Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The Common Character Trait of Evil Geniuses | Frank Amodeo

Episode Date: December 28, 2023

The Common Character Trait of Evil Geniuses | Frank Amodeo

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August 1st. Adolf Hitler attempted a coup in Germany. There are so many examples of political figures that are criminals, arrested, thrown in prison, get out of prison, take over the country, or multiple countries or half the world. So it's not that unreasonable. It's insane, but it's not that unreasonable. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and we are going to be doing a continuation of the Frank Amadeo's story based on the book that I wrote about Frank, which is It's Insanity. And Frank, in the last segment, I think we talked about how Frank had just reduced my sentence by 12 years. We're going to jump back. to basically Frank, kind of his law firm that he was running in the prison, which is perfectly

legal, by the way. The Supreme Court has said that it is legal not to run a business from prison. There are a few things you can do as an inmate from prison to make money. And that is, as far as a business kind of is concerned. And one of those things is you're allowed to write stories. Inmates can write stories. They can write their fellow inmates stories. They can write stories and they can sell the rights to those stories. They know they can't be an employee of like a newspaper, but they can sell things on a piecemeal basis. I'll give you an exact example. I have a friend named Seth Vrante. He used to write for Vice Magazine and he was incarcerated and Vice paid him a small budget to interview other inmates and they put it in their magazine. They'd pay him, you know,

$200 a week for a little article about an inmate that he was in prison with. Now, that was it. He's not being paid hourly. He's not being paid like a, like a W-2 employee. These are piece mail. These are little assignments. So you're allowed to do that. You're all allowed to write a book, sell a book, get an advance for the book, get royalties.

You're allowed to do things like that. But you can't, like, run like a CPA firm where people are sending you in their taxes and you're doing it. And you've got a whole slew of guys doing taxes for you. You can't do that. But one of the things the Supreme Court has said is that because inmates have such limited access to the law and such limited understanding of the law, that inmates are allowed to help other inmates with their legal work. So when Frank was doing my legal work, it's perfectly legal for him to do that.

Now, I can't pay him. I'm not allowed to pay him, but people do pay guys. I don't know of anybody that really paid Frank for his services. Now, I know that there are people that went out and hired an outside private investigator to do things that Frank was working on. And Frank would suggest that they use this private investigator. And they would, maybe their family would pay that private investigator to go do private investigation work. I know he's done stuff like that. But I don't know if Frank specifically receiving funds directly from anyone.

and certainly never asked me for any money. In fact, and I think I mentioned this before, Frank actually paid for the postage for myself, because I really didn't have any money at that time. I was writing guys' stories, and of course I was writing Frank's story. So because I was writing Frank's story, I spent more and more time with him.

And one of the things about Frank and about the prison in general is that it was made up of three different large buildings, which were units, housing units, and each housing unit had four, housing units within that building. So there's let's say there's four or three buildings, three housing buildings and there were units within it. Frank was actually in my building, but he wasn't in my housing unit. I was in B4. He was in, I think, B3. And you're not really allowed to go from

building to building. So I'm not really allowed to go into Frank's unit. But people do it all the time. You know, they go in and say, hey, you know, they sneak in and the guard doesn't see you because the guard's in the office and he can't see the front door from the office or usually they'll close the door and they're practically falling asleep or playing on the computer. Or sometimes you just ask the guard, hey man, can I go see Frank? They'll go, yeah, yeah, go ahead. So Frank would kind of hide out in his housing unit. The prison had actually given him an office because he was doing so many guys legal work, which is comical because you really have to know the prison system to know how over the top insane it is that the warden would

give Frank an office of his own to do legal work in that he had. That is so over the top. I don't want it. It's not, I don't know what's, it's not inappropriate, but it's, it's, it's just unheard of. But still, people really can't come in the unit to see Frank. They know, it's hard to get in and out and they could get in trouble. So what Frank did was he would go out in front of his unit and he was on the second story and he would come down. stairs, come down the stairs and go outside. And there was an area that we called, I may have mentioned this before, we called Stonehenge. Stonehenge was a big circle. And it was a large, and I mean large, like it was probably 50 feet, 40 or 50 feet, you know, from one, one edge to the other

