Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - INSIDE THE MAFIA'S BEST KEPT SECRET | YBOR CITY

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

Max Herman and Matt Cox talk about the mafias history and involvement in Ybor City, Florida. Max is the guide for yborghosttour.com check out the link below.

Either way, he's like the encyclopedia of mafia history, and I've sat down with him for cigars and drinks, and not only that, I've read all of his books. He really can tell you, Ebor City was probably the best kept secret in mafia history. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I am here with Max Herman, and Max runs Ebor City Ghost Tour. I recently went on the tour, and I thought it was super cool, so I asked him if he would be on the podcast. Jess and I went on it, and we'll get into it. And so check this out. So he'll play a video, he'll play it in the intro, and then you'll be allowed it. So, yeah, sorry.

Matthew, thanks for having me. And it's a pleasure and coming on my tour and enjoying Ybor City along with me. It's really nice to be out here. You've got a great setup. I mean, really, really well done. And I'm happy to see you again. I mean, how you been? Yeah, good.

So I was going to say, what I wanted to mention was that I've actually been on ghost tour before. And I think I mentioned that when we went on when I talked. phone with you that time was that so it you know I don't know you probably don't know anything about you don't know much about my story anyway when I was I was on the run for three years but when I was on the run I actually went to New Orleans at one time we went for like me and the chick I was with we went for like a weird two and we went on three different ghost tours and but they you know and they were they were cool and they were interesting but we stayed outside like the houses like we stayed on the street and they would walk and stay in front of this building was built in 1810 and was owned by so-and-so and then in 1890 there was a murder and they would do that but yours was was different when i went on yours so i always like ghost horse yeah but when i went on yours we actually went into the houses and it was it was way different you went way deeper into the history of the war city and so it was so it was really cool and i didn't i i learned a lot on it and that's why it's a it's a major

difference when you go on ghost tours or any kind of tour whether it's history ghosts or art depending on who the guide is makes the tour what it is i mean everything i give you you can get out of a you know google search really but i also present it in a certain way that brings you like it paints the picture for you as we lead into these haunted buildings now as you know because you went on the ghost tour i pretty much tell the stories of what happened here the history and give you a good idea and then i let you explore because if i'm in that building talking and trying to hit buttons or something the way some ghost tours can do, the ghost will just disappear, no pun intended.

But, like, they will literally come out and play if you walk into that building with the respect and knowledge of what has happened there. And if you do go in there with an open mind, I mean, more times than not, you'll get activity. All right. Well, I was going to say, do you remember the safe? Well, you showed us. A couple days after you and I, or me and Jess, we went on the tour. A couple days later, it was Jess and I took her dog.

water and we went and we went and saw the safe and I was like heavy this thing we're really trying to get us to roll it around you like push on it like it's it's it's a classic old safe and it's it's got so much history behind it that's the other thing about the tours we sprinkle in some history to make sure you understand why these old buildings are here and then after that we get right into the good stuff the uh the murder the mayhem the heartbreak and well of course the spirits right so ibor city a lot of people that watch this like you have to understand there are people from tampa but then there are people from you know around the world Yeah, L.A.

Yeah. I get guys that are from Australia. Guys will send me stuff from, you know, hey, New Zealand or wherever. They're like, hey, you know, watching, watching from the U.K. Hello, New Zealand. So basically, there's Tampa, and there's an area of Tampa called Ebor City. And so what, tell me with the history of Ebor City. So Ebor City, first of all, came together when Tampa was nothing but alligators and mosquitoes.

The population of Tampa, Florida came together in 1885. it was about 700 total people. But this Spaniard named Mr. Vincente Martinez-I-Bore, he went to Cuba to avoid conscription to the army of the Civil War in Spain. When he got to Cuba, he learned about cigars, and in the cigar industry, he worked his way through. Eventually, he opened his own factory and became wildly successful. From there, he got to be pretty comfortable as a Cuban

and a little bit more upset with the Spanish colonization of Cuba. He started speaking out on it, so the Spanish government kicked him off the island. He went to look for a new place to go, And as he walked around America or traveled around America, he started seeing industry towns popping up around. He knew that he could open a new factory anywhere, but he wanted his own industry town, which I know that sounds crazy today, but you think of places like Hershey, Pennsylvania and stuff. It was not uncommon. Well, he comes to Tampa, Florida. Like I said, backwater, nothing but fishing cottages around.

