Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - WSB Founder Sues Reddit | Lawsuit, Documentary, GameStop, & More

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

WSB Founder Sues Reddit | Lawsuit, Documentary, GameStop, & More

For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. Now, there's an issue with Reddit. There's a lawsuit. Reddit says that it was because I attempted to monetize the community. I attempted to take control of my own brand, Wall Street Best, which was flourishing.

over the place. I'd written a book. I was in the process of launching this kind of a stock training gamified competition and all of my efforts to monetize or everybody else's were perfectly fine up until I submitted my trademark request. And then all of a sudden I get removed from the subreddit. Reddit's like, oh, that's a really cool community. I like it. And just go to the trademark office and like, we'll go ahead and take that now. Thank you very much. And then they just register. Now it's their intellectual property. So it's just really confusing to me because it's like, hold on a second. So not only do you want me to read your terms or service, now you want me to freaking have a lot degree. And I'll be up there with Jordan Belfort and with Rob Paul, Anthony

Scaramucci. These are heavy hitters in the financial world that were all in the documentary in March break. and I am here with Jamie Rogazinsky. He is the founder of Wall Street Bet, and there's some interesting new stuff going on, and so check out the video. I know that sounds horrible, right? I know that was not...

It's sad. That was actually pretty dead for a first take. Silly. I'm not... And then, listen, like I said, you've already been... You've already witnessed me in action. So nobody watches this channel thinking they're dealing with a professional.

So, you know, I don't even try. I don't even try. I mess it up. I just keep going. You know what? People actually appreciate like just a good old fashioned unpolished sincerity nowadays. It's almost rewarded.

Now, so far, it's working for me. So, all right, so like I had said, you know, before we started, that I've, you know, I've watched a few videos. And I remember when this was kind of all happening. Like, I remember hearing bits and pieces of it, but

I don't. You know, I always joke around people ask me they ask me about real estate or they'll ask me about some something that I don't know anything about and it's like you know I don't talk about that like I don't and I always use the example like I don't talk about the stock market

because I don't know anything about the stock market so you know there's certain things I just don't talk anything about and this would be one of those things so I was hearing bits and pieces of it I do know what a short you know I know what a short sale is in real estate but I know what shorting stock I know the

basics of it and i know what a pump and dump scheme is and i know what you know there's there's all these stock guys in prison that you meet that have done certain things so you know i know some basics of what's going on not that this was criminal but when you listen to you know when i've listened to the podcast about it and i'm only listened to a couple you know it almost sounds criminal like what you doesn't make like i was listening i was like that's just i know that's lea but it just doesn't sound right that when they were driving the prices you know they're driving the prices down or they're driving the prices up

and so can you kind of go through it and just explain to me what yeah just in case i forget to touch on that comment i think that while game stop was taking place a lot of people were actually wondering i don't know if criminal is the right word but whether there were any kind of regulatory infractions right like whether whether things were being done correctly, as far as the regulators are concerned. And I remember seeing debates on to be saying, like, is this a lot? Because, like, there's no, there was no overt law breaking per se. There are certain things that are straight up considered illegal. And those

laws or regulations are really clear. But in this particular case, when people were just honest, you know, when you lie, for example, about your intentions with the stock, when you mislead, when you're fraudulent, they'll be like, yeah, buy this investment because it's the best and you're lying that's against the law right but if you say buy this because we wanted to go to the moon right like we're not saying that the game stop is a good investment but we want to kill the hedge funds right like that's why you should buy like they're not lying and so they're being brutally honest so therefore so i you know as far as i know no there there was no nobody got in trouble for that so uh so anyways but yeah i can i can walk back just i'll and i'll even rewind

slightly before GameStop itself put Wall Street Betts on the map for people that weren't familiar before GameStop like that made it more of a household name even of people that weren't following finance things so Wall Street Betts is a

community of retail or amateur investors that don't mind taking higher risk trades right like they use just really unsophisticated language although their method are very sophisticated for taking really high risk, high return type trades. And, you know, they collaborate together.

They just crowdsource ideas. They're looking for just opportunities where collectively they have some type of an advantage. Historically speaking, you know, historically speaking, it's up to investment base to say, okay, we're going to pay these PhD geniuses of due analysis or quantitative computers, you know, or collocations like they're physically by computers. put them next to the stock exchanges so the messages are transferred really fast and so they can buy the stocks quicker than the rest of the people that are further. But people that are sitting at home using their cell phone to trade, they don't have that advantage, but it turns out

they have other advantages and they just enjoy having fun and they use language revolving around the risk and gambling and just enjoying. And it started right after the, or not right after, but shortly after the financial crisis where big banks were being lambasted for treating Wall Street like a casino. And so it was like, how dare you do this with our mortgages and how dare you are irresponsible with her retirement funds? And I think there was a sentiment among younger people, including myself, where I said, well, if the banks can do it, then we should be able to do it too. They could be irresponsible, then nothing to stop us from actually doing it to with the hopes of maybe hitting it big, right? Like hitting a home run and then we can also get rich too, right? So that's where Wall Street bets is and it's exploded.

There's obviously a lot of people that were like-minded and, you know, the years prior to game stop, there had been a lot of really high profile, really interesting things that have taken place. But mostly whenever Wall Street bets made the news, it was CNBC or Blue, Right. It was just finance-related outlets. And then GameStop came around. GameStop was interesting because it was kind of like this, before we get into that, I was going to say, first, like, when did you, you started it just after the financial, or after 2008 financial crisis? Correct. After the 2008 financial crisis, I had in the middle of it. Yeah, yeah. I'd lost my job, you know, a lot of things. But in 2012, after I'd gotten a new job. Things were starting to stabilize again, and I had disposable income with which I could be responsible with. In 2012 is when I started. So you went on and it off.

