Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Suing Warner Bros In Prison

Episode Date: March 2, 2024

Suing Warner Bros In Prison

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. So Devoroli says, I don't understand. And I said, hey, how are you going to sue them over intellectual property? I haven't even written yet. Like, I mean, it doesn't even make sense.

And he says, we're going to sue them for theft of intellectual property. He says, it's not that hard to allege. theft of intellectual property when there's multiple versions that are accessible so don't worry about it I'm going to take care of it no matter what no matter what we're going to monetize this

and I remember thinking these guys are a couple of con men like I'm in prison for being a con man but these guys are a couple of con men Hey this is Matt Cox This is part seven of my story when I was in prison, and at this point, I am meeting with Ross Rebac, my literary agent, and Ephraim Devoroli. We met in visitation, and Devoroli ended up, we ended up arranging our meeting so that I would be meeting with Ross Reback. who was approved to come visit me because he'd come to visit me earlier at another time with my brother-in-law, who was a lawyer.

So my brother-in-law got him approved as kind of like, I don't know, an associate or legal counsel or something. I forget. But so Ross came in to see me. And Devoroli's, I think, is, I want to say it was his mother, his sister, and might have been both of his brothers. I think maybe it was just one of his brothers. I don't know. But they came to see me. Or they came to see him.

So what happened is I go and I see Ross and Deverelli shows up and he's there with his family. And they're all talking. And you got to think the visitation room is a big room. It's probably, gosh, I don't know. It's big. It's like it's got to be a hundred. I don't know if it's 100 feet, but it's probably 60 feet by 40 feet. it's filled with these plastic chairs and little tiny like tables like it's super uncomfortable

um there are windows on the you know there's windows around it in a few places but you have to think this is like double blocked um construction so there's two blocks with poured with concrete there are windows but they have these thick thick bars on the windows um and then there's an outside too you could actually go outside but the outside was like same thing it was just this this massive these massive walls that probably go up 20 probably probably now I don't know about 20 maybe 10 or 15 feet and then it's covered with like a a screening like you would have like let's say for your for your pool so it's got this huge covering for your for like a like a pool screening

screen it's screened in and you could go out there and sit in these these poured concrete benches and poured concrete picnic tables. And, you know, people go out there and sit down. So we ended up, you know, Deverelli was out there and I think his sister ended up coming to us and saying, hey, you can come sit with us. What happened was in the middle of Devoroli's, in the middle, Deverelli's mother and brother and sister, like they have no idea this is what's happening. They just drove four and a half hours from Miami to be there before.

for anybody to wait and see him. And so they get there. They come in. They talk for maybe 30 minutes in the middle of the conversation. He looks at his watch and he says, listen, I scheduled a business meeting. So I've got these guys that are here. And they're like, what? He's like, yeah, yeah, I've got these guys that are here.

They're going to come and they're going to, this is a guy who's writing, I want him to write my book and his literary agent. So I scheduled this business meeting here. even though his family drove four and a half hours to spend the day with him. And when I say spend the day, they might be able to spend three or four hours with him. And he just decided 30 minutes into it, got a business meeting. And keep in mind, too, they have to sit there with us. If they can't get up and go sit somewhere else, or the guards will come over and say, what's going on? Like, why is this inmate sitting with you?

Why are you guys talking? because you're not really supposed to mix like people what we were doing you're not supposed to do but they get so crowded sometimes they'll actually tell you hey go sit with those people

or you guys got to sit at the same bench you have to share so they can't really stop you because it's so crowded they want you to sit together anyway um we see I

his sister comes over so his mom's furious by the way mother's furious the sister's furious the brother could care less like his brother i'm pretty sure knows his brother's a jerk so the sister comes over i'm pretty sure sister she comes over and she says hey come outside so we go outside and we sit down and i'm like hi and reback kind of introduces himself to everybody and his mother i can tell is furious and so reback pitches himself too

to Deverelli. Like, he basically explains who he is. And while, and he's like, look, here's who I am. Here's what I do. Here's what I've done. He used to represent Ron and Ron in the morning, which was a huge syndicated show. I've done this. I've bought this.

