Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The Full Story Of Matt Cox | FBI'S MOST WANTED MAN

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

The Full Story Of Matt Cox | FBI'S MOST WANTED MAN

Stop. Do you know how fast you were going? I'm going to have to write you a ticket to my new movie, The Naked Gun. Liam Nissan. Buy your tickets now. I get a free Tilly Dog. Not included. The Naked Gun. Tickets on sale now. August 1st. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I'm going to kind of go over my story. I've gone over my story before on concrete and value tainment and Vlad TV and a bunch of other, a bunch of other YouTube. channels but i've never really gone over my story on my channel and what i wanted to do was kind of go over the story almost you know not i don't know necessarily it's chapter by chapter but i want to go over it in a longer form than the typical 20 minute or hour two hour uh you know format i wanted to go through it kind of take my time and go through the story and so uh basically if you don't know anything about

me I basically I was I was on the run for three well I was a mortgage broker I started committing mortgage fraud I ran a bunch of different real estate related scams and credit card scams and ultimately I ended up going on the run and I was kind of you know I was you know on the secret services most wanted list I was on the FBI's most wanted list and I was I was on the run for three years and eventually I got caught and I went to prison so that's essentially kind of you know this this story and how those events unfolded uh so i think i'll start with by saying you know that i was raised in tampa florida and i was raised in and i was actually raised in temple terrace which is a separate city but so it's kind of like almost like a suburb slash city of

tampa i never really say temple terrace because nobody knows where temple terrace is essentially it's florida i mean essentially it's tampa so basically raised in uh in temple tariff and you know my I was raised by a strict Catholic mother my dad was he was never really that religious my father had a you know he had an alcohol problem and I was it's funny like my mother my mother and father my mother was unable to have children she was she was back then they used to call it being barren you know she just she wasn't able to get pregnant and they tried for years when they first got married and eventually they they they adopted i have a sister named katie and they adopted my sister helen then they adopted my brother like a year later they

adopted my brother his name is mark then they adopted uh katie which was my closest sibling and then you know about eight 10 years went by and my mother at the age of i think she was 39 or almost 40 she went in for a hysterectomy and back then you know back then you became you were 40 years old and women were you know this is back in the 60s they basically were just kind of standard you you were in your 40s you went in for a hysterectomy so she went in for a hysterectomy and when the doctor opened her up he noticed that her ovaries were spongy and he realized hey did we give this woman a pregnancy test and they were like well no she's not able to get pregnant so they gave her pregnancy test while she was sitting right laying right there on

conscious on the table, came back, said she was pregnant. So they stitched her up. And when she woke up, you know, she woke up and my dad was there and he said, uh, my mom said, how'd the surgery go? And, and he said, not as expected. So he said, you know, you're pregnant. And she was like, I came in for his direct to me. What are you talking about? And so whatever it was, you know, seven, eight months later, uh, I was born. And so, you know, my brothers and sisters were adopted and I was a you know whatever you want to call it natural born child and my like I said my father had kind of an alcohol not kind of an alcohol my father was a drunk he had an alcohol problem like beating around the bush like he was a drunk okay so he had an alcohol problem he had a

problem with pills he was narcissistic extremely arrogant overbearing and I was you know not, I think not the son he wanted. You know, I grew up and I remember, you know, he would get drunk and he would call, you know, he'd call me and my brother's stupid and say we'd never be anything. And then he would call my, you know, brother, my sisters, he called in names and, you know, he was just a nasty drunk. And then he'd sober up and he'd be great for three or four months or six months and he would be great. And he worked for a state farm insurance as a manager it's an amazing manager he was a great salesperson a great sales a great manager hired you know trained agents and i forget what he had like 25 agents he was always winning awards always doing well made a

great deal of money and i think watching him he was he did so well that even when state farm realized that he had a major drinking problem you know they they would send him to rehabs like they didn't fire him he'd show up at a meeting drunk they wouldn't fire him because he he was one of the leading managers and had the was running one of the leading sales teams of agents uh in the nation so instead of firing him they just kept putting them into rehabs and they'd sober him up and he'd be good for a year or two and then he or he really they would think he was good for a year or two the truth is he would still go on these uh these uh benders and uh i i remember one time they one time they were going to get a divorce uh my mom was wanted to get a divorce my dad wouldn't

stop drinking he was just being a dick and i remember he drove us out to the projects and told us the whole family and told the whole family that he could afford two of these houses which really honestly looking back wasn't true uh but he was saying he could afford two of these houses and we would all live in the projects if my mom left him what a dick uh you know and i was the little kid too i remember he he was like and you guys all have to decide who you want to live with and i remember saying my mom mom i want to live with mom immediately uh really you know one minute i just loved my father to death and the next minute i just despised him and he was just belligerent and he bullied my mother and all of us. He was just a dick. And so, you know, I just know I never lived

up to what he wanted in a son. And although I was smart, you know, I, I tested high on all the IQ tests that I took and all the oral exams that I would take, you know, I did great. But as far as reading and writing, I did very poorly. I had a learning disability. He ended up putting me, it they ended up putting me into a couple different schools for kids with learning disabilities and you know i still just didn't do very well uh eventually i i ended graduating high school and i went to college i what did i tried to get a business degree i started with a business degree but i remember i failed like accounting no i didn't fail it i almost failed accounting two i got like a c in accounting two and i almost failed to be honest i really did fail it i really

got like a 68 or a 69 and the teacher said let's round up so i don't have to see you next semester and i was like let's do that and so he rounded up to like 70 and was like it was like one of the only sees i ever got so i switched my i remember thinking well i'll never be able to look past like microeconomics and macroeconomics and all these other courses that you had to take to get a business degree was just like that was just never going to happen uh and what i did was i switched to art and i ended up getting a degree in art because I've always been very artistic. I graduated, remember, so I graduated high school. Well, I'm sorry, but when I graduated college,

graduated college in like 95, and I was dating a chick that was working as a stripper. She actually, we actually lived together for several years. So we'd been living together a few years. Her name was Chrissy. And so I graduated. I first I went and worked for a company that was, a couple different companies that were insurance companies as an insurance adjuster.

So ultimately I thought I was going to be an insurance agent, which I wasn't. I never did. That never happened. I kept taking the aptitude test for these companies to be an agent, and they kept, you know, the aptitude test was like, well, look, he's just not a good fit for being a salesperson. So I ended up being an insurance adjuster, and I did that for like a year or so, and then eventually I got laid off, and then I started working construction. I could barely pay my bills.

and but my girlfriend at the time was working for a company called eagle lending and eagle lending did subprime loans you know that you have conventional loans this is basically when you walk in the bank of america and they give you a regular type loan where the the the fed sets the standard and so those are those are conventional or they're basically they're called conventional uh loans and so then you have subprime loans so subprime loans are where the bank itself comes up with their own underwriting guidelines and it's not backed by the Fed and this company did they did a subprime loans and she was actually doing okay at it she wasn't doing great but she had just started with the company and she had met the owner of the company which is a guy named Kelly Aaron she'd actually met him at the strip club believe it or not because I know I know what you're thinking, Connor, you're thinking, I know that you meet a stripper at a strip club and you think, hey, this is the kind of girl that needs to be working as a mortgage broker

for my company. Well, believe it or not, that's really probably not true. So, but he met her there and she was getting, she was in college and she was getting her degree in finance. So Kelly ended up hiring Chrissy to work for his company, Eagle Lending. And then when, you know, she came home and you know after working there for a while she came home and she was like look you you got to work you got to work here you got to come work at this place so christie was working for for eagle lending and so she she comes home after working there for whatever a few weeks and she says listen you've got to do this you have to quit this job you're working construction you have got to come work at eagle you got to be a mortgage worker you'd be great at it you were made for this and i remember thinking like i i i was going to be able to keep up with paperwork. I was like, look, I can't do the paperwork. I don't know. The learning disability, I barely read and write. And she said, no, no. She said, the processors, the processors do all the paperwork. All you have to do is take an application. It's not that hard. And she said, and you're going to be, you'd be great at structuring deals. You're creative, you're smart. You could do

this. And you're personal. You know, you can do this. And so I went, I met with Kelly. And Kelly said, yeah, definitely, I'll hire you. He talked to me for a little bit. And, and he they flew me up to they flew me up to north carolina for like a week and they put me through a training course and i came back down and within a couple weeks i i was closing i was going to close my first loan my first loan i had i had run some ads i'd taken i called some real estate agents i was putting out signs i got this this uh a girl that wanted to buy a house i had a real estate agent we found her a house i got her the loan i i'd put her the loan i'd put put together a loan package and I remember I went into my manager's office and her name was

her name was Gretchen Zayas. So I walked into Gretchen's office and I gave her the package and she had to look at the package, right? Like you need W-2s, pay stubs, you need cancel checks or you needed a verification of rent, you need a verification of deposit, like you needed all these things in the package before you could send it up to underwriting so they could look at it and determine if they're going to lend her your customer the month the loan so I get there and I give the package to to Gretchen and she opens it up this is my manager and she starts looking through the pages let's the one page and another one and as she was looking she's like that's good that's good she took one page out and she put it to the side and then she kept looking and then she was

it looks perfect and I was like I looked at the one I said what about this she was well this is your verification of rent I went right right and she said you never looked at it did you and I went well I mean no the processor sent it off the management company mailed it back says she's been she was at her last place two or three years she paid her rent she's like she did pay her rent but she has a 30 day late payment so my customer had been 30 days late on one of her rent payments and although she had caught it up and it was only it was six or eight months ago, Gretchen said, because of that, she can't get the loan. And I was like, oh, my God.

And I remember, too, listen, I'd been working there. So I'd already, I hadn't really worked in three weeks. Like, I'd been working, but they're not paying you. You don't get paid unless you close something. So I'd gone almost three weeks to a month without getting paid for anything. And by the time this loan, if it did close, I was going to be a month. It would have been a month since I'd been paid. So I'm behind on everything

Like I banked everything on doing well at this company I was behind on my mortgage payment I was behind on How old was I was like 28? So I was behind on everything On my mortgage payment I was behind on my car payment I'm behind my credit cards

I got credit cards getting canceled I mean things are bad Because I was thinking I am going to do great at this I love the idea of it And I could tell I was good at it I knew I was going to excel at it Well I looked at the I looked at the verification rent and I was like oh man I remember just thinking this is horrible

like I'm gonna I'm gonna lose everything and I said what do I do and Greshian goes she pulled out a bottle of white out and she started clicking it like that and I remember the old bottles like that was before they had the tape ones they had the bottle and I was like and she she gave it to me she goes if I was you I would white out the 30 day late make a copy of it stick it back in the file send it to underwriting and the loan's going to close. I went, whoa, whoa, whoa, I said, that's bank fraud, isn't it? And she went, well, yeah, but listen, the worst that's going to happen. And I remember saying, I can go to jail.

Like, I'd never broken the law at that point. I'd never, I'd gotten a couple of tickets. Like, I'd never have been in trouble before. Breaking the law to me at that point in my life, it was something I had never even considered. So I was like, I could go to jail for that. she says oh listen the worst that happens is under if underwriting catches it then they'll deny the loan maybe if they think you're involved and you whited it out or you knew it was in there they might fire you but that's the worst that's going to happen and she was like if i was you i'd do it so

i i went made a copy of the i whited it out made a copy of the verification of rent stuck it the copy the altered copy in the in the file and mailed it to underwriting four or five days later I get an approval you've been approved to close a couple days later we closed so within a week I'm at closing got a check for like 3,500 bucks and I was like this is amazing I just got 3,500 bucks 3,500 bucks 20 years ago was it a nice that was like a month's salary well I was working on multiple loans within a couple of days I close another loan within a few days later somebody else had a problem where they almost qualified for the loan but they didn't

So the guy made like $42,000 on his W-2 said he made $42,000. But if the W-2 had said he made $47,000, I could get him alone. So I cut and pasted, turn the 5 into a 7, altered all of the corresponding deductions on the W-2, put it in the file, sent it to underwriting. They didn't catch it. Next thing, and you have to think there's 30 pages, different types of documents in these things. They're calling on as many as possible, what are the chances that they're going to call on the W-2 and that they were going to say, how much did he make exactly last year? Typically what they're doing, they're just looking at what's called the verification of employment for the actual numbers,

and they're calling the employer just to say, does he work there? Has he worked there for three years or two years or whatever was on the verification of employment? They say, yes, well, he's worked here for four years. Okay, perfect. Did you fill this out? Yes, we did. Thank you. And that's it.

But then they'd look at the W-2s for the actual numbers. And the W-2 had been altered. So that went right through. Loan closed. Boom. $3,500. Next loan. That one closes.

I closed four loans my first month. By the next month, I closed six loans. The next month I closed eight, which was more than the manager was closing. By the next month, it was $10. Then it was $12. I think the most I ever closed was $12 loans in a month. Then Kelly ended up making me the manager from the Tampa office. He made me the manager of the Brandon office.

You know, I never mentioned this in the book that I wrote, but what actually happened was by this point, Kelly was sleeping with a girl that I was dating, the girl that got me that I was living with at the time. So by this point, Kelly was now coming down and sleeping with Chrissy on a regular basis. And I had no idea. He made me the manager of the Brandon office.

He made her the manager of the Sarasota office, and he bought her a house in Sarasota. So she, but he was basically, the whole thing was like, hey, I'm gonna, I've got a, I've got a rental property down there. But in reality, he bought her a house. Bought her a house, put her down there, so she and I couldn't live together anymore. Because it was too long of a,

it was too much of a commute to do every day. It's like an hour and 45 minutes to two hours. So for a two-hour drive every day to see each other. So she and I were still seeing each other. We'd meet in the scent in the middle once or twice a week. But eventually I figured out what was going on and we broke up, which was not traumatic for her because she liked Kelly. And by that point, I think Kelly's wife figured it out.

She had had a private investigator follow him around. And so within a month or so of me breaking up with her, Kelly's wife kicked him out of the house. He had three boys. So he ends up losing the wife, the three kids, moves in with Chrissy, divorces the wife, they get married, they end up having a kid, and they're still married to this day. So it's really a romantic story from her perspective. From my perspective, they're scumbags.

But whatever. I mean, I don't. It's promiscuous. All right. Well, what ends up happening is at some point, the Department of Banking Finance and the FBI closed down Eagle lending. I think it was for fraud, which I don't think had anything to do with me. They end up closing that whole, that company down, like literally guys are showing up to the office one day and the doors were chained. And what had happened with them, the biggest problem was that they had lost a credit line.

They had several credit lines from banks and these banks and lenders had. had closed down the credit line because of fraud and because loans weren't performing. So they closed them down. Department of Banking and Finance came in. They eventually shut them down. By that point, I had moved to another office, another lender, well, actually another mortgage broker. And I very quickly, it was only there like a month or two. And then I started my own company.

And my company was called Consortium Financial Services. And I hired about a dozen guys to work there, brokers. know like half feet was actually half and half about half women half men and you know and listen when we were committing fraud right away right away we're all committing fraud it was and it was it was it was so overwhelmingly blatant the fraud that i was it wasn't blatantly obvious it was just so it was it wasn't like a w2 or a pace up they weren't they weren't slight alterations anymore By this point, I was doing things like, by this point, like, I was, like, making my own banks. So I was making online banks where you could go online and it looked like a bank.

Or, and I had multiple cell phones. I remember you would walk in my office and I had like a bank, or, like, six or seven, I had like a whole row of cell phones. So I've got cell phone, I got like six cell phones with little tags on them, on who they were for and what company they were for. I was opening up different corporations so that I could verify people's employment I would list like the corporation in the business directory one of the things we would do

one of the things I would do is I would make you know I would make fake bank statements and so I'd make obviously I'd make the fake online banks and I'd make fake corresponding bank statements I would also make bank statements for other you know let's say if I had a a borrower that was with Bank of America

but they didn't have their down payment in the bank for 90 days, which you'd need to have it 60 to 90 days. What I would do is I had blank card stock for Bank of America in color, trim down the whole thing. So I could print, I could take your bank statements, and I could retype your bank statements and put down that you did have enough money to close. So let's say a lot of times, like you're going to buy a house,

and maybe the seller was going to give you your down payment because you didn't have your down payment. So the seller is going to give the down payment. And this makes sense if you're buying, let's say, for the sake of argument, a $200,000 house and you need to put down $10,000. You don't have $10,000. The seller only wants $190,000. He's willing to bring your $10,000 to closing because he just wants to get $190. And you don't have your down payment. So he'll bring it because he's just going to get the money right back. Well, you're supposed to have that money in the bank. So if you had a bank count with Bank of America and you had some money in the bank,

we'd have them either deposit the money in the bank or we'd show the money being in the bank for the past three months using fake bank statements and we'd send those bank statements to the underwriter. The underwriter would look at it and they would say, okay, looks like he does have the money in the bank. And then when you go to closing,

the seller would then just take $10,000 and deposit it in the escrow company or the title company in escrow. And then the loan would close. He'd get his money right back and the loan goes through. So we would do stuff like that or we would say it was in your currently in your bank that you don't even have a bank account. I would say it was in the Bank of Ebor and I'd have bank statements.

And if you called the Bank of Ebor, we had someone that would answer the phone with the Bank of Ebor and would verify that you have the funds in the account. So that was some of the stuff I was doing. I had canceled checks. I'll give you an example. Let's say you've been laid on your rent a bunch of times. Well, you don't have to give them a verificate, you don't have to give the lender a verification of mortgage or rent.

You don't have to give the lender a verification of mortgage or rent if you can prove you've made your payments every single month via canceled check. Cancel check is a check that's gone through your bank and they've got all the routing numbers and all the cancellation and everything on the check. So I actually dummied up canceled checks from like SunTrust Bank, from Wachovia from Bank of America from all kinds of different banks I would dummy up what appeared to be canceled checks that had gone through for $1,200, $900 every single month for 24 months and all you had to do all my borrowers had to do was put their customer's name

at the top upper left hand corner and their address on each check so they would make a little label and they would glue it on there and then they'd fill out the checks and then they'd sign their customer's name or have their customer sign them and then they'd make copies of them and then they would send them to underwriting and underwriting would think oh look this is 24 months worth of canceled checks that I can see have gone through the bank for $1,200 on you know January February, February, February, March, April, May, you know, $1,200, $1,200, and you could see them they look, cancel front and back, perfect. So that's what we're, those are the kinds of things we were doing it was just it was just blatant i mean we're making everything the the um the appraisals for the properties

were all jacked up i mean we're altering appraisals well i'm doing all kinds of stuff like i'm doing anything to get these loans to go through and the loans are going through and the reason i would obviously do this is because if you went if one of some customer came in he'd already been to a few different uh brokers or he'd gone to his bank they turned him down he went to a credit union they turned them down. Went to another broker. They turned him down. Then he would eventually get to me and I'd say, yeah, I can do the loan, but the broker fee is $4,500 and your interest rate is whatever, 8%. Because what a lot of people don't realize is, let's say your interest rate is going to be 5%. I mean, I know interest rates are ridiculously low now, but back then they were like 7 or 8%. So let's say your interest rate is going to be 5%. What a lot of people don't realize is at that time, If you came in and your interest rate should have been 5%, but I told you your interest rate was 6%. And you said, okay, I'm cool with that.

If I told, for every 50 basis points, really it was, to be honest, it was like 35 basis points. So each interest rate is made up of 100 basis points. So if I told you your interest rate was 5, it's supposed to be 5%, but if I said it was 5.35, that means that I get one point on the back of the loan. So if the loan's $100,000 and I tell you your interest rate is 5.35 and you say, okay, no problem, I get $1,000 back because your loan is $100,000.

It's $200,000 I would get $2,000 back. I get $2,000 or one point. One point on a $200,000 a loan is $2,000. So you would come in, guys, people would come in. I'd say, yeah, your interest rate is 6%. They would say, 6%, man, should be 5%. everybody else is doing five but yeah but everybody else turns you down i can do it at six percent so i'm charging you forty five hundred dollars as a broker fee and i'm charging you three points

so it's five not not five if i at five let's say you're borrowing a hundred thousand it would be if you're borrowing a hundred thousand dollar alone and i tell you your interest is five percent i get nothing on the back if i tell you it's five point three five i get one point if i tell you it's 5.7, it's 2. I'll tell you it's 6.05, which is 3 points, I get 3 points on the back of your loan, which means I get an extra 3 grand. So I'm charging you 4,500

up front plus 3 points on the back of the loan. Your interest rate is higher. But you have nowhere you can go. I'm able to get the loan through because I'm creating canceled checks. I'm saying you have your money in the bank. I'm altering your W-2s and pay stubs so I'm doing everything I can to get these loans through and we would get caught all

the time listen we got caught one time where I had done owner occupancy fraud for this this person there was a woman a guy I knew a sheriff's deputy actually he comes up again so there's a sheriff's deputy no wait this was a real estate agent we'd done so if if let's say I'm going to buy let's say want to buy an investment property if I want to buy an investment property say I want to buy a duplex and I want to buy it duplex the bank wants me to put down 20% so if it's a hundred thousand dollar duplex they want me to put down 20 grand well if I say I'm owner occupying that duplex which means I'm gonna I'm gonna tell the bank I live in the duplex I'm gonna move in there then the bank says okay well we'll lend you

95% so you only have to put down 5,000 as opposed to 20 We had a real estate agent one time. She bought, I want to say she bought six or eight owner-occupied duplexes. Actually, I want to say it was six. The new BMO ViPorter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks, more points, more flights, more of all the things you want in a travel rewards card, and then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMOViPorter. Mastercard and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months.

Terms and conditions apply. Visit bemo.com slash V-I. Porter to learn more. Six owner-occupied duplexes where she said I'm living in each one of these duplexes. So obviously I couldn't send all those to the same lender because the same lender would say, well, there's no way you're occupying six duplexes. What I did instead was, well, I didn't do this. my one of the brokers that worked for me her name is susan barka did this she closed one duplice or one of the owner-occupied duplexes with let's say bank of america another one she closed with

let's say household bank another one she closed with so she closed them with all different banks and this woman showed up at six different closings like the same day at six different title companies and signed saying she's owner-occupying each one of these duplexes and she was a real estate broker. So she's a real estate agent and a real estate broker. She had, this is like, so this is somebody who clearly knew this was fraud. We close, and let's say about two months later, I remember getting, I remember Susan came in my office and she said, listen, I've got a lawyer on the phone from, I want to say it was Washington Mutual or, is it Washington Mutual? no it was union planners she said i have a i have a lawyer on the phone from union planners

and he said he has two two duplexes that are both owner-occupied by the same borrower and we did both loans i went what so what had happened was one of the one of the loans we had closed let's say at oak street mortgage oak street mortgage ended up selling that loan that they had a credit line that was connected to that was all given to them by union planners so union planners ended up with that loan so union planners ended up with two of the same owner occupied properties and so this lawyer's calling up saying look you've committed fraud you guys did two owner occupied prop duplexes at that two owner occupied duplexes with the same borrower using the same information at two different title companies you clearly knew what you were doing i remember he's telling

started talking about commit he's going to call the FBI he's going to have me arrested he's going to do I ended up convincing that guy to let us refinance both of those properties and pay he also took a short pay so he took less money they took union planners took less money than we even owed them and they paid us a broker fee so I convinced him to pay us a broker fee and take less money they they took a hit of like $30,000 just to get rid of these loans you know because they don't want here's the thing like he started saying I'm going to call the FBI this and I was like whoa whoa you don't want the FBI showing up the FBI is going to go through your files for all the FBI knows you guys did anything something wrong for all you know the broker that did this at my

company was working with someone on the inside of your company you don't have any idea that the can of worms you're about to open up like be reasonable here and And the guy was like, I said, look, how about this? Let me just refinance him. He was like, I was hoping you would say that. And so I convinced him, I'm like, yeah, the problem is I can't refinance it and pay off the balance. I said, I'd need to short pay. And he goes, well, how much would I have to reduce it?

I mean, he immediately he's ready to start reducing them. He reduced it. And I was like, the problem is there's closing costs. He didn't realize when I start talking about there's three or four thousand of closing. There's like $4,000 in closing costs on both of these loans. He was like, well, that's fine. We'll pay the closing costs. the funny thing is he didn't realize that that those closing costs a portion of those closing costs included a broker fee so we got paid a broker fee again anyway uh that loan we got caught then um god i get caught got caught all the time got caught one time um one of my mortgage brokers i got a phone call from a bank in chicago called um it was called uh gosh what was it called pinnacle pinnacle bank court and i got a phone call

from them from the owner of the bank and what had happened was one of my mortgage brokers guy named Eddie Le Fuente God he was a problem he was always getting caught jammed up and he wasn't even good for but maybe three or four loans a month anyway so he he had basically taken the same canceled checks and submitted those canceled checks with all of his loans so every one of his borrowers had the same Bank of America checks, $1,200, Bank of America. He, like, he didn't even order, try and order verify these people. He's just using all fake documents. Send it to this company.

It just so happened that the same underwriter got two of his files like two days in a row and noticed, hey, these canceled checks look familiar. She then opened up the file he had sent her the day before and they were identical, except for the signatures and the, you know, they were filled out. a little bit differently. The names of the borrowers were different, but the numbers, the routing numbers, the cancellation numbers, everything was identical. I mean, that's, you know, that's, obviously that's a problem. And they then turned around, they pulled all of La Fuente's files and realized that they had like a million dollars worth of bad loans from this guy. And then they

kept pulling files and they had sold another million dollars to household bank. So, I get a call from this guy, Gary, who owned the Pinnacle Bank, and he's like, look, we got $2 million in bad loans. We just sold a million dollars in bad loans that you guys have provided us. Now, keep in mind, a bad loan just means that it's got fraud, and it doesn't mean that they're not performing. People are paying. They're just not, they have fraud involved in them.

You know, there's some fraudulent documents, and those are just the documents that he could see. I mean, who knows what other documents were in there. I remember he said, Matt, listen. and uh you know we got an issue you got you know one of your brokers did this and i remember i go a rogue broker he goes because you and gary goes because you wouldn't know anything about this i said i have no idea what this guy did and i said i'm just finding out about this and he explained the situation and i said look gary i said if you're thinking at the end of this phone call that i'm

going to cut you a check for a million or two million dollars i said i'm going to tell you right now i don't have the money i can't do it and he said oh i get that i get that he goes look i just want you to give me your word that if any of these loans come back on us, because lenders have what's called a, they have what's called a clawback clause, which means if fraud is found in a loan that they provided, then they have to buy that loan back. Well, he said, if we get hit with a clawback, on the clawback clause, you'll agree to help us get rid of the house or refinanced it or whatever. Now, the likelihood that that's going to happen is, is It's just, it's highly unlikely that once these loans have gone from my brokerage business to the lender and from the lender to another lender like household bank, and that six months later they're going to get caught and they're going to notice the fraud, it's highly unlikely.

So, you know, I was like, yeah, absolutely, no problem. I mean, what am I going to say? It's that or he says, okay, I'm going to call the FBI. Now, he didn't want to call the FBI anyway, because the FBI is going to come in and do an internal investigation. They're going to find at least a couple million in bad loans. that have been sold and then Gary's on the hook to buy all these loans back and it would been bad so he says look yeah I said yeah I'll I'll help you get rid of the loans if they come back on your the properties or whatever and he says absolutely said man I appreciate that

no problem he said I don't worry about it I'll take care of it so he ends up selling the selling another million dollars to households that's two million he knows of and then I remember a week later he came down and took me and several of the guys out to to dinner for lunch I forget which, I think it was dinner. And he actually got a little drunk. And I remember he told me, listen, man, he said, Matt, to be honest, he said, I don't care if, I don't care if all of these, I don't care how much fraud is in these loans. As long as I can get rid of them and they don't come back on me, he was, I could care less. And so, I mean, that, that, like, that kind of, I think that lets people know, like, that was the environment.

that was like fraud was not everybody was committing fraud but it was it was extremely prevalent and it was forgivable especially the more fraud I was caught with if the lender caught me and I had a bunch of fraud with them I had a better chance of convincing them to let me fix it if if they were and especially if they were so if they were going to lose a hundred or two hundred thousand dollars they were definitely willing to bend over backwards to let me fix this problem and that was the environment that i was working in so uh you know so i i was committing fraud i own my own mortgage company at this point i had about a dozen brokers uh by by this point this was i would say this is 2000 well i would say i was 30 what was this 2000 2001 i was 30 31 years old something like that

30, 31, and, you know, committing fraud on a regular basis and making good money. And I was also flipping properties at this point. At this point, I started buying properties real cheap in an area of Tampa just out, well, an area of Tampa called Ibor City. And I was buying properties for 40,000, 50,000, putting whatever, 20,000 in them and selling them for 100,000, you know, make a profit of like 20 grand, 30 grand. depending on the house. Well, I was also buying properties and renovating them.

So I would buy them, renovate them, and some of them I would sell. I mean, sorry, some I would sell, some I would keep. I was also buying rental properties, and I would renovate those. By this point, I was married to a girl named Kayla, and we'd had a son named Cass, and what I'd done was, I bought about 50, we bought about 55 rental units over the course of a year. And what Kayla did was she managed those properties.

That was her job. She raised our son and she managed the properties. She was a stay-at-home mom or property slash property manager. But you have to understand she didn't have a job. So one of the things I would do is, you know, obviously she would buy a property. We'd renovate it. She'd rent out the units. And another one of the things I would do,

sometimes is sometimes I would go in and I would buy a property in my name and I would renovate the property get an appraisal and then sell the property to Kayla well you know Kayla never took my last name so it wasn't Kayla Cox it was it was her maiden name and so I could sell properties to her because the lender didn't know we were married because that's not if you sell a husband and wife can't sell properties between one another it's not an arm's length transaction so that's an issue for lender the other thing is the reason I would buy the properties and sell them to her instead of just buying her buying them and refinancing them was something called seasoning seasoning says that like

you can buy a property for $50,000 let's say then you go and you put whatever 40,000 in it and now the property is worth 150,000 where you can't use the value of that property to refinance it you can only use the sale price of that property for the first year so after a year you can say hey it's worth i bought it for 50 renovated it and after a year you can get an appraisal for 150 and refinance based on the value of that of the appraisal but for the first year you have to go

based on the cost of the purchase of the property and the renovations so instead of getting an appraisal for 150,000 i can only go off of the 50,000 i bought it for plus the 30,000 that's not enough to refinance it get my money back and pull out any money if i wanted to pull out money So what I did to get around that was I bought the properties in my name, renovated the properties, sold them to Kayla because Kayla isn't subject to seasoning,

because she's a new buyer. So I would do that. And then, of course, all of her documents were fraudulent. So her W-2s and pay-subs were all fraudulent. Everything about the file was fraudulent. She was real. She had perfect credit. But the entire kind of transaction was fraudulent.

well I had been so I'm running my mortgage company and not all of the loans going through were fraud I mean we were an FHA approved lender a VA approved lender we did conventional and we did subprime loans but most of the subprime loans almost all the subprime loans were fraud and some of the some of the FHA and some of the conventional so I would say 60 to 80% of the loans going through that company were fraudulent well one of the things that happened was I bought some properties and I had sold them to Kayla. I think it was three properties. And at some point, somebody, some of the couple of the brokers that used to work for me, one being my ex, my old mortgage, my old manager, remember the manager that I had first committed

fraud, showed me how to commit fraud. She had come to work for me and then she opened up her own mortgage company, name was Gretchen, and her husband was Pete, so it was Gretchen and Pete Zayas. So they had come to work for me, and then they went and started their own company. Well, what I was doing was because I was buying these properties and renovating them, I didn't want to close the loan through my own company, because once again, that's also not a non-arms-length transaction. So I could buy the properties. I could sell them to my wife at the time in her made in name, but I couldn't close those loans in my company's name. So I had those loans and I ran those closings through Gretchen Zaya's company. Well, at some point, I'd done like

three loans through Gretchen, her company. At some point, Gretchen and Pete got in trouble because they were doing what's called a straw man scam. They'd met a bunch of guys that were buying houses and selling them to each other so they'd find a house for let's say five hundred thousand dollars and then they'd get it appraised at like 700,000 which in that range isn't that difficult to do so the new buyer would qualify for a seven so one guy has it for 500,000 he buys it he sells it for 700,000 to some borrower that borrower qualifies for 700,000 because Gretchen is committing fraud. She's creating a fraudulent, a fraudulent, whatever, W-2s, pay, subs,

whatever she's doing, she's getting this guy to qualify for a $700,000 loan that he's not really shouldn't qualify for. So when the guy who bought it for $500,000, sells it to the guy who's qualifying for a $700,000 loan, now there's a profit of $700,000. Well, Gretchen was getting a huge broker fee plus a kickback. and these guys are splitting whatever, let's say there's 150,000 left over. They're splitting 150,000.

They rent the property out, and they're supposed to rent it out and have someone rent it. What ended up happening was the one guy borrowed, he qualified for five or six loans. She did five or six loans for this one guy. He never makes a payment. Those loans go into foreclosure.

They're what's called first payment defaults, and as a result of that first payment default, the FBI comes in and they investigate. they realize they're all fraudulent transactions and they realize that Pete and Gretchen Zeyas are the ones who did the fraudulent transactions. They come into their office and they raid their office. They get all their files, including my ex-wife's file. That's what they told me anyway.

The truth is, so I could call up, or Gretchen and I get a phone call from Gretchen one day. I know she's in trouble. I had just refinanced her personal residence to get her the money to pay. pay her lawyer. And as soon as I got her that money, she gave it to her lawyer. The first thing her lawyer said was, who did this loan? And she said, well, this guy, Matt Cox, is he committing fraud? She said, yes. He said, my advice to you is to wear a wire on him, get him to talk about fraud, get him busted, and then you don't have to go to jail. So rat him out. So the guy that just refinanced your house to get you the money to pay me, I'm telling you to now turn him into the FBI.

nice right like that that's uh that's a good criminal lawyer um and so what she does is she puts on she wears a wire she calls me up and says look can i talk to you can we have lunch i want to talk to you about some you know about something so i go sure no problem so i drive out to this pizzeria and i meet her and pete and i say down i go hey what's up and she says listen the fbi is asking about you i go about me she was yeah well not so much about you she said about really about Kayla my wife and I went why what about Kayla she's well you know those three loans that you did through my company I went yeah she said they're asking about those loans they're saying that they know that Kayla you and Kayla are married and that or they think that you're married or whatever it was

they know the loans are fraudulent and I went are you serious I said what did you tell them she said well we haven't told them anything I said you didn't tell them that the that the W-2s and pay stubs are fake did you you haven't told them anything about the the loan like I immediately start saying things that bury me. You didn't tell them we were married, did you? You didn't tell them like, I mean, I'm just bury myself. And I remember in the middle of the conversation,

I remember saying, look, here's what you do. Tell them you never met Kayla, say she called you on the phone, she gave you the information on the phone. She faxed over all the information. So, I started coming up with this plausible way for them to deny

that they really knew anything about the fraud. and then I would have Kayla just not talk to the FBI and therefore the whole the whole investigation should fall apart you don't have anybody cooperating nobody met in person who knows who showed up with the closing like we don't really know like basically they could blame it Kayla could blame it on Gretchen and Pete Pete and Gretchen could blame it on on

Kayla who knows what the processors and underwriters did like there's too many people involved to to indict someone so that was my thought process I was wrong but that was my thought process so I started coming up with this plausible story to try and clear everybody or at least put enough confusion into the whole investigation that they don't pursue it and while I'm explaining this I remember Gretchen said Matt we can't lie to the FBI and I went what are you talking about I go you've been lying to him I said you just lied to them when you just went and signed

refinanced your house because their house loan was all fraudulent. Like W-2s were fraudulent the pay subs, everything. I go, you just lied to them. You just borrowed like $70,000 $1,000 to pay your lawyer. That whole loan was fraud. You've been lying. And so Pete stands up.

Like, bolts up. And he goes, we've never lied to the FBI. We may not have told them everything, but we never lied. And I looked at him, and I was like, what the fuck is he doing? Who are you telling that to? Like, I know that's not true. Why would you say all, like, why would you, what are you doing? Like, you're not telling me. You, you, you, me, and Gretchen, no, that's a lie. So I realized, oh, God, he's wired. And I was like, oh, my God. What's so funny

about that is that the FBI agent was actually sitting like right beside us, kind of behind, you know, kind of and I had at one point when we first sat down I go hey hey I go bro bro because the guy there was a guy the guy that was sitting there the FBI agent had ordered a piece a slice of pizza and he had folded the pizza up and the napkin was under the pizza was wrapped around the pizza and he was eating the pizza and the napkin and so I go hey hey hey hey hey hey hey bro bro and he he kind of like tried not to look over like he was like looking like they go whoa hey hey hey hey so finally he glances at me I go bro you're eating your napkin and he goes what and he looked and he was oh thanks and he kind of glanced at each other and I didn't smile like like a nervous

smile I didn't realize that was the FBI agent that was he's sitting there and they're recording it so anyway Pete stands up and goes we've never we haven't lied we haven't lied we haven't lied we haven't told them everything but we never lied and I was like oh man and I looked down I realized like both their cell phones are on the table they're both sitting there leaning in and I was like oh they were wired and I looked and I said wow I said I hope you get something for me I hope you get something for this and she looked at me and she was she starts crying her tears start rolling down her face and she said I don't have to go to jail Matt she goes I have a kid I have a kid and I go I don't have a kid like she babysat my kid like we've been on vacation

together like I go I don't have a kid I said listen I said Tell the FBI agent I'll talk to him But not to come in my office Because when the FBI raided her office Everybody quit I go so

Because they're all commit fraud So I said you tell him Not to come in my office Call me on the phone And I'll come down there and talk to him So I stand up and I leave I mean but look I drove back to my office Within 10 or 15 minutes

My phone my secretary goes Matt there's an agent Scott Gale On the phone for you FBI and I was like holy shit pick up the phone i'm like hey what's going on he's hey mr cox uh i'm sure you know what this is about i mean he didn't even pretend like he didn't even come up with a story he knew like it was like he didn't even pretend like oh i just happened to be investigating no no you know like i called because they told me to call he goes look uh you you know i know what this is about why don't you

uh when can you come down i said oh i'll come down on monday uh yeah i'll call you give me your phone number and i guess phone number everything well i immediately go out and i i i schedule a bunch of appointments with lawyers i end up with a lawyer by the name of Gary Trombly, super, a high-profile lawyer. I give him $75,000. And basically, I go in and I explain to him. I said, listen, man, I said, he was like, well, you know, based on potential loss, you could be looking at three years.