You started what, Reddit? I started, yeah, I went on Reddit, and then I started, and I also started a Twitter account. I bought a couple of domains. I had a Google account, you know, where they give you like the Gmail and the YouTube, whatever it else. Forget all the properties that I ended up getting on social media. And it's just this omnipres. It's just the online community, right? It's just this philosophy, this brand, this way of thinking.

And currently, Wall Street beds exist. The largest community is currently on Reddit, but you have them on Discord, and you have them on Telegram and on TikTok and Instagram. And then you have like almost like offshoots of it, right? Where you have like Wall Street, Silver, Satoshi Street beds, Korea Street, Bet, you know, like different geographic or asset classes or whatever might be.

But all of them kind of. sing to the same tune. So they get together and they kind of say, hey, this is happening here. Just heard about this. This is what's going on here. This is a great company. This company is having issues. My understanding is that sort of thing.

Yeah, but even more like, even more jockey, right? So if you can imagine it's like the anti-Wall Street. If you can imagine an analyst commenting on, let's say, Jerome Powell, who's the head

of the Federal Reserve. He says interest rates and monetary policy related stuff. He gets up there and uses really big words and says, well, we need to combat inflation according to this thing with the interest rate so that the, you know, rub, blah, blah, unemployment rate and just, you know, it just throws jargon out there. And then you have the analysts that go on television afterwards and they pull out their Excel sheet and they're like, we're using all sorts of different like ways to discount the future cash flow and then today's time value, you know, and they're just jargon, right? And so Wall Street best is going to take like, almost to make fun of it, but not, right?

They're going to turn that same speech into a meme, right? Which is like, Jerome Powell makes stocks go down, right? By making interest go up, which is really the same freaking thing. You don't need to have words that are so many syllables to say stocks go down when interest goes up. Right. It's not necessarily a bad thing, right? It's by design sometimes, right? There's like a whole chain reaction of logic that takes place in there.

But you can actually convey that entire 30-minute segment with like a picture and a really, really poorly spelled out like caption on it, right? And it'll actually make you laugh. So that's what Wall Street bets does. It'll simplify the same concepts. And so now you're understanding that same analysis of whatever news just took place. and it's almost like this way for people to you know make fun of themselves make fun of other people but also point out opportunities right

you'll have you have people that'll say hey guys check this out this thing is happening over here I believe that if we do this that and the other and then other people will jump on top and say nah that's a really stupid idea or that's a really great idea and then other people say hey I'm just going to buy you know, the stock because I like the car. I just bought a car and I like it, so I bought the stock.

The car is really fast. You know, some really non-sophisticated investment idea. But people just cheer this person on, right? I mean, sometimes they accidentally make money. And sometimes they will make an investment. But then, like, other people will pour in with actual fundamental analysis and say, well, maybe you bought it for the wrong reasons, but check this out, right? They're about to do a merger with whatever.

or open a plant over here and you know like and just you have this collaboration of sophisticated financial analysis dressed up as unsophisticated apes that are just got a budding heads right okay all right

and that and that just so that's the community and it just I mean how does that progress into you know the whole game stop thing like if you know because it wasn't just a bunch of guys talking they end up buying they end up buying the stock and they end up you know I guess several of these hedge funds went under and you know

and these guys are losing tons of money and you know obviously they're buying it for the wrong reason well then it's not illegal so it's not the wrong reason they're buying it to make money for their stockholders I get it so but you guys come in and and and that ends up becoming like this huge movement yeah I mean like short sellers they serve a productive purpose right like they have you know there's a solid argument to make to say short sellers sometimes identify inefficiency like the market itself is a productive activity right like if you think about the fact that a market gives you the price of a stock because a lot of people agree on that price and that tells you something about stuff right

like such as there's a reason why nobody's buying this company right now right somebody knows something and therefore we shouldn't touch it right somebody did the research so The overall emphasis is, it's a bad company. And sometimes short sellers go out there and find out, hey, like, you know, there's, this company is just realizing that this, I don't know, a wire card right now is, you know, an example that comes to mind where they just did their own, I forget what their actual fraud was, but like, I think they fake their own transactions or they just did wash transactions or something. You know, they were laundering money basically for the mafia, I think. And so if you have a company like that, it's about to go public, yeah, you want a short-sell a company like that because you don't want ordinary investors to get caught up with losing money thanks to short-sellers, they expose these things.

So that's, you know, overall, they don't serve a bad purpose, but sometimes they get a bad around, right? And in this particular case, I don't think that short-seller's burden of silly exposing fraud. They just struck a nerve. So I think what happens with GameStop is you have this perfect storm of things that happen. A lot of stuff had to happen perfectly in order for it to take place. So we have this designated meme stock, this a new phenomenon that exists nowadays, right? These are stocks that everybody, all the retail people are just clamoring over.

They just really enjoy this stock because popular, it's gone viral. Everyone's buying it. Everyone's excited about it. These meme stocks usually have to have some component that makes it a tangible emotional connection to it. It's like, look, I get it. Brick and mortar's over. Coronavirus, nobody's going to the mall. You can now download games.