The life ride. I've option life rights here. I've done this. I've sold a bunch of, whatever. He goes through a whole thing. He pitches himself. He does a great job. And Devoroli's like, okay, okay.

well, you know, so you think you could, what do you think you can do? And he's like, I think we can do this. I think we can do that. And so he goes through this whole thing of when, of how he believes he can get this, um, accomplished. Get him get a book done and option the film rights and possibly even get, really he's thinking he can get a movie or a series done on Devoroli. But he, his big thing was I need to get, we need to get a book done as quickly as possible. I remember his mother is furious. And I'm just sitting there. Like I, I only got, when. and did this to arrange the whole thing so that they could meet. So while they're sitting there pitching, I remember Deverelli's sister said, Ross made some comment about how he believed that he could get it done. And he said, and she's like,

well, how do we know you can get this done? And he says, well, I mean, I've gotten a lot. I've accomplished a lot. And I accomplished this. I've done this. I've done this. I've done this. I've been successful in all of these things.

And she goes, well, maybe you just get lucky a lot. I mean, she was like super hard on him. And I remember she said, she goes, well, maybe you just got lucky a lot. And I said, well, I'd rather be lucky than I'm than good. And then Ross says, I say that all the time. I'd rather be lucky than good. And I said, you'd be so shocked at how often luck plays a part in just any given, you know, scenario. Like, I mean, you look at, look at American Idol, like, the top 20 people that are on that show or top 10 people are, you know, like, they're all amazing.

But only one ends up getting chosen. And you almost never hear from any of these other people. It doesn't mean that they're not all amazingly talented. They just, they just weren't lucky, you know, that you sometimes. Sometimes your cousin knows a guy who knows a guy who he met, you know, at a party. And the next thing you know, you have a movie made about you. You don't even deserve the movie. But other people have amazing stories and the movies just never, it just never happens.

So we end up having this huge conversation. And in the middle of the conversation, Ross starts kind of tries to include, he tries to endear himself to Deverely's mom. And his mother, he says, says something, and she says, Deverelli's sister is like, well, why are you writing the book? And I went, well, I've written, I wrote, I just finished a book and something I'm going to probably start doing. And I think I could probably write it. And I said, probably do a pretty good job. And so the sister ends up saying, well, she's like, well, what qualifies you? I'm like, well, nothing qualifies me to write a book.

I said, I mean, I've read several books. And I started to start kind of explaining what I've done. And she goes, well, why did you write a book about yourself? And so Ross ends up saying something to the mother. And the mother goes, I have no idea who any of you people are. She says, I don't know who he is. I don't know why he would write a book or anybody would want to read a book about him. She says, I don't know who you are.

And Ross says, well, Matt actually had a big case and starts going on about my case. And then all of a sudden, she turns to me and she says, oh, my. God. She was, you were on American Greed? And I was like, yeah, I was on American Greed. She said, I've watched every one of those shows. What did you do? And so I started explaining what I did. And she goes, I watched your show. I remember your show. And completely her whole demeanor changes. And the sister's demeanor changes. And the brother's demeanor changes. And he's immediately like, what's going on? What did you do? Oh my gosh. I remember that episode. So they go on and on. So we have this conversation. But keep in mind, we can only sit there for about an hour.

and then because it's like we're intruding on their visitation so we end up leaving and we schedule another meeting the next meeting we have is I don't know how long it is later I want to say it's it's a few weeks later a few weeks later but this time it's just Devoroli and his sister and it's me and Ross so we all end up on another table inside and we have the same conversation and Ross basically they end up hammering out an agreement. During the course of while they're hammering out the agreement, I remember they ended up, Ross kept saying, we have to get the book done as quickly as possible. And I was like, yeah, I get it, Ross, but it takes time to write a book. He's like, Matt, we need to get it done as fast as possible. The reason they wanted it done

as quickly as possible was because Warner Brothers was in the process of making or writing a screenplay about Devereoli and about their case

Deverelli's case but it was based on David Packhouse's version of the case not Devoroli so it's like you and your buddy both ended up I don't know, you know, going to school together and playing on a soccer team and winning the championship.

But he writes a book about it and you're in his book. He talks about you, but he ends up writing the book and selling the book. You don't get anything. Even though he talked about you, even they talked about you about stuff in the locker room and conversations you had, he's allowed to do that. On top of that, in Debroli's case in particular, there were lots of documents and there were lots of articles. So any expectation of privacy he had, he lost. So plus there had been an article written. So, and that article had been optioned.