in kind of like a circle. And then there were four benches, there were four tables with benches, There's concrete tables with benches, you know, in a little kind of square in the middle. And then along the whole side of it were concrete benches. Well, really, the concrete benches around the side of it made it look like Stonehenge. And it's funny because there was one in front of my unit, too, and we called that Canterbury Circle. Because a lot of people don't realize that there's Stonehenge. And there's a very, in another part of, I want to say, England, there's actually another part that looks just like Stonehenge. but they call it Canterbury Circle.

So it's actually very much, looks like it was built by the same people who ever did that. Whatever. I don't know. I'm not a historian. The point is, Frank would go out there and sit. He had certain nights where he would have like Spanish Tuesdays. And he would go sit down and he would meet with Spanish people in the prison, you know, Mexicans, people from Spain, whatever, South Americans. And they would come and they would meet with him.

and he had an interpreter that would interpret their whatever legal issues they were having and then whatever they could, whatever he could do for them or couldn't do. And they were, listen, there's many times he would look at somebody's stuff and he would say, look, there's just nothing we can do. Like, it's, you've got 12 more years to do or 10 more years to do and you're going to do them. So the problem is Frank, a lot of times he would take on cases that he just shouldn't have like it was such a crap shoot that's like, Frank, this is never going to. happen like you're never yes but if we can do this and do this and if the oh for god's sakes like

you could spend your time better working on someone's case who's got a got a chance but you know he wants to help everybody um which i think partially is is part of his his mental issue is that you know he wants to be that savior you know and in my case of course he was so i mean who am i to say so you got spanish tuesdays and then he would come out like maybe three he had three or four days a week he came out and it was almost like a schedule right like he would tell everybody i'm going to be out on on wednesday i'll be out from seven o'clock until lockdown which is i think nine you know so come out there and meet me and guys would he would literally be sitting at the table looking at people's stuff going over their paperwork or taking notes and he he had someone

there that would be he would have someone there that would take notes for him i mean it really was like if he he wasn't wearing greens because in Coleman most federal prisons they were they were beige or tan but in Coleman you actually wear green which is weird because it's like why would you wear green why would you wear green when the whole purpose is that you don't want to get if you could get out of the fence you immediately go into the tree line now I'm wearing camouflage green like I'm gone you're never going to find me I don't know why they did that it's stupid anyway he's he's there if he wasn't wearing green you would think the guy was a lawyer i mean you would think he was at a you were at a law firm right

and so guys are and guys were literally be standing there there would be five guys deep six guys deep standing there with their you know holding their their all their legal work like waiting to talk to frank and and i you know i make fun of it because i was one of those guys so it's not like i'm picking on them because i know exactly how it feels like you got your transcripts and you got your stuff and you're standing there with like your file like frank can i talk to you real quick so you know this guy is your only hope. And so he'd sit down and I, Donovan and I, and Pete, my buddy Pete, we would sit at the table directly behind him. Keep in mind, Frank had a bunch of drug dealers that are doing, that are doing legal work for him. He teaches the legal research class. So he teaches guys how to do

research on the legal computers. And he would have a group of guys, that worked for him, right? Or, you know, with him, whatever. He's not paying him or anything. But they would do research for people's cases because they wanted to, you know, look, if you got 20 years and you're down 20 years, being mentored by someone who's got a law degree and is successful in prison and can teach you the law. Like, you mentor under Frank for two years.