You no longer have to use a disk to put it inside of the console. It's just on the computer. But it's like when I grow up, I used to have Tetris and I have to put the cartridge in the thing. And so I remembered these memories. So my, like, I have this, this emotional. attachment to this thing. So I'm not going to allow this company to go down because I'll be sad, right? Nothing to do with a smart investment decision. It's an emotional thing of saying, I'd. Long bendy Twizzlers candy keeps the fun going. Keep the fun going. Don't want this

company to go under, right? And then you have certain players that were actually making the fun, you know, mainly Keith Gill or Deep Fucking Value Rory and Kitty. It's the same person that very, very enthusiastic individual, intelligent out of YouTube channel was actually throwing in

fundamental analysis saying, hey guys, like I've done the math, this company's good, I'm going to do a YOLO bet, right? And you throw $50,000 into these relatively risky stock options. So everyone was like, look at this crazy dude. He's just throwing a ton of freaking money with this really dangerously risky

derivative's play. Like just, you know, I won't walk you through that. But it's leverage. It just means that if GameStop were to go up 10%, he might be able to make, I don't know, 50%, right? Like, it's one of the features

of this and so, and all of a sudden there's chatter that's taking place. And all of a sudden you have validation by people like Ryan Cohn, who's just this person who's historically gone in there and shaken up companies, he rescues them, he buys, you know,

he does these corporate takeovers where he buys large percentages of the stocks and he moves the, you know, the board of directors around. I think he ended up getting a seat on the board of directors, right? And then all of a sudden they exposed some short sellers and the short sellers started to go on on YouTube making videos

antagonizing Wall Street beds. And there's nothing better than to antagonize, like to have this public work because now you have an adversary with which you can try and defeat right nobody loves uh like everybody loves a good war of saying aha it's going to be you mr andrew left or gave plot can or whatever you know these got a name and a last name and a picture with which i can make memes with right and uh and so now you have good guys and pat guys and you have this uh potential money making opportunity and then you have this this component where this a technical component where, so I'm sorry, I'm kind of getting ahead myself.

So these are all kind of the social components, right? Then you have the technical component. You have a stock that is likely to go down because GameStop is a bad investment at the time. Nobody's going to the stores to buy these games. You have a lot of head funds that were short selling, meaning they were betting that it was going to go down, but they were very, very heavily short selling it, making it vulnerable to a certain type of maneuver called a short-selling.

So then you have the Wall Street feds community turning it into a meme stock, making them be rationally excited about a stock which doesn't have a fundamental reason to go up other than the fact that they're happy. And now they have an adversary because if the stock goes up, the people that were betting against it are going to lose money. And then there's some more technical capacities behind that that they had fine-tuned certain maneuvers, with stock options, and I won't really get into that, but it's very sophisticated. They don't have that much money to push stock prices around, right? Even if you say, yeah, I know that there's 10 million of you, but that's still not enough money. Even if all of 10 million of you have like, whatever, 100 bucks in your account, like, it's still not enough.

They use these stock options in a certain way that they're able to leverage it, right? and this is a practice technique that they had worked on for the past couple of years. So they're like, yeah, but we know this little cheat code. And so they were just turning up the screws. And they ended up making the price of GameStop go from like, I forget what it was, from $40 a share, like $450 a share no matter of days, essentially forcing all the short sellers out of their short position. They had lost tremendous amounts of money, billions of dollars.

and lots of them have to close their doors. And it was this really special moment because you have this narrative. And now I get to kind of close this circle of having started Wall Street bets at the heels of the financial crisis, where there was this level of resent or anger or just a bad taste in the idea where you had this Occupy Wall Street. movement where they're saying, hey, the 99% and the 1% in inequality. And so just nothing happened from that. There was never any closure that the Wall Street, the Occupy Wall Streeters went home after a few years. You know, just no, no, I don't remember anything substantive ever taking place. And so I think there's a lot of those feelings ended up resurfacing, right? They're like,

I am still mad about what happened back then. I think the news and the entertainment industry and I take people, even that weren't in the U.S., that weren't involved with the Wall Street, with the American Stock Exchange, but they were affected by the financial crisis. We're like, hell yeah, damn right. Like, you know, I'm not going to buy stocks or whatever, but I'm happy that the 99% that, you know, that these little Davids got together against the Goliath and were actually able to teach them a lesson, right? Like, because Wall Street had been painted as this bad, you know,

irresponsible actor that was never held accountable. And all of a sudden it's like there is a way to kind of put a chink in their armor. And obviously there wasn't this grand war that was defeated. Wall Street didn't go away nor do I think that would be a good thing anyways. But it was a really good, it was a feel-good story where at least there was a good punch that was returned. And Wall Street had to take notice. that the little guys can also get together

and fight back if it's done properly. So that was the GameStop event or side hour moment. All right. So when this whole thing kind of subsided, right? And it, you know,

everything kind of, I guess, you know, there was an equilibrium kind of applied to it and everything kind of went back to normal, then, like, what, what, what happened after that with you? Like, you know, as far as you were, you know, you were in the, the center of this, you know, this interesting, you know, I don't know what, you know, like you said, saga. So what happened, you know, were you approached by, you were approached by some people to do a documentary, a movie, um, write your, your book, write a book you know that sort of thing uh yeah it was interesting so you know there there uh i wouldn't say that it wasn't the center of it there had been a lot of things throughout the years

that has a bit have been interesting on wall street bets uh and i've never really claimed to take credit for manufacturing any of them including uh game stuff right like the the beauty of crowdsourcing these uh these moments like that but there is collective, there is strength in collective intelligence and there is strength in, in, you know, crowdsourcing these ideas. And it's always just been a combination of ingenuity from various different peoples and meeting the right timing and the right opportunity and the right betting and platform systems. So I don't, I don't ever pretend to take credit for it. And that specifically with GameStop, by the time that,

game stock took place, I was no longer on Reddit, on the subreddit itself. So I wasn't participating on that forum per se. You know, I'd written a book already published in 2020. I'd done all sorts of other things regarding this, but I was approached for movie rights. Like, I'm still the creator of this philosophy, this mindset, this community, or these communities, right? And, and still viewed. as the thought leader behind this movement and definitely got a lot of attention for what took place.