And I go, potential loss. He was like, yeah, you could have lost. And he starts adding up the numbers. And it doesn't even make sense. Like, it's all bullshit. Like, he's trying to scare me. And he did scare me. But what he was saying was, look, these properties are worth,

you know let's say 150,000 so that's a potential loss of 150,000 and he said because you know if they went bad then they'll end up losing 150,000 I said no I said that loss is offset by the property itself and the property is worth 150,000 she borrowed 150 it's worth 150 we have appraisals on it he's like that's not how it works and I had read the example of potential loss and I said that's exactly how it how it how it works and I read off the example And he's like, Matt, Matt, Matt, listen, Mr. Cox, that's just not how it works. Okay, trust me, there's a half a million dollar potential loss. You could do it up to three years, blah, blah, blah.

He was foolishly. He was just trying to justify his fee. Because what happened was a few months later when I come back, he says, well, I got them to drop the potential loss by offsetting the potential loss with the value of the home. And so the way it works is then he explained the same thing that I had told him I had read. It was like, bro, what are you doing? I guess exactly what the conversation we had before and only now he's making my argument the point is I pay him 75 grand

he I plead guilty I end up pleading guilty to I think it was wire fraud so I pled guilty to wire fraud now they wanted to charge my ex-wife or my sorry my wife at the time

Kayla and I told them that I would the conversation was initially the initial conversation was he said you should cooperate. He said you should go in your office. He goes, is there anybody else committing fraud? I said, they're all coming in fraud.

And he said, he goes, you should go in the office, grab 10 or 20 of the most egregious fraudulent files from your brokers, bring them to the FBI, work with the FBI to get those brokers busted, you know, it charged and indicted. And then he said, I might be able to get your charges dropped. You and your wife's charges dropped completely. Like it's called a, it's called pre-trial intervention. So if you work with them, they won't indict you. Because I hadn't been indicted yet, nor had my wife at the time.

And I said, no, bro, I said, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to indict. I'm not going to get these guys messed up. I'm not going to, I'm not going to get these people. I'm not going to rat out my friends. Like, like, I totally still believe that there was like a code. Like everybody, like, we were all. kind of like criminals

and we were going to look out for each other and I didn't realize how it worked that really everybody rolls over on everybody. You know, I believed you know, the godfather in O'Marta and you don't tell on your friends and you don't tell on the other criminals and it just doesn't exist.

So, but at the time I was an idiot and instead of, look, had it been now and what I know now, I would have walked in there with a dolly. I would have walked into our Friday meeting with a dolly and asked the guys to help me load up all of the file cabinets, load up the file cabinets, walk back into the

meeting and say, listen, I'm going to bring these to the FBI and I just suggest you guys all get lawyers and cooperate, because you're all going to be fucked up. And I would have left. But I was an idiot, and I didn't do that, and I let myself get indicted. And I actually said, look, I will plead guilty,

indict me, plead guilty if you drop the charges on my wife. She didn't know anything was going on. She didn't know. So the lawyer goes back to the U.S. attorney and explains that situation. He says, we believe that the wife knew everything. There's no way she didn't know this. But we think Cox was orchestrated the whole thing, and we get him wanting to plead guilty to take the charge for his wife.

There's no reason for him both to get in trouble. So we have no problem with that. And they said, of course, they did say there could be no indictments if I would cooperate, and of course he said, well, he's unwilling to cooperate. right. He says that he's not going to do that. They said, okay, fine. Well, because there was no potential loss and no actual loss, I ended up getting three years, I pled guilty to wire fraud and got three years probation. I had to forfeit my license as a mortgage broker. Well, I was also a brokerage business owner. So that meant that I could no longer run my brokerage business. Couldn't

be in my name. So I transferred the brokerage business into one of my brokers. he was a CPA he had you know that's not true he was a a tax attorney he had a tax he had a master's degree in tax he wasn't a CPA um he was a he had a master's degree in tax uh and so he uh he was a he was an accountant anyway he so i transfer the the the company into his name and he kept me on he paid me eight thousand dollars a month because i what my basic bills were and at the same time that all of that happened so when all of that happened all this is happening my wife and I get a divorce so we're in the middle of this whole thing we start the divorce proceedings and by the time I'm now a felon I've lost my business although I still

do have an income coming in she got all the properties I paid off all of her credit cards all of her debts all of her everything she had I paid her off I paid $2,000 a month for child support and she kept all of the properties and collected rent on those properties so she was making she was making over a hundred and something odd thousand dollars plus you get that she got all the depreciation of the properties so you've got a couple million dollars worth of properties that she's getting the depreciation on so she's paying almost no taxes and she's got a huge amount of money coming in and I'm living off of 8,000 a month and my bills are outrageous Anyway, I end up moving into this property in Ibor City.

I had completely renovated. Property I bought for like 80 grand. And, you know, but I don't, look, I know it sounds like $8,000 is a lot of money. All right. But the life I was living at that time, you know, I'm driving a brand new Audi. I think it was an Audi, Quadro TT. Those were like 50, 60 grand. And it was a lease.

It was like $1,000 a month up for the lease. You know, I've got my property. is I'm renovating a new property I'm buying rental properties I'm flipping properties I mean I was not I was I was doing okay I guess but I wasn't making the kind of money

I'd made when I was old when I owned the mortgage company and everything I'd basically made the mortgage company I'd just handed over to my ex-wife you know I was able to see my son every other weekend I got them like every Wednesday you know and that was nice

you know I had a girlfriend I was dating I dated. I was dating a bunch of different chicks. And that's really where this really went off the rails. Because now I, at this point, I know own the mortgage company anymore. I'm getting a salary from the mortgage company. And I'm able to help manage it by dealing with a lot of the paperwork and helping to train the brokers. But I now don't really have a full-time job. I mean, that's maybe 20 hours a week. And so what I decided was I was like, oh, I'm going to open a development company with this guy. guy named Rudy. He's a real estate agent. He's actually still a real estate agent here in Tampa. He didn't talk to me for some reason. I don't know. It's kind of a dickhead. So, especially for a guy who was committing just a ton of fraud. Now he doesn't want to talk to me because he's like, that was a horrible part of my turn. It was a horrible. It's funny. He says, that was a horrible thing that happened, that whole fraud thing. And then I got talked to by the FBI. And it was just a horrible part of my life. It's like, I'm the one that went to prison. Like,

you didn't get indicted. You're still a real estate agent. You didn't go to jail for 12 and a half years. Like nothing happened to you. You talked to the FBI and you were scared. So what a fucking jerk off that guy is. So what ended up happening was I met Rudy and Rudy and I and my other partner, his name was David and another guy named Jonathan. We all decided to open up a development company and build, start building brand new like luxury loss for like really nice duplexes in Ybor City. a shithole area of Tampa but it was going

through a lot of gentrification there was a lot of money being dumped into the area so we decided to do that but you know we don't really have the money to do it so I figured you know what I'm going to do I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to start flipping properties and committing fraud to raise the money to do this development company in my mind I was thinking I'll steal the money

and invested in a in a legitimate company and that's just a really foolish way to think but at the time because now all the money going into that company is tainted and as a result of that that company is completely a fraud is fraudulent and therefore able to be seized by the government if they could ever link that money to the fraudulent transactions so what I came up with I sat back and I thought you know what I'm going to do here's what I'm going to do I'm going to come up with a fraud that I can commit, that's a massive, massive fraud that I can commit that nobody actually knows a fraud has been committed.

And that fraud included what's called synthetic identity fraud. And it was bank fraud and mortgage fraud and real estate fraud and credit card fraud, all wrapped into one in really just a really amazing scheme that I came up with. And I hate to say that. And I know it sounds like I'm brash,

and everything else. But listen, I got, you know, I've got, I've got professional FBI Secret Service, professional white-collar criminal, white-collar experts. I got judges, lawyers, everybody, all of them were saying the same thing. It was a brilliant. It was a brilliant scam. And so basically barely getting by on the money that I was making. And I ended up with the, I had the kind of the train of thought that was,

I'm now already a criminal so I might as well start you know being a criminal acting more like a criminal like before I felt like I was doing a little bit I was doing fraud but it was it was fraud for customers to get them

into property so I could make large commissions and you know so this is 2002 so by now I'm it's like it's like mid 2002 and I

was early 2002 mid-20 whatever first part of let's say 2002 and what I did was I decided I was going to open up a development company with a bunch of some of my other some of the other guys that I knew some real estate agents and some business partners we were going to open up but we didn't we needed money to do it and nobody had enough a significant amount of money to open up a development company and we wanted to to build these new properties in Ibor City which is like an area of Tampa that was going through revitalization and what I decided to do was I need to come up with a scam that was what I considered to be semi-full-proof so that I could basically steal from the banks and they wouldn't realize they'd been defrauded. So what I did was I decided I was going to start

flipping properties to do that. I was going to buy properties cheap, fix them up, sell them. But the problem with that is that, you know, the problem with that is if you buy properties in a cheap, cheap property is in a cheap area and then you fix them up and you sell them, you know, the problem is those areas don't appraise very high. So I had to figure out how to get that property is to appraise high. And then the other problem is people to buy houses in crappy areas like that, they tend to have credit problems. You know, job, they have employment problems, they have rental history problems, they have credit problems, they have down payment problems, they're a major problem. Like they'll quit their job four days before the closing or they'll go out and spend

all the money for their down payment or something they just do stupid stuff so they're a problem and then they have bad credit that's a problem so i needed to get away a figure out a way around that and what i came up with was creating my own borrowers and having those fake borrowers but the by the way the other problem when you fix up a property the other problem is you spend a lot of money renovating it so i didn't want to spend blow money renovating the properties i want to you buy them for 50. I didn't want to put another 30 in it and then sell it for 120 or even if I could get it appraise high. Sell it for whatever that. Why would I blow 30 grand? Why wouldn't I put five grand in it? So what fixed all these was creating synthetic identities. So what I did was

I figured out how to create synthetic identities by using the social security numbers of kids that really hadn't been born yet so or hadn't been fake kids so you know you get social security I convinced social security to start issuing me social security numbers to children that didn't exist and this takes place over long initially it started where I just got social security numbers from kids that were like three or four years old like I went into my the file cabinets and found kids people that were claiming their children on their 1040s which I had copies of their 1040s so they'd be like they have three kids here's their socials and I'm I'm claiming them as dependents.

So I would go in and get those, like, oh, this kid's three, this kid's two, he's five. I'd get those numbers just to kind of play around. But ultimately what I ended up doing was going to Social Security and convincing Social Security to issue me Social Security numbers for children that had never been born. So I would say, hey, I've got a 10-month-old son, and I'd provide a fake birth certificate and a fake shot record. And I would get them to issue me a Social Security number to a child that doesn't. doesn't exist and then I would take that social security number and I would go and I'd apply online to a credit card company sorry to a whatever to a bank that issues credit cards whatever

I'd apply and that of course they would deny them so I'd go online they'd deny it but what it would do is when I plugged in I would give makes I'd say the kid was like 30 years old so this 30 year old kid here's a social this 30 year old kid here's a 30 year old man here's his social security number, here's his address, here's his job, and I would apply for a credit card. They would deny it, of course, but they denied it because they didn't know who the person was and he had no credit scores, but it would create a credit profile, and that credit profile would say that this person's name, John Doe, this is his date of birth, this is his social, this is his address, this is where he works. So now that's listed in the credit.

Bureau, I would then turn around and I would apply for credit cards with companies that also ordered secured credit cards. They would then say you're denied for the Bank of America platinum visa, but if you give us $300, we'll give you a secured credit card. So I would do that for this fictitious person, this synthetic identity, and they would send me a credit card. and I started making the payments on those credit cards after six months

of keeping the balances below 30% of the available balance on the card the credit bureaus would generate credit scores so after six months these people would have they would have they would have credit scores of like

705 720 690 you know 695 they were all right around 700 so my borrowers end up with 700 credit scores my fake borrowers have 700 credit scores at that time you only needed a 620 to get a loan so to get 95% financing or 80 or 90 whatever you want you to get a loan you own on a mortgage you only needed a 620 or higher my guys have 700 so what I did was I went into Ebor City and I started buying houses. So the way an appraisal works is this. Say I buy a house in an area for, let's say I want to buy a house for $60,000. And let's say if you're going to buy a house or refinance a house and you want to borrow money from the bank, the bank sends out an appraiser. And that appraiser goes out and he looks at your property. He then looks at the surrounding properties that have sold recently that are the same square footage, that are the same type of house.

Like if you have a two-story triplex, you can't compare it to a single-story, single-family home. I mean, it has to be a single family. It has to be apples to apples. So what happens is these houses in Ebor are selling for $75,000 if they're in good shape. So how do I buy houses for $50,000 that are in bad shape in Ebor? Clean them up a little bit and get them to appraise at $200,000.

You need comparable sales. Right? So the reason Ebor City at the time was all selling for $75,000 is because all the houses are selling. So there's no comparable sales for anything over $75,000. So I went in and I started buying houses for $50,000 in the name of fake borrowers, my synthetic identities. And we also called them phantom borrowers. So that's what the that's what the newspaper started calling them phantom borrowers. borrowers. So I would go in and I buy a house for 50,000 and I would then go downtown and I would

record the value of that home for 200,000. So I would say that this property that I bought for 50 had actually been bought for 200 or, you know, whatever, on average, 175, 210, 190. So now you've got one house in Ebor City worth 200,000. That's not enough to borrow again. because as soon as the appraiser comes out he's going to say this house is worth two you bought it for 200 but all the other comparable sales are worth 75 so what i did was i bought one house for 50 and record the value at 190 i bought another house for 50 000 and record the value at 210 i bought another house so i start buying houses and recording the value in the name of fake people and the borrowers were named They were names like, now there were some other borrower names. Like there was a guy named Alan Duncan. There was one named Joel Cologne. So what I very quickly started naming them after characters on Reservoir Dog.

So I, the movie Reservoir Dogs by Quentin Tarantino. So what happens is I was naming them like, one of the guys' names was James Red. One was named Lee Black. One's name like Michael White. One is named like David Silver. One was named William Blue. so one was named Brandon Green

so these and they all have credit cards they all have perfect credit profile so they all have 700 credit score plus once they bought the house recorded the value I would then clean it up you know I'm not putting in new pipes and new new electrical

we're just painting doing very basic painting trimming the trees cleaning the front yards painting the outside of the house and we're doing a horribly shitty cheap job but the appraising would come in and he would look at the property and he'd say well it's not a great property but it's okay and he'd say it's in a bad area but man there's comparable sales all over the place like that house down the street sold for 210 that one sold for 190 that one sold for 195 and I'd say

well and I'd say yeah I bought this property for 190 how much can you get it appraise for he'd say oh I can get it appraise for like 195 so this property that I bought for 50,000 and put 10,000 in to is now worth $195,000. So James Red can now refinance the property. He can get, let's say, a 90% of 195, so let's say that's 170. I don't know exact number. So take $60,000 out of that because I need the money I put up back, plus my renovations back. That means that after closing, you're making about $100,000.

Well, James Red borrowed about a million dollars in real estate or in mortgage. ages. James Red Bart a million, Brandon Green barred a million, David Silver Bart a million, Lee Black barred a million. So over the course of this starts going starts happening in early 2002 and we start and this is literally the first closing I had was a few like a month or so after I was sentenced to three years. So I mean I'm I'm literally sentenced to three years probation. I'm now a felon, and a month later, we did a house that was $150,000 or $160,000.

I borrowed like $110,000 in a guy named, I want to say it was Brandon Green. So we borrowed like $210,000. No, wait, it was $1.96. I think I borrowed $196,000. It's actually, it's in my book. I have the exact numbers, like in the book. I'm not going to look, find it.

So there's like 190, 195 right around that. Borrowed $195,000 in Brandon Green, like within a month of me being sentenced. And then immediately turned around and borrowed money in this and another guy's name and another guy's name. And so now I ended up doing like 109 houses in Ybor City. That's what the FBI said. I did.

They said I borrowed in excess of $11.5 million in mortgages. And once again, listen, got caught all the time I got caught one time by a bank what was the name of that bank South Star Bank they actually caught me red-handed like they called the broker

they called the account executive they called the broker the broker came into my office and said South Star Bank is calling they're saying that this is fraud I then call up the bank and talked to the owner of the bank, like the bank president and the head of their fraud department, which said he was ex-fbi. And they sat there and they're saying,

look, you know, this, you don't even exist. Like I'm saying, I remember it was Alan Duncan. I said I was Alan Duncan. And they're going, you don't even exist, Mr. Duncan. This is like, this whole loan is fraud. The reason what had happened was that we were supposed to obviously start making a few payments. we never made the first payment on this particular one I had given it I'd given money to

to everybody that was involved and Rudy was supposed to make the first payment and he never made the first payment he was just an idiot this is one of these guys who like just can barely feed himself like he's a real estate agent but he's just a constantly fucking he's a fuck-up so the very first payment

he'd never even made the first payment so then I call up and that sparked a whole investigation and so I have to call them up and I explain to them look let me just pay the money back and they were like, look, we're going to call the FBI and we'll get our money back when we sell the property. And I was like, no, no, that's not true.

And I had to explain to them that they thought they had lent like $150,000 on a piece of property that was worth $200,000. And once I explained to them that they'd lend $150,000 on a piece of property that was worth probably $30,000, maybe $50, that they were about to lose a minimum, a minimum they were going to lose was $100,000.

once I explained that to them they were like okay okay wait a second let's talk about this can you give us the money back so they let me send them the money back they still didn't call the FBI we just had an agreement we just agreed I'll send you the money back if you promise not to you know because you can mind if they call the FBI I get caught I got to pay them back

anyway so I was like let me just send the money back and they said you send the money back we'll consider this just a mistake and it was a problem and we won't we won't contact anybody we just want our money back so I sent them back to $150,000 loan was done I mean that you know it was a done deal but I got caught I mean I got caught several times and I always just paid them back and got away with it so what's funny about this whole thing is that what I would do with these the reason that most of the time I got away with it is this let's say I was Brandon Green

Brandon Green would borrow let's say roughly five or six loans he'd get five or six mortgages and he would let's end up borrowing like a million dollars we'd walk away with let's say 600,000 then we'd make a few payments and we'd let those loans go into foreclosure when those loans went into foreclosure the banks would foreclose on the property they then put the house back on the market and then they'd sell the house and they'd take the loss they would assume hey we lent 150,000 or 180,000 on this house we put them back on the market for 200,000. Three months later, it didn't sell. We'd lower it to

150. Three months later, it wouldn't sell. We'd lower it again to 100,000. By that point, somebody would make an offer for 60 or 70,000 and they'd sell it and they'd go, hey, we just lost almost $100,000. But that happens. And they didn't think anything was wrong. The other thing was

when they would start sending collection letters to the borrowers, I would then write a letter from my fictitious borrower's sister saying that and I would I would type up I would take an article from the newspaper like a 30 car pile up on I-75 or something and somebody was life-flighted to Tampa General Hospital and I would re-type the article and I would put my borrower's name in it

I'd print it out on on newsprint and then I'd cut it out and I'd make a copy of it And then I'd highlight the name of the borrower that I'd put in the article, and I'd send a letter with that newspaper clipping with the letter from the borrower's sister saying that her brother had been in a catastrophic accident and was lifelighted to Tampa General Hospital, and he was currently in a coma, and that the doctors said, look, even if he wakes up from the coma, he'll never work again, and that the lender should just go ahead and foreclose on the property. property. They would stop sending letters. I gave them a reasonable explanation as to why this person wasn't making the payment anymore. And they accepted it. They'd then put the house, they'd foreclose, put the house back on the market, sell the house, take the loss, move on. I would also run up the credit cards of these guys. So once I'd loaded them up with debt, I'd then apply for a bunch of credit cards, get up $30,000, $20,000 or $30,000 in credit cards. I'd then go to the mall, run up the credit cards. So each one of these guys was worth, they'd end up with like a million, million

and change in mortgages. There were a $600,000, $700,000 profit. And then the banks would, you know, they just cut their losses and move on. And it was a great scam. You know, I mean, I shouldn't say that. I probably shouldn't say that, but it was a great scam and it worked really well. Remember Rudy and I would go to the mall and run up their credit cards. And he would always be so nervous like I we'd go buy like a thousand $2,000 with a clothes or whatever we were borrowing computer I mean we were a whatever borrowing whatever we were buying we'd buy a couple thousand dollars we're buying we're buying Rolex watches and all kinds of just junk and we're buying stuff and we'd get up the counter and he would always get so

scared I'd pull out a credit card he was huh what are you doing what you know what am I doing I'm using credit card that's what we're here for oh you know we'd go what if they notice what if they call the police but how are they going to call the police it's my credit card like i am brandon green i'm brandon green i ordered the credit card they sent it to me i activated i've been using it why are who's going to call the cops there's no brandon green and he just was some people are just not they're not psychologically prepared to commit fraud and be under that high anxiety it wasn't even high anxiety because it was just no chance that they were even going to, even if they got a phone call. By that point, I was

making my own IDs. So by that point, I'd figured out how to make my own IDs. By that point, I'm making fake IDs, and I'm going into the bank, and I'm actually opening up bank accounts. All right. So there was just no chance that anybody was going to think that there was fraud that had been committed. What was I going to tell you? Oh, bank account, sorry, sorry, at this point bank out. So the bank, so I would go into, I was making fake IDs and I would go in and I would open up bank accounts. So I'm opening a bank accounts using, like I would give the ID to the person at the bank and they would run my ID. There's a computer or there's a program. I don't know if they still have it in where they would actually generate what your, what your Florida ID number

should be. So I had the Florida ID number on my fake IDs and I would go in and because these guys don't exist. They don't have an ID and I would actually be able to open up a bank account in the name of some fraudulent person. And what's so funny is that the fake IDs were not great. Like they would grab them. It's funny because I actually had like several, I've had people look at them like the FBI and stuff. They were looking and they go, they look, they look really good. But they didn't. I didn't think they looked. They looked good. But to me they weren't like, they didn't look great. I didn't think they look good enough to fool people so I'd give it to the bank the banquet sometimes they would actually take it and they would look at it like to see the hologram like I would freak out

I was let me like start sweating like oh my god and they'd sit it down and they they type in they start the process of opening the bank account and they would say have you ever had a bank account before because nothing's coming up and I'd say oh no I haven't had one in like gosh uh you know it was in my ex-wife's name or you know whatever it was and they would open up a bank account for me So, I mean, I had bank accounts. I had credit cards. I had everything I needed to launder the money. And I had a full proof scam.

The only time, you know, so there was, so one time this happened. This is funny. So what's funny about that is that I would, so I've got the appraisals are working, like the appraiser's working for me. I've got, I've got the whole thing set up where, where the appraisals are coming in solid. I've got my borrowers which are solid. Their credit solid.

Their employment solid. Like, everything's pretty solid. And the loans are going through, and then they're going into foreclosure. Nobody knows. This has been going on forever. Like at this point, I'm probably at $10 or $11 million. We brought in. I think by the end, the FBI ended up saying we did like $11.5 million.

This scam netted me. 11.5 million is what they said. Over 100 houses. of the course of 18 months so it seems like a lot of houses but so well one time this is funny one time and so many people knew what was going on

one time I I had a guy named James Red that I was doing this synthetic identity by the name of James Red James Red had borrowed like five or six now like four or five houses at this point barred eight nine hundred thousand dollars in mortgages and but what we were doing is once we put

together a full package we would run it through through my old mortgage company and we would close it at title companies where we knew we knew the people at the title company so i could show up at the title company and say hey listen my guy isn't going to be able to be here for the closing can I drive the package the closing package out to him at his work and get him to sign and the title people would let me do that so I pick it up and I'd go sit in my car and I'd sign all the documents and I'd make a copy of his fake ID and the the pictures that I was using on the IDs now some of them I could I would make a fake ID if I was going to go use his credit cards I'd put my picture on it but typically they were just pictures of people that I knew that had been

arrested. So it was kind of a joke. So like let's say it was some tenant that I knew that had lived in one of our places. So if it was some tenant I knew that had been arrested a few times, I'd go on the Hillsborough County arrest website and I'd pull his photo off and I'd use his photo on the ID. Well, one of the guy, so what was funny was and then I'd put that on there and then I'd close the loan and I'd keep using his picture. And then when the whole thing was going to go under and I was going to run up as credit cards I'd then switch the ID into my with my picture and I'd go in and run up as credit cards for 20 or 30 grand and you know I do everything like my this chick I was dating named Jan I remember I put like

a thousand dollars worth of new new tires on her truck or I would you know you're paying for anything like somebody's like hey bro I need new furniture can you put like five grand on a credit card sure no problem I mean we all have everything we want so it was a lot of fun so what ended up happening was at one point one of the title people figured out that one of the borrowers that was closing that I was closing loans with

at her title company was fake somebody had called her and told her hey something's not right like I think this is something's not right like these people don't exist I don't know what she knew or who told her I never figured that out but what happened was One day I got a phone call from a mortgage worker named Kelly Pruitt.

And Kelly said, hey, listen, you know, Mary at like Island Title, or I think it was Paradise Title. At Paradise Title, Mary is saying that next time James Red does a closing with her, he has to show up. And she's like, we have a closing like in a couple days. She's saying he has to show up. And she's like, she's got to know. and I was like I mean okay and she's like

I mean Matt what are we going to do I said well maybe he's got to show up he's got to show up normally Mary would just give me the package and let me have somebody and bring it to James Red but I was like look if she's saying he's got to show up he's got to show up and she's like how he's like a fake he's

he's some paperwork and a fake ID I said no it's okay I said I'm I'm going to figure it out so I actually call this guy named Eric Tomargo and Eric comes in the office and Eric, can you come in? And Eric used to clean all the yards for us. He would trim the trees, clean out the yards

of these dumps that we were buying and make the outside look presentable. He owned like a landscaping company. So he shows up and he walks in and I know Eric, I've known Eric for a while. I knew his ex-wife back then. Her name was Amy. She was an accounting executive

that used to come in for one of the lenders. and so that's how I knew him and they got divorced and he was kind of a derelict at the time and you know he's doing cleaning yards and stuff but he was also had a drug problem so he comes in

and I'm like he's like hey man what's going on bro everything cool I said yeah yeah everything's cool I said look Eric I gotta tell you something and I said can you sit down sure so he sits down I said look you know all these houses we've been buying and he goes yeah I said well let me tell you what we've been doing we've been buying them for like 50,000

recording the value this amount okay i said you know how an appraisal works and i explained it to him he's like oh okay then we we we have somebody buy those properties the people that are buying the properties and refinancing those properties are fake people and i explained to him about how i made the fake people and he was like holy shit bro i said right and then we we make a few payments and we let him go into foreclosure so we we load the guy up with a million dollars and then we just let me go into foreclosure he was like oh my god oh that is what happens when the banks the banks don't figure out here's why i explain that he's like man this is brilliant i said right i said the problem is eric usually

i am able to just sign for for these people okay i said well this one title company paradise title they're having an issue and they want this guy james red to show up okay okay and i said so i need somebody to go in there and sign for james red and i looked at him and he goes oh man who are you going to get to do that and i went well i was thinking you eric and he goes me i don't know he goes well wait a minute i can't do that and what do you mean he goes you said you're using some scumbags picture off the hillsborough county website you're you're using some guys some some guys mugshot they're going to know it's not me i well here's the thing eric i said for james red i used the photo of you when you were arrested for domestic violence when you slapped around

your ex-wife and got arrested. You know how that's online. So I used that picture. So you are James Redd. He goes, motherfucker. He stood up. He's like, you fucking piece of shit. I had a beat your ass. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I was like, oh, Eric, just calm down, calm. Listen. I go, the only reason I used your

name was because I knew if it came to this point and somebody had to show up and sign for James Red. You were the only person I knew that had the balls to pull it off. And he looked at me. I mean, listen, it was such a bad salesman job on my part. And he looked at me and he goes, she started shaking his head. He goes, yeah, yeah, you're right. You're right. And I

said, bro, I know you can do this. And, you know, you can make this work. And he goes, yeah, bro, it's a big favor. He goes, I'm not going to do it for nothing. I said, no, of course not, bro. Of course not. I mean, obviously, I'm going to pay you. And I remember thinking if he asked more than like five or ten grand, I would just get an ID in my name and go to another title company and do it myself. But I didn't want my picture associated with this whole thing. so he sat there and he kind of rocked his head back and forth like well how much Eric and he goes let me think about this and he kind of thought about it for a little bit and keep on I've told him the numbers that we're borrowing I've told him the numbers we're kind of making and he goes you guys

are making a lot of money bro I said well wait a minute Eric I go a lot of that money goes back in the property there's not a ton of profit here and he goes all right right right kind of think that I go how much Eric and he goes man I want five hundred dollars Right? $500. And I literally almost started laughing. I had to cut. I was like, I put my hand over my face and I was like, are you serious? 500?

I mean, it was everything I did or not to burst out laughing going, are you joking? And he goes, yeah, bro. It's a big favor, bro. And I said, no, it is, bro. I said, you got a sign before I give you that money. He's like, no, I get it. I get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Listen, I make a fake ID with his, with his picture. Like he's got a fake ID, but it was all. It was all just cut and paste. I actually had to make a fake ID. A couple days later, we go in to the title company. We walk in, and he, I remember Mary comes out, and she sees me sitting there. And she goes, Mr. Cox, I don't know why you're here. I specifically told Kelly, I'm not closing another one of these loans unless James Red shows up.

And so Eric stands up and he goes, I'm James Red. And she looks at him and she goes, hold on. a second, Mr. Red, and she goes and goes and grabs one of the last files we closed, which had a picture of his old driver's license. And she pulls the picture out, and sure enough, it's a picture of him. So she sits there for a minute, and she goes, you could tell in her head she was thinking, like, how did I get this wrong? Like, that's the guy. That's James Red. And she goes, She goes, okay, well, Mr. Red, come on in. So we go in, and he signs the paperwork.

She starts handing out checks. Like, here's 30,000 that goes to so-and-so. Here's 45 that goes here. Here's 10 that goes here. Here's five here. Here's 30,000. Like, she starts giving me all these checks. And I'm like, okay, thank, thank, because I'm supposed to distribute the checks.

And I go, okay, thanks, Mary. And we leave, Eric sees the checks. So we get in the car and I start giving him, count out $500. He's like, yeah, bro, you guys made a lot of money. And I go, whoa, whoa, I said, bro, you said $500. and on top of that, a lot of that money goes back into the scam. Yeah, yeah, you're right. You're right.

All right, that's cool. So I give him the money. Like a week later, I call him back. I got another closing. I said, Eric, I need you to do another closing for me. Yo, bro, he's like, I've been thinking about that. You made a lot of money, bro. I'm not doing it for no $500.

Nah, you made a ton of money, man. I don't do it for $500 this time. I said, no, I totally get it, Eric. How much? Let me know what the price is. I get it, $500, if you want more than $500, just let me know. And he goes, yeah, let me think about this. Let me think about this.

Yeah. Yeah, I said, how much, bro? How much? He goes, yeah. Man, I want $1,000. A thousand. I mean, he saw me walk away with like $70 or $80,000. He wants $1,000.

I was like, dang, well, you got to do it for, no, no, I'll do it first. I'll do it for sure enough we meet again he goes in he signs for a thousand dollars he I mean sorry he signs the whole thing he comes back gets in my car I give him a thousand dollars listen like a couple months later like I'm like a month month and a half later I only ever signed for one loan ever and that was also a James red loan I borrowed from SunTrust bank I borrowed 250,000 dollars from SunTrust bank walked in fake ID That's the only time I ever signed, ever showed up anywhere, ever signed anything was South Trust Bank.

Sorry, SunTrust Bank, $250,000. Other than that, Eric signed for James Ray. And nobody signed for anybody else. I signed for everybody. I mean, nobody ever showed up for a closing ever. Oh, my God, bro. I remember one time there was a girl named Kim. I went and picked up a package for Kim one time.

so I pick up the package I remember I walked to bring it to my borrower to sign I walked around the building got my car which was parked right next to the building right next to all these windows

I sat down I signed for the guy I listen to the radio I make a few phone calls I wait about 45 minutes in my car finally I get up and I put the picture of the guy's ID

on the front of the file I walked back in and I I remember I handed it to her and she goes that was Joel Cologne by the way the guy's name was Joel Cologne I hand her the file

she walks in the she goes I remember she picked it up she looked at it she flipped through it she looked at me and she goes I like the way you put picture of his ID right on the front and I went okay

and I remember thinking that was weird that's weird and I went okay well yeah and she goes yeah she said have I shown you my office, Matt? And I went, no. And she goes, come back, come take a look at my office. And so I walk in the back

and I walk over and walk in the back of her office. And the window to her office on the other side of the window in the parking lot is my car. And she said, I've sat here for the past 45 minutes watching you sign documents. She said, you listen to the radio a little bit. You made some calls. She said, but you did not drive to this guy's office.

And James, she was, and, and Joel Cologne did not sign these documents. And I was like, fuck. And she was, what's going on? I said, listen, listen. I said, Amy, the guy told me to sign for him. He's busy. I actually have a power of attorney for him. But the lender, sorry, the lender we were going through would not allow a power of attorney.

So I have to sign. Somebody has to sign for him. I can't. He's like, I forget what I said. He's two hours. away or he's out of the state or well forget what it was I said it's not a big deal she was well I can't let you I can give you the checks I mean I mean I can't I got to notarize this so I'm supposed to note I said look his signature is identical I said here's his original statement I start showing her pictures and she's like okay I agree you've got his signature now but I need to talk to him and I was like um hold on I'll call him right now so I call his phone number and it rings and it rings and rings and goes the voicemail he doesn't answer obviously um it you know it it goes sorry I'm sorry she called him that's wrong she called them and it rang and rang and rang went to voicemail and I know it went to voicemail obviously because his cell phone was

sitting in my car on the other side of the window and she called and left a message and called back and left a message and I go look what she said look if I don't talk to this guy I'm not letting you leave like I'm not not not not not notorizing these things I went shoot I go hold on and I grab her phone I go what's the number She gives me the number and I punch in my business partner's phone number, Dave Walker. And I answer the phone and I go, hey, Joel, this is Matt. And he goes, oh, Christ, what am I Joel here? And I said, yeah, I said, yes, sir.

And he goes, okay, all right, what's going on? I said, so listen, I'm at the title company. I go, Kim is here and, you know, she let me sign and everything and I told her about the power of attorney. But the problem is she wants to talk to you to make sure it's okay that I sign because she has to notarize it. she wants to make sure that you okay it and he goes oh christ he has put her on the phone so i go here here's jol and she grabs the phone and she's like hey mr cologne i just want to let you know i'm at kim's goldborough mr cox explained the situation but you know what you have to understand that i'm notarizing these and i need to make sure that everything's okay he's like yeah you know it's

fine i told him i actually signed a power of attorney but he said there's some issue with the bank and she's like no problem okay thank you so i can notarize your signature no no problem I'm like, still totally not right, by the way. She still shouldn't have done it. But she hung up the phone, notarized everything, gave me the fucking checks, and I left. I, bro. I mean, it's so ridiculous, the amount of, the amount. Listen, and this is like, I could go on, like, I could go on and on

and how many times I got caught and just got away with it. Okay, so I'm going to explain it again. So what I did was I figured out how to get social security to, well, I started with just random social security numbers. That didn't work out. Then I figured out that I needed a social security number that had never been used. And it was hard to figure out, well, whose social security numbers are active that haven't been used. And I actually had a client that had come in.

This is how I figured this out. I had a client that had come in and she was making whatever. She made like $40,000 a year. And I pulled her credit, and her credit was perfect. But then when she came in to provide all of her W-2s and paystubs and stuff, by the way, this had happened like a year or so earlier where I figured this out. She had come in and she said she provided me with her W-2s. And her W-2s, I noticed that the social security number on her W-2s were different than what she'd given me.

So we asked her to come in and obviously they were also different than the credit I'd pulled. So I asked her to come in and she sat out in my office. I was like, look, I noticed that the W2 has this Sosh, but you gave me this Sosh. And that's what I pulled it under, pulled the credit under, and it's perfect credit. But your W2 has a different Sosch. And I remember she got a little scared. She looked a little bit worried. And I was like, I said, listen, I promise you, I said, I'm not calling anybody.

