Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Lawyer Real Estate Scams & Avoiding Bankruptcy | Shawn Yesner

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

Lawyer Real Estate Scams & Avoiding Bankruptcy | Shawn Yesner

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 $5.00 plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. I remember one story when I was foreclosing. The bank called us. They had got someone in there. A couple of stories.

They had got someone in there. The homeowner was so upset about losing the house. He painted everything black. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I'm here with Sean Yessner. Sean is a real estate attorney in the Tampa area. Yep, Tampa. Okay, in the Tampa area. And we're going to do a podcast.

We're going to talk about a bunch of stuff, one of them being foreclosures. He may or may not have foreclosed on some of the synthetic identities that I created when I was doing scams in, in Tampa and so we're going to talk about real estate we're going to talk about foreclosure the foreclosure process and Sean also has his own podcast the other thing I want to talk about real quick is this is what I was going to explain to you is that so YouTube so you have a podcast that's on it's a it's on Apple and Spotify and all this it's audio only okay so the thing about the thing about YouTube is that obviously

you know you can get monetized right so and it's not that hard to get monetized either I mean well so I have my show my show does go up to YouTube but all it is is the logo of the show with the audio behind it there's no sometimes

we are experimenting with video and we'll probably get some video up of me doing you know interviews like this but you don't even need to do an interview even if it was just you talk you've seen Graham Stefan right yeah It's just Graham Steffen.

Well, and I've got a co-host now, so at least it's the two of us talking. If it's an interview, there's a third one that comes in. Right. But yeah, right now the show does go up to YouTube. It's just, for now, it's the logo of the show with the audio behind it. And that's it got to get a camera, you got to look up again. And these are so easy. These are like the Sony's awesome.

They're like 750, 800 box. Like they're cheap. And they're perfect. They're made for podcasters. Yeah. Like, anybody can figure these out. I can figure them out. I don't barely know anything about technology.

I'm horrible at it. And even I can semi-figure it out. So, but here's the thing. YouTube, once you're monetized, they just introduced something called a thank you. So right under the video, there's like a scroll button or like a, you know, you can scroll through it. Typically, you didn't used to, but now you kind of have to, there's so many different features. Well, one of them is obviously the like button. So you can like the video.

Right. And then you can do, you would like it. You can not like it. Well, one, or you could share it. One of them, now that they have, if you go down to that button, you can scroll it. And it says, thank you. And it's a little dollar sign. So if you click on the dollar sign, you can dole that people can just donate.

Like a $1.99. I think it's $1.99, $2.99, $4.99. And then the next one, or is it? Yeah, I think it's then the next one up, I think is, it's $49.99. So I've been pushing this, right? I've been like, you know, hey, by the way, you do, because there's a problem is it's not directly, you can't see it. So you pull it up on your phone. You don't see it.

to scroll over so you have to tell people hey this is a feature huh so you know people are like you know if they don't want to join patreon so i have patreon yeah we got patreon too right but not everybody wants to join patreon and and you know they don't want to kind of um you know that's a that's a commitment right so but if they're like hey man that was a great video i i you know i'd like to send you money and i have people send me money like they'll send me you know ridiculous stuff like they'll send me like hey cox here's like three dollars for coffee you know which is great because you don't owe me anything which is great but you know how often are they going to go through that and they'll they'll cash at me three bucks or five bucks which is cool right but what's even cooler

is that all they got to do is just scroll over and boom they can hit the dollar 99 why two guys like in the last week or so that that that thank you for 49 99 oh wow like that's like you know and it's not like patreon where at different levels you get different stuff no you don't get anything Basically what you get is like right now One of the guy's name was I'm going to mention it I don't say that I'm going to mention them But we were so shocked

Like Colby contacted me and said Bro like he'd screenshot it and sent it and said hey man This guy just Just thanked you for 4999 Wow And I was like wow And then like three or four days later Another guy which the first guy that did it was

His name was Robbie the Dragon No sorry Robbie the Danger Sorry Dragon I've been watching Game of Thrones. So it was, his name was Robbie the, the danger. I mean, we really should have used her real name. And the other guy's name is Joe Me.

And both of them, so I have two guys, they both did it. And I just thought that was cool. And I was like, hey, Colby said, bro, you got to give these guys a shout. I was like, yeah, definitely send me that, send the name. So that's it. So thank you very much, Robbie, and thank you very much, Joe Me. Like, they really should, you should have to use your real name. It's just so silly.

So anyway, that's these guys. But yeah, definitely. Like, it's not that hard. Like, it's 1,000, 4,000 watch hours. Right. And a thousand subscribers. And if you just went on two or three programs and you're doing financial advice, that's one of the highest RPMs you can get, which is how you get paid.

Well, and that's what my show is about. And we can talk more about that as we go. But that's the title of my show is crushing debt. And that's what it came from doing. foreclosures and that led me into bankruptcies and that led me into helping people get rid of debt and so that's what a lot of the show is about right I mean but that's that is so you know CPM is like how much they pay you yeah cost per mill it's right yeah so like like the joke programs like where the you know where they do gags and they tell jokes or they have funny you know whatever skits or whatever

those have like one of the lowest um CPMs and it slowly goes up like Like, true crime and stories and stuff is probably around, let's say, $10 or $12. Like, mine's pretty good for my channel. It's around $12 or $13. But financial advice is like $20, $22, $18 to $26 or something. Like, it's one of the highest ones out there. Yeah. But you've got to get a lot of, a lot of subscribers, a lot of downloads, a lot of minutes, to get that.

Yeah, but you're already doing it. That's what I'm saying. You're already doing it. Yeah. throw a camera on there and push for subscribers like you probably you probably get a thousand subscribers in a month or two i've got so so the law firm is yesner law has a youtube page that i post video content to that page okay the page that hosts the podcast is my personal page is sean yesner so there's two youtube channels i tried once incorporating them what i heard was that

you shouldn't mix video with static you know video with just the picture okay Okay. And so that's why I sort of separated him out into the two channels. But, you know, at this point, having done podcasting for so long, having been in this space for so long, what one person says, another's going to say is garbage. And what one person says is great. Another one is going to say doesn't work. And you just got to experiment until you find out what works for you. Yeah. Well, that's the problem is everybody's an expert. Right. And typically they don't know what they're talking about. So I met you. I went to Chris Kay is, you know, we both know Chris Kay. He owns and operates Podfest, which is what? 3,500 members, like with the largest? There's a lot of people. It's one of the largest in-person podcaster conferences in the country. I think the only one that's bigger is podcast movement is the only one that's bigger. Podfest started here in Tampa. It's since grown to Orlando.

I think there's one coming up in January of 2023, which it's killing me because it's the same weekend as Gasparilla here in Tampa. And it's the same weekend my son has a soccer tournament in Jacksonville. So I'm trying to decide how to be in three places at once here. But yeah, there's typically we get pre-pandemic. There were 2,000, 5,500 people that attended live. Right. We just had our first one post-pandemic live. and there were, I want to say, like, 12 to 1,500 people there.

Right. That's the one I went to in Orlando, right? Yeah. So it draws a lot of people. And we're anticipating to get even more. We've also done virtual, so just online and whatnot. And I think Chris twice has set the world record for the – and it's really specific. It's weird the way Guinness does it.

But it's the most attendees at a virtual podcast conference, and there were over 5,000 people that attended online. Yeah, it was pretty cool. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. But he also has like smaller groups where you get together and that's where I met you. It was a small group here in Tampa at the IHOP or something. There was like 20 people or something. So I ended up meeting you and and then when I was leaving, like I talked a little bit about my, you know, my channel and you talked about your podcast and your podcast and crushing dead. And so I didn't really realize, I didn't make a connection that you had ever done real estate.

And so when I was leaving, I said, hey, you should come on the show. I said, you come on the show. And you were like, and I was like introducing myself and you were like, I've read your book. Yeah, I had been exposed to you a couple of years even before that. And that's where I first got the book and read the book. And it was, I loved it because I'm sitting there reading it. And from my perspective, as an attorney that's done foreclosures, an attorney that's been involved in title and closings.

and real estate transactions, and then on the flip side of it, defending foreclosures and all that stuff, I'm reading the book going, yeah, yeah, I get it. Yeah, okay, yeah, I see that. Yep, I understand. Yep, yep, yep, yep. And almost kind of thinking to myself, why didn't I think of any of this? You know what's funny is, so for you to say that, like, do you know how many times when I went on Concrete, which is a channel here in, you know what Concrete is? I think so. Yeah, it's a guy named Danny Jones. He runs a channel. out of, I'm going to say, it's, was it Sarasota, where is it?

It's not Sarasota, it's St. Pete, right? St. Pete. St. Pete out of St. Pete. And I, you know, and I explained what I did. Like, there were so many people in the comment section, like, that's not true. You can't satisfy a mortgage. The bank would know, you can't, or they would say, you can't do that anymore. That wouldn't work anymore.

Nothing's changed. Like, it's only, it's become easier. Yeah. but but but so it's funny for you to sit here and say that but what I was wondering and we were talking about earlier is like I all the things that I did to create those synthetic create synthetic identities and drive up the prices on the houses and and you know for like for anybody who's watching that doesn't doesn't know the quick version is I made a bunch of synthetic people I built credit histories for them and then would buy properties for

$40,000 in, in Ebor City, you could buy them then, God, now they're like 200,000, 300,000. Even for a complete shithole, it's 150, 200,000. It needs 50 or 100 grand with the work. Right. Well, what I was, when you were doing it, we were still just starting to get on that uptick of housing increasing. I think it would be, I think it could still be done. I think it'd be more difficult because prices have all appreciated and we're not getting and actually that we took a big jump here recently and then the prices have kind of leveled off a little bit. So I don't know that you could buy them as low.

Oh, no, no. I don't mean that. I don't mean that I'm just trying to say that anybody who's watching who doesn't know my story is that I was buying them for, let's say, 50,000 and then I would record the sale price. I'd pay extra dock stamps and I would record the sales price

of a $50,000 true sale at $200,000. So I did that with so many properties in a very small area that it drove the price is up. And then let's say I would borrow money on the property. I was then also able to go downtown and I would, if there was a mortgage on the property, I could satisfy the mortgage on the property. And now Bank of America, who lent me $200,000, let's say, on this property, or $150, whatever it was, I would file a satisfaction of loan from Bank of America and I could satisfy that loan. Bank of America doesn't know it's satisfied. But now if you look at the

title in the property, it now says that I bought the property for 200,000. I had borrowed a mortgage, but I paid it off, and I don't owe anything on the property. Right. And so, so that was essentially what I had, I was doing in Ebor City and around the country in different places as my story, you know, I kind of continued. But, and we were talking, I was saying like, I kind of figured this out because I was, I dated a girl that worked at a title company. The, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, And so, and I was constantly, then eventually I started doing it on my own. I would just go down. I'd look at the documents and pull them up when you had to go downtown and look.

And I'd pull them up and ask for, can I get a copy of this? Get a copy of this. And so I would do that. And I would slowly figure out what the process was. But I've never actually spoken with an attorney about what is the process of how to foreclose. Like the scenario of somebody buys a house. They pay their mortgage for six months. and then something happens.

They lose their job, whatever it may be, and they get behind. And then they make another payment. They try, catch up. They don't. And then you always see that. You know, two months later, they make a payment. And then they go another month or two. So in six months, they've made two payments.

And now the bank wants to foreclose. Like, what is the process of trying to foreclose for a bank on an individual? Yeah. And that's basically, when people kept saying in the meltdown, we need to stop foreclosures. You're never going to stop foreclosures. The foreclosures are going to happen in any, even a healthy market. Foreclosures are going to happen. Typically, what will happen is a borrower will get 30 days late and they get a notice from the bank.

Hey, you're 30 days late. Is everything okay? You have a little fee. Right. Late charge and whatever. Catch it up. If they then fall two payments late, maybe they get a phone call and a letter that's, hey, you're now, you're two payments down. You owe us two late charges.

You owe us this, you owe us this. Typically, and I think theoretically, the loan says when you're 30 days behind, the bank can pull the trigger and start the foreclosure. But I think the federal laws come in and said, well, we want you banks to wait until the borrowers are four months behind. And in that four months, we want you to try to reach out. We want you to try to modify. We want you to try to do this or that or, you know, try to figure out some kind of resolution before we'll allow you to pull the trigger and foreclose. And it's interesting because the documents say 30 days late, we can accelerate, we the bank can accelerate, pull the trigger and foreclose. Right. One of the things

I get a ton is the bank wants my house. There's so much equity. The bank wants my house. Bank doesn't want your house. Bank wants your money. No. They want that stream of payments. They're not in the business of buying and selling real estate.

They got to hire the agents just like we do. There's too much cost involved. There's too much chance that something will go wrong while they own it. And on top of that, when they sell it, they typically almost always lose money. Right. Like people like, oh, they made this. If they make money on your house, they have to give you the money. Like they have to in a, so let's say the foreclosure goes all the way to the end and there's a sale at the courthouse steps and I can explain all this.

But let's say there's a sale at the courthouse steps and let's say it's $150,000 that's owed and somebody buys it for $200. The bank only gets $150,000. Right. That extra $50,000 goes if there's a second mortgage, they get it. If there's an association, maybe they get it. If there's judgment liens, maybe they get it. And then at the end, the borrower, the same thing you would get if you actually sold the house. Right, exactly.