I'd say the person who got the most amount of attention for GameStop was Keith Gill. This would have been the guy with the YouTube video who said, I'm going to take 50 grand, right? I'm going to put it all on GameStop. I mean, he ended up making like, I don't know how he walked away with, but his bet at the highest level was like $50 million.

I think he cashed it out closer to $30 million. So, you know, he was the hero of that story. And he was the face of it because he was just the champion where he says, I'm not selling this thing. And he was this charismatic guy that people at first, when he was losing money, they were just bashing him because his idea was dumb. And then he stuck to his guns.

And all of a sudden he started making money. And then people started bashing him again. again, because he's not taking profits off the table, right? And then he just said, I'm not, I'm not selling, right? I'm just diamond hands. And all of a sudden, when you take a $50,000 bet, you turn it into a $5 million bet, it takes a tremendous amount of a lot of things like stamina and discipline

and, you know, the site in. All is Tanaka, you know, to turn that into $10 million to $15 million to $20 to $30. So, so he, he's the one that really deserves, uh, the credit for that particular moment. But yeah, um, I was, you know, I was approached. It was definitely, uh, an interesting moment because I started getting calls from, um, you know, first kind of just these people that said, oh, I'm a producer and I worked on some, such and such film or, and I was like kind of starstruck because I'd Google them and they were like, never heard. of them, right? Never heard the movie, but like I'd connect six degrees of separation and they

were like loosely affiliated with some movie that maybe I'd heard of. And then eventually I'd start fielding calls from people that were, you know, working on stuff that I definitely was impressed with. I was like, holy cow, I just got off the phone. You know, like the guy that wrote, I forget what it was, like the Sopranos or, you know, and then I was just the guys that worked on the wolf of Wall Street. And I was on the phone at one point with Ben Mesrick, who also ended up writing a book on this topic. And so soon enough, I was like, all right, okay, how does this game work?

Because there's authors and directors and producers, and everyone seems to be, everyone wants to make a movie about this thing, and everyone seems to be the right person to make a deal with, right? And so I had to get a really quick lesson on how the Hollywood works. and it's actually kind of fun because the one thing that everybody agreed on from who I was speaking with

they said look let me tell you how Hollywood works when you have a situation like this people try and race and put a team together right and they'll say okay well you have you know Steven Spielberg you know and Leonardo DiCaprio and this whatever author and you get the team together and then they say yeah we've all decided

to do this thing together and then they announced it to the world and they plant this Peruvial flag on the ground and all of a sudden everybody else that was trying to race put something together you all kind of back off and be like God damn it they got DeCaprio or they got

there's no way we can do two movies especially not with that freaking game and so everyone backs away and starts looking for some other movie idea because usually like movies you can only have one movie sometimes you can get up to two movies the topic is good enough and so I was

the middle of this race and talking to all these different people and uh you know and and eventually ended up signing this deal with rap pack which was the it was a production studio that works on like x-men and a bunch of other these movies and it was useful because the other thing that I understood is uh if you're working with the producers sorry with the directors and the writers and the actors none of those people have the money the studios have the money right right and so So that's how you know that the movie gets made. All the other ones are just kind of crossing their fingers. So it's like, well, Rat Pack has the money so that they'll definitely make that movie.

Otherwise, you just kind of sign your life rights and get it. So I side with them and we plant the full pole on the ground. We're like, aha, we're making this movie. That'll stop everybody else. That should stop everybody else in their tracks because it's Rat Pack and they've got like the founder of Wall Street beds. and it's good, you know, big names behind this thing. And next thing, you know, I'll flip it through Twitter and I'm like, oh, Netflix is going to do one too.

Okay, well, whatever. Not quite the same thing. You know, I was like, Ben Mesrick, who had been all the thought with before, like, damn it, Ben Mesvick sold it, too. Those three of them coming out. And the next thing, you know, four, and five, and say, and any Hulu and HBO,

like, freaking nine different movies on this. Like, okay. I guess people really either really love this story, and they think that it's worth having that many of them or they're out of stuff to do because of you know we were just just getting out of the pandemic i mean this was in january of 2021 so you know almost still 2020 uh and so everyone was just dying for a story that was not about putting on a face mask or uh uh uh but the more of how the more similar content or stories that are out of the more similar content or stories that are out of the more similar content or stories that are there the less likely that yours gets picked up because they're all get picked you know get picked up they just get diluted i suppose right so you just need to find a way to differentiate um it's it's a matter of of saying all right well that's fine that they're all going to cover game stop but how do you make it so that this one is unique right i've see i haven't seen all the

ones that have come out i've seen uh several of them and there is a ton of overlap right that they're having to cover, and I've seen this from everyone, including with my own documentary when they were going through the learning process, it's a complicated concept. And when you want to try and translate all the pieces into entertainment, you know, one, two-hour film, you have to walk the audience through a story and you have to spoon feed them the fundamentals to be able to so that they can appreciate the nuance later on. and then they all end up kind of gravitating towards a very similar storyline

and so they end up having really similar stuff and so I think what it differentiates the current movies is like who they were able to interview because they're all documentaries up to now there hasn't been any nonfiction I know that there's one sorry nonfiction yet there's only one

non-documentary that's being worked on that I know of right now every other one has been a documentary. So it's a matter of who they get to interview, what kind of perspectives they get. With me, they get the benefit of having true inside information

with regards to how things work behind the scenes, right? Everyone else has to rely on newspaper, clippings and stuff. And they get access to some of the best. You're also the, you also are able to give them the, origins of the, yeah,