You're not in trouble. I don't care what you've done. I just want to know how it works because you have perfect credit. So, and I want to make sure, I said, but I'm having a. a feeling if I pull this social security number on your W2, which is probably your true social security number, you'll probably have bad credit. And she looked at me and she was like, I do have bad credit. And I said, okay, so what happened? What are we doing here? I need to know before I send it to the lender so I can figure out if they can figure out what you've done, because I can't send these W2s.

I have to change the W2s. I have to figure out what's happening here. So she goes, okay, here's what happened she said I was married and I had been using my husband my husband and I had the you know she was using his his surname and she said they got divorced he stopped paying credit cards they got evicted she said so when I got evicted with him it showed up on my credit all of my credit cards were horrible so she had a friend that told her why don't you use your sons or daughters I forget which it was but her child who was like five years old why don't you use his social security number with your name and she went okay she said i'll uh well i don't know i'll try so she went and applied for for an apartment using her maiden name which she hadn't used in 10 years and her son's social

security number but everything else was normal oh and the new and another address because she'd been evicted so she's staying with a friend or something so because she had used a different data a different address a different name and a different soche even though the date of birth was the same and part of her name was the same like her first name was still like you know Karen or something it because of that it created a the credit bureaus created an entirely new profile for her it didn't attach any of those things to her old bad credit profile but yet she could still use her driver's license because she had a driver's license in her maiden name so she said i pulled she said when they pulled it they said i had no credit she said so i put down like double the security deposit and i moved right

into the apartment she said then i turned around and she said because we had her husband or she or whoever hadn't paid their rent their electric bill was bad and it was in collections so she went to the electric company got the electric turned on using the different SOC. So she got everything turned on using this new SOC and this new credit profile.

She said, so she then went, whatever, like a month or so later, she said she turned around and she went and she got a car loan or something. Did she get, no, she started getting credit card offers, pre-approved

credit card offers in the mail. because she'd moved into a new apartment complex and they had and she had gone to she'd gotten electric and all these other things turned on her name so she suddenly got a few credit cards so she said i applied for the credit card she said and they gave her like a secured credit card from like it was somebody first premier first premier used to give you a credit card like everybody if you had no credit you just had to pay a fee so she said i got a first premier credit card she said a couple months later i ended up getting a car loan using that so she said eventually she said i realized that i had perfect credit under that new Soche and her maiden name. So I was like, okay, so I just need to change the W-2 so that underwriting doesn't notice that the W-2s and your credit are in different social security numbers. And when they pull it, they should have the same, same, get the same thing I got. So that's what I did and her loan closed. But then, but by going through that process, I realized I can basically make synthetic people. Like I can make people that don't really exist.

So what I did was I figured out, I mean, eventually I grabbed a couple of just social security numbers. Like I went in the file cabinets and just grabbed some social security numbers from like two, three, four year old kids that I knew weren't using the socias. And I started pulling credit under different names. but just to see if it would work. And then eventually I was like, okay, so I figured out, guess what, if I use a fake name, fake date of birth, a real social security number,

and an address, it'll create a fake profile. Of course, it has no credit. It's just a profile, but at least it exists. Then what I realized I could do was I could then get a secured credit card, so I'd put up 300 bucks and I'd go get a credit card from like Bank of America. I'd get one from whatever, first premier bank, capital one so I'd get like three credit cards because the minimum that you had to have was three trade lines so it's very easy to create to get three credit cards using security so I'd give

them 500 bucks 200 bucks 300 bucks whatever and I get three different credit cards and I start making the payments and what I realized was well and then I started making the fake names so the fake names were typically not always because I had a guy named Joel Cologne I had a guy named Alan Duncan I had a guy named. I had a bunch of different ones. But I ended up making a bunch using the names from Reservoir Dogs, which was like, you know, Mr. Black, was basically like Lee Black, Michael White, David Silver,

that sort of thing. Like I just color-coded names, branding green, James Red. And what I would do is I get the credit cards. And after you, if you made the payments for like six months and you kept the balances below 30%, of the available balance. So if it's a $1,000 credit card,

you don't ever go above $200 or $300. Then after about six months, all of these guys started getting credit scores, like 700 credit scores. And I had already figured out how to make like a fake ID. I figured out how to make a fake ID by taking my real ID, and I just took sandpaper and I sanded off my basic information, like my name and data.

birth and address, and then I would print the name of whatever name I wanted in reverse on a piece of really ultra-thin transparency paper. I'd then take clear glue stick, and I'd glue it over my license in reverse. So the name was in reverse, but it was upside, but it was inverted. So when you looked at it through the plastic, it looked normal. And it was, you couldn't scratch it off because it was in between the filament, right, the transparency paper and the actual plastic. And it was glued on.

So then I just trim off the excess and sand it down slightly on the edges. And it was perfect. I had a perfect ID. You could see the hologram and everything. I mean, it wasn't perfect, I guess, if you really looked at it. Although I, you know, listen, I had cops look at it and stuff. They were like, looks good. I thought, you know, it was okay.

But everybody thought that was great. And listen, I opened dozens of banks using those different IDs, driver's licenses. My picture with the name, you know, James Red on it, gosh, the first time I opened, I remember the first time I went and opened up a bank account with that was terrifying. Like I walked in, I have to walk in. Who was it? Oh, it was Joel Colon. I had to open up. I had bought a house, renovated it, and was in the name Joel Colon and was refinancing.

it to pull out a bunch of money and I had to have a bank account because I had to have reserves in the bank. This is before I was actually making bank accounts or during that same period of time or they were going to call the bank, I think. Either way, I had to, you know, plus I have to launder the money. Like these are getting checks in the names of Joel Colon or Lee Black and you have to be able to deposit that, you know, you can only put so many in your, and I can only deposit so many in my bank account before it looks odd. So you start needing bank accounts in different guys' names. So I remember walking into a bank one time and giving them the ID and telling him my name was Joel Colon. And the chick, she looked at it and she typed the information in

and she went, huh, that's weird. And I was like, what's that? And she goes, have you ever had a bank account? And I went, no. I said, no, no, I haven't. And, you know, I'm a 32, 33 year, I'm like a 32 year old man, 33 years old at this time. I'm 33 years old. Never had a bank. I said, I told them, oh, my ex-wife had one. You know, I always used hers. Yeah, I haven't had one. Yeah, I haven't had one in my own name in like 10 years. Like, I have no idea.

But I did know that they run, everybody that goes to the banks, they ran them through either check systems or Accu-check. And so I didn't know what came up. But obviously it said there was no record of me ever having been pulled, no inquiry. So the woman gets up, takes the card, the ID, and goes, to the manager and she gives it to her and she takes it and she looks at it and I remember she held it up to the light and twisted it back and forth like and looked at each other and then they looked over at me and then she did it again and she handed her the license and walked back over sat down and started typing

and I go everything okay and I said everything okay and she was like uh she was yeah yeah she said it's fine I just needed approval because you've never had a bank count. And she just opened up the bank account. I gave her whatever, $1,000, $500, open up a bank account, walked out with some temporary checks and a little deposit thing, and I have a bank account now. So when I refinanced that house and I got a check for whatever it was, $60,000, I went and I deposited a check and I went right in the bank account.

Completely fake person. Okay, so, you know, What I did was I started making more and more of these guys. And these guys had everything. Like I had, they would have a, they had a job. I would go on SunBiz. I remember I'd go on SunBiz, which is the Secretary of State website in Florida. So if you have a, if you open a company, you're registered on SunBiz.

So you can go there and you can just type in different names. And so I remember I started going with the name I was using was Express Tax-Sert. because there was a bunch of express tax services like if you put it in Express tax services there were several that had this very similar names and I took one I just uses the tax ID number and it was in Miami so I went and I registered a DBA for Express Tax Services because this was like Express Tax Services of South Florida or something I went and I just registered a DBA as Express Tax Services and then I registered the phone number so

if you went and looked for the phone number, it would give you a phone number that would dial a phone that would send you to a phone that was sitting on my credenza in my office. I had a bank of multiple, probably half a dozen cell phones. So one of those was express tax services. It would ring.

I'd pick up a phone and I'd express tax services. How may I help you? Oh, you're looking for Joel Colon? Oh, sure. Hold on one second. Or put him on a hold or say, I'm sorry, he's not in the office right now. I can have him call you right back. regardless I like had a whole system set up

and I was creating these fake borrowers and borrowing money and that system was going pretty well I don't know if I were explained this or not obviously I was buy these houses for like $40,000 and I'm recording the value I already went over that but once these guys would get like a million dollars in mortgages in their names

you know you get to the point where you just there's just they're overloaded with debt and their credit scores start going down what i would do is i would we'd stop paying we stopped paying on on you know at some point you can't keep paying these mortgages once you've you borrow a million dollars and you've pulled out let's say six or seven hundred thousand dollars and we've got six or seven hundred thousand what we would do is you can't just keep using that money to make the payments at some point i had to let these things go into foreclosure so we just stopped paying and when we'd stop paying, eventually the banks would start sending collection notices to all these guys' houses.

And I would take the collection notices, and I would write a letter from the borrower's, phantom borrower's sister. And I would go into, like, say, the St. Petersburg Times or some newspaper article, and I would rewrite the article to include my borrower's name. So if someone, let's say there was a 12-car pile-up on I-75 or I-4, and someone was life-flighted to Tampa Bay General Hospital. I would put my guy's name in for Tampa Day, for the person who was life-flighted to the hospital. Then I would write a letter from his supposed sister saying that,

listen, I know he hasn't been making the mortgage payment. I know you guys are about to foreclose. You might as well go ahead and foreclose because the doctors told us that he's, well, he's currently in a coma, but the doctors told us even if he wakes up from the coma, he'll never work again. So he's not going to be able to make these payments And I would send that letter along with a copy of the article

With his name in it So they would get the article And they'd look at it and they'd say Oh wow, I see his name here. It's highlighted And he was obviously in a car accident Yeah, that's what happened They would then foreclose on the property Put it on the market and resell it

Now they've obviously they've lent They think it's worth 200,000 They lent 180,000 They put on the market They might eventually at some point sell it for 90,000 And they lost 90,000. You know, maybe they sell it for 80,000.

They lost $100,000. Since the value of the area was going up, they would end up selling it for more than it was really worth, but not more than what they owed. And as a result of that, they would stop looking. Like, they wouldn't keep sending the letters. They were given an explanation for why this person

stopped making the mortgage payments. And that's all they cared about. Like, they just needed an explanation. And that made sense because those things happened. Well, I was doing this all the time. Like I was buying houses, buy four or five houses, six houses in one guy's name, pull out, you know, borrow a million, million and change in mortgages on the guy. And then I'd get the money, deposit in the bank, pull the money out of the bank.

It was just going, it was just on and on and on. And we were taking that money. We were reinvesting the money. We were buying more and more real estate. And we're building new houses. I mean, I'd started a development company. I ended up, gosh, I remember I bought, at this point I was, at this point I was divorced from my ex-wife.

My current, well, wife at the time, I guess no, that she would be an ex-wife then too. So got a divorce. After we got divorced, I bought a house for like $80,000 and I renovated a house. Well, I got an apartment. I remember I got an apartment I started dating I remember I dated this stripper

that was living upstairs She was insane I mean just crazy It was Danielle Most strippers are crazy So What ended up happening was I bought this one house

And I was living in an apartment complex And I was renovating the house And I was renovating it And I remember I needed to borrow more money On the house Like I'm dumping a ton of money In this house It had a four-car garage.

It had two apartments. It had a one-bedroom that was a one-bedroom apartment that was 2,200 square feet. Like, that's a huge, that's a huge one-bedroom. Hardwood floors. I mean, I was just decking this thing out. At one point, I needed more money. And I had been, I started dating this other chick named Connie Wick. And she was a manager of a lawyer's title in Tampa.

And I went to her and I was like, Like, Connie, I have a question for you. And she was like, yeah, what's up? I remember when I went on. I went on a date with her too, bro. I took her to see Les Miserables, which is a musical. She loved it. I mean, listen, told, like, if you want to,

you have a chick that you want to date, and you bring them to a musical, like, it's over. I mean, you might as well just drive straight back to your fucking house. I mean, it's a penny dropper like you can't believe. Because most guys won't do that. like women want to go see like a musical they want to do those things but guys won't bring them like that's like you know that's like for most guys that's weird that's gay i don't want to be

sitting through some bunch of people singing or whatever but i'm telling you if you go to see one they're awesome and if you're with a chick it's over like you just you get to do whatever you want so i brought her to uh lay miss and then we went i think we ate it like ruse ruse chris went back to her place i mean just like pulled up to her place and she is do you want to come I mean she was just like just come in like you and I both know what this has been an amazing night just come in so go in there

you know give her the best four minutes she's ever had in her life and we're laying in bed and I was like listen I remember she told me we were laying in bed and she she said she started laughing and I was like what because she knew I'd been indicted

and I was already on federal probation and she said God she remembered she's like I remember we got subpoenas for your stuff before you got in trouble like the FBI came in subpoenaed your stuff and like we were all like freaking out like oh my gosh and all the girls at her

work started calling me Darth Vader and when she was like they were free they were like you're going out with Darth Vader tonight and she was like oh he's not that bad she was like I'm telling you he'll pull you over to the dark side like this guy is doing all kinds of fraud and we were laying in bed and she was laughing

about it and I said you know it's funny that you say that I said I have a question for you and she says what's that i said i bought this piece of property for about 80 grand i've dumped a hundred and something thousand in it i need to borrow some more money on that property how can i borrow more money on that property when i think it's only going to appraise for a couple hundred thousand and she looked at me and she was like well i don't know what do you owe on it i was like well you know i i owed a couple hundred thousand said but i need to borrow more money how can i i said how does the lender know

that there's a mortgage on the property and she was like well I mean they pull they pull the title work they have she says they have us pull the title work and when we go downtown if the mortgage shows up I go yeah but when the mortgage

how do I get rid of a mortgage so they don't see it and she went well I mean when a mortgage is paid off it's satisfied and I went well how do they know it's satisfied She goes, well, because the bank, when the bank gets paid, they send this one-page document that says it's a satisfaction of mortgage.

Like it says that the mortgage that was taken out by this person on this date for this amount and recorded in the official record book on this page with this instrument number is hereby satisfied, like the person paid us. And then it's notarized, and the president of the bank, or somebody signs it. And I go, what happens to that document? And she goes, well, it's typically mailed back to the, um, you know, to the bank to show it was recorded. And I'm like, okay, how do they know where to mail it, though?

And she goes, well, because they say it in the upper left-hand corner, like, hey, it was prepared by Bank of America. And after it's recorded, mail it back to Bank of America to this address. And he goes, one address. And she goes, well, no, there's Bank of America's everywhere. I mean, who knows? It could be any number of addresses. And I went, okay, so let me get this straight. you're telling me that if I fill out a one-page document

with the correct information on it, I can get public records to record it in public records to show that a mortgage that's currently recorded in public records was satisfied. I can then have it mailed back to an address that isn't necessarily even the bank's address. And when you go to search it, you're going to see the original mortgage and a satisfaction,

and you're going to list on the title, you're going to list that there is no mortgage on the property she is right because there's a satisfaction saying bank of america paid it off i go even though they didn't she was right and i said okay so bank she says as long as you keep making your mortgage payment bank of america doesn't realize that you that they no longer have a lien on the property they think it's still there they didn't get a satisfaction of course if they got the satisfaction they realized right away we didn't satisfy this but that doesn't happen so

okay so i was like okay cool and so i went downtown and i pulled i pulled the mortgage on my property and i went down and i saw her and i gave it to her and i said can you prepare a satisfaction of mortgage for this and she was like holy shit you're seriously going to do this i go absolutely and she said i mean i can show you i can fill one out but i'm not going to notarize it and i went that's fine i said i can i can get a notary I had already called, like, Office Depot, what was the other one? Staples.

I'd already called several places, and I'd ordered notary stamps in different names. And so I pay for the, I'd go in, I didn't call. I went in, I filled out the paperwork. This is my, here's my name, here's my notary number, here's this, here's that, here's when it expires, and I said, I need a stamp, and then they would order it. And then I would just, they'd call you a couple days later, or I'd just go, in a couple days later and I say hey is my stamp here and they go sure and they'd give it to me

they wouldn't ask for ID or anything I had one place I had like four or five places I ordered stance from one place asked me the guy goes do you have your ID and I was like no bro I mean I came in here a couple days ago I said yeah man I said I don't have it on me yeah man I said well I'll go get and I'll come back he was okay so I left I got his name I left and I called down there and said hey when is this guy you know is this guy there and they said yeah he's there I called a little bit later and they said oh no he's off he already left for the day okay great so then I went back in to the next person that was there and I said hey I need my notary stamp and they didn't ask for an idea and they gave me the notary stamp

so I end up with multiple notary stamps and I just once Connie filled out the showed me how to do the satisfaction and she filled it out I notarized it I signed signed it went downtown and recorded it I had it mailed to an abandoned house instead of mailed back to the the mortgage company who had lent me the money I just had it mailed to an abandoned house so a couple days later i drive by there boom i got the i've got it so now when i went to go borrow more money and the title company pulled the title on the house that i was using as collateral to borrow the money there's no mortgage showing up so i borrow another 175 000 or something like that on that house it was worth maybe 200 000 at the time i was still being renovated but of course the appraiser

that i was using didn't say it was being renovated he said it was in perfect condition because we're ordering whatever you know this guy's doing what how 10 20 appraisals a month for the company that I used to own but I'm still basically running in a way I mean he's going to obviously he's going to do what

we ask him to do or what I asked him to do because otherwise I could yank 20 if you're being paid $400 $300 to $500 for an appraisal and you're getting $20 of them and so you're making $5 to $10,000 a month

off of this one lender or this one mortgage company, you're going to pretty much do what I ask you to do. And he was a cool guy. And so he said that the house wasn't being renovated, took a bunch of good pictures, said it was in perfect shape and he said it was worth, I don't know what he said it was worth, $2.250. So I borrowed another $1.75. I then satisfied that loan and I borrowed two mortgages at the same time on the property. I borrowed a million dollars on this one piece of property and renovated that property. it was in great shape built a concrete block wall

around the whole thing restocked the building it was it was a hard hardware floors the whole thing great kitchens the four car garage it was great great at that point

I really had that scam down and I really knew the paperwork I remember by the second or third time I walked in to see Connie to ask her to fill out the paperwork she was like I'm not doing this she's I'm not doing this again I'm not filling this out. But by that point, I already understood public records fairly well.

I'd been down there several times. She and I had had a bunch of conversations, and I dated her on and off for a couple of months. And then I stopped dating her. I started dating a chick named Janip. Janip was a owned a, she owned a gym, like a little fitness gym and a strip mall. She was a nice little private gym.

And she was a personal trainer. She was an amazing shape. Like, blonde hair, blue eyes, a tiny little waist, abs. Like, I never should have been dating this chick. She was that good looking. She was that over-the-top good-looking. And she had been dating a chick. When I said, the chick she was dating, she'd been dating some other chick.

So she was a lesbian. She'd been with this other girl. They'd been dating for, I forget, like, four or five years. They'd broken up. And my house, by the time, that's right, when I finished my house, so when my house got finished, there was something called the Tour of Homes. My house was one of, there was like six houses on the tour of homes. And what happens is they sell tickets and people get to walk through your house. So they had all these nice houses in the Tampa Heights area, which was an area that I had moved into, which was booming.

It was right next to Ebor City, which is where I was doing my scam. So it's convenient for me to be next to my scam area, the area I'm what they call farming. so I'm jacking up the prices of this area I live right next to that area I ended up buying my house and about three or four other houses that were on that street

like on my one little block there's maybe eight houses and I own five of them well I end up dating this chick Jana who had walked she was walking through the tour of homes she went on the tour of homes and as she was walking through my house

she actually stopped me and she's like oh you you own this is your house you own this house I was like yeah I remember I painted a bunch of murals on the walls. She was asking about the murals and she said, I would love to buy a house in this area. Do you know who owns the house across the street? And I said,

yeah, I actually own the house across the street. And we were in the middle of renovating it. And I wasn't using it as a part of a scam or anything. I was just renovating the house. Like I was always renovating something. I was always doing something. Like, I'm always doing like five things. Right. So at least

something every, if you're doing five or six projects, at least every month or so, something hits and you make a nice little chunk of change. And so I was renovating this property. I said, yeah, I'm renovating it. She's, oh my gosh, I would love to talk to you about possibly buying it. So we started talking and I got her phone number and I said, yeah, that's cool. I said, well, give me a call.

And she got my phone number. I said, give me a call. We'll talk about it because there were so many people. There were like a thousand people or so coming through the house. So I'm talking to other people. And she leaves. She called me later and asked me if I wanted to have dinner. So I said, yeah, absolutely.

And I was just thinking, at first I thought she was interested in me. And then I talked to a buddy who told me she was a lesbian. And so we end up going to, I think it's called Samurai Blue in Yvore City. But when we got there, I realized she was flirting with me. And I told her I could get her the house. That's probably why she dated me just because I could get her the house. But it worked out for me because I started hitting it. And it was amazing.

Never should have been dating this chick. she was so smoking hot and uh you know the worst thing about her she just had like no sense of humor like i'm big on sense of humor like a big part of my personality is that you know i'm funny i'm entertaining and funny she didn't find me entertaining at all she didn't find me funny at all not even remotely um impressed by my by me at all but she did want to get in the house and what a great trade-off. I mean, it was a good deal for me. And we started dating. So I obviously wasn't dating Connie anymore.

I was dating Jana. Oh, gosh, 33 by this point? By this point, I'm on federal probation. Did I tell you that? Did I ever say I was on federal probation? Like, I'd been arrested. Yeah, it was on federal probation. And I was dating

Jana. And then Jana and I broke up. I got her into three properties, by way she made money on every single property one of those properties she bought renovated sold it and made like 80,000 dollars on the property. I mean she's never seen that much money in her life oh and all fraud by the way every loan was fraud I had to make fake fake um fake 1040s everything her credit was crap I mean I had to do I had to fix everything I had to get her a new credit

profile I mean it was just it was just completely I had to wipe her credit get a new credit profile I'll get her secure. I basically had to create a synthetic identity that match her identity to get her into these properties. But it worked. She made a bunch of money. You know, so.

God, I would buy her stuff all the time. Yeah. You know, and I genuinely thought that, like, at the time I would have told you this chick really likes me. But really, I'm just paying for everything. So, oh, it was a trade-off. Anyway, then I started. dating and then I started dating

I started dating this chick Allison listen do you have any idea how many properties I owned at that point I owned a fucking shit well we owned a ton of properties and you know what when I say we I mean me Dave Walker a guy named Jonathan Krieg who was an investor and a guy named Rudy Rudy I had met through an investor named Kelly was in Tampa

was in Ebor City and she and her husband Her name was Howe were buying properties and renovating them and I remember Kelly had come to me and she said I'd already got her into a bunch of properties and she was like she's like Matt listen she said I want to buy this of this property and all of our loans are fake or all fraud so I was like okay well what's

what's the problem she says well it's a five unit building and if you know anything about real estate if you've up you can buy residential real estate or you can get a residential loan from one to four units but if you get five units it becomes commercial well that's a completely different animal altogether i didn't do commercial loans and she was never going to qualify for a commercial loan and i didn't know enough about commercial loans and and basically there was no comparable sales for the for the property so

the property can't even qualify for a commercial loan so she calls me and says look i want to buy this bar i'm going to get this property the problem and i need to pull out money so i can do the renovations I was like how much she would need to pull out and she was like 80,000 to do the renovations or whatever it was and I was like man but by this point I'd recorded the value so many I'd recorded the value of so many properties

like all the properties in the area were now starting to really record like really come in high so the whole area ballooned up I mean people are buying properties left and right left and right and guys are starting to pay

ridiculous prices Like I was started off on buying properties for $40,000 and let's say there was some guy trying to sell a property for 50. I would go to him and say, hey, I'll buy it for 40 and they'd go 40. I want 50 and you'd go, 50, you're crazy. Like, I'm not paying you $50,000. I'm buying the same size properties for $40,000 and they're in better shape. I don't know. They just actually happened.

Well, all the properties, even the shithole started selling for higher and higher because we'd recorded so many that the value in the area was shooting up. and I remember I went to this one old man and I asked him and he wanted 50 and I said I'll give you 40 he said no so a couple of about four or five months later I go back to him I said look I'll give you I'll give you the 50 grand you want because there was the the availability of properties were drying up

and so I said I'll give you the 50 grand and he goes now I want 60 grand I want 60 I give you 60 grand three months ago you wanted you know three or four months ago you wanted 50 nah no so I said no man forget that forget it so I leave a couple months later

there's so few properties like we're now really starting to pay ridiculous prices for these for these just shitholes and I go back to the old guy I said man I'll give you 60 grand he says I want 80 80 how do you figure 80

less than a year you're telling me your property doubled and he goes he looked at me he said have you seen what properties in this area are selling for that house over there sold for $200,000 like no it didn't like I bought that house for 50 and recorded it at 210 or 205 or 200 whatever it was it was just like you know but what happened

was i was working against myself i was creating these ridiculous comparables that now people that had houses that you couldn't even live in thought they were worth 90 or 80 000 so we're still buying properties pulling out properties uh i had met rudy because rudy was the was the guy selling this piece of property that Kelly wanted to buy. So Kelly wants to buy this property. And I said, well, what's the problem, Kelly? Why can't you qualify for? What was it? She goes, well, it's a five unit. So I said, okay, she said, um, you need to call the real estate agent. He was selling the property. I said, okay. So I said, I'll call him. And she said, listen, he's a real jerk. And I went, I said, what's the name? He was Rudy. So I call him up and I said, hey, listen, I'm the, so

Kelly, he says, look, can you call this guy and arrange it so that I can walk away with money? I mean, which, by the way, this is completely illegal. Like, you're buying a piece of crap property that this guy was selling for like, like $100,000 or something. And I'm going to get it, I'm going to get the value recorded. I'm going to get the sale. It's going to go through it like $240,000 so that she can, one, bring a down payment, which she's going to get back. And two, pull out like $80,000 so she can renovate the property. So I call the guy up and I say, listen, I need you to do this and do this.

I need you get me an appraisal for this. And the guy says, listen, man. He said, I've already had like three or four contracts in the last few months fall apart because you understand this thing is a commercial building, right? And I was like, yeah, I understand. I said, it's a five unit. And he goes, right, but it's five units, so it's commercial. And I was like, okay, so it's, it wasn't zone commercial.

But he said, it's a five unit, so you can't get a residential loan on it. I said, I understand that. And he said, well, how are you going to get this chick alone? She said, you've got her a bunch of them, but those are all houses or duplexes. I said, yeah, I'll be able to get her, I'm going to get her a loan on this. He goes, how? You have to get a commercial loan, and there's no other commercial properties in the area that you can compare it to. I said, because I'm going to get her a residential loan.

And he goes, you can't get a residential loan on a five-unit building. It has to be four units or less. I said, right, I'm going to have the appraiser say that it's four units. And he goes, you have an appraisal that will do that? I said, I'm going to have two or three appraisals that would do that. and he went okay are you and you're sure about that i said absolutely i said so you need to write up so i explained to him write up the contract for 240 000 i needed him then i had him go back on mLS and say the take it down relist it at 250 000 and say that the property had recently been

completely renovated and gone from a five unit to a four unit i then met the appraiser out there and got him to say it was a four unit building and that the fifth unit which was a little tiny efficiency was actually a utility room where all of the electrical and junction boxes and everything were and it was also storage it was a storage unit where all the they also had all the electrical and there was a fifth uh meter and i had them say that that meter was the house meter which ran the sprinkler system and all the lights there was no sprinkler system there was no exterior light system there by the way and the security cameras why not so we he does all of that i get a appraisal for 250 000 we have in a sales price for 240 she gets a loan for like 80% or 80 or 90% she gets the down her down payment back plus the money back she ends up walking away with like 80 000 she then renovates the property and actually renovates the property and does a decent job it was such a shithole um even when she was done it was pretty bad so but that's how i met rudy so i so i now i know rudy rudy has an investor

named jonathan creg who lends money to flip properties we start having are not or i'm sorry we start having this guy creig lend money to our fake people to buy even more houses so that's how it's like it just keeps ballooning up and ballooning up and ballooning up and these houses are just going left and right left and right um they're there they're we get some guy he buys five houses renovates it gets a million dollars pulled out six or seven hundred thousand dollars makes a few payments let them all go into foreclosure we bought a property for like 30 000 i mean what it was just a dump and we bought this property and we got it appraised for like 180 or 190 i don't remember the exact number i actually have all those numbers in in in my book like i have the actually at the time that everything

but we bought the property the name alan duncan and we bought like six properties i think five or six properties in this guy's name already well you know I would get money out so let's say let's say bought the property for 30,000 cleaned it up a little bit got some a decent appraisal and then you know we go to the closing we rent we we refinance the property in the name of Alan Duncan he gets a check you know he gets a check and and we would cut it up into different entities like some people like rudy might get some money dave might we might have a couple corporations get money we might have all kinds of just the money would never go to one person was always being divvied up into multiple different people or in identities uh what identities

well yeah sometimes sometimes it was being divvied up into uh into uh people didn't even exist like sometimes i'm cutting checks to to to other phantom borrowers and depositing the money into their bank accounts, which is probably one of the reasons I got hit with money laundering. So at one point, we had closed a loan. We borrowed like $140,000 or $150,000 on a property we bought for like $30. So it wasn't even a big loan. We made maybe $80,000 to $90,000 that we'd walked away with. And one of the checks, one of the biggest checks went to Rudy, one of my business partners,

gave in the check and I said listen bro I said you're getting the check but you got to make the payments on this thing for the next two three months until we let them all go it's like we're going to make like three payments to let them go we'd already had a bunch of other properties we'd been making payments on so you know it's time to start letting these things go and so it was like okay no problem no problem and a month or so went by so the first payments basically do well what ended up happening was I get a phone call from the mortgage broker that had done the loan for Alan Duncan. She knows he's fake. Her name is Kelly Pruitt. She knew the loan was fake. She called me up and she said, listen, Matt, I got an issue. And I was like, what? She said, I just got a phone call from the bank's rep, their account rep.

She said, she tipped me off and said that they were looking into the loan. and I went, why? And she goes, I don't know. Apparently, she said, you guys never made the first mortgage payment, which means it's what's called the first payment default. Any type of first payment default means they automatically review the loan for fraud. So I remember I was in my apartment. I remember I ran downstairs and yanked open Rudy's door

because Rudy rented one of my apartments in my building. I yanked open his door and he was like, oh, what's going on, bro? And I said, did you make the fucking payment for Alan Duncan's property? I think it was 15th Street on 15th Street and he went oh is that due and I was like I was like yeah it's due he's like oh I'll put it in the mail right now well it's too late now they're now they're looking into it like they know something's up so I drove back I don't we all drove to the office and we opened up the file and review the file and I remember just looking at it thinking of all the files that they could have been suspicious of like this is like the worst one i'm like like there was very little um subterfuge let's say i like i took i just took no real precautions at this point i was so cocky everything had been working so flawlessly that i didn't even i wouldn't even really like money was going directly into everybody's account so rudy's got a check i've got a check dave's got a check like every single player has a

check and it was just like this is just the worst you know you know exactly who's making the money and so I was like this is this is messed up so I called I got the phone number for the to the bank and I called the bank and I put them on speaker and the secretary or whoever somebody answered and you know when you went through the prompts but I ended up getting a secretary and I said look I need to talk to and I forget who the guy's name was like the head of the bank or something I had the fraud department I forget who I asked for and because he was the person who had been who had been one of the people who had been calling and I said hey and they said who is this So I said, this is Alan Duncan.

And they said, well, they're in a meeting right now. And I said, look, I assure you, you want to interrupt them. They want to talk to me. So I said, interrupt the meeting. She goes, are you sure? I said, absolutely. I'm 100% positive. So she comes back.

And next thing, or she didn't even come back. I just immediately was in the meeting. Like they transferred me to there and they picked it up. They put me on speakerphone. They were like, hey, Mr. Duncan. And it was a, I remember, it's a small bank. It was called, I want to say South Star Bank in, like, Georgia or something. I forget exactly what it was.

Star Bank and they said they put me on speaker it was like the like the one of the head one of the head one of the head of the bank um the head of security which what he he ended up saying he was ex-fbi and like some lawyer and they were like we were just having a we were just having a discussion about you and and I said okay and they said especially since you know based on everything we can determine you don't even exist and I was like oh okay well listen um I said I understand you've got some issues and they said we don't have some issues like your social security number they were waiting for social security to call them back they said we don't we don't think your social security number has just only been around six or eight months you know nine months something like

that they said so you've only you're you're less than a year old on your credit profile your your your driver's license number has never been issued your we contacted like one of the banks that bank has never issued a bank. You don't have a bank account there. Like they start dismantling telling me all these things. And they said, as far as we can tell, you don't even exist. And I was like, okay, well, what are we getting out here? Like, I can, obviously there's an issue.

They go, oh, we're going to call the FBI. I said, okay, listen, then. They say, because you're not Alan Duncan. There is no Alan Duncan. I said, all right, so listen, what's the bottom line? You just want to get your money back, right? Let me give you the money back. Because I told you I'd been caught before.

When I owned the mortgage company, I'd been caught with fraud. They'd always let me pay them back. And I said, let me just pay you back. You know, what do I owe you? $140,000? I can cut you a check. And they were like, oh, no, no, we'll get the money back when we foreclosed on the property. They said, what you need to be concerned about is you go into prison. And I was like thinking, oh, this is bad.

Like they weren't even the least bit concerned about getting the money back. But as they were talking, they were basically mocking me. like, oh, you're going to prison. You need to be worried about spending the rest of your life in like an eight-by-eight concrete box. I remember they kept saying that. And at one point, I realized that they thought they were going to be able to get their money back

when they sold the property. Well, the property is worth 30 grand. And they thought it was worth like 190 or 180, and that they had a loan on it for 140, but it was worth 180 or 190. They figured when we sell it, we'll recoup our 140. And so I said, okay, fellas, I think I understand what the issue is here. I said, you think that your $140,000 alone is attached to a property that's worth $190,000.

They said, yeah. And I said, yeah, we know it is. I said, no, no, no, no. I said, you're about to lose $100,000. I said, let me explain why. I said, do you have the appraisal there? And they said, yeah, we do. They open the appraisal.

And they said, look, we even had the appraisal reviewed, which was a common thing. Let's say I send the bank of my own appraiser, they would do. do what's called a desktop review or even a drive-by review where they send their own appraiser out there to look at the property but he never goes in that's why i would clean up the outside so if you drove by you never got out of your car it looks fine from the street well they said uh we i said well that property's worth about 30 or 40 grand like what are you talking about they said we had our we had it reviewed i said let me explain why i said open up the appraisal look at comp number one comp number one explained to him is owned by a guy

named James Red. Comp number two is owned by a guy named Lee Black. Comp number three is owned by a guy named you know, like David Silver. This is going to well, it's not going to catch it.

This is owned by a guy named David Silver. And I said, and I explained to him that I bought the property for 30 grand and I record the value at 190 and then one of the other comparable I recorded at 210, another one I recorded at 195. So I explained what I did and why their appraiser,

when he did a review, didn't catch it because the comparables are true. They really appear to be legit. So they now were like, they were just like, holy shit. And I said, so when you foreclose on that property, you go to resell it, you're going to realize that the inside of that property is gutted. You can't live there. It's raining inside the house in the back room. It's a complete shithole.

you're gonna fucking end up you're gonna you guys are about to lose a hundred thousand dollars so even if you sell it and make sell it for 30 or 40 you're still you still oh you still have a hundred thousand dollars left on that loan and then they were like remember the owner said well we'll uh we'll recoup that money when the fbi catches you and i was like no that's not true at all i said let me explain why i said first of all you already know my name's not alan duncan the bank accounts where the money went are all forged are all fake bank accounts and different fake people's names none of those names lead to me they're all synthetic identities so i explain that they're all how i made the synthetic identities how i have the fake driver's license how this i said you've got a grainy black and white photograph and a and a surveillance footage of me from 30 feet away i said i promise you even if the fbi tracks all that money back to those accounts the money's of the money has been drained there's no money left the accounts were open in fake people's names The bottom line is I said, you're about to lose 100 grand. I said, and you're going to have nothing to even try and track me down.

I said, I go around the country doing this. This is my job. This is what I do for a living. I said, if you want to get your money back, I said, we need to agree that you're not going to contact the FBI, and I will give you your money back. Which is, you know, they could have gotten the money back and still contact the FBI. But the truth is, nobody wants to contact the FBI. Like, no bank, especially no subprime bank, wants the FBI looking into their files. So I remember they put me on hold

And they came back and they said So you still have the 140,000 I said I can get you the 140 They said you get us the 140 We will not contact the FBI We'll just consider this You know a bad error On your part

And no harm, no foul And so they told me exactly what I owed them Because I owed them a per diem For the amount of money that I owed For the payment that was never made Plus I owed a yield spread For what they would have made Like, I pay them exactly what they're owed.

They're like 143,000 change. I go get a bank, a cashier's check, and I send them the cashier's check. And that was it. So I paid them off. They never contacted the FBI. And I remember, I remember with Rudy, we had just mailed the check, and we were, we were walking, and I took all the IDs and everything, and I threw them in a garbage can. He's like, bro, what are you doing?