And these guys, they're kind of desperate to get back on the map. In fact, the bank of Tampa was going to implode and go back to Jacksonville before Mr. Reboar arrived. When he gets there, he sits down with the board of trade of Tampa, which are like, kind of the city council yeah they negotiate some concessions he buys some swamp and immediately writes to everybody he's ever met but here's the thing when he writes to all these guys in the cigar industry to come this way he tells these board of trade i'm going to bring people to your little sleepy town of tampa under one condition i want my own city i want my own mayor i want my own police force i want my own rules in fact that's the reason why ebor city went so wild with well

organized crime because Mr. Ebor had his own mayor, his own police force, like six guys, you know, and the Tampa police, yeah, pretty easy to get six guys on your payroll. And they also had a port and a railroad connected to it. When the organized crime organizations found out about that, it went in crazy mode to immediately get as many people down here as possible to see who could take over. Well, Ebor City, being its own city, eventually became part of Hillsborough County, Tampa, Florida, because, well, like I said, that cigar industry came this way, and it was successful. When you're making money, eventually people are like, yeah, we want you all on board.

So it went from being its own city, much to Mr. Ebor's Deskron, to part of Tampa, Florida. So now it's a neighborhood of Tampa, Florida, but it's notorious. And that's why our tours have such an attraction, because people, they'll drive through Ebor City and go, what is this place? Why is it so different than, you know, half a mile that way? Because it was its own municipality, or, you know, the world I'm looking for, it was its own city. Right. I was going to say, it's funny because whenever somebody ever asked me about E. I'm always like, you know, it's, it's a lot like Bourbon Street.

Like we have 7th Avenue, which is a lot like Bourbon Street. But the difference is the buildings are so much nicer in Ebor. Yeah. You go to, you go to Bourbon Street, and it's not that nice. And it's sinking and the buildings aren't holding up. Well, like, Ebor has the same style buildings, but they're bigger, they're in better condition. They're taller. They have the same.

They have the banisters. Yeah. You can look over it, and we have Guavaween. We've got Mardi Gras that we do down there. Gasparilla. Gasparilla. Everything that you can think of, pride parade, whatever you think of, they have an excuse to throw beads and have some drinks. Right.

The reason why, in my opinion, it probably looks that way is because, first of all, it's a little newer than New Orleans, you know, but also it's a national historic landmark district, which there's only three of those in the entire state of Florida. To get that designation, you have to have a major impact on American history, and that's why I also do a little history on my tour. as well because it kind of sprinkles in with the ghosts. But the National Historic Designation means that it gets funding from the government to make sure those old buildings stay exactly as they were. Right. So these buildings, which have been around for 110, 120 years, they look like they were built yesterday, but in the old school look of, you know,

like they don't make them like they used to. They're great. Yeah, there's a bunch of cigar factories. Oh, it's amazing. Cigar, sorry, shops and warehouses. And there's still, there's still working. Factories. A couple.

Right. I was going to say Gasparilla So Jose Gaspar, right? The pirate Jose Gaspar You understand? Up until probably I want to say

You know, probably until I was in my 30s I thought he was a real person. Me too. I always thought he was a real person. They had this whole background and history about this pirate and how he became a pirate

and he was once like a sailor and then this happened and he eventually took over all of tape all bullshit and I totally bought it like I believed all that well you're from Tampa yes it was the boogeyman you know my mom would tell me you got to eat your vegetables or Jose Gaspar's gonna bust down the door and kill us all it was you know it was like the Tampa boogeyman but Jose Gaspar as even though it's a mythical pirate it's still a great excuse to start drinking rum at nine in the morning yeah yeah

it's pretty it's pretty cool um so okay so you we were going to talk about uh basically the like the history of kind of the mob in the general mob and yeah and ebor and how they eventually came down and like you know like i mentioned to you earlier like i grew up down the street from uh the trapecanes yeah traficantes right and that's uh trafficante oh yeah it's okay it's okay but it's okay i'm backwood so uh well i'll tell you um you know the guy that i get most of my information from he actually is the guy who wrote a book on santo traficante he wrote the Cigar City Mafia book. His name is Scott, and I always messed up his last name, Deitchie, or Deach. Either way, he's like the encyclopedia of mafia history, and I've sat down with him

for cigars and drinks, and he, and not only that, I've read all of his books, he really can tell you, Ebor City was probably the best kept secret in mafia history. I mean, first of all, remember I told you Mr. Ebor sat down with the Board of Trade and all that? Well, the Board of Trade of Tampa, as prestigious as that sounds, was nothing but, like, you know, alligator farmers or fishermen. Like, they really had no idea what they were doing. And when this fancy Spaniard sits down with him and starts talking business, they're going, yes, sir. Yes, sir. He's like, these guys don't even have a business bone in their body.

