Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Tragic Downfall of The World's Greatest Bipolar Megalomaniac Lawyer | FRANK AMODEO

Episode Date: September 23, 2023

Tragic Downfall of The World's Greatest Bipolar Megalomaniac Lawyer | FRANK AMODEO

Anybody who's been involved in Frank and been around Frank knows he's a maniac and that this situation at hand is partially his fault. The judge says, I should throw both of you in jail right now for contempt of court. And immediately one of them says, Frank Amadeo, Frank's a lawyer, Frank's a lawyer. And Frank stands up and he goes, I'm a lawyer. I'm a lawyer. And he says, I'm going to transfer all of these cases under your license and it's going to be up to you to make sure that the filings get done. He almost immediately

becomes one of the largest single lawyers in the area. Some of the people involved end up going to the police and saying look, we gave these guys money and they just took off and so several charges

get filed. When they get to his wife, Claire, the probation officer tells her, he's going to recommend 24 months probation. Claire, who's also a lawyer, says to the probation officer, you cannot

give him probation. He'll never learn his lesson. You have to send him to prison. He has to go to prison. He has to know that his actions have consequences. Hey, I appreciate you guys checking out the video. I am

continuing the series on Frank Amadeo it's insanity and we're at the point now where Frank let's see Frank just got my sentence reduced we talked about that part when that was in prison so now we're going to go ahead and go back to when he was um in Orlando he was working for so I believe by this point Frank's father has passed away and he's he ends up getting a job at Hyatt Legal Services, so Hyatt Legal Services was owned by the same people that started H&R Block, right? So it was supposed to be where it's like for the everyday average person that, which is, you know, like H&R Block, which for taxes, so that the average person could go and get their taxes done. With Hyatt, with Hyatt, it was the same type of thing, but it was for people to get bankruptcies. So if the average person wants to get a bankruptcy, like you would have, if you try to,

to do that yourself like that's difficult to do a bankruptcy yourself how it was designed to kind of turn it into you know a mill like very quickly be able to get people to train people to fill out the paperwork to process that very quickly just like you know like a like a tax service for their average everyday person he came in there he started working there and he was doing he was doing fine he actually ends up meeting his he meets a claire which is uh he ends up marrying it's a she's a she's a a lawyer she had just gotten her law degree and she was working there too he ends up meeting her i want to say they were married very quickly within a few months but initially he said i was there basically learning the ropes hyatt had gotten into trouble right like they they had gotten into a

situation where they weren't they were taking in money with you have to think these are people people are coming to you that have have have problems they have you know they have money problems so you can't charge a lot of money or you're putting them on payment plans they're not paying you're not doing the work and for a lawyer typically lawyers have to secure money their fee up front they can't a lot of lawyers depends on the situation you can't just say hey they didn't pay me i'm going to stop working. A lot of times the court's not okay with that. Well, what's happened is there's tons of filings being done in the bankruptcy court and then they're not following up with those filings because a lot of people end up stop cooperating with them. So finally, the federal judge

calls in the owners of Hyatt. They call them in and Frank goes in essentially, he said, I went in to help carry some boxes. Like, I'm really learning the ropes, but I don't really know much about the business at this point. It's only been a few months. So he goes in, and we're talking about,

there's multiple locations. He goes in, they go in with a bunch of boxes and files and the two owners of the business go in there. And they get in front of the judge, and as they're sitting there talking and explaining to the judge

that they've missed some deadlocked, lines and give them some more time and this and that. Judge gets upset and says, which one of you guys is a lawyer? And neither of them were lawyers. So a lot like if you were to open, let's say, a medical clinic or even a hospital, I could open up a hospital. You'd hire doctors. It's a business.

You don't have to be licensed to, you don't have to be licensed as a doctor to own a hospital. so these guys don't even have law degrees and they're running this massive mill. So the judge gets really upset about this and says, you know, you guys aren't even lawyers. You're in here talking to me about this. You're not lawyers. Like, why should, you know, who's representing these people?

What lawyer is representing these people? And they did have some lawyers, but some of those lawyers were coming and going. So they don't really have a lawyer even there. And the judge says, I should throw both of you in jail right now for contempt of court. And immediately one of them says, Frank Amadeo, Frank's a lawyer, Frank's a lawyer. And Frank stands up. And he goes, I'm a lawyer.

I'm a lawyer. And he says, I'm going to transfer all of these cases under your license. And it's going to be up to you to make sure that the filings get done. So they very quickly beg Frank to do this Because otherwise they're in a lot of trouble You're running a law firm where you don't have enough lawyers To handle the volume of people that are coming in You're running out of money

And you've got a judge ready to throw you in jail So they make a deal with Frank right away Frank takes over And almost immediately if you think about it He becomes the largest We're talking about hundreds of cases get put under Frank's law license. So he almost immediately becomes one of the largest single lawyers, bankruptcy attorneys in the area or in the state.