And I was like, bro, it's, it's no good. No, wait. We first went to the mall and ran up all the credit cards. We first went to the mall, ran up the credit cards. And then when we were leaving, I threw them all out. And he was like, what are you doing? I said, bro, I said, they're no good now. First of all, the guy's already got a 30 day late on his payment.

So that's probably going to be reported. And the guy already had four or five mortgages, and we borrowed a million dollars. And he was just shot. You know, plus, I'm not, I can't borrow any more money in this guy's name. These people are out there, and they know what's going on, and I just can't show up anywhere. So we shut that whole guy down. But that was totally Rudy's fault for never making the payment.

What else? What else? So that was the one time, man, let me tell you about being scared. My heart was racing, and they were so, like, they really had me. I just totally bluffed them because if the FBI had shown up and actually traced any of the money, all that money went to our bank accounts. Like I'm acting like they went to synthetic identities, accounts, and there's no trail. But it was a complete trail back to Rudy, me.

Jonathan got a check. Everybody got a check. Dave got a check. Yeah, that would have been a bad, that would have been a bad situation. I didn't even know if I want to get into the, at that same time, I had bribed a politician. I wanted him, we owned a bunch of vacant lots in the area. We wanted him to renovate the whole. We wanted him to, sorry, renovate, rezone.

We bought a bunch of vacant lots in Ewar City and Tampa Heights where they were single-family homes, but we wanted to build like triplexes and quadplexes on them. So if I buy a property for, let's say I buy a vacant lot for, let's say, 7 or 8,000, but if I could get it rezoned, it was zoned single-family. If I can get it rezoned multi-family and I can build a three-unit, Well, that lot now, instead of being worth, let's say, 7,000,

it's now worth like $25,000 or $20,000 or whatever. So it was worth a lot more money. So we were going to have him rezone 100 vacant lots that we owned in Ebor City. And this guy was running for, he ended up running for, he ran for city council. and we were, oh man, I'm leaving out a bunch of shit, bro. So, well, what we did was, he came to me one day. He was out, this guy was out passing out signs, like putting signs in people's yards. And he saw, and I saw him, and I was like, hey, what's up?

And he was like, hey, you know, look, I'm running for city, was it? Yeah, city council. I'm running for city council in District 5, which was the Ybor City District. And he said, you know, I'm looking for support and donations. And I was like, well, you know, he was running as a Republican, too. And I was like, okay. And he said, yeah, I'm trying to. I think he was.

He said, what do you do? So what do you do? He said, you own this property? And I said, I own this property. I own that property. I own that one over there. I own those two down there. I own this one here.

I said, I own about six over here on this street. I said, I own about 100 properties in this area. And, you know, that, keep in mind, it was there a hundred properties that we were doing a scam with, but I also own a bunch of other just properties, rooming houses, stuff like that. And so I was like, yeah, I own property on Jefferson Street, on Columbus. So I name off on Amelia.

I start naming them all off. He's like, okay, he's like, man, I'm very, very pro developer, especially in my area i said okay well i said all right well what's it going to cost take for you to you to win he said you know these campaigns aren't run off very much he said 10 15 grand he said i'm raising money right now i've got a few thousand dollars and i went okay and i said so how much is it to win and he said well i mean i think i'll probably win if i come up with the enough money to run ads and do this and that i end up sitting down with him like the next day with dave my partner And I think Rudy was there.

And we basically say, look, what if we help fund your campaign? Here's what we want. And I said, I explained about the vacant lots. And he said, oh, yeah, I can do that. I can get all those rezoned. He said, well, how much are you planning on giving us, on giving me for my campaign? I said, you've got a couple grand, right? What do you got a couple grand?

You said, you can run it off of what? 15 grand? What is it? He said, well, 20 grand would be perfect. He said, I've already got a few thousand. I said, okay, well, I'll get you another 15 grand. and he's like really and I said yeah I remember the next day I tried to give him like cash and he wouldn't take it he said no I need this in checks of like 500 bucks for corporations 250 for

individuals and I spent the day driving around going to all of Dave's my former Dave's current employers getting them to write checks for 250 dollars my family wrote checks for 250 corporations like I'm going to buddies that own corporation I'm giving them 500 bucks tell him to cut me a check for $500. So I get this guy like, I get him $15,000. What happens is ultimately there's a runoff.

Like he doesn't win. It's a tie. So he needs to, then there's going to be another runoff. So he and just he and the one other person that tied with, they're going to run off and he's got to try and get it. So then I give him $7,000 in cash.

Because he needed like 10. He's like, I still got a couple grand, but I need like $7,000. I said, here's $7,000. I give it to him. Named Michael White. One of my guys was named Michael White. Michael White, that identity, I'd set, my friend Travis, I have a buddy named Travis. He had set up a scam with my help in Orlando.

And he was buying houses in the name of Michael White. And he was refinancing those houses and pulling out money and depositing in the bank. So that whole scam is going right there. It's a couple hundred thousand dollars so far that we've been pulling out. So I dating this chick, Janet, and we ended up getting into an argument. She started, actually, it wasn't even an argument. She started sleeping with this girl, this other chick. So she's cheating on me.

So my lesbian girlfriend is cheating on me with a chick. Fucking humiliating. I know it. I know it's humiliating. Anyway, so she's banging this chick. I was banging the proper term for a two lesbians. things, having sex, banging. I can't imagine there's any banging going on.

She's subtly, I'm not sure. I'll ask a, I'll find a former lesbian, anath, the proper terminology is. So they're sleeping together, and so, oh, it's horrible. Bro, I go into it in here. It's hilarious. It's hilarious. I can't even get into it, but I go into it in my book.

It's so bad. I even remember one time. that Jana showed up and I was dating this chick Allison. Jana bangs on the door one morning and Allison comes out wearing just a t-shirt, one of my t-shirts and they get into this fucking screaming match with each other. I'm just like, what is happening? I got two, I got the lesbian chick and I got this chick. Oh, one time I was banging.

That's not true. I wasn't banging because I never slept with the chick. Okay, so one time I started seeing this chick who was a buck, a buccaneer's chick. cheerleader, a black chick that was a black buccaneers cheerleader. I mean, like, you can't imagine how good this chick looked. And so we go out, we go to sushi, we go back to my place, we're about to have sex. And Jan and I had broken up, but she still had a key to my house. She comes in.

I remember I'm about to have sex with this chick. And I hear this, teet, and it was the alarm system. And I'm like, oh. And like, I mean, I'm, she's spreading all I'm on top. I'm, I'm, I'm about to, and I'm like, oh, and she looks at me, it's just like, she's like, oh, my God, is that the girlfriend? Like, because I, you know, she knew we were broken out, but she's like, oh, my God. And I was like, um, hold on, because I thought, maybe it's Rudy.

Because Rudy had a key. So I jump up and I run into the kitchen and I'm, Jana already had this chick's purse dumped out. She was dumping out all of her stuff and opened up her wallet and saw that it was a, it was a black chick. And she goes, a black girl, a blast you. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I was like, hey, hey, hey, now calm down. I said, listen to you, you can't even, you can't be coming in here. Like, you can't, I mean, and I was, listen, this chick's standing in the middle of the kitchen with a bunch of knives around her.

And I just remember thinking, she'd kill me. She'd kill me in this chick. Anyway, the black girl grabs, she gets completely clothed, says, just, just get. Give me my purse. I want to leave. I gave her the purse, and she took off. It's a little bit more complicated than that, but that's the simple version. I remember she took off.

Jana goes, did you sleep with her? Did you fuck her? Did you fuck her? Because Jan is still there. She's not leaving. And I went, yeah. I said, no. I said, okay.

I said about that much. And she goes, what does that mean? I said, I mean, that's what was happening. I was this far in when the alarm system went off. And she goes, did you sleep with her? I went, no, you ruined it for me. me and I mean she just was furious bro it was so bad um and uh yeah she ends up spending the night so but then she catches me then another she didn't catch me because we weren't even dating she just

kept chasing these chicks off so then it was this didn't this chick alison knew what was going on because alison was helping me run a scam in uh palm harbor which is basically like let's say st pete so isn't Palm Harbor in St. Pete area basically roughly? Kind of Clearwater. Yeah. So let's just say whatever, Palm Harbor Clearwater area. I had renovated a house. I mean, sorry,

renovated a house. She and I rented a house, satisfied the mortgage on the house, and we were refinancing the house. We transferred the warranty deed into the name Rosita Perez. Allison had an idea name, had a

idea named Rosita Perez. So she's renovating the property or sorry refinancing the property multiple times she goes to a couple closing she signs she ends up signing she ends up signing several mortgage for several mortgages and gets the

payment but one of them that place wouldn't give her the money they said something's wrong you don't look like your ID but it was actually her in the ID what she had done was she got the picture of the ID with black curly hair. She'd gone out and dyed her hair and had it curled. So she gets the picture of the

idea of black curly hair. But then when she, a week, two weeks later, when we go to the closings, she changed her hair back. So now it's brown and brown with blonde highlights and it's straight. So she doesn't look anything like the picture anymore. It's still her, but it just doesn't look like her. So they said, yeah, we think there was an issue, so we're going to make some phone calls. So Allison comes out without the check. She's like, yeah, listen, these people are freaking out. Like they didn't want to give me the check. They, they're said they were going to make some calls. They end up calling around.

They find out that they figure out pretty quickly that it's not her. So that's an issue, right? So they're calling around and they eventually figure it out. And it's complicated to understand how they figured out. But they figured it out. But we did have a check. We had one check. So Allison and Travis decide they're going to deposit the check into a bank account that Travis has.

So he deposits it. And we have to wait for the money. to clear, which was going to take, you know, back then, it's not like now, where it's like the next day it's clear, or half of it's cleared right away, and then the next day it's cleared. Like, this take, this used to take like 10 days. Well, and, you know, look, you've got to understand how many properties, you know, how many we were refinancing and pulling out money and letting go.

And it was a juggling act. well like 10 days later Travis drives to Orlando to pull out some of the money because we'd deposit a check for like 100 grand or something well that check had been red flagged

because the title company had tracked down the had tracked back to the other title companies that two title companies figured out something was wrong they got together and figured it out they put a then they tracked where the lender the money was for the lender it would lent the money they put a red a red a notice they red flagged the

the check so when the check went through they didn't give her the check they just called Travis that the bank called Travis and said hey hi um michael white we would like to for you to come in we need you to sign the back of the check again we need to witness the signature which was weird So I remember calling Travis and said, hey, man, what's going on? Are you going to the bank? He's like, yeah, I said, what's up? He said, yeah, I'm going there, but they said that they need to witness me signing the back of the check because it's such a large check. Well, look, I've signed backs of checks for $200,000 and deposited them.

Nobody ever said, you had to witness a check. Like, it was just totally weird. And I went, no, bro, something's wrong. Don't go to the bank. That whole thing. We got to scratch that whole thing. Well, Allison was there going, no, it's fine, it's fine. it's fine well she's desperate for the money and i'm like no it's not fine something's definitely

wrong Travis says yeah bro i'm gonna go in i'm i'm good with the guy like the owner like i mean the bank manager like i'm cool with him like he's he's like cool with him like what you say hi to him like he's not gonna tell you that you're committing fraud like he's not gonna let let it go which is the dumbest thing ever anyway Travis walks in the bank and so he walks in and he's like hey i'm going in right now and i remember i was yelling at him not to go in he hangs up on me he's like that's fine bro calm down he walks in and then i never heard from him again i called and called and called and called and later that night i called his cell number from like a pay phone no i called his real number not i was was calling um i was calling his cell from my phone

wasn't going through then i call the michael white's cell phone from a pay phone and officer answers and I'm like hi is Michael White there and I was this and I was like this is you know whatever Brandon you know Brandon Green or whatever I said and he said this is officer you know this is officer done with the you know whatever ultimate you know police department or whatever whoever it was and I was like oh shit

and he said how do you know Mr. How do you know Mr. White and he and I just hung up the phone I was like he's been arrested this is horrible so Travis was in jail I'd get him out of fucking jail I'd hire a I remember had to pay like

$15,000 to get a lawyer had to get him one get him out of jail to pay $15 grand to get him a lawyer then he starts coming around saying hey Matt

I need money I mean obviously we're not doing the scam I need money like they're going to shut off my electric and you can you give me some Sure, how much do you need? Or $1,000 for this? No problem.

A couple weeks later, hey, bro, I need like $2,000 for that. No problem. I'm cutting him check for $2,000. I mean, he starts just milking me for money. I gave him $25,000 to start a lawn, I mean, not a lawn care. A tree trimming business. So he buys all this equipment. I ended up getting him a, I bought him a Dodge Ram.

I bought him the tree trimming thing. I bought him the, I mean, listen, I bought him so much stuff. so desperate for him to not cooperate against me. But the truth is he was already cooperating with a task force. He got himself out of, like he got out like the next day on Bond because he told him this is what's happening. This is a guy I'm working with. And it wasn't hard to convince them that there was a scam.

He said, look, go to Hillsborough County property appraiser record and look, look up the name James Red. Bam, five houses in the name James Red, all of them in foreclosure. you know or brandon green all of them in foreclosure you know um lee black all of them foreclosure you know uh david silver foreclosure um it's funny because like that whole thing was unraveling and i knew it was unraveling like every time i saw him i could just feel that i knew it was coming down i just knew it uh god i was definitely coming down that is

it's funny because of all the loans I only went in I only went in and signed one time I signed for a $250,000 credit line for James Red

now remember Eric Tamargo had gone in a bunch of times and signed for Red I didn't want to keep calling him because he was figuring it out pretty quickly that he wanted more and more money so I just went in one day to SunTrust and I signed for like a $250,000 credit line on a piece of property that I bought.

And at this point, you have to think the houses, we weren't recording the value of the houses at 200,000 anymore. We're recording the values of the houses now at like 300,000, 350. So we're buying bigger and bit, we had switched to quadplexes. So quad pluses and duplexes and triplexes,

and they're massive. And so we're recording the value at 2,300,000. This is 20 years ago almost. No, wait. Now, this is almost 20 years ago. Almost 20 years ago. So you have to think if these houses are worth $300,000 then, that would be like a $600,000 house now.

And so the kind of money, if you say, oh, you have a million dollars back then, it was like $2 million now. So that was like a half a million dollar credit line. So I get this $250,000 credit line. And now I'm definitely involved. Like you could definitely see where I went in. where before I was very remote.

Yeah, some money went into my bank account here. Like, you know, it would, not that they couldn't have. They would have, they would have buried me anyway. I mean, it was done. I was done anyway. And I knew when things were coming down, I knew it was bad because I knew that the judge, you know, I knew I knew I was doomed. Like if that judge saw me again, he was going to hammer me.

I knew, you go in front of a judge again twice. It ain't good. They're not happy with you, especially since he didn't give me any prison time the first time. Uh, yeah, that's when one day, yeah, one day, uh, I realized that that Travis is definitely cooperating and that things are coming down. They're definitely coming down on me. So, yeah, at the same time, so at the same time, I had met a chick. I was dating, like, listen, I'm dating a bunch of different women. And I met a chick by the name of Rebecca. well Rebecca was um she was a train wreck bro like she had a kid uh she had just moved to the area

she worked at the dog track um from Vegas she'd been lived in Vegas moved to the dog moved to St. Pete lived at the dog track I met her on match.com we've been out a couple of times like we like she's driving across the bridge to Tampa you know we'd slept together I don't know, a dozen times, like over the month or two. Like, we're not even serious. It's not like this is even like a serious relationship. Like, I'd known like a month, maybe two months. Not even two months, but it was like a month and a half.

I barely even know this chick. And I remember she, like, you know, she knew that I was, she knew I was on federal probation. She knew that I had done some stuff. She knew. like we'd gone to a couple of movies we went to um god did we see like matchstick men and we had talked about scams and she kind of knew that i was a questionable character well so we're dating and it's okay it's going okay well what happens is in the midst of this whole this chaotic situation which is super high stress bro like i mean i'm taking like xanax i mean i'm having panic attack

Like, I'm, at this point, I'm taking Paxil, which is an anti, you know, for anti-anxiety. Like, I'm, I'm, like, desperately trying to keep my anxiety in check. I got, I got Jana chasing chicks off. I got Allison, you know, she's getting a divorce from her husband. I got to move her into an apartment. I mean, I've got, it's just total chaos. And at this point, I'm going into banks, pulling out money. They're going to actually go into closings.

I mean, I just had gotten so cocky and sloppy. And then one day I'm at work, I'm sitting at work at the development company. And one day, this sheriff deputy walks in, his name is Steve Sutton. I had done about a million, maybe $2 million worth of loans for him. They were all fraudulent. And so he comes walking in, in his full outfit. This is at like 4 o'clock. And he comes walking in, he goes, hey, Matt, can I talk to you?

And I went, yeah, what's up? He goes, can I talk to you outside? I went, sure. So I walk outside. I'm like, yeah, what's up? And he says, oh, you know what it was? One of the reasons I knew for sure that things were going bad was that there was a reporter by the name of Jeff from the St. Petersburg Times had started calling around asking questions. So title company people were calling me saying, look, I just got a phone call from some guy.

guy at the St. Petersburg time asking about this guy James Red or asking about Lee Black or asking about whatever, Michael White. You know, they're like naming off phantom people and I'm like, oh, shit. Then the, um, there was a subpoena that was served to one of the title companies that they called me and said, look, we got a subpoena. We're not supposed to tell you that we got the subpoena, but I'm letting you know, Matt, we're friends. I wanted to let you know. We just got a subpoena. I'm just like oh man this is bad so and that was from the task force

and so I need more coffee so what happens is Steve Sutton walks in so I already know things are bad Steve Sutton walks in and he says listen man can I talk to you outside and I go sure so we walk outside and I said what's going on Steve and he says look

I used to date this chick I used to date this chick that works for Tampa PD said okay and he was a sheriff's deputy and I went all right and he goes she came to my house this morning like six seven o'clock in the morning and she said she had been working on a task force said all right he said the task force was investigating the arrest of a guy named Travis Hayes in Orlando okay he said he's cooperating He's been cooperating with the task force and they've completely put this whole thing together

and they know that you're running a massive, massive fraud and they're going to arrest you. And I was like, when? And he said, well, not now, but like yesterday, they handed the task force over to the FBI. The FBI is going to come arrest you in the next couple of days. This is like a Thursday. And I was like, okay, he said,

she told me because my name came up about it. And she knows that we're friends. And she told me to stay away from you. Because not to talk to you on the phone, just to stay away from you. I said, all right. He said, what are you going to do? I said, I mean, I'm leaving. And he goes, what should I do?

I said, just tell him that I arranged all the loans for you. You don't know anything. Like, I wanted to buy this house. He arranged some loans, and that was it. He arranged the loan for me. I showed up the closing. I signed paperwork. I mean, how am I supposed to know what he was doing?

I don't know. I said, you should be fine. I said, I'm not going to be here to tell him any different because I'm going to leave. And he said, all right, man, good luck. So we shake hands, he leaves. I walked inside. I remember him with the Allison. I said, Allison, I wrote a check right then.

I needed you to go get $8,000 out of the bank right now. I started writing people checks, left and right, left and right, to go cash checks at different accounts. By the next day, I had gotten out $80,000. That was all I could get out, you know. I mean, it seems like a lot of money. Like, but if you've got millions of dollars in the bank, millions of dollars in real estate, you've got, like, basically I had like a, I had like a couple, like, I had like 20 or 30 minutes left in the banking day. and I had the next day and all I could get out was that

and I remember I had this one account so I had student loans like $30,000 in student loans which I'd never paid off because they're like 1% interest right so you just make you don't pay off a 1% interest loan it's free so

it's like free money and I was so tired of making these little $120 payments I had just paid off that was like literally the night before the loan the check had gone through I paid up like 30,000 and I was like, oh my God, 30 grand I could have gotten out.

Anyway, so I out of my personal account, right? So I got out as much money as I could, as quickly as I could. And that night, I remember thinking I don't want to stay at my house. So I started packing my bags. So I'm stuffing a bunch of duffel bags full of clothes and computers, everything I could think of. and I remember I was supposed to go out with Rebecca Becky the chick I'd been dating supposed to go out with her that night totally had blown off her phone calls

everything she drove across the bridge came to my house walks in and I remember when she came in like like just walked it like I thought I thought that was the FBI I thought they I like oh my god they're they're here she walked in and she was like what are you doing like she sees me I'm panic I'm stuffing she's clearly I'm going somewhere I said hey I'm um mom leaving. She goes, where are you going? I said, I'm leaving. I said, look, I didn't be honest with you.

I said, look, I was running kind of a scram. And I just tell her what happened. Bam, bam, bam, bam, they're coming to arrest me. Like any time now. And she said, you're just going to leave? And I was like, yeah. And she goes, well, I want to go with you. And I went, what are you talking about? We don't even know each other. Like, what are you talking about? Like, you've got a kid. You've got, like, you got a kid here. You got family. You've got, you don't want to go with me. we don't even know each other and she goes we're in love and i was like yeah i listen i don't know about that i like you i don't know about being in love i said look you know and she goes no she she's i said look you've got you're a stable person you're a normal person she says i'm not a normal person she said

listen she said let me explain something she says i've just claimed bankruptcy i've been married she'd been married twice she i've been married twice she said my son is is he's failing school he's been caught outside uh for curfew she's been picked up for curfew you know break curfew several times she was he's smoking pot i can't control him she said i'm sending him back to live with his father she said i'll be here i'll be all alone he's going he was going back in like a month anyway she's i'll send him back and i'll come with you and i go are you are you insane like that's crazy you don't up and leave somebody for someone you just met a couple months ago and she was like i don't care i'm in love with you i want i said look this is never going to become love for me

and she went listen she said can you get the money And I went, yeah, because I told her I was going to, she was, what are you going to do? I said, I got like $80,000. I'm going to go commit some more fraud, and I'm just going to start pulling money out of houses, and I'm just going to get a bunch of money and maybe leave the United States. And she went, can you get the money? And I went, yeah, she goes, how much money you plan on getting? I go, I don't know, a few million dollars invested in real estate and just kind of kick back the rest of my life.

And that's the best hope I've got. And she said, if you can get the money, I don't care if this ever turns into love. I don't care if it's love. I want to come with you, I'll help you. And I was like, what are you doing? And she goes, you don't even know. I said, you're going to break the law? She said, listen.

She said, do you know why I'm in St. Pete? And I went, why? She said, because I was embezzling money from the law firm that I used to work for. She said, I was embezzling money to pay my, my gambling debts. And she said, my boss. the lawyer I worked for found out about it and he didn't call the police because I was sleeping with him

and he didn't want his wife to find out so instead he called his client one of his clients which is a huge company that owns a bunch of casinos and a dog track in Tampa and it was the furthest place he could send her to get her out of Vegas so one he said you don't owe me the money you stole

I'm giving you some money we're going to move you to Las Vegas and I'm done with you And she, he moved her to Las Vegas. She started working for the dog track. And he quashed the money that he owed her. Or that she owed, sorry, quashed the money that she owed him. And I remember thinking to myself,

you're a lying, cheating, thieving, degenerate gambler. I mean, she really was like the perfect partner in crime. I mean, all of those. those were attributes for as far as I was concerned. Like this is a, you know, this is a, this is an insane chick that will do anything. And she's desperate to come with me. And I was like, you know, look, I was nervous and I was scared and I was afraid. And I, I was desperate. And I, I had no what the future held, but I didn't have to be alone. And that was a huge burden to take off on my own

and just do it by myself. So I'm supposed to steal millions of dollars, just me, nobody's help. That's a tall order. I'd had lots of help before. So I wasn't sure I could do it by myself. I was pretty sure. But, you know, it's easier if you have somebody else

to help answer the phones and help do things. And she wanted to come. So I was like, all right, let's go get your stuff. So we went and we got her stuff. Over the course of the weekend, we ran up, all of my credit cards all of the synthetic identities credit cards bought a new vehicle

bought like a hundred thousand dollar Audi traded in my Audi got a hundred thousand dollar Audi got a temp tag I remember told the guy I want a brand new tag I want another tag and I want the tag in the dealership's name and I want you to keep it the dealership name as long as possible because that way if they see

the dealership they run it it's not it goes to the dealership not me they don't know who's in the car And so I got this Audi And God, it was an A8 or something It was fucking this thing had like 400 and something 480 horsepower or something It was outrageous. It was a four door.

So I forget that the exact Audi it was. It was a great Audi. So we packed it. I mean, this thing was packed full of stuff. Like we bought as much stuff as you could. I had 80 grand, but I don't want to spend the 80 grand when I can run my credit cards. I ran up.

I remember I left. I must have owed American Express 30 or 40 grand. So ran up the credit cards We got like probably close to 70, 80,000 maybe $100,000 With it just stuff It got so bad by Sunday night She's buying like purses for $2,000 shoes

For $1,500 bucks I mean it's just ridiculous We're buying watches We got like multiple Rolex watches Diamonds I mean it just ran them everything up And yeah we get in the car And we leave Tampa When we left Tampa

I wrote a letter to my parents and my ex-wife because you have to think well oh we put her son she put her son I didn't put her son she put her son on a on a plane going to Vegas and I wrote a letter to my ex-wife because I was leaving my son

because I kind of figured look I end up in if I was going to go to prison no matter what my son was going to he was never going to see me my ex-wife wasn't going to drag him to a prison to see me so I just got in my car and we left and we yeah we took off

we got into a huge fight huge argument not a fight a huge argument on the way to out of town too like she I realized during that argument she was just insane and I should have turned around right then

but I didn't I said okay you know we argued I tried to turn around I started to turn around and she begged me not to turn around and we ended up going we ended up going to Atlanta so we wrote a letter I wrote a letter to my ex-wife regarding you know just basically

to my ex-wife and to my son I wrote a letter to my mother and father and this becomes important later because I addressed the letter to George and Margaret Cox which is my mother and father and I'd signed it you know Matt so and I just just basically the letter I don't know if I wanted to mention that the letter

I just basically just said explain to them what happened and what was going on that I was not sticking around to go to federal prison and that just wasn't something I was interested in doing. You know, I intended to run. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm just, I'm too cute to go to federal prison. And the only, the only things I knew about federal prison was I'd watched a movie called, you know, Shawshank Redemption,

and I'd watched a movie called The Animal Factory. And all the movies I'd seen on federal, sorry, I'm just prisons in general. Not a good situation. I'm not a big guy. I'm 5 foot 6. I weigh 160, 170 pounds. I'm just, I'm too cute to go to prison.

It's just not going to end up well for me, and I know that. So we're on our way to Atlanta, and we get there, and we had no credentials. Like, I had some fake, some IDs. I had some ideas, but they were fake IDs that I basically had created myself. So very quickly, we rented an apartment and we moved out of that apartment and moved out of that apartment and moved into, well, first we rented, first we stayed in hotels for whatever a week. Then we rented an apartment using a fake ID and, you know, I had no credit, but I was able to show that I had, obviously I was able to show that I had four or five years worth of rental history. and well of employment and I had several years of rental history and even though I had no real credit I did have an ID and so I simply had to put down double this security deposit and we rented a place

in a midtown in Atlanta so is right on peach tree and so we rented this this apartment and immediately we went within days this was this was in I don't know if I mentioned this was in December early December 2003 so we immediately go to I didn't want to get a driver's license in Georgia because in Georgia they take your fingerprints and although I knew they didn't run them they keep them on file I just didn't want it I just didn't want to give them my fingerprints so we went to Alabama and I had stolen the information of a guy by the name of Scott so I'd taken this guy Scott's information who I'd done a loan for.

He was actually an account executive that I'd worked for, and I had kind of tricked him into telling me what his mother's main name was and where he was born, and I'd ordered his birth certificate, and I had a copy of his Social Security card. And so I went to Alabama, and I made a fake lease for an apartment in Alabama, which was actually a UPS box.

So I went into the DMV in Atlanta and I got them to issue me a driver's license in his name. So it's got, it's Scott, but it's my picture and it's a valid driver's license. I then came, went back to Atlanta and then we rented a house. You know, because the whole purpose of going to Atlanta was to try and get some money. I mean, I had like 80 grand in cash and we had a bunch of stuff, but we didn't have jobs and we couldn't live. The way we were living, we wouldn't last very long in Atlanta on 80 grand. So I ended up, I rented a house from a guy by the name of Michael in Alpharetta, Georgia, which is just outside of Atlanta, just like a kind of like a suburb.

So I rent this house. The house is worth about $190,000, $200,000. And this is like almost 20 years ago. And, you know, I don't know what that house would be worth. probably whatever, three, four hundred thousand at least. So we rent this house and I go downtown to Fulton County, which is the county that holds public records for Alpharetta. I go downtown and I end up checking the real estate public records

and I see that Michael owns the property. Well, Mike had two mortgages from Bank of America on that property. And so what I did was I prepared a satisfaction of lien or mortgage. It's the same thing. Satisfaction of mortgage for his first mortgage that he had on his house and his second mortgage, because he had a first and a second mortgage. So I prepared a satisfaction of lien or mortgage on those. and I typed it out and printed it out and signed it.

I ordered a notary stamp, went and picked up a notary stamp, so I had a notary stamp. I signed the witnesses and signed from whoever was supposedly from Bank of America that had satisfied. I just made up some name. And then I recorded it. The reason I didn't transfer the property into somebody else's name is because public records was so far behind in,

Fulton County. It was actually like 10 to 12 weeks behind. So once I recorded that document, it was going to take almost three months before it showed up in the system. So I would have first had to have recorded that. Then I would have had to transfer the title into somebody else's name. I mean, it would have just been a real issue. It was easier for me to simply make a fake ID that I used a child's social security number and I created kind of like what's called a, it's like a synthetic identity it's kind of like a shadow um i explain this it's like a it's like a separate credit profile for a real person so i use some of his information but i did i use his part of his name i changed it slightly and then i didn't use his date of birth and i didn't use a lot of i didn't use

a lot of his pertinent information so i created a completely different synthetic identity but i was still able to use the driver's light or the fake id that i'd made and and and then And then basically, I opened up a few bank accounts in his name. I opened up a few corporate accounts. Well, you know, we opened up a corporation. We opened up some corporate accounts. We then opened up some accounts in the name of Scott. Becky, I ended up getting Becky another fake identity.

She opened up a few bank accounts in her name. And we basically just had to sit back and, wait we had to wait about three months for all of this to take for the for that whole scam to mature and for the new satisfaction of mortgages to get recorded in public record you know the thing but the thing is is like sitting around waiting was a problem because then we ended up burning even more money you know now we we end up you know Becky by this point I realized Becky's got some some mental problems I didn't really know her when we took off on the run and I realized right away she's she's got a she's bipolar she has bipolar condition she didn't really know it like

she knew something was wrong uh and and you know at at this point she told me we were we had been talking and she'd explained to me that she'd been divorced several times and that several guys that she had dated had had just left her like in the middle like she would come home she said i i like on a couple occasions she'd been living with someone came home and when she came home the guy was gone like the guy had cleaned out the apartment and just left and you know she was like i was like wow you sounds like you've dated some some real jerks and she's like i know right but the truth is like she's been divorced three times she's had multiple guys just leave her and all the divorces the guys just like left like they just they just took off and it was like that's weird that they would just

that that's your that's the cycle with you is that you date some guy and then he just takes off on you and that's strange but you know after looking at it it really wasn't that strange like after dating her i started realizing she put me in a in a a fighter flight mode constantly during these fights like she would get so erratic and these arguments would get so you know hyped up where she was just screaming and hollering and and like she'd get to the point where you think the cops are going to get called or you think she's going to physically attack you and all I wanted to do was leave like I don't want to hurt her I don't want to get into a physical confrontation with her I just want to leave and she was blaming me for everything I mean everything was my fault I had ruined her life and I'm like you begged to come with me

you wanted to come with me I told you what was happening you knew what was happening like you you asked to come with me didn't matter it was my fault uh I hate you. And then 10 minutes later, it was, I love you so much. I never want to be without you. You're the most amazing person I've ever met. I'm so lucky to be with you. I mean, it was really insane.

And just mentally, she was just so fucked up. You know, not that I'm the picture of mental health. But compared to her, I was. So we're waiting around. We're doing stuff like we're going on vacations. we're flying all over the place and we're going to like like ours of Bermuda

or they um wait we went to Jamaica oh yeah that's the thing by this point I had gone online to steal identities I had placed ads in like the flyer newspapers

which would be like the equivalent would be what is it now you put it go online you put these like the free publications that you can put stuff for sale wow like now you're telling me if you want to sell your house

where would you put if you want to sell something you would put it or if you want to buy something you would put it at fuck i it's it's craigslist jesus so you it would be like like you put a job out i put like an opera i put something out on craigslist let's say but it was called the flyer they don't think they have the flyer anymore you I would run an ad in the flyer and I pay a couple hundred bucks and it would run a little ad that would say good credit bad credit no problem so good credit bad credit no problem free loan applications call now and it had my phone number so then I'd run this ad and I'd get like 50 60 calls a day

so I'm answering the phone and I was it was a I was calling it um like United Capital Mortgage or something after you. United Capital Mortgage, help me help you. And they'd say, hey, I'm calling on your ad. I was when I'm thinking about buying a house and I'd go, okay, well, do you want to fill an application out now or do you want to fill one out? Do you want to do it online? You can do it online. Of course, you can't do it online. I didn't have a website or anything.

And they go, they always said, no, man, I'll fill it out now. I'll fill it out now. And I'd say, okay, sure. So we take an application. They would say, yeah, bro, problem is, dude, like I got like a you know I got bad credit like I got some credit a repo and I got some bad student loans and I would I'd say that's bro don't even worried about it we got a program for that we told I can totally get you in a house let's go ahead and take an application let's get you sorted out and let's get you into a get you into a house as soon as possible definitely can get

you a loan you know it didn't matter what they said I was going to tell them we have a program for that oh I just had a foreclosure I'm in for like I say I'm in foreclosure I'd say bro don't worry we got a government program for that We can totally get that taken care of. Not going to be a problem. I get you in a house. I'm just trying to get them to give me their information. So they would fill out the application.

You know, they'd give me their name, date of birth, everything. And I'd just ask a couple extra questions, which would be like, where were you born? What county were you born in? They'd say, you know, Hillsborough County. What's your mother's maiden name? They'd say, oh, her name is, you know, Jennifer Smith. Okay. And now I have enough to steal their identity.

But just by telling me their full name, what county they were born in and their mother's made name, I can now. their date of birth i can steal your identity so they would give me their information i'd say okay great look i'm going to go ahead and pull your credit and i'm going to give you a call back it'll probably be later today or tomorrow then i would after by the end of the day i would pick out the ones that i like like i like this guy he's about my age this woman's about about becky's age we'd have four or five different names and then i'd take all of the paperwork and i'd call a local mortgage company and I would say hey I have 50 you know some odd applications do you guys want

you know I'm with a mortgage company we we only take so many per month we're at our quota I'd like to go ahead and give these to you just take the applications pull these people's credit and call them back so I'd send over the applications I'd actually fax them I don't think people use faxes anymore but so I would actually you know it's like a scan document whatever so i'd fax over the all the applications to them they would then call pull these people's credit and call them back so the people get their credit pulled and they don't ever think anything's wrong like they get a call back from a mortgage company that says yeah that the guy that initially you called on and took it the application that's a more a guy that generates leads for you know for us

or whatever and they call them back and it totally makes sense to them if they question it at all i talked to a guy named they'd say i talked to a guy named john on the phone he took my application who are you oh my name's nancy and i'm calling you back we with this mortgage company we pulled your credit and we can get you alone or we can't get you alone we pulled your credit and you're horrible now it's nancy's problem to tell them that they're they can't get alone either way i have the information that i wanted so out of like 30 40 50 applications i would have i would cherry pick five or six people that were close to my age and i would then order their documents so i'd go online and I would order their birth certificates and their social security cards and sometimes

I'd register to vote in their name and then I'd order their high school transcripts and now I have enough information to steal your identity I could go down to I would go to whatever I'd go to South Carolina North Carolina Alabama there's plenty of state Florida going to the DMV I just have to show proof of residency so I would register to vote in that state and I'd get a voter's registration card within a couple days and I'd get the voters registration card or I would get a lease agreement I'd make a fake lease agreement fill out the lease agreement for some local UPS store go open up a box at the UPS store in case something gets mailed there for these guys and I'd get mail there so on the on the the lease looks like

it's an apartment but it's actually a UPS store so you can mail stuff there I would then go into local DMV say hey my name is for instance one of the first identity identities I did was a Michael Shannon no guy named Michael Eckert so I went and I would go in and get a driver's license in the name of let's say Michael Eckert's name and I would give them like I did this actually I think in North Carolina because I relocated at some point later in North Carolina and went into North Carolina gave them Michael Eckich

birth certificate Social Security card Now that's my proof of Those are my two primaries Then you need a secondary Which is really your social security card Also works as your secondary And then I would give them

A voter's registration card Or I would give them a lease agreement proving residency and they would say okay go ahead and wait over here and stand in line and 30 minutes later or 20 minutes later they'd call you up and they'd type all the information in and they have you stand in front of the you know standing in front of the little background they take my picture and boom they'd give me a driver's license or an ID or whatever multiple times I had to take driver's license tests you know they make you take a written test so which isn't written is obviously on a computer but the point is is that I would get that

ID. So in Michael Eckert's name I got Michael Eckert's name. I think I got a passport in his name. So Becky and I had our passports in two

fake names and we went to a few different places. One of the places was I remember Jamaica. Remember Jamaica because going through because when we came back from Jamaica I was so flipped out

because I was thinking that Becky because she'd been smoking pot she smoked dope the whole time we were there because she's a big pot fan so the whole time she was stoned when we were in Jamaica and I remember on the way back telling her if you put

anything in your fucking luggage like you're trying to bring anything back like that's going to be a problem no no and she kept joking with me that if they asked to look in her luggage just to run. And I was like, it's not even funny. So I remember going through, I remember we got into an argument waiting in line

in, at customs. And I went to the bathroom, came back, and she'd already gone through the line. So by the time I got there, they were like, okay, are you traveling alone? I said, no, I'm traveling with another, and I gave her her name. I forget it was something else. Anyway, Grace Hudson or something. So I gave her her name that she was using, and they were like, where is she? I said, I don't know.