You're basically a lawyer. And imagine the amount of criminal cases that you're, you're, you're, you're basically a lawyer. are going through your hands and really you're getting the equivalent of five or 10 years worth of experience by being under this guy. And so these guys are gladly donating their time. He would give them an assignment. They would go do the research. They would print out stuff. They'd bring it him. He'd highlight it. He'd say, look up this case. Look up at this case. Read this case. Tell me what this says. Like he has, these are, these are are paralegals for him or, you know, associates. We used to call them, you know, Frank had his associates. So, so back to Stonehenge.

me Pete Donovan and a couple of the guys we would sit behind in the table behind Frank and I was just kind of listen to him and Frank it's funny too because like my hearing's not great I have what's called auditory and visual dyslexia which means that if I can overhear a conversation five feet away from me and I'm talking to you I basically can't hear you either I both that conversation and your conversation become blended and I can't It's like five people are trying to talk to me at the same time, and I can't understand any of them. Frank could simultaneously be discussing your case with you and hear our conversation and would make a comment. Every once in a while, he'd turn and say, well, you know, Johnson v. the United States, or he'd turn around and go, Johnson versus the United States, he said, actually settled that argument. And that would have been, I believe that's 2012 Supreme Court. The case number is 5-5702, and he'd rattle it off and you'd go, but this guy was just talking to this guy about his drug case, and he's, now he's quoting Johnson versus the United States, because he overheard us talking about a gun charge

of some kind for somebody's case. Like, he could simultaneously hold two and three conversations at once. And you didn't, by the way, the drug dealer didn't have to stop talking. He could continue talking, and Frank could answer your question that he wasn't even part of the conversation and still pick up where you were, where, where you guys had left off. Anyway, my point is this. So I say that to let you know. So this is, these are the conversations that we would have. And I would walk away going, this is insane. Like, had I not gone to prison, I would have never been able to be around these guys that were just brilliant. I mean,

fundamentally flawed, but brilliant also. And I, and here's the thing. So Donovan, when Frank would take on your case, one of the things he would tell you is, and I may have gone over this, he would say, listen, here's the way this works. Your case is a plane, all right? So the process of fighting your case is a vehicle, which is an airplane. I'm the pilot. You are the passenger. You sit back. Now, you've told me where you want to go. I'm going to devise how we're going to get there. I'm going to execute on that.

And I'm going to determine how we go about doing all of these things. I'm going to fly the plane. You're just a passenger. Do not try and tell me how to fly the plane. You don't know how to fly the plane. You're just a passenger. And guys, of course, you know, they don't say anything. You're like, yeah, of course, of course, Frank, of course.

and you have to understand that so everyone periodically though things happen and guys would come to frank and they would say frank frank did you hear about um you know Richardson versus the United States like I think that that that pertains to my claim that the government framed me and he would say well no Richardson was a this type of a case and it was this district and in that district that was overturned but you're not, you're in the 11th district, you're not in the fifth district, and that doesn't apply to you. Now, maybe in a few years from now, so it may end up going to the Supreme Court, maybe it becomes, you know, pulled into this case and is relevant to our district, but it's not. Right now, it's, no, no, but, but Jimmy said, and he'd be like, okay, Jimmy, Jimmy, your roommate, who's a crack dealer who's never had a job, has done, does, he's a jailhouse lawyer, he's been locked up two years, who, who, doesn't know what he's talking about told you it does apply okay Jimmy Jimmy doesn't know okay I'm

explaining they would kind of he would be nice he'd be polite about it but at some point it's like listen we've talked about this for 10 minutes now you don't seem to want to hear me we're done talking about it this is the avenue we're going with your case this is how we will win if you have a problem I'll just give you your stuff back and the guy would you know he tried to be polite but the guy was like, well, you don't understand, man, you're my lawyer, you're supposed to do what I said. And he, guys just forget the fact that they already told you not to do this, you know, not to go about trying to tell him how to go about doing it. So, initially, it became known as Frank throwing someone out of the plane, right? Like, like, we would hear, overhear these conversations and Donovan would say, yo, he'd be like, Frank's about to throw this dude out of the plane.

And it was kind of a joke, right? But at some point, and Donovan's so hilarious, right? Jonathan, at some point, Donovan kept adding, like Donovan would add to the scenario. He'd go, oh, oh, no, no, no. Oh, he just opened the door, bro. He just opened the door. Oh, this dude's going out. He's going out.

