we went up to about $25, $2,600 a month. And so at that point, we started, I started saying, look, we need to start buying some just single family houses and renting out the rooms because these guys have to live somewhere. Right.

You know, you can, you just need a couple. You just need a couple to make a really good income. Yeah. And then here's the thing. Like, and then I would get these guys that would say, oh, man, you're just a, so you, so what do you want to be a slum lord? I would go, yes. Yes, I want to be a slum lord.

I want to have a hundred of these things. I want to be making $100,000 to $200,000 a month, and I'm going to get a business card that says slum lord on it. And when I'm driving around in my half a million dollar Bugatti, you could say there goes that slum lord while you're riding your to your job at McDonald's. I mean, what are you talking about? And not just that, I'm not forcing these people to stay there. They were begging to get it.

If you offer a clean place at a decent, at a decent price, people are lining up to get in there. How am I a slum ward? Exactly. I have cleaning service come twice a month. I have most of my tenants thank me. They thank me because I offer a really, really, really affordable rate. And I never raise rent, never charge late fees, never do anything.

That's why most of my tenants move in and stay. They never leave. Once they move, I'll bet you've got three guys, right? You put an ad in the paper, you got 10 people saying, I can move in tomorrow. I haven't had to put up an ad in like a year because I have referrals. I just ask my tenants, hey, do you know someone? They all know someone because right now it's so expensive to live on your own. Now, here in Vegas, I have a guy moving in in a couple days.

He's a software engineer, good career, good income. But he's paying like 1,800 or 2,000 a month before utilities to live on his own. He'd come to and live in one of my houses for $800 a month. Sure, he has to share a bathroom, but he's got a really big room. He lives in a really nice suburb and a really nice three-story house, clean. Got maids come twice a month. Well, you know what's great about that, too, is that you're taking, you're taking, You're taking a losing rental situation, which is a single family home, and you're turning it into a winning situation.

It's never vacant. It's never completely vacant. Even when someone moves out, what's it vacant for? Four days? If a single family moves out, there's a good chance you're losing six to eight weeks worth of rent. Wow. That long. Yeah.

I mean, have you had any single family? Yeah. I've never had to deal with that. Oh, yeah. Then you go clean it. So it takes a week or so to clean it. You run an ad almost immediately. then so you clean it people come to see it over there even if over the next week nobody's ready

to move in right that they're not going to move in right right they're moving they're looking four to six weeks out yeah the ideal one because they're responsible enough to look ahead of time right right you got to worry about the someone who's like hey i just i got to move in tomorrow yeah that's the guy that's okay can it get me there tomorrow uh the probably a minute um the other thing is too like if if rents are super high people look even further and further out because they, you know, they are, they are conscious that it's a concern and they're looking for a decent place and a decent deal because they know they're not going to be moving soon. You know, they're going to move every year out of a single family.

Or if you have to evict somebody out of a single family, that's a nightmare. Right. So, I mean, if they put up any fight, if they don't put up a fight, they're out in 30 days in Florida. But if they, listen, God forbid, they show up to the actual eviction with a kid, you know, and holding their little child's hand. And the little seven-year-old little girl is crying, and they say, she's sick. I need help.

I need, oh, my God, you're getting six months. Yeah, with the ramp room, you get a little bit of a shame a little bit. So you don't deal with the, like of an eviction, they want to get out because they don't want to, they just lived with people. They don't want to then have an eviction and the sheriff show up. So they deal with the element of shame. I'm dealing with that right now. I have someone that needs to get out.

He stole something of another tenant in the house, so I have to have to get him out. But not a problem, not much friction. Yeah. Well, yeah, I was going to say most of the guys that we had, like they just, they just left. Yeah, that's a, they mostly know what's up. Like if they're not getting along or people want them out, it becomes a little hostile. It's just, hey, just easiest to move out. Maybe you help them a little bit.