Right. So, I mean, obviously they can add and they add in all their fees. And if they had to order an appraisal and they had ordered, all the fees associated with the foreclosure, the attorney's fees, all those things have to get taken out. But you don't have just, you don't have any of that money coming anyway. Right. And so that's, so once the bank gets to the point where they decided, okay, we're not getting paid. This borrower's not responsive. We're going to pull the trigger. We're going to file the foreclosure. One of the reasons that your book was so interesting is one of the first things we have to do is pull a title search. We got to look at who else. is on title to this house and that would be the first time as the bank as the attorney that would be the first time if there were any of this um false satisfactions or i think one of the other things you did that that i was reading was not only would you go to one bank and say hey i got this free and clear house but then you go to another bank and say hey i got this free and clear house and then you go to another bank and the problem is the lag time it takes yeah two three four weeks for this stuff to appear on the public records so banks one two and three are all going cool We're going to be in first position on this free and clear house.

And now their first, second, third position. So we would figure out that kind of stuff, figure out who the defendant should be. And then the foreclosure gets filed. We got to serve the defendant. Now, again, in your case, these people didn't exist. They could never find them. So for the bank to get money out of these borrowers, we got to serve them personally. Someone that has to knock on the door.

Hey, are you Matt or, hey, are you Joe Smith or hey, are you, whatever? here you've been served with a lawsuit. Sometimes it's the sheriff. Sometimes it's a private individual, whatever. But that's the only way the bank can get money out of you. If it's somebody that doesn't exist, the bank can publish notice in the newspaper and still get service on the property. Right. So the bank can still foreclose on the house, even if the person doesn't exist. And so you got to go through that process. So if they can, if they can serve you, you're saying they can get money from you. You mean they can get a judgment against you. Well, they can get a judgment in either case. But let's say, you know, the previous example, the house,

the judgment is 150,000 and the house sells for 200. Right. We'll flip that. What if the what if the judgment's 150, but the house is only worth 100, right? And so there's a $50,000 deficit. For the bank to get that $50,000 deficit from the person, they have to physically serve the person. So, but keep in mind if I don't have $50,000. Well, then that's where garnishment, bankruptcy, that's where all that stuff comes into play. But if they can't serve you, then they don't have the right to garnish your wages or do any of those things. Right, because the court doesn't have personal jurisdiction against you. Okay. The bank, if they publish a notice in the newspaper, then the court has what's called in rem jurisdiction, meaning they have

jurisdiction over the property only. But not you. But not you. Okay. They don't have the in person or personal jurisdiction over you. So once we get through that process, people provide whatever defenses they have to the foreclosure or they don't do anything and they just get steamrolled. So what happens if the person fights the foreclosure? Like what is the process of? It depends on what the fight is. So when I started doing this, I did it for three years from the bank's perspective, 01 to 04. And then in 04, I switched sides and started representing homeowners in foreclosure. And there are a lot of my contemporaries. Some of them don't exist anymore, meaning they've been disbarred. They don't practice law, whatever.

Some of them still do. But there were a whole group of attorneys, maybe two different groups of attorneys. One group would say, all banks are evil. They shouldn't have given you the loan. They bifurcated, you know, they split the note from the mortgage, the debt from the security agreement. They had all this tricks and all that stuff. And we're going to fight the banks and we're going to try to get you these houses free and clear and da, da, da. That was one set.

I more fell into the other set, which is you borrowed the money. Yeah. Let's figure out a way to either pay it back and save the house or get you out of it, whether that meant get rid of the house, sell the house, whatever, modify. We could even, in bankruptcy, we can even save the house through chapter 13, through a payment plan bankruptcy. So let's figure out either number one how to save the house or number two, how to get rid of it so that you don't owe the bank any money. That was sort of where I felt. Kind of negotiate.

Yeah. As opposed to try and trick them into being able to keep the house somehow or another by saying. Exactly. You never properly signed. They never properly disclosed. They can't find the original robo signing and all that. I didn't fall into any of that nonsense, probably because I had been doing foreclosures from the bank's perspective. Right.

And so I had that creditor slant in me. Plus, one of the other things that sort of played out today is that if you delay, delay, delay, delay, delay, I've got some foreclosure cases that I inherited from other attorneys that, seven years old. eight years old at this point. Well, back in the mid to late 2010, 2000s back in that time frame, there were a lot of tax laws that said, if you lost your house and you took a loss on it, there would be forgiveness of debt income.

You would have to report income. If the bank said, hey, that $50,000 deficit, forget it. You don't have to pay it. Well, the IRS comes in and says, well, great, if you had to pay it and didn't pay it, we're going to tax you. on it. Well, there were some tax laws back in, I think, the late 2010s, just before 2020,

there were some tax laws that came into effect that said, hey, if you have that deficit from the sale of a primary residence, a short sale of a primary residence, you don't have to pay taxes on it. Those laws have now gone away. So delay, delay, delay, delay, delay, if you get rid of the house today and you take a loss on it, you might still have to pay tax on that. loss. Okay. Or you'd, there were some, there was one scenario where the person had a gain. So they had to pay capital gains, taxes, because it wasn't homestead property. But they had borrowed so much that there was a deficit based on what they borrowed. And so they got hit with forgiveness of debt income. So they got whacked from, from both sides by the IRS. IRS said, great, you had capital gains. We're going to

tax you on that. And the bank got rid of debt that you didn't have to pay. We're going to tax you on that. So a lot of these delays may have put some borrowers in a worse position, where now they're getting hammered by the IRS. And I can negotiate with banks. I can make banks go away all day. IRS is a totally different animal. And I've been able to do some negotiation with the IRS, but that's a different. They're in a way stronger position than anybody else. Exactly. So, so that's really where I came in was more of a, let's figure out how to do it. So a lot of the delays, what I tell clients is the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to file a motion, a motion for extension and time and say, hey, I just got hired, which is true in most cases. You typically

have 20 days to respond from when you're served with the lawsuit. So, hey, I just got hired and I need time to figure out what's going on, Judge. You just got hired as the attorney. Right. Okay. Give me an extension. Right. And most times those are granted, just professional courtesy. Here you go. Here's an extension of time. Then, you know, we'll see. Did they comply with all the prerequisites. Did they send out all the proper notices? I'm going to make sure that the bank did what the bank was supposed to do. Right. But I'm not trying to get anybody a free and clear house. Right, right. Unless I think there's something there. Yeah. I have a handful of cases floating around right now where I think there's a legit defense. And so, yeah, absolutely. Let's fight.

Even then, I tell the client, look, if I can get the judge to agree with us that you tried to make your payments. And for some reason, the bank wouldn't let you make your payments. Well, at some point, even if the judge rules in our favor and says we win, at some point, even the judge is going to say, look, your X number of payments behind. Your payments are whatever they are per month. You've got to catch that up in order to get to where you should be today. We'll wipe the late charges. We'll wipe the inspection fees, the attorney's fee. We'll wipe all that nonsense. But your X number of payments behind, your payments or so and so per month, you've got to pay that amount to the bank to get current. That may be where we've got some leverage to say to the bank, okay, give us a loan

modification that's favorable. Right. Give us a good loan mod. Let's just take those and stack them on the back of the, you know, let me start paying again, put them on the back of the, which is, do they do that often? They have. I mean, and that's a loan modification. So yeah, let's do a loan modification and do it that way okay and so i've been able to do that for some people too so what happens if but still what's the process of one okay i get it you get extent let's say you're foreclosing from the bank's perspective right like what's the first document that you file with the court well you've got to file the note and the mortgage so right um florida has specific requirements in terms of i got a file an affidavit that says where the original note is right to get rid of

that defense of you lost the original note right and i can tell you from doing it in in the early days what would happen a lot of times is the bank wouldn't send us the original documents right because they don't want those documents in transit yeah yeah they don't want them to get legitimately lost so they wouldn't send them to us so when we're getting ready to file the foreclosure we would have to say the judge we don't have the original documents right now the the the case would get ready to go to the final hearing, and the bank would send us the original documents. We'd file those in the court. Now we've got the original documents.

Let's foreclose. But a lot of times, we didn't file the original documents because the bank didn't want to send them to us yet, not because they didn't exist. So you've got to file the note, you've got to file the mortgage, you've got to file any assignments that show the chain from the original lender to whoever's foreclosing now. Right, because banks close with, you close with ABC lending, and then a month later, your mortgage just got sold to countrywide, then countrywide goes under, or it ends up getting assigned to Bank of America. So you have to explain what it. And Bank of America sells it.

Why this bank, your bank legitimately owns this fucking mortgage mortgage. And even then, sometimes it's not that the loan got sold to Bank of America. It's that the servicing rights got sold to Bank of America. So Bank of America is servicing it, but they're servicing it for this other bank, this other Wall Street security, whatever it is. Right. Which means they're just collecting the payments. I'm sorry, some of the stuff you're saying, like, I know what you're saying, but so servicing it means we're collecting the payments because we have a processing center. We can keep, we have all the software, and then they get a little percentage of whatever the payment is, like the interest rate, but somebody else really is holding the debt. Yeah, there's some wall.

So a lot of these things get, a lot of these loans get bundled up into packages, and then those packages get sold on Wall Street. Right. And so you may have a Wall Street security that's got a thousand loans in it. Well, Bank of America is the one, like you said, they collect all the money from the borrowers. They pay all that money over to whatever Wall Street security bank account owns the loan. They're in charge of collecting the payments from the borrower and giving the payments to whoever ultimately owns this thing. And they take a little piece. And they take a little piece of it.

And that's where the other, I loved, I don't know if you saw the movie The Big Short. I love the Big Short. I watched The Big Short two weeks ago with my girlfriend because she'd never seen it. It was a great, it's a great movie. It was a great on the ground telling of that story. Like, did you ever watch too big to fail? Yes. Like, I like that.

But if you're just kind of like an average person, like it's too surface. It's too high up and you're looking at everything, you know, from, you know, whatever, you know, two miles up. Right. As opposed to the big short where you can really see it's a down-to-earth where like, now this makes sense. That one scene where they go to that house, I think it's in South Florida somewhere, and they knock on the door. and can we talk to blah blah and the lady's like yeah that's my dog or something and they're like wait a minute your dog got this loan and she had the mortgage guy came out and told me to sign a bunch of papers and we got money yeah and that's literally how it how it used to work sometimes do you remember the the douchebag mortgage brokers that were like oh i go for uh uh um i go for immigrants or i i try and focus on on on um what do you say on on strippers and like Those were my brokers. Those were, like, every time I watched that, I'm like, oh, my God, like, at the time, my brokers seemed pretty cool.

They're watching these guys. And I'm like, these are the kinds of idiots that I hired that were doing loans. Like, that was the kind of, it was, it was horrible. It was literally, can you fog a mirror? We'll give you money. Yeah. Making up pay stubs, making up jobs, no verification of income requirements, all that. People say to me, you know, the banks are to blame for the mortgage meltdown.

They are. The brokers. The brokers, the appraisers, even the government officials. I mean, the counties loved it. Their income was going up because all these properties are increasing in value so much. They're getting all this tax revenue from the appreciation of the properties. And you read my book. You saw how many times did I get caught?

Like, I got caught over by the banks would catch me over and pay them off, pay this, agree to do this, and just kept going. Yeah, and kept going. And nobody ever called the FBI. Yeah, they were making money. They didn't care. they were making money hand over a fist nobody I think in the I think one of the things in the beginning of that of the book I explained about like I call one time red handed we were talking about like two

million dollars worth of fraud I mean it was it was a ton of fraud that one broker had committed and literally they were like they they were like look just promise to if we get it have to take any of these loans back just promise us you'll help us either refinance the house sell the house you'll help us out because they were in Chicago right and like two or three weeks later the owner of that company flew down took me and three or four of my mortgage brokers out to dinner and he had a few drinks and he was he even told it he said look man I don't care how much fraud goes through as long as it gets passes through our quality control and I'm able to sell it on the

secondary market he's like I could care less yeah I mean that was really his they're at it and they were doing they're probably they weren't a huge company but they were probably doing 10 million a month Yeah, when the money's flowing, nobody really cares. It's when the music stopped. Yeah. That everybody went, oh, my God, what's going on? He wants Khan Bank of America out of $250,000 using nothing but a fake ID and his charm. He is the most interesting man in the world.

I don't typically commit crime, but when I do, it's bank fraud. Stay greedy of my friends. Support the channel. Join Matthew Cox's Patreon. So you file with the, sorry, back to you file with the court, you say, hey, here's the, here's the note, here's the note, everything was signed, everything's proper, they're not paying. Like, if the borrower, the borrower's been served or not served, and, you know, like you said, if they're not served, then you run an ad in the newspaper saying, hey, this person's in foreclosure, they don't answer because they don't know they're running some little dink newspaper, nobody, nobody ever. looks at but they know they're being foreclosed on anyway um and then so what's the next process of is that is that you file like a less pendence or what so list pendants is filed at the very beginning oh that's the

beginning yeah that's and a lot of people confuse the list pendants with the foreclosure really all the list pendants means is that there's a notification there's a lawsuit that affects property so i've used list pendants in quiet title lawsuits where you're trying to say i really own the property not this other person i've used list pendants in partition lawsuits where two people People own property, but they're fighting over what to do with it, how to get rid of it or keep it or whatever. So all the list pendants means is that there's a lawsuit that involves property. Okay.