He's going out the door. Oh, he's going to throw him out. He's going to throw him out. And so, you know, we'd be listening. Well, eventually, over the months of joking around, he ended up coming. up with the scenario where he said, this, bro, Matt, you missed it. And I go, what he was, you know, so and so. And I go, yeah. He go, he, he, uh, he came to Frank. Frank, Frank, Frank didn't just throw him out of the plane. He threw him out of the plane

and he hit the, he threw him right into the turbine. Bro, yeah, threw him right into the turbine, right into the airplane engine. Turbined him. He turbined him. That's what he did. He turbo. So it became known as being turbine like, yo, Frank's got to turbine this dude. And that's what, like, that became a thing where we would laugh. I'd say, man, I'm going to go talk to, go talk to Frankie. You go, don't get your, Frank's in a bad mood today, bro. Don't get yourself turbine. You know, and we would joke around about it.

So it became a thing. So I say that to tell you that one time we heard, and I've mentioned this before, I know, I have to, I don't know if I sold this during this thing, but Colby said I didn't tell it, but I think I did. I'm going to tell it anyway. So one time Colby's arguing with this drug dealer about his case. And the guy's with, no, no, no, this. And he's trying to explain to him that this isn't the way it works and you're wrong and this and that.

And this isn't going to happen. I'm sorry. This isn't working for you. And so he's going back and forth with this drug dealer. He gets manic, right? So he starts, he gets really manic. And all of a sudden, Frank goes, I will, if you continue with this, I will, I will anthrax your entire village. And the guy looks at me and goes, village.

He goes, Frank, I'm from West Palm. And he goes, West Palm then. And I mean, we were just busted out laughing. So, you know, the guy, I don't know, I figured what happened. The guy backed down or whatever happened. The guy walked away. You know, guys, they didn't really very, I only saw one confrontation with Frank. I had heard about a few where, you know, he would yell at somebody and somebody would, you know, I remember there was one where this guy physically attacked him.

And I was sitting right there when the guy like slapped him in its face, which is going to happen every once while. you start to you forget that you're dealing with with violent guys and uh listen i thought i thought this guy was going to get killed he slapped frank in the face and frank stumbled back and listen this this jamaican guy jumped up and went towards him the guy took off running i mean it was like there were three or four people that stood up immediately to move towards this guy like they would have they would have beat that dude down for frank anyway uh and frank immediately it's so funny to typical Frank, he immediately was like, no, no, no, it's okay, it's okay. And Frank stepped over the line. I think he ended up saying something about the bloods. And this guy was like a blood or

a crypt or something. Frank made some comment about, that's what's wrong with you guys. That's why you guys, you know, and said something insane that, you know, was probably not that far over the line. But in prison, it was over the line, right? Like you don't insult this guy's gang. with that said i remember one time we're sitting there and i'm writing the story right like i'm writing this story and i remember talking to pete about it and we're sitting behind frank donovan's there we're sitting there talking we're joking around and i said um i said you know what's so funny about frank talking about taking over the world and you know frank heard that right like frank's like sitting there talking to somebody and looking over their transcripts you know he was probably like

and he goes and I said you know what's so funny about that is that you know you say that you joke around like oh yeah yeah this guy who's locked up in prison for 20 some odd years he thinks he's going to get out and take over he's going to one he's going to get himself released early and he's going to take over he's going to build this massive company and he's going to end up buying up all these companies with military applications just like he was doing before and he's going to build an army and he's going to take over countries and he's going to end up taking over the entire world like how ridiculous is that like this guy's delusional and and so you know we're talking about the the insanity of that of that statement and i went and i remember going it's you know thinking

it's not that insane adolf hitler attempted a coup in germany right so he was the leader of a little of a political organization he attempted a coup they tried to kind of march on Berlin and take over and they end up getting shot at arrested he ends up getting thrown in prison he gets out of prison a few years later goes back to this to the you know the Nazi party right this the national socialist blah

blah ended up being called Nazis the Nazi party and he ends up getting himself elected as chancellor and takes over all of Germany he was this is a guy who's thrown in prison, gets out, takes over Germany, and he starts invading all of these countries. This is a guy who took over all of Europe, okay, and part of Africa before he was finally stopped. So is Frank's delusion unreasonable?

