The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Con Artist Matt Cox Opens Up About Pulling LARGEST Mortgage Fraud In American History | The Connect

Episode Date: March 16, 2024

Matthew Cox shares the details that led to him becoming one of the most wanted men in America by the FBI and the Secret Service. He started as an honest insurance salesman and quickly found himself committing fraud as a mortgage lender. It wasn't long before he found himself creating and stealing identities, forging real estate documents, opening credit lines, faking deaths and borrowing more than 11 million dollars from banks all across the country. Go Support Matt! IG: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/ TikTok: tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime YouTube: @InsideTrueCrime FaceBook: https://m.facebook.com/MatthewCoxTrueCrime/ Book: https://www.amazon.com/Shark-Housing-Pool-Matthew-Cox/dp/B0851KBYCF Art: https://www.etsy.com/shop/CoxPopArt This Episode Is Brought To You By The Following Sponsor: RocketMoney! Visit https://www.rocketmoney.com/connect and stop wasting your money TODAY! Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I ended up convincing social security to issue me social security numbers to children that do not exist. And then I would go online and I would apply for credit cards in the name of that child. I've had 27 driver's licenses in seven different states, a little over 20 passports. But I've had more than 50, 50 identities. Every person that I made bought five to six houses. I ended up borrowing $11.5 million. Today's guest is Matt Cox. That's right.

We finally made it happen. Matt Cox, you've probably seen his crime podcast on the internet. He is now world-renowned for telling his story of being the mastermind behind a $50 million mortgage fraud that had him running from the feds in like 15 different states for years. Yes, he has told the general aspect of this story on many different podcasts, but never the specifics that Europe. about to hear on The Connect. In this podcast, we truly discovered the man behind the mask, behind the fraud, and that is a good dude. That is a good human being. Go subscribe to his channel inside true crime with Matt Cox. And God, check out that Patreon. Patreon.com slash the Connect show.

Without further ado, you are going to love it. Matt Cox, right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitch. I didn't make that money. I stole that money. I mean, it was hard to steal it. It took some work, It wasn't my money. And all the friends that I had that loved me to death would have done anything for me. Never came to see me. They weren't my friends. You're struggling to make money to impress people that hate you. That's when I see the lights behind me start to flash.

And I didn't even think. I just hit it. I was driving like my life depended on. Then I parked the car, popped out, closed the door, and I started running. And he pulls out a burner, shank. It's like six inches. And he passes it to me. And he goes, here, that's yours.

Don't ever leave the car. cell block without this. He was the reason I made it out of that place alive. Matthew Cox, long overdue. We've been hanging out for the last couple hours. You're not incorrigible. You're not like a narcissistic, well, maybe a little bit, but you're, you don't know me. But, you know, you've got a wife, you've got some stability, you've got a podcast. The biggest misconception about you, in my view, the reason that I was hesitant to talk to you for years now is that I viewed you as

a crook like within your bones you know the crooks you meet when you're in prison you're like this guy's never going to change Danny said it was because I cooperated No Danny goes I don't think he wants to interview you because

he said you cooperated I said I did cooperate Let me tell you something If I only interview people that didn't cooperate We'd have two episodes Yeah yeah Okay. Yeah.

Everybody's talking to some extent, but we're going to clear that up because we found out a lot of insightful stuff about that cooperation. Yeah. But what is it about you, though? Like your, what was the driving motivation? If it wasn't, if it's not in your genes to be a lawbreaker or to be like to be a rule breaker, what drove you in the first place? well i mean i was a little question i was going to say i'm not sure like you know it's i would say probably it's very a very um it's it's probably a convoluted or something but i would say that the reason

i started breaking the law you know my initially why i broke the law and why i told myself i broke the law was why i was desperate for money and when i first did it i was desperate for money Like, I was probably 28, 29 years old before I ever broke a law. And I was a, you know, a licensed mortgage broker. It was my first loan. And I ended up whiting out like a 30-day late. And, you know, which basically means that the loan was, I had to white something out. I had to commit fraud to get the loan to go through.

And, you know, I was behind on everything. I just started out. I was desperate for money. And I did that. And I got a check. You know, got like, made like $3,500 bucks. And I was like, oh, my gosh, you know, this works. But and I was telling myself, I've told myself for years that I did that because I was broke.

And that is why I did it. But then you do it again and again and again. And now you're not broke. And now you've got 25 grand in the bank. And then you've got a hundred grand of the banker. And then you got half a million in the bank. He's like, why are you still committing fraud? You did it because you were broke.

You haven't been broken a long time. So really, I think. Ultimately, when it comes down to it, ultimately I end up getting in trouble and I'm placed on probation is that I didn't want to start over and I didn't want to embarrass my family and I didn't want to have to move back into my parents' home. And my dad was an alcoholic. He wasn't always an alcoholic. You know, he would sober up. But, you know, he was extremely narcissistic, very arrogant. And I didn't want to be there while he's bullying my mother around.

and he was very much a bully. He'd bully my mom around. He talked down to everybody. And he never expected me to do very well anyway. So when I was doing well, he was like super proud of me. It was the first time in my life he was proud of me. And I, and now I'm a felon, but I could be a felon with a bunch of money, which is what he respected. But to be a felon and selling used cars and living in my old bedroom, I didn't want to do that.

And I mean, at that point, I was willing to do anything not to be, not to have to start over and live in someone's spare room and listen to my dad talk shit about me and you belittle me belittle my mother and I was like you know I don't go fuck what I got to do and to not be in that position so I continue to commit fraud that's a long see that's something it's not an easy question but it sounds like it's a mixture of survival the reason a lot of people commit crime right some people sell drugs survival and also the need for approval for my father right yeah but it's not when I say in Corrigible, that means the psychopaths that you don't remember meeting in prison where you're like, it doesn't matter what historical time you put this person in, where and what condition, they're going to commit murder, rape, whatever it is. Or even those guys that like, you're like, look, I'll, I'll give you, you know, you're going to make my, I have a buddy, Zach, who this has happened before, hilarious guy.

So one time he's he and his wife are driving around there. They've got people cashing checks. And so his guy that's going into the, into the bank, he has a check. He has a fake ID. Go in the bank, cash this $10,000 check. You get whatever, half of it. We get half of it. By the end of the day, let's say, and I don't have the numbers right, but by the end of

of the day, you're going to make 50 grand. So in the next, in the next three hours, three hours from now, you'll have 50 grand in your hands. He goes in, he cashes a check for 9,500 or 10 grand, whatever, walks out, looks over and sees Zach, looks at the money, and takes off running. So 10, you were going to make 50 grand, and you know it works. You just cash the check. Now, before you go in the first bank, you're questioning, will this even work? But you've got 10 grand in your hand. You know the scheme works.

after 10 grand, you run. There are some people that they just cannot do right. Well, I said incorrigible, not retarded. Right. But, you know, yes, the mixture of both is a recipe for complete failure and doing life in prison and the installment plan. People that just go in and out. People that can't, that guy, like they say poor people can't think long term. That guy couldn't even think to the end of the day. Yeah, yeah. He's like, I got 10 grand in my head. My first inclination is to run. Like, think about that twisted survival mode. I have to squirrel away this money.

I can just wait five hours and have five times that. Just idiots. Yeah. But you're a good guy, man. You're a good guy. Well, from what I know of you, and I'm glad we're doing this. I'm probably a good guy now. Yeah.