Well, what happens is he's running this whole thing. And within it, he runs it for a few years. He helps get everything straight. And within a few years, he ends up opening up his own firm. He goes off on his own and opens up his own. own firm with two partners, not these two knuckleheads, two other knuckleheads. So he goes with these other guys, they open up a firm, and he turns it into, you know, it's, it's a, it becomes very quickly he starts taking on just more and more clients, more

than he can handle. You have to think Frank's bipolar, and when he's manic, he thinks he can do anything. So he starts promising things, and he's very convincing. So you believe him, because you could tell he believes. himself he's super confident the problem is it doesn't always work out so he takes over so he brings a bunch of clients over from hyatt he then gets a bunch of new clients hiatt actually goes into going under he gets a bunch of new clients his new clients are you know once again bankruptcies are hard to do and you have to wait a long time to get the money from some

of these clients they can only pay so much up front you put them on a payment plan sometimes they don't pay so what happens is frank's taking on more and more people he's married and he ends up having you know he's juggling too much and he ends up going down a flight of stairs and he falls and he falls and he kind of like breaks his hand like part of his hand he sprains or yanks messes up his pinky and and but he's they bring him to the hospital and but he's he's so out of it by the time he gets there uh they keep him in the hospital for a couple days and or i'm sorry like the next day he they go to release him and he won't leave he won't leave the hospital like he he's exhausted he can't get up he can't move so frank ends up having like a depressive episode

and it's debilitating and he he told he had these types of episodes throughout his life where he had he would go into like a stupor of depression for days and couldn't get out of bed and at one point when he was younger they thought he had like pneumonia so they didn't know what the issue was well he's in the hospital he wouldn't leave like he just he was almost comatosed and so they keep them there for a few days the problem is this is at a period of time when people didn't think of mental illness right like they're not thinking he's bipolar like he's super successful so the doctors aren't thinking hey this is this is a mental illness like this guy has it has some issues he needs to be medicated and this is in the 80s so

people aren't thinking that early 80s what happens is while he's there his his two partners which he basically said his two partners at this point keep in mind this is in the 80s cocaine is a big deal right like turns out that both of his partners have drug problems Frank's doing the bulk of the work

so when they have to step in for the next over the next week and kind of take over it absolutely doesn't go well like they don't know the cases they're not carrying their weight they certainly can't carry the weight of Frank works 70 hours a week.

I mean, you can't, so how do you step in and take over those cases? So he ends up staying at home for a week or two, maybe three weeks. And by the time he gets back to the office, it's complete chaos. His partners are pulling money out of the various accounts that they have set up. They're not, they're missing filings. the whole thing starts to fall apart. So ultimately the business just

collapses. It just goes under. These guys have a huge issue with one another and Frank basically packs up his things and these guys pack up and they leave, right? So I can imagine a bankruptcy law firm

filing for bankruptcy. So they end up going under they file for bankruptcy and nobody really like these guys are drug addicts like one of them ends up going into rehab uh frank basically just walks away from the whole thing and he's not right in his head is he's not realizing hey i this is not going to take care of itself so they all kind of walk away it collapses they've got their their frank's licenses connected to all of these cases and

some of the people involved end up going to the police and saying, look, we gave these guys money and they just took off. And so several charges get filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office.

So Frank takes off walks away from the whole thing. His partners walk away from the whole thing. And the issue is this, that several of their clients go to the local authorities and they say, listen, you know, these guys took our money and they were supposed to file this paperwork. They were supposed to represent us in the bankruptcies and they didn't. They just left. What's going on YouTube? Ardap Dan here, Federal Prison Time Consulting. Hope you guys are all having a great day. If you're seeing and hearing this right

now, that means you're watching Matt Cox on Inside True Crime. At the end of Matt's video, there will be a link in the description where you can book a free consultation with yours, our DAPDAN, where we can discuss things that could potentially mitigate your circumstances to receive the best possible outcome at sentencing or even after you started your prison sentence. Prior to sentencing, we can focus on things like your personal narrative, your character reference letters, pre-sentence interview, which is going to determine a lot of what type of sentence you receive. If you've already been sentenced, we can also focus on the residential drug abuse program,

how you can knock off one year off of your sentence. Also, we have the First Step Act where you can earn FSA credits, serving your sentence for every 30 days that you program through the FSA you can actually knock an additional 15 days off per month these are huge benefits and the only way you're going to find out more is by clicking on the link booking your free consultation today all right guys see you soon at the end of the video peace I'm out of here back to you Matt one woman had given had deposited something like 30 or 60 thousand dollars into the law firm and so as far as she's concerned and the money's gone.