I'll give you another example. Another example is Benito Mussolini. I can never remember Benito, but Mussolini. Benino, Benito Mussolini, okay? Same thing. Political coup, takes over, takes over Italy, ends up taking over Italy, joins forces with Hitler, and he's a part of the access, you know, allies, and they end up, listen, they end up, he's part of this whole thing. They take over all of Europe, right? So, same thing. Hugo Chavez, same thing. And by the way, Mussolini had been in prison, okay? Chavez had been. Chavez had been. been in prison. You know, somebody else? Castro, Fidel Castro, had been to prison. Got out, took over Cuba. There are so many, Joseph Stalin, prison, been in prison, ends up being, taking over and helps create the Soviet Union. Listen, there are so many examples of political figures that are criminals, arrested, thrown in prison, get out of prison, get out of

prison, take over the country or multiple countries or half the world. So it's not that unreasonable. It's insane, but it's not that unreasonable. So Pete and I are, we're having this, I remember we were having this whole discussion, me, Pete, and I think Donovan was there. We're joking around and laughing about it. And Pete's going, no, you can't. And he goes, you can't, you're not going to write that in the book. You can't compare him to Hitler. And he was like, the guy knocked 12 years off your sentence. You can't do that. And I was like, yeah, I'm telling you, I think that's a great comparison. So I remember Pete jumps in and says,

Nelson Mandela. You can compare him to Nelson Mandela. And I was like, I'm not going to compare it. Because, of course, Nelson Mandela, by the way, this is South Africa. He was held in prison for, I think, like, 20 years, got out and became president of South Africa. And so he's like, listen, he's like, Nelson Mandela. I'm like, I'm not, he's no Mandela. I'm not comparing him to Mandela.

And I remember Frank ends up chiming in. So Frank's sitting at the table behind us and he hears, you know, he's hearing this whole thing. And in the middle of a sentence, Frank leans over to us and leans back and he goes, the apostle Peter. He was imprisoned and he got out and he started the Catholic Church. And I remember saying, bro, you're no apostle Peter, Frank. You're not the apostle. And I remember he said, he kind of chuckled. He goes, I'll remember that when I'm, he goes, I'll remember that.

when I'm emperor of the world and just like ha ha ha ha and turn around and kept doing what he was doing but I mean it was just typical we're you know we're snickering and giggling and laughing the whole time like it's just a hilarious conversation so um I remember uh that I don't know how much longer it was days or weeks after that that I remember Pete came up to me and was like do you And I have the guy's name right here. It's Charles Brown. He goes, hey, he goes, he is, you remember Charles Brown? And I was like, I mean, I, maybe I remember him.

I think so. And Pete kind of described it. I was, yeah, yeah, okay. And he was, yeah, he said, he got, the guy got, he was, he got, he said, you remember him? And I was like, yeah. He goes, he said, so you know he got 30 years, right? And I went, okay. And he goes, Frank just got 20 years knocked off his sentence.

20 years knocked off his sentence And I was just like, whoa Not long after that Pete comes up to me and Pete tells me I don't even know if it was Peter or Fred Donovan or who it was But there was a guy named It was Dr. Jose

Casino. I'm going to say Casino. I'm sure I'm butchering the name. It was like, you know, Dr. Jose Casino He got 14 years and he or whoever had told me I was like right he said um he is you know Frank just walked him up to R&D today right he got immediate release this guy got 14 years a couple years later

Frank gets him an immediate release I mean so you know it's it's insane but it really was like okay what do you what do you do like it's insanity admittedly it's insanity but but he was also doing amazing things. You know, at this point, like, I'm close to getting out. I'm probably a year or so away from, it depends. It depends on how much time if I got, it, there's different factors, right? Like I was either a couple years away or I could have been a year away. It depends on how much halfway house you get, that sort of thing.