Right. So like a good business man, he started playing hard to get. Yeah. He started saying stuff like, well, you know, money really isn't an issue. I can buy a lot of things. And, you know, I've been to a lot of towns that I've seen. And really the problem in Tampa is you guys are prudes. You think gambling should be illegal.

It was illegal in Tampa, Florida then. You think alcohol should be illegal, which long before. nationwide prohibition no alcohol out in tampa it was a very christian area in fact i think uh what you can't buy alcohol till on sunday till 11 a m or something yeah yeah that's well that used to be four p m they only changed it for the buccaneers games but uh anyways um he thought if i bring a bunch of cubans to this area to roll cigars i know them they're gonna want to drink they're gonna want to gamble they're gonna want to sing and dance all night this isn't gonna work out so the board of trade they said well mr ebor why don't we just turn our back to that swamp of yours and you can

just have your fun out there and he said i'll need that in writing right now right so that day they added a new page to the tampantown charter called mr ebor's provisions nice right in these provisions gambling was legal in ebor city only alcohol ebor city only but this was also in the provisions remember i told you that they had their own police force yeah no tampa police official could arrest anybody in ebor city no matter the crime so when the mafia found out about that absolute power Yeah, but a port and a railroad, that sweet Caribbean rumpf was flowing through here like the Hillsborough River. I mean, any big name you can think of from Al Capone and Meyer Lansky, the biggest one, Santo Trafalcante Jr. He and his dad pretty much ruled Ebor City from the 50s all the way through the 80s.

But I could tell you about some other characters. There's a guy that is known as the White Shadow. You ever heard of a name, Charlie Wall? You ever heard that name before? That sounds familiar. Charlie Wall, if you have a chance to Google and look him up, he was the kingpin of Ebor City, not to say. Zibor of a Tampa and he he actually was not like your traditional mafioso like on the godfather you know he wasn't a nothing to something I'm I'm probably wrong I'm it makes me think of a

Dixie Mafia but that's probably no Charlie was um well Charlie was he was a local here in Tampa he also his dad was part of the board of trade he came up very rich but he got into some shaky situations well some tragedies happened in his family his mother died things like that and he eventually got involved in a game called bolita which have you ever heard of the game Well, good. Bolita, Spanish for Little Ball, was the biggest gambling game in Tampa, Florida. It was like a lotto game, but more of a social event, because there was a bunch of them on every block. And Charlie happened to be involved in this, but eventually he rose to become the king of Bolita.

He literally took it like the lottery or something? Yeah, let me explain. It's actually pretty funny. Like I said, they have one on every single block, Bolita operations all around the town. And what you do is you go in there, you pay for your number and all that. And then after that, they bring you into the room where you can drink. can gamble and have a good time mostly it was like a social event but when they were ready to start the bolita game little ball they locked the front door so nobody else can get in and then they

bring everybody into a side room known as the staging room where pretty much there's a big stage a table on the stage a big bag and then a bunch of little tiny balls with numbers all on the table when they're ready to start the game pour all the balls into the bag they tie it up and the belita operator throws it into the crowd and the crowd you know catches the bag and they're juggling around and throwing it around and shaking it and cheering. I mean, you've had like three or four cocktails at this point. It's a great time. Eventually, they throw the bag on stage.

The bleed operator catches the bag, opens it up, starts reaching in. The last ball picked out is the winner of everybody's money. So it is kind of like the lottery. Yeah. But in the lottery, if nobody wins, what happens? Not in Bolita. If nobody wins, House wins. Help keeps it.