someone else telling that part of the story. Yeah, and, and I have access to the, to, to, all the, the, the, yeah, the, the, the, the, the, the, yeah, the, the, the, the, the, the, yeah, the, the people that are, like the people that are, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're actually going to, uh, the premiere this weekend at South by Southwest. I'm flying out tomorrow. And I just got my, um, what do you call it? Scheduled for, right after the premiere, there's a Q&A. And I'll be up there with Jordan Belford and with Ronald Paul and with Anthony Scaramucci. I forget like, right, but these are, these are heavy hitters in the financial world that were all in the documentary in large part because it's rat, rat pack and many of the other ones large part because it was me that was on there. And so you have, you have very relevant players that are either talking on. on the side from wall street beds or talking on the side of wall street or on the side on the perspective of either government or social depending on on on how they're talking about it so

but but nevertheless i mean the point of this having eight different movies wasn't necessarily to try and show off might it was the fact that this incident was such a big moment that resonated so well around the world that there was enough demand that movies said let's take a chance let's actually go out there

and make a movie and spend money on it I know there's six other ones out there and I know that somebody's already signed with that guy but let's go ahead and spend money on the seventh one right that's a risk that the financial risk

that they have to take in hopes that there will be enough demand given the saturated market that someone's going to say yeah I'll actually watch this one on this channel even if I've already been exposed to the other ones.

And it's true. Like I ended up getting messages for so many people around the world. And I think that's what I found really interesting is half the messages that I got from people of support or whatever, like, were from the U.S., but the other half were from people elsewhere in the world. Like, you know, my favorite message, I will never forget it to this day was some taxi cab driver in Spain. And he said to me, dude, I don't understand anything about anything when it comes to. stocks or the stock market or finance, I don't get what it is that you guys are doing, but I think it's awesome. Like, you guys just keep sticking it to the man, and I love it, right? Like,

all he understood was that the little guys were fighting back against the banks, right? And he just warned his heart, right? And like, he's a taxi cab, right? Or halfway around the world, it doesn't know anything. And he was happy for this movement. And that's, I think that was cool on that that that has nothing to do with finance that has like this just the heartwarming I don't know empowerment this feeling of empowerment that everyone could relate with okay so what where I mean what's happening now what's happening with you now there's a there's an issue with Reddit there's a lawsuit there's what's no yeah so so there is I uh there's

There's kind of a side story that's been going on. I ended up getting removed as a moderator, as the head moderator from Reddit in 2020, like I said, before GameStop took place. And this was, why did that go? When did that happen? But I, you know, the Reddit says that it was because I attempted to monetize the community. And so it's, you know, so I'm suing them because, uh, oh, yeah, I, I, I, I will, I will share as much as I'm able to without really jeopardizing the, the legal issue at heart. Most of these things are public knowledge, so people are able to go out there and read them, right? So you can see that the counts that I'm doing is breach of contract.

one of the arguments is that attempting to monetize is not an actual infraction in their terms of service and blah, blah, blah, but without going too many much into specifics, I attempted to take control of my own brand of Wall Street bets, which was flourishing all over the place. I'd written a book. I was in the process of launching this kind of a stock. trading game-ified competition. And I submitted a trademark request. I filed to trademark the word Wall Street bets. And all of my efforts to monetize or everybody else's were perfectly fine up until I submitted

my trademark request. And then all of a sudden, I get removed from the subreddit. So at the time, you know, I'm kicking and screaming and I'm, you know, making assumptions as to why they removed me and, you know, and it's taken me many years to be able to piece everything together. But a few months after I was removed, they never answered anything. They never gave me a chance to appeal their decision. They never explained their decision. They just straight up removed me. They said, you broke the terms. And, you know, that's it. How were they? How were they? notified of that? I mean, they're not... I don't know. You know, they're not a part of the, you know,

copyright office. Like, why, I'm sure the copyright office didn't notify them. So they had to have gotten. That's an excellent question. I don't know. But it turns out that, you know, after, after years of looking into this, you know, like a few months after the sort of once used a file for a trademark, one of the last steps before they're issued, you know, it's fully registered, they do this thing where they publish it for any companies or individuals out there that want to oppose this brand, right? It's like the proverbial, if anyone opposes this couple, get married, speak now, or forever, hold your peace like that for trademarks. And so when we were on that step, Reddit spoke up and said, I oppose this thing. And this was pretty much

shortly after I was removed. And I've been in this opposition battle with them. since I was removed, right? And so to answer your question, I started doing more research, and it turns out Reddit's been made, this has made a habit out of trademarking communities that are very successful. In other words, there's been countless examples of individuals that go to Reddit.

Say, I have a great idea. I'm going to make a community, for example, am I the asshole right that's the name of a currently I believe it's the most popular community on reddit um and people go on there and they just talk about their grievances or stuff and and it just exploded in the past year and reddit's like oh that's a really cool community i like it and just go to the trademark office and like we'll go ahead and take that now thank you very much and then they just register now it's their intellectual property did that That's a part of their terms there? Is that a part of their terms? Well, they're using lawyers to argue that they are because, you know, a lot of times people, this is crazy. It's like, you know, whenever I speak out and sometimes I have a lot of people that on the internet, you always have devil's advocates. And so people say, did you read the terms of service before you did these things? I said, to be honest with you, I actually did. And the terms of service says, you get to keep your content. It's your content. You get to keep.