You give them a few hundred bucks to move out. But I think it's the best strategy to get started personally because house flipping is very expensive and very, very, very risky. Saving up 100, right now, saving up 100 grand to buy a single family rental. to make $100 in cash flow a month, you're not going to be financially free, even though all the gurus will tell you that you will be just from real estate now. You need to have a very different strategy. I think house hacking is the best way, because as you alluded to, if you get one of these extreme deals, like for me, I look for six or seven. For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or

McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. Houses where you could cash flow $800,000 a month. You only really need two or three to have like a very, very supportive side income. So what we would do is get, well, typically we found they would have four rooms. The thing is, we'd find one that was a three bedroom or a four bedroom or even a two bedroom. We'd take the living room and dining room, put it, boom,

Wall, wall. That's two rooms and rent them out. And they can be extremely small. If you're doing it by square footage where you're like, look, you're paying $130 a week. You're paying $90 a week. Well, why does he pay less? His bed barely fits in the room. He's got a bed and very little room and a dresser. That's it. But let's face it, if I was a divorced, if I was divorced and had two kids and I'm trying to make child support and I work at Tire Kingdom, I've been there five years. I don't have a drug problem. I just want to see my kids pay my child support. Where do you cut your bills? Yeah. So I would be thankful to be paying $100 a week and just have some place that I could sleep that was clean and I could keep my clothes. Because I'm working or I'm hanging out with my kids or my girlfriend in her house. Yep. You know, so that's, that's what I think this is a God blessing. Yeah, I think this method is going to be even more lucrative for the investor as we move into the 2020s because I think housing supply right now, is ridiculously low. I think this little crunch that we're in, I think is going to slow developers down so that the supply is not going to increase. We're already way, at least here in Vegas,

we're way behind on demand. And so I believe there's going to be, I mean, the affordable housing crisis is only going to get worse. Even from a rental perspective, it's only going to get worse. And so what I think, I think I can offer a really good product to the market, which is I can offer for a young single dude, 27, 28 years old, who's got a job, it's cool living with others, wants to cut back, doesn't want to go spend $2,000 a month to live on their own. They'll spend $800 and live with roommates. So they get a deal. They get a great place.

All the utilities governed, furnished, clean. And from my perspective, I make money. And what I found is most everyone will fall in line with your rules because what you offer so great. Like, it is so lucrative to them because they know if they were to get kicked out or not follow the rules, they'd have to go find a place real quick, $1,500, $2,000 a month. And they might not be able to afford it. Right. I was going to say, and what, turn on the electric, the water, the closets, the, I'm paying

and you have to get furniture. Yeah, I'm covering all of it. Yeah, it's very expensive to live alone, very inefficient, too. Yeah, you got to come up with a better name, though. But your name isn't trendy enough. Yeah, oh, I call it, my course is called HouseHack King. Yeah, so House Hacking. I mean that you, you're, what would you say, room sharing or rent by room?

Rent by room. You need something trendier. You got to go with, like, eco units. yeah yeah yeah something that row lofts yeah some people like what is that strategy i've never heard of it you get a business card or i rent microlofts you got to have you get yourself a little website make it sound trendy make it look trendy that's it's nice yeah that's funny um okay uh what else anything else yeah uh youtube i got a second channel i want to have a more of a real estate and investing focus channel and so i've only put out one video there but i did a video comparing what

$1 million buys you in L.A. versus Vegas. Okay. And so, like, I think I can make a mix of, like, a good YouTube video with more of an investor-focused mind. That's the hope. That's just a fun channel. So I don't know what that channel will turn into. But I've got two channels and hopefully they both work out.

I was going to say, if you want to do, um, yeah, I mean, if you want, if you want to do one on, well, one, if you want to do one on real estate fraud, what to look out for it. You could interview me. Yeah. Yeah. That is true. And the other thing is, if you want to do one, even this conversation we had about, about roaming houses, like, that's, honestly, if I can go through piece by piece by, like, how I figured out this, how much we were making, how we, how we were saving money, you know, how to take a losing, you know, losing rental, which is typically a single family. They're just not great rentals. And why this turns it into, listen, it's better than a quadplex. You've got five or six rooms. And you're saying you do it by the month.

You know, we did it. Yeah. I always did it by the week. But, you know, so, you know, that could be a video. Yeah. You know, so, I mean, if you want to interview me on your channel. I'd go out to Tampa. That'd be cool.