You know, although even, you know, listen, even when you're doing things that are wrong, you know, or you're breaking the law, you think, you know, I have all the justification in the world to do this, to do that. But, you know. Well, people are multi-layer, you know. But I also went, you know, you go to prison and I've said this probably a thousand times. I have a buddy named Pete. Pete used to say when we were in prison, he's like, you cannot go to prison and continue to think in the manner that led you to prison and get released and not expect to come back. He's like, because it's not really, he used to be like, well, it's not really breaking the law. It's their, your thought process.

So he's like, no matter what it is, you're going to, you're going to end up getting yourself back into trouble if you continue to think that way. You might, it might be a different type of crime. It might be a legitimate business that you'll somehow turn, turn into an illegitimate business or you'll start, you'll get into a position of trust and you'll start stealing. Like, like you can't continue to think that way. You have to think in a different manner. And I feel like going to prison. I just, yeah, I'm just done. Yeah, you said that, which leads me to believe that you are, well, you're older, but you're, you have the ability to live honestly.

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That's rocketmoney.com slash C-O-N-N-E-C-T and take control of your finances today. How have you changed? You got off probation in four months after four. five years of federal probation. How is your thought process different? I mean, I just think that things are, well, one, how much time did you do? Two years. So, so, but you know that after, let's say it takes three to six months before your, your, your, your, your expectation of life is lowered so much, so

dramatically, the things that you thought you could never live without, or maybe you took for granted when they're removed and you're just like those first few days when you're, you keep reaching for your cell phone or you can't turn the TV or you can't, you know, there's so many things. It's just gut-wrenching. Then within three months, you start realizing that like how cool it is just to lay in your bunk and read a good book. You know, like all those little things or walk outside and feel the sun on your face, which is cliche. It sounds stupid. You know what I'm saying? It sounds silly. And until you're in that situation, you take all those things for granted. And so when that's all you've got left, it becomes extremely important. Well, by the time 13 years later, when I get out of prison,

you know, I've come to the conclusion that all the money that I had was bullshit. And I didn't make that money. I stole that money. I mean, it was hard to steal it. It took some work, but it wasn't my money. And all the friends that I had that loved me to death would have done anything for me, never came to see me. They weren't my friends. So, you know, your friends weren't your friends. You were stealing money to impress people that I love that Gary V says this. You were, whatever, you're struggling to make money to impress people that hate you.

And that's what I was doing. And I realized that for sure by the time I got out. And I realized, you know what you're going to do? You're going to get out. You're going to be humble. You're going to be appreciative. You're going to live in someone's spare room and you're going to be fucking happy. And that's it.

And you're only going to do things. that you want to do, that make you happy. And I thought, if you do that, then you don't have to come back to prison. And so that's been like, that's been my model. And the funny thing about that is, because of that, everything has gone super well. Like the things that most people are failing at, I try and it works. And it's like, it shouldn't work. It just works because I think I have a better attitude and things are going well.

And, you know, not that everything works. You try this. It doesn't work. You try this. It doesn't work. And then six months later, this suddenly makes a check. You know, you get a check in the mail and this works out and this. And so, like, all these things that I'm trying and that none of them should work.

I've never had a month that I couldn't pay my bills. I've never. Everything has seemed to be working out. I mean, I'm not blowing up or anything. But I do YouTube and it pays all my bills. How ridiculous is this? We might have never had to go to prison if we had this back in time. Yeah.

Yeah, this is like, this is insane. I was laying in bed months before I got out of prison going, how am I going to make a living? You're going to work at McDonald's. And I was like, and I would tell myself like, and there's nothing wrong with that. But that's what, that's what I, when I walked out of prison, it's like, you're going to work at McDonald's. You're going to do what you have to do. You're going to live in some of the spare room. And now I'm making a living doing the same thing I did for 13 years, which is basically just talking to other inmates.

And people, and they, and YouTube sending me a chat. And it's this didn't even exist when I went to prison. So it sounds like gratitude is what you found, is what you practiced that you didn't have before. Yeah. And, and, you know, being, doing all that time, too, you know, you suffer enough to where usually, unless you're absolutely irredeemable, you want to avoid ever happening again. Yeah. I mean, I think under any social, under, under, under. certain circumstances, almost anybody will commit a crime.

You know what I'm saying? So people are, oh, I'll never commit a crime. Listen, bro, if I'm starving to death, I'm committing a crime, you know. But yeah, if things keep going half as well, if things just stay the way there are. Yeah. I'm good with the way things are. Things are great. Yeah.

Instead of fucking having to fart, flush your fart down a toilet or risk getting in a fight. Laying in bed, listening to fucking people screaming and it's so loud all the time. And it's just guys are disgusting. I have to walk my hands 50 times a day. because these guys are using the same computer keyboard or hitting the lights or one guy gets sick. And three days later, the 150 guys are laying up all night. Or even worse, someone telling you about the book they should write about their life. Yeah, yeah.

It's like, bro, you can't even read. You wouldn't be able to read it. Oh, man, I'm going to write a book. It's going to be, yeah, another urban novel. That's what we need. Yeah, yeah. That was one of my hustles. I thought, damn, I should just write these hood.

We called them hood books. Remember those in prison? Yeah, yeah. Tell the people what hood books are. Yeah, it's some guy who's got a, some guy who's raising the projects. Yeah. Who can't really, can't really write and can't really even speak well. And he writes an urban novel, right?

That's the genre's urban novel, hood books. Yeah. And it's either features like a pimp or a drug dealer or like a big time like heroin or Coke dealer that's like trying to get out of the game. you know, one last deal. Damn, we've never heard that one. There's a double cross. There's a double cross. And then they're always, you know, all,

all the bitches and hoes want them. And then they'll, they'll have sex scenes in them that are just. Oh, dude, I used to beat off to those sex, like sex pages. I swear to God, it was like, it was like I was jerking off from like the 1940s. Just reading about, ooh, the smut. And the guy, they, listen, they would be,

they all had, you know, he slamming her with his, you know, 12 inch python and it was just like Jesus bro I mean just you know I kind of got into him though anyways I was going to write those under a pseudonym I was like yeah this is I got an unlimited market here in the federal prison system

actually one of those books became a movie I was on Sunset Boulevard like three years ago three years ago been out for over 10 and one of the books that I read I look up there's a billboard for that book that's now a movie pimping them hose whatever damn pimper them hose got made But, okay, so, you know, I know you've talked about it ad nauseum, but let's, let's broadstroke your resume, shall we?

You're from Florida. Tell me, what is it about Florida? I can't quite figure it out. Why is this the white collar crime state, epicenter of the universe? What is it that attracts? You know where the bulk of them are? Where? And Palm Beach, West Palm Beach, Boka.

Like all that whole second. Do you know where all of the mobsters relocate? Okay. All of them go straight there. I'm not saying that it's all of them, but also the thing is, you know, Vitaly. I have a buddy named Vitaly. Oh, you should have interviewed him. I wrote a book or a story on Vitaly, New Yorker.

Albanian? No. Is he? Maybe. I don't know. Sounds like. Joseph Vitaly. Great story.

Anyway, Vitaly was. running a boiler room, right? So you get these guys that have high school diplomas. They get their series seven, series 32, whatever, you know, all the licenses. And so they've got tons of money running through their hands and very quickly it ends up getting twisted into some kind of a Ponzi scheme or they start stealing the money or, and those phone rooms are great. Like they're extremely talented. They can talk anybody out of out of their money. It looks very legit. And a lot of times they start off legit. So a lot of that type of thing, that and Miami, a lot of those areas are just riddled with fraud. I'm sure they're great.