Well, you know, that these guys stole my money. When in fact the money went to bills and things of that nature. The problem is Frank's a lawyer. The two other partners are not lawyers. So they really kind of come after Frank. Well, Nancy Grace was the U.S. I'm sorry, not the U.S. attorney. She was the attorney, the state or county attorney.

I think it was city attorney. attorney maybe she was basically like the county attorney so she a district attorney what am i saying sorry i'm not used to state terms um she was the district attorney and she formed two different grand juries and tried to get two different grand juries to indict frank amadeo and the grand juries looked at all of the looked at the case and said look we can't determine who took this money we can't determine what happened what we know is Something happened. These guys missed a bunch of deadlines and the company went under and filed for bankruptcy.

But we don't know that anybody took money. Like, we don't know what happened. So, you know, Nancy Grace is trying to say that Frank Amadeo stole a bunch of money and took off. That, you know, she couldn't prove that in the, in the, under the state's legal system. So she takes her case and she goes to the U.S. attorney and the, you know, and shows the U.S. attorney what she feels happened. The U.S. attorney takes it to a federal grand jury and gets an indictment against Frank for commingling client funds,

which is a fancy way of saying you were using your client's money for something that it wasn't supposed to be used for. like this was money that was supposed to go into a bank account and be used for legal fees or to pay bills for the for the for the client according to frank he was he was in the hospital and at home when that money was taken out of the account and that money was in an account with other funds but somehow or another nancy grace and the and the u.s attorney decided to to focus on this one woman who had deposited 30 or 60,000. I don't know why I can't. I can't remember which amount it was. So, and that money was gone. Maybe she was sympathetic. They put her in front of a grand jury like you feel bad for her.

She was an older woman like, oh, he took my money. And they feel bad for her. So they indict Frank. Frank at this point has put together a little group of investors. And they've decided he has decided he's going to, that this bankruptcy thing is never going to work. He's never going to make enough money. to do the things he wants to do in life.

So he puts together a group of investors and they decide they're going to start buying up companies. They're going to start buying companies that are having financial problems and they're going to use bankruptcy laws to restructure those companies. So he's in the middle of just kind of putting this together when one day he gets a knock at the door.

And this would be, at this point, it'd be in the, probably close to the 90s, late 80s, early 90s. He gets a knock at the door. It's two U.S. Marshals, they came to his house. And they said, yeah, we're here to arrest you on a fugitive warrant. A fugitive, it's kind of ridiculous. Like, if you knew where I was, then why, why didn't you guys just send me the paperwork? like Frank had no idea he'd been indicted he had no idea that they were looking for him and so he's not he's not a fugitive because he was never notified that he was indicted

and they wanted him to come that they wanted him to turn himself in instead the US marshals show up and they arrest him and they bring him downtown he's immediately released on his own recognizance he's not a flight risk but listen anybody who's been involved in Frank and been around Frank knows he's a maniac and that this situation at hand is partially his fault um so he decides he's going to plead guilty so he pleads guilty and he tells me that he paid that the woman back he paid her back he paid her all the money back no okay maybe i don't know what i know is what what i do know is this that the probation that he pled guilty to like one count of like wire fraud or something.

It's in the book. One counter wire fraud. And the government, the way it works is you plead guilty. The government assigns you a probation officer. The probation officer comes and interviews you, your family members. They look at all the things you do, you've done. They see what laws, the federal sentencing guideline rules apply to you. So they look at what federal sentencing guidelines applies to you.

And they determine how much, how much you should, how much of a sentence you should get. So, Frank, um, pleads guilty. They go.

They talk to him. They talk to his family members. They talk to the client. They talk to everybody. And he's pled guilty to 24 months of probation. so he doesn't have to go to jail he's going to be a felon but he doesn't have to go to jail when they get to his wife claire the probation officer tells her he's going to recommend 24 months probation claire who's also a lawyer says to the probation officer um do do not you cannot you

you cannot give him probation he'll never learn his lesson You have to send him to prison. He has to go to prison. He has to know that his actions have consequences. Amadeo was supposed to get 24 months probation, but Claire says, tells a probation officer, you can't give him probation. He has to go to prison.

He has to know that his actions have consequences. So the probation officer ends up telling the judge that he believes that he believes that, Frank needs to go to prison. So the judge gives Frank a 12-month sentence. I believe it's 12 months of what they called a shock boot camp. So they send him to a camp, but it's a boot camp. And so this guy's like in his 30s at this point.