Yeah, the goal, though, the goal for me right now moving forward in life is I'd love to travel for videos, travel for content. Like, I'm very fortunate that my real estate portfolio covers my living expenses. So where I'm at, my mind is at right now. Like, I want to go all in on. content. Any money I make I want to put back into it. So that being travel, that's why I was just out in Miami, doing a couple of videos out in Miami. I'd love to start traveling. So if I could do a main channel video, if I could go to Tampa or something, if I go to a city and do a main channel

video, then I can also leverage my second channel and do something real estate focus for that specific city. So I get two pies out of it. You've got Ryan Pineda is there, right? Yep, he's in Vegas. He's a friend of me. What about, oh shoot, come on, Graham Stephan. Yeah, good friend of mine too. Okay. I've been on, I was on Ryan's channel. Oh, I would probably have seen it then. I'd probably watch it. Yeah, because you were on his Panetta show. Uh, yeah, I don't know which one I was on. I was on, I don't know, one that where he interviews people. Yeah. Yeah, his podcast. Um, he didn't have the blue hair at that, which was good, because I don't think I would have, I would have had to say something. Like, what do you think? Um, and then Graham Stephan, uh, I was actually

was supposed to be on Graham Steffen when he lived in L.A. Got it back when he was first starting. Right. And then that, you know, the last minute, it just fell through. I don't know what happened. You know, I don't want to, I'm giving him the benefit of doubt. And then the second time, I actually went to L.A. And was supposed to be on his channel and was corresponding with his, the guy that helps him, his assistant.

Jack. And, uh, my booking agent. was swapping emails with him. We were supposed to go. And we, so we went out there and I was doing pinnettas. And then at the last minute, he said,

yeah, yeah, can you be here tomorrow morning? And we were like, beware, what's your address? What? Never heard back from him.

And then whatever it was, maybe a week later, he was like, oh, yeah, I got busy. I forget what the excuse was, but it was like,

but Colby, the guy I run this, though, that runs this channel for me, he's been on, I think he's been on the coffee. Is it coffee hour? What is it?

Ice coffee hour? Ice coffee hour. He's been on that. Oh, cool. I remember I was very upset when I watched that because they asked him, well, what was he doing? And he said, oh, I do editing.

I do this. He was, and I run this channel for a guy named Matt Cox. He was kind of an older guy. And I, what? That's what you came. That's what you came up with. He's kind of an older guy. He's kind of an older guy.

I mean, you couldn't have said anything else, strikingly handsome. You could have said former an inmate. You could have said con man, anything but that. And he's like, why? Anyway, so that was upsetting. Yeah, but I, yeah, I'd probably, I'd like to go on a Graham Steffin's show. Yeah, he's got a big podcast now. Yeah, we've got a great creator group out here.

A lot of creators here, I think, that are coming over from L.A. But I also think the creator economy is getting so big now that all cities have, have creators. Like, down in Miami, there's so many. It should be a short flight for you or for them. Yeah. I was going to tell you how many people

are moving into because you're last year 360,000 people moved into Florida. The population grew by 2%. And I know that Nevada is growing also.

It's another We are growing. Yeah. It's a very lucrative state to move to, especially if you're out in L.A. And you're kind of tired of the high prices. We get a huge influx of people from California. It's where our real estate has blown up.

up. We have so little supply of housing for the demand. And that's where I just, I see, I see myself fit in a hole in that market. If I had a billion dollars, I'd just be buying rent by rooms and hiring and creating a management company and having full-time employees manage this stuff. Listen, and I don't know what it's like out there, but like literally you can drive in the middle of nowhere here. You can just start driving. I'm telling you, you're going to pass a massive subdivision where I live it's going towards nothing towards the middle of the state you're not even heading towards Orlando you're just driving kind of towards in the middle of two there's nothing and there are just massive subdivision after subdivision you're like this is 30 minutes from

the nearest interstate and there's a 2,000 home subdivision and these aren't cheap houses these places are going for 400,000 it's like what what's happening like? Where are these people coming from? And I know we're growing, but it's insane. Those houses will be 800,000 in about eight years. Yeah. Yeah, listen, the place I live in, it looks like the Truman Show. Oh, yeah?

It is. Every time we come here, I'm like, this is, it's eerie. Well, I had a thought the other day that I think we're seeing the work from home. We're seeing what happens when a lot of people don't feel location dependent anymore. And I think this is a sign of like, where, let's let the market dictate. where are the coolest cities? Where do people actually want to live? And I think we're seeing that.