Now, 99% of the time, that's foreclosure. But you could have a list pendants in other types of real estate related lawsuits. Okay. But yeah, you follow the list pendants, the complaint, all the supporting documents. Then the defense attorney typically comes in and says, you know, hey, here's my motion for more time. Here's my motion to dismiss. here's my answer in defenses, you know, whatever it is that's filed. One of the advantages

that we have here in Florida, and I use advantages loosely, the foreclosures have to go through the judge. There's other states where it's all a document process. It's all pushing paper. So in Florida, the homeowner owns the property. The bank only has a lien on it. In other states, the bank owns the property until the borrower pays it off. Well, in those kinds of states, you just file a notice and the bank gets to foreclose. It's a much faster timeline mostly. It's like I'm taking your car. Right. In Florida, you've got to go through the judge. And so the judges have calendars. The judges have dockets. The judges are busy. We just had Hurricane Ian come through, which shut down court for a week. So in those kinds of cases, there are some delays

that are just created naturally by the judge and the judge's schedule and the clerk and the amount of cases that are being processed and all that kind of stuff. There's just natural delays there. We can typically file stuff that does create an answer that creates some kind of defenses to the foreclosure lawsuit. We can ask one of the other things that Florida did, which we can talk about too, Florida put in a mandatory, not a mandatory, but in most cases, if the borrower asks for mediation, the judge will give it. So the borrower can submit a document that says, hey, I want to mediate with the bank to see if I qualify for a loan modification. Even though the bank had to take four months before they filed this thing to try to modify with the borrower, the borrower

within the foreclosure can then file something that says, hey, I want to, I want a mediation to see if I can get this loan modified. So you can do that. Well, that whole process slows things down for months and months and months. Eventually, the bank will get to the point where they say, okay, forget it. Here's our motion for final judgment, motion for summary judgment. Here's the motion that we're filing. This says, judge, bang the gavel, say we win, give us the house, schedule the sale, whatever. When that happens, I can even go to that hearing. Florida law says the foreclosure sale has to be between, I think it's 28 and 35 days from that final hearing. So when the bank files for that final hearing and says, Judge bang the gavel, say we win, give us our judgment,

schedule the sale. Florida law says the sale has to be 28 to 35 days from that point. But I can go to the hearing and say, judge, we're trying to sell it. The borrower is sick. We got the end of school coming up. We got Thanksgiving. Whatever. And in most cases, the judges will give 60 days from that date, 90 days from that day. You're like six months from the first time they stopped the pain. And that's if typically I could, I can some, I can most times get it out of year. I was going to say, that's if everything goes in the bank's favor. You're, you're like six months. Right. So you're saying if you drag it, you can go a year or more. Yeah. And when when I was doing foreclosures, my fastest foreclosure from the day the list pendants was filed until

the day of the foreclosure sale was 91 days. Right. That was my record. But that was that's with nobody fighting. That's what? 15 years ago. That was yeah, 2002 or three. Okay. Like I said, I've got some now that are six, seven, eight years old. Now, to the extent anyone from the Florida bar is listening, I do put in legitimate. Defenses. I'm not trying to delay just for purposes of delay. Like I said at the very, very beginning when we started, I've got some plan in place with the homeowner that we're going to try to sell it and pull out the cash. We're going to try to short sell it and eliminate the equity. We're going to try to modify it. And then even then with the sale coming up, if there's

a foreclosure sale coming up, we've always got bankruptcy as an option. Right. We can do a chapter seven, which is a liquidation bankruptcy, which basically is the homeowner saying, I want to get rid of this house, but the bankruptcy stay causes about a 90-day delay. Or we can do a chapter 13, which is a payment plan bankruptcy, and I'm going to try to catch up the mortgage through this bankruptcy plan. And bankruptcy plans are typically five years in length. The other thing is here in Tampa, and I think all over the state, but especially here in Tampa, we've got a mortgage modification mediation plan within bankruptcy court. So you've got the first four months that I'm going into default that the bank has to try to modify with me.

Then we get into the foreclosure, and I ask for mediation to try to modify the loan in the state court foreclosure. If all that fails in the bank schedules a foreclosure sale, then I can file a bankruptcy in a chapter 13 and say, I want to save the house. And oh, by the way, I want a third shot at trying to mediate with the bank to get a modification put in place within the bankruptcy court. So I got three tries at least to try to get this loan modified within the foreclosure process here in Florida. Okay. So here's what I'm wondering, because I, in my opinion, like, and I'm going to be totally wrong, but like most people, they get a few payments behind. They can't catch up and they kind of put their, typically, like, don't they pretty much like just put their head in the sand? Yeah. You know, like that's the problem. Like they, they think there's nothing we can do. And then, of course, if there is, then they have to pay you to try and figure these things out for them. Um, so what I'm wondering is like, do you ever get to a point, do you ever get clients in that are basically like saying, look, you know, I'll pay you, but I want to, I want to just stay in the house as long as possible. I don't really want to pay anything back. I just want to stay as long as possible, put as much money in my pocket as possible and move on to something else. Like, I mean, is that, like, because I guess my, my problem is when I've, I've thought about this, you know, you know, you know, multiple. multiple times. And actually, I have a friend of mine that I was telling him you were coming over and we were talking about it. And I was saying that, you know, like, he's like, well, you know,

we went back for that and we were talking about like, I was talking about like, um, adjustable rate mortgages. Right. Because I was saying initially he was like, man, you know, they know what they signed. You know, he was saying, they know what they signed. They, they owe $1,200 a month. They couldn't pay it or they decided not to pay it or they didn't want to work hard enough to pay it. And so they get foreclosed on. And I went, you know, and honestly, I said, said a lot of times that's what happens they lost their job they didn't save enough money they didn't budget correctly they get a little bit behind then they get further behind then they justify not paying they get angry at the bank and they this i said but to be honest with you i said having been a

mortgage broker a lot of times people with adjustable rate mortgages had no idea what they were no i agree with you know like and when you read the documents like i literally used to be it would disclose to people what the documents said and when they read it, I would let them read, I'd say, well, here's, oh, you can calculate right now what your payment would be. And I would say, well, look, right here. And I'd say, oh, I see. It says that your late payment will be, or your adjustable rate is based on the, the

LIBOR or the whatever. And I'd say, that only just only goes up a couple of percentage of whatever, you know, and they go, so my payment will only go up like a one or two percent of the payment. And I go, yeah, so I'm sure, yeah, that sounds what, that's not what it means. But I go, yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what it means. I know that's not what it means. And then I would say, they'd say, well, what's my late payment good amount? I have a prepayment penalty.

And I'd say, well, let's see. It says it's going to be, oh, here's what it says it's going to be. And it would say 80% of whatever the remainder of the prepayment period is, you know, based on whatever your interest rate is. And so the way it made it sound like it was 80% of the interest. on the on the payments yeah but the problem is so to them they would think well my interest rate is let's say for sake of argument five percent right my payments a thousand dollars five percent of a thousand dollars is fifty dollars and i have i'll have two years left so 50 times 24 right so oh so it's like two hundred and forty dollars or or no i'd say it'd be like a hundred and twenty

They want 80% of $120. And I'd let them do that calculation. I'd go, yeah, that sounds right. They go, oh, okay, no big deal. That's not what it means. No. Because almost your entire payment for the first five, six, seven years is all interest. So what they really mean is it's like 80% of your payment for the next 24 months.

So, you know, it's thousands of dollars. So a lot of these people I know just from disclosing to them and talking to them and having them look into it, I know that you have no idea what you're about to sign. and then they would get into that position and they go to sell the house a year and a half later and they'd have a $6,000 prepayment penalty that they had never saw coming

or they would or their adjustment would hit period would hit and their payment would jump $220 on their payment and they never saw that coming right so to me like I was explaining my buddy I was like there is such a thing as predatory lending

I think there are legitimately Like you said, some borrowers, either prepayment penalties, adjustable rates, balloons, there are some borrowers that legitimately had no idea what they were signing. And in that instance, yeah, they were taken advantage of, but where the problem that I always had to overcome as the attorney making the argument for the borrower is they still got the money to buy the house, even though they were taken advantage of by the mortgage person or they were taken advantage of by an appraisal for a property that wasn't worth what it appraised or they were taken advantage of by this one, that one, the other. They still, they got divorced. Their income,

their household income got cut in half because of the divorce. Now they've got alimony and child support on top of that. They didn't understand what they were signing, but they got the money to buy the house. So is it fair to the economy to give them this house for free because they didn't understand that, hey, I'm borrowing this money and I eventually got to pay it back. That's where I always struggled. So that's where I always said, I'm going to defend you as best as I can. And I'm going to buy you as much time as I possibly can. But at the end of the day, you owe this money. We got to figure out a way to pay it back. Right. Either sell the house and pay it back, short sell the house and let's wipe the deficit there or modify it. Let's get it from

an adjustable rate to a longer term loan or that call in hard money lenders. Now, at that stage, no hard money lender was interested because the house was 100, 110, 120% financed. In other words, they had borrowed more than the house was even worth. Right. So hard money lenders, the private individuals were not going to come in and loan those people money. But let's figure out some way to resolve. Put your head in the sand isn't the answer. Put in your head. Yeah. At a minimum, call the bank. Yeah. At a minimum, call an attorney. Most of, I know, I give free consultation. Most of my peers give free consultations. So call an attorney, talk, and we're bound by attorney-client privilege.

So if someone calls me and talks to me, I can't, you know, hey, Matt, your listener, blah, blah, blah, I can't tell you that. I'm not allowed. So, you know, contact somebody, even the bank, contact the bank. Like I said, the bank has four months that they got to try to figure out something before they can pull that foreclosure trigger. The other thing that I, that you said is that, you know, so what will happen is, well, I've got the money this month, so I'm going to make this month's payment. Well, I don't have the money next month, but I've got the money the month after that. Right.

So I'm going to make the payment then. Well, what happens is if you skip a month and make a payment the next month, say your payment's $1,000. Right. And like you said, a 5% late charge, so $50 late charge. What will happen is you skip a month, so now $1,050 is due. Right. You pay that $1,000 the next month. The first 50 pays the late charge.

Right. So now you only got $9.50. So you didn't make a payment. So you didn't make a full payment. Right. You got 950. So now the bank says, well, we're going to put that into this suspense account. And so 950 sits in that account.

And then you skip another month and then you pay $1,000 the following month. Well, again, now they've got two more late charges. So 100 comes. Right. They got 900 left. You're not helping yourself. They take 50 of that. In other words, you're not instantly behind, but it's a slow death.

Right. That's a, you know, every month you fall a little bit further behind. And so typically I tell people, if that's what you're going to do, just stop making payments. Yeah. Start saving up your war chest. And let's figure out what we're going to do. Are we going to refy the house? Are we going to modify?

Are we going to bankrupt? What are we going to do? But you've saved up. So when it comes to paying me or paying another attorney or paying down debt or doing this or doing that, you've got a war chest built up to do that with. Right. So once you get in front of the judge, there's just nothing you can do to stop it. And I'm saying, assuming you get to that point, nobody's showing up.

There's no way to remodify it to that point when the judge says, okay, we're going to give, we're giving the house back to the bank. Right. The bank now has possession of the house. How long, what does that process? Because like if they do it at 10 o'clock in the morning and the judge, you know, hits the gavel and says, okay, the bank gets the house back. Like, I mean, can they go right then and just say, hey. hey, grab your stuff and get out of the house. So it's literally an auction.

And back when I started, it was literally. There was a guy at the courthouse steps in front of a podium and there were bidders and, you know, you bid 100 grand and you bid 105 and you bid 110, literally an auction on the courthouse steps. Today, I think all over the state, at least in most of the, I know in all the Tampa Bay area and I think in almost every other county, it's all online. So you go online and you say, well, for this house, my max bid is this or for, for, for, this house, I'm going to start my bid at this and I want it to go up $100.

So I'm going to start my bid at $100,000 and I want it to go up $100,000 until it reaches 150. And if somebody outbids me at 150, stop bidding. Right. And so all the different bidders will put their instructions in. And it literally, the computer just does it. You figure out who the winner is. Now, in Florida, a lot of people get confused and they say, well, I've got this right of redemption.

And you do. And what the writer redemption says is at any point before the sale, before that auction, I can pay the full balance to the bank and I can get my house back, right? At any time before the sale. What a lot of people get confused about is between the day of the sale and when the clerk of court actually issues the title and says, okay, bank, you were the only bidder, you win it, or Matt, you were the successful bidder, here's your title. In between the day of the sale and the day that title is issued by the clerk is a 10-day window. That 10-day window is only to challenge that the sale was conducted properly. A lot of people confuse that and say, I've got that 10 days to redeem my property.