So what happens is they're right currently, Warner Brothers was having a screenplay written based on the article that had been written in Rolling Stone magazine. And Jonah Hill wanted to play Devoroli. So I don't know if you know who, I'm sure you know who Jonah Hill is. Jonah Hill was in, do you know who Jonah Hill is? Right? Everybody knows who Jonah. Is it right? I don't have to explain that, right? Okay, everybody knows who Jonah Hill is. So, I need a coffee. So what ends up happening is, they end up writing this screenplay. And Ross knew that they were writing a screenplay. There was lots of stuff on, on, there was lots of stuff on the internet about it. So Ross is like, you got to hurry up and write the book as fast as possible. Well, I remember at one point when Devereoli and his sister, kind of broke off like they had they kind of worked out an agreement they well it wasn't quite like that but when when i had a conversation with with ross i'd explained to ross that it was going to be difficult to write a book while he was still in the prison because he had already been he'd already been put in to be transferred to miami so he could be in he was from miami's families

from miami so they were going to transfer him to a camp in miami so the idea that within next month to two months i was going to be able to write a book a full 300 page book on this guy was very difficult. It's difficult to write in prison. You have time to write, but it's difficult. You don't have research materials, whatever. Deverely did have all of his stuff, and that was a huge help. The great thing about Devoroli was his memory was phenomenal. He had an amazing memory. But I didn't know that I could do it, but I didn't really need him to do it. Really, I'd heard most of the stories. And I had a great outline. So, Anyway, I end up telling Ross, look, I can do what I can do.

And he basically, Ross was like, look, if you have to fictionalize the fucking thing, fictionalize it. He said, we'll put down, we'll basically write it up as, and I said, well, like, I don't want to fictionalize it. And he goes, he said, no, no, he said, we can write it as kind of like based on the, you know, based on true events or based on the story of Devoroli. He's like, we'll figure something out. He said, we can put down some kind of a disclaimer, whatever. we'll figure it out just get it done as quickly as possible and i remember telling him it is virtually the more i sat with devroly that it was virtually impossible to make him into a sympathetic character he was genuinely an extra of just a vicious person i mean his business dealings were vicious

he was constantly laughing about how he would he would basically screw people over i mean he was he was he was vicious and so i was like it's going to be difficult like i mean i practically would have to fictionalize the you know the fucking portions huge portions of this book and and his character in general and he's like i don't care what you have to do but make him as likable as possible get it done as quickly as possible um so with that said so one of the things about this i should preface this by saying one of the interesting things about this is that I had written

a book called Stranger Danger which was about a it was about a guy who opens up like a trailer park for

sex offenders so they live in the trailer park and he uses them kind of like as as slay labor. So the book was, it was a, it was a, you know, a not a political satire. It was a satire. It was just a satire. So I had kind of, you know, made this guy basically like he was taking these people that nobody wanted and he was exploiting them. And it was, the whole thing was just kind of a satire on just sex offenders in general. And it was, and I remember saying to Ross, I said, bro, I said, the guy, the guy in the book I wrote called Stranger Danger. And it was just a manuscript. It's

never been, it was just something kind of I had been working on, kind of just something to do. I said, the guy that I wrote in that book is more sympathetic than Deverelli. And he said, I don't give a shit. He said, I need you to do this as quickly as possible. So I said, no problem. So our little meeting is taking place in the visitation room. And Devere, and Ross ends up saying, listen um i think i can get an option i can option this and i think i might be able to get a movie and deboroli says listen he's okay what if you can't get what if you can't do this as quickly as possible like what if what if warner brothers gets their script finished first and what if warner brothers makes the movie before us and beats you to the punch and reback says well we'll we'll

sue him he's but we have to have a book to sue them Like, we have to have that available. We have to have that creation of that intellectual property to be, have been created. And there needs to be intellectual property out there in order for us to sue them. And Devereoli goes, what are you going to sue them over? And I went, what are you suing them over? If they haven't, like, how can you sue them over? Like, that doesn't make sense.