Miami's a huge surge of population, Florida in general. I think Texas, Austin, Texas getting a huge surge. Vegas getting a huge surge. Arizona. Well, and, you know, this is the thing. Like, for me personally, I've been telling my wife for, like, the last two weeks.

I'm like, I want to just sell my car. My car payment's nothing. It's like, it's like $3.75. But it's $3.75. It's $1,00. 150, 160 bucks for insurance, and I'm telling you, we wake up at like five or six in the morning and drive to the gym. She drives us. Okay. I can go, I can go two weeks without ever getting in my car. Yeah, you get Amazon Prime and have your groceries delivered for a small, small fee.

Not just, but I don't even go to the grocery store. No, she does. Or, and I was like, look, honestly, and when I do leave to go somewhere, like, I really could just wait two hours for you to come home from work. We just say your eyes. Or I could Uber. I could Uber once easily. I could Uber three times a week and still not spend what I spend on my car. Mm-hmm.

Because everything I do is on the computer. Yep. So anyway, yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, uh, the market's definitely changing. And that's probably why these places are in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. Well, I think the growth will be out into the suburbs. We don't really have that in Vegas.

We don't, we only have so much land to grow to. and so you're kind of confined. That's why another element of me really believing in my strategy in Vegas is there's just not that much room to keep growing to have the housing match the demand. So people are going to need a place to live. Yeah.

Yeah, I got to start buying single family houses. It's just the prices aren't dropping here. Yeah. It's pretty challenging. My next goal, hopefully, where I've been mentally, just I haven't been in the right space, I've been so filled with pressure to like make videos and content to pay my bills.

But I'd love to get into the creative finance space or go hunt for deals. Like I love, if I had enough money, I would, I would, my old, my strategy in life would just be to make YouTube videos about real estate and hunt for deals, real estate deals, because I have access to money. If I found a deal, I got, I know plenty of people with money for partnerships. And so I would love to go hunt for deals. I think right now creative financing is the gold mine. I just wish I had money to go play.

because you've got plenty of people mortgages at two or three percent that want to move but don't really want to sell the houses just dropped five seven percent and so their house isn't worth what it was six months ago or year ago i think what you mean subject to mortgage go into my yeah subject two or yeah some type of yeah seller financing owner financing you know it's so funny because you know if you do a uh uh a you know a seminar or a course or something like that And you just, even things like that, like honestly, 95% of the people watching this video will go subject to what do they talk about? If you used to talk about a wraparound. Yeah, I was going to say a wrap around is probably more, more of an option today.

Then they're also like when that, well, I don't understand. What do they say? Or have you ever, it's funny because people don't mention this when you're when you're asking someone to do on our financing where and you just kind of you have your rebuttals, right? Like, well, here, I can do this. They go, no, I, what if this happens? I can do this. Well, what if this happens? You kind of go back and forth.

You know, well, one of the things is, is a deed in lieu of foreclosure, you know, where basically you're like, I'm signing over the, I'll sign over the property to you. And the lawyer, you can have the lawyer, the title company or a real estate attorney, you can give him a fee to just keep that document. And if I don't pay and you go to him, he contacts me and says, did you pay last month? No, I didn't pay. Okay. Or if you say, oh, I did.

They go, did you pay by check like you're supposed to. Can you prove it? oh no i gave it give it to him in cash okay stop stop stop you didn't pay so it's like if one if you can't get in touch with you within 10 days you know or 30 days you know and two you can't prove you paid by check or by a cashier's check you can't prove it well then he's going to file that deed in lieu of foreclosure and the house now gets reverted back to the original owners they don't have to foreclose and they just they just kick you out of the house yeah so and and what's so funny is that most people just don't they don't know that they don't talk about it and those are the

things that you and i are like okay well that's just that's common like that's not those aren't difficult to understand but most people don't know it they've never heard of it yeah and when you tell them something like that in a course they think you've given them some kind of secret recipe and this is amazing oh my gosh he knows so much really i don't i didn't tell you anything you couldn't have learned if you'd gone out and bought the book real estate for dummies they would have told you the same thing. But yet people will pay $500 or $1,000 or like that one guy, $5,000 a course. I mean, absolutely.