I've got that 10-day window to pay the bank in full and get my house back. Right. That's wrong. That 10 days is to challenge. And I actually had that. I've got one reported appellate case in my career, and it was that kind of a situation. The borrower had paid off the bank. And the, The sale was down in Palm Beach, and we tried to get the sale stopped, and the clerk refused to do it. So I said to the bidder, to the person that was bidding on behalf of the bank, because is when they were live, I said to the person bidding on behalf of the bank, before the clerk starts the sale, announce as loud as you can that the borrower had paid off the loan. What that did was that created an issue in terms of the sale itself. So anybody that was bidding knew, hey, we're going to try to stop this thing. right so the the uh our bidder did that who wants to bid on that who wants to be involved in that

somebody bid on it and one we then filed our motion within the 10 days that said hey there was an irregularity in the in the sale we knew because we created it right so there was an irregularity in the sale the sale needs to be unwound that would allow our borrower to redeem during before the sale happened so he could keep the house this particular borrower could keep the house well the clerk didn't docket any of that until after the fact. Dock it, meaning putting it on the court record. Why? What was wrong with this clerk? It was just a Palm Beach.

Left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing. They were flooded. They were overloaded. I don't know what the reason was. And I actually have an opinion where the court said, the appellate court said no, because everything got to the courthouse on time. Not our fault that the clerk sat on it for two, three, five, ten, however long it was. everything got to the courthouse on time that was proper so we were able to create that irregularity to get the sale unwound to then allow the borrower to redeem the house and save the house

but a lot of people will say in that 10-day window i can redeem no you can't right once that sale happens your ability to pay off the loan is is done i had someone call me two weeks ago and this is at 845 in the morning they called me we have a sale at 10 o'clock clock okay they said we have a contract to sell the house okay can you stop the sale no not with an hour and 15 minutes left there's very little if i can get to the bank maybe if i can get to the court but i don't know that the judge is going to have time right to listen to review this motion and rule on it plus all you've got is a contract you don't have the money still not go through yeah right you just have the contract and so i said okay well send me the contract never

got the contract. Yeah, there's probably no contract you again with, yeah. Either an investor or some, realtor, somebody that didn't understand. So, okay, so let's assume the house goes through, somebody buys a house. So, and that process is like, you know, if the houses,

they owe the bank $180,000 and they bid $160,000. The bank has got $20,000, but basically now the house is owned by this new person free and clear even though they didn't pay the 180 off they paid 160 the bank now has to go after those people on their own yeah well a lot of times what the bank will do is the bank gets a credit

bit what's called a credit bid so if you think about it in your example 180,000 judgment if somebody bid 500,000 dollars the bank gets the first 180 right so the bank doesn't have to pay any money to the clerk until the bank's bid goes over their judgment amount Because they're going to get book club on Monday. Gym on Tuesday. Date night on Wednesday. Out on the town on Thursday. Quiet night in on Friday.

It's good to have a routine. And it's good for your eyes too. Because with regular comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers, you'll know just how healthy they are. Visit Spexsavers.cavers.cai to book your next eye exam. eye exams provided by independent optometrists. In your example, they're going to get the first 180. It doesn't make sense for the bank to pay 180 to then get it back.

Right. So they get a credit for the amount of their judgment. But a lot of times what you mentioned is really good is that the bank will do its own evaluation and say, well, this house is only worth 160. Yeah. So we're not going to bid 180 because if we bid 180 and we get this house back, now we got to hire the realtor, we got to secure the house. We got to do this at the other.

So we're only going to go to 160, which is what we believe to be the value. of the house. And if somebody outbids us, great, we'll get our money. If nobody outbids us, we'll still get it back at a value that we think we can sell it and at least try to break even or cut our losses or whatever. So in your example, judgment's 180. Somebody buys it at 160. They own it. It's up to the bank whether they want to go after that 20,000 against the borrower. And again, did they get personal service? Did they publish in the newspaper? That's where that issue comes back to that the bank has to evaluate. But the person that buys it at 160, they own it. Right. Any other judgments or any other issues that are inferior to the mortgage. So a second

mortgage. Associations are different in Florida, but IRS liens. IRS liens. Judgment liens. All that stuff, assuming the bank did their title search, assuming the bank did their homework up front, assuming the bank named all those parties as defendants in the lawsuit, They're gone. Yeah. They're wiped off. So now I own the house. I paid $1.60.

I own it. You own it free and clear. How do I? But there's still two, there's still a husband and wife and two kids that live in the house. Now what do I do? The judgment says you can evict them. And you don't have to start the eviction process over again. So what a lot of investors will do, what a lot of banks will do is they'll knock on the door and they'll say, hey, here's our certificate of title.

We own this house. We understand you live here. If you move out in the next 15 days, we'll give you $2,000. Right. If you move out in the next 30 days, we'll give you a grand. If you move out in the next 35 days, we'll give you $500. If it takes you longer than that, we'll just evict you. Right.

And that's called cash for keys. Yeah, yeah. And they'll just, you know, because what the banks realized or what the savvy investors realized is, as much as I have my own mortgage to pay, you can save some money. by paying these borrowers or these tenants to leave as opposed to fighting it versus hiring me and fighting it. Yeah. I had a girlfriend that, oh gosh, she had her tenant show up. Like, you know, you always hear these nightmares about tenants and stuff.

Like my ex-wife and I, we've, you know, evicted, you know, plenty of people. And she's been, since we divorced, she's evicted, she said one or two people a year. That's it. And she's never really had any horrible scenarios, right? Like people are like, what if somebody destroys your house or it almost never happens. You know, it does happen, but almost never. So anyway, I remember this.

I remember I had a girlfriend that literally somebody showed up with her sick kid. I mean, the oxygen tank, the whole thing. And the judge immediately six months. And she was like, six months. Oh, my God. I was like, that's not. like so assuming that these people don't show up you're saying they go in with cash for keys they could just start evicting immediately they could evict once they get that certificate of title once that 10 days pass and they get the certificate of title they can begin the eviction immediately and they don't have to start like a traditional landlord would send a three day notice you failed to pay rent they don't have to do that they go back and say here's the judgment the judgment says if if these if anybody's living there and that's why you'll see in a lot of foreclosure cases they name this unknown tenant owner. Right. And that way they pick up any. So if I'm the homeowner and I just throw a tenant in there,

well, that tenant is now covered within the foreclosure lawsuit. It doesn't mean that tenant owes the bank money, but it means that that tenant is now covered in the lawsuit. And if I get the house back or anybody who gets the house back can now evict that tenant. Doesn't matter if they have a lease agreement or anything. There is a law in Florida, the protecting tenants in foreclosure act or protecting tenants at Foreclosure Act, some kind of goofy name like that. And that law does say if there's a legitimate lease, so it's got to be a legitimate lease, fair market value. You can't be like I slapped a lease together on a napkin five days before the sale and you're paying five bucks a month. Right. If there's a legitimate tenant, a legitimate lease, the bank or any person who

bought that property for investment purposes has to honor the terms of the lease. Oh, wow. If it's somebody that bought the house to live there, 90 days notice before they can get the person out. So there is a law. And that came out of the foreclosure meltdown as well of people making up bogus leases and people saying, I didn't know the house was in foreclosure and all this other stuff. So there is a law specific to Florida that says, yeah, you got to give some notice if you're going to live there. If you're not going to live there, you got to honor the terms of the lease if it's a legitimate lease. Okay. I remember one story when I was foreclosing. The bank. Mike called us. They had got someone in there. A couple of stories. They had got someone in there. The homeowner was so upset about losing the house. He painted everything black. The floors, the walls, the ceilings, took out the light fixtures. Everything black. There's stories of people that put socks down the toilet and flush the toilet. You know, all that kind of. I have heard stories like that. I haven't experienced a lot of it, but I've heard them. Yeah, I mean, I've, you know, the whole thing is too, like, it, listen, you give someone a hammer and five minutes and they could do $10,000 for the damage to a house, you know, it's not hard. Right. But typically what happens in evictions is that the person knows they owe the money.

Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like people, you know, at heart are, you know, they may try and justify this and be angry about this and, oh, the bank this and this isn't fair and it's not my fault and it's not. But in the end, you know, you owe the money. Yeah. You know, so they typically leave. They may leave it trashed, but most likely it's about a 99.99% chance that they're not going to take a hammer and knock the windows out and crack the toilets. And they're going to leave it a mess.

Yeah. We're not going to clean up the bank's house. Right. But I'm going to get my stuff and I'm just going to leave. Right. I'm going to get, you may have to, as the bank or as the foreclosure bidder, you may have to clean out the refrigerator. You may have to replace the carpets. Right.

Well, typically, they're not taking sledge hammers to the walls. Well, and I was going to say, if it's cash for keys, then you could always say, look, if you leave the place in good shape, you get two grand. Typically, cash for, cash for key says you got to leave it in what they call broom swept conditions. So you got to put some effort into cleaning it. You don't have to make the floors clean enough. It doesn't have to be rent off of them. Right. But you got to put in some effort to tidy it up before you go.

Right. Law enforcement often questions him, not because he's suspected of a crime, but because they find him fascinating. He is the most interesting man in the world. I don't typically commit crime, but when I do, it's bank fraud. Stay greedy, my friends. Support the channel. Join Matthew Cox's Patreon. Actually, I have an idea for a business.

I'll tell you later. Offline? Yeah, only because, like, right now, it's not really a thing. Like, it's not really a business that needs, that is needed at the moment. Right. But in a year from now, it might be huge, right? So, but what I was going to say is, like, right now, you know, the economy, right? So, I mean, you've got a podcast.

You give financial advice or, you know, crushing debt, the name of it's crushing debt. Crushing debt, yeah. I see, you got a shirt. I don't have shirts. I have shirts, but my shirts are so, like, I don't, they don't, I need to get better quality. They're good. They're cotton, but they don't, I don't like the way they fit me. Anyway, so yeah, crushing debt.

Is it just about how to kind of get rid of debt and bankruptcy, or is it? No, there's other ways. There's other ways. So one of the stories that I've told on the show, one of the stories that I've told before, my best example, I have a client who, a former all-pro football player, was getting money thrown at him. He was an all-pro football player, so he's getting money thrown at him. He ends up blowing out his knee, career's over, goes into coaching. Well, the bank then said, hey, we want this money back.

And we're like, wait a minute, we went from an all-pro salary to not even an assistant coach, like a positional coach salary. We went from seven figures to low six figures in a second and couldn't pay it back. So I ended up getting into a lawsuit. We ended up settling that one. He ended up owing the bank, I want to say like $350,000. we ended up settling it for 175 on payments. We're making payments to settle the 175.

But he calls me one day. And he says, hey, look, when I was at the last city I was at, which happened to be here in Florida, when I was at one of the last cities I was at, I got this electronic store to give me a bunch of equipment for my house. And when I asked him what I was going to pay for it, they were like, don't worry about it. Just use it. You are who you are. Just use it. Tell people about our store. whatever he said so they never asked me I never paid it well when when I got hurt they

they now wanted either the stuff back or to get paid and then when I tried to give them the stuff back they said no no no we just want you to pay for it now and it was like nine or 10 grand worth of equipment did he sign anything I don't remember like to me you just gave me a bunch of stuff right what just happened so anyway he the he ends up getting sued he moves away to the next city where he's now an assistant coach at the next team. They sue him. This is all before I got involved. They sue him.

They got a judgment against him. Now, they'd also sued him for civil theft. And in Florida, civil theft, you can get triple damages. So it basically accused him as stealing this stuff. He wasn't around to get served with the lawsuit. We mentioned personal service. He wasn't around to get served with the lawsuit. He gets his triple damage judgment.

He has a judgment against him for like 37. grand and change he then calls me and says hey can you take a look at this well i look at it they they didn't serve him personally they knew that he had left the city when they tried to serve him they didn't even try to serve him in the new city they got there were all kinds of issues procedurally with the way that they had done this and one of the things that he told me was the guy that used to own the store that gave me all the equipment doesn't own the store anymore it's like okay so I file this motion that says you got to unwind the judgment because you don't have service. You got to unwind this. You got to unwind that. You got to unwind this. And by the way, we think

that the person that's giving the authority, the person that's directing the attorney is no longer the owner of the store. So I file all this. About a week later, I get a call from the attorney handling the case. Can we work this out? He says, we're talking back and forth, BSing, whatever, talking back and forth. He says, listen, dude, offer me a dollar to sell. this case right like okay my and then normally you got to get permission from the client but i was like whatever it's a dollar it's like okay we'll offer you a dollar to settle the case he goes accepted send me the dollar okay right so i send him a dollar it cost me almost as much to send him the damn check as the check itself so send him a dollar get back um a satisfaction of the judgment get back you know cases

dismissed and all this everything gets unwound i call him back later and I'm like look dude I I need to know 37,000 I just got rid of for a dollar he said well when the store sold the agreement between the new owner and the old owner was that the new owner had to pay any settlement proceeds for any lawsuits outstanding to the old owner and they hate each other so and the new the new owner likes my client their buddies so dollar right he called the old owner and said, hey, I settled that case against so-and-so, here's their settlement proceeds, paid them a dollar, and it was done. But that's my best success story in avoiding bankruptcy is I got 37,000 wiped out for a buck. But that's the, originally when I started

the show, it was also from a real estate investor perspective. So, and there's still some topics that I'll do today that are for for the real estate investors talking about LLCs and land trusts and and private mortgages, and we'll bring up foreclosure topics, and we'll do all that stuff. A lot of the show, though, is also geared towards how to get out of debt, and whether that's with bankruptcy, with settling it, with tweaking your budget, it's all those kinds of tips. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's funny, I don't know, like when, you know, the things that I see people spend money on, you know what I'm saying?