She was in line. I went to the bathroom. Now she's gone. They were like, so you didn't stay in line with her? I went into the bathroom, came back. Like, it was a big issue standing there at customs with this fucking dude. And anyway, he let me through because she had already gone through. She was just such a jerk off.

all right so you know we're basically doing anything to burn time we're going mountain climbing we're going hiking we're going indoor mountain climbing we're doing all kinds of stuff

skydiving like we're just doing anything we can to burn all the time we went to Disney World for a week and we drove to Orlando and went to Disney World for a week I mean we're just doing anything we went to

oh we went to New Orleans no wait Do we think of our New Orleans then? You know what we did? We ran another scam, and we went to Tallahassee, because public records in Tallahassee was only like a week behind. So I remember we rented a house in Tallahassee from this guy, and it was in his ex-wife's name, and he was helping her out.

So we rented the house, and we got two loans on the house for like $50,000 apiece, so we're going to get like $100,000. And we got, and so Becky, goes and I had originally wanted to do the loan do the do I was going to transfer the deed out of this woman's name into my name and Becky was saying no no it's better off if I just pretend to be her we'll get we'll make a fake ID in her name and I'll be her just satisfy the loan because that way she's loaned it for like 10 years it looks more it looks more reasonable that your refinancing house that's been you've owned for 10 years than one that you bought a week

or a week or two ago and that does but it had never been an issue but she wanted in on the whole thing she wanted to like do her part so i said okay no problem and i was going to do like three or four loans but we didn't we only needed a little bit of money at the time because we were running low what we ended up doing was i i went and i satisfied the mortgage on this woman's house this woman had a mortgage and she had like two judgments on her so i satisfied both the judgments and the mortgage because it's the same basic document. So I satisfy all of these this stuff on her house and now Becky owns a house. The woman's name was Teresa Knight. So she owned the house and the name Teresa Knight. We then,

I then applied for like three, two or three different mortgage with hard money lenders and they were going to lend her money. So she's going to get like, she like, I think it was two. I think it got down to like she was going to borrow two different mortgages for like $55, $56,000 each mortgage. So she goes to the one closing. We go to the closing. She gets the $50-some-odd thousand dollars. And the next day, we were going to do the second closing. And on the way home, we got into an argument. I remember in, like in my book, I go over what the argument's about.

It's literally, this was the argument. I'm going to explain. This is how fucking insane this chick was. The argument was this. That as we're driving, she was, oh, my God, we just made like $56,000. And I think the check was her like, we were like 60. And she walked away with, like, let's say, 56, I think. So she's like, oh, my God, we just made $56.

thousand dollars that took like less than a month she says that's 56,000 dollars and I went well yeah I mean less expenses and we're driving and she goes what I go well less expenses I mean gas car payments driving down here you know spending you know this you know a couple of hotel nights like we stayed in the hotel that's it you know food that we could have been eating a whole like there's there's expenses but yeah it's roughly 56,000 I said roughly but less expenses and she goes you're fucking sucking all the fun out of this for me and I went

well what and she goes I mean less expenses and I went no I'm not saying we didn't make money I'm saying yeah we made money I'm saying but it's not $56,000

it's $56,000 less about $4 or $500 in expenses so it's but yeah you're right it's about $56,000 $56,000 and she goes she's you know what I want to go home

let's just go let's just go back to Atlanta and I went no no we we have to close the other the other loan is tomorrow it was for like 60 grand

I was like 60 grand tomorrow and she goes I said we gotta close tomorrow and she goes no I don't want to I don't want to do it I said, I go, Becky, I go, it's $60,000. What do you mean?

It's 60 grand. And she goes, less expenses. And I go, what the fuck does that mean? What the fuck are you saying? I go, it's 50, it's 60 grand. And she goes, I'm not doing it. It's too risky. I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

So it's not too risky. It's already gone through underwriting. It's already, we've already talked to the guys. It's ready to go. We're ready to close. Like they've already sent the money. We just have to go pick it up. And she goes, well, I'm not doing it.

I said, well, you know, if I'd known you were going to go tits up on me at the last minute, I said, I'd have just done it myself, which is my original plan. She goes, forget it, let's just go. We get into this huge argument, but she wouldn't budge. And so we end up driving back to Atlanta and never closed on the second loan. And that's just what a psycho this chick was. Then, oh, and then so now we've got like $55,000 extra. you know we've spent probably 30,000 in the last few last couple months and she says i remember

she goes she wanted a boob job so she's like well i i want to get a boob job i'm like why don't we get a boob job with the 60,000 dollars that you left in in tallahassee like the money you didn't get why are we getting a boob why are we paying for plastic surgery for you with the with the money that that you did get which you left the rest of the money i mean why are we still splitting the money you left your money and show you know we get into this huge argument she ends up getting a boob job she got she got a boob job liposection she got a tummy tuck she looked amazing she looked amazing afterwards at around the same time i ended up getting i ended up getting a nose job so i got a nose job i got hair uh two hair transplants so like they take the hair from the back

of your head, they take the follicles and they re-implanted them in the front of your head. So, you know what you could do? You could put up like a picture of my old mug, my, I'll show you the mug shot where I'm like balding in the front and then you can take a picture of me now. Well, they know what I look like now. You see the wanted poster? So yeah, they redo that. Then I got what's called a mini facelift. They go in behind your ears and they suck out all the junk in your neck. And so I did all this stuff. got rid of my love handles got what's called gyneclamastia surgery

because I used to work out all the time I had what they called bitch tits which is a gynaeclmastia like you get a growth in your you've seen older guys that have this growth in their chest right like a lump so they went in they cut that out

I guess a work done and so now we're still in Atlanta waiting for the satisfaction of mortgages to to take place. What did we do in Atlanta? Oh, I know what it was. Sorry.

So while this whole time, while we're still screwing around waiting, once we get the 50 some odd thousand, so now we've got like maybe, we're still only half probably, 80 or 90. Probably we're still back at like 90,000, maybe 90,000, maybe 100. And I remember we went to New Orleans.

So when we go to New Orleans, oh, yeah, this is the other thing. Before we even went to Atlanta, I'm sorry, before we even went to Tallahassee to borrow the $60,000, whatever it was, before we even went there, the St. Petersburg Times came out with an article called Dubious Deals. And this is a newspaper in Tampa. It's now called the Tampa Tribune. Or is it Tampa Times? Tampa Bay Times, I think. So they'd come up with an article called Dubious Deals where this guy Jeff Testerman had, he'd pieced together all of the different synthetic identities, the reservoir dogs, synthetic identities that I had been using. He pieced all of those together and came up with this article, which explains that there's this guy, Matt Cox, who's currently on federal probation. He drove up the prices in this area.

He borrowed a bunch of money. like he's he's quoting law enforcement he explained he like blows the whole thing wide open so every couple of days a new article's coming out because now people are talking law enforcement's talking they're looking for me I'm wanted I'm now on the run like there's all these articles that start coming out and then we just went to Tallahassee and just stole some more money and now we're in Atlanta well while we're in Atlanta these articles are coming out as an article there was a whole series around the same time when the first six months to a year that were gone whole a whole series of articles that come came out in the Chicago Tribune called the fugitives um well we ended up going to

New Orleans and while we were in New Orleans we just just for like a week or two I remember we were in New Orleans we went on a bunch of ghost tours we hung out we this was before Katrina we hung out went on some ghost tours uh you know rode the trolleys went to some bars, you know, did the whole New Orleans thing, went to a bunch of museums. Turns out that there's an artist by the name of Matthew Cox. The U.S. Marshals had gotten a tip that there was an artist named Matthew Cox that was having an exhibit in New Orleans, not on, we stayed on Royal Street, right, because there's Bourbon Street, Royal Street, there's like one street over, like literally about

two to three blocks from where we stayed. was a gallery, an art gallery, that was having an exhibit, like a two or three week long exhibit for a guy name, an artist name, Matthew Cox. While we're in New Orleans, the U.S. Marshals sent two U.S. Marshals to the gallery to show the gallery owner a photograph of me, my wanted poster, and he said, no, that's not Matthew Cox. That's not the Matthew Cox that I own. I mean, just completely by coincidence, this is what happened. I found this out five or six years later when I ordered the Freedom of Information Act. I found got the U.S. Marshall report that explains that they flew out there, went there, the whole Matthew Cox thing. So I thought that was hilarious or interesting because, I mean, for all I know, we passed right by these guys.

They were a couple blocks away. We were all over that area going to museums and bars and just hanging out. so what what ended up happening was we then we go back to we go back to Atlanta by this point we now have the the satisfaction of loans that I had created were now had now shown up in public record so now I own that house in Atlanta in the name Michael Shanahan I own his house free and clear and I have a driver's license in his name I have multiple bank accounts in his name. I actually, by this point, I have credit cards in his name. I have a social security number in his name, not with his soci on it, but the social of a, you know, a kid. So I have a social

security number in his name. So I have everything I need in that I need to close on his house. I then get three hard money, I call three hard money lenders in the area. Just go online and I look them up and find three guys. One comes out at, let's say, 10 o'clock in the morning, looks at the house and says, Oh, Michael, yeah, this is a nice house. This is worth about $190,000, $150,000. I'll lend you $150,000 on it. I go, okay, great. We schedule a closing at his title company.

Around 2 o'clock, another guy shows up, walks around the house, says, yeah, nice house. This is nice house. It's worth about $190,000, I'll lend you $150,000 on it. I said, great, we schedule a closing to close at his title company. Fourth guy, a third guy comes out, whatever, around 4 or 5 o'clock. day looks at the house everything's great he's going to lend me $150,000 on it schedule another closing so within a week now they all go to they all send an

abstractor down to public records they look at the title and the title is in the name the deed is in the name Mike I have an idea it's Michael I'm in the house he sees me living in the house I don't live in the house I tell him I don't live in the house I mean I tell him it's a rental I'm gonna do repairs put hardwood floors in put a pool in put a new roof on i'm going to do an addition you know tell them i'm going to do all this stuff tell them it's a rental property because i can't say i live in the house because if you go in the house there's nothing in the house except for some bedroom furniture where we're what we're using i like i didn't furnish the entire house because it doesn't look right i mean because i'm not first

of all i'm not going to blow thirty thousand dollars on new furniture for a place that i'm going to abandon in a month so all of these guys are ready to lend me money on this house and I'd say a week later by this point they've called my employer which is a telephone number that goes to Becky so Becky's answering they might have asked for W-2s and paystubs I doubt it they were hard money lenders

they typically don't they'd pulled my credit I have a couple credit cards that showed up but there's no real credit it's brand new credit and if they asked hey what's with this credit like you only have a couple credit cards that have only been open for a month or two I'd tell them well I'm in out of bankruptcy like 10 years ago and I haven't really reestablished credit and I'm just now trying to reestablish credit and they go okay that

makes sense and it does make sense so we schedule the closings and I go to the I go to the title companies and I close let's say I close one on you know one on a Monday one on a Tuesday and then another one on a whatever Wednesday or Thursday not that I couldn't close them all the same day I just saying that within the same day or a few days I close them all about the same time I get the checks issued to me I then turn around I go deposit all the checks into different bank accounts. Well, what I usually did was, instead of having them give me a check for $150,000, what I would typically do is I would say,

I go to the title company, I'd say, hey, listen, I owe some general contractors, and I owe different people, some money. Can you take my $150,000 check? Can you break it apart and give me one check for $29,000 to this guy? One check for $7,000 to this guy. check for 14,000 to this guy so I would ask them to break up the checks and um you know that's what I typically did so usually they would do that they wouldn't have a problem

with that I remember this one title company they had an issue with that they were like oh we don't know that's against policy so they just gave me the check so I went to their bank and I asked their bank can you break up this check into different cashier's checks and I remember the woman gave me a hard time like this is something like I didn't didn't put in the book but I remember she was like I'm sorry that's against policy we don't do that I went okay well I remember going well the check is good right she said yeah it's good but we don't break up checks into cashier's checks like you don't have a bank account here and I was like okay well but the check is good right I said so if I came in here with cash and gas

you to give if I asked you to buy a cashier's check or a cashier's check and I didn't have a bank account would you then give it to me she was like if you came in with like two thousand dollars and wanted a cashier's check i said yeah she goes yeah we would do that i said so what's different this is a check to your bank that you're saying is good and she was like i'm sorry it's just not policy we just don't do that i went but if i wanted to cash this check you would have to cash it and she looked at me and she went well i mean it's a hundred and fifty thousand dollars and i was like right but you still have to cash it she said well we couldn't cash it at this at this branch you'd have to go to a cash transaction branch and I said great can you set that up and she went

well why don't you just deposit I said I don't want a deposit I want cash or I want the cashier's checks I want one or the other she said well we can't do that here we have to schedule it I said well then schedule it and she is well I would have to call down there I said so call and she went are you serious I said yes ma'am I'm serious and she was okay well I'll schedule it I'll when do you want I said tomorrow she says I'll schedule it for tomorrow you can go get cash tomorrow I said, great, tell them I'm going to want it in nickels, dimes, and quarters. And she looked at me and she goes, you must be joking. I said, no, ma'am.

I said, and when they asked, why are we counting $150,000 in nickels, dimes, and quarters? You can tell them about your strict adherence to policy for not cutting this up into cashier's checks. And she just looked at me, I said, or you can just give me the cashier's checks, because I said, I'm getting one or the other. And she looked at me, and she went, what were the names you want the cashier's checks in? and I said okay so I gave her like the name Scott Cugno I want to check for Scott Cugno

the name and for $29,000 I want another check cut to this guy to this girl to this guy and these were all names of people I had IDs in so she cuts up these checks

and we so Becky and I spend the next week going around cashing these checks and depositing this so we deposit some of the checks we cash some of the checks so I'm a at this point I'm I'm acting as Michael

well I end up I have a check in the name Scott and I have a real ID in Scott's name for 29,000 so I instead of depositing it in his bank account I remember Becky and I went to the bank and I walk in the bank and I said hey look I need to cash this and the guy goes

the cashier looked at it and she goes well as $29,000 and I went right and she said I mean why don't you just deposit it? And I said, I don't have a bank account here. I have a bank account in Florida. And a small local bank in Florida, I don't feel like.

Back then they would hold your checks for like 10 days and out-of-state banks. And I was like, I don't feel like having it held. I just want the cash. And she goes, well, you're going to have to talk to the manager. So I go, okay, so I walk over and I sit in the manager's office and it's a little glass cubicle. You could see the whole bank. I said, okay, no problem. So I go and I sit there and he comes over and he says, okay, why don't you just deposit

in your bank? And I explain to him why. And then he goes, okay, well, we have to look into this. And I said, that's fine. And he goes, can I have your driver's license and two forms of ID? Sure, I give him my driver's license. And I give him a credit card in the name for Scott Cognow. Well, it was a debit card.

So I give him a debit card. So it says Visa, and I give it to him. He comes, so he walks in the back to check it out. And I remember my phone rang. So my phone rings, right? And I look at my phone, and it's a phone number that I don't recognize. No, no, no, no, no, wait, the first phone number I looked at. So I look at my phone, and it's Becky.

She's sitting in the car. And I look at the phone and I go, huh. So I pick it up and I go, yeah, what's up? And she said, what's taking so long? I go, I don't know the guy's being an asshole. He won't give me the money. He's running a check right now on the whole thing. And she was, oh my God, get out of the bank.

Get out of the bank. And I go, no, I'm not going to get out of the bank. I'm just, I just have to wait. I have to run a check. Like the check is good. The check is good. My idea is good. everything's real so I just have to wait she says oh my god I'm so nervous I go calm down I said

look if the cops show up call me and I'll run out of the bank and you can meet me behind the public's like in the same shopping plaza she's like all right hang out the phone a couple minutes later the guy comes back and he goes um why do you I have a question for you so why do you want why do I want cash I said I want cash because I work for a construction company and we cash guys payroll checks and so I'd like to have the cash on hand to cash their payroll checks and he went okay okay

that makes sense and he walks off phone rings again it's Becky she's screaming and hollering a couple minutes later the guy comes back and he goes I have a question he said who gave you this check I go the guy's name is Michael and he goes why did he give you the check and none of this is his business by the way

so I was like I look but they weren't hard questions and a normal person would just answer the questions they wouldn't get pissy with them they would just be like oh well this so he goes why did he give you the check and I went my construction company that I work for

we're doing an addition for him and he owes us this money on a draw and he says okay okay and you own the construction company I said I own part of the construction construction company he was okay okay he says yeah that makes sense

and gets up and he walks away so the phone rings again Becky's screaming and hollering get out of the bank, get out of the bank. I said, there's a cops here or something? She's like, no, no, I just, I feel nervous. You've got to leave. I said, I can't leave.

Like, I can't leave the bank. If I leave the bank, I'm walking away with a, he's got a check for $29,000, my ID and my, my visa, my debit visa. Like, I can't leave. They'll call the cops for sure. I have to play it out. So I hang up on her. A couple minutes later, he comes back. He asks another question.

He leaves. and my phone rang again only this time my phone rings and I don't recognize the number so I go huh so I pick up the phone no big deal I pick up the phone and I go hello and this woman says

hi is this Michael and I go yes because I'd use the same phone number for most of these guys so although I'm in the bank as Scott the phone number is for it could be Scott No's phone, it could be Michael, so I go, yes, I go, who's this?

She goes, this is Kimberly from SunTrust, SunTrust Bank, South Trust? I don't know. She says, this is Kimberly from SunTrust Bank? We have someone in the bank by the name of Michael, no, by the name of Scott No, trying to cash a check. We're just calling to verify that the funds that you had initially issued the check and that it was okay to cash the check. And I went, yeah, she was,

can you verify the amount? I said, yeah, I believe it was for $29,000 even. And she goes, oh, okay, that's all we need to verify. Thank you. So it's good. I said, yes, it's good. Scott, I issued it to Scott Cugno. It's fine.

She goes, oh, okay, that's fine. Thank you. So go to hang up the phone. I said, how did you get this phone number? And she says, oh, I got the phone number because we called the title company where the check was originally issued from. And they gave us your phone number. If they had called information or anybody, they could have gotten the real Mike, but they didn't.

They happened to call the title company who gave them my number. So I just got lucky. So I hang up the phone. I wait and a couple minutes later, still took this guy five minutes. The bank manager comes over with this woman and says, Mr. Cugno, we're going to go ahead and cash a check. And they count out $29,000. He counts it out twice. And then when I'm done, when he's done, I scoop up the money, put it in an envelope, put it in my pocket, stand up.

And just as I was leaving, he says, Mr. Cugano, I'd like to mention something. I said, sure, what's that? He goes, I feel very apprehensive about this transaction. And I go, really? I go, what is it exactly? And he goes, you know, I can't put my finger on it, but I just feel like something's wrong. And I go, huh. I go well I'm sure it'll come to you

and I turn around I just walk right out of the bank listen that dude about a week later I know the Secret Service showed up and said did you cash a check for $29,000

from this fucking guy right here like completely not the guy so I remember I got back into the car and I closed the door and I was like oh my God I'm laughing I go they just cashed a check for $29,000, say this.

I told her about the phone call. I told her the whole thing. She's like, you got so lucky. Well, there used to be a program called masterminds. So it was like a true crime program about guys that they would say were like master of criminals. And I close the door and I'm sorry. And so I'm like, oh my God, you can't believe this, boom, boom.

And she's like, oh, my gosh, you got so lucky. I said, listen, I said, when they do the, when they do the episode of masterminds on me, I said, that's going to be in the episode. And she goes, oh, my God. She just started laughing. and we backed out and drove off and that was the only check I ever cashed for more than

basically $10,000 because that was what, you know, there's something called a cash transaction report they have to fill out or a suspicious activity report. That is the only time I ever got a CCR

filed on me and I got a suspicious activity filed on me out of all the millions of dollars of checks that I cashed. That's the only time I ever got a cash transaction report and a suspicious activity report filed on me is because of that one thing.

But I drove off. We spent, we cashed $350,000 worth of checks over the next week or so, just depositing them, cashing them, deposit them, cash them. Sometimes they would go, sometimes the bank would get, like, I would be cashing, we would deposit

a check into one of the IDs for, that Becky had, and I would go in and cash a check for like eight grand and then they would call her like they go hold on a second they'd walk in the back and call her and be like listen some guys here trying to cash a check for nine thousand dollars and she has a new account it's only been open three or four months so they and they would say you know he's trying to cash a check for nine thousand dollars here's his name did you write this check and she was she'd go yeah I wrote the check that's fine that's so and so

I wrote him the check they go oh okay she'd be sitting in the car verifying that she'd written the check they'd cash the check and I believe that was happening every single day for a week or two So at the end of that scam, we pulled out $450,000, I'd say about $450,000. And at that point, we kind of, we had built up some additional identities and started a new, a new, we'd set up like a safe house in Charlotte, North Carolina. at this point and so we had a whole life kind of set up like we had an apartment rented we we were um we had furniture bought like we had this furnished apartment completely in this god right downtown charlotte like on the i forget what floor it was whatever 10th 11th floor or something i forget but i mean it was a nice condo downtown it was an apartment building at the time

and it was but it was they turned it into condos but super nice um right downtown um beautiful fucking beautiful place god it had i think had to be fourteen fifteen hundred square feet two bedroom two bath concrete floors um stainless steel appliances i mean just the place high ceilings was great so we'd set this whole thing up and we're still in it in alpharetta georgia basically atlanta georgia cashing checks and we we have a little over four hundred thousand four or five no about probably close to five hundred thousand at this point four hundred fifty five hundred thousand in cash in a duffel bag and it's sitting in I remember it was sitting in the back of the vehicle we bought a new oh by the way we bought another vehicle we took the Audi and we dropped the

Audi that we had been driving just before we took off it had been housed in the garage so just before we took off we went and we put the Audi in a police station parking lot so I parked it in a police station parking lot and I left we went to went and got like some lira and we printed out a brochure for uh for like a hotel in spain right like some spanish hotel and we left the brochure in the wedged between the car seats and we left a couple of lira laying in the back and then we got a spanish for dummies book and stuck it in the trunk with some other just random junk that you would leave in a car you're abandoning right so we just left some random bullshit in the car

and then left it in the police station parking lot where you know they're going to find it. They're already looking for this car. Then we had another car we bought in the name of, what was the name of the guy? That was Michael Eckert. I was Michael Eckert in Charlotte. So

we've got a car in the name Michael Eckert. We had a we got like $4,500,000 in cash and a duffel bag sitting in the back and we had all the money out and yeah that was it that was it and we abandoned everything so we abandoned everything

and I'd say about a week or so after we left Atlanta to go to Charlotte, North Carolina to do another scam at that point the Secret Service and the FBI showed up at the Alpharetta house and went and contacted

the real Mike told him that, hey, there's been this scam committed and these guys just borrowed almost half a million dollars on your house. And we took off and that was it. So that scam was like over. Now we were in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Becky was using the name Michelle Joseph and I was using the name Michael Eckert. And I remember we got there and we had to start buying,

like we had a bunch of cash, I think like whatever, 400, over $400,000 in cash. So we started buying, we started buying furniture. We live in a really nice, like an apartment building in downtown Charlotte. And we started buying furniture. Remember we would go in and I would pull out cash and I remember the, like I would pull out cash

and the guy would say, look, if you give me more than $10,000 in cash, like you have, they're like, do you have a credit card? Do you have a check? Do you have this? No, because we had just opened, like we were just opening up bank accounts and things and they were like yeah man uh if you don't have that stuff then you know and you give me more than ten thousand dollars i have to turn it in so we're like

look here's what we're going to do we're going to buy these two pieces of furniture for $8,000 and I'll come back tomorrow and the guy was like cool come back the next day I'd buy the couch for seven or $8,000 come back the next day we did this over the course of like a week we got like whatever $30,000 or the furniture um I ended up getting an A car. I bought an infinity. Becky bought a... Did she have an infinity also? I got a Nissan. What is it? The 350 Z or something like that. And then we also got an infinity. We got the infinity, whatever it was, the SUV. listen we had we got we bought like three cars got a nice apartment and kind of started hanging out set it waiting to set up the next scam so we I think we ended up going to we ended up

going to Jamaica I remember we went to Jamaica and I had to get a passbook port, which wasn't difficult to do. Because once I had Michael Eckert's driver's license, like I had a state issue in North Carolina, I went into the state DMV and I got a state issued driver's license. So I have a driver's license in this guy's name. I'd ordered all of his documents. You know, I had gotten all of his information because I'd run an ad like a buy here. Not buy here. He was a good credit, bad credit, no problem. Free mortgage. Free mortgage. applications call now and so people would call up and I take all their information and then I'd order their documents so I had all this guy's documents and I had already gotten a driver's license

so then I just walked in and I got a passport like they don't ask if you're a US citizen they don't ask for your your your fingerprints or anything to this day they don't I always had people say oh they don't do that anymore well then you must be an idiot because you know like people say oh well uh uh they they asked for fingerprints now really because i just got a passport and i'm a a i'm a a felon and i just went got a passport and they didn't ask me for any fingerprint so if you're a u.s citizen they didn't ask for them now then they don't ask for them now i had a per my first certificate and a driver's license got myself a passport same thing um michelle Got hers. Michael Eckert got his. We went to

Jamaica. Remember the first thing that Becky did was we went to Jamaica was she went out on the beach and got a bunch of pot. What else? You know, we went on and we did all the thing. We drove four-wheelers. We took out wave runners. We stayed for like 10 days. We hung out. It got boring after a while. She was driving me nuts. So then we came back. I mean, you know, I'm walking through passport control, or I'm walking through passport, you know, the passport center with a fake, with a real passport. I was issued by the state department. But, you know, I walk up and you put the passport down. And you say, you know, they say, hey, you know, did you, you know, welcome back to America. Did you, you know, was a business or pleasure? And you say, I was, I was a, they asked you going out and, or coming back in, they ask you, say, oh, is it a pleasure. We just got back from Jamaica. They go, okay. You walk on in. So. You know, it's, look, I mean, I'd love to lie and say that, oh, the stress was killing me and I couldn't sleep at night, but the truth is, you know, it was pretty cool.

It's pretty cool walking around fake passports, well, passports, you've got false passports, you've got false driver's licenses. I'm driving a car in the name of the guy. I'm driving a sports car. At that time, it's a $50,000 sports car. Probably, now they're probably $80,000 or $100,000. So, you know, we're driving sports cars and SUVs. We're living in downtown Charlotte. We're living a pretty decent life,

but we're blowing through the money pretty quick. At one point, we were driving, and I remember Becky said, look, you know, we're stealing identities. And, you know, we're, like, at some point, we're going to have to get, she was like, you know, like, we're stealing these guys' identities and stuff.

Like, you know, you're worried it's ever going to catch up with you. and oh i know what it was what i remember what what keyed that in i was driving one day and i was speeding because listen if you don't give a crap about that you're keeping your driver's license because you're only going to have it for six months or a year you drive like a maniac i'm driving like a maniac and so i was speeding and this cop pulled me over like a state trooper he pulled me over and i remember becky was flipping out oh my god i'm so oh my god oh my god i'm like it calm down I've got a driver's license. So I give the guy the driver's license and he asked me, you know, how fast were you going?

I was like, I have no idea. How fast were you, how long were you behind me? I got one point I was doing like 90, 95 miles an hour. And he just was like shocked. But I mean, what do I care? Write me the ticket. What is it? A $300 ticket?

$400 ticket? I don't care. I've got $400,000 in cash or $300,000 probably by this point. We blow through so much money. So the guy writes me the ticket and he leaves. and Becky says, you know, are you concerned about, you're not concerned about these cops? Like, are you concerned about, you know, like what happened? Like getting, we don't we need permanent, don't we need like a permanent identities?

And I remember I said, you know, we need permanent identities for sure. We're going to have to, I'm trying to figure that out now. Like I was just in my head always kind of thinking about how to do this, how to do that. And I said, my problem is that what concerns me is not that the cop's going to figure out that I'm using a fake ID or a false ID. What I'm concerned about is that the guy whose driver's license I now possess in his name, when I had interviewed him on the phone, he told me that he'd had a DUI like three or four years earlier. and he'd lost his license but he had it again because when I asked him about it one of the things I asked these guys was do you ever had a felony and he said no I actually had my driver's license taken away for a DUI like whatever three four years ago but it was for

like a year but I got it back like I don't think that was a felony and I was like okay my fear was what if I'm driving around this guy's driver's license and he's lost his license like what if he got a felon what if he got pulled over and got another DUI and his license was suspended and I'm driving around in another state with his driver's license like the hub system that they use would probably tell the other states that this guy has a DUI so I could be driving around on a suspended license and not know it and I said that's my fear and I said and she was like what do you want to do about that I said well we need to be able to get people's get IDs and identification in people's names that are real people that aren't using those and I remember she

was like like what like uh who do you want to get like i go i don't know she was like like mental patients or something or i was like well how are we going to get their information and she goes i don't know what about um what about like prisoners or inmates or something i thought i don't know what if my fear with that i thought about that my fear about getting like inmates information or prisoners information let's say some like that guy with a life sentence like he's got a real social security card date of birth or birth certificate social security card he's got all that stuff is out there and he's not ever going to use it again he'd be perfect but my fear with that was i didn't know that if i got pulled over and was using his license or even i could even go into the dmv maybe for all i know

there's some kind of a a check in there where they check your you know your your criminal record or something i didn't know and what if i get arrested is this guy like they're oh my god this guy's supposed to be in prison and bam they grabbed me and then they fingerprint me and then they figure out that I'm wanted so I was like I don't know what if they were in a check I'm not sure so we were happen to be driving down we were going to get like a lunch we were going to like a subway you know subway sandwich place we were driving down off the interstate and I remember I was parked at there stopped at the interstate for the light and I was about to turn and try and go to the sandwich place and I looked over and there was a homeless guy

And he was holding one of those, you know, we'll work for food signs. And I looked over and I said, that guy, that's what we need. We need that guy's information. And Becky was like, are you serious? That guy? She's the homeless guy? And I was like, yeah. I was like, think about it.

He's not using his information. And she's like, yeah, but what if he cleans himself up and this and that? And I was like, I don't know. I said, I don't think these guys clean themselves up. Like, I think a lot of his mental illness. And she was like, well, he probably lost his license. I said, well, let's go find out. So I drove across the street, let her go in and get a sandwich.

I walked across the street to the guy, and I said, hey, bro, can I talk to you for a second? I'll give you 20 bucks real quick. And he goes, oh, yeah, what's up, man? So I gave him 20 bucks. I said, listen, dude. I said, I got some quick questions, man. I said, and he goes, what are you doing? You taking a survey or something?

And I went, a survey? And I go, no. I remember I said, no, why? You get a lot of surveyors out here? And he goes, well, I mean, we get homeless, we get a lot of, you know, we get like social workers and stuff. And I thought, oh, okay, good to know. So he's used to people coming up to him asking questions like social workers. So I said, well, first of all, I said, when was the last time you were employed?

And he said, man, it's been, I forget what he said, you know, it's been five, ten years or something, six years, seven years. I said, well, what happened? He said, you lost my job, and, you know, I'm a drunk. I said, he said, I drink, and that's what I want to do. I said, do you think there, any chance you're ever going to get it, be gainfully employed again, like get a job, working 40 hours a week? And I remember he looked around and he goes, nah, this is it for me. I was like, okay, I go, do you have a driver's license?

And he said, no. And I went, I said, did you, was it suspended? Or he said, well, one, I don't have it. And two, he said, no, I just think it's probably expired or something. I said, would you get a DUI? Or he's like, how would I get a DUI? He goes, I don't drive. I don't have a car.

I don't drive. And I was like, okay, do you have an address? And he looked around. He goes, no, man, he basically lived in the woods. And then I said, are you ever been in trouble before? He said, yeah, I've been arrested a few times for like vagrancy and loitering and being drunk in public and stuff. He said, but those are all misdemeanors. He goes, and they keep us, he has someone like me, they keep me in jail for 30 days and then they let me go.

I go, are you, you don't get probation? He's like, well, look around, bro. How can I do probation? I don't have a house. He said, so I don't have anywhere to, I can't pay. So I can't pay my state, like that would be a state probation thing. I can't pay state probation. I can't go to my probation officer.

I can't, I don't have a gainful, I don't have an address that you can go to. I'm not gainfully employed. Like, you can't put me on probation. I don't meet any of the requirements. So he said, no, the judge will basically keep me in jail for 30 to 60 days, and then they just release me. And I thought, okay. so he's got the ability to get a driver's license he he's probably never going to go out and get a DUI because he's never going to drive again he's not planning on going out and cleaning his life up

and getting a job I mean this guy wants to be an alcoholic and just drink and beg you know for people to give him money enough money to eat and and drink and so I thought this guy's perfect he's perfect because he does have a social security number and he does have a birth certificate somewhere so i was like okay cool man i i i appreciate it so i gave him 20 more bucks and i left so i went home that night and i wrote up what i called a statistical survey um statistical statistical survey sheet or analysis sheet or something i forget exactly what i you know form statistical analysis form whatever you know and i remember i put like the the social security symbol, I copied it, you know, cut and paste it, and I put it in the middle, and I put

like statistical survey form over and over and over again all the way across. And that was like a cover sheet and then you flipped it. And on the second one, it was like form number 2207. And then it said, you know, that it was printed in the government office. And I basically copied most of what's on an application, a basic, like a mortgage application. So it looked very, the bottom you have a bunch of numbers and where it was printed and the form number and a bunch of just junk so i printed up all that and then i wrote out 17 questions the questions were like name date of birth uh where you were you know where you were born uh the state county what states have you had drivers identification in have you ever had a held a u.s passport have you

have you been in the u.s military uh what is your social security uh what is your social security number, what is your mother's made name? Have you ever been arrested? Do you have any felonies? Have you ever been in prison? You know, do you have any felonies? Like, I had a whole list. They ever been in the military, the U.S. military, you know, whatever. I had a whole list of

questions. Are you currently on food stamps? Have you ever been on food stamps or, you know, government assistance of any kind? Blah, blah, blah. Or you're on Medicare, Medicaid. You know, I went through everything. Do you receive housing from the government? All kinds of stuff I went over. Wrote up all the questions, printed out a bunch of the forms, went and bought a clipboard,

went and got a little plastic badge, and put my face on the badge, and I made what I thought maybe a Salvation Army little badge would look like. So I made it, it said statistical surveyor, and it said, you know, Salvation Army, and it had some made-up name.

Actually, I think it said Michael Eckert, and then it had my picture. I actually used a picture that was on my wanted poster. So I put that picture on. So I put it on my belt, and I took my little, my little, you know, clipboard with my sheets, and I went out, and I drove around

until I found a bunch of homeless guys. And I just walked up to him, and I said, hey, man, I'm doing a survey for the Salvation Army. We're trying to figure out where we're going to place our next indigent facility. And they were like indigent. I was, well, homeless facility,

and they were like, oh, okay, yeah, yeah. No, man, I'm not interested. I said, would you mind taking a service? they were like well I'm not interested and I said hey bro I said it pays 20 bucks cash right now cash right now you're gonna be 20 bucks cash right now I said right now cash and they were like yeah bro what do you need so you have to think you've got to drive around a long time to find a a guy a white guy and a white woman in their early 30s that's a lot of driving around so I ended up surveying multiple people within the day maybe three or three or

or four or five people a day you know it doesn't you know it's a few hours it takes a couple hours here most mostly you're just driving around looking and you know of course the first thing i say is one of the one of those questions right away was you know just you know are you do you have an address where you receive mail are you homeless you know that sort of thing and if they were homeless bam it was on so i start asking them the questions boom boom boom boom boom get their information and go to the next one. Go to the next one. So once I got their information,

I would then order their documents. I would order their social security cards. I'd order their birth certificates. I'd get all the information. I'd register to vote in their name. I would order their high school transcripts. That was one of the things I asked was where they, if they had graduated high school, if so, where?

Do you have a college degree, if so, where? So I'd get their high school transcripts. I would get, so I would order. Every document that I could think of. Once I got those documents in, of course, then I would go into the local DMV. Of course, I obviously had to make sure I couldn't go into a local, a DMV in a state they'd had a driver's license in, which is why I always asked what states have you had a license in or an ID in. So if I talked, if I drove into South Carolina and talked to people in South Carolina, I would get an ID in North Carolina.

or wherever, you know, Tennessee or Alabama or Texas or whatever, Florida. So I ended up surveying a bunch of guys in North Carolina, and then I got IDs in South Carolina and Alabama. I, so, oh, yeah. So we're trying to think about it because we've got. a bunch of IDs and we were opening up bank accounts here's what it what happened was i'm trying to think of where i got this one guy so i then ended up driving becky wanted to go see her son and her parents so we drove to we ended up driving to uh gosh where did we drive I'm trying to think if I went to New Orleans before this.