it. And then furthermore, it says, whether you are uploading content that you've previously created or you're creating it using our services for the first time, you're granting us this license with its royalty free to host it and publish it, blah, blah, blah. Those are the words they use. Now I'm not a lawyer, but as a non-lawyer that actually takes the trouble to read the terms of service, which is already a lot to ask for, I think to myself, it sounds like, sounds to me like, it's mine right right and so so no I I don't know and so not now there's lawyers involved and now their lawyers are saying no no no not what that means your content doesn't apply for your content or whatever I don't know so it's just

really confusing to me because like hold on a second so now not not only do you want me to read your terms or service now you want me to freaking out a lot agree to know that those words don't mean what they're supposed to mean like um but it doesn't matter i mean like to me it's it's this thing where i worked on this community for like a decade and i wrote a book on it you know and if they're saying like oh you're trying to take advantage of this moment to monetize this this cash grab it's it's like they're missing the point i don't all of you, people have tried to write a book before. I'm not an author. I'm not an English major. I'm an engineer. I, like, English was my worst class, you know, both in high school and

in college. I despise it. But I wrote a book because I, because my, my passion for this subject, the ideas that I wanted to share with the world were stronger than my hatred towards writing stuff. And if you want to personally enrich yourself, writing a book is really not the most efficient way of doing it. There's a lot of easier ways to do it than to write a freaking book. You know, it's something that I truly care about, like, like hardcore. And so then they just rip it apart from it. Like, yeah, yeah, you can go over there now.

And they paint me as this like, you know, opportunist cash grabber. And, you know, and it sucks. Like, it just sucks to have something that I, love and I care about so deeply just get ripped apart from me. And then to further that, they're they're then taking it away from me preventing me from doing this elsewhere. In other words, by taking this trade, they've since filed, you know, further trademark applications for Wall Street bets of their own in such a way that if they

win, I can no longer use that same brand. That's, that sign that's behind me that's kind of cut off. It says Wall Street bets, you know, if I want to cruise. a forum on whatever new platform comes out next, they're going to be able to say, no, you can't anymore because that's Reddit's property, right?

Like, that's a huge freaking blow, and that's wrong. And it's like a social media company that relies on content creators. The company's a social media company to create content. Like, they just don't get it. And so that's kind of where we're at.

And I've been quiet, I've been silent about this battle for three years, mainly because I was hoping to find a friendly solution around this. I'm like, dude, I don't want to have to have a battle about this where everybody in the world, like, you know, has to find out. We should be able to negotiate a mutually beneficial arrangement such that, yeah, such that it makes sense. And, you know, there, something happened this year that they're in a huge hurry to get this over with. And they put me up against the wall and didn't give me any choice. And so I finally decided to defend myself and went on the offensive. Yeah, it seems like it's it seems like suddenly YouTube says that my channel is their channel.

They own it and they own the name and they own, uh, you know, my website and everything else, even though I'm clearly the person that started the channel and have been, working the channel this entire time. That's exactly right. And it's like it's almost as if they kick you out and they get to keep your followers and they get to keep publishing videos on your behalf. Right. Right.

Like, you know, and then they can use the argument in court that they says, well, I know that Matt Cox says this is Matt Cox's podcast, but it's really not his anymore because he can't control the contents of his podcast anymore because we kick them out. which is actually an argument that's, you know, being used. It's like, yeah, it's, I don't know. So it's, you know, like, here's a thing. It's like, so I use these arguments and these arguments are not logical to you and me. Unfortunately, you have the law and you have lawyers and you have these, these jargon,

and they'll talk about stuff that to me makes little sense. And so I just, you know, I do, I do come out and I speak out about these types of things. of because it makes no sense, right? Like, it's surprising to me that a social media company, Reddit, should understand social media. Like, the way that every other company does, the reason why YouTube doesn't have an incentive to do that is because YouTube makes money from you.

Right, right? You make money from you. And so does you to it. You guys both are happy with whatever arrangement you have with you two. If it wasn't... 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 BMO ViPorter MasterCard and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13. months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit bemo.com slash the iPorter to learn more. Because of you and if because of because of YouTube, neither of you would be working this this thing out. Right. And like, uh, if YouTube burns you like that where you just run you away and they

keep all of your stuff, then everyone's going to be like, yeah, no thanks. I'm thinking I'm going to go elsewhere now. And then YouTube's left with no more content creators that are going to their site with great ideas right and and that's game over um i don't understand how reddit is justifying this maneuver and now they're doing so publicly and they're antagonizing me publicly right they're painting me they're like oh this guy's just you know trying to come after us now because we're you know like for three years he was perfectly quiet and now he's just come out of the good board works i'm like really really read it for three years i was quiet for three years you've been like drowning me with legal

my fees. For three years I've been trying to be really quiet. But whatever. It doesn't matter because at this point, look, I'm speaking out in as much as I can. I'm fighting back. I'm not going to go down without a fight.

You know, and I think that what, yeah, you know, my property belongs to me. I think that needs to do the right thing. And, uh, and I'm really confident that once, once all the facts come out on the table, that this is, um, yeah, this is, this is, so you're, you're finally under what? Basically, that's depth of intellectual property? Um, it's the, all the accounts are on there.

It's not theft of intellectual property because I think that's, it's all civil. It's, a trademark infringement, it's a breach of contract. a bunch of other ones like there. Yeah, people are able to. If people go on my Twitter like at Wall Street Betts on Twitter and they can scroll down a little bit, they can see the full text of the thing. But essentially, I'm suing them for having me removed me from the subreddit under false pretenses by not removing me correctly from the subreddit from having trying to take away my trademark

and from actually infringing on my trademark in addition to a few other accounts. Right. Okay. And you have a law firm? Yeah. Okay. I was going to say, you know, I mean, listen, I was in federal prison. I fought a, I sued Warner Brothers.

I sued I entertained there. And I sued for, for theft of a story that I wrote that was, anyway, it ended up being a, it was a law. Also between me and the guys that made war dogs, which I believe was a rat pack. Are they school for a year? I think, well, it was really Ephraim Devoroli, the guy, the movie War Dogs, the main character is a guy named Ephraim Devoroli. Well, it's David Packowles and Ephraim Debroli. Deverely is played by Jonah Hill. I was in prison with the real Ephraim DeVroly, and I wrote his memoir.