They didn't learn anything in that course. That's the problem. Right. Allegedly. All right. Well, all right. Do you have anything else you want to talk about? Like, I'll do it for another hour.

I don't dare. No, no. Unless you want to get deep into YouTube strategy or house hacking. I honestly don't know I don't think I know anything about YouTube strategy I don't you know we've been my channel's been going for it's going on almost three years now

I think I just got the 80,000 subs I say this all the time because people are constantly saying like you know why don't you have more subs you should be getting more views more because and I feel like and this is just gut my gut when I did concrete

have you ever met Danny? No, I haven't. Okay. Like, Danny at the time told me something that I totally blew off. Listen, I've been out of a halfway house maybe a month or so. I'm living in someone's spare room. I have no money. You know, I'm struggling just a, I'm wearing, I've got like four or five pair of blue jeans. Like, I mean, I'm a couple pair of shoes. Like, I got nothing. And I, on a whim, Danny called me and was like, look, man, I had somebody canceled. I haven't put a video up in two weeks. He'd come to do my podcast.

I happened to have contacted him already, just asking him questions about starting a YouTube or a true crime podcast. So I went, I did it. And that day, right afterward, right after it was over, he, we went to Waffle House. It was like 11.30 at night. We got a Waffle House. And he says, listen, you know, and I was talking to him about the true crime, doing a true crime podcast. And he was like, look, you know, I don't know that I'm interested in doing it. I'm doing my own thing. And he said, but if I was you, I would start a podcast. I was like, yeah, but I don't have the equipment. He goes, well, you've got an iPhone. I said, yeah, it's just an iPhone. And he goes, yeah, it's got a great. It's got a great. It's got a, you know, whatever it is. He says, get a, he said, get a, he said, get a, he said, go spend $150, get a decent mic and a recorder. He said, you can use, you got an Apple computer. I said, yeah, he said, great. You've got, you know, whatever it is. I, not iTunes.

but whatever the Apple thing is, I-movie. You got I-movie, you can edit it. He said, it's not that hard. Start putting up videos. And I was like, no, but I want to do this. He's like, yeah, I understand you want to do it perfect. He said, but it's better that you put up crap.

He said that people will watch because he said, people will be able to watch your journey of putting up bad videos and they'll get better. And then they'll watch bad videos if it's you. He said, because what I don't think you understand is, he said, this video we just did. he said, I think is going to be big. He said, and you're going to get a lot of people that are interested in following you. You need to give them somewhere to go, someone to see you.

Now, I had no idea what YouTube was. I had barely watched it at all. I didn't really understand what was happening. That video got almost 2 million views. And so over the course, huh? Game changer. Yeah, but where did they go? They didn't go anywhere because I didn't put up a video.

So it took me a year and a half to almost two years before I put about, about two years before I actually started my channel. So I missed two million views on that video, another million views on another video he did, another one and a half million on another video he did with me, another two million on valutainment, another half a million on Vlad, like another million,

almost two million on soft white underbilly. For the next year, I did nothing but hammer, go do interviews and get tons of people watching. and I completely missed my that wave of interest into Matt Cox right I remember it was you were the cool mysterious guy though at the time like there was an element of like you couldn't find you because I remember that I was like oh this guy is mysterious like who is it doesn't pay the bills it's serious it only works if you've already made 50 million and you want to be like

a recluse you just you just show up do an interview and then pop back out and everyone's like Who is that guy? Can't find him. Yeah. Well, unfortunately, had I, had I listened to Danny, you know, I definitely think I would have a different cheating right now. Yeah, what's really unfortunate about life is how much of a tax you pay when you're broke. Like what you just explained, if you had 10,000 in the bank, I'm pretty confident you would have figured out how to do it for a thousand bucks. You would have paid for a nice camera, maybe pay someone to help you out for the first one. Just like, hey, let's make sure this gets going on the right direction. I feel the same way. Like, there's so many decisions I've had to make in the last, like, six to 12 months because I've had to be so money conscious. And I've just noticed, because I've had moments where I've been cash flush with cash and moments where I've been depleted. And I've just noticed how our brain circuitry works when we have momentum in life

and we have a little cash in the bank. Like, we're so much more aggressive with decision making and investing and like, oh, let's go make that decision or let's go do that thing. That is the real challenge of being broke, I think. Yeah. No, no, definitely. These like unexpected taxes where you would make. a decision that would cost $2,000 that I think would propel, you're saying propel anyone.