I don't know. Do you think it's, we were talking about this on the way over here, my producer and I, do you think it's partly because it's also the retirement capital? So there's tons of social security money, Medicare money, health insurance money. I was thinking that and there's, well, you're right, there's a lot of money in that area. But in general, I think Miami in those areas, unlike. like Tampa, Orlando, Tallahassee, Jacksonville, you know, those are areas that are very, they're kind of blue-collar areas, you know, there's some, there's money, but, you know,

like there is in any city, but it's not as flashy. Like, everybody in Miami wants to be driving a Lamborghini. They want to have the fake tits. They want to have the girlfriend that looks like a fucking model. You know what I'm saying? So it's super competitive. Like, it's so competitive in Miami. Right.

They all have to be gorgeous. They all have to have, you know, what is it, the facial shots. They have to look, no wrinkles, no, everything has to be perfect. So it's super competitive to get money in the car. You have to have all the right stuff. You know, there's not a lot of pickup trucks. Yeah. But even, you know, your father, you told, you said he respected how much money you have.

Yeah. So it's a very materialistic culture down here. It's a very, it's very much driven, not so much by like art. or talent as it is just raw capitalism and money. Right. I mean, I guess in general, Florida, well, I think everybody wants money. Everybody likes money. Everyone wants money, but in a lot of places, a lot of bigger cities, a lot of bigger states,

what counts the most is like how you made your money. Right. Right. Like that counts for more like social equity. Like he's a filmmaker and he's rich. He's a high priced Fifth Avenue lawyer he's right. Down here, it's like, it's a banker. They don't give a shit.

You make your money as long as you have the money. Down here, it's like, yeah, I just bought a ton of land and parceled that bitch out. Or, yeah, I got this. You go to Miami. Everybody has five companies. And you're like, do any of those really exist? Do any of them really make money? So yeah, it's a very, I don't know where that comes from, I guess.

A lot of, I think beach culture, there's something about humidity too. Does something to people. Something to their brain. Damn, so you have no, there's no definitive answer. I will get to the bottom of why Florida is the sky. scam and white collar capital. White collar crime capital. I'd love to see what the statistics are on if you took Florida and said,

okay, where's the bulk of the fraud coming from? I'll bet you it is down there. Yeah. No, you're right too, though. But New York, after the mafia started to really get squeezed by the government, a lot of their guys just shoot down here.

Tons of when they go to prison, they immediately relocate to Boca. Yeah. But so this tracks with what happened to you, you know, even though you didn't set out to do crime or you didn't do crime until you were 28, it was an opportunity. Right. It was opportunism.

So what were the early years? You don't have to go into a ton of detail, but like, I can do it in five minutes. Great. Let's hear it. I have a five minute version. So the five minute version is that, you know, I have a graduating USF with like a degree in fine art. So like I'm basically prepared to do nothing, right? University of University of South Florida okay wow so I get out a fine arts program yeah so I get out

of there I get out of there and I'm doing um you know I actually try to be a try to be a insurance adjuster for a while and then I I couldn't cut it and then I not that it's difficult I just wasn't able to keep it with the workload I have a learning disability I don't read very fast and so and then I start doing construction work so now I'm doing construction work I end up working for a, I then end up have a girlfriend that tells me, look, she had started at a subprime company. So you have to start, you got to do mortgages. You're born to do this.

So I start doing mortgages. The very first loan is fraudulent, very first loan. What do you mean? The very first loan I did, I get a customer. I order all the documents when I get the documents. Verification of rent comes in. She was 30 days late in the last two years. You're not getting a loan.

You've been 30 days late. You're done. So my manager tells me, white it out. She's like, I'd white it out and make a copy, put it in. You'll be fine. They'll never catch it. There's, you know, there's 80 documents in there. They're not going to figure it out.

I'm like, okay, so I do it. And I end up the loan closes. I make $3,500. Great. Next guy comes in. He makes, let's say, $45,000. But if he made $52,000. So I changed the document.

Boom, guess what? Bam, loan closes. I made the money. I make a, so that. How were you, uh, doctoring those documents. How were you changing? At that point, I'm cutting and pasting. I'm literally cutting numbers and pasting them over and making a copy. Old school. Because we're talking, what, late 90s now? By this is the time, it's, yeah, this is like 1999, 1999, 1998. Beautiful. Before digital.

Right. Okay. So, oh, yeah. Now it's funny guys are like, you think you can still do that. It's easier now. Right. You know, because now you've got Photoshop. Right. You can make a whole document. Right. Or you could, Or you could just, you could order the documents online. You can go to like paystubs.org and order W2s, paystubs, everything. They're perfect. Oh my God. So what ends up happening is I do very well. I very within, let's say a year, I open my own business.

I own brokerage business. I hire 12 guys. And I'd say, I don't know, 60, 80% of the loans going through there are fraudulent. And now were you, when you owned your own firm, were you the one telling your employees, to change the documents? Just like your old boss did? Well, more like they would come in and they're like, look, I got a loan. Here's what I've got.

And they'd explain it. They'd go, I got a problem. This is my problem. And I'd say, okay, well, they're like, what would you do? I'm like, okay, well, look, you know, redo the, redo the application. Don't say they work there. Say they work here because I set up a dummy company with a phone number. The phone number goes to this phone.

When it rings, it'll go to voicemail. I have somebody leave a voicemail. I'll return it. I also listed it with the business directory. So, you know, I've got, so it's perfect. You know, there's a website set up so they can go to the website. There's the whole thing. So I'm telling them how to finagle this, how to do this.

I'll make W-2s and pay stubs. You know, it'll go through no problem. And let's say, let's face it, you can charge that customer or anything. I'm charging you $3,500 or $4,500 for a broker fee. And you're going to pay whatever, seven, eight, nine percent interest. Oh, I'm not going to pay that much. Okay, go to the credit union. Oh, no, that credit union told you, they wouldn't do the loan.

So these are people that are not going to get a loan anywhere. They're not getting a loan anywhere else. So you're like, you know, go to the credit union then. And they're like, oh, credit union, oh, that's right, that's right. Oh, well, go to Bank of America. Oh, that's right. Bank of Ameriturgery. Oh, well, it turns you down.

Go to this company. Oh, that's right. They turn. Listen, bro, it's $4,500. Or you don't get the loan. Like, it's a high interest rate. Really, keep paying 100%. Well, I don't pay 100% right now.

You're renting. So you are providing a service. Yeah. You are, you're doing kind of a mafia-like service where. A mafia thing. where you're, yeah, you're fucking the banks, but you are providing, you are helping people get credit for their house.

Right. And they can keep renting. Like, you can keep renting. You keep renting, clean up your credit, wait a few years, fix this, fix that, you'll be fine. Do the people that are working for you now, are they all,

how do you know you can trust them? Well, because they're committing fraud too. Like, you're not going to, if we're all committing fraud. First of all, I was young, right? And all I'd ever seen, like, the only thing I knew about prison was like, Shawshank Redemption. And I'd seen a movie called the Animal Factory, which was 10 times worse.

William Defoe is in it. It's horrific. So one, that's all I know about, you know, there's no social media, right? There's no Facebook. At that point, there wasn't even MySpace. The, this is 2000, 2000. By this point, it's probably 1999 or 2000. So there's really barely even an internet. We're just now sending people emails. So the other thing is, all I know is that, you know, if you're committing crimes, you don't tell on anybody.