When he got out, Warner Brothers. got a hold of the memoir, and according to Deverelli, they used it to help write the movie War Dogs. Now, whether that's true or not, I don't know, but I do know that when I then sued him and I sued Warner Brothers, because he also sued Warner Brothers, but he didn't include me in the lawsuit. So he took my property, he took the memoir I wrote, he left prison with it, published it, and then sued Warner Brothers saying they had stolen parts of the story. And so there was a lawsuit and that I wasn't included and he just kind of forgot about me because I was still in prison so I had to sue him I had to sue Warner Brothers and then I ended up getting out

of getting out of federal prison and then we ended up settling the lawsuit but but so I so I mean you'd even think I didn't have a lawyer at that time we were doing it inside of prison ourselves as inmate and this went on for years for years yeah so I know plus of course I also fought my own case. You know, I got ascended to 26 years and I got it cut twice. We got 12 years knocked off and I ended doing 13. So, I mean, I know going back and forth with just in the legal system, criminal and civil is horrible. It's, you know, and I was doing it from a prison. Like, we're, we're literally using 30-year-old SwinTech typewriters to type up motions. And we're dealing with law firms that have hundreds of lawyers working for them. And it's just me and a couple of inmates. And it, you know,

went off forever. It's, it's extremely frustrating. So I was going to say, but, you know, luckily you have a whole. I do. I do have, uh, I have a wonderful law firm and, uh, wonderful lawyers. And I'm really thankful for them because they have, uh, tremendous dedication for this cause and they've had success in this type of, uh, cases going up against social media companies. and um uh but yeah but but i definitely sympathize with the the legal system right it's just this for people that are non-lawyers it's it's frustrating right like you know i think i can be thankful for its existence it allows it allows for people to seek justice or seek an arbiter or seek some type of uh uh resolution resolution exactly or at least i had got a fair shot at it in

whatever way that that's possible right like it's easy to be able to say well it's not fair because whatever but it's it's better than than it could be and so um so i'm very thankful to have all that there and then even though it's easy to complain about the processes uh or or various aspects of it i'm i find myself being a lot more thankful for its existence than I am frustrated with whatever idiosyncratic components of it that exists. Right. Yeah, it could definitely be worse. But the problem is extremely frustrating.

It takes a ton of time. And in the end, a lot of times what's very clear, you know, in the actual statutes, they just don't go by. And the lawyers are so, they're so crafty, they're able to twist an argument in a way that's almost hard to follow. And so, I mean, it's, it's, it's difficult. Like, it's a, you know, people say that, you know, a legal battle, it's a battle. I mean, it's, it goes on and on and on. And it, you know, and sometimes it's just a war of attrition. Like, there's just wear you down, you know, that was certainly the case with the ones I've been involved with.

And it's the same thing, though. in it it's a same it's it's a you know they're goliath you know and you're it is yeah so it is but it's like in my nature right like they most definitely are goliath they've been evaluated at 10 billion dollar company and they have more lawyers more resources more money more they have more everything than i do right you know and to some extent they get to go home at five o'clock and just be like how was your day at work like good you know i worked on you know like filed for a new trademark. I did this thing. I got, you know, I'm up against this guy for Wall Street bet. You know, like, I've just like this kind of like a checklist, right? They can

just turn that off. And for me, crushed a couple of people. I don't turn it off. It's like what I live for and I love and it. It's my passion. And so it's both good and bad, right? Because you're right, it does, it does, uh, it can weigh me down some more. But it's also something that I care about more. Right. Like they, they can and they have. They've already. you know, since I've been working with them for years, I've already, like, worked with various different lawyers. They've shifted law firms. Like, I started working with one guy and he left for another different law. And I'm like, right, now you're working on this person. I'm like, all right, cool, whatever. Catch up the speed, I guess. Like,

welcome to your new job. This is what we've been working on, right? Like, it's just a job for a lot of them and it's this entity. And so it's, it's, that makes them more resilient, but also makes them less passionate about what they're doing. So I suppose I, I, I have that. that working for me. So I just got to pace myself. And look, I, to be honest, but I'm focused on all the stuff that I love, which is to continue creating. And I do continue to create on work on all sorts of different projects that I'll be announcing here in the coming months, which all revolve around the same stuff, right? And it's continuing to push the envelope to create fun, accessible, controversial, just accessible ways of bringing together finance and retail in a, yeah,

in a fun, quasi-educational, productive manner. So it's, it's what I'm actually passionate about. And that's my, yeah, that's, that's, that's been my drive always. So as long as I'm able to get some of that every day in, then I'm, I can go on forever. Okay. Anything you want to mention that you're working on or no? Yes. No, like the one that, the one that's already, yeah, no, I have, I'm going to save all the ones that are in the back for the contractual counterparty.

But I know that there's stuff. Like, like, the only one that I could safely mention right now is that the, like, touched on earlier the, the, uh, the new Americans. This is the movie that's premiering in South. by Southwest on Monday, March 13th. I don't know when this podcast will be airing, so that'll be exciting. But the other projects will be announced by the counterparty. So I'm working, a lot of these projects, I work with big companies to launch them.

So most of the time I let them do the launch since they specialize in that. And I write, we'll give them a lot of hundreds, don't even want you to talk about it. Like, you know, I prefer they do it anyways because they'll do a better job than I can. Hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching the video. Do me a favor if you liked it or you like my content. Subscribe to the channel. Hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this. Leave me a comment in the comment section.