Better look next time. I'm going to say, you throw that bag in the crowd. I'm going to throw you a bag. back that doesn't have a ball in it you know or you know well you want your ball to be picked of course so you had to be very careful about if you did shoot in this game like I said every single block had a belief operation if they were like this guy cheats don't go here but Charlie had a pretty good idea at Charlie wall one day he looked at his wall with all the numbers on it and said well nobody's picked number two so he goes to

the staging area by himself takes the number two ball and puts it on a block of ice when the game's ready to start he puts it back with the other balls when that elite operator catches the bag and reaches in and feels the cold ball that'll be the last one picked number two oh no one's got it and then he closes it to create some heat puts it back down and everybody comes and inspects the balls make sure they're not weighed or anything charlie got away with it for years made a ton of money it's just wrong it's just wrong hey well you hear these organized crime stories and scott by the way that guy he does a whole mafia tour if you do want to do it i mean he's the guy to talk to about all that kind of

of stuff oh he does he do it does he do it for with your tour no no no whole different company and it's uh you know it's you know real recognize real he's a great tour guide and well he lets me do all the history and the ghosts and he covers most of that stuff but like i said we you can't talk history and ghosts without talking a little bit of the organized crime right right when i show it's funny because when i showed up to the cigar um the place where you had us meet yeah like everybody knew you there like all the guys were like we're walk we walk we're on the sidewalk and we're staying there we i mean we hadn't been there 10 seconds walked up stop

kind of looked around and one of the guys goes are you here for the tour for the tour and I was like yeah and he goes yeah you're looking for a guy he's going to have a you know what did they call the hat Panamanian hat yeah he's a Panamanian hat he said he yeah he was here a minute ago

like he may be inside you know another guy was like yeah no no he's inside and I was like everybody sitting in front of the it was a coffee shop and a cigar place like then there must have been 15 guys there all of them were like yeah yeah he just went in too like well you know when you have a tour that was named by u.s. traveler magazine best ghost tour in america people start to recognize what a segue what a segue people do start to recognize your round down so um okay so what uh what else is the

um you were saying you were talking about before i interrupted you're fine no you were saying about the mob and then you were talking about, like, you told all the different stories about when we would go into the building. Oh, yeah. Well, it's not just mafia stories. There's, I mean, it was like,

Ebor City was like the Wild West of the South. Some of the lot more like some of them were like love stories. Yeah, there was some heartbreak there. I mean, well, like I said, the Wild West of the South, there was dueling in Ebor City. There would be public executions in Ebor City. I could go on for about five hours on my ghost store

about hauntings, but I have to keep within two hours because, you know, I just... Right. I feel like that's the attention span these things. Dueling. Dueling. Yeah, there were duels in Ebor City. Yeah, I know.

I know. I mean, oh, yeah. But, Jesus. Ten steps in turn. In fact, it's more of a history thing than anything else, but there was a duel based upon what they were going to have read to them at the factories because they used to have readers at the factories. It's funny you say that because when we were going through, I actually was telling Jess, I said,

you know, it's funny. I said they used to have these guys that they would, it would read the newspaper. Yeah. And then sometimes they would read a chapter of a book or two chapters throughout the... Because these guys, they didn't have radios. They didn't have... And most of them were illiterate, the immigrants that came here. So literally...

That's how they got their news. And you're rolling hundreds of cigars. And all of a sudden, you know, you're hearing, like, the Count of Monte Cristo. And you're like, all of a sudden, you go, oh, I just rolled a hundred cigars. We'll through that chapter. You know, that's... You get interested and... Pretty cool.

Keeps you going. That was the YouTube. That was the old YouTube. That was YouTube. That was, you know, and even the days before TV, radio, before any of this stuff, there was guys that would literally be paid to sit there. I mean, there was no microphone either. They had to yell it across the whole thing as they're reading Don Quixote or something, you know? So there was a duel because one of the factories couldn't decide what was going to be read.

You know what that is? That's an argument in the TV. So nobody can see right now, but Boziac sitting over there. That was like an argument in the TV room over what we're going to watch tomorrow night. That's the argument. There's going to be, we'll fight. Who's holding the remote? Who's holding the remote?

Exactly. I'm funny you know that. Exactly. Go put my boots on. We're going to meet. Yeah, it was intense. What can I say? Yeah, that we go in the showers and fight.