You're allowed to have multiple versions of the same story. Packhouse has a version. you know um was gie lawson wrote up packhouse's version and deverelli can have a version i mean how many versions of john goddy's you know life or you know are there or or you know Obama they're all taken from different perspectives so reback so devroly says i don't understand and i said hey how are you going to sue them over intellectual property i haven't even written yet like i mean it doesn't even make sense and he says we're going to sue him for theft of intellectual property. And I went, how? They haven't stolen anything. He says, it's not that hard to allege

theft of intellectual property when there's multiple versions that are accessible. He said, so don't worry about it. I'm going to take care of it no matter what. No matter what, we're going to monetize this. And I remember thinking, these guys are a couple of con men. Like, I'm in prison for being a con man but these guys are a couple of con men and I'm surrounded like I'm in prison and these two guys are setting up a scam so I was

like I was just like yeah I said well it doesn't really matter because I want to write the book and it's going to be a great book and I'm not worried about it and I'm not worried about anybody suing anybody because I'm going to write a great book so I'm not concerned

I don't think it's going to come to that and Ross was like you know so Ross was already like don't worry about it It's not going to come to that anyway. I'm going to get this done. So that's fine. We end up leaving, I end up leaving a visitation, and I go back, and I start expanding the outline that I'd written on Devoroli. Well, while this whole thing is happening, it turns out that, it turns out that Jonah Hill signs up to, he signs on board.

to become Devoroli, to play Devoroli. But Jonah Hill doesn't like the script. Now, I'm getting this, by the way, this information I'm getting, I got this from Ross. I talked to Ross, and Ross said, it turns out that they've written a script. Jonah Hill wrote the script,

and he is insisting that they rewrite the script, so there's more about Devoroli in the script. Because you have to understand that, because it's from David Packhouse's version, there was too much about David Packhouse. And they wanted there to be, you know, Jonah Hill's a big time actor, and he wanted to be more about the character he's playing. So he's like, yeah, yeah, he said, you know, he wants it to be more about Devoroli. So they start rewriting the script.

And so Ross is like, you got to hurry up and finish this. You got to finish this. And I was like, okay, okay. So I start working. Well, Debroli ends up getting transferred. And I'd written a little bit more than I'd say half the book. Let's say I had written half, maybe two-thirds of the book. By the time he was done.

And the great thing was he had all of his documents. Plus, he was amazing with his recollection. He, so he ends up getting transferred, and I end up finishing the book. And I remember I finished the book and I sent the book to Rob, to Ross Reback. When I sent the book to Ross, I remember. thinking because when Ross had read my book, he was really fairly critical, not of the writing, but just of who, how I'd portrayed, I had, how I'd portrayed myself. And I hadn't accurately discussed my childhood or talked about my influences or, or given the reader any reason to

kind of root for me. Like, I left all that stuff out. Well, with Devoroli, I had included those things. Now, I had a cherry pick the hell out of it because he had so many horrors. horrible, horrible things that had occurred that he'd done. So I really cherry-picked through it to kind of create a person that, a character that had, you know, basically that it was very obvious that he was driven by money and the reasons he was driven by money. And so I, you know, I embellished as much as I really felt like I embellished. And Ross was really pushing me to embellish.

So, and he, but he was insisting that it was going to be based on the life of, uh, of Ephraim Devoroli. So I sent it to him and I remember he got the book. He read the book and I called him like two, two days after I think he had gotten it. And I called him on the phone. I said, hey, I said, did you read it? I'm expecting tons of notes, tons of rewrites, all kinds of stuff. And he went, this is, this is amazing. He said, you, you absolutely not. this thing out of the park like it is it is an amazing story and I was like really and he was like absolutely he said it was great he said the only thing I have an issue with is the very ending and I was like why and he said you make the low security prison that he's in

you make it sound like like it's Disney World like you make it sound like it's joke like it's really kind of a tough high school that you're in and it's not dangerous he goes but you told me people get stabbed there you told me people get in fights you told me that people get you know that it can be brutal I'm like well yeah but if you've got to bring that on yourself and you know I thought I mean you know it's it's not that bad for you he was but for a guy like Devoroli it's bad like he you know he felt like Debroli truly felt like it had ruined his life like it was a horrible experience and it was the worst thing that could have ever happened to him and it was a and i have a vastly different attitude anyway he said i need you to change that to really make the prison sound like just you know a horrible place and i was like oh my god so i was like all right fine so i rewrote like the last couple of pages and i took out a few paragraphs and made it sound like a much much more harsh place than it actually was and i really focused on anything that was unfair about the prison or kind of draconian, I focused on that. Now, listen, to be honest, though, like, I could go into