So I was, whatever it was, two, three years away from getting. out of prison at that point. And I remember, I had gotten a lot of information, right? I got the transcripts in on Frank. I'm reading through transcripts. I'm reading through. I had ordered the Freedom of Information Act. You know, the problem with Freedom of Information Act was a lot of times, even though I had Frank's permission, like he's signing, I have the signed documents from Frank releasing information to me from the FBI, from these different law enforcement, federal law enforcement, and state law enforcement agencies, a lot of them wouldn't give me any information, which was really odd because I've done a lot of freedom of information

act requests, and they just wouldn't give it. In matter of it, the CIA, I remember they sent me something, and it said that they would not confirm or deny if they had any information about Frank Amadeo. The FBI gave me limited information. Now, keep in mind, the FBI and the IRS did this massive investigation into Amadeo, and I barely got anything back from them. They acted like they didn't know who he was. There's no way they didn't have gobs of information.

A lot of the information I was getting, I was getting from the docket, where Frank had the information and Frank had recorded information in the docket, the court docket, and I was getting that information released to me. Some of those were a variety of different things, either from transcripts to motions, to some of them were affidavits by his co-defendants, affidavits from his wife, that sort of thing. But I remember, you know, there were lots of things that I was like, I can't confirm this is what Frank said, but I can't confirm this. You know, I do have photographs of this. This makes sense.

I read an article that says this. But of course, it's even better if you can get it directly from the FBI, right? Or the CIA. Like, that's like, oh, this is what they have. So you know. And I remember one of the things Pete had said was, when you get out, you should blow this thing up into an entire book. Because I was getting a lot of information. I had a lot.

You know, I was writing, what I initially was writing on Frank was just a synopsis, right? It was just like a large article, maybe 10,000. thousand words. I think it ended being like 14 or 15,000 words, 12,000, something like that. And I was going to run it to write like an 8 to 10,000 word thing. It ended up being like 12 or 14, I forget. So, you know, and a book is 50,000 words, you know, 80,000, 70,000, maybe 100,000 words. And I remember Pete was like, yeah, you got to get out. You know what you need to do? When you get out, you can interview these guys. You know who you need to interview? Kevin Billings. Kevin Billings had been the head of the CIA or head of the Secret Service detail that protected George Bush, right?

Senior, George Senior. And we have photographs of Kevin Billings with him. They're on Air Force One, all these different things. And I remember he said, and I got pictures on my website of Kevin Billings with George Bush, with Frank, with everybody. And because, and I was like, why? I said, I said, honestly, I said, do you, Pete, do you really think the Billings is going to talk to me? He is, why not? I said, Billings was running Frank's, he was running tactical, which was Frank's private security company.

Like, Billings, and I'll get into this later when Frank tries to take, when they try and take over the Congo, right? They try and pull off a coup, a political coup. Frank says it was a political coup. the Congolese are saying it was a military coup. I think they did have weapons. Frank says they had no weapons. Congolese says that they did have weapons. But anyway, you know, like Billings,

and I remember thinking Billings is not going to want to talk to me. Here's why. Billings was head of Franks of Tactical, and Tactical was owned by a guy who Billings knew was mentally unstable. And he's running a private military for this guy who is bipolar, who's got severe bipolar disorder to an extent that he's actually suffering from schizophrenia at times. And I was like, Billings isn't going to want to admit that he was a part of this.

And he was also a part of some very questionable operations. You know? We're talking about kidnapping people from other countries. We're talking about about going to another country and trying to pull off a coup. This is questionable. Anyway, and I just remember talking to Pete and he's like, well, what about this guy? I was like, that guy's the same thing. Like most of these guys, I was afraid, were going to be very concerned about talking to me. And most of them were slightly concerned. I'll get into that later of what ends up happening with that. And I do talk to several guys. Listen, the next video will be more exciting, I promise. Consider buying the book.

insanity. We have it on with physical soft copies and we've got it on Audible. So we're going to leave the link in the description. Really appreciate it. See you.