You don't tell on anybody because, you know, they'll tell on you that you don't want to tell on them. They don't want to tell on you. I've seen the Godfather. Everybody keeps their mouth shut. That's not the way it works. Guys are killing each other.

So, I mean, I've got this delusion of how things work. So they're all committing fraud. I'm helping them commit fraud. And I'm making money. Keep in mind if there's a broker fee, I'm getting a piece of everything that they make. We have an application fee.

I get all that. So I don't really have to close loans. I can live off of what these guys are doing. And I just kind of help out. So at some point, that's what happens. Well, the short version is at some point, a friend of mine who owns a mortgage company, she gets in trouble. She wears a wire on me.

She and her husband wear a wire on me. They meet me at a pizza place and they get me to admit that I'm making fake documents. Right. Now, I had closed several loans for months. my wife at the time at their mortgage company because I couldn't close them at mine because I own the properties and I also own the mortgage company. I can't provide a mortgage and sell somebody's house. So I'm selling houses to my wife in her maiden name so they don't know we're married. But I'm closing those loans at their mortgage company. Well, they get busted running a scam.

That was called a straw man scam. When they get busted, they came to me and asked me to refinance their house. So I refinanced their house to give them $75,000, which they give to a lawyer which immediately says, you need to wear a wire on this guy. So they wear a wire on me admitting what I've done to get these loans to go through. Well, so then, of course, I get a call from the FBI. They want to meet me. I go get a lawyer. My lawyer says, and this, I'll go into this a little bit more because it leads into what we're going to talk about. So my lawyer says, he talks to the FBI and he says, listen, you know, there's this, there's X amount of dollars worth of there's like half a million, 800,000, whatever the number was, worth of loss.

I said, there's no loss. There was like four loans or three loans. We'd already sold three. Let's say there's three loans. We'd already sold two of them. So I bought a house, renovated, it sold it to her. We pulled out the money, rented out the property. It's like a triplex or something.

And then we put it on the market and sold. It made a little bit more money. So out of these three loans, two of them don't even exist. And the other one is on the market. It will be sold in a couple weeks. So I'm like, there's no, dollar loss. And he was like, okay, well, let me look into it. And then he comes back and he says, well, there was a potential dollar loss. Could have, you could have lost money. You just didn't.

No. And then I explained why that's not possible. He goes back to the FBI again. And he's telling me the whole time, you're going to do, you're going to do about three years. Well, when he finally comes back and realizes there's no dollar loss, I know that I'm doing, I've got, there's no dollar loss. I'm looking at maybe three or four years probation. So he says to me, listen, you haven't been indicted yet. Well, first he says, how close are you to your wife? And I went, what do you mean? And he's like, I mean, all the loans are in her name.

And he's like, I could, if you agree to cooperate against her, I was like, oh, I'm not going to do that, bro. Like, I'm not going to cooperate. My wife's Puerto Rican. She'll kill me. So I was like, no, I'm not going to do that. And he's like, all right, well, I didn't know how the marriage was. And then he says, uh, that. That's a shark lawyer.

I know. He's good, right? 75 grand. How close are you to your wife? Yeah. One foot out the door? Great. Here's what we're going to do.

Let's make that permanent. We can get rid of her perfectly. You can take the kid. She'll get out in three years. So the second thing, he said, have you ever heard of a, it's pre-trial diversion? Yeah. Okay. So he said, look, there is no dollar loss.

You're down to basically wire fraud. Which was from admitting that. you fake documents. Yes. And in this case, to your friend to get her the loan, right? Yes. For the 75K. Right.

Well, yeah. Well, for my, to those wires funded the mortgages attached to the houses that my wife bought. I see. Which were closed in my friend's company's name. So that's called wire fraud. Wire fraud because there was a wire. Memorial Day weekend is almost here.

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I mean, they could have charged me with bank fraud, but they didn't. They said, okay, we'll just go with wire fraud. So he said, look, you're basically down to wire fraud and three years probation. He said, but he said, we could do a pretrial intervention or diversion, pre-trial diversion. And I went, what's that? He said, well, the FBI is being told by the informants, which was my friend, my Gretchen. He said that you're running a mill and that basically you've got about 10. or 12 guys working for you and they're all committing fraud. And I went, maybe. Why? And he goes,

well, if you would work with the FBI, I could get them to not indict you. So you would work with them and they'll just drop the whole thing. So you give them five guys that are committing fraud that will end up getting time. And we don't have to charge you at all. And who would those people have been? Oh, my brokers. So he's. saying go in and grab some of the most egregious files. We'll sit down for the day with a couple FBI agents and

we'll and you'll lay out how they're all fraudulent. He is in these all closed in your brokers are the ones that closed them and you cut checks to your brokers. So you're just a middleman and they'll drop the wire fraud because there's no dollar loss on yours. So it's not a big deal. And I was like I said, I'm not going to do that, bro.

You know, because at that time I thought it was a fucking gangster. I also wasn't I also wasn't By this point, I know I'm not really facing any time. And now we've decided that he's still kind of telling me you might get 12 months. But I know at this point, you're not giving me anything. There's no dollar loss. So it's interesting. They want you to basically give up your firm.

Yeah, give up these guys. You walk away. Because you would think you're the boss. It's your company. They should want your employees to wear a wire on you. But it sounds like they just wanted to take out the whole bunch, the whole mill. But they don't, you know, it always. you know, everybody thinks, oh, the top guy, he gets the most time.

But that's not true. If the top guy cooperates and knocks off 10 people underneath them, they'd rather have 10 people than the top guy. Okay. So that's different than cooperation in drug cases. In drug cases, they want to move up the ladder. They want the guy who's got more and more and more product who's higher in the organization. Right. But if they go to him first, he says, I'll decapitate my entire, I'll give you.

10 guys underneath me, he may not have to go to prison at all, even in the feds. Yeah, but usually they wouldn't offer a guy who's moving 100 kilos a month to take out his workers. They usually wouldn't offer him a deal like that. You can't really account it to drugs because one, the equivalent to drugs in financial crimes is money. So you're basically talking about knocking off a guy that is moving no drugs because there's no money stolen. Right. So they're like, there's no money lost. There's no potential money. loss. So he's not even looking at any time and he can give us 10 people. Right. So it's a different in in drug cases, the levels of snitching are a ladder. In white collar cases like fraud,

it's lateral. It's like horizontal. I mean, it could it can be there. There's actually different so I could get into that too, bro, because I'll explain there are kind of different levels of snitching that get you more and more money or some more and more money more and more time off. And I'll explain that. So what happens is I tell him no, I'm not going to do that. You know, I think I'm a fucking tough guy. I'm going on my gangster. I'm not going to, I'm not going to snitch on my friends. Let it be known world, YouTube world. Matt Cox, not totally a rat. Held kept it tight the first time. Yeah. He kept it tight the first time. Yeah, but that doesn't last. Oh, my. Trust me, you're going to be disappointed. Oh, so. So what happens is I say no, I'll take the three years. What do I care if

I'm a felon. So I go ahead and I don't do anything. Listen, and looking back on that, I end up getting three years probation. With a felony? Yeah, I'm a felon three years probation. Did you let your staff know? Oh, they already know. They know all this is going on.

Okay. And they know about your offer to cooperate against them? Oh, no, I never say that. Oh, you don't tell them. No, no. I just tell them like, I'm, oh, I'm just going to take plea. And at that point, I'm actually, I've got it out there that I'm trying to sell my company. And I was going to sell it to maybe somebody that worked there.