Yeah, I think we'd already gone to New Orleans. Anyway, yeah, we'd already gone in New Orleans by this point. So we drove to Las Vegas, and we go to Las Vegas, and I'm walking around Las Vegas. Did I ever tell this story? No, I couldn't have, because we were in North Carolina when this happened. So we drive to Las Vegas, and we go to Las Vegas, and Becky goes and she sees her mom and her stepfather. And she sees her son, and we went and we bought them a bunch of, bought her son at like a thousand, $2,000 with a present. And I remember we gave her, I'm trying to think of how much money we found.

We went and got her ex-husband who was raising her son, and we gave him maybe 10 or 20 grand. I forget exactly how much, but we gave him a chunk of money. I went up to him. He was a valet at like a hotel. I just walked up to him, and I said his name, and he turned around, and he looked at me. I forget his name now. And I said, you know, whatever his name was, you know, Tim or whatever. I was like, hey, Tim.

And he's like, yeah, what can I do for you? I go, my name's Matt Cox. I said, do you know who I am? and he was like whole he was like uh yeah what's going on and he said he was how's becky he was how's how's becky and i go becky's fine i said she's standing over there and i said she wants to give you some money to for her son and so we gave him like 20 or 30 grand i forget what it was 10 20 whatever let's say 20 so it was 20 grand in cash or 30 grand in cash and he took the money and we uh Becky went and hung out for the day with her son and talked to her parents and and then we went

around while we were there like you know we were there for days and she blew a ton of money gambling like she is not a good gambler of course you know she was a gambling junkie so you know I played blackjack twice the first hand I won the second one I lost I said I'm done like I don't like to lose so um and and so uh we drove around looking for homeless people in in Las Vegas so we get out and I remember we had gone to a couple places but man there were so many homeless people and i was afraid to get out and go into a crowd of homeless people and start pulling out 20s there were that many of them so i was like wow i was like there's a fucking ton of them like i'd rather find some guys by themselves and so she goes i know

exactly where we need to go so we drove down a few streets and there were there was a white uh there was a two three white guys sitting on like a park bench and i was like oh they're perfect so i I jump out of the car, and I walk over, and one of the guys comes walking over, and he's like, hey, what can I do for you? He goes, what do you need? And I said, I'm taking a survey for the Salvation Army, and I was wondering if I could ask you some quick questions, and he goes, nah, I'm not interested. I said, hey, man, it pays $20 right now.

He goes, you're going to give me $20 cash right now. I said, absolutely. And I showed him the money. You know, like, I pull out the money. I got it right now. And he goes, I put it in my pocket. He's like, okay. And he said, what do you need to know?

And I said, well, what's your name? He's like, you know, Gary. So it was Gary Sullivan, I write down Gary Sullivan, and where were you born, how old are you, where were you born, what's your mother's name, maiden name, and so I go down the list, and when I get to the question of, I said, have you ever been arrested? And he said, okay, I said, is it a, do you have any felonies? And he went, he said, no, no, I've been arrested for, I've been arrested for prostitution several times. He said, but it's not, he said, but it's not a felony here in, you know, in Nevada. And I went, you mean solicitation? Because to me, you know, prostitution is women get charged with prostitution.

Men get charged with soliciting them. And, you know, so that was my first, I go, you mean solicitation? And he goes, no, no, he's a prostitution. He said, I offered to blow an undercover cop for $20. And I went, oh, you're a male prostitute. and he goes yeah he said well i mean a girl's got to do what a girl's got to do and he like suddenly just kind of went woo like he was like turned went straight very flamboyant and i was like oh wow i was like i totally didn't see that and i was like okay so i write down the information i

write down all the information give him his 20 bucks and he leaves and anyway i remember turning around and looking at Becky and she was laughing her ass off so i go and i get in the car and i was like did you know and she she goes what's your boyfriend say and i said did you know that this is what is this this is this is an area i'd asked him actually i'd asked him i said oh is that what your that's you that's what i'm doing out here i said i said does everybody know that this is an area is this like an area for like like sex workers and he goes yeah everybody knows that i was like oh okay so when i got in the car becky was like um oh what's your boyfriend say and i said i said man you motherfucker and she started laughing and she was like she's

like I knew it when we got here I knew those were those guys were prostitutes so we drove off we went back to we drove all the way back to Charlotte to North Carolina and I ordered I got in several you know several people's information so I ordered all of their information and I ended up getting Gary Sullivan stuff in and I went to South Carolina to Columbia South Carolina I set up a UPS box and I went to, set up a UPS box, and then I went and I got, I applied, I'd already applied for a bunch of stuff. And I ended up making up a lease. I think I had a lease there. So I made a lease, and I went into the local DMV, and I got an ID.

So I walk in with Gary Sullivan's birth certificate, his social security card, and a copy of his lease agreement for the UPS box. So they thought it was an apartment. So, you know, instead of putting, like they always tell you you can't do this, you put down, where the box number, instead of putting, you put, you know, apartment number. They always say, oh, you can't do that. Well, yeah, you can. You know what you can't do? This is the only times I ever had a problem with that at, like, the DMV or opening up a, opening up like a bank account was if the UPS store or mailboxes, etc. store had been around for four, five, or six years.

But if you went to a new one, it wasn't in the system. So if it had just opened six months or a year ago, you could do. do that and they wouldn't the system wouldn't catch it so i went to this place where it had been open recently probably within like the last year or so and i called the i had called around like i would call around like hey how long have you been open oh we opened about eight months ago or oh we opened about 16 months ago or so i went to one got the information went into the dmv got an i wrote up a lease agreement for an apartment lease but put that address on it went in gave it to them I have the birth certificate.

I have the Social Security card. I have my proof of residency, which is my lease agreement. Tell them I lost my driver's license in the move here. I've been here about two weeks. And I need an ID. I'll come back and get a driver's license. And they said, no problem. Stand over there.

Stood over there. They took my picture. I get the ID. I leave. So now I have an ID in the name Gary Sullivan. So at this point, I'm in South Carolina. I'm in Columbia, South Carolina. and I have assumed, I started up, I started a scam with using the name Gary Lee Sullivan,

Gary Sullivan, which was a transient that I had met in a homeless, he was also a male prostitute that I'd met in Nevada in Las Vegas. And I already, I'd gotten an ID in his name in South Carolina. and was starting a scam in his name. So let's see. So here's, so I wrote a book called Shark in the Housing Pool. Here's what I want to mention is every once in a while I'll see one of these quotes

that I put in the book. And the quote is, Cox and Halk disappeared from Georgia last summer, then resurfaced in Columbia, South Carolina for more of the same, using false IDs and forged documents and setting up a false. phony loan company to snare

more than a million dollars in fraudulent loans, the Chicago Tribune. Bro, what the hell, you know? Like, it's ridiculous. And then this is one from Fortune Magazine, wrote. Cox has the ability to dramatically alter his appearance.

He frequents tanning salons and has had numerous cosmetic surgeries. Which is true. At this point, I have had a nose job so I had a nose because look my my picture was

you know I was on the Secret Services Most Wanted list the FBI's looking for me the U.S. Marshals are looking for me I got you know there's posters of me like I know they're looking for me there's all these articles that are coming out and I you know they're

it's bad so I ended up getting a nose job I had a I had a couple different liposuction surgeries and you know I had lost weight I had two hair transplants or two um they call them hair graphs whatever they're not plugs so two hair graphs would actually cut the hair out of the back of your head like the little seeds that make your hair grow and they implant them

in your your hair because I when I left Tampa I was you know was thinning and my hairline was receding so I had that done I had what was called it was called a mini facelift so by this point I look drastically different. You know, I mean, it's still me, but I definitely, it's questionable. I've lost weight. I'm tanning. I'm wearing my hair different. And I have an ID in the name Gary Lee Sullivan. I go to South Carolina.

Now, keep in mind that Becky Halk and I are living in Charlotte, North Carolina. I haven't done these in a while. I mentioned Becky, right? Yeah, yeah, she was, okay. Okay. So, yeah, of course I mentioned it. Anyway, so we are living in Charlotte, North Carolina, but I'm going to run a scam in Columbia, no, in Columbia, South Carolina. So I'm in Columbia.

And the first thing I do is I, after I get the ID, I go to a corporate lawyer and I set up a couple of shell companies. You know, I tell him that I'm a lender and I need to open a couple corporations. so we open a few corporations and then I go around after I've got the corporations opened I go to several different banks and I open up corporate bank accounts then I go to several other banks

and I open up personal accounts for Gary Lee Sullivan the other thing I did was you know there's a lot of things that like in the book I don't mention one of the things is that what I did was I

when I pulled Sullivan's credit he had a bunch of medical collections so I had to contact those his medical collection people and I paid off probably about $20,000 worth of medical collections I also of course got a few secured credit cards in his name so he had some semblance of somebody who's kind of rebuilding his life you know you've got the medical collections that were paid off you've got a few new credit cards and then I turned around and I of course I got a business card made I set up a website for labor on demand, which was supposedly his, the company he worked for.

I set up a, what's called a, they call them HQs, which are like virtual offices. You can actually rent real offices. They typically have them almost everywhere. They have them in Atlanta, downtown Atlanta, Charlotte, Columbia. They have most major cities, you know, Orlando, Miami, whatever. I'm not sure Columbia is a, would be considered a major city. anyway they had one so you could call and they'll give you a phone number so you could put that on your business card so if somebody called the business it would go it would be answered by a real

person and they would either take a message and then email you or they would reroute the phone call to you so you have to understand so i've got all of this stuff set up in the name of gary sullivan and i have corporations set up i have bank accounts i have everything so then i turn around and I contact a realtor. I remember, I want to say his name was Griffin. Anyway, I contact this realtor and I tell him, hey, I want to buy a house. I want to buy a piece property owner occupied. I'm sorry, but God.

I want to buy a house to buy, but it has to be, you know, I want to buy the house to live in it, but I want to buy a house. and I need the owner to owner finance it. Like, I'll put down 10%, but I need them to owner finance it. And so he and I drive around. We look at like probably five or six houses the first day. And I come back and I say, I find a, actually, we put like five contracts down on probably out of the six houses.

I think we put five contracts down on these houses, where I put like $1,000 down and I said, look, write up a contract asking them. telling them I'll put down 10% and they have to hold a 90% mortgage and it's what's called a wrap-around like even if they have a first mortgage you they can still hold a mortgage on the house and they just wrap their mortgage around the first mortgage so they're still technically in first mortgage position kind of and that I would make my payments to them and then they could pay their current mortgage their current mortgage company and you know look not all real estate agents even know how to do this so but i explained it to griffin he kind of

explained it he ended up uh what was his name bro was the guy's name griffin um shoot anyway whatever so we end up getting two two of the homeowners come back and they say okay fine no problem we'll uh we'll do the uh we'll do the owner financing and one of those cup uh one of those guys was a guy that sold he sold what did he sell uh he sold a chemicals he was like a chemical uh salesperson that sold some kind of chemicals for to pesticides and stuff like that so and he was selling his house and he was actually behind on his mortgage so part of my down payment went to catch up his mortgage with his mortgage company. Second guy was a doctor and I ended up going, he agreed to owner finance that property.

So I met with both of them, you know, obviously they want to know the story. They're like, well, why can't you go to a bank? And of course, I would say, you know, I can't go to a bank because, you know, I was in a car accident or something, you know, several years ago. Or I forget exactly what the story was I told them, but it was some bullshit. And they never asked me anyway. I had ended up telling the real estate agent that I had and he would tell them. So it was something along the lines of I had been in an accident or something and I had, you know, several years ago and I had a bunch of medical collections which fit with Gary Sullivan. And then I was rebuilding my credit.

And I couldn't get a loan from a bank. You know, I worked for the same company for five years and I gave my business card. And so he then conveyed that information to the homeowners. Homeowners agreed to go ahead and owner finance the properties. I went to two different closings, bought the one property from the one guy. It was cheap. It was like $110,000. It was in a big deal.

The other property was worth about $230,000, the one that the doctor owned. And the doctor, they were moving to Atlanta, Georgia. So I go to the closing and I close on the property, and that's great. Great. It works out great. I've got the properties. I'm in possession of both the properties. And here's a thing. Like, if you borrow money on a house, the bank will lend you more money if you live in the house. So I went, so Becky and I drove around and we ended up getting a bunch of boxes. And we, we, you know, we, you know, like we got boxes and we just opened all the boxes and just piled them up right so it looked like we i just moved in i went and i got furniture and a real cheap furniture and had it delivered plastics on it didn't even take the plastic off bought a bunch of cheap cheap frames i mean just like really filled this house up with a lot of cheap furniture but it's wrapped up in plastic and

it it who knows you don't even know that it's cheap like if you're an appraiser you come to the house and you walk in it looks like i live there bought bought a couple of beds put the beds in we'll just lean them up against the wall like i mean it looks like i live here like i just moved in and boxes like we wrote like kitchen and put a bunch of boxes in a kitchen that said kitchen put you know just a bunch of junk i mean we spent like all the day just doing this and so the one house definitely looks like i live in the one house the other house uh we did the same thing in the other house um so i then turned around and i went downtown i waited about about a week or so and I went downtown and I found I went to public records downtown for real estate

and I found the recorded deed I'm sorry and I found all of I found all the recorded the deed to both houses and I found the mortgages on both houses so I satisfy the loans that these people had on their on their homes I satisfy the loans for both the buy I create a status what's called the satisfaction of mortgage. I fill it out. I get it notarized. I didn't get it notarized. I notarized it myself because I had a notary stamp.

So I notarized the document. I go back downtown and I file it in public records. And that basically satisfies the mortgages that are currently on the house in the other people's names. Now, keep in mind, these guys also put first mortgages on the properties also in their name. It's called a wraparound. I then went back, got a copy of those documents, made satisfaction. satisfaction of mortgages for those documents, went back downtown and satisfied those loans on both the houses. So now I own these two houses. It's basically $200, almost $250,000 worth of

real estate. I own free and clear. I don't technically. Technically, I have mortgages on them. I mean, it appears I have mortgages, but it appears I don't. And keep in mind, too, because I had owner finance these properties they don't show up on Gary Sullivan's credit so I then turn around and I go to I want to say six or seven different banks and I apply for loans on those properties I get I want to say like eight or nine loan mortgages on these properties I close one on one house on the smaller the two houses one that's going for like 110. I closed like four or five loans on that one and I get like half because these these guys are only lending me like $96,000 or $90,000 or $100,000 on the property. And I've

closed four or five like like half a million dollars on that property. But I'm going to focus more on the on the larger property, which was the one owned by the doctor. So I then turn around. I close on like five loans on that property. And those. loans are like you mind I have a mortgage on on the properties too so the money's not going directly to me some of the money's going to me some of the money is going to the corporations so I can deposit those checks into the corporate accounts because you know Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guidelines at the time I don't know what they are now probably the same they have an issue with just cutting you a check for more than a hundred thousand dollars

So what I did was I would have like $190,000 going to a corporation that appeared to be a mortgage company. And maybe $5,000 or $10,000 would go to me personally. And so, but either way I'm getting the money because I'm in control of both of those two entities. So I would then take the money out of those entities and deposit, kind of spread it out amongst all of my bank accounts. And then I'd start removing that money in cash. And that's what I was in the middle of doing. I was slowly removing that money in cash. Listen, this whole time, you have to understand this whole time, Becky and I are going everywhere.

We're going to Bermuda, we're going to Mexico, we're going to Jamaica, we're flying all over the place. And I remember one time we had gone to, we'd actually gone to New Orleans. and there was a there was a I think I did say this where there was a we went to New Orleans and stayed on like Royal Street

which is right next to Bourbon Street and when we were there you know we hung out there for like a week or 10 days or something then we went home and I later found out when I ordered documents on myself I found out that the U.S. Marshals had actually been there the same time we were there. There was a famous artist by the name of Matthew Cox. Now, I'm also an

artist. And what it ended up happening was, because I'm an artist, the U.S. Marshals had found out that there was a guy named Matt Cox who was having a gallery, like a showing. And so they sent two U.S. Marshals to the gallery to ask them if the Matt Cox, who was doing the, having an art exhibit or showing, whatever we want to call it, they showed him my picture and said, Is this the Matt Cox that's the artist here? And the guy, the owner looked at and said, listen, I've known Matt Cox or whatever he said five years or something. That's not him.

But they happened to be. And by the way, that gallery was only like two streets away from where we were staying. Just so happens that they, two marshals were there at the same time I was there. And I may have told that story earlier, but I always thought that was amazing. Like when I got the documents from Freedom of Information Act, I was like, oh, my God, that's amazing. Back to Columbia, South Carolina. So I've got these two loans, and I'm pulling money out of the properties. But I'm staying in Charlotte.

So one morning, I'm, and you keep in mind, when I did these closings, I would close, like, within a day or two. So what happens is you close these loans on the, let's say I close four loans on a property or five loans on a property. The title company would then, you'd sign, you go to five different title companies or four different ones or six different ones. or six different ones so no one title company knows about the other loans and what happened is i would sign the documents and the title company gets it then they put together a package and they mail that those documents to public records then they just get recorded like the person in public records doesn't know doesn't realize that there shouldn't be six loans on this one house they have no idea there's all their job is to get the loan document scan a copy of it into public

records and then that's it. So it's not a big deal. I'm steadily pulling cash out $8,000, $9,000, $4,000, you know, slowly pulling cash out of all these different bank accounts. And what ends up happening is one day I'm sitting at home in Charlotte, in my apartment in Charlotte, and I get a phone call. And the phone, or I don't, Gary Sullivan gets a phone call because I'm actually living in Charlotte as a guy named Michael Eckert. And I get a phone call from a lawyer with, I want to say it was Washington Mutual Bank. I'm going to say Washington Mutual Bank. Anyway, from Washington Mutual Bank, the guy calls me up and he's like, listen, hey, is this Gary

Sullivan? I mean, is this, is this Gary Sullivan? I'm like, yeah, this is Gary Sullivan. And he says, hi, this is, whatever his name was, from Washington Mutual Bank. I'm a lawyer, and he says, we have a problem. And I go, what's that? He said, the problem is that we got a phone call from one of the title companies that says that we have a first lien position on this property, but somebody else is in front of us.

So he's saying, we're supposed to be in first position on the title, and we're not. there apparently there's another loan in front of ours we don't know how this happened but it's it's it appears to be some kind of a scam or something and you know we're thinking about calling the FBI and we're not really sure what's happening so we're hoping you could kind of explain it and I said whoa whoa whoa listen bro I said let's not call the FBI hey you haven't called anybody have you and he's like no I haven't called anybody and he said but apparently he said I feel like this is maybe there's some kind of a scam happening here I don't know what you're what you're up to I said well listen let me do me a favor i said give me about an hour or so let me go to talk to my corporate

lawyer and i'm going to have give you a call back is that cool and he goes yeah i go don't call anybody till you hear from me he said no problem i'll give you a couple hours so i then jump in my car and i drive to columbia south carolina on my way there i call the corporate lawyer who set up all these corporations for me i call him and i explain to him what happened he goes wow you know gary this sounds like it could be a criminal action My partner handles all of the law firm's criminal work. I'm going to have him here when you get here. So I show up and I say, listen, here's what's going on.

I explain the situation. He says, and I tell him that I've actually borrowed like five mortgages on this property. And he says, you know, wow. So both the lawyers are, are you serious? I don't know if it was four or five. Anyway, so let's say five. And I said, yeah, I've got five mortgages. And he goes, they go, oh my God.

They go, what were you thinking? And I said, look, I just needed the money. And I, you know, I think I told him, them, look, I went to a couple of different loan officers, the banks, and they said that they could fix this whole thing. And they were like, look, and I said, look, man, I need to pay off this Washington Mutual. So I need you to call. So the criminal lawyer is like, well, what do you want to do? I said, I want you to call him and get him to sign something saying that he agrees. that they're not going to contact law enforcement.

And I remember he said, well, I don't know why he would contact law enforcement. He said, this is just a creative financing error. This isn't criminal. He was like, we're not going to admit that this is not criminal. What you did was just a creative financing error. And so I started, I was like, okay, which I was pretty sure that it was not a creative financing error, since obviously my name's not Gary Sullivan and the FBI and Secret Service

weren't chasing me around the country because of creative financing. It was clearly fraud. But that's what he wanted to go with. So that's fine. And so he calls up Washington Mutual's lawyer and Washington Mutual's lawyer says, okay, look, I can, you know,

if this guy can give us the money back and really it wasn't that much money, it was on the smaller house, which was like $100,000. So he said, does he have the $100,000? And I was like, yeah, I got the... And he goes, do you still have it? I said, of course I have.

Yeah, I have it. And he says, okay, he said, if he can just give us $100,000 back, we won't contact anybody. And I was like, okay, cool. So first they said, he wanted me to go get a cashier's check and bring it to Washington Mutual Bank and deposit and have the manager call me. And I was like, listen, bro, I'm not going into a bank. Like, my buddy Travis had been arrested going back to a bank when we knew they were the problem.

Like, I'm not stupid. I'm not going into a bank. bank when I know there's a problem. So I was like, no, I'm not going to do that. I'll bring the cashiers check here to you, to the lawyer. And the lawyer explained that to their lawyer. And my lawyer explained it to their lawyer and their lawyer was like, okay, that's fine. So that's what happened. I got up and I went and I remember I got up and I, just as I was about to get up, the two lawyers were like, Gary, wait, we have to talk to you. about something i said what's that and they said listen they said okay we have an this is just one bank you've got like four more mortgages on this property what are we going to do about those i said well my

my immediate problem is just paying off these people and they said yeah but listen there's four more mortgages like what are you going to do like what are you going to do if they find out about the other mortgages and i went well that's when i leave town and so they both laughed they were like Oh, Gary, Gary, listen. They said, don't you understand? You can't just leave town. Like, they have your name, your social security number, your date of birth. Like, they'll find you.

I mean, you know, this could be a real problem. And I remember, I looked at both of them and I said, you're assuming my name's Gary Sullivan. And they both, like, were like, whoa. And I remember thinking to myself, they don't meet a lot of guys like me. and I said they said well I remember that the corporate lawyer goes I mean sorry the criminal lawyer goes well we'll we'll we'll we'll cross that bridge when we come to it I say right I said my immediate problem is paying these guys off I said I'll be back with the cashier's check I go I jump in my car I go get a cashier's check I come back when I come back I give it to

them and he calls them and says look we have the cashier's check he reads off the the whole thing he faxes them a copy he says we'll have the money wired to you in the next day or two and so that's that's done i'm good with that and i remember the lawyer looked at me and said well we need to discuss our fee and i went okay um you know which was funny because like you'd think you'd want to discuss their fee before they did all this work and he goes and i said okay well what do you think's fair and he said well you know i said you got a couple hours in this at this point he's yeah I know but you know it's a lot of phone calls and it's a dicey situation and he said um he goes I'm thinking 1500 bucks and I went okay and I pulled out pull out you know some money

out of my pocket and I start counting out $1,500 in cash and he goes no no no he said well Gary we don't we don't typically take cash we typically take a check and I looked at him and I go after what you just heard I've done you take a check from me and he goes yeah you know what go I didn't give you cash. So I counted out the cash, gave him the cashier's check, of course, and I left his office. Went straight to a bank and removed more money. Went to another bank, removed more money, went to another bank. So, I mean, it was going to take, I had about 1.3.

At this point, I still had like 1.3 million, 1.2 million maybe. No, I had 1.3 million after I gave him the 100,000 back. So I was pulling out cash. I knew it was going to take about a month or so for me to get all the cash because I was removing it slowly. I was also getting cashier's checks and depositing the cashier's checks in other bank accounts. That way, the balances just didn't,

you didn't have like $300,000 in one account and it's just drained. I was doing it so that the banks, the balances would go up and down, up and down. So I was taking, I would go in and I deposited cashier's check for $30,000 and I'd ask for $8,000 back and they would they would uh you know they would cut me the check it's funny that whole time I only got a I only got a two or three suspicious activity reports filed on me uh never got a CC a CTR filed on me I mean I found all this out later when I got eventually get caught so I'm removing money no big deal uh I remember wow I remember

At this point, Becky and I were just at each other's throats. I mean, she was miserable. She was stoned all the time. She was, it was just horrible. Like, living with her, like, bringing her with me was just the biggest mistake ever. You know, and we have different identities. We have fake identities. You know, she's got a bunch of friends, but she doesn't have a job.

Like, I remember telling her, maybe you should get a job. because she was someone that like if she didn't have something to do she was like a child like she would just get into trouble and she was stoned all the time or drunk and you know i don't really go out like i'm not a a guy that goes out i'm not a flashy person i we did have we had nice vehicles you know obviously we were both driving sports cars and i think and she had a she had like an infinity the s uv and we have we had nice vehicles you know we're going on vacation we're i'm trying to keep her occupied uh we're doing rock climbing and and going on these you know going out uh as much as i was willing to go out and she had a bunch of friends but you know periodically she she was

she was she was she would have these mood swings and and and i remember one night and she started screaming this actually happened about i only talk about i think two different occasions in the book but this happened like three times where she just was would screaming and hollering about how you ruined my life and I can't believe you did this to me and it's like like I don't even know you you begged to come with me and I kept telling her you really haven't done anything wrong yet well you can go home like I'll get $100,000 well I'll put you get $100,000 and we'll put it aside for you and you can get a lawyer and you're like I'm trying to get rid of her and I remember one time she screamed so much that I knew it was in the middle

the night, she just lost it. I remember thinking the cops are coming. So I just left. I grabbed a bag, threw a bunch of stuff, and a double bag, and left, and I got in the car and started driving. And she calls me up, she called, must call me like 50 times. And by the time I finally answer the phone, I remember the cops had just gotten

there. And the cops told her, listen, if this guy, like one of the neighbors had called, because she was screaming so loud, and the cops said, listen, had this guy been here, one of the two of you would have had to have gone to prison, or gone to jail. So, I mean, this chick's going to get caught she's just she's a lunatic um what else had i done at this point god i remember this point

i was living as michael eckert and i got his i had his name change to michael johnson just to see if i could do it you know see what the process was because i was trying to figure out how to kind of create a whole synthetic identity by kind of altering a person so much that they became their own person like I was already able to get passports and and I had God I had like at this point probably half a dozen no more than that probably a dozen passports at this point when I get caught eventually I got caught I had like two dozen passports but at this point I probably have like maybe a dozen passports and we're traveling all the time so Becky's a lunatic she's spending money like you can't believe she got a bunch of plastic surgery she got a boob job she got liposuction

She had two tummy tucks. Listen, she looked amazing. She looked amazing by the time she had all the surgery. All right. At this point, I, at this point, things are going good. I think I have $600,000 I've pulled out of the bank. Plus, we still have some money left over. But the way Becky's spending money, it's outrageous.

I came home one day and she had bought a new SUV. like it was just ridiculous and I was like what you know what what are you what are you fucking doing like I started going what are you doing you're blowing all the money you just you're you're pissing away all the money on on stuff that we really you know I wasn't sure exactly how we were going to get the money back you bought a brand new SUV and when you've already got a sports car and she was like oh the sports car wasn't big enough for all of her friends and you know and listen she's she's going on little vacations with her friends so she's scream I remember the one time she got the cops call

I wouldn't come back until she agreed to get her own apartment. So I had her go and get an apartment at a building right down the street. Like from her, and I remember from her balcony, she could see my apartment, into my apartment. She was crazy. So here's what happens. I, one day I go to Columbia and I'm removing money. What I didn't know was this, was that one of the loans, that I had applied for.

The woman that I applied for the loan with had gone on vacation and had never put the title work in. So when she got back from vacation, she called me and said, look, we can probably close next week. And I said, and by that point, I'd already closed like five loans on the property.

So I didn't want to close her loan because I knew there were other loans were already showing up in public record. So I didn't want her to continue her loan process because I knew when the title company that she used searched public records, they were going to see those other recorded mortgages. So when she called me, I said, cancel the loan. I've already refinanced with my bank.

She said, oh, gosh, I'm sorry, Gary. I didn't realize you were in a hurry. And I said, yeah, well, it's not a big deal. I said, but do me a favor. I said, make sure to cancel the title work being done. I don't want anybody to go down to public records and spend all that time searching the title, you know. And she goes, oh, it's not a big deal.

I understand. I'll cancel it. She didn't cancel it. What ended up happening was somebody went to public records. An abstractor went to public records. An abstractor is a person that goes and does all the title work for the title companies. An abstractor went to public records.

They saw that there were three mortgages on the property. were actually four or five, including the two that I'd satisfied. However, they only saw three for some reason. So they immediately contacted the bank. They said, oh, this is fraud. There's three mortgages on this thing. Like, something's up. And this guy's trying to borrow another mortgage.

Like, something's wrong. So they made a few phone calls, and immediately there was an investigation launch. The company that was in charge of that investigation was Wachovia's fraud department. So I go into the bank one day to pull out like $8,000 in cash Like I'm doing every other day Sometimes it's $4,000 sometimes it's nine whatever So I walk in one day with my Gary Sullivan ID And

I go in And I said And this is interesting So by the way, whenever I would withdraw money I would tell Becky Hey I'm going into the bank she'd go okay no problem and I remember this happened many many times Becky would say hey what if you get arrested and I would say if I get arrested I'm gonna need all you have

to do is call a lawyer a local lawyer and have him get me out on bond because if I get arrested it won't be as Matthew Cox it will be as whatever ID I'm using because I'm not typically the kind of guy that walks around. I don't have multiple IDs. I would walk in with a couple credit cards and an ID, pocket lint, everything as a person I am, who I am. So they would typically just arrest me, and I would have a valid ID or driver's license or passport. So my identity wouldn't be in question, so they wouldn't run me right away. And I said, so you get me a lawyer, and they'll be able to get me out before I'm IDed, because typically they don't try and ID you if you have identification, especially if it's identification issued by that

state. So, no problem. I go into the bank. I walk into the bank. This was a Wachovia bank. I walked into Wachovia Bank. I put my ID down and I said, hey, I'd like to remove, I forget what it was, eight grand or something, seven grand. And the woman goes, okay, hold on. And she walks in the back, which wasn't a big deal because I had, you know, every time I went in there, they would go in the back and they'd make a few phone calls because, you know, I'm withdrawing cash and it's an account that was open less than 90 days ago.

So I'm waiting and waiting. It's not a big deal. And all of a sudden, somebody reaches over my arm and grabs me by the hand and pulls my hand back. I go to turn and somebody grabs me from the other side,

pulls the other arm behind my back, and boom, I feel the handcuffs on me. You know that noise they make. And I go, I turn around and there are two massive, massive sheriff's. deputies from i want to say it's richland county yeah yeah what's what this says but it's actually richland county so i think the richland county sheriff's deputies so they turn around they look at me and they said mr solvin sorry you're being detained and they walk me into and into the manager's

office and sit me down and i mean i listen let me tell you something i mean i'm just like numb. I'm just going, holy shit. Like, this is it. They've got me. And I'm waiting and and I said, what's going on? What's happening? The guy goes, well, we don't really know. We were just told to keep you here and detain you until the detective gets here. And I kept thinking to myself, because he said detective, I remember thinking, like, I don't know the difference between an officer, a deputy, an agent, a detective. Like, I don't know these things at the time. was like oh okay so i thought the fbi was showing up or the secret service so i'm waiting and waiting and all of a sudden this guy walks in probably in his late probably early 30s mid 30s

let's say i don't remember exactly and he walks in got his nice gray suit and he walks in he says hey uh mr solvin uh my name is detective whatever his name was and he says my name is detective whatever and we've got a phone call. We have a complaint filed by the head of Wachovia Security Department. And, you know, they're a fraud department and they're saying that you're running some kind of a scam. And I went, really? And he goes, yeah, apparently he said you have three mortgages on your piece of property. Now, that was the Willow, I think it was Willow property.

Anyway, that was the one that was like $230,000. there's like half a million dollars in mortgages that they've just discovered. Now, they only discovered three because there were multiple, several more. And so I went, and he said, yeah, apparently you have three mortgages on this property. And I went, is that illegal? And the guy goes, the detective went, you know, I don't know. And I remember thinking, oh, I'm walking out of here. I'm walking out of here.

What do you don't know? So I was like, oh, okay, he said, let me call Wachovia. So he gets on the phone and he calls Wachovia, the head of the head, their fraud department. So he gets the guy on the phone and the guy and he's like, hey, I have Gary Sullivan here. And so he's kind of explaining and he goes, what is the problem? He's like, I'm not even sure what to arrest this guy for. Like he came and he borrowed a mortgage.

Like, what's the problem? And the guy said, he's running a shotgunning scam, which is exactly the type of scam that I was running. Like, the Wakobia knows exactly what I'm doing. And I'm like, and so I can hear him on the phone. And he said, he's pulling money out cash. He says, and he looks at me, he says, he says you're not, you have three mortgages. I go, right.

I said, I have three mortgages. He goes, yeah, he says, that's funny. He goes, yeah, there are three first mortgages. And I went, no, I said, one was a first mortgage. One is a second mortgage. And one is a he lock, a home equity line of credit, which isn't true, by the way. They were all first mortgages. But nowhere on the document does a first mortgage say it's a first mortgage.

It just says it's a mortgage. It's just a lien placed on your property. Right? So I know that it could easily, that there's no way that he knows that I know that. And so I explain it's a first mortgage, second mortgage, and it's a helot. And so the guy from Wachovia goes, they're all first mortgages. And I say, listen, man, I read those documents. None of them even said they were first mortgages. Like I, and he goes, and so he says, okay, he goes, why is he, why would he go to three different companies?

And he goes, why would you go to three different companies, Gary? And I went, okay, look, I said, I came into Wachovia because Wachovia obviously knows they have a first mortgage. I go, I came into Wakobi, I applied for a first mortgage to refinance my property. I refinanced it. I told them that I needed some, I told the loan officer here, hey, I really need to borrow about $300,000 and the loan officer said, look, we can't give you that much money, but I have a friend that can probably get you a second mortgage and another friend that can probably get you a helock.

And so, and keep in mind, I don't even know what mortgages they know about. And I remember the detective goes, he flips open and goes, oh, so that would be Fieldstone mortgage and SunTrust Bank. And I went, right. Like literally he just told me what the mortgage is. I don't even know. And I was like, exactly. I got a second mortgage from Fieldstone and a helock from SunTrust. SunTrust at the time was big on Helox.

They did a lot of helix. Guy from Wachovia is screaming. That's not true. And he says, he's, and listen, he even had to tell, the detective even had to tell Wachovia's fraud guy. to lower his voice, like calm down. He's telling him, he's telling him arrest him. And so then he says, why is he removing all the money in cash? And he looks at me and he says, why are you removing all the money in cash?

And I said, look, I said, I worked for a labor company, okay? Now, by the way, by this point, the detective, it told me you're not under arrest. And I showed him my cuffs and I said, I feel like I'm under arrest. And he told me, he told the deputy take the handcuffs off him. So they took, so I don't even have handcuffs on at this point. So I said, bro, I said, honestly, I work for a labor company. So I pull out, I pull out my business card and I hand him my business card. And it says, labor on demand.

And I said, I work for a labor company, all right? I said, we provide a lot of labor for commercial projects. I said, and a lot of our laborers are undocumented. They don't have, they don't actually have bank accounts, and they typically will have to go to some kind of a person that cashed their check, and they'll take like 10%. I said, I know the checks are good, so typically what I do is I pull out cash, and I give them, I cash their checks for them for them for free because I feel bad for them. And he looked at me and he goes, no, that's, that's, is that illegal? I don't think that's illegal. And he's not illegal.

That's actually very nice of you in it. It makes sense. And then he said, that's a good thing. He said, yeah, and he explains it to the guy from Wachovia. He's losing it. Losing it. So then he says, this guy is running a scam. He goes, he's running a scam.

His name isn't even Gary Sullivan. He's using a fake ID. So the funny thing about that is, as he's yelling at that, which is absolutely true, but my ID had been issued by South Carolina DMV. so he starts yelling this guy by the way the guy from wakobia is in california he starts saying look at the id it starts with zero zero zero and the detective says no our IDs start with zero zero zero trust me this guy's gary sullivan i even ran an ncic report which is that he ran me through the national credit or national credit national criminal uh um database so he said

trust me, his name's, this is Gary Sullivan. So I remember I looked at the detective and I go, are you serious, bro? I go, now I'm not even Gary Sullivan. I go, come on, man, what are we doing here? And he goes, I know, Gary, I know, I know. So, listen, I've totally won over the detective at this point. The detective tells the guy from Wachovia, he says, listen.

He said, I don't even know what this guy's done wrong. You know? He said, I don't even know what to charge him with. He goes, I'm going to have him follow me downtown. and I'm going to have him fill out a report and then honestly he said I'm going to wait until I talk to the district attorney to see if he's even committed a crime.

Listen, the guy from Wachovia is losing it. So he ends up hanging up the phone from the guy from the Wachovia fraud guy and I stand up and he says to me, Gary, he said, do you have your do you have a driver's license? And I went, well, yeah, I do, but it's in Nabothi.