Like, I don't understand. I make this much money. this, but it is, and I know Graham Stefan is big on this. Yeah. Um, is that like, like the, the, the $5 Starbucks or $6 Starbucks coffee. And I, I go to Starbucks, you know, like, honestly, I honestly almost never go anymore because now I almost

never leave my house. Yeah. Like I paint. I do, like everybody comes here. Right. Was like, was just perfect. Like, not that I mind driving. I just, I've set it up in such a way that I don't, I don't need to go anywhere anymore. I can't, I can't remember the last time that I bought myself Starbucks.

I've been to Starbucks, but I have people that send me gift cards. I was because I get gift cards all the time. And so I get Starbucks basically for free. I don't think I've ever paid to load my Starbucks account with money myself. I've paid. I've paid. I may have in the past. But I'm saying I've been lucky.

And I go so seldomly now, what happens is now, like people will, I've like a small group of people that are doing things, you know, real estate. And they'll call me and say, hey, does this sound right or explain this to me? And I'll talk to him about this. I'm like, yeah, honestly, they're like, guys charging me this much money. And I'm like, that's excessive. Like, listen, call them back, tell them this, tell them that. You know, and I'll, um, even things like, and then I'll get a Starbucks car. Yeah.

Well, and even things like, um, simple things like cable TV. Right. You know, we've, I pay, I used to pay like 300 bucks a month for cable, internet and phone. well who has a landline anymore in their house so cancel that internet i can get from anywhere and cable i mean you mentioned youtube my kids are addicted i've got an 11 year old and an 8 year old they're addicted to youtube so who watches cable anymore i can stream Disney plus i can stream ESPN i can stream uh netflix i can do all this stuff so i cut my cable bill from what 300 to 100 right and that's 200 bucks right there every month

in savings. That's 2,400 bucks a year. And that's, you know, I can use that and put that into something else and invest it or, you know, and you do that enough times. I've been able to help. There was one guy I was preparing his bankruptcy petition. And within his budget, uh, food, his food budget was like $1,500 a month. I'm like, dude, you're, I mean, he looked about our size. He wasn't overweight. I'm like, you're not packing away $1,500 in, food every month. You're not. I know you're not. What is up with this? He's like, well, you know, I'm a single guy. I date a lot of women and I pay for all these dates. I'm like, dude, you're about to file bankruptcy. Dial it back. Yeah. Dial it back for a couple of months.

Go from $1,500 bucks a month to $300 a month. Yeah. Get a girlfriend. Get a girlfriend, do something. I can save you a thousand bucks a month right there. Yeah. You know, I've gotten people to cut back on smoking, cut back on drinking, cut back on drinking, cut back on subscriptions you know i mean who needs physical newspapers delivered to them anymore who needs physical so there's a lot of subscription services that we have the people can cut out and save and yeah it's it's 50 bucks here it's a hundred bucks there it's 200 bucks here it's 10 bucks there but you add all that up if i can help somebody create a thousand dollars a month in their budget now i'm really making a difference and and they can use that in some other way do you do

any like well i mean do you do any like uh helping people rebuild their credit after or you just give them a device and that's it or is it like not because it's like it's like it's not that different like after bankruptcy a lot of people all i got bankruptcy i can't do anything not you can you can go get a secure credit card you can there you can start building right now i've got banks that'll that'll give borrowers secured credit cards right after bankruptcy and that's one of the most interesting conversations people will come to me not only because typically when they're in foreclosure They've also got unpaid child support, unpaid alimony, sometimes, unpaid credit card debts, unpaid hospital bills, IRS bills.

I mean, I have people come to me. And it's funny, one of the questions I ask is, well, how much do you owe? If you were to hit the lottery today, you could stroke one check, pay off all your debt. How much is that? And I can see the wheels turning and I can see them thinking to themselves. I don't want to embarrass myself by giving Sean some number. but the most amount of debt I've ever helped a client get out of individually was 15 million. So there's not a number that you're going to be able to give me that I haven't heard it before.

And a lot of times you'll see that fear in their eyes of I don't want to embarrass myself by telling this attorney how much I owe, even though it's confidential, I can't repeat it. And then they'll come out with 20 grand, 40 grand. And I'm like, that's that I'd be embarrassed about. Like I knew a guy who was going to claim bankruptcy for like 12 grand. I said, that's embarrassing. To me, someday I plan on claiming bankruptcy just to go through the process. Like, I want to walk in with a million dollars minimum, be like, write it off. Although.

Legally allowed to do that. You are. Now, what I'll say in response to that is, if you got 12 grand in debt and you make 30 grand a year, maybe bankruptcy is a better option. Right, right, right. If you got 12 grand in debt and you make 120, yeah, bankruptcy is horrible. Let's figure out another way to pay off that 12. But, you know, they'll have all this other debt. And what they say to me is, I don't want to.

follow bankruptcy because I don't want it to impact my credit. I'm like, dude, you got two lawsuits pending, you got one judgment, you got this debt, you got that debt, your credit's already smashed. This is your best bet. This is your best bet to fix your credit. Right. Like you'll never get back on track at the rate you're going. Your credit's already smashed. Don't worry about your credit. Let's file the bankruptcy. Let's nuke everything and then we can rebuild it. Secured cards. And what I, you may know this better than me or remember it better than me, but from what I understand banks will loan you money to buy a house two to three is years it used to be it used to be I don't know if it's three years now but it used to be two years out of bankruptcy you could get

it like an FDIC right or or um was a FHA like you could get these government backed kind of loans two years out of bankruptcy and I would have people come in and the mortgage company and they go yeah the problem is I claim bankruptcy and I'd be like how long ago yeah yeah you know 24 23 24 months ago yes well and you know the way the credit is is calculated even though the biggest piece of credit is making your payments on time there's other things you can do you can take out you know typically car loans aren't going to be as strict as house loans so you take out a car loan that that increases the mix of credit which increases your score right you know you can pay down other debt capacity right so there's other things we can do. I don't do a ton of it. I don't necessarily charge to do it.

I'm more kind of included in the bankruptcy costs and I'll give people advice. And I have a banker that can set them up with a secured card or they can go to their bank and get a secured card, whatever. But yeah, I've helped people. I do have another attorney that I refer to if there's massive errors on credit. I'll refer to him and he sues the credit reporting agencies to fix credit right that's become its own kind of fraud industry in and of itself is oh yeah there's credit repair there's a whole you know there's a whole thing on um on these guys on youtube that talk about you've heard of a cpn i don't okay it's a i i i i've done a bunch of videos that they call them uh it's a uh a credit what is it what do they call what they

say a credit um it's a cpn a credit profile number i think is what or okay so what they're this is supposedly what happened um and i get people that just you don't know what you're talking about because they think somebody put a website out there right that says we sell cpns well if it's on the internet it's true it's true right and listen if you read the website it sounds convincing if you don't know anything right so it's basically saying hey you can go to this website and you pay 150 bucks or 75 bucks there's different plans and we'll give you a number that's issued by social security it's not it's a lie well it actually is issued by social security but and it's a it's a you know it's it's it's a it's a number that's your it's your uh your personal number that you can

use in placement of your social security number so you can go and apply online you use your name and you use your CPN and your date of birth and everything you can apply for credit cards or secure cards and it tells you how to basically create a completely separate it's basically you're creating

a synthetic identity but what people think they've been issued by either the social security administration or there's some government body that issues these numbers and they'll tell you that oh this is what celebrities do

and this is like there's all these just idiots and they'll be and they will. They will build an entire credit history, acquire loans, run the loans up, let them go under, or they'll create an entire credit profile, and maybe they'll use it. Maybe they'll always pay the loans. But the problem is the numbers are actually numbers that have already been issued to somebody. Maybe it's a five-year-old kid. Maybe it's a two-year-old. Maybe it's a nine-year-old kid. These are social security numbers that have been issued and haven't been used.

Or they may not have been issued yet, but they will be issued someday. Now, what's not happening is you're not getting a social security number that's been issued to a 45-year-old man. Because if you use that to pull your credit, that'll trigger. It would trigger it and they'd say, hey, this is a fraud. This is something's wrong. This is somebody else's credit's reporting on this. So these companies, they find these numbers that aren't being used and then they sell them and they'll sell like let's say a $69 package for the number and but if you want for the $120 one we'll give you we'll put um we'll give you a credit or I'm sorry a credit card history so they've got somebody else that will add you to their credit card using your and now

suddenly this credit this new CPN that you have with your new profile now has a card that's been has a $20,000 limit has almost no money on it and it's been around for five or 10 years. So now suddenly you have a score because you're an authorized user. Right. So it and then it allows you to turn around and borrow a couple of secure credit cards and it's a whole thing and it happens and periodically people get arrested for it. No matter how many people get arrested, no matter how much research you do, no matter how many times you go and you look through these things, there's a whole group of guys that believe this and there's a whole it's almost like a subsection of guys on credit how to build credit that are making tons of money doing this and have been doing so for

year for I can see for five years 10 years and they so it's it's what I've told clients before is you know we all started with zero credit right you built it up once the fact that you had a bankruptcy you build it up again it's not yeah you can do it the old trick. The old scam used to be, and I think what the law says today, if you send a letter to the credit bureau and you say, hey, verify this debt, they got 30 days to do it. Right. But the wheels turned so slow that they can't. And so you send them another letter, verify, another letter, verify, another letter verify. And you wear them down where they don't verify and then it falls off your credit. Right. Well, eventually they do verify and it pops back on. Right. So what a lot of mortgage people

were doing is saying, let's hammer the credit reporting agencies, get this stuff pulled off your credit, get you the loan and then when it pops back on who cares you're paying the loan yeah and so all these people that say we can get rid of bankruptcies we can get rid of this we can get rid of that you can only get rid of stuff that's false yeah if you actually file bankruptcy it's not coming off your credit unless you're doing something I don't want to say illegal maybe illegal improper at least hungry now now what about now whenever it hits you where wherever you are, grab an O. Henry bar to satisfy your hunger. With its delicious combination of big, crunchy, salty peanuts covered in creamy caramel and chewy fudge with

a chocolatey coating. Swing by a gas station and get an O'Henry today. Oh hungry, oh Henry. It's not coming off your credit unless you're doing something wrong. You know, unless you're doing something improperly. So I don't do a lot of credit repair, but I do have, I just referred out a client the other day. We settled with the creditor and part of the settlement, it was a commercial loan, and part of the settlement was you'll delete the trade line from

the client's credit. It's paid off. You'll delete any negative reporting and they agreed to it. And that was a year ago and they haven't done it yet. So that one I sent over to my buddy to sue because you agreed to do it, you didn't do it. Right. I'm going to pop you for it now. So,

so I actually know a credit repair guy who has just has a lawsuit in his computer already written and he goes through the process trying to get you and he said look at the moment they don't do it I print it up he said a lot of times you print it up and you just send it to them you don't even file it you say this is what I'm about to file right and then suddenly you get the phone call oh well taking it off or this or that they because they think you just won't go through the process no um but I was going to say

uh in in the course of you just doing foreclosures and looking through title have you ever have you ever found any title fraud or any of the stuff that I had done or so I can't think of anything off the top of my head I've certainly I've been involved in title issues and I've you know a lot of what what fascinated me about your story was the the other side of it the side of it that you didn't know and so I'm not saying it was wrong of you not to tell it it's you didn't know it the title side of it the title claim side of it so what would have happen is as the foreclosing attorney, as the lender's attorney, I would get it in and I would say, oh my gosh, there's a falsified satisfaction out here. And so I would then have to go to the title

insurance underwriter because remember, when you do a closing, there's two policies. There's the owner's title insurance policy that protects you as the buyer that I bought this house. There's no title issue. The lender also gets title insurance policy that says your loan is legitimately in first position. And so we would have to send the claim to the underwriter to say, hey, we've got a first mortgage here that may not actually be in first position. And typically really what's happening is the title insurance industry would then have to absorb that loss. They would then pay, probably pay off the invalid mortgage, the fraudulent mortgage to protect the legitimate mortgage. That then has the ripple effect of title insurance premiums have to go up. The reinsurance

market for the title insurance industry has to go up. The cost of closings have to go up. So it was interesting the ripple effect that that has in the economy, but that's what title insurance is for. If I'm the foreclosing lender and I see that I loaned on a property that still has a legitimate first on it because it was fraudulently satisfied, I still loaned out the money and I've got this insurance that protects me from that. So that was kind of what fascinated me. I've got a couple of title claims going on right now, one that resulted from a bankruptcy where a loan was allegedly was eliminated in the bankruptcy, but the bank that got eliminated is claiming they weren't. And so they're still in first position, but the new bank came in in first position.

So we're fighting that one. I've got another one where some like a guardianship where the person that sold the property, then got subject to guardianship proceedings. And so that person's heirs are saying he didn't have capacity to sell this property. And so we're going to go after it and say that it's really our property. But my buyer got it from a flipper. The flipper didn't know anything about it. So we're two, three layers deep. But that all went to the title insurance underwriter to say, hey, here's our claim. Handle it. Right. So, um, I was going to say one time that this is, you know, we were talking about, you know, the ripple effect. One time I had bought a property.