Like, that could be a big move in your life. But because you don't have it, you decide to put it off or, oh, I'll go get the cheap option. Well, I mean, it's always that guy that ends up, you know, he struggles for 10 years to end up getting a million dollars. And then he's got a million dollars. And then two years later, he's worth five. And then two years later, he's worth $800 million. You're like, how did that happen? Well, it happened because now he had the money and the means and he wasn't scared to take those risk. Right. But if you're barely like barely paying your bills, then you're making very, very adverse risk decision. Very much so. Yeah. Yep. And that's what I've been in the last

two years. Like I make videos because I can, I have to fit the videos between doing other things. I'm just now at the point where basically making videos is almost, my entire the money I make off of those videos almost pays my entire bills in a few months some type of consulting within the real estate space real estate lending space um I mean I can but I don't push that you know I have a I should I really should do two things I should do a real estate course and I should do a course on um building credit you know because we're partner with someone I know I know I need to too. I'm just thinking that one thing that's been on my mind is my strategy of focusing on views

mostly because I get paid from views. I get AdSense and then sponsorships. So those are all reliant on views. That's just such a terrible way to make a living on YouTube because when times are good, it feels like you're invincible. Then when times are bad, the views are down, you realize you're in a rat race. You're on a treadmill where you just like have to keep uploading. Like Danny said to you apparently, he's like, I haven't released a video two weeks. I got to get it up. That's not a fun. You don't choose that you shouldn't want to choose this career so you have to get on a treadmill. But if you can offer a product or service on the back end, that's how you can start slowing down the release quantity if you need to. If you want

to go take a vacation because you have money to be made on the back end, that's something I haven't figured out yet entirely. I want to do a real estate course. Like I actually want to write a course and teach a course and teach it reasonable and not do, I don't want to do a hype course. I want to do a basic, you know, like here's the basics. And then after then, you know, you get to do the first few videos is on basics. And then after that, here's strategies. Here's an idea, too, if you go that route. One thing I did for my course is I actually went and toured about 16 properties that were listed for sale. And I walked through them and just said, hey, here's why I'd buy this house for a house act. Here's why it would make a good deal, not a good deal. Here's how I'd add a bedroom at this

property. I did fourplexes, a duplex. I did a caseta or a house with a casino, big house, expensive house, cheap house, condo. I went through the whole, every type of property. So that's something you could consider. You could walk around Tampa, two hundred properties. Did you ever, so I, two things came to mind. One was not many legitimate people would partner with me, not because they don't, they don't trust me. Like, I know plenty of legitimate guys, but I think for them it'd be like, I don't want, it's not that I don't like you, Matt, and I don't trust you or I think you do anything wrong, but I don't know that I want my name associated with you, which I understand. Like, you're, listen, I get it. And,

The second thing is, I was wondering if in the video, what would be interesting is to give all of the rebuttals, like actually go through the rebuttals that you need to convince someone to owner finance a property. That's a good idea. I don't know that I've ever really seen that where people say, oh, you got to convince them to owner finance the property. Well, Pace Morby is the goat right now in that area. I mean, you could always look at an affiliate deal. You promote someone else's course, get an affiliate cut. Right. That's an option.

Same thing with credit. If you team up with someone that offers that service, just an idea. They're horrible. They're horrible. And we know what's so funny is, and it's still the same thing. You could go,

you could go find all this stuff for free. But it's funny because like with me, I remember Graham Stephan did a video where he talked about how he had a, was it a 790 or an 800 credit. I think he had an 800 credit score. And I talked about how when I went to the half, house, I pulled my, as soon as I got there, I pulled my credit. I had no credit score. I went

and got three secure credit cards. I never spent more than about 20 to 30 percent of the balance, kept them low. And even, I didn't pay them, I would pay them off. You know, they get paid off for them maybe for a week and then something hits and there's 10 bucks or. Yeah. And then the next month I pay it down or I pay it off. So it's almost nothing. And when I walked out of the halfway house, six months later, I pulled my credit score and it was a seven, I want to say it was a seven, 56 or 754 and you know and I was just like like it's like it's just not that hard yeah the credit system's so flawed so incredibly flawed so I mean I have six months where they're and keep in mind I used to I would create fake people and you know I convinced social security to start issuing my social

security numbers to children that don't exist right wow I make a fake birth certificate a fake shot record I'd go in and say, hey, I have a, I have a 10-month-old son. Can you issue a social security number to him? He never was issued one? They'd say, well, is he born in a hospital? I'd say, now he's born with a midwife at, you know, at our house. And they would go, okay, when they go, well, let me check. And they'd look at, they look, oh, you're right, he doesn't have one.