And he goes, oh, that's right, you're from Nevada. And he glances at the two sheriff's deputies, and they all grin at each other. And I immediately realized that he ran me through NCIC, which means he knows that the transient that I was using his information, I'd stolen his ID, he had been arrested twice for prostitution. So these guys think that I've been arrested twice for prostitution. And they all kind of grin at each other. And I'm like, oh, fuck. So, you know, like a little embarrassed, but I have bigger problems. So anyway, he says, well, do you have your ID with you?

And I said, actually, I said the deputy's got my ID. So he pulls the ID and he goes, yeah, yeah, I got his ID. And he says, do you have a valid driver's license? I said, well, I mean, I think so. I think it's valid. And the deputy says, well, I'll check. So he walks out to his police car to check and see if Gary Sullivan has a valid ID. I have no idea if Gary Sullivan has a valid ID.

He was a homeless guy that I'd met in Nevada. Who fucking knows? He didn't even have a house. He didn't even have a place to stay. So what ends up happening is the detective, so the deputy comes back in and he hands me the ID and he goes, yeah, he's got a valid ID. And he goes, oh, okay, cool. He said it, he said, he said it, he said it, he said it, he said it, he said it's valid. He goes, well, it says he's five foot 10.

And they all look at me and I'm like five foot six. And they all look at me and I go, well, fellas, I go, with a good pair of shoes. and they all start laughing. Gary, follow me. And he lets me walk out, get into my car, which, by the way, my car was registered in the name Michael Eckert, which was registered to the address I was living at

in Charlotte, North Carolina. So I get in the car and I follow him back to the police station. I go inside, I fill out a police station. report and then when I'm done with the police report he asked me can you go can you stand in the hallway I can't he couldn't leave me in his cubicle for some reason while he went and got his lieutenant to sign off on it so I stand in the in the hallway and while I'm in the hallway there's a bunch of of wanted posters and there must have been 50 or 80 of them right and there was only one that was in full color and it was my

secret service's most wanted poster so I ended up before I by the way before I walked in there on my way back to the police on my way to the police station Becky had called me and she she must have called me 50 times like I had like 50 missed messages so I get the phone I'm like oh my god so she it was ringing as soon as I got in the car and I go hey what's up she was oh my god where have you been I was like um I said listen man I got I got I got issues I said I just got questioned by the police I'm on my way back to the police station back to I'm on my way to the police station right now and she's oh my god oh my god she says i just checked the internet your number

one of the secret services most wanted list and i was like oh man i said look i got bigger problems i said i got to go in the police station and fill out a police report she says don't go in the police station get on the interstate and get out of there and i went i can't there's a cop car behind me and there's a sheriff's the cruiser was like in front of me and like the cop car was behind me i said i'm boxed in i can't i have to play this out out. And I said, look, worst case scenario is this. If I get arrested, I'll be arrested as Gary Sullivan. You can get me a lawyer. And before I could say anything, she goes, I'm not getting you a lawyer. I'm not getting you out on bond. I'm not going to risk everything I've got

for you. She probably had $600,000 in cash. So I was like, well, I guess I better not get arrested. And I hang up the phone. I go into the police station. I fill out the police report While I'm waiting in the hallway, I see my Secret Service's Most Wanted poster. The deputy walks up behind me while I'm looking, while I'm glancing at it, he walks up and says, hey, Gary, you ready to go? And I was like, absolutely terrified me. Like, I jumped and totally flipped out. So I was like, oh, my God.

And he says, hey, you ready to go? And I said, yeah, everything fine. He's yeah, yeah, well, you said, my lieutenant signed off on it. No big deal. We're going to look into it. I'm not sure you've done anything wrong. we'll have to check into it we get in the elevator and as i'm walking out he's do me a favor though he's don't don't go anywhere like don't leave the the area because we do have some questions and i might

want to talk to you again i said yeah no problem bro i go i own a couple houses in this area so i'm not going anywhere i work in this area he goes okay cool so i leave i go straight to two more banks and get out more cash and then when i walk into the third bank somebody in the bank like literally they see me and two women almost bump into each other trying to get to the telephone and I knew right then something else something was up like I didn't know if there was just like a a red notice or something some kind of a warning or something to if they saw me to call the police from so I saw them I was like oh shit so I realized what was happening I turned around got back on my car drove off got on the interstate and drove

um drove back to a Charlotte North Carolina I remember Becky had called me And she was like, oh my God, thank God, you're okay. Are you okay? I was like, you bitch, you were going to leave me here. And she's like, no, I was packing a bag. I was going to come get you. I was going to come get you. But she was never going to come get me.

So I ended up leaving. Yeah, I ended up leaving and driving back to Charlotte. When I got to Charlotte, keep in mind, when I got to Charlotte, But Becky and I had, we already knew that we were leaving the area. So I was just pulling out a bunch of money out of that scam. I was going to get the $1.3 million and then we were leaving anyway. So Becky wasn't in Charlotte anymore. She had moved to Houston, Texas.

She'd gotten an ID. She'd got an apartment. She was living in a condo in downtown Houston. So, of course, when I got back to Charlotte, I immediately packed up all my stuff, put it in, I had two guys, she actually had two guys meet me the next day. They packed up a U-Haul van, and I got in the U-Haul van, and I left my car in the parking lot in my apartment in downtown Charlotte. And then I left and I drove all the way to Houston, Texas. When I got to Houston, it was, you know, an issue.

As soon as I got there, we unloaded the vehicle. Well, we had a couple of, she had a couple of Mexican laborers meet she and I at a U-Storage, and we unloaded the U-Haul. And then we took the U-Haul, and I, like, parked it on, like, outside of her apartment building. She had a great apartment. And so I was going to stay there with her until I got my own place, basically. So we went down, we had, I remember we had something to eat, and we were driving around. and as she was like showing me the area she's like oh my gosh it's a great area there's a sushi place here

and there's this and there's that and she's pointing out the whole place i remember i i said hey i had seen a like a four-sale sign in the front of this townhouse and it was you know it's in one of those four-sale signs it had one there was one of those uh those plast clear plastic uh um flyer things so I go hey stops the car stop the car and I jumped out and I grabbed the I pulled a flyer out of it and I got back in the car and I was reading about the townhouse I remember Becky

said oh my God you know what what are you doing and I went well keep in mind she's bipolar and she's not taking her medication like I had sent her to a psychiatrist

she had been prescribed Zoloft she would take the Zoloft for a month or so and then she just stopped taking it and she would always say that well i felt better i thought it was okay i didn't think i needed it i don't like the way it makes me feel you know it was a mood stabilizer and it would keep her from getting too manic but it all you know it kept her from getting too low and depressed but it also kept her from getting too manic so she didn't like it and so she'd stop taking it so anyway as soon as i got back on the car she immediately said you know

what are you doing like well why did you get that flyer she goes you're not going to run a scam here are you? I don't want to run a scam here. She's, I like it here. I want to stay here. And I went, I'm not going to run a scam here. I said, but I need to find a place to live. I can't stay with you. She just went nuts. She immediately started screaming, what, I'm so disgusting that you can't stay around me. You don't care about me. I mean, just went, just nuts. And so I remember saying to her, did you, are you still taking your medication? That's in her off. Again, I'm not taking my medication. Fuck you.

I don't want to take that shit. There's nothing wrong with me. It's you. And I was like, oh, wow. So we go back to her place, get into the elevator, go up in the elevator. I remember, this is funny, because I remember there was this really hot chick that got into the elevator. And I remember being in the elevator staring at the ground. Because I remember thinking, don't even look at this chick.

Don't even glance at her because Becky's staring at me and I'm trying not to stare at this chick. As soon as we get up to Becky's floor and the door opens, I bolt off the elevator immediately. And I remember as we were walking off, Becky said,

I bet you'd love to fuck that little skank. And immediately as the elevator doors were closing, I heard the girl go, hey! This cracked me up. So I get to her apartment, we go inside, and all I can think about

is like this chick is going to get me a rest. like I had known it before and I wanted to keep her you know I wanted to do the right thing by Becky I didn't want to leave her but it's just at this point you know

she just one I knew I couldn't rely on her because she had she told me she was not going to come pick me up at the police station when I was I was in the video before this one I explained that I'd gotten caught and I'd gone to the police station and Becky had told me like if you get arrested I'm not going to get you out on

I'm not going to help you so I was you know I just realized like there's just no reason for me to stick it out with this chick anymore at all she was planning on taking the money and just keeping the money and leaving me in prison like this is this is not a girl that's worth staying for so I I I but when I gotten there I she had taken there I she had taken the money that I showed up with she had taken like I had all the money and like a it was it was in a you know a duffel bag and she had taken it and put it somewhere in the apartment and I didn't know where it was this is a a big apartment she had a lot of stuff it was a nice place and I thought how am I going to figure out where the money is so I still had like I don't know what it was

It's $10,000 or $15,000 in cash. So I pulled the money out, and I handed her the money. I said, hey, by the way, I said, this is what I got out of the bank. Here you go. And I gave her the money. She took the money, and she goes, you know, she's ready to fight. And she just kind of, like, looked at me and just shrugged and walked off, leaving me, like, in the kitchen. So I remember, as she walked into her bedroom, I immediately ran up to the door and looked where she was going.

And she walked in the closet, stuck the money in a, like a shunct. shoebox, a Prada shoebox. I remember she stuck it in the Prada shoebox and turn around and I bolted back to the kitchen. She walked out and I said, listen, I said, we need to talk about just splitting up the money and go in our separate ways. And she was like, well, you know, well, you know, you can leave and but I'm not leaving and you're not getting any money. And so we start getting into this huge argument about the money. And at one point, she said, you know, you're not getting any of the money. I said, listen, let me explain something. I said, we're splitting the money up. and I said because when I asked her what

she thought I deserved she said nothing she said you don't deserve anything I want to keep all I'll keep the money she said I can't go do what you're doing so I need all the money you can go run another scam I go yeah but I don't have anything

you're telling me nothing I don't deserve anything she's no you don't deserve anything I mean she was just a fucking bitch and I was like I said listen I said let me explain something I said we're splitting up the money I'm getting something

I said, or I'll take all of it. And she said, with what? She said, you don't even know where it is. I said, it's in the Prada shoebox that's sitting in your closet. And she was like, she immediately was like, oh, okay, you can see it in her face. And I said, so either I take all the money or we come up with something reasonable. And she said, take all the money and do what? She said, you're going to what?

She said, drive off in that U-Haul van. She was in the ID that the police are going to be looking for. and the funny thing is is that like she was right like I didn't have ID we put all my IDs in the storage unit like I didn't have anything I didn't have anything that she didn't know about so I couldn't use any of those IDs because she made it perfectly clear like she's going to call the police tell him hey there's this guy he's in a U-Haul van here's who he is like what am I going to do so we argue and we end up arguing and I accept I said look give me $100,000 in cash, you keep the rest of the money. So she gave me $100,000 in cash, and I left.

And I remember when I left, I left my cell phone on the kitchen counter. Because the times that I had left her before, she'd always called me and called me and called me until I eventually answered the phone, and then she would talk me into coming back, like she'd cry and beg and plead and I'd end up turning around and coming back so I took the phone I put the phone down I grabbed my duffel bag I grabbed the hundred thousand I walked out got into the van and just started driving and never uh you know never went back so I was somewhere around um going through louisiana through Baton Rouge I forget the interstate that cuts through there but I was going through there, and I had stopped to get a track phone. So I got this track phone. It's like a

burner phone. So, you know, I got the phone just so I could call home. I called my mom. I called my ex-wife. I ended up calling a friend of mine named Susan, who was also one of my former mortgage brokers. And I called Susan, and she had said, look, like the FBI is looking for you. Like, they've been, they're knocking on doors. They're banging on everybody's, everybody's door. They're staking out people's houses. They've interviewed almost everybody. like they it's done like you're done everybody's cooperating which included susan and she said you need to turn yourself in she said the fbi's uh the agent's name is kandis calderon she's the lead agent and she wants she said that if i ever talk to you to have you call her i have her phone number and i

didn't want to do it but i was like you know i give me i was like eh i don't know so she was just call her and hear her out so i got her phone number and i called the i called the agent and I talked to her on the phone and I was like hey my name's Matt Cox I said you know she answered the phone and I did this you know agent called her on and she said yeah and I said this is Matt Cox and she was like oh wow Mr. Cox how did you get my phone number I told her Susan gave it to me she told you me you wanted to talk to me and she said yeah I said well what can I do for you and she said well I want you to turn yourself in I said yeah that's not going to happen and and she said well let's not be too hasty she said maybe we can work something

out and I said okay well what are we working out I said how much time am I looking at And she was, that's not how it works. You have to turn yourself in and we'll take that into consideration. I was like, yeah, I'm not doing that. So she and I went back and forth, and we started arguing back and forth. And she was like, look, you're going to get caught. And she said, we're going to catch you eventually. We're definitely going to catch you.

You'll never get away with this. And by this point, it had been like a year and a half. And I was like, what do you mean you're going to catch me? I said, I mean, what's taking you so long? Like, if you know, you know where I'm at, come get me. And she said, we're 90% assured of where you are. And I said, well, only 100% counts. And so, you know, we had done stuff like we had left,

when we abandoned a car one time, this Audi that I had. We abandoned it when we left Atlanta, we left that car in Atlanta in a police substation. and in the car we left Lira and the book Spanish for Dummies and a brochure for like a span a hotel in Spain so you know they then you would read the newspaper and like CNN would say and the CNN website would say that they're believed to be in Spain you know so you know or they're believed to be in Cuba or you know that kind of thing so we were leaving

like these blind alleys like they had no idea where we were and so i'm i'm talking to her and i said look you're never going to you're not going to catch me and she was like well you're cocky you know aren't you and i said listen i said i'm i'm i'm so that i'm i am cocky but i'm not stupid enough to just turn myself in and hope for the best so i remember she said at some point you're going to go back to you're going to go back to Tampa or somebody's going to recognize you and they're going to turn you in and I said listen I said there's nobody in Tampa that I'm I want to go back to see I said I'm not she oh and she said or you're going to get pulled over and the police are going to arrest her I said I said there's nobody I'm planning on going back to sing in Tampa I said and as far as someone recognized me I said nobody's going to recognize me I've had tons of plastic surgery I don't even look like the same person I said and on top of that I said I just I've already gotten like five different tickets from police. I went to traffic school as another guy one time because I was going to, I'd gotten so many tickets in his name and his driver's license. He was going to lose his license.

So I said, you're not, I said, and as far as some cop, I said, somebody recognized me. I said, I've got passports. I said, I just got back from a trip. I've been in and out of the country. Like, you're never going to talk to me in person, ever unless we work out of deal. so she said give me some time let me call the u.s. attorney i'll find out what what i can get you and i said okay and she said what's your phone number i'll call you back which was funny because you know obviously she had my phone number i was just like i said yeah listen i said i'm i'm not i'm just going to shut off the phone i go you're probably like triangulating this call right now and i remember she said she's get over yourself you're not that important and i remember thinking

yeah bro like like this isn't c s i like they're not tracking your phone call like what are you even thinking like that's just silliness you're not you're nobody but it's something in me told but you know what just shut the phone off and i went you know i said i'll call you back in like an hour she was okay and i shut the phone off and turned it off now i later found out she immediately called the u.s marshals they immediately tracked the phone they called the local the U.S. Marshall's office, they found out that the phone had just been, that it was shut off, but it had just been sold at a, at a gas station. And in the gas station, there was a subway station, you know, subway subs, you know.

And I was actually sitting in the subway sandwich station, uh, subway sandwich shop, eating a subway sandwich, playing on my laptop while I was talking to her. So they immediately had two U.S. Marshals jump in a car and head that way. I waited there another, I'd say 30, 45 minutes. I finally thought, you know what, I'm going to call her, but I'll call her from the road. So I got in the U.S. U. Hall and I started driving, and I was driving down the road. And those two U.S. Marshals showed up, and I had just left. I was on the interstate headed towards North Carolina

and the reason I was going to North Carolina was like I'm driving a U-Haul truck I needed to get a vehicle and I had a vehicle in my apartment complex so I was just going to get that vehicle even though I knew that the police in South Carolina knew what kind of vehicle I was driving and by this point I knew they had they had figured out where that vehicle was registered to and they probably knew the address but the vehicle was in the parking garage

so I thought I could get to it I wasn't going to the apartment so I'm still driving the car and I called the FBI agent back because by this point she should have talked to the U.S. attorney so I call her up and she says she actually hadn't talked to the U.S. attorney I actually had to call her back

but regardless when I eventually talked to her and I said hey what's going on she said okay I talked to Robert Mazakowski that was the name of the U.S. attorney in Tampa and he said he can get you seven years if you cooperate and I was like seven years I was like listen that was seven years for what I had done in Tampa and I said does that include Atlanta and some other stuff I was thinking South Carolina which she didn't even know about I said that some other stuff I've done like you know in Atlanta is that including Atlanta

and some other stuff you look you show up and and we'll work it out I said, okay, well, she said, seven years. I go seven years for everything. She said, look, she said, if you, when you come, she says, I can meet you at your parents' house, and I can arrange for you to see your parents and your son. And then I went, okay, well, I appreciate that. She goes, I'll let you hang out there for like a couple hours, so you guys can all spend some time together before we put you in custody.

I said, okay, I don't know. She said, look, she said, you know, everybody's already. cooperated against you and I said yeah I said and this is going to include everything she said look what's important is that you know you have to turn yourself in before this gets out of control somebody might try and apprehend you you could get hurt I was like oh I'm not worried about that and I said look why don't I go to Atlanta I said I'm closer to Atlanta than I am Florida I said and we need to work on the seven years you got to call this guy back I can't do seven years and she said look you have to turn yourself in in Tampa and I went okay but Atlanta's

closer like i would hate to be on my way back to tampa and get pulled over and get arrested and she said no she said you you can't go to atlanta and i went well what they what what am i said you know what i it dawned on me i said you know i've asked you like three different times if this deal includes everything you said it did no i said i said but you haven't you haven't said it includes everything i said i'm asking does this deal include Atlanta and some stuff, a few million dollars in fraud that you don't even know about yet. Does it all include all of it? I said, I keep asking you this and you haven't said yes. And she went, listen, we're going to catch you eventually. And I went, oh, fuck.

I said, what does the deal include? She says, it just includes Tampa. But I can call the other districts. I can call the, I can call it the Atlanta U.S. attorney. And I realized they wanted seven years for the 11.5 million I'd stolen in Tampa didn't include the money the half a million dollars that I'd stolen in in

Atlanta. It certainly didn't include the, you know, 1.3 million I just you know, defrauded the banks out of in Columbia, South Carolina. So I mean, that's almost $2 million more money.

Like, I've got some, there's some like I'm going to do way more than seven years at this point you know and I'd been on the run for a year and a half and God knows how much more money they'd figured out now that they'd been investigating everybody like the 11 one of my scams was 11 million but that didn't include all the money that was all the money all the fraud that we had done at the mortgage company which ended up being about 40 or 15 million dollars more money that I was luckily never charged with so I was I just I remember thinking this is nuts like they're going to give me 10 or 15 years And I went, are you fucking serious? And she says, look, she said, I can call the Atlanta prosecutor. I can work this out. I said, you know what, lady? I said, I wouldn't believe you if you told me water was wet. And I threw the phone out the window.

So I drove all the way to Charlotte. I got to Charlotte. I remember I dropped off the U-Haul and got a taxi back to the apartment. They didn't have Uber back then. So I got a taxi back to my apartment in downtown Charlotte. And I remember thinking to myself, I was going to retrieve my vehicle.

I had an infinity. I was going to retrieve the infinity. And I remember thinking that by now they've got to know where I am. Like the FBI has to know where I am. So I end up going into the apartment building, and I go up to the garage and I'm staring at my car looking at all the other cars

because I really felt like they were watching the car but I kind of walked around a little bit and looked and nobody was there I got in the car, backed it out and drove down the parking garage and drove right out on the street and I was like, yes, I'm good, I'm clear.

There's nobody here. So I pull up and I park right in front of a Starbucks that was kind of catty corner to the apartment complex it was kind of right around the corner and I was like I got to think

are good things are looking up i've got a i've got a parking space right in front of starbucks let me get some starbucks then i'm going to head i'm going to head out of uh of charlotte so i go in the starbucks and i i ring up or i go on starbucks and i order a uh i order a coffee and or whatever like a latte or whatever you want to call it grande or venty vanilla latte or something anyway so i order a cup of coffee they ring it up and i pay and as i'm waiting i notice that there's two people from the apartment complex staring right at me and they're looking at me

and they're like chattering away they look very nervous and I remember this is like the fourth or the fifth of the month and I hadn't paid my rent because I was abandoning the apartment so I'm not paying a $2,000 worth of rent someplace for a one bedroom or two bedroom whatever it was like a two bedroom

I wasn't going to pay that when I'm abandoning it but they're freaking out so I'm like they recognize me and all of a sudden the girl the woman bolts out the back of the Starbucks so what I didn't know was that the U.S. Marshals were actually interviewing people at the apartment complex and they just interviewed those two people and then they left and came to get coffee so the marshals were still at the apartment complex she runs back to the apartment complex and the marshals are there and said

he's across the street at the Starbucks and she tells him where the Starbucks is and they run out there and they start running towards the Starbucks I get my coffee the guy from the apartment complex gets his coffee he follows me outside I get in my car and he's standing on the sidewalk staring at me like holding like a bunch of a tray full of a bunch of coffees and he's just staring at me and remember I put my seatbelt on like I don't know what's going on put my seatbelt on put my coffee up I checked the you know You know, check this, the, the, the, remember CDs? There were CDs.

So I checked the CDs. I get a CD going. I, you know, I'm checking my lights. I look down, make sure there's no cars coming. I'm about to pull out. And all of a sudden, the guy on the sidewalk starts screaming. He's right here. He's right here.

He's right here. He actually drops the cup of coffee while he's pointing. Drops all the coffees. They hit the fucking ground. I look in the rear of your mirror, and there's two, U.S. Marshals, and they actually weren't even dressed. They were dressed in, like, suits. Like, whenever you see them on TV, on TV,

like they always have, like, a windbreaker or something on. These guys were actually in suits. And they're running down the street towards the back of my car. And just so happened, I just checked the street. Nobody was coming, and I realized, like, I don't know who they are. I thought they were FBI or Secret Service something. I hit the gas. Boom.

Take off and shoot in down the road and into traffic. And boom. I'm gone. I didn't know who those people were until later when I ordered the Freedom of Information Act, and I actually got the U.S. Marshal report that says that they were there and that they had almost apprehended me. And they immediately called in a bolo on my vehicle, and like it has the vehicle tag and everything, like they're looking for the vehicle.

I ended up driving straight down the street, about two miles down the street, and there was a homeless place. As I'm driving by the homeless place, I see these three white guys in their 30s. that's hard to come by so i swing around i park jump out with my clipboard which i had in the back of the car and i walk over and i immediately survey those three homeless guys and i end up getting their information and one of those guys's name was um god his name was joseph carter mer no joseph marian carter junior and i got his information i got all three of their information but as as joseph marian Carter Jr.

I went to I went to Nashville, Tennessee and I got there and I immediately went and got a cell phone, got business cards made for as a

like as a, I forget what I said I was. I was like a acquisition specialist and that I worked for a company called manufactured funding group and I got an HQ account an address

a cell phone I got business cards made I drove through this really nice neighborhood and I saw an old guy I remember I saw an old guy who was putting a sign in his front yard that said apartment for rent and this was a nice

this is an area called Green Hills in Nashville is where like all the celebrities live just happened to be renting out an apartment in a duplex that was beside his house and I pulled in in my car and I got out and I said hey I'm I'm interested

in possibly renting the duplex or the apartment two bedroom two and a half bath little townhouse side by side town like a townhouse style duplex there was two units walked in looked at it came back and I said hey looks great and I'll definitely

I'll take it and I said do you need to pull my credit or what do you need to do and he looked at me he looked me up and down he looked at my vehicle and he said nah I'll take first month and last month deposit he goes you look like a nice young man you look trustworthy and I said okay and I remember thinking I'm going to like Nashville they're very trusting here so I just rented a duplex from the old man in Green Hill and I was still driving I was still driving my infinity that's right so I remember I ordered Marion Carter I remember Carter's I got Carter's birth certificate and I got his um I went and got I went and got a new social security number in his name and I ordered some secured credit cards,

but I didn't have a driver's license. So, but I did, I registered to vote in his name, and I had a lease in his name. So I have a lease, I've got a lease, I've got his birth certificate, I have a social security card, I've registered to vote in his name. I have his transcripts for his driving record, and I took all of that, and I went to the local DMV, and I got a driver's license.

I remember I had to take the driving test I had to take the driving test in the infinity did I say Lexus it was infinite it was an infinity so in the infinity that was that the police were currently looking for

I even took the driving test and I almost failed the driving test I remember I was clicking through because you know every I've taken driving tests in a bunch of different states but every state's different and they asked several questions on for like driving while intoxicated and I remember I missed several questions

I also missed the question where it shows a picture of a sign and it has people walking and I thought oh that's pedestrian it's a pedestrian zone but it wasn't because one of the guys had a briefcase and it was a business zone missed that question so I missed like three or four questions I was like oh my god I almost failed I remember when I went up to get my license I go I told the woman I said I almost failed, and she says, I know. She goes, you were one question away. So I got my driver's license. I then jumped into the infinity, and I drove the infinity all the way back to this.

Now, keep mind, the police are looking for the infinity now. There's a bolo out for the infinity. I drove all the way back to Nashville, and I left it in long-term parking, because I didn't want it to be found in Nashville, all the way back to Charlotte, North Carolina. I didn't want it to be found in Nashville. I wanted the car to be found in Charlotte, in long-term parking. So I parked it.

I then waited a little bit, and I bought a ticket and flew back to Nashville. And then I went to, I don't, I think it was, it was like CarMax or nations or something. they had these different they had they had it was like car max anyway i went to this dealership and i walked in keep in mind this guy i i've got three secured credit cards in his name i've ordered them but i hadn't even gotten the cards yet like we're talking about within days i just ordered the cards so he's got a credit profile but there's no credit at all but it's not

bad credit i went to like whatever it was like nations cars or car max or something i I walk in there, and I said, listen, man, I need to get an SUV, and I need some kind of first-time buyers program. They go, well, we have one. You have to put down 20 percent, and you cannot buy a vehicle for more than $20,000. I said, let's go find one. So we went and found one, and it was a Nissan Pathfinder or something. So I got like a $20,000 Nissan Pathfinder. I put down $4,000.

I gave him a W-2 and a pay stub. They called to verify my employment. I answered the cell phone, verified my own employment, and they gave me a, I got the car right then, so I drove the car home. So I drove the car home. I've now got a new vehicle. I've got an apartment.

I've got a driver's license. I applied for a passport. I got my passport. I've got, but I'm burning through the money quick. I remember I got some furniture. And I realize, of course, you know, at this rate, I'm already. burning through money. I don't have a job. So I don't have a lot to do. I don't know anybody in

Nashville. I'm working out, you know, once or twice a day. I'm, you know, I don't have much, I don't have anything to do. I'm going to Starbucks. I go work out. I walk around the mall. I come back. I, there's just nothing to do, right? So I start driving around and looking at real estate because I figure I'm going to run another scam. I'm going to get a few million dollars and just I was just going to leave like I was just going to leave the United States and just at this point things are bad like if you punched in Matthew Cox into into Google everything that came up was you know fraud fraud fraud and and by this point there were several articles about me having been caught in South Carolina by the police and that they they let me go that wasn't good

There was more and more articles about that. It was becoming more and more sensational. The Chicago Tribune started running a series called The Fugitive. It was just not good. It's not a good situation. So I ended up dating, though. I was bored, so I ended up going on a couple of dating websites, and I start dating a bunch of different women.

I dated a chick named Brittany Sutherland. I dated a bunch of different girls. Like I go over it in a book. I think I have like a whole chapter on just the insane women. and I started dating. This went on for like four or five months. While that was happening, I also went and I started, I found an area of Nashville that I liked where the houses were going for,

they were just dirt cheap. They're going for, they're going for $40,000. If they were renovated, if a house was renovated, you could get it for $65,000 or $70,000. It was just that. That was how bad this area was. So I go in the area, I end up talking one owner into owner financing me the property. Her house was so bad, it was going for like, she went like 19 grand or 15, 15, 16 grand, 19 grand.

I forget, it was cheap. I have the exact numbers in my book. But I end up getting her to own her finance. I gave her like four or five, like three or four thousand dollars down and have her finance like something like $10,000 or $15,000. So then I find another guy who buys and sells houses. He flips houses. I buy, convince him to owner finance three houses. You have to understand, I convince them to owner finance the house by saying, look, I'll give you 5% down or 10% down or 20% down. But I tell them, like, I don't want to buy your house. Like this one guy, his houses were renovated. They were all selling for about $65,000. One was going for $75,000. So I think it was like $2,000 or $65,000, regardless. I say, look, I'll, I need you to own a finance the houses. For him, I said, I need to close on all three houses on one HUD statement. That way, all of the houses end up getting recorded for like $210,000 or something outrageous.

Was that the one I did that with? No, that was another transaction. Anyway, for him, I, for the woman that I got to do it, I told her, wanted to record the sale of the home at like $150,000 even though I was buying it for like $20. So for let's say $150,000 and I wanted to, I wanted a construction credit on the house for like $130,000 and I would pay the doc stamps. So it gets recorded for $150,000. I paid the extra doc stamp so the sale ends up showing up in public records as being a sale for $150,000. And I think it was like 152 or 154 it was roughly around there the other three properties i get this guy i end up i didn't do

them all in one closing statement i had each one i added like a hundred and some odd thousand dollars to each sale so one got one was came in at like 190 000 one came in at like 175 and the other ones came in at like 175 well i did all of these houses were within about three or four blocks of each other so what obviously if you've been watching what that ended up doing was I could now use that one property, you know, each house, I could use the other houses as comparable sales. I immediately refinance those houses and pull out like $100,000 on this house, $120,000 on this one, $90,000 on this house. So I refinance those houses. Now I'm flushed with cash again. I have like $30,000, $350,000. So now I'm doing okay. So I start buying more houses.

in the area because you know i don't have anything else to do and it's just what i do so and i need to get a few million so i need to buy 20 or 30 properties i figure i can refinance all those properties in multiple names at this point i'm starting to build additional credit profiles for additional synthetic identities but i'm also dating i end up meeting this girl named amanda Gardner. So I meet Amanda and Amanda and I start dating and she thinks I'm like this

just super successful real estate guy. So I ended up buying a house in that same neighborhood where I was buying all the other houses. I buy this one house and I renovate it. I renovate it. It's super nice. I've got hardwood floors. It's really really nice.

But I'm buying other houses too. I'm continuing to drive the value of this area up through the roof while I'm building other identities. I end up meeting Amanda. Amanda and I hit it off right away. I mean, what's not to hit out? What's not the like? I mean, she sees me. I'm a decent looking guy. I've got a ton of money. She had just gotten out of the military. She had a son named Cameron. He was a cute little kid. He liked me. Amanda loved me. She moved in with me right away.

I mean, right away within weeks or months she was living in my house. And keep in mind, too, she's broke. So I look like a savior to her. And I'm buying her whatever she wants. I got her and bought her a new car. She's got new clothes. Granted, we live in a shithole area. But we also, I also own at this point eight to ten houses in the area.

I'm buying vacant lots. Within six months, I'm building brand new. houses and and she she quit her job she's helping me now so i i remember one of the houses like really to be on this is funny but one of the first houses i refinanced one of the first houses i i refinanced so going back a little bit i i remember i had bought these houses just the first four houses i bought before i refinanced anything bought the houses record the value high and what was so funny about that was um i ended up um i ended up putting these signs on the houses i put these i made these banners that said Nashville restoration project so i made these

banners and i stuck them on everyone in the houses i renovated the houses so they looked really good on the outside like they didn't look great inside they look like crap but i put these banners and the banners said you know nashville restoration project nashville restoration project over and over again and then along the side of it it would have like nashville restoration project dot com and then i designed a website i got a ton of before and after photos from properties i took pictures of the entire neighborhood i really dressed up the website i mean it looked great I even use the same exact color scheme as the city's future comp plan. So every city has a future comprehensive plan for what they want their city to look like in the future.

And typically they work in conjunction with different developers. So I basically said I was one of those developers. The other thing I said on the website was that this area in Nashville was called J.C. Napier. that was the subdivision that was the name of the area and it was right next to the jc napier projects so the problem with that is that there was there was obviously this is right next to the project so you can imagine the kind of area this is so on my website i specifically said the projects were scheduled to come down within the next two years they were currently vacating the the projects so if you

went, if you looked up Nashville Restoration Project, or you went to the website, you got all this information that said this entire area was going through gentrification or being revitalized. The city was dumping a ton of money into it. Developers were coming in there. It was worth, we were working in conjunction

with the future comp plan with the city and that the projects were coming down within the next year or two, 18 months to two years. So, And there's a ton of photos of all these houses being renovated. Anyway, what I ended up doing was I refinanced one of the houses and when the appraiser comes out, I go to meet him at one of the houses. So I go out there and I said, so, you know, he measures the whole house. I said, well, what do you think?

And he looks at the house and he was a grumpy old guy. And he kind of looked at the house and he goes, you know, it's not bad. It's not too bad. And I said, what do you think it's going to come in? What do you think it's worth? He goes, what did you pay for it? And I said, I think I paid like $180,000 for it. And he looked at the house and he goes, you know, a year ago, I'd have said this thing was worth $50,000 or $60,000.

I went, really. He said, yeah. But, you know, since the Nashville Restoration Project has come in this area, this whole area is going up through the roof. There's comparable sales popping up all over the place. there's there's comparable sales popping up all over the place it's he said the whole he said the whole area is going up through the roof he goes I'd say this this thing's worth at least 180 185,000 whatever he ended up saying and I just remember thinking fuck that's awesome it was

great because he bought it he'd he'd obviously and I knew he went to the website because he told me he goes you know the projects are coming down and I was like really and he goes yeah he said the projects are coming down and then I remember I'll never forget he'd said this. He said, you know, I said, Nashville Restoration Project, I said, really? I said, and what is that anyway? And he goes, yeah, it's one of these big developers. They work with the city. They come in and they revitalize an entire area. He said, you know, they did the same thing in Germantown about 10 years ago. I go, really? He goes, oh yeah, Nashville

Restoration Project went in there. They revitalized the entire area. You can't buy anything in Germantown now that's not worth less a million dollars. He goes, you hold on to this place. You're going to easily double your money in the next year or two. I was wow thanks like he totally added that whole thing like that wasn't anything i said i didn't know about german town i didn't know anything even about the area he threw that in there so that house that's one of the first houses i refinanced which i always thought was hilarious because what i did was i went into that area bought up all those houses and put signs on every single house that said nashville restoration project and then of course i kept recording the value of these houses higher and

higher. So within a couple of, within a year, these things are everywhere. There's 20 properties that are worth over $200,000. I can refinance these things anytime and get two or three million dollars easily. So I'm dating Amanda. Everything's going good. I've built up several synthetic identities and we'd been dating about a year and the relationship was going great. We start seeing, so this

is what's comical. One of the chicks that I had gone on a date with was a chick named Trina. I went on a date with Trina and we went out one time and I just wasn't interested. She had, like typically I like a southern accent but she had

this really, really bad, almost like a Kentucky. southern accent, which is way different than a Florida or Georgia southern accent, which to me I find sexy. Trina's was not sexy. And so we went out, we went to, I remember we went to go see the movie the Dukes of Hazards, which she wanted to go see. So we would go see it and afterwards, like I didn't even try and kiss or anything. I just wanted to get out of there. I wasn't interested. I got my car and left. Well, Amanda and I were dating, and at one point Amanda says to me, you know, you know, at you know how it is you're sleeping with a chick and you've been sleeping with her for a while

and six months or something and she Amanda ended up saying have you ever thought about being with another woman you know me and another woman I was like yeah I mean I guess I would be willing to do that you know out of love for you um so she says well I would be interested and so Amanda you know Amanda starts looking Amanda starts looking on the website um shit, it's called Match.com. She starts looking for other women. So she comes across Trina. And I remember looking at Trina's profile and being like,

holy shit, I went out with that girl. And she's, no, you did. I said, I swear to God, I went out with her. I said, flip through her pictures. There's a picture of her leaning against the Corvette and another one where she's running a marathon. Sure enough, that was her. And I was like, I went out with her.