And now they think about it, this is actually later. By this point, it's in the late 90s. So probably like 97, 98, something like that. they end up sending him to uh they end up sending him to this boot camp he goes to the boot camp i remember he said he showed up with stephen hawkings like the theory of i don't know the theory of relativity or theory of time or theory of all things or whatever some book stephen hawking had written um and and the in the bible and amadeo said that he got there and they made him stand outside in like 30 degrees um waiting for hours and hours before they came out

and the the warden came out because this is a small camp the the warden came out of the camp and after he'd been sitting it staying in there for hours and he goes he said the only thing i hate worse than criminals is lawyers and you're both and he said listen this guy made my life miserable he said I mean, they're waking him up at 6 o'clock. He's running around. He's in his, he's in his love. At this point, I guess Amadeo's in his late 30s or so. I don't know.

I can't. I'm not going to do the math. It's got to be in his late 30s by this point. Amadeo's in his late 30s by this point. Keep in mind, he was in, like, Claire, his wife, like, his wife this whole time, he said, we used to sit around and have dinner and he would talk about when he was going to take over. When he takes over, when I'm running.

things this is how it's going to be i'm going to do it like this and i'm going to do this and she would just grin and smile like like these people that are in his life i i don't want you to think that they didn't like this was a delusion in his mind that he was harboring but not telling anyone he's very open about it so he said we would sit around and we would have dinner and we would joke about it kind of laugh about it and and i interviewed people when writing the book i interviewed people that were business partners of his and i would say well i mean you were aware of this of this belief of his i mean and he says that he you guys would talk about it and he go oh yeah yeah no we all knew and i go so it was kind of like a running joke like you

didn't nobody believed it he goes no no we believed it we believed that he definitely believed that like we would laugh about it and joke about it but we knew he was serious This is something he really believed. And look, having been locked up with Frank, I can tell you right now, he does believe it. He's very serious. He'll joke about it, but deep down, he's honest about it. He really believes it.

So he ends up going to prison this boot camp for 10 months, right? So he got 12 months, but you get a couple months off for good time. So he gets let out of prison. um and i want to say it was uh 99 late late 1999 is when i think when he gets that because he was there for like almost a year at this point when he gets out claire was clear clear ended up going to somewhere in like somewhere in the stands right like there's Kajikistan and you know

all these different stands countries right and the that had broken away from the Soviet Union or Russia and so he goes there or she ends up flying there they were sending people lawyers to these different countries to help set up their legal systems and so she ends up

as soon as he's like literally as soon I get home within a few days or week or so, she was getting on a plane and leaving. So she left him there with, now, she had two children from a previous marriage. So she takes off and he's left with their two kids on probation to basically fin for them. So yeah, he gets out and he does this and he, he, um, uh, he, um, uh, he, uh, he, uh, he, uh, he, he, uh, he gets out and now he's out of prison he's now a felon he's out of prison and what he does is he meets up with um he meets up with a guy that he had kind of started a little according to frank he'd started a little business with right he had started a little business where this guy had come

in and bought a bunch of inventory from one of of frank's previous um bankrupt clients where Frank had invested money, he'd invested money. The guy bought a bunch of this company that was going under. They bought a bunch of inventory. And this guy went and sold that inventory. Now, according to Frank, the guy's name is Yaniv. Frank got out, called Yaniv. They met at like a Denny's.

Frank loves Denny's or I don't think it was Waffle House. It's like, I think it's Denny's. He loves Denny's. So they go to Denny's, and while they're there, Yaniv pulls out like, I don't know what it was, 30 or 50 or 60,000 dollars in cash and gives him, like, whatever it was, $40,000 in cash and says, this is your part of the stuff that he had sold. And stuff he had sold, when I say what he saw, we're talking about, like, it was, it was ridiculous. Like, it was something like, it was a massive amount of, like, they were like gift baskets or something. like it wasn't like it sounds nefarious right like he sold a bunch of stuff but it was like gift baskets or something he had some little company he sold a bunch of gift baskets and frank had put up

a bunch of the money and this is what and this was frank's part of that that whole thing was going on when frank left so when frank comes back yaneed's like here's your money and frank said i was shocked he said i didn't think yon yv was going to give me anything like i disappeared i hadn't done anything other than giving the money i hadn't done like my part like frank had a part that he was supposed to be involved in keeping the books uh corporation like a whole little thing he hadn't done any of it but it had worked out for yon-eve and he was happy he gave frank whatever 30 40 grand i forget what it was and so frank had a little bit of seed money to start this um start uh start start over again which is hard getting out of prison uh the next video is where frank starts

what's called Marabalus. Mirabalus is the this the mega company that he creates that starts this I'm going to say

scam to get money to build this massive company that's designed to kind of take over and it's funny because I always compare Mirabalus to Spector like frank creates this specter like james bond specter is the name of the organization that

is hell bent on world domination in james bond so he creates this specter like company that starts buying up other companies and that's what the next video is going to be it's going to be about it's going to be about marabulous and how he starts marabulous and how it just starts to blow up