Well, that's a different world, man. It fascinates me. I mean, to hear your story, too, is just like, you know, it's fascinating to think about because somebody from the outside, obviously, you know, the most I've gotten was a night, you know, in the slammer. And it's horrible. Nothing compared to what I'm sure you went there. I mean, they gave me a cheese sandwich. I went home.

That was it. But for you guys, it's so funny because whenever we talk about, he always gripes about it. He's like, oh, fucking below. sandwiches I like bologna sandwiches like I'm okay with the bologna I eat the sandwich so what what happened with the duel is there a specific story well so the lectors let's talk a little bit about them they were like I said the cream of the society they were like Hollywood superstars and they were also at the mercy of the factory workers because they were paid only by tips they didn't get a living wage but they also made the most money in everybody

in the factory other than the owner because everybody was like great story here's two cents here's three cents you know they would eventually they're like I made three dollars And my house costs $1.50 a week. Right. You know, they were really well off. So these lecturers were totally at the mercy of these, you know, workers. And, well, the 1920s, let's backtrack even more than. 1917, the Bolshevik revolution happened in Russia.

Communism was being spread around the world. So in the early 1920s, these lecturers kept getting demands like, read from that Karl Marx guy again. I want to hear about workers' rights. And the lector's like, listen, the owner told me not to read that stuff. Yeah. You can imagine being the owner, you're going like, what is he saying down there?

I don't want to hear that kind of stuff. Big business. No, no, no, no, no. Well, eventually it got to be so ugly that half the factory were, they were torn. And there's a whole placard over there by Hotel Haya about this. They literally had a duel to decide what would happen. Well, Karl Marx won. And then eventually that was the death of the Lector because the factory owners started going like,

we should get some radio. I'll invest with the radio. We should get some speakers and stuff, you know. Yeah, that's the way it went. Carl Marx killed the Lector. What can I say? Yeah. Well, you know, you have to imagine, too, like I thought, you know, it's funny because being from Tampa,

like these these factories are like you know they're they're massive factories and they're still here they're big big warehouses so you have the roofs are held up by you know the the the pole the thick pole the iron and stuff so you've got hundreds of guys sitting at tables rolling cigars and so on one of those poles up in the air sometimes I mean I just what or they'd have like they built like a stand they'd have a guy in the middle of it and he would be he's the electric right yeah he'd just be sitting in a big chair up there. I don't think we explain that. Yeah, hundreds of people in a huge room. Men, women, children, 10 years old, you start working in the factory. And they're sitting there reading the newspaper to them every morning. As

as soon as he got there, he'd have his coffee, just like you, he'd have the newspaper and go, all right, today's events. This is the date and et cetera, et cetera. Then he go right into the chapters. But not only that, the lectors would also keep them coming back to work because they get to the good part of the book and go, all right, make sure you're all here tomorrow. Yeah. And then you'll hear the end of Romeo and Juliet or whatever I've been reading. You know, it's, you know, it was almost like, stay tuned, folks, you know. Yeah, genius. So funny is it's like the level of what you had to do to entertain someone before.

Like, you know, the amount, you're imagining like, oh, we're going to play kick the can. Like you told some kids that now they'd be like, what? Well, no, that's because they have YouTube, they have, you know, they have, they have games, they have, what was that Oculus thing? Oh, yeah, the Oculus. Oh, yeah, I'm crazy. It's fun. Well, you know, I used to, when I tease kids that come on my tour, going to know what the number one toy was for kids back in the day, a kite.

Just a piece of paper and a twig and a string and you try and, you know, kite cutting, you try and hit your friend's kite. Simpler times, man. What can I say? Now I have a son. He wants PlayStation 5. I'm like, these tours aren't doing that good, buddy. Okay.