Deverelli's story and the actual book, and he really did get railroaded. I mean, this is a guy that I personally may have issues with him and don't really like him and don't think he's a likable nice person, but overall, his book, you know, he really got railroaded. I mean, it's a, he got, he got a bad deal. All right. So, so, so now I'm writing the book. That's pretty cool, right? Like I wrote, I wrote, the name of the book was once a gun runner. It was, although portions of it were, were embellished and fictionalized for the, but it was the bulk of it. It was an amazing story, and the bulk of it was based on, on his story. And so, and look, a lot of it was was way more accurate than maybe Lawson's book or

whatever. I mean, according to Deverelli, obviously. DeVroly was thrilled by the book. I remember his sister read the book. His sister came back and was like, this is an amazing, this is an amazing telling of his story. It's phenomenal. Of course it did. It made his, her brother sound like a great guy. And of course, I'm sure she saw him as a great guy. So I, Ross has the book. Yeah, Ross has got the book, and Ross starts pushing the book. So it turns out that Devoroli had a cousin that worked in Hollywood. And his cousin, Devoroli, I remember when he told Ross and I about his cousin, he said, yeah, my cousin could probably help us out. He goes, my cousin, like he's, he goes, well, he thinks he's into the industry.

He goes, I mean, he goes, the movie industry, he was basically a schmuck. He said, but he's, he thinks he's in the industry. he may know some people and Ross is like yeah well I know some people so it'll be it will work it out well what ends up happening is Devoroli at some point contacts his cousin and I'm pretty sure his cousin ends up getting in touch with a guy and a producer friend of his and tells him my cousin is Ephraim Devoroli and he's written a book well that particular cousin his friend that he talked to had a business partner. His business partner was the son of the vice president of Warner Brothers. So he contacts him and he says, look, Devoroli has written a book. And you guys are in the

process. So they basically, they were in the process of rewriting the screenplay for Wardogues. And so what they end up saying is, he ends up saying, well, do you want? want to see, do you want to read the book? Do you want to see the book? Like he's got a whole manuscript. So the son, the son of the Warner, his name is Shimmy. Shimmy? Yeah.

So Shimmy ends up, ends up saying he is interested. So Devereoli's cousin's buddy, they end up contacting, Shimmy ends up contacting, and DeVirola and the buddy, the producers, These two producers end up contacting Ross Reback. Ross Reback knows who both of these guys are. And I remember I called Ross on the phone and I said, hey, Ross, what's going on? He was good news.

And I said, what's that? He said, it turns out that there's a guy named Shimmy and he wants to see Deverelli's book. He is a producer. He and another guy are a producers and that Devoroli's cousin has put us all in contact. Oh, okay. And he said, so they're interested. Oh, okay. And I said, well, that's good. I said, so what are they going to do? They're going to make like a documentary. If they're documentary producers, he's like, yeah, they want to contact us to get a hold of the book.

I'm having them both sign a non-disclosure agreement, which is weird. The non-disclosure agreement essentially says, I'm going to give you the book, but you're not a lot to show it to anybody. Not a lot of people have you sign these. Very few people have you signs something like this. So Shimmy signs it. The other guy signs it. I forget his name right now. They both sign it.

And while we're talking, I said, well, what, what have these guys done? And it turns out that Ross tells me, well, the good news is that the one guy, Shemmy's father is the vice president of Warner Brothers. I said, he is a vice president of Warner Brothers. They have several. He says, he's the vice president of Warner Brothers. And I went, oh, okay, so what, you're going to try and get him to talk to his dad about the book? Like, what are you going to write? Like, what are you talking about?

Like, they've already bought Lawson's, they've already options, optioned, losses, Lawson's. God, I can't talk to that. They have already optioned Lost, Guy Lawson's version of the story. Coming in with another, another version of the story doesn't really make sense. Granted, Jonah Hill was not happy with. with the script. They were in the middle of rewriting it, but I didn't put it together.