She was what happened? I told her, I kind of blew her off. She sent me a couple of emails or a couple of text messages afterward. And I just never responded. So, Amanda hits her up, asks her if she wants to meet, they go to a lesbian bar, because it turns out that Trina was gay, they go to a lesbian bar, Amanda and her end up making out in the car, in the car, she mentions me, asks if she would be interested in all of us getting together, Trina says yes, we all end up going to dinner, Trina comes back home, you can imagine. what happens. So, what ends up happening is we all start to hang out together, right? Like, we're going to festivals, we're going to movies, Trina's coming over every once in a while, like things are good. Life is good. I've got tons of money. We're building new houses. We're

renovating houses. And everything is going good. Well, then one day Amanda ends up going online. Well, that's not how it happened. So here's what happened is at one point, Amanda ends up finding, I had a corporate lawyer that had incorporated all of these several corporations because obviously I can't just dump all this money in my account. You have to kind of launder it through different accounts. So, and those accounts actually were in Amanda's name. So what ends up happening is I, the corporate lawyer contacted me one day and asked me to send her something. I sent it to her, never heard, you know, she never got it for some reason. So she called back and she called Amanda and said hey I never got this document so I told Amanda go on my computer

and look in word here's the name of the document well when Amanda did that she ended up seeing a finding a letter that I hit the letter that I had written to my parents the day I left Tampa two years earlier two and a half years earlier she finds that letter she reads the letter she looks up who Matt Cox is she sees a ton of articles she spends a whole day reading articles by the time I get that night I walk in I'm like hey what's going on and she's like oh everything's fine everything's fine she says nothing I end up going on my computer and when I go to do to close out all of the programs I see that word is open when I go to click on word to close it I see the last thing that had been open was the letter to my parents and obviously

I hadn't opened it in a year and a half to in like two years so I realized holy shit she read it so then I go and I look at my history and boom there's nothing but all these articles on Matt Cox Mac Cox MacCock MacCock wanted wanted wanted so I I go in and I said Jesus God Almighty

I said did you what did you do and she was like and she she immediately realizes that I know she breaks down she starts crying she says I'm sorry I had no idea I didn't mean to I said well I have to leave so I can't stay here if you know who I am if anybody knows who I am like it's dangerous for me

She begs and pleads and cries and says, please don't leave, please don't leave. I'll never tell anybody. I'll never tell anybody. And the truth is, I was, like, totally in love with this chick. I thought she was amazing. She was great. So I stayed. So she knows my true name is Matt Cox, not Carter, not Joseph Carter.

Which is bad for me. We end up seeing Trina. Everything's going good. one day Amanda goes online she was checking on Google just randomly she would check my name so she checks my name and she sees something on Dateline

turns out that Dateline was was about to do an article on me I'm sorry an article Dateline was about to do a news program on me

at this point I've already been in Bloomberg magazine has already done two articles one about just about me and two the second article was when they caught Becky because they had caught Becky at this point then I had been in Fortune Magazine had done an article on me

like a 6,000 word article horrible then so then she went online and she found this article about not to mention all the St. Pete Times articles all the Chicago Tribune, all the Atlanta Journal Constitution. There was just one article after another. So she finds this thing about Dateline. There's a blog about Dateline how they're interviewing people that knew me or that know me.

And they're going to do a one-hour episode on me. So I now know I'm going to be on Dateline. That's not good. Like local newspapers aren't a big deal. Even a national magazine or two. Like the kind of people that I hang. First of all, I don't have a big circle of friends. The kind of people that know me that I associate with aren't reading Fortune magazine.

These are contractors. Like, I'm not concerned about them stumbling across my photo in Fortune or Bloomberg. But this is Dateline. It's a tabloid. And your average blue-collar worker watches Dateline. Dateline, I don't even know if it's still out. But so I realize I'm going to be in living room. everywhere and somebody's going to recognize them somebody working at Starbucks or

working at Home Depot is going to say holy shit that guy comes in here all the time they're going to catch me like it's a problem so Amanda tells me about it and I go Jesus oh my God this is this is really bad I can't stay in the United States anymore so she and I decide we've got a month or two about two months a couple months before it comes out we decide we're going to refinance all all the houses, pull out a few million dollars, and leave the United States. And at this point, we started researching where to go. We figure we're going to go to Australia.

And the nice thing about Australia was Australia would allow you to go to Australia. If you had a, okay, if you shut up in Australia with like $200,000 and a business plan to open a business in Australia, you could go there and you could be a permanent resident alien. They would give you a driver's license. They'd allow you to buy a property. They would allow you to stay in their country and open a business. You could not go to Australia and get a job, but you could go there and open a business and hire Aussies. So I can't go there and become a citizen,

because if you were to go and become a citizen, they wanted you to do a background check. But I could go there and become a with, U.S. documents. If I showed up with my U.S. passport, I could become a permanent resident alien. And keep in mind, I'm living as a homeless person. I can easily become a permanent resident alien in Australia, and he'll never be notified. And then if he dies someday, they're not going to turn around to notify Australia that I died. So we decide we're going to Australia. A man has researched the whole thing.

start refinancing properties I start pulling out cash as we're pulling out cash we start asking people like my general contractor his name was Tracy I ask him hey can would you do me a favor and could you cash some checks for me and I he's like yeah sure so I have him cash a check for like 8000 then another check for 6,000 and then I have another guy that we worked with cash a check for 4,000 3,000 9000 And then I have, so Amanda ends up giving Trina a check, of several checks, and asks her to, asks her to cash those checks. I remember Amanda and I had gone, we had a couple of friends. One was Brittany, another chick that I had dated, and her new boyfriend, which they just gotten married, his name, his name was Brian. So Brian and Brittany, we went with them on their honeymoon to Venice, to Italy.

We went there for like 10 days. We did a 10-day trip. So we were gone for two, three weeks. We left and we went to Croatia. We went to Greece. Like we hung out. We went on this cruise, European cruise. And I remember we'd come back.

And as soon as we came back, we hadn't been home more than a few weeks when we started asking everybody to cash checks to start pulling out money. So we're pulling out money. and we had pulled out a few hundred thousand dollars one day I'm at home and suddenly I hear this bam

somebody had kicked in the front door and it was like oh my god I had cameras all over my house I had cameras in the living room dining room outside the house But I go to walk out to see what happened Because I remember it was so loud I remember thinking maybe the TV had fallen

Like the big flat screen TV And I thought maybe Cameron had pulled the Knock the TV or something I don't know But as soon as I walked Start walking out of the bedroom This fucking guy These two black guys had kicked in the front door

Comes running in and he sticks a gun In my face and he goes Get on the ground! Get on the ground! So I go oh Jesus So I get on the ground They lead Amanda in the room She gets on the ground Cameron gets on the ground

They throw a blanket over us they robbed the whole house they grabbed some i i mean literally i'm like bro what do you want you know they're they're they're like shut up shut up i'm like what do you want and they said you know where's the money where's the money i said bro there's money here like i told them where there's some money here there's some money here we had some money in the refrigerator or in the freezer i didn't say that i told them to get the money out of that they had a gun safe which was amanda's gun and they grabbed the gun safe, they grabbed our Rolexes, they grabbed a couple of Cartier watches and stuff

and some jewelry, and then they grabbed, oh, they grabbed the keys to, I think, a mandish truck, and they jumped in her truck and took off. No, do they take my truck? I don't know, they stole one of our vehicles. So we immediately sit up, and as soon as they're gone, we call the police. police show up and the guy the cop's like I'm like hey I got a video of it but they had ski masks on

so the cop comes and he's I remember he told me look you need you got to find another place to live you you can't you you guys can't stay here like you can't stay in this neighborhood you know I said I told him I own like 20 houses in the neighborhood I another five or six lots would build new houses he's I don't care because what these guys didn't steal this time they'll just come back and steal so I said okay so we ended up going to a hotel well I didn't they had taken my my wallet so I didn't have my driver's license or my they took my a bunch of stuff I didn't have anything in my name so they took all my stuff all I had was a passport in the name Walter Holcomb so they took my Joseph Carter stuff so I got a passport as Walter Holcomb

and a driver's license in Walter Holcomb's name so we go and we check in to a hotel we were there maybe a day or two. We didn't go back to the house. We were going to, we were just going to buy a new house and stay in the hotel. It was a really nice hotel. So we stay in the hotel. And while that's happening, Trina is calling because they took our cell phones. So we get our new cell phones back. And I remember Trina, as soon as I got it back in mine was back on, like, we got a phone call. I got a phone call from Trina. And she was like, oh my God, where have you guys been? What are you doing? What's going on, where's Amanda? What's happening? I said, Trina, calm down. I said, look, we had a

home invasion, and we're staying in a hotel. And I said, she goes, what hotel? And I went, I remember thinking, what? She didn't say, like, are you okay? How's it? Oh, my God, that's horrible.

She goes, what hotel are you at? And I was like, I'm at the, whatever hotel it was. I just told her the name of the hotel. I forget, like, the, fuck, I don't remember. was the westing or something so i tell you i was this hotel and she goes okay well tell amanda to call me because Amanda was in the shower i go okay no problem so i hang up the phone uh what had happened was a couple days earlier trina had called the secret service and turned us in and the secret service had gone to my old my house where we weren't staying and had staked out the house for the

like the day at the day we left that night the next day they showed up and started staking out the house So they've been staking it out for two days, and we weren't there. So she was calling to try and find out where we were. So she called the Secret Service back. She said, this is where they are. They sent, Secret Service sent a team, sent themselves and the marshals, went to the hotel where we were. And they asked, is Joseph Carter staying here? And they said, no, because I wasn't.

I was staying there as Walter Holcomb. So then Trina calls back and says, I called the hotel. you're not there you're not there and I was like it was weird I was like what and at that point I wasn't at the hotel I was at the at our office we had rented like a 10,000 square foot warehouse and I said look I'm not there I'm she says are you there now I said no I'm at the warehouse Amanda was dropping off her son and she goes well okay so you're there now is Amanda with you and I went no Amanda's dropping off Cameron and she goes okay I got to go and she hangs up the phone. Like a couple minutes later, Amanda calls me. And I go, hey, what's up? She

says, Trina just called me. And I go, okay, well, what's going on? She goes, I don't know, Matt. I'm worried. I said, Carter. She goes, I don't know Carter. I'm worried. I said, why? And she goes, I'm worried because she said some stuff. Like, she told me how much she loves me and cares about me. And she goes, it was just weird. And I go, she's, I'm concerned. I go, what are you concerned about? I go, if she doesn't know anything, what are you worried about? And she goes, oh, God, Matt, I'm so sorry. And by this point, I'm concerned because by this point, I got a phone call from the local police. And the local police asked me if I could meet them, if I could meet them at the house.

So I'm now driving to the house because they wanted me to meet them at the house because they said they wanted the video of the home invasion. So I'm driving to the house. And when Amanda called, and I'm getting in the car, I'm driving, and I'm like, yeah, well, what are you worried about? And she goes, oh, my God, Matt, I'm so sorry. I'm worried. I'm worried. I go, what are you worried about? So at that point, I had just pulled up to the house because our place was only a couple blocks away, our office.

So I pull up to the house and I'm like, well, if you're not worried, I mean, if you're worried, you must be worried about something. What are you worried about? If she doesn't know anything, there's no reason to be worried. And she's like, you know, she didn't want to tell me what had happened. But she goes, I think I might have fucked up. And I go, how did you fuck up? What are you trying to say? Like, what is going on?

But at this point, I'm getting out of my car, walking to the front, to my house, and a black SUV pulls up, another SUV pulls up, another car pulls up, another one pulls up, and they all lock up their brakes. And I'm standing there in the middle of the street holding my cell phone when the Secret Service jumps out of their vehicles, screaming, get on the ground, get on the ground. get on the ground, get on the ground. And obviously, at that point, I realized what the issue is. Amanda, I later found out. Amanda had told Trina who I was, and Trina had called the Secret Service and turned me in. And when Trina called Amanda,

she was basically just making sure that she wasn't with me, that she wanted her to know how much she loved her and cared about her and was trying to kind of distance herself from the situation and I end up getting arrested. So the Secret Service runs up to me and I remember, you know, I remember at first I thought I was getting robbed again until I saw the secret, they have these white, they're all in black, they have these white things that say Secret Service on them.

So a Secret Service was there. and uh they throw me on the ground they're like get on the ground get on the ground i was just like numb i get on the ground they handcuffed me pulled me off pulled me up dust me off and i remember they're holding me and i'm just standing there they're like matt cox are you matt cox mr cox and i'm just staring at him and i'm not saying anything and the guy looks at he has a clipboard with my wanted poster on it and he holds it up and he's looking and another officer comes up and i remember he looked at me and he goes is it him is it him he's no i don't think it's oh shit i don't think it's bro. And he looks at me, no, it's him, it's him. He goes, look at his eyes. It's him.

And he looks at me and he goes, hey, Mr. Cox. He's, we've been looking for you. And he goes, you are Mr. Cox. You are Matthew Cox, right? And I went, yeah, yeah, I'm Matt Cox. I mean, at that point, I, you know, I'm done, right? That officer told me, that agent told me when they had arrested, when they arrested Becky, Rebecca Howick, when they arrested her in Houston, six months earlier, they said she didn't admit who she was until they put her hand on the scanner. They said she complained the whole 30-minute drive back to, they arrested her, by the way, they arrested her at school. They arrested her. And they brought her all the way back to the Secret Services office. And she, the whole time she was there being driven there,

She goes, you guys fucked up. You're going to lose your job. I'm going to sue. You've embarrassed me. They said, he goes, she didn't break until we put her hand on the scanner. And she goes, okay, I'm Rebecca Howlick. So I broke immediately. Yeah, you got, I know I'm done.

So they bring me back. They handcuffed me to a table. I wait. They fly the Secret Service agent from Atlanta, and she flies in. I'm there for hours. and they come in and they read me, you know, of course they read you your rights, they tell you what you're charged with, and they say, we're going to bring you back to Atlanta.

And they brought me back to Atlanta, and I went all the way back to Atlanta, and that was an ordeal. And what's funny is when they called Amanda, this was weird. Like, Amanda, when she found out that they had caught me, she immediately drove to the bank, went to our safety deposit box. First of all, there was cash in the box. So she doesn't pull out,

she pulls out the cash, but she pulls out the passports. She keeps all the cash in the ice box, and she keeps the cash in the safety deposit box. She grabs all the fake passports that I had and driver's licenses, and she brings those to the Secret Services office, and she gives them to them immediately

and says, I just found these. I don't know anything. I was completely duped and don't have a clue about who this person is. I thought his name was Joseph Carter. And she gives them all my driver's licenses and IDs and everything. She later tells them that she did know who I was, but she didn't think it was a big deal.

Like she waits until she gets a lawyer. When she gets a lawyer, she goes in and she cooperated. She tells them who I was and what I was doing. but she had nothing to do with it. She didn't really know what was going on and it was all me and, you know, which is fine because it was pretty much all me. Anyway, yeah, I go back to Atlanta and I get a lawyer and I fly on Conair, which is nothing like Conair in the movie.

And it takes about a month, month and a half to get me all the way back to Atlanta because they bring you from one prison. and they bring in one county jail or U.S. Marshal's holdover where they hold you for two weeks, then they hold you here for a week, then they hold you here for two weeks, and they hold you here for five days. So you keep getting bused from one place to another

until you're eventually flown back to Atlanta. And I was flown back to Atlanta, and I was held in the, I was held in Atlanta in two different jails. And I get my attorney, and I remember when I got my attorney, she told me I was looking at a bunch of time. She didn't really know how much time,

but she said you're looking at like 15, 20 years. She didn't really know. She said that I was responsible for like 25 or 26 million dollars in loss. The Secret Service was saying something like $40 million, $40 or $50 million in fraud at my mortgage company. And the numbers were all over the place. And, yeah. So I end up taking a plea. I end up pleading to 26 years

and I end up getting sentenced to 26 years and yeah that I get a PSI for 26 actually my pre-sentence report said out of 34 years or 30, yeah, 32 years of life 32 years of life is what my pre-sentence report said when it eventually came out. I was interviewed by the Secret Service and the FBI. I mean, I was trying to help myself.

I cooperated fully, told them everything I could think of. That by this point, they'd already indicted me in Atlanta, in Tampa, and in Nashville. Bill. I'm there. My lawyer and I have been talking. I've got a pre-sentence report that says I've got, I'm getting 26 years. The government has, I'm being, I was interviewed by the Secret Service and the U.S. Marshals, what am I saying? I was interviewed by the Secret Service and the FBI. When I was interviewed by the Secret Service, that was actually comical because when I was interviewed by the Secret Service, when I first sat down my lawyer and I sat down with the Secret Service there were two agents there one was Agent Peacock

who's a female agent Andrea Peacock and the other guy was Dan Brunsowski I think his name was Dan Brunsowski Brzowski I don't know it's in my book it's a long it's a long one I remember they sat down

and we hadn't been there maybe five or ten minutes when we finally had their stuff all arranged and they started questioning me. And one of the first things that Dan said was, listen, he said, I, first thing we need to go over is, we need to know where all the money is. And I said, you've got all the money.

What are you talking about? And he said, no, no, we know you've hidden money. And I went, hidden money. What are you talking about? Like, I haven't hidden any money. And he said, you know, we know for a fact that you have money hidden in an account. Now, you're about to get an obstruction of justice charge unless you come clean with us

right now. So I remember my lawyer was like, her name is Millie, Millie. She'll lean and she goes, do we need to talk about this? I said, no, I said, I've gave them all the money. I gave him money and, you know, there was money in, in a bunch of different bank accounts that I had already given them. And I said, what are you talking about? He pulled out several bank statements and put them in front of me, boom. And he said, you have, I think it was $200,000, roughly $200,000, you have $200,000 in Southern Exchange Bank of Clarksville. And I looked down and he had these bank statements. And the funny thing about the bank statements is Southern Exchange Bank of Clarksville was one of the banks that I had created.

So this is a bank and bank statements that don't even even exist. It's complete forgery. He goes, we know you've got $200,000 in that bank in the name of Walter Holcomb. And I looked at him and I went, did you call the bank? And he said, yeah, I called the bank. He said, I've left several messages. He goes, we've already subpoenaed the records. And I go, did you go to the website?

And he went, yeah, I went to the website. And I go, what did you think? He goes, what do you mean? I go, what do you think of the website? And he goes, it's a bank website. I go, yeah, but it's professional. like I mean it's you know convincing and he looked at me and he goes oh Jesus Christ he is are you serious he is and so at that point the U.S. attorney and the other agents of my lawyer

they go what are you talking about and he looked at me and he goes he goes it's bullshit it's all bullshit I go it's all an illusion I said the bank doesn't exist and he said he goes I can't believe are you serious I go who did you call he was I said did nobody answered he goes no I left message And I was like, I haven't paid the voicemail in months. Like, I'd been arrested. By this point, I'd been arrested for several months. So I was like, how did you even leave a voicemail? And he's like, I left several.

And I said, who did you subpoena? He goes, I looked it up. It's a real bank. Now, it was, there was a Southern Exchange Bank of Clarksville. I actually had open an account there at one time in one of my fake identity's name. So I had a check that had the routing number for Southern Exchange Bank. and I had used that on all the fake checks that I'd made, and I'd used that on everything.

So that was the number he looked up, and he saw that there really was a Southern Exchange Bank. But it wasn't Southern Exchange Bank of Clarksville. And so the website I had created was Southern Exchange Bank of Clarksville.com. So he thought that Southern Exchange Bank and Southern Exchange Bank of Clarksville were the same thing, and he thought it was a real bank, and he actually subpoenaed Southern Exchange Bank's main office, which didn't even exist anymore because the bank had been sold to SunTrust Bank or something.

So, you know, he was waiting for these bank statements. So I just looked at him and I just was like, bro, what's going on? And I remember he said, I can't believe that. And I looked at him and I remember I said, bro, you're the Secret Service. And I was like, I can't believe you believe this. I mean, that was the first time I was actually embarrassed that they'd caught me. So at that point, we ended up talking. He was like, hey, who was involved?

Who helped you here? Who helped you there? With the Secret Service, I wasn't able to really tell them anything, to be honest. There was very little I could tell them because they didn't enter the picture until I was on the run. So once I was on the run, it was really just me and Rebecca Hout. she'd already told them everything now there were people in nashville that knew what i was doing a little here a little there but not a ton and you know i and i did say look this person and this person this person but they had been interviewing these people and most of these people either already

cooperated or or they'd said they didn't know anything and that wasn't true but nobody in in nashville i think ended up getting indicted so that actually was secret service that went on for several days i was interviewed with them by them for several days so then Then, weeks later, I was interviewed by the FBI. And that's when I met Agent Candace Calderon with the FBI. And she was a woman that I called when I was driving back from Texas. She was the one that I talked to on the phone. She despised me.

And so she came in and I'll never forget when I had the handcuffs on, right? I'd been shackled and chained and walked up to the U.S. Attorney's Office and I was in a room where they, you know, debrief you. And I remember she, they took the chains off me and I was rubbing my wrists and I, and she goes, your wrist hurt? And I was like, yeah. And she goes, get used to it. I mean, it's like she was constantly making these little snide comments. And so I interviewed her. and I remember one of the first things they wanted to know was that I had actually, when I was in Tampa,

I'd actually bribed a politician named Michael White. And I'd also used the name, well, this guy's name was Kevin White. I'd used the name Michael Kevin White because I'd seen this guy, I'd met this guy, and I'd seen his signs all over the place. And so I thought it was funny because I was using all these color-coded names like red, blue, silver and I saw I saw Kevin White so I used the name Michael Kevin White and then I ended up meeting that guy and I ended up

bribing that guy and got him elected to city council. Now I got him elected to city council that's a long story in and of itself but the point is I got him elected and he was going to rezone all of my vacant lots in Ebor City but I took off on the run before

any of that could happen so they immediately were like look we've got tons of checks from you and these color-coded names and their accounts going to his campaign contribution. And they had already talked to one of my business partners, who was a guy named David Walker. And Dave Walker had told the FBI that I had bribed this guy and helped get him elected to city council. Well, to the county commission. No, not county commission. It's city council.

To city council. So they asked me about that. And I was like, yeah, I mean, they've got the checks. Yeah, this is what happened. I bribed the guy. I mean, I got him elected and explained all that. And she was like, did he know this? Did he know that?

Yeah, he knew all that. So we talked about that. We talked about the various people that were involved in the scam. Most of those people had already been indicted. My actual indictment in Tampa has a bunch of names with initials. So it's like my name and then it's a bunch of initials. They're unnamed co-conspirators because these are people that were cooperating. and so they indicted me but they don't want to show that to anybody so technically they'd been indicted

but all these people were also cooperating against me so you know they already knew a ton of stuff i explained exactly what happened told them everything that happened and that interview went on for like three days two or three days or maybe four days like i think i was interviewed by the fbi for like three or four days so then i go back to you know i go back to my cell after the three or four days, I go back and eventually I get my PSI. My PSI says 36 years to life, is what it says. Now, I'd also been interviewed by Dateline. At this point, Dateline had come out.

The One Hour Special came out, and it was horrible. It's called The Thief of Hearts. And the person they mainly interviewed was Rebecca, Rebecca basically said, look, Matt Cox is a con man. He convinced me to commit crimes. I'm innocent. I didn't really know what I was doing. He's a Don Juan. He forced me to fall in love with him. It was just complete bullshit. But the one thing that was true that she said was I'm charismatic, which is true. I'm very charismatic. Charming. She said charming. Charming came up a lot. Anyway, so what happened with that was that Dateline had come out, but Dateline also, I'd been caught. So they wanted to interview me. So they came, they got the U.S. attorney to be interviewed, the Secret Service agent, and they came into the prison, and they interviewed me. The U.S. Attorney's Office asked me to be interviewed by Dateline, which I was interviewed by them.

I didn't want to be interviewed, but they told me if you were interviewed with. We'll consider it substantial assistance. Substantial assistance means you've cooperated with the government, and they can reduce your sentence as a result of it. They said, if you're interviewed, we'll consider it substantial assistance. So I was interviewed by them. I was also interviewed by the FBI and the Secret Service, which also was supposed to be considered substantial assistance. They said, we'll consider that substantial assistance. Fine.

So the night before I'm about to be sentenced, I call my lawyer, and I said, hey, what's going on? How much time am I going to get? Because I have a pre-sentence report that says 32 years to life. Now, we had negotiated after I got that 32 years to life. I was like, well, I'm not going to plead guilty. I want to take my plea back because I might as well go to trial. That's the maximum sentence you can give me. It's 30 years is bank fraud.

Maximum you can get on bank fraud is 30 years. And then I got an extra two years for aggravated identity theft. So it's 32 years to life. I'm like the maximum sentence you can give me 32 years. So why would I plead guilty? I might as well go to trial. If I lose, I can only get 32 years to life. So they said, look, what do you think doesn't apply to you?

So they actually sent the Secret Service agent down to the prison with my lawyer, and we argued for about 30 minutes to get it from 32 years down to 26 years and four months. But my lawyer kept telling me, don't worry, when we get in front of the judge, I'm going to argue these enhancements and I'm going to get them taken off and you're going to end up with 13 years, 12 to 13 years. Okay. So the night before my sentencing, we've already agreed to 26 years and four months. But I'm also supposed to get a sentence reduction and my lawyer is going to argue to reduce my enhancements. So I call her up and I said, hey, what did the U.S. attorney say?

And she says, oh, Matt, I'm so sorry. not going to recommend a reduction in your sentence. They're going to recommend you get 26 years in four months. But don't worry, I'm going to argue the enhancements and you're probably going to end up with 12 or 13 years. I was like, why aren't they going to recommend that I get a reduction? I was interviewed by the FBI, by the Secret Service, and I was interviewed by Dateline. And she said, I know, but Matt, nobody's been arrested. And that's really what a reduction is. to where you cooperate and someone's been arrested. And nobody's been arrested on your case based on anything that you said.

But don't worry, they're going to investigate and those people will be arrested. And at that time, they'll reduce your sentence. So tomorrow, you're probably going to end up 12 or 13 years. And then later when you get to prison, your sentence will probably be cut down again, maybe even by half. And I thought, oh, my God. I mean, first of all, it doesn't really matter what I thought that's what was happening. Like you can't say, oh, forget it.

I don't want to be sentenced. No, you're going to sentencing tomorrow. So you just deal with it. So the next day, I go to sentencing. I'm led in the courtroom. The U.S. attorney goes on and on and on about all of these. Mr. Cox did this. Mr. Cox did that.

She provides like a 40-page timeline of all these things that I had done. Once I went on the run, it's 42 pages of fraud, not including a small summary of three or four pages from when I was in Tampa and that's the bulk of my crime was in Tampa so plus I got my PSI my PSI is like 52 pages which is massive

most PSIs are five pages 10 anyway I get in front of the judge US attorney says that I'm a complete scoundrel scumbag con man can't be trusted have to be taken out of society to protect society my attorney gets up and says that he's really just he's just a misunderstood guy uh and uh you know the judge read some letters

from my friends and family i remember my uncle wrote a letter and he's a lawyer and i remember he said to the judge that mr cox is an extremely disturbed person And I remember thinking, like, when my lawyer read it, she was like, Mr. Cox has always had problems. He's always had issues with, like, he, like, this is a guy that I saw once a year, maybe. And he starts explaining that I've had, I've always had emotional problems. I've always had learning disabilities. I've struggled growing up, struggled in school, and that I'm an extremely, From what he can tell, I'm a disturbed person, but out of love for his sister, my mother, he's writing this letter and asking for a lenient sentence.

And it was like, it was the worst letter. This is a defense attorney. It was the worst letter you could have possibly written from an officer of the court saying, this guy has problems. that's my uncle he's a douchebag and just a complete scoundrel and scumbag and always has been really to be honest

did you know this is a guy by the way this is a guy that graduated first in his class in law school ended up being a bottom the barrel attorney really like doing wills he does wills he does real estate

he does some criminal law he does some like it's like you were the top of your class and you were doing bottom the barrel law work and he wrote this fucking letter that just was horrible like my attorney was like you know I don't even think I want to send this to the judge she's like I talked to him on the phone like I don't understand I tried to she tried to talk to him me like what did you write like she called she was so bad my public my my um public defender called him to be like, what did you do? This is your letter?

Anyway, she gave it to the judge, though. She did give it to the judge. I mean, look, it didn't matter. It didn't matter what he said because I was done. So the judge just read all these letters. And the judge, I remember, the judge said that Mr. Cox,

what Mr. Cox did was borderline sociopathic in nature. Oh, I mean, he, listen, I wish I had. transcript it was scathing what he said to me and honestly probably pretty accurate but that's not the point point it was harsh it was harsh it was you know you see that guy on tic-tok there's emotional damage that guy that you know emotion that's how i felt like oh my god this is a federal judge like he really who it was bad anyway i ended up not getting the reduction and i ended up getting um i got 26 years and four months. I typically don't say the four months. I typically say I got 26 years

because you say 26 years and four months, it sounds like I'm whining. You know, it's saying like, oh, 20, like four months like that was overkill, but really the 26 years in general was overkill. So I got 26 years and four months and, yeah, I tried to, you know, obviously I stood up and I gave them my little, hey, oh God, did I even tell you about my aunt? My aunt stood up and spoke for me. My aunt said she was a taxpayer and it was a waste of taxpayer money to put me in jail for that long. And that's not really an argument that I'm a taxpayer, Your Honor, and it's a waste of my tax dollars to put him in jail. She also has a lot of money. She does. She and my uncle is extremely wealthy and she very much feels like anyone that works for the government is like

a servant yes thank you perfect yeah is is subservient or they are someone who works for her like these are not people that you know people of means feel like the people who work for the government are subservient so she's basically like almost kind of came off like a lecture to the judge like you're on it's a waste of my money like You need to listen up. Anyway, yeah, it was bad. So that didn't help. Really, I had nobody that really helped me.

Nothing. It wouldn't matter. Anybody could have stood up. They could have been perfectly eloquent. It didn't matter. My PSI said 26 years. You get 26 years. So he gave me 26 years and four months.

I tried to talk. I cried like a fucking small child. Then on my way, after I got the 26 years, and I was leaving I don't think I stopped crying until I got to the down to the

probably the U.S. Marshals like the holding cell and when I walked in I remember there was this there's a bunch of you know there's a bunch of tough guys but there was this one guy that was like

just this flamboyant gay guy and when I walked in I just got control of myself and I walked in and one of the guys goes, how much you get? Like you go to a holding cell where you're

waiting to be put on the bus to be driven back to the U.S. Marshal, to the Marshall holder. And he looks to me and goes, what did they give you? And I go, over 26 years. And the gay guy goes, oh my God. They, oh my God.

They didn't, the judge didn't throw the book at you. He jumped over the, he jumped over the bench and bludgeoned you to death with it. Oh my God. And I just was thinking I mean even even

in the gay guy's voice it sounded brutal. I mean he did he did the whole oh my God the whole way it was fucking just a bad day. It was a bad day. Yeah I got 26 years and so then I go back to the it's so funny too because when I went back to the to the Marshall's holdover

and they dropped me off and everything this is funny because I remember I got, I was, we were all led in, and there's like 10 of us, and we're sitting there chained up, and I remember they were calling four o'clock count, and they go, you know, Johnson, you know, Thomas, and when they got to me, they go, you know, Cox, and there was an officer Cox. Now, keep in mind, the staff in Atlanta, all the officers were black. So when they got to me, and he goes, he goes, Cox, and I went here, and he goes, Cox, and he goes, Cox, and he goes, He goes, you're not related to officer cocks, are you?

And all the officers start laughing. And I go, well, my dad did get around a lot when he was younger. We may be related like that. And the officers all stopped laughing, and all the inmates started laughing. So, yeah, they called me out. They called out a roll call. They brought us upstairs. I walked into the unit once again.

I was in control of myself again. And when I walked in, there's about 100 guys in that unit. And as soon as I walked in, everybody looks over at me because I had just been on TV where they'd said I got 26 years and four months on television. Like my roommate told me, bro, it just went off television. Like the 6 o'clock news or the 5 o'clock news, they just said it. And as soon as it was done, they popped the door and we all walk in. Like, we're talking about like 100 guys looked at me at once, boom, and looked at me. And they were just like shaking their head.

Boom, I immediately start crying again. Immediately hit me again. So I go to my cell. I walk in, I have like maybe 10 guys come in going, bro, it's going to be okay, it's okay, you're going to be okay, you can appeal it, you can this, you can that. All of that's not true. But, you know, there's the things that people tell you to try and, you know, get you through it and make themselves feel better, I guess. So, yeah, that was a bad day. About 10 days later, I was placed on a bus and I was driven to the medium security prison at Coleman, in Coleman, Florida.

Coleman Florida the complex There's a Coleman Florida, it's a complex And it's the largest Prison Complex In the United States It's got two penitentiaries Which you know two pins And it's got a medium security prison

A low security prison And a camp Which at that time was for female So it was all male Except for the camp which was females It's now male I was placed in the medium This is funny when I got there

I remember, you know, they interview you, and they were interviewing me, and I remember the guy from SIS, which is internal security for them, they kind of, they're like the internal FBI for them. The guy was interviewing me and he goes, yeah, bro, he's like, you shouldn't even be here. Like, you're at a medium security prison. Like, this is for violent inmates and stuff and guys that have life sentences. And he was like, yeah, you really shouldn't even be here, Cox. But you have so much time. you have to go to a medium you have to do you have to be below 20 years to go to a low and even with good time my out date was 2030 like i still had 24 years to go with no good time

my out date was like 2035 or something or no sorry like 2032 or something like that so my out date was 2030 and this was in 2006 no 2007 because it took a year. So late 2007 was when I was in it. I was arrested in late 2006. So this is late 2007. I'm at the medium. And I remember the guy said, hey, can I call somebody? And I called my mother. This is what a gangster my mom is, bro. So this is my mom when I called her, she said, I said, hi, mom. And she was like, oh, Matthew, are you okay? I'm fine. I said, she says, where are you? I said, I'm at Coleman prison And she goes, are you at the medium

Or are you at the low? The fuck? Like, I didn't even know I didn't know anything about Coleman. And she goes, you're at the medium of the law? And I went, I'm at the medium. And she goes, she says, okay, I need you to look up your cousin Reese. His name is Reese Townsend.

He's Jack's cousin. And I went, Jack has a cousin in prison? She goes, yes. She said, I said, well, he's not my cousin. and she goes, well, for all intensive purposes in this situation, in prison, he's your cousin. So he works in, she goes, he works in, he works on the, he works in maintenance. She goes, he works in the maintenance crew. He's in one of the units.

Ask around, you'll find him. He's going to take care of you. And I was like, okay, she goes, okay, I'll be up to see you in about a few weeks. I have to get placed on your visitation list. mom knows how prison works better than i do within a couple days i find i trace tracks me down and my mom shows up a couple weeks later i remember the first day i'll tell you the first day story and then that that's then i got i got to end this the first day i'm there i go to pill line right because i'm at this point i'm so stressed out and anxiety and and just i'm just dying like i'm taking paxel it's like an

anxiety drug so i go to pill line and i go there and i get my paxel you have to take a pill and won't give you a bottle because you know we're your children so i take the paxel and i'm walking back and i go to walk in the unit and there's a sally port's right so you have to stop you go in one door and then they have to open the other door to let you in so i'm standing there with this black guy and i and this is how absurd the situation is and this is how foreign it is to me even though i've already been locked up a year but this is how foreign the environment fireman is and how unprepared I am I as I walk up I go to grab the door and it's locked and I I pat my pants and I go man I don't have the key my key you got your key to the black

guy and he goes man I ain't no snitch motherfucker I ain't no snitch boy he said I'll show my paperwork I ain't no snitch motherfucker and I went whoa whoa whoa whoa I go bro what are you talking about and he's sitting there and he's looking at me and he goes man you what you're trying to say I said, bro, I don't know what the deal is, man. He looks at me, he goes, man, you just get here? And I went, yeah, bro, I just got here today. And he looked at me and he goes, man, he said, I go, what did I say? And he goes, man, you asked me if I got the keys.

And I went, yeah, because the door's locked. And he goes, nah, man, that's like you calling me a snitch. Only the police got the keys. Only po poeot got the keys. I ain't got no keys. Only snitches got the keys. And I went, oh, wow, bro, listen, man, I got no, I had no idea. That's what, I didn't know how you were going to take that.

I was just playing around. Man, you got to watch yourself, man. You're going to get hurt. You're going to get hurt. Listen, bro. It was that bad. Like, I mean, I walked in and I had a cellie. They'd assigned me a cellie.

And we're talking about very quickly. When I got there, very quickly, they start screaming over the loudspeaker, recall, recall. And guys start running around the unit, grabbing stuff doing this, microwaving stuff, screaming stuff. the cops are screaming, getting your cell, get your cell,

and they walk to the first cell and lock it, second cell and lock it. Guys are running and scott. I'm just standing there looking around while they're screaming recall. Well, my cellie was a Mexican.

He comes running up to me and goes, he says, hey man, you got to get in the cell. He's bunky, bunky, bunky. We got to go to the cell. We got to go to the cell. And I'm going on, what's going on? He's somebody got stabbed in the yard, man.

I go, oh my God, someone got killed in the yard. He goes, nah, man, they didn't get killed. They just got stabbed up a little bit. Let's go. But I thought, this is a place where he said got stabbed up a little. They just stabbed him up a little bit. Like, that's where you're at. You can get stabbed up over a gambling debt.

Like somebody owes somebody $20 and won't pay him. He gets stabbed up a little bit in the yard. Like, there's no little bit of stabbing, in my opinion. So, or you say the wrong thing and some guys ready to fight you because I was joking around saying, hey, do you have your keys? I mean, it was such a foreign environment. And ultimately, I get my sentence cut twice. And I'm going to do another segment of videos where I explain how I got my sentence cut.

And it is extremely interesting and devious and, yeah, it's, and telling. So, if you like the video, do me a favor and subscribe, hit the bell. so you get notified leave me a comment and i'm going to go back to the beginning and watch them all over again we're going to put them in a um in a playlist so that you can watch the videos and i appreciate you watching and basically that's my story up until the point where i got to prison and really appreciate you watching and see you