Right. In the name of, actually, this is what a guy, Gary Sullivan, where I, the guy was in foreclosure that I bought the property from. So I pay like $10,000 to catch up, he got maybe a grand, the owner. But I caught up the mortgage. Right. So they reinstate it. It's fine. I'm supposed to pay him.

He's supposed to pay them. Right. So a few months later, I go by the property and there's a guy putting like, this was in South Carolina. He was putting like a neon pink or orange note on the front door that says like notice and putting on the front door. And I pulled up and keep in mind, I'm not Gary Sullivan. Like I'm concerned. Like I was like, but it didn't look like a cop. And so I pull up and I stop.

I walk out and I go, hey, what's going on? He said, are you, whatever was guy's name was something like Hutchinson or whatever his name was? I was like, no. He's Gary Sullivan? I was like, yeah. And he goes, oh, yeah. it's a it's a it's a foreclosure notice you're right i was like what like i had been paying there was a wraparound mortgage right i'd been paying the the guy who under finance the house

he wasn't paying his mortgage right i call him up i yell at him not super like crazy yell but i'm like bro what are you doing i've been paying you that i'm sorry i just i'm trying to get my get you know i'm going to have to claim bankruptcy i'm like yeah but i've been i've been sending you like a thousand dollars a month for the past however much uh a few months and you weren't paying them. Oh, I'm sorry. And so I said, look, give me your payment booklet. Give me all the paperwork, everything you have.

And I, you know, I end up calling the people that were the lawyer that was foreclosing. And he was in South Carolina or in Columbia. So I go there to him. Well, first I find out how much is owed. I go there and I pay them. Right. But I went there and I paid them. And they said, look, from now on, we'll just send everything to you because you're paying.

I can see what happened. Mm-hmm. But when they started foreclosing, here's the interesting part. When I looked through the documents, because keep in mind, I'd already satisfy the loans. Right. So I thought, geez, they did a title search, and they must have seen the satisfaction. When they continued the process of foreclosure, they saw the satisfaction for their client. And all they did was included it in the foreclosure.

They said, Your Honor, we're foreclosing for, you know, federal bank, who accidentally satisfied the loan that was filed on this date for this much. We are currently, you know, we are in the process of Fort. Like, they just happened to mention by there was an accident. The banks are so big. They probably didn't know that it was you or whoever else that had forged that satisfaction. They're so big they don't, they don't know. Right.

But I, listen, I can't. To me, it's like you didn't, they didn't even look into it. They didn't even make a phone call. Like it was like, and I had signed it. You know, it's the funny is I had actually pulled one of their satisfactions. Right. And I'd actually gotten a, I'd actually pulled the notary stamp off from the notary and superimposed it and did every. So it looked very much exactly like one of theirs, like the same bank president signed, the whole thing.

Which is probably why they thought it was accidentally satisfied. They didn't, they probably didn't even realize somebody had forged it. Yeah. And they just let me, anyway, I went and I cut the guy a check and he said from now on, you'll just pay it. And I already had the payment booklet, but they, you know, whatever. weeks later they sent me something. What's interesting, one of the first questions I get from a real estate investor. So when they buy the house, they have to buy it in their name because the bank's not going to loan to an LLC. The bank's not going to loan to a trust. The bank wants to loan to a person. Well, all these loans in Florida, at least, and probably in other places, too, have what's called to do on sale clause. Yeah. In other words, if I borrow the money and I don't own this house anymore and the bank didn't give me permission to sell it, then I've got to pay off the bank. Now, typically, if I'm going to sell you the house, your purchase price is going to pay off the bank. It's not a big deal.

Right. But if I sell you the house subject to that loan, now that's a breach of the mortgage. The bank can foreclose because you weren't the original borrower. I was. And I've sold the house without their permission. But how often does that ever happen? As long as they're getting paid. Right.

As long as the bank's being paid. So I have people ask me this question all the time. Can I put it into my LLC? Well, you can, but then there's a due on sale violation. Right. There is a federal law that says if you put it into a trust and you're the beneficiary of the trust, that it's not a due on sale violation. But if you put it in a trust and the LLC becomes the beneficiary of the trust, then again,

it is a due on sale violation. But you nailed it. So I've been doing this now since 2001. So at 21 years, 22 years now I've been doing this, I've never seen a bank foreclosure only because of the due on sale violation. Typically, the payments stop. the bank says wait a minute payments stop we're going to foreclose because there's no payments oh and by the way there's a due on sale violation we're foreclosing for that reason too yeah yeah if you're like

you'd be hard pressed to i can't see a lawyer going in front of a judge saying your honor these people bought the house they live in the house they transferred it into a trust they've been making the payments but they violated the due on sale we want you to go ahead and let a foreclosure go through and i think the judge's going to be like what are you doing yeah come on it's just silliness like i've never seen it happen ever and that was the same like i i i one of my big things was i would get people to owner finance their houses you know i just try i say hey look you know i put an offer on five houses multiple people would come back say okay yeah but they'd say yeah but i own or i i owe i owe 200 000 to this bank like how no no we'll do a wraparound mortgage right and then i would have it's so

funny too because i would have to explain to the real estate agent what a wraparound mortgage was right And I'd say, you know, it's just a, it's subject to the mortgage. We'll do a subject to the mortgage. You know, or even I would, I've done this, I've done a bunch times too, where I would go and I'd buy a house and I'd say, look, you owe $100,000 on your house or on your mortgage. You're selling your house for $110,000. I'll just give you $10,000. Let me make the payments of the bank.

I'll just take the mortgage over. Right. Like that, that's all you're going to get anyway. Right. And they would do that. That lots of, you'd be shocked how many times. how many times people will do that? And the problem is, of course, they're like, yeah, but, but, you know, but if I sell the property,

like I have to, you know, technically, I have to notify the bank, I have to this. Yeah, but I'm making the payments. The bank isn't going to foreclose. And that would, you know, don't worry. I'm going to make the payments. They're not going to foreclose. So in 2004, when I first went off on my own, I answered an ad in the Florida Bar Journal, Florida Bar newspaper, somebody looking for an attorney.

So I answer the ad. It was this pair of real estate investors. And that's what they would do. They would buy Subject 2. They would buy using wraparound mortgages, seller financing, whatever. And this was started at the end of 2004. So right as the market was going crazy and the crash occurred. And what they would do is they would send out mass mailers to the foreclosure lists,

let us help you, let us do this, let us do that. People would come into the office. They would evaluate it. They would say, okay, yeah, we can help you. We're going to buy this house. We're going to do it subject two. We're going to do land trust. We're going to do this at the other thing.

I would come in as the attorney representing them to do the closings. If it was a house that they were not interested in, they would say, look, I'm sorry, this is really not a house that we can do anything with, we can't help you, I'm sorry, but we've got an attorney that rent space from us downstairs, would you like to talk to him? Right. And so they would just, I had that built the practice at the very beginning. That gave me the education on, okay, now I got to defend foreclosures and slow them down. How do I do it?

Well, I got a ton of clients from doing that. But that's what they would do, wraparounds and subject twos and all these different types of transactions. And you pretty much hit it too in terms of that's the biggest danger. If you do a wraparound, there's got to be a big level of trust that whoever you're making the payments to is going to pay. Because the problem is, let's say you as the one who has to make payments under the wraparound mortgage doesn't make payments. So I'm the borrower. You're going to make payments to me on a wraparound and I'm going to pay them to the bank. Right.

supposedly right if you don't pay me i have to foreclose against you right while i'm still making payments on my loan to the bank right and that's a lot of people don't understand that so there there's yeah yeah you're not you're not exonerating i mean like you're not you're not released from your responsibility to pay the bank you still have to pay the bank you say well listen i sold the house and i have a wrap around the guy's not paying me like bank of america's not going to be okay with that's where they're going to pull the deal on sale clause right and say you need to pay us right um that's funny that would be a great video i was just thinking about that. I taught the real estate class in Coleman. And I used to do a whole

class just on owner financing. One was wraparounds and then one was due on sale or I'm sorry, subject to mortgage closings. And that would actually be a good, because I had all these rebuttals, you know. But one of the things that, shoot that, that, that do ones. Oh, one one thing I was going to say is I would, you know, while I was, would talk to people, they'd say, oh, well, you know, of course, the fear is, you know, what if you don't pay me? Well, you know, then if I don't pay you, then, you know, what is your concern that I'm, I'm not going to pay? And they'd say, yeah, what if you don't pay?

I'd say, okay, well, then they'd go, well, I have to foreclose. And I'd say, well, then we'll do, I'll sign a deed in lieu of foreclosure. Right. You know, and you don't have to foreclose. You just sign it, and then you just, it's like a quick claim. Then you just, it's back in your name. we can let the lawyer your lawyer hold it and if I ever can't prove I'm making the payments you just go down he'll file it downtown and now the house is in your name again you just have to go through the foreclosure I mean you just have to go through the eviction process so that was always one of my I never started with that I was started slowly now I've got I've seen that a bunch of times there is a question legally in Florida as to whether you can do what's called like a self-help foreclosure so the deed is invalid until it's delivered.

Delivered is a legal term, meaning I physically have to give you the deed. Here's my house. And you have to accept it. So I know there was one law firm in town years and years and years ago. What they were doing is they were doing like a forced deed in lieu of foreclosure. So the borrower would get into foreclosure, couldn't afford it, didn't want to keep the house, whatever. They would sign a deed. They'd say, okay, the foreclosing bank is Bank of America under securitization series, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Right. They would sign a deed. to that plaintiff record it and then they'd call the bank and say why are you foreclosing you own the house well under florida law not only does a deed have to be delivered but it's got to be accepted and so there is a question whether that issue of i'm going to sign a deed in advance and if i fall behind on payments you can just trigger it and get it back i'm actually litigating a case about that issue right now too so there is a question under florida law whether that's valid but i know a ton of real estate investors do right so you also have to keep in mind i'm at this point i'm just trying to

convince you to like whether it's ultimately valid or not right you throw it in there and it's like you know i would always start with oh i'll write out 24 months worth of cancel checks or with the worst of checks you can put one in the bank they'd be like yeah but what if the checks bounce oh okay well what if i give you a cashier's check you know um a month ahead of time yeah but what if eventually you don't oh okay uh you know i always act shock like oh yeah that's right that's right like Because like it wouldn't even occur on me to not pay. And then I said, well, okay, well, oh, I know what I can do. And then I hit him with the deed in lieu of foreclosure.

And then they, and then if they were like, no, I don't know. I'm not sure. I'd say, okay, well, you know, I understand. Like, some of you have to be able to walk away. Like, like, okay, I understand. Look, I mean, it's not going to work out. And I get it. And that's, you know, and I'm sorry about that.

And I'm sure you'll find somebody. You know, I mean, I know you haven't in the last, you know, six months. But you're going to find somebody. So it's a nice house. And I appreciate it. nice waiting, and you leave, and four days later, a week later, or the next day, they call up, well, explain this to me again. I actually, the same investors that I, that I hooked up with when I first started on my own, what I've always said to the investor community is, if you're

treating people right, I'll help, I'll be your best friend. If you're treating people wrong, then I'm going to pick up on the side of the homeowner and I'm going to try to do some about it for them or the person that sold a subject to or whatever. So these guys that I worked with at the beginning, I thought they were doing things right. And I remember I get a call one day from another attorney. He's like, by the way, this house at whatever, one, two, three main street. I said, yeah, he said, it was bought by blah, blah, blah, which is my investor landlord client. I said, yeah, he said, tell me why I shouldn't sue for taking advantage of my, my former homeowner client. I was like, well, look, I get it. You, this guy's an investor. You don't like him. I get it.

He put a new roof on the house, put a new AC unit in the house, gave your guy five grand. caught up his mortgage. The rent that your guy is paying is $250 less than his mortgage payment. Tell me again how your guy was taking advantage of. I'll call you back. Click. Never heard from the guy again. So for me, it was all about treating people right.

Right. You know, he legitimately put a new roof on the house, put a new AC unit in, caught up the mortgage, did all this stuff. It was about treating people right for me. What's funny is I'll bet you the person, you know, their client. people can justify all kinds like they'll forget all kinds of stuff like they'll forget about all this other stuff that happened and all the things that are in their in their favor um you know and justify you know being offended and upset and it's like the thing that's the thing that

drives me crazy as the attorney working with clients is the ones that I get it bad stuff happens and bad stuff happens to good people bad stuff happens all the time people get divorced people lose their job. I get it. That stuff happens. What drives me crazy are the ones that don't take any responsibility for it. Yeah. It's not my fault. Not my fault. So I don't have to pay you rent. Right. Not my fault either. The bank shouldn't loan me the money. You know, COVID happened. I'm still getting, I'm still getting COVID as an excuse two years after. You were begging the bank to lend you money at the time. Yeah. Listen, I used to, this happened, oh my God, this happened so many times where I literally, And keep in mind, too, this is fraud.