So he says, no, no. He said, nothing like that, but it may open up some possibilities for us. And I went, oh, okay. You know, look, this isn't my department. I'm not, I'm in prison. I got my own fucking problems. I got a counselor who's going around

searching lockers who, if you have, you're supposed to have, you're allowed to have two shelves in your locker and some guys had three shelves in their lockers because they bought shelves from other guys and so I've got a counselor who's going around opening up your locker and yanking out one of your shelves I mean these are the kinds of things that occupy my time

is trying to hide my shelf in my my extra shelf in my pillow so my counselor doesn't steal it I mean you can see like I have other issues like what's important to me is not important to other people. So I'm like, yeah, okay, okay. So I hang up the phone.

And so now this, I'm telling you all of this because now the groundwork is kind of, you should kind of understand, like it's set. And what essentially happens is, according to Deverelli's lawsuit, the son of Warner Brothers president, Shimmy, ends up getting the moment. my manuscript and giving it to his father. Now, Warner Brothers never denies this, which is odd because in my opinion, Devereoli and Ross and everybody kind of set up this kid to get a hold of the

manuscript. Like they kind of do an end run around to say, hey, to talk to this guy and talks to this guy. Now, was that on purpose? I feel like it was kind of on purpose, but I don't know that. What I know is that Deverelli's cousin talked to this guy and this guy talked to this guy and this guy asked for the manuscript and they gave him the manuscript and he also was the son of Warner Brothers president which Ross was super excited about

and Ross and Devoroli seemed like they were ready to fucking sue Warner Brothers anyway so what ends up happening what ends up happening is as a result of that whole thing the screenplay gets rewritten

at the same time. So at the same time that the manuscript ends up in this guy's hands, the screenplay gets completed. So Ross is furious. Like, not furious at this moment, but what ends up happening is he later finds out that he later talks to Shimmy and finds out that, or Shimmy and the other producer,

and finds out that Shemmy's father is a vice president. with Warner Brothers and so he immediately acts offended like he's like what I didn't know that I never would have given you the manuscript if I'd known that and hangs up the phone on him but the truth is he knew the kid was the son of a Warner Brothers vice president prior to ever giving him the manuscript so what he was doing was he was setting the whole thing up in order to sue Warner Brothers that was the whole that was the whole purpose of that Well, at this point, basically, Ross isn't trying to pitch, even trying to pitch Devereoli's story. He's not really trying to get a deal anymore.

He's basically now just trying to get an attorney to sue Warner Brothers because he knows that he knows that the movie's coming out. because they're now they are now going to they're now using their own script um they end up making the movie um you know todd phillips makes the movie uh god what is his name bradley cooper's in it uh Jonah hill is in it uh is it miles davis david davis miles teller miles teller miles teller is in it he plays uh david packow so all these guys are in it they end up making the movie Well, before the movie even comes out, Deverelli, basically, he doesn't talk to me at all. Ross stops talking to me completely. I end up writing, well, I end up writing, um, writing Deboroli a letter in which I say, I don't know what you guys are doing.

You need to get your shit together. You guys should be trying to get a book deal. I don't know why you're focusing on suing Warner Brothers. They haven't done anything wrong. You know, what are you doing? Same thing. I basically end up saying a similar thing to reback. And essentially, if you understand that I'm in prison, like, I was banking on this thing to make me some money and it's made me no money. And not just that, like they're not even trying to get

a book deal. They at one point had a book deal that was, they were, according to Ross, we're about to sign a book deal with Simon and Schuster. You know, they had, they had several people offering them book deals. What ends up happened, the problem is they can't get the book out very quick, you know, quick enough. So Ross ends up getting self-publishing the book. But I don't know this because they're not really talking to me. So Ross is hardly ever picking up the phone, not really responding to emails. And what I decide is, you know, I just kind of, I'm so frustrated by the whole thing. But at one point, I find out that Devoroli has actually published the book

I find that out when a guy comes up to me one day and I'm sitting in an area called Stonehenge and this guy comes up to me and he says hey Matt he said and I'm like yeah what's up and he says bro he said are you making any money on that book and I go what book he's that Devaroli book you wrote his memoir right and I went yeah but I said I'm not making any money on it they haven't sold any books like they haven't they haven't published the book they might have a deal with Simon & Schuster I don't know