And I was going to try. try and continue to work there kind of on the side and run it. And then I end up selling it to a guy who's a CPA. He had a math, he went to the CPA. He had a master's degree in tax. So he's a, he's an accountant. How much you sell for? Basically, I financed it where really he's paying me $8,000 a month because that just covered what I owed every month. Oh, so you owed restitution as well. No, no, I know. I don't know me. No, no, what I owe me my, my, mortgage payment, my car payment, my insurance, right. My, because by this point, I'm divorced.

So I'm paying a couple thousand in child support every month. So that just covered it, right? And I figured I can make some money on the side. So, and it looks good because I have a job. I'm acting as a consultant for a mortgage company and I'm getting paid. I've sold my company. And I don't owe restitution. So as long as they just want to know, like, where's your money coming from?

What's coming from here? Right. So. you know but like I said if I knew then what I know now the people that I protected I would have taken just heard this she's going to be like I would have taken a dolly and I would have walked into the Friday meeting and with everybody there and I would have scooped up the file a file cabinet and I had to said you're going to be contacted by the FBI I suggest you get a lawyer and I would have walked it right out and gone straight through the FBI warehouse and said

80% of these files have fraud in him. You know, and I would have given up all those guys. Well, should we wait to why? Are we going to bury the lead? Should we wait till the end? Does this tie into anything? No, no, because. Why do you say that? Because I later found out when ultimately

I get in trouble, you know, ultimately I get in trouble like these guys all told on me immediately. And not only did they tell on me, but even like their crimes they put on me. Like, they put everything on me. Like, he came in. He told me to do this. He told me to do that. I, you know, this happened. You know, I signed an app. I don't even know what's in that file. Like, that kind of stuff. It's like, stop it, bro. Like, this is, this is your cousin.

You were doing the loan. So all of them turned on me. How long after all this happened did a case get put on them? Well, when I left, as soon as I left, they were all. all listed on an indictment, but only as unnamed co-conspirators. So, you know, they do it, feds do it. They'll put like, um, they'll put like, you know, co-conspirator one, co-conspirator. Or they'll just do it by initial, like, you know, J, B, you know, K, W, whatever. So I have like 12 KW, DW, you know, all these little lists of them on my indictment. You know, but of course, I look at it. I'm like, that's David Walker. That's Susan Barker. That's, you know, I'm saying. Like boom, boom, boom, boom, I can tell you every one of them.

Especially when you read the indictment, like, you know, KB did this on this property. Like, you could just look up the property and get his real name. So anyway, what happened is, so that happens. I get three years paper. I'm getting paid on that from that company. But at that point, you know, we talked about this. Like, I should have claimed bankruptcy. You know what I mean?

Like, I probably should have claimed bankruptcy and moved into my parents' spare room and and just started my life over. But what I did was, and kind of like, you know, you and I, you got in the same thing. You got in trouble. You had, you got a chance. And your thought process was, well, now the gloves are off. Like, fuck it. I'm a felon now.

I might as well dig in. Like you said, you 10xed it. So that's what I did. I thought, well, there's a lot of stuff. I was just kind of, to me, I felt like I was skating in the line. I wasn't doing anything extreme. I'm changing a number here doing that, like things I felt like I could get away with. And I had been getting away with it for years.

Because by this time, I'm like 32. 33. So what was your first play after you, you know, left the company, you got your three-year probation, you're getting paid, you know, stipend every month from the sale of it? Where, where do you go to next? Do you open another company? Well, I mean, I did. I opened up several companies, but I actually opened up a development company. But what I did was, I decided what I'm going to do is I'm going to start flipping properties, right, in an area of Tampa called Ebor City. Problem with Ebor City is, let's say, on average, the average house in good condition is selling for around $100,000. So the average, the median price in that area is about $100,000

at this time. So I thought, I'm going to go in there, start flipping property. And this, keep in mind, this is 20-some-odd years ago. Those same houses now are going for $300,000. But I go in, and I thought, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go buy these houses, fix them up. No big deal. The problem is if I go in there, I buy these houses that are run down for 50,000 and I clean them up for 30, I'm going to make 20,000 because they're only selling it for around 100. Yeah. So that's not a lot of money. A lot of things can go wrong. And I went, what I need is, and then the borrowers that can get by those houses in that area are really shitty borrowers. So I'm like, I don't want to, you know, like I don't have to deal with that. And so I thought,

you know what I need, if I could make my own borrowers, make perfect people. And I already knew how to do that, right? So I already knew how to create fake synthetic identities because I had a client come in and she had done it. And I discovered it. And she explained how she did it. So what I did was ultimately what I did was I ended up convincing social security to issue me social security numbers to children that do not exist. So I would make a fake birth certificate for a 10-month-old child, and I'd make a fake shot record. And I'd go into Social Security and say, hey, my son or my daughter, these were actually all men's at this point. So I'd say, my son was born 10 months ago, and he doesn't have a social security number. And they go, well, was he born in a hospital.

I'd say, well, he was. He was born with a midwife. And I'd say at home. And the pediatrician said that they never ordered one. and I needed to come down here. And they were like, okay. And they'd look, hold on. Oh, you're right.

There's nothing for this person, for this, your child. And they would issue me a social security number. So they'd mail it to me in the mail. Two weeks later, I get it. And then I would go online and I would apply for credit cards in the name of that child. But I wouldn't say he's 10 months old. I'd say he's 33 or 32. So I would apply and I would get denied.

Of course, he's got no credit history. But they would offer me secured credit cards instead. So I'd get the secured credit cards, make the payments for six months. months, and in six months, you've got 700 credit scores. Right. So now I have someone that on paper has 700 plus credit scores. So I name these borrowers. This is, you'll get a kick out of this.

I named the borrowers like the first, like one of them was like Lee Black. One was Michael White. One was David Silver. One is Brandon Green, James Red. So I, you know, Reds. You know, I remember. He's a fan of Tarantino movies. Yeah, I love that movie, right?

And actually, you know, I think. Pulp Fiction had come out by then And then I saw that movie Because I didn't see it in theater I was so good I was so you know The characters were so great right So

Anyway what I did so I thought And I thought it was cute You know I'm thinking I'm so fucking smart So So I do this And I then turn around And I thought so I'm gonna have these guys Buy these properties

And then I don't have to put 30 grand in to fix them up I thought I could put 5 or 10 grand in So you own you buy the property first, like a fixer-upper. Right.

You use your own money. Yeah. Is there a loan on that? Well, at some point, sometimes I would... Would you buy cash? First, it's cash. Not cash cash. I mean, you know, it's my own money.

Right. Money in the bank. That's what I mean. Okay. So if that's a clean fraud deal that you buy a house cash in your name, you create the fake person. Right. And then you apply for a loan for that person.

that person applies for the loan to buy your property. Yeah, to buy that property for top dollar, $100,000, right? So what do you make? You put $10,000 in it, clean it up. He's never going to know, need to live there. No. So what I thought was, that's good, but I'm going to make $30,000, maybe $40. And I was like, he's got to be a way to get these things to appraise hire.