Like, I would commit fraud. I'd have some guy, somebody who's got good credit. They'd come to me and they'd say, look, man, I want to flip some houses. But I don't really have the money to flip the house. And I know my buddy, so-and-so, you got them, they bought a house. And you gave him like $40,000. And then, you know, he fixed up the house or whatever, and rented it out. And like, man, can you do that with me?

I got perfect credit. And I'd go, yeah, hold on. I actually have a house. I can work this out. I'll get a mortgage broker fee and a point or two and I'll get some money. You give me this much money and you buy this house for $150,000, you'll borrow $100,000 or $200,000. It needs $5,000 or $10,000 in repairs. You'll make $40,000, let's say, or $30,000, whatever it is.

Let's say $40. So you make $40,000. Okay, you rent it out. That'll just make your payments. But you got $40,000. You're saying you want to take that money. You want to do something with it, do this, pay off your car. you want to pay off your credit cards,

whatever it is. You know, I can do that. I can work that out. Complete fraud. Those people would then do that, rent out the property to some friend of theirs. Two months later,

or six months later, the guy stopped paying them. Right. Now they'd come back and say, well, I thought that was your buddy. Man, fuck him. And he's like,

okay, well, you know, and then they'd say, well, I got to, you know, man, I now I got to make the mortgage payment. I had to make the mortgage payment last month. Do I have to keep paying?

Of course you have to keep, paying you know and and they'd say well um okay so i got to make another mortgage payment this month it's it's it's 1400 or whatever i go okay i understand and they go man man you really screwed me on this bro how and this happened i can't tell you i can't think five or six people that this happened with and i would go are you serious the the good real estate investors will tell you you don't make money when you sell it you make money when you buy it yeah you got to know what you're doing yeah you got to know what you're doing and if you can't afford the fourteen hundred dollar a month mortgage payment if you you're going to assume you can't assume that this thing is going to be rented 12 months out of

the year every month consistently you're going to have pain you're people are going to leave people there's going to be problems there's going to be maintenance you know what you know what i would always do at that in that moment after it happened once or twice i always found out what the answer was the answer was man bro i'm sorry that i'm sorry i didn't realize it was going to be such a problem for you i would i would always say listen here's what i'm going to do i'll make the mortgage payment. Okay, just I'm gonna, I'll get a, uh, the title company will write up a, a, a, a, a, a claim deed. And you just, you just, you just quit, quit claim deed it to me. And I'll rent it out. I'll evict the guy. I'll rent it out. And I'll make all the payments. And they go, are you serious?

And I go, yeah. And they go, yeah, let me think about that. I think I might do that. I might do that. I go, okay, just, just give me the 40 grand. And, and I'll take care of everything else. They go, well, what do you mean? Like, well, you, you, you made $40,000 at closing. And they go, oh, no, bro. Like, I've spent that money. That money's gone. I go, wait a minute. Yeah.

So you're telling me you want me to give you 40 grand and make payments on your house. And you're okay with that. Like, you think I screwed you over. Like, you're about to let me give you 40 grand and make the payments on it. Like, wow, you're a scumbag. Like, that's just, like, to me, and all of this is fraud. Yeah. They may not under, maybe they do understand it.

I just think people are, you know, they just, they just, they just, they just have, like you said, they just, they take no responsibility. They justify. Look, I had other people where, you know, they, they, they, they, same thing happened. They understood the deal. Right. They were fine. They realized every once in while somebody's going to move. Right. They're going to have to make payments. You know, they might get hit here or there. And again, I mean, I get it. You know, good things happen to bad people. And that's another big conversation I have when I'm talking about bankruptcy. People, I borrowed the money. I need to pay it back. Yeah, I get that, but at the same time, if we're going the bankruptcy route, or even if we negotiated away, Visa ain't going out of business because they don't get your $20,000 back, right, you know. And let's face it, you know, like as much as I think if you borrowed the money, you should pay it back, the truth is that sometimes, you know, it's just things line up against you to a point where bankruptcy is your only alternative or your best alternative. And the truth is, is like, this is a, this is a, this is something that the government says, this is reasonable. Like, look, sometimes you get cancer. You can't work. Right. You've got kids in school.

You can't, like, like, you lost your job. Like, things went so bad and there's nothing you can do. And your only viable option is to walk away from as much debt as you humanly, you know, possibly can. Right. And that's something that happens. You can say, no, no, I'm going to continue it. Stop. What are you doing?

Like sometimes. But if you're just like, hey, I ran up a bunch of debt, I just don't want to pay it. It's just too much. It's ridiculous. Then it's like, okay, come on. Well, wait a minute. Right. Let's not get crazy.

I'm looking around your house. I know what happened. You bought a house. You shouldn't, you drive in a car you can't afford. One of my very, one of my very first bankruptcies representing a borrower, she was, you know, But I can't do that. I can't, it's, you know, this is when the bank did this and it's not my fault, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And how am I going to pay for the $8,000 rims on my escalade? Oh, my God. If you got $8,000 or rims on your escalade, you got bigger problems than bankruptcy. And that's why you're having to file bankruptcy because you didn't have the money to put $8,000 rims on your escalade. Well, I was talking to a buddy the other day and I was saying, you know, the thing is there's some people that you can give $10 million to, and five years later, they're in bankruptcy.

And then there are, you know, there are some people that no matter how many opportunities you give them, they will always just go broke again. And then there are other people who you can give them, you can take everything away from them, put them here, and they'll be a millionaire in three years. And you take it all away again, put them in another state, start over from scratch, and in three, four years, they'll be a millionaire again. And there's some people that just, they just keep rising to the top. Yep.

And it's just, you know, it's money management and it's long-term planning and it's sacrifice. Most lottery winners are out of the money within a couple of years just because they had bad spending habits. And they only made it a few years because they had the money. Right. Like, trust me, if it was less, the less money they had, the quicker they would have been broke. Right. It's just, it's money management. It's, I mean, that's basically.

what it comes down to. Right. So what do you think right now with the economy and you're getting tired, aren't you? No, I'm good. I'm good. Cotter is ready fondly. What, um, exciting stuff we're talking about. Yeah. Listen, I, I talk and talk. Um, what, uh, so what do you think right now is happening with the, with the economy? I know we, you know, touched on. Yeah. It's weird because we're still, you know, I think, I think Biden has said that COVID is officially over. I think the government, has said, we're still dealing with some ripple effects of that. We're still dealing with this struggle between the banks need to get paid because they loaned out all this money to buy houses, but we've got, we sent out all this money to help with COVID. Now we've got

inflation because you've got to pay all that money back. Plus, like I said at the beginning, there is a healthy level of foreclosures and bankruptcies in any market. It's just going to happen. So, I think business is going to pick up. I think there's going to be more foreclosures. I think there's going to be more bankruptcies. We're still having medical issues. We're still having, you know, we've got student loan repayments. Biden is just forgiven or started the process to forgive 10 or 20, depending on the type of student loan you have from your student loans. But you've got some people that borrowed six figures. A $10,000 dent in their student loan is not going to, not going to make any impact at all. Right. So I think with inflation going up, with interest rates going up, property values have started to stagnate a little bit. I think we've got to get back to a, I think we were under what was a healthy level of

foreclosures and bankruptcies. And I think we have to get back to that a little bit. And I think that's where the economy is going. I don't think real estate's going to take the dip that it did in 2008, 9, 10. I think real estate may actually pull us out of it. this time because it's going to kind of stay in terms of its value plus people have equity today where back in 08 we had no equity in their house so I think you know there's amongst all the bankruptcy groups that I'm in the Facebook groups and whatnot there's chatter about the

title waves coming I don't know that it's a title wave but there's got to be something on the horizon to make these corrections well I mean I also think that that that dip in and you know, in the real estate market is kind of offset as a result of inflation. You know what I'm saying? Like, is it happening? It's happening. Is it noticeable? You know what I'm saying? So you don't end up getting that kind of panic either when people don't really see. They're like, well, that whole, the one house across the street sold for 350. Like, you know, my house sold for 350, you know, a year ago. Like, you know, or maybe even it sold for a little bit more. Like things aren't really as bad. But what really happened was that house should have been selling for 400, you know. So you don't notice it. So you don't get, you don't get, you don't. get that panic, you know, that panic feeling as opposed to the house next door selling for $2.50 and you bought yours a year ago for $3.50. And you're like, oh my God. Yeah. What I, what I saw a lot of six months ago, eight months ago, nine months ago, what I saw a lot of was buying site unseen, waiving inspections, you know, making offers 10, 15, 20 grand above

list price, multiple offers within hours of things going on the market. We're not seeing that as much anymore. Now it's, okay, there's now more of a competitive bidding process. Houses are on the market for longer. They're not, you know, there's, there's issues with appraisals. Now, it's so it's starting to, we still have a very low amount of inventory. Yeah. In terms of how long is it going to take for all the houses to get sold. And I think part of the issue too is that the real estate market is kind of localized. So what we're feeling in Tampa Bay may not be what we're feeling in Orlando. Right. It's definitely not going to be what we're feeling in Atlanta. Right.

So there's some of that going on too, but yeah, I mean, my business is starting to pick up slowly. So there was a girl, it was actually two women that were, they were, you know, when you read, I read these articles about real estate scams. Right. They never tell you quite what they were doing, but I immediately, I'm kind of like, this is what they were. I think this is what they were doing. Right. This is what I think they were doing based on. on two articles that I read, which was they were renting houses, maybe even just doing

like an Airbnb for a week or so. And then they would actually show the houses, take deposits for the houses. And I think, what, I don't know what they get. Was it $250,000 or $350,000 in like six months or something? Wow. They were taking in a ton. Like they, you know, in the, the article makes it sound like they came up. up with a fake title company, a fake this, a fake that, you know, fake online like websites or

whatever they did to create this illusion. And I was thinking like this was six months, six to eight months ago that they were doing this or I guess the articles came out maybe six months ago. So maybe they had been doing it for months and months before that. But within six months, so started maybe a year ago. Like I can see they rented a house, put it on Craig's list or whatever to sell the house. and then people would come by and see it it's a little bit below market value and people are giving them like $5,000

and then they're writing a check to you know maybe they opened a title company a bank or a bank account like a DBA for themselves to a bank and then they're depositing and they're pulling the money out there were two women and they both got busted doing this

Wow the other thing I was going to mention to you is is that and this is actually where I was going. I started talking about that one, which has nothing to do with what we're talking about. But that led me to this where there was a guy in New York, this was probably like he's been, he'd been doing it for like five or ten years. This is what's insane. This was title fraud. I had asked you about title fraud before. He would go and he would find

houses that, for some reason, why he did this, I don't know what they had to be free and clear, but that the houses were like free and clear. He would then place a lien on the house for, let's say a couple, three hundred, a couple hundred thousand, whatever it was, whatever, it's five grand, whatever, a couple hundred thousand dollars. And then, and whoever lives there, so it'd be a 60 year old, or sorry, like a 70 year old retired person. And he would put a couple hundred thousand dollar lien on the property. And then he'd wait a few months and he'd start the foreclosure process legally through an attorney. Wow. So the attorney who's, it goes in front of these judges all the time. Right. Goes in and says, Your Honor, he's sent out.

several letters to these people, which he probably didn't. They haven't responded. It's been several months. We want to start foreclosure. So they start foreclosure. And maybe the person at the house even gets notified. Somebody shows up and serves them. So if you're a 70-year-old woman and you get served something saying you owe $200,000, you might even just say, I don't owe $200. This is a mistake. Maybe they call the phone number. They don't. The person says, they say, I don't, I never took out any of this money. What are you talking about? Six months ago or four months ago, you did this. We're foreclosing.

My client says you did. Even as the lawyer, what is the lawyer going to say to the client? This woman saying she did, well, what's she going to say? Yeah, of course she's going to say that. So there's a couple of things. If the real teeth comes in, so a lot of times what I'll say to a client is it's the cost of defense settlement. So if it's going to cost you five grand, 10 grand, 15 grand.

to hire me to take this all the way through trial. Again, I'd like to make money. I got my own mortgages to pay too, but if they'll go away for five or ten, you're coming out less than what you would pay me. You're resolving it. Now, that's theft by them. This guy's taking the properties.

Right. Like, he's going through the whole foreclosure. They interviewed people that were living on the street now. Wow. In most cases, there's an attorney fee provision. So if you hire me and we win, we can go after him for my attorney's fees. So whatever you've paid me, we can go after him. Now, again, if he's really committing crimes like that, the chances of him having the money to pay you back

all those attorney's fees are slim to none. But I would think, at least in Florida, there would be enough documentation or lack of documentation to prove that that lien was fraudulent. There's only two ways to create a lien in Florida, voluntary, like a mortgage, or an involuntary, like a judgment. Those are the only two ways. So if there's no lawsuit backing this lien, then you don't have the support for it. And yeah, you may be able to set up some documents, but if the borrower comes in and claims, I never signed it. Or as the attorney, show me where, okay, the lien is for $200 grand. Show me your bank account that shows $200,000 leaving it to go to this woman or this man or this 70 year old. Show me where that money went to him. Eventually, there's going to be no proof

behind their lien. The problem is with someone like me, I'll give you the bank accounts. I'll give you this. Like I would be able to, yep, here's my bank account. Here's this. Here's the closing. Here's the HUD statement. Here's here. Like, I would be able to provide all of that. That would be a problem for a 70 or 80 year old woman. I think what I would do is probably counter it and pull her banks. Okay, you said you sent it to the bank account ending one, two, three, four. Her bank account is one, two, three, four. Here's the bank account from that time that that wire was supposed to go in and there's no wire in. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so it's It may ultimately come down to who the judge believes.