So what else is, what else is cooking? How long have you been doing the tours? I've been doing the tours about seven years. You know, it's, like I said, voted top tour in America by U.S. Traveler Magazine. trip advisor has given us award of one of the top tours to see in the world and it's a must see if you ever come to Tampa, Florida or if you're traveling around Florida

at all in general, you know, come to to Ebor City just even have to drive through it. If you haven't seen Ebor City, like you said, it's pretty cool. It's a different place. It's got this own Geneseecois, as they say, you know, like you don't know why, but when you go through it, you're like attracted to it. I've had people that come to Ebor City, they talk

to me and they go, I have no idea why I'm here. I just, I heard about it and I had to go see it. Now they live there. Well, you can walk all around evil in the houses and there's you know the worst part is trying to park um really but they do they have a bunch of parking garages and everything else now um well and they have a brick like all the all the streets are brick they have they have a trolley system yep they have can take you all the way downtown it's honestly it's way cooler than it's way more family i hate to say family friendly it's more it's better put together and it's better maintained than

today than it was well then i'm saying then uh bourbon tree oh yeah in in new orleans i mean it's way better it just everything about you don't have to we brought jess's daughter down the other day like i wasn't worried about anybody coming up to her and saying something you know raunchy or rude or anything i mean it's still a party town yeah but it wasn't but it ain't like and it's it's just a it's just on a more solid foundation it's a better built everything yeah kept up better thank the city of tampa for that i mean they do a pretty good job and especially recently, I mean, even before COVID, I went to like Gasparilla and stuff like that. I'm like, this was pretty well maintained, you know, considering how many people come down here for

these parades and stuff. But I mean, other than that, like, there's still some issues. It's a party town. The bars are open until three in the morning. It's just like wrong alley. You're going to have something. You know, it's, there's still going to be some things that pop up in the news that people go like, Ebor City. I'm not going there. It's, it's safer than any town that you just mentioned, like Bourbon Street, New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis. I mean, these are places. places that have a lot more crime rate than Ebor City does. Yeah. So the reputation of the 80s, 90s, you know, I remember growing up around that town.

If the street lights came on, you got out of there. Yeah, you know what I mean, it was rough. You know what we used to do, I went to, you know, Davis Island. Yeah. So I went to a school on Davis Island for kids with learning disability. Oh, okay. So we would during lunch, we would jump in our car, drive all the way down to E. Or get, is it silver ring or gold ring?

There was an old Cuban sandwich shop. Now one you might stump me on. Really? Silver ring or gold ring. I'm not sure. But, you know, something for me to look up when I get home. We get a bunch of Cuban sandwiches and we drive all the,

we could just make it all the way there and all the way back because of traffic was, you know, but it was worth it for the sandwich. Yeah, go there and you get a Cuban sandwich and they were amazing. And, uh, but yeah, it was rough. Like that was in the middle of day and it wasn't great. Yeah. At night, at night, it was horrible. Yeah.

At nighttime, I remember, like I said, as a kid, if my mom found out, I was in Ebor City, should be real upset plus you know where I bought like one of one of the major I had one scam where I got like 11.5 million it was from buying houses and the bulk of those houses were in Ybor City so you know you could buy houses back then for same houses that are now going for a hundred half a million right yeah well I was buying them rehab condition like 40 50,000 dollars yeah those same houses in the shitty condition are going for 200,000 now that's what's crazy horrible exactly And surrounded by okay area, but not the best area.

But, you know, speaking on that, like, Ebor City's always had something like that going on. And the scam that you even mentioned about getting a house, you know, working around the mortgage fraud or whatever you were really, really deep into, basically that's been going on since the beginning of time in Ebor. The first crimes of the mafia were arson and grand larceny. You know, like they, you know that. You know, they'd get a bunch of furniture and having a praise for 100,000,

even though it's worth like 50 bucks light a match and then now they collect you know the insurance companies it's uh it's it's nothing new it's something in ebor city i'm sure i mean i don't want to step on any toes but there's probably something going on now that i don't know about you know it's always going to be a cycle of something going on in ebor city it's had so many different lives how could it not listen i i've i've always done well on a fire i've had a couple fires every one of them was it was a good deal you always worked out in the end for me yeah i hear you know it's insurance what can I say I'm telling you um actually I had a fire one time I literally I was gonna tell you yeah I bought a place on a like we bought it on like a Monday and we were

in the middle the people that owned it were in the middle of evicting someone they were going to have them evicted by like Wednesday and so they were like do you want to wait until Wednesday when we get this guy out I said nah we'll close Monday just follow through on the eviction and it doesn't matter because we'll he won't know that we bought it on Monday so it doesn't know that really technically he's not going to get a nail on the door that's right well technically we're supposed to start over yeah the eviction so I said just continue to evict him he'll be the cops will show up nobody'll know I see okay okay we close on a Monday Wednesday I get a phone call from the real estate agent and she says hey are you down there and I go down where she was at the property