Of course he doesn't. I just made that first certificate. Wow. So they'd issue it for a 10-month-old kid. Ten days later, I get the card. I'd then, of course, whatever, let's say he was born July 7th. 2000 and, let's say right now, 2023, let's say, or

2022. Then I would just say he was born in like, you know, July 7th and I'd change it to, you know, 1970. You know, so he's 50-something years old. He has no credit. And then I'd just get three secured credit cards and start making the payments.

Six months, it generates credit scores. Boom, he's got 750 credit scores. And those are the guys that I was borrowing millions of dollars. Within a year, this guy's got like a million dollars worth of mortgages. And we're getting, you know, and I, you know, I'd get personal loans, two or three personal loans for $15,000 or $20,000. I'd run up his credit because he's got his great credit. He owns a bunch of rental properties. Anyway, so, yeah, so that's all, that's all I got in the

halfway house. I hadn't had credit in 13 years. Well, really, 16 years. So I had no credit. There's just a bunch of straw people that don't exist. That goes. Exactly. It's nuts. Synthetic and synthetic, uh, um, synthetic, um, synthetic identity. Were you one of a few people doing this? Was there a little group of people down in Tampa doing this? At that time, I was probably the first person to start kind of doing that because this was 20-something years ago. Now people make synthetic identities all the time. But no, it was me and it was me.

I was making them, but there were other people involved. There were real estate agents involved. There were appraisers involved. Pretty wild once you figure out how to game the system, isn't it? If you just like lose the ethics and morals just a little bit and you know how to game a system, man, you can you can win at this country in in Tampa we are borrowed like 11.5 million um when I was on the run I borrowed roughly I don't know it was like three and a half to four probably three and a half to four and a half million dollars while I was on the run so um yeah same thing

it was so like getting the halfway house was you know a joke so it's like it's not like I don't know how to build credit how to get paid off how to dispute credit like I've done all those things So I've already had a bunch of clients. They just didn't exist. Right. So, so I thought, yeah, I thought doing a credit, do a credit course and a real estate course. Okay.

And then make it, you know, offer it for reasonable. And just be honest, this is how it works. Like, I'm not going to, you can this and you can that. And listen, it's not. It's work. Like with a little bit of knowledge and some work, you can make a ton of money. Yeah. There is a guy named Bamman Kevo, who I made a video about, you know him.

I made several videos. on him. Yeah, he was making, his assistant reached out to me and said that at one point he had, he was making 400 grand a month. They had something like 800 clients at $50 a month or 8,000 clients at 50 a month. I went, what? Yeah. Do you, have you, yeah, I know, but have you, you understand that what he's, he doesn't know what he's talking about. Like, I, I haven't seen any of the info. So I've had multiple guys come to me. He, he does like a, um, an only fan. Correct. yeah where and so guys would pay this some this not one guy but i had three or four guys but this one guy got on the phone with him because he was like you've got to make a video he's like i'll come

on with you i'll say what happened everything and i had actually ordered the freedom of information act on him and was and there was just very little like it was hard to even find out all the places he's been arrested and what's happened and but this one guy was like here's what happened he said like literally he had paid him like 800 bucks to talk to him on the phone for 30 minutes. Yeah. And he said, I bought, like, I paid for all of his courses. I'd done all the things I was supposed to do.