Well, by that point, I'm divorced and I'm dating a girl at a title company. I go to her and I say, listen. how do I get these a house? I want to buy a house, but I want to record the value of the sale of the house higher than the 50 grand. And she's like, oh, well, you would just have to pay the extra doc stamps on it. So what? Documentary, documentary stamps. So when you buy a house for, let's say, $100,000, you pay $700 in doc stamps. So she was like, so you're paying about 350. If you paid an extra $350, it'd show up at $100,000. I go, but if I paid an extra $1,000, it'd show up for $200. thousand. And she's like, oh, yeah, yeah. And then she was like, yeah, but nobody's going to believe those houses are worth 200,000. I said, if there's enough of them, they will. And she was like, I mean, I guess. And I was like, okay. So it was literally, I've seen it was like two days later, three days later. I came in with a with a thing and said, okay, tell me exactly what to do. And she's like, oh my God, are you serious? I go, fuck. Yeah. She's like, shut the door. I'm not, she was, I'm not going to notarize it. And I was like, that's fine. Like, I got a bunch of notary stamps. Like, if you just, you can go and just. You can go and just. order notary stamps at like office depot or whatever and three days later they call you up and say oh you're mr johnson your your your notary stamp is here and you walk in and they give it to you so yeah this guy can make if you can get the social security office to send you yeah that's not a problem right social security cards i think you figure out the notary right so i've got like five

notaries so she shows me how to do it maybe two or three times and then she's like i'm not doing these anymore this is you're going to end up in prison i was like okay well i don't need you anymore actually so the most honest person florida's ever produced so she only did it five times So I end up, I start making them. So I start buying these houses for $50,000. And I'm recording the sale at $200, $220, $195, $205. And I, now the FBI said I did 109 houses. That's untrue.

I don't remember 109 houses. I feel like they threw some of my regular sales into it. Some of those were legit. But whatever, let's say, I don't know what it ends up being. But basically every person that I made bought five to six houses. So here's what happens. I buy the house for 50. I record the value at $200,000.

I put $10,000 into it. So I mow the yard. We repaint the house. We clean up the outside. So it takes some good pictures. I get an appraisal done. And from a friend of mine who says that the inside of the house is fine. Like we put different pictures in there.

So you can't tell that it's a shithole that inside is gutted. practically. And from the outside, it looks good. So if the lender does an appraisal, if they say, we're going to do a desk, they call it a drive-by review, they send somebody out there, he drives by the house, he takes a picture of the outside. He looks at the comparable sales, all of which I've created. So my guy, James Red, owns five houses within about half a mile of each other. This one sold for 210, 205, 195, 400, or sorry, 3, 245, whatever. Does James Redd, when he's applying for the loan, what does he say he's going to do? Is he going to fix him up and rent them out?

Or this is for his family? Like, how do you justify buying five houses in the same? James Red buys it for 50 from the get-go. He buys it for 50, but records the sale at 200. So when he walks into a bank or calls the bank to apply for the loan, they say, Oh, is this your address? Yeah, I bought it about two months ago. Oh, okay, what did you pay for it?

$200,000. I have an appraisal. It's worth $200. They send an appraiser out. Their appraiser says, yeah, it's worth $200,000. I want to refinance my house. The comparable sales are, there's a comparable sale three blocks over. Brandon Green bought it for $205.

There's another one a block away. Michael White bought it for $210. So it's legitimate. There's so many comparables. It's worth $2.10. So the cash comes from the refinance. That's the play. Yes.

Okay. So James Red refinances a house. He gets a loan for, let's say, $190 on a $200,000 house, 95% LTV. So I've got 60 in it. Let's say 70. 70 in it. And so that's $120,000 profit. He does this with five houses.

So roughly a little, about almost a million dollars. And then I would also go out and take, because he's got perfect credit. So I would also go out and I'd get three or four secure or personal loans for like 15 grand. So that's another 50, 60 grand. Who are these banks? Name it. Bank of America, Wachovia, SunTrust. I mean, so, I mean, I don't think, I don't know if SunTrust is.

I don't know if Wachovia is still around. But major banks and smaller ones? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'll hit a credit union. I'll take out whoever makes the mistake of walking in my path. So I end up getting, you know, and then I remember the personal loans were like, you know, American general, pretty sure they went under. City Group or City Financial.

I think they went under. Gee, I wonder why. So anyway, so I'm getting these loans. So it ends up being about a million, a million point one. And then I make the payments on the house, right? So I make the payments for six months, sometimes three months, four months. And then Brandon Green has a tragic accident on I4, and it's very dangerous. And so there would be, let's say, an article in the newspaper that would say there's a 12-car pile up on I-4, and someone was life-flighted to Tampa General Hospital.

This is before you're getting your stuff online, right? It's actually a physical newspaper. So I type out the whole thing. I would put Brandon Green or Michael or James Red or whatever the guy's name is in the article. and I would print it out on a piece of newsprint that you buy it like the art store. And then I would cut it up. And then I would make a copy of that. And then I'd highlight his name and that I'd write the collection department at the bank a letter saying from his sister that my brother was in a tragic car accident.

He's currently in a coma. And they can see that he was life flighted to Tampa General Hospital. Poor guy. So and then if they call his employees. employer, the employer still exists. There's no reason for me to shut the employer down because I got like four other fake people working for him for that employer. Okay. So you had, you would hire real people to pose as the employers of. No, no, I would, I would open a corporation or I would just get a tax ID number off of sunbiz.com. I would open and then I make a website and then I would, whatever the phone number was, I would list it in the business directory. So the checks that they have to verify. that this is a real company is, they would go to SunBiz and go, what's the tax ID number? Okay, it's a real business. And then they'd say they could go to the website. There's a real business. And this might be a real business. Some of these are real businesses like maybe in

Miami or in wherever, somewhere in Florida, or maybe they've been shut down. But the tax ID number still says it's active. So I, so, and then they would call or they, they check the phone number, would check the phone number, see if it's a real business. Oh, yeah, it's in the business directory. Okay. They've got W-2's pay stubs. They can call somebody answers, HR answers, whatever. They, you know, and they say, oh, can you have his boss call? But we need to verify this person's deployment. I call back and I say I'm Todd from HR. And yeah, he's been, he's been here about five years. He's, I don't think he's here right now. He's on, he's a site manager. He's, whatever it is, whatever the business was, express tax services. Could you have done that in this day and

age? It'd be easier now because I don't have to make all those documents. And the only reason I was able to make the websites is because GoDaddy had just come out with the first official, like, whatever, platform where you could make your own website. You didn't have to hire a professional. So me and a buddy, oh, I'd love to say his name. But me and a buddy, he was super savvy. He was a guy that I had hired. I'd hired him. He had worked at, what was the name?

It was like, it was like a big time stock brokerage firm. And so he'd worked there for like three years. And then came work for me. And then listen, he's also probably the only honest person ever. He worked there maybe six months and said, came in one day. He said, bro, I can't be here. Like these guys are making stuff. They're doing stuff.

Like, I can't. This is going to go bad. Like he's super smart. He's also a multimillionaire now. And he quit. But we stayed friends. So he, one day I sat down with him and he showed me how to help me figure out how to build these websites. So I would, so if you like literally this company has a website.

Everything appears legit. Every way to check it is legit. So I've got employment. I've got the guy, you know, where he lives. I can verify his history. Because I have a legitimate property management company that you could call and they would verify it. I have W-2's pay stubs. He's got a bank account. I would make a fake bank account so that I had a bank of E-war. I also had one called Southern Exchange Bank of Clarksville. But in Florida, people believe that's a real fucking bank. Bank of Ebor? Yeah.

Yeah. It had a website. It's got bank statements. I'll send them to you. They're in color. And you can call, call it. You know, they call somebody answers. They go, hold on.

Oh, what's the, hold on. I'm sorry, I can't verify, but yes, he does have an account here. I just can't verify what's in it. You can fax me something. This is back in faxes. You could fax it to me. And if you can get authorization, I can tell you what is in the account. What kind of did all of these steps you took?