I haven't talked to them in, God, weeks, maybe months. I'm not sure. And the guy goes, what are you talking about? And he opens up, there's a magazine called Oceans Drive Magazine. It's a big glossy magazine from Miami. He opens up Oceans Drive magazine, and he shows me a picture of Devoroli on one of the pages of the magazine. And Devoroli's holding a copy of the book that I wrote, his memoir, once a gunrunner, it's got a picture of him on it and he's holding the book and it and he's got probably several

hundred books piled up behind him and he's at a book signing he's at a at a book fair where he's signing books my name's on the front of the book with his and he's signing books and I had no I had no idea that the book had been published and that they were signing books I'd gotten no money. People aren't answering my calls. And so I freak out. I'm furious. I end up calling Ross several times. I eventually end up talking to Ross. And when I talk to Ross, I'm like, hey, man, I just saw this and this. And he's like, oh, yeah, yeah, we self-published it. And he, I blows it up, like, like, oh, it's no big deal. And we just figured to go this route. We want to get it out, you know, before the, we want to get it out before the movie comes out. And, and, and, and,

he said and I said well what are you doing because he's not telling me really anything so I he said what are you doing he's oh we're waiting for them we're about to file our lawsuit set um because it turns out that shimmy is the son of the vice president of Warner brothers and we believe that they used the book in order to rewrite the entire screenplay to put more of you know Ephraim de Veroli's character or in the screenplay or in the movie for for Jonah Hill and so we're suing them it's like you he he was I remember he was saying it to me like can you believe that Warner Brothers sent one of one of the one of the kids sent his winner brothers vice president sent he sent his son to trying to get a copy of the manuscript so they could steal it from us that was his pitch to me over the phone like he was like can you believe that and I'm like but I knew like I guess Ross had forgotten that he told me he forgot my mistake he must have forgotten that he told me that he knew before he ever gave him the fucking thing that he was a his father was uh worked for Warner Brothers

so I was like okay he said yeah so we're suing him we're suing this other guy we're suing they were suing everybody you know Warner Brothers we're suing New Line Cinema we're suing, you know, like all kinds of people. I don't know who else. I don't know if it's in the line cinema. They were suing a bunch of people. And he's like, right now they just came out with all the trailers for Warner Brothers. And we've got guys going through the trailers, cutting up the trailers to try and figure out which scenes they stole from the manuscript.

Keep in mind, the manuscript is partially fabricated. So what does it matter? Anyway, I'm just, and I'm still in prison with no money with now there's obviously not going to be a movie about this guy. And, you know, these guys, the whole, just the whole thing was just horrible. It was just a horrible situation. And I felt like I'd just been robbed. I'd worked really hard on this thing. I really was excited about it only because I thought it would get my name out there.

And just the whole thing had just fallen. this whole thing, I'm condensing this into one little, you know, part because I, otherwise, because they drag, this dragged out over years. Now, keep in mind, Ross and DeBeroli felt like they could do anything they wanted to me because at this point, my sentence has my outdate. I'm being released from prison in 2030. I've got a 26-year sentence. I've got a whole bunch of time left. And so they can basically do whatever they want to because, let's face it, I don't really matter. And I'm not a factor.

They kind of figure there's nothing I can do from prison. So, yeah, so that's the situation that was currently happening was these guys were about to sue Warner Brothers for, you know, God, for milk, you know, I don't know what they were asking for, 60 million or 30. I forget how many millions and millions they wanted from Warner Brothers. And they were, and they'd file, they end up filing their lawsuit. They ended up filing a lawsuit against them. So I'm going to go ahead and wrap it up because this is long and drawn out.

And I'm sorry. And it's, and it's a much more, it's a much more complicated version of what happened than most people understand. So, you know, typically when people say, oh yeah,

yeah, Matt's the guy that wrote the movie War Dogs. That's just not true. Like, that's not what ended up happening. That's not how it unraveled. And so I hate that. So I thought I'd go ahead and take this opportunity to kind of lay it out to tell you what did happen. So anyway, that's pretty much it.

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