He's like, and it didn't work. And so he finally got him on OnlyFans. And he was like, look. And bandman Kevoh's going, well, you got to do this. And he's like, no, I did that. Well, you got to go in the bank and borrow, you could borrow, go into a bank and borrow $100,000. He's like, I did go into the bank and they wouldn't lend me $100,000. dollars and I have the credit score you told me and I have that like all these different things

well you did something wrong you don't know what you're doing well I did everything you said to do like he'd argue it and the guy he said finally came out go go with you know man you're you're you're you're you're fucked up bro uh you fuck something up I can't help you man if you fuck it up you fucked it up and just hung up on him oh it took my 800 bucks and and he was like you and so the guy was telling me he wanted me one to a video and two he would pay for me to do and only fans with it, Coveau. Because he's like,

you know what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, you can confront him. Right. Adnick for a great YouTube video. How funny is it that he'll tell you like, yeah, yeah, we can, he'll tell you one, he can, you know, clean your credit, let's say you get your credit with,

you have no credit. Then he'll, there are these, I don't know if you know this, but there are actually these websites you can go to and they'll add you on to other people's as, as a, Authorized user. Authorized user.

Of course, it boosts your credit. Yep. And you can also go on there and offer yourself as somebody that you'll add people to your credit. So it pairs people up. So one, you do that. And then he says once you've got like a 750, 750 credit score, you can then go to the bank and borrow $100,000. Well, wait a second. Don't you need to be on your job for a couple of years?

Don't you have to be able to provide W-2s and pay stubs? He skates over all that. And then the guy said, yeah, but if you go to like OnlyFans, he'll tell you that there are other websites. You can go to like Paycheck.com or Paycheck.gov and get them to make you a couple of pay stubs. So he'll tell you all the... A little bit of fraud thrown in. The secret sauce. The sauce.

I'm giving you the sauce is what he says. Yeah, the secret sauce. He's the best god. Yeah, if you're comfortable committing fraud, yeah, you can do a lot of things in this country. but he's uh yeah he's one of the worst i but actually his videos some of the videos i did on him all have like a hundred thousand um i did a couple two three videos on yeah he's an interesting character for sure come on listen the fact that you would listen to this guy is ridiculous yeah so you know no disagreements here um but yeah yeah that that that really upsets me now that you're saying

that he's he's making that kind of money uh but And again, I also think that he's going on there and he's really, really, it's all hype. It's not accurate. It's not true. And a lot of times people don't even want to hear the truth. Right. Well, he has all the elements of success, right? He's got jewelry. He's got the lifestyle. He shows up on yachts. He does videos. Here's how to hang on a yacht. Here's the supercars. Here's the freedom. You know, he uses all the elements. So people aspire to be him. And when people aspire to be someone, they'll buy from them. And even if they don't even apply what is taught. it's too bad yeah anyway all right thanks for having me dude yeah i i yeah let me know if i can do anything like if you want to do any you want to interview me on anything or you want to come back on and talk about anything else and let me know how you're how you're um

how the lawsuit or you know what the judge rules yeah we'll do listen i've been wondering what's going on up here in the background on the corner yeah it's it's a wallpaper The wallpaper is pulling down a little bit. Yeah, it's peeling a little bit. Well, you got to go get some glue. Go to home. I know. I've done everything. I've got a gorilla glue. I've done everything. It's so annoying. It's so annoying. Yeah, I've done like four different tactics. You're going to have to put a pen, a couple, get some, some pens. Yeah. Well, I rarely ever use this view. And so it's not an urgent fix. Listen, I, I was like, I don't, is the paint not, am I, is that in the blob? Is it? And then the

just dawned on me that's wallpaper wallpaper yeah you're better than this what you're doing i'll get on it all right well listen let me know i appreciate it you got hope and i do hope everything works out it's you know it's a shitty deal yeah i kind of got a rough end of the stick but it's all right i'll bounce back i've been trying to train my mind that uh i think a lot of setbacks turn out to be uh the right pivot in life a lot of times i've heard something recently that sometimes a setback is like a life's version of a red light saying like here's a red light you got to stop and think about something and then think about a different path that's when i had one of those it last it was a 13 year uh stoplight but yeah but it got my head right i'll tell you that i'm all

better now um but i appreciate it and thanks thank you and definitely if you want to do something let me know i'd love to be interviewed and you know help you work on your channel yeah or the other channel so wonderful thanks man all right thank you hey so if you guys like the video do me a favor hit the subscribe button hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this leave me a comment in the comment section I've been trying to respond to as many as possible also I'm going to leave we're going to leave Spencer's GoFundMe a link in the description and the links to his channels so check out his channels and share the video and I appreciate you guys watching. Thank you. See ya.