Was it just one logical progression to the next? You're like, well, okay, if I file this fake person, they could call down to his employer. I need to set up a website. I've been through it. I've been at this point for three or four years, I've been doing mortgages. So I've had, I know what will pass and what will pass. I know how they verify things because I'm in faking stuff. Periodically, you get caught, which was even easier when I own the mortgage company

because I don't get caught. You get caught. That broker got caught. They called the manager and the owner of the company or the manager, which a lot of these guys thought I was the manager. I'd be like, what? Wait a minute. Whoa, okay, are you suggesting that Johnny made the W-2s?

Wow. And how did you find that out? Really? Oh, so you do that with every W-2. Good to know from now on they have. You have to use a tax ID number that's listed. Yeah, oh, no. Oh, he's gone.

He's gone. Thank you so much. much, you know. Hang up. Good job, buddy. Get Johnny in here. I'll take care of this. Put Johnny on the board. Right. You're doing great. Let's go ahead and move that file to the mortgage warehouse. They'll close it. So you got your experience at the mortgage company for what came, came about when you started making fake people and buying houses. Yeah. So they keep in mind that my guy, so when the, when the collection companies start or the banks start looking for the guy, They get a letter from the sister saying he was in an accident.

And they just assume he was in an accident. He stopped paying. He's got five other mortgages. All of them are in foreclosure. He's got all of the money that he has. His perfect credit is going, it's all going under at the same time. So something happened to this person. He has a real social security number.

He has a real, he has bank accounts. He has employment. He has, they don't think anything's wrong. They foreclose on the house. And even if the person that goes out and forecloses says this place is a dump. By the way, by the time they foreclosed, it's in Ebor City. It's been trashed. But it's Ebor City.

You assume it's going to get trashed. Right. That's what I'm saying. People have knocked out the windows. They've gutted it. They've yanked out the copper wire. So by the time they foreclose, it takes them three to six months to foreclose. It's been over a year and change since this house was bought. So when they show up and they think it's trashed, but it looks like a bunch of crackheads got into it.

They've crashed the place. They don't, from what they know is the appraisal that we gave them to begin with. That's what it looked like at the time of the appraisal. So when they go to resell it, they go, well, it's, they're selling in the area for 220, 210 right now. We'll just resell it. They list it for a little bit less. Let's put it on the market for 160.

It doesn't sell. Okay, 120,000 doesn't sell. 100,000 doesn't sell. $170,000 doesn't sell. Well, some of them would sell for 170, or not 170, sorry, gets down to $100,000, gets down to 90, 80, 70, and maybe it sells for $70. Or maybe it sells for $100, even though it's probably worth $50 or $60 because the market is also going up. Like I was working against myself. Anyway, and I'm doing this over. And so it's James,

it's James Red, it's Brandon Green, it's Michael White, it's Lee Black. So I ended up borrowing $11.5 million. Right. Between how many banks, do you think? Did the government give you a number? Oh, well, yeah. It was over 50 victims, you know, that every bank's a victim. Do you remember countrywide? No. You don't remember country? wide bank? I guess so. They were huge. They were like the huge, you know, you remember? Oh, my God. We're from the West Coast. Children. Yeah. West Coast, it was the biggest, it was the biggest lender in the world. It was the biggest lender in the United States. It was countrywide mortgage. We're millennials. My God. So anyway, Countrywide Bank, I remember they listed Countrywide Bank as

four victims because I borrowed one loan or several loans from like Countrywide home loans. And then Countrywide also had Countrywide Bank. They also had Countrywide Financial. They also had like countrywide, you know, equity. And I happened to have borrowed. So countrywide was four victims. I always feel like that pushed me. That's the they did it to push me over 50 victims. Right.

The point is, is at that point, it was close to 50 victims because I kept stealing. I kept doing this. What happens is at some point, a guy that was a sheriff's deputy who I'd done a bunch of loans for and it was a friend of mine, he came to me and told me they were coming to arrest me. Now, the reason he did that was I was, it wasn't just me doing these loans, right? Like I'm also, I'm also have other people doing frauds too. So I'm running other scams and other parts of Florida. I had a buddy who got arrested in Orlando. Actually, at that probably my, he was, at one point, he was definitely my best friend, right?

We were still friends. So my best friend is running a scam and he gets busted. as I want to say he was David Silver. I could be wrong. In Orlando, he gets arrested. And I get him out of jail. I get him,

I pay for his attorney. And he starts working with the, with a task force to help bust me. He's also, by the way, coming in to my office once a week going, bro, like my rents do.

And I was like, of course, I'm embarrassed you had to come to me for money. Here, what is it? How much? Let me give you $1,000. A week later, oh, they're going to shut my life lights off. It's $400.

Plus, I have nothing for, you know, for food. So sorry. Here you go, Travis. Here's another thall. What was the purpose of that? Because I kept thinking, if I keep him happy, he's not going to tell on me. But he's already working with the taskwork. Yeah, it's fine.

It's fine. He's got, you know, and this is the way I look at it is he's got, he had a daughter. nobody's going to take care of your daughter. He doesn't want to go to jail, even for six months or a year. And it may have been, honestly, he had run about half a million dollars through that bank account. So they were hounding him for half a million dollars. It was, it was state. But he was probably going to look at doing some time.

And, you know, he doesn't, he doesn't know me anything, you know. So I talk to him today. I talk, not today. I mean, I talked to him to this day. Probably talked to him a couple months ago. Oh, wow. So you've forgiven him. Yeah.

I don't think I was ever upset with him. Yeah. Like, you don't seem like you take much personally. Did you get mad or upset or take it personal at the time when you found out all these people that were your friends or at least co-workers or cooperating against you? Unlike other people, I don't expect much from people. You know what I'm saying? Like a lot of people like, you should this, you should that. Why?

What do I owe you? You know, we're two criminals committing crimes together. you're just some scumbag, you know, selling drugs or robbing banks and we get busted or I get busted and I tell on you. And now suddenly I'm supposed to have ethics and morals and values in a code. And, you know, if I had a code and I was a decent human being, I'd be working two jobs, not robin banks. So don't expect me to suddenly be a decent human being to you. You're robbing banks too. Well, when you first got in the game, you did have a code because you were naive and you thought this was a black and white.

Yeah, I thought everybody, initially I thought everybody thought like that when I realized they don't. So keep in mind that this sheriff's deputy shows up and he says, so he's like, do you know somebody in Orlando? And I'm like, yeah, he's like, so there's a task force. He used to date a chick that was on the task force. He's a sheriff's deputy. He used to date a cop and Tampa PD. She came to him that morning and said, don't talk to this guy anymore. The feds are going to arrest him.

He's already on probation. He's going to cooperate. He's probably going to roll over on you. So he said, but we're friends and I wanted to let you know. Like I was never here. And I was like, okay, he said, what do I do? Because I know, he knew his loans were all fraudulent. He borrowed, I borrowed at least a million dollars in his name and another million in his

ex-wife's name before they got divorced. He's like, what am I going to do? I said, you don't know anything. Most of his stuff was legit. There was fraud because he was getting money out. But as a, as a borrower, you don't know that. You don't necessarily know that you don't go to a closing and get a check for 60 grand. Hang on. So during this time, as you're creating fake people to get loans, you're also using real people.