I respond to, I don't know, at least 50% at this point. Also, I've got plenty of, I've got a bunch of true crime books that I've written. And so check out the, check out my true crime. Using forgeries and bogus identities, Matthew B. Cox, one of the most ingenious con men in history, built America's biggest banks out of millions. Despite numerous encounters with bank security, state, and federal authorities, Cox narrowly, and quite luckily, avoided capture for years. Eventually, he topped the U.S. Secret Service's most wanted list and led the U.S. Marshals, FBI, and Secret Service, on a three-year chase, while jet-setting around the world with his attractive female accomplices. Cox has been declared one of the most prolific mortgage fraud

con artists of all time by CNBC's American Greene. Bloomberg Business Week called him the mortgage industry's worst nightmare, while Dateline NBC described Cox as a gifted forger and silver-tongued liar. Playboy magazine proclaimed his scam was real estate fraud, and he was the best. Shark in the housing pool is Cox's exhilarating first-person account of his Stranger Than Fiction Story. Available now on Amazon and Audible. Bent is the story of John J. Boziak's phenomenal life of crime. Inked from head to toe, With an addiction to strippers and fast Cadillacs, Bozziak was not your typical computer geek. He was, however, one of the most cunning scammers, counterfeiters, identity thieves, and escape artists alive,

and a major thorn in the side of the U.S. Secret Service as they fought a war on cybercrime. With a savant-like ability to circumvent banking security and stay one step ahead of law enforcement, Boziac made millions of dollars in the international cyber underworld, with the help of the Chinese and the Russians. Then, leaving nothing but a John Doe warrant and a cleaned-out bank account in his wake, he vanished. Boziak's Stranger Than Fiction Tale of Ingenious Scams and Impossible Escapes, of brazen run-ins with the law and secret desires to straighten out and settle down, makes his story a true crime con game that will keep you guessing.

Bent. How a Homeless Team became one of the cybercrime industry's most prolific counterfeiters. Available now on Amazon and Audible. Buried by the U.S. government and ignored by the national media, this is the story they don't want you to know. When Frank Amadeo met with President George W. Bush at the White House to discuss NATO operations in Afghanistan, no one knew that he'd already embezzled nearly $200 million from the federal government. Money he intended to use to bankroll his plan to take over the world. From Amadeo's global headquarters in the shadow of Florida's Disney World with a nearly inexhaustible supply of the Internal Revenue Services funds, Amadeo acquired multiple businesses, amassing a mega conglomerate.

Driven by his delusions of world conquest, he negotiated the purchase of a squadron of American fighter jets and the controlling interest in a former Soviet ICBM factory. He began working to build the largest private militia on the planet, over one million Africans strong. Simultaneously, Amadeo hired an international black ops force to orchestrate a coup in the Congo while plotting to take over several small Eastern European countries. The most disturbing part of it all is, had the U.S. government not thwarted his plans, he might have just pulled it off. It's insanity. The bizarre, true story of a bipolar megalomaniac's insanity.

insane plan for total world domination. Available now on Amazon and Audubord. Pierre Rossini, in the 1990s, was a 20-something-year-old Los Angeles-based drug trafficker of ecstasy and ice. He and his associates drove luxury European supercars, lived in Beverly Hills penthouses, and dated Playboy models while dodging federal indictments. Then, two FBI officers with the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force entered the picture. Dirty agents, willing to fix cases and identify informants. Suddenly, two of Racini's associates, confidential informants, working with federal law enforcement, or murdered.

Everyone pointed to Racini. As his co-defendants prepared for trial, U.S. Attorney Robert Mueller sat down to debrief Racine at Leavenworth Penitentiary, and another story emerged. a tale of FBI corruption and complicity in murder. You see, Pierre Racini knew something that no one else knew. The truth. And Robert Miller and the federal government have been covering it up to this very day.

Devil Exposed. A twisted tale of drug trafficking, corruption, and murder in the city of angels. Available on Amazon and Audible. Bailout is a psychological true crime thriller that pits a narcissistic con man against an egotistical, pathological liar. Marcus Shrinker, the money manager who attempted to fake his own death during the 2008 financial crisis, is about to be released from prison, and he's ready to talk. He's ready to tell you the story no one's heard. Shrinker sits down with true crime writer, Matthew B. Cox, a fellow inmate

serving time for bank fraud. Shrinker lays out the details. The disgruntled clients who persecuted him for unanticipated market losses, the affair that ruined his marriage, and the treachery of his scorned wife, the woman who framed him for securities fraud, leaving him no choice but to make a bogus distress call and plunge from his multi-million dollar private aircraft in the dead of night, the $11.1 million in life insurance, the missing $1.5 million in gold. The fact is, Shrinker wants you to think he's innocent. The problem is, Cox knows Shrinker's a pathological liar and his stories of fabrication. As Cox subtly coaxes, cajoles, and yes, Khan's Shrinker into revealing his deceptions, his stranger-than-fiction life of lies slowly unravels.

This is the story Shrinker didn't want you to know. B. B. Chinker, the life and lies of Marcus Shrinker. Available now on Barnes & Noble, Etsy, and Audible. Matthew B. Cox is a con man, incarcerated in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. for a variety of bank fraud-related scams. Despite not having a drug problem, Cox inexplicably ends up in the prison's residential drug abuse program, known as Ardap. A drug program in name only.

Ardap is an invasive behavior modification therapy, specifically designed to correct the cognitive thinking errors associated with criminal behavior. The program is a non-fiction dark comedy, which chronicles Cox's side-splitting journey. This first-person account is a fascinating glimpse at the survivor-like atmosphere inside of the government-sponsored rehabilitation unit. While navigating the treachery of his backstabbing peers, Cox simultaneously manipulates prison policies and the bumbling staff

every step of the way. The program. How a Conman survived the Federal Bureau of Prisons cult of Ardap. Available now on Amazon and Audible. If you saw anything you like, links to all the books are in the description box.