it was a quadplex it was a four unit building and I went no well why she goes oh they didn't call you and I went no what happened they had evicted the guy the guy cop showed up he walked out the cops like it's got to get out now and we're changing the locks you got to get out so he left

they didn't change the lock oh he came back because he walked straight out got into his car drove down the street came back with a gas can an hour later literally there's some old woman in a wheelchair and duplex next door

looking who looks at the window all day sees him pull up get out with the gas can walk over to the door put his key in opens the door takes gas comes out drops the gas can gets in his car and she said right then i could see the smoke coming out drives off cops show up you know she calls the fire department yeah she called the police the police say did you see this yeah it's the guy they just evicted an hour ago yeah tells them the whole thing and the whole place burned down so she's like it not it didn't all burn down the one unit got really badly burned yeah and i remember she called there i was like oh my god

So I drove down there and I was like, oh, I had just, like, luckily, you know, obviously I had insurance. Yeah. But think about that policy. They just had insured for two days. Yeah, no. If I was that, even though, you know, insurance columns, they're supposed to be pretty skeptical. I'd be like, no, get this guy in my office right now. But how did it work out for you?

Oh, it worked. Well, first the claims adjuster came down. He said, he said like 30, he wanted to give us like $32,000. And I was thrilled. Yeah. Just knocked that room off and build a wall there. Well, it was a building. And I was thinking, you know, honestly, I had only bought that building because the school board was supposed to be buying up everything in the area to put a new school in.

It had been playing for years. So you were trying to flip it? Well, I was planning. I was thinking they would buy it from me. I was just going to maintain it until they bought it. So anyway, the guy, they offered like $32,000 or something like that. I got a public adjuster. He came in.

He looked at it. He came back, argued with the adjuster, got it up to $59,000, which he gets 10% of. He took 10%, so I got a check for like $54,000 and change. I took $1,500, got somebody to gut the whole place. And before we started to build it out, we got the letter from the school board saying, hey, we're going to buy it. I bought the property for like $80,000. They bought it from me for $157,000 or $158,000 within a few months. That was a nice.

And then plus the check you got. Plus the check. I only spent like $1,500. bucks and I did lose the rent for like three months on that one building out of four buildings though so big deal I was I never had to make a payment yeah so that was like I said I did well on that fire I've always done well on a fire yeah I could just pick you ever seen that meme where the girls like smiling in front of the fire the burning building like that I bet that was your face when you saw like oh look at that money go nice yeah yeah it was a hey that was a good look it's

pretty funny the way it works sometime so all right anything else you want to well just you know I'll, you know, want to make sure that people know. We do tours seven nights a week, available at 8 p.m. If they fill up, we go to 10 p.m. It's $25 a person for adults, $10 for children. And then it's about a 90-minute tour. We do historical facts. We go into some haunted buildings.

And let me tell you, the best way to put it, it's like being in a scary movie, but you're in the movie. You get to go in the buildings. Well, that's what was cool. Matt, you got to go in. It was at, what was it, 10 o'clock at night? 10.30 at night. We get there about like 9.30.

When the sun has set, it's even better when, like, you get a full moon. And it's dark. And when you get off 7th Avenue of Ebor, you know it gets quiet. Yeah. Well, and then what was the one building, the, was it the old Cuban club? Yeah, the Cuban club of Ebor City. Like that whole, that's a massive building. We walked through the whole, and it was just us.

There's nobody there. You have the key to it, luckily because, well, the respect I have for the building. But not only that, this is a building that, like, the shows like the ghost hunters, deadfiles, ghost adventures. They have all investigated this building, and the ghost hunters said there's hundreds of ghosts, hundreds of ghosts in it. It was named one of the top most haunted buildings in America,

and I get to bring you guys in there to investigate it. Yeah. Talk about, there's a reason why we're getting such highly acclaimed, you know, praise for our tour, because when you have passion, when you have knowledge, and when you have access, it's head and shoulders above the others. Well, we'll leave the link to the website in the description.

and so all right well I appreciate you guys watching if you like the video do me a favor and subscribe hit the bell so you get notified of videos like this share the video

leave a comment for me in the description I try and respond in the description leave a comment in the comment section I try and respond to any comments worth responding to and I appreciate you guys watching and see you