Yeah, I'm still periodically doing loans here and there or the company that I'm getting paid from my old company's doing them. Right. Okay, but you're not like using somebody's, some living person's identity to go. No. At this point, there's commit fraud. At this point, yeah, at this point, there's, they're basically synthetic identities. So he tells me all this. I tell him, I tell him, when the FBI shows up, just tell, if they question you, I said, go and tell them, you apply for a loan. I told you, I took the information. I told you to be at the title company. You showed up, you signed the papers like, what the fuck did I do? How am I supposed to know I can't walk away with 60 grand? Right.

I rented, I used the money to renovate the house. Yeah. So Matt made it sound very legit, you know. So he's like, okay, he's like, what are you going to do? I'm like, oh, I'm leaving, bro. I'm already on federal probation. Right. Like, this isn't going to be good.

And I knew it was, I knew it was 10 or 15 million. I didn't know exactly how much money it was, but I knew it was a lot. And how much do you have on you? Like, what is your net worth if you've just frauded 50 banks for 15 million? You nobody ever asked that. So remember the development company that I said, I opened it? Well, we were building brand new houses. So I've got about 100 vacant lots that I've bought.

And I've got a bunch of new construction. So I don't have a lot of money. I mean, we have several hundred thousand dollars. And we got some credit lines. But that's not accessible at 4 o'clock. on Thursday. So 4 o'clock on Thursday, between 4 o'clock on Thursday and the next day at 5 o'clock, I get out, I'm able to get out $80,000. That's it. Everything else is dumped into land. It's dumped into land and I have to leave. Yeah. I have to leave immediately. So I end up, so I'm actually, this is much longer than it. I'll run through it, right, if you know, if you don't mind. So because otherwise it's going to get convoluted. It's going to get, sorry, more and more. Um, Intrigate. So I end up taking off on the run. And I actually brought the chick I was dating with me, which was stupid. And that's a whole other fucking ridiculous bad move that I made. But she begged to come with me. So and I know everybody's going to roll over on me. Right. I already know that. Because I know that Travis did. And I know that the brokers or none of these guys are going to jail. Like, you know, listen, we're all soft as cotton. Like it's 12 white guys, you know, who all like either went to college. And or they've all had professional careers.

Like they're not, they're not, they're not going to, none of them are going to hold up. So pack up my vehicle, take off. I go to, I go to Atlanta. I rent a house by a guy named Michael Shanahan. I then make a fake ID because I was able to make fake IDs. So I make a fake idea as my. Michael Shanahan, open up some bank accounts, and then I go down to Fulton County records. And by this point, I know how really I'm really good at documents and public records.

So I go look up Michael Shanahan's title. And I see that Michael Shanahan has owned the house for 10 years or something. And he has two mortgages on it from Bank of America, the first and a second. So I then look up what a satisfaction of mortgage looks like. I print it out and I go home and I type up two satisfaction of mortgages. And I go back and record the satisfaction of mortgages, which get rid of the mortgages on his house. Now, are those mortgages still exist with Bank of America? Yes.

As long as they get their payment, they'll never know that they don't actually have that property secure anymore. So now I'm living in a house as Michael Shanahan with no mortgages. It's worth $200,000. It's an area called Alpharetta, Georgia. And I am Michael Shanahan. I have bank accounts. I have a couple of credit cards because I just used a social security number. Started us another synthetic identity as Michael Shanahan.

Right. And I got a couple credit cards, but I didn't have a lot of time. So there was no credit scores, but there are cards. So if you look him up, they're like, oh, he's got a couple credit cards. He just got him, but they're there. He owns his house for $200,000. He doesn't have any mortgages showing up on his credit. And there's none on the title.

So I call three hard money lenders. These are just guys that lend money on your, based on your house, not on you. They go out, they look at the house and they go, eh, it's worth $200,000. I'll give you $150. I go, okay. We set up a closing. Would you tell them it was for renovations or? Yeah, well, I'm going to put in a pool.

I want to, I owe my parents some money for my student loans. You know, they put me through college. It's the least I can do, I owe them like $50, you know, and then I'm going to put into some hardwood floors and I want to put in maybe a pool. So, and it's in a nice, it's a brand, like I said, the house is 10 years old. if that in a nice subdivision. So I go to three, another hard money lender shows up. So they all show up within like a day of each other.

I schedule three closings and I at three different title companies and I close all the loans at the same time within a day of each other. All under Michael Shanahan. All under Michael Shanahan. So it's $400, roughly $450,000. Would other, would they not be alerted to that? How? computers the left hand like like this this hard much like look if if if i met you and my wife and uh you know and colby and neither one none of you knew each other i asked you hey bro can i borrow 10

grand you said sure and i your wife my wife and this is you could all pull my credit right but and then you're all looking at the house so you send a the title company sends an appraiser down or an an abstracter down to look at the house, but they're like, yeah, he doesn't know anything. Right. So your mortgage is going to be placed on the house. So nothing is popping up on a credit score that you're taking out. A credit report. A credit report.

Or the title report. Right. So that's it. I get the, I get roughly four, I probably got about 400,000. I get 450 because there's closing costs and all this. Right. So I get that money. You know, and I did a couple other thing.

You got that cash. Yeah. Plus I had that, well, I didn't really didn't have the 80 anymore because we were going through it pretty quick. The what? The 80,000 in cash, I didn't have that. So, and I, we did another one in like a Tallahassee. And how are you, are you, are you then pay those loans off?

Like, you're paying them down or you just run. Okay. I just, I pulled the money out of the bank and I leave. And leaving the real Michael Shanahan. He had some issues. He had some issues. Look, I would say he's got a few issues. He, uh, he did it.

So I, so I. So this was victim. You did actually have real victims. Yes. He had to pay five or $6,000 to an attorney to correct the title, to fix the title what I did. So he ended up losing about $6,000. But how did he prove that he wasn't the one? Well, when the Secret Service showed up, they knew immediately because you can mind they get, first of all, I'm leaving thumbprints.

Like, I'm not even hiding anymore. I'm not trying to, I don't have anybody acting as a. Just because you're on the run. Right. I'm on the, I already know the FDFB. By this point, they've already, they've already rated my office. They've already, so they've rated my office and they've, there's been probably five or ten, um, let's say, um, articles. Tampa Tribune, St. Petersburg Times.

They've done a bunch of articles about me. They were calling me, I remember at that point, they were calling me a serial signer, sounded, you know, scared. So and then and with your real picture and real name. Oh, yeah. They're calling me a con man. Okay. So Matt Cox is on the run. On the run and I'm a con man.

Right. Which I was so offended, bro. You know. That's pejorative. Right. You know, like I would read the article and be like, they don't know me. They don't. And now I look back.

I'm like, what are you an idiot? Like con man was, that was nice. Like, it was just like they did you a favor, bro. Yeah. So that, what is going through your mind? Are you, is it just one rationalization after another? Are you on drugs? No, I'm thinking get three, four million dollars and go buy a bunch of real estate and retire.

It all blow over. Nobody's got, you're nobody. You're nobody. You get three, four million. You start buying real estate. You get some rental units. You buy $3 million in real estate 20 years ago. You don't have to work again.

Right. But you've got a warrant out. No, no, no. Oh, I'm sorry. Like what are you, what's going through your mind when you're like getting mad that, people are calling you a con man like what what are you justifying all of this to yourself are you are you just in survival mode i'm i mean i'm it doesn't matter you just got to you're just fighting for your freedom yeah justify i mean rationalizing yeah i mean i'm i'm i'm it's just

like any idiot you know i mean just it