This guy did it for five or ten years. He eventually, by the way, finally, finally, even though people had complained, like, they said that there had been multiple complaints. And what happened was the, like the sheriff or whoever they complained to or the police department, they would say, well, this is a civil matter. Right. And so they would keep referring it to a civil matter. Well, so many, so many, there had been so many complaints by this one guy over the years, eventually, Some detective was like... Wait a minute.

Like eight months ago or a year ago, this was... And he's doing it in different counties, you know, different areas. But eventually, just so happened, somebody said... I'm going to look into this. If he was smart, what he probably would have done is if somebody pushed back, he probably would have been like, okay, mistake. Let that one go and move on to the next one. Well, the FBI, the federal government got in it.

Like, he was federally indicted. Yeah. And, you know, and that's another one of those things where you read a little here, a little there. I got a piece here. I got a piece here. And I kind of pieced it together. I was like, like, oh,

because they explained he was placing liens on the properties. He was then foreclosing for lack of payment. So the lien was a mortgage. Right. You know, the people were then saying that they hadn't borrowed any money. And a lot of people were just ignoring it. Like,

you got a 75-year-old woman. She knows I own. She's like, I own this property free and clear. Right. You know, and that somehow or another, he was figuring out,

like, who could afford to fight. Right. You know? And they couldn't afford to fight and he was periodically he's taking some property some brownstone worth a million dollars for whatever the amount was and he's providing documents and he's and he had a legitimate lawyer who's foreclosing and you you've got a 78 year old woman going your honor I didn't this I didn't hopefully the attorney was not in on it probably at some point he had at some point you get three

or four or five of these people saying the same thing you got to start going hey man yeah something's wrong what's going to people from all these different areas didn't just come up with the same story. Hopefully, but I tend to be, I tend to be the optimist. Yeah, I met a lot of, a lot of lawyers in prison. I don't know, we'll see. The other thing that you were talking about in terms of renting, what I see going on right now is, like you said, the wraparound mortgage, but in a rent situation. So I'm going to rent this place from you for a thousand bucks a month, and then I'm going to put in the rent, a sub-lease provision in our lease.

Yeah. And then I'm going to turn around, and I'm going to Airbnb it for, a thousand bucks a week right and so those Airbnbs are going to pay me to pay your lease agreement and and I've been involved in a couple of those that have blown up and that's those were messy right to try to clean those up but that was that's sort of the wrap around equivalent yeah yeah in a lease situation is people wrap around sub leases um um I was gonna say like I kind of I almost feel like but then, you know, it just depends. I guess it depends on all kinds of things. On what's happening, how it's a lot of wear and tear?

On the one hand, why would the owner care? On the other hand, if it's my house and I'm getting $1,000 a month from you, but you're getting $4,000 to rent it out on a weekly basis. Wait a minute. Why can't I rent it out on a weekly basis and get that $4,000 myself? Well, I mean, you're also going through a lot of headache for that, too. You're the one coming in, cleaning it up. You're the one.

Like, I know some people that the whole everybody wants to do the Airbnb's. Well, I know I got a friend that owns. of several of them and she's like listen it's it's not a joke like you you got to come you're constant you're made you're coming in you're vacuuming you're you're managing everything you know you're managing keys and people and how this works and she's like you're getting phone calls you're still got the toilet clogging up and the sink clogging up and this isn't working right and that light needs to be changed she is making good money though yeah i have a friend of mine Danny uh i'm actually doing a uh podcast with him tonight okay uh so i and that's like an hour it's

used to be a 45-minute drive. Now it's like a little bit over. Now it's like an hour and 20 minutes. It's St. Pete. But yeah, so I don't know. I'm about, I'm about, I guess, about 40, 45 minutes away. I'm in Westchase. Although the office is in Clearwater.

And just to plug, you know, I try to keep the footprint of the law firm to the Tampa Bay area. So Hernando, Pascoe, Hillsborough, Pinellas, Sarasota, Manatee. But as a Florida attorney, I could practice. anywhere in the state of Florida. I'm licensed in all three federal districts, northern middle and southern. So in terms of bankruptcies, I could do them anywhere.

Right. Although I typically try to keep them. Because the bankruptcy court during COVID, it was awesome. We could do everything by phone and Zoom and all this other stuff. Now bankruptcy courts are starting to go back to in-person hearings. And so as a solo guy, do I want to drive to Jacksonville and Tallahassee and Miami in Fort Lauderdale?

Right. Well, I can put, you know, I can put your, in the description box I can put a link either to your website or your email or whatever you want so we can we can pop that in there yeah either way um I was gonna tell you uh I so there's a guy named a Frank Amadeo and Frank I wrote a story about him he was in prison he actually did my I did uh I don't know if you know a two I did I got 26 years right I filed, Frank filed, two 2255s on my behalf, right, to get my sentence reduced.

Because for cooperation that the government wouldn't give me, he then filed these 2255 saying my lawyer was ineffective and eventually got the government to give me, reduce my sentence twice. Well, Frank is a rapid cycling bipolar with features of schizophrenia. He has, he has a law degree. He eventually got it. He was disbarred. And since he was a teenager in his early teens, which is a little bit odd for this, but he's been hearing God tell him he's preordained to be emperor of the world. Okay. And it's insanity.

It's insane. And if I hadn't been locked up with them, you know, I would think it was all a ploy to try and get out of his charges, right? Right. But it's just not. Like everybody you've talked to, like I've talked to a ton of people that knew him. he was out there and everything um i've read the affidavits from people from his his wife from friends i've spoke with friends and they were all them they were like oh no no this has been an ongoing thing they go but you know he'll laugh about it and i'm like so you think it's it's not true they go

oh no he's absolutely serious they go but he also knows it sounds crazy right and so he was in prison doing guys legal work well at some point i started writing guys stories and i ended up writing his story um and about just how he ended up getting in in prison and he actually backed like a a coup in the Congo right the yeah the Democrat Republic of the Congress in Africa so um so we're talking about not just that he he was trying to buy f15s he was trying to he had a security force like it's insane like if you actually look him up like there's articles on like how this didn't turn into like a series or a movie or something I don't know. But I wrote a book on it. But he, he, I would say embezzled isn't the right word, but I'm going to say embezzled. He embezzled between $180 million and $200 million from the federal government.

Wow. Here's how he did it. And as a bankruptcy attorney, because that's what he did. After he, he was, I think, Emirate, took his law degree. After he graduated, he went to work for a company that was, it was started by the same people who started a H&R block. right but it was for bankruptcies you know they tried for years to make it work yeah it just never did eventually went under claim bankrupt they claim bankrupt so he came in and he started working for them and they were

doing bankruptcies and he learned how to become a bankruptcy attorney extremely analytical I mean super smart guy you know as a lot of schizophrenics and you know people with bipolar condition you know are you know people with mental for some reason if you have mental

condition you tend to also be bright right um so he what ultimately he did was he started he became a an investor in businesses so he would come into a business and he'd look at the business and go well you've got 500 employees you're bringing in this much money like what the hell's a problem why are you going under and he start looking at it and he'd see the creditors and mismanagement of things and so what he do what he did was he opened up a company that was a payroll company and so the first thing you do is he'd come in he'd go one thing I would always notice is if even if people weren't paying their creditors, they were always paying their employees.

Right. So I'd immediately have them shift everything to the, to the payroll company. So now they're the payroll company. So now immediately he's got cash flow from them. He goes, because they can't pay me. Right. They're going under and they're going to owe me half a million dollars. They can't pay.

So he'd immediately say, and I could generate income this way. Well, here's what he did ultimately, you know, because he's out there. he would collect the payroll taxes and not send to the IRS. He would notify the IRS, hey, which legally they have to do. Like, I owe this much money. We don't have the money or it's been reallocated or whatever, but we can't pay it right now. We're contemplating bankruptcy. You're a creditor.

And he said, he said there was something like, if the IRS doesn't notify you, you have to do this with the funds or separated or whatever. He said, then they just become a creditor. and so he would negotiate with them to pay them off like we owe you four million dollars we can pay you a million for the four million and we can make a payment plan and he would go back and forth for months and continue to withhold this got so bad it ended up being a total of like a hundred and eighty million dollars um so i'm going to listen it's insane yeah i'm going to give you the book. Okay. I don't have a code, like there's an audible version. I don't know if you read or you listen to it. I like reading. Most of the time I'm listening to podcasts if I'm in the

car. Okay. Because based on what he was doing, you'll get a kick out of it. Yeah. Because you're going to, like I had to really dumb it down just for me. Yeah. Because I just, you know, but a lot, it's still semi-technical on some of the things he was doing. I focused mostly on the stuff he was doing. Like, for For instance, there's a documentary called, it's on YouTube. It's called Nine Days in the Congo. And it's got interviews with Frank. Interviews with the guys that he had, his security forces go to the Congo. They backed a political candidate.

The candidate went from like 30 down to number three. He was, him and all of his guys were arrested by the number two candidate for the Congo and held for nine days while they negotiated to get these guys released. They, they, they, the Congolese said they, it was an armed. coup. They were plotting an armed coup. Frank says the guys weren't armed. However, the newspaper said they pulled guns off these guys. Right. You know,

they grabbed 32 of them. There were actually probably 60 or 70 security personnel, but there's only like 32 in this one area. You know, if you read the book. It's interesting, though. Fascinating. What you're describing, though, isn't really any different, like

credit repair companies, credit negotiation companies. You pay us, X amount of dollars per month, and when we build up a war chest of X, we're going to go negotiate with your creditor and pay it off at a discount. That's what he was doing. Right. You know, one of my peers in the foreclosure defense industry, one of the things that I really never did, I charged on a flat fee basis, but what other friends of mine were doing are peers of mine. They weren't really friends. What they were doing is they would charge monthly. So you pay, what's your mortgage payment? A thousand bucks. You pay me 500 or 750 a month. While you're

paying me, I'm going to keep that loan in foreclosure every month that you pay me. Well, if I charge $500 a month and I have 20 clients, that's $10,000 a month. And I'm not picking up 20 clients. I'm picking up 50 and 100, 200 clients. And I'm getting this stream of cash coming in just to slow down your foreclosure forever. Eventually, maybe we negotiate it. Eventually, maybe I bankrupt you. Eventually, maybe we do a 13 or a 7 or a loan model.

But I'm keeping you in the house flow. but I'm keeping you in the house. You're not making your mortgage payment. You're basically sending all that money to me. It's all the same kind of stuff that you're describing. It's all the same kind of stuff you were doing. I'm going to get cash flow from over here, but not send it where it needs to go over there.

Or I'm going to send a portion of where it needs to go over there, and I'm going to keep the rest for me. It's all basically the same scheme. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, I wish if Amaday was here, like he would, you would, because he can get super technical.

the forms and what was being done and how many months they were on they were they were uh they were negotiating and he was trying to get the irs to accept he was trying to get the irs to accept stock in the companies and they were saying at the time think about it they were saying at the time we're not legally allowed to do that we would have to get somebody to sign off and they were trying to find someone to sign off so that they could actually accept the stock and then the companies would be sold later and he was like they couldn't they weren't saying no but they they technically could not accept stock in a company, especially in a public company

or private company, in lieu of the taxes. But they didn't want us to go into bankruptcy because they weren't going to get any of the taxes. They weren't going to get any money if you went into bankruptcy. And it's so funny too because what's funny about that is that, of course, in 2009, the federal government accepted all or took all that stock from all these companies. Like, legally you weren't allowed to do this at that time.

But the plan that he proposed to them is exactly what happened when the government bailed out the banks. You had to bail out the banks, right. So, but at the time, he was like legally they weren't, they were saying they didn't legally understand if they could do it. Anyway, if you read the book, it's, I'm just letting, you know, it's. No, I appreciate it. It sounds like, I like reading that. I, I really liked your book, too. I appreciate it.

Yeah. It's too bad as shit. I wish it was something would happen with it, but whatever. So you got one sale off of me. Yeah, there's you go. There you go. There you go. So it's you and that.

other guy. Right. We, we plug the, the crushing debt. You can go to what? What can you go to to to find it? Well, any podcast player, just type in crushing debt should pop up. The, the law firm's website is yesnerlaw.com. If you do yesnerlaw.com slash podcasts with an S, it'll, it'll go to the website page, or the podcast page where you can look all those up on the website. But that's really the yesner law.com is kind of the wheel that everything spokes out from. Okay. Well, I mean, I'm super irritated that you don't have a YouTube channel, but, you know, we'll walk on. I do have a YouTube channel. It's just not as robust as yours.

Well, I mean, that you got to start videoing. It's one camera. It's a joke. It's nothing. I've got to. Connor runs this. I've got a webcam. Anybody can do it.

I just got to position it correctly so that I can. Actually, we're not. We're just playing with recording it. We'll throw up the recordings. Hey, this is Matt Cox. I really appreciate you guys watching. Do me a favor. If you like the video, hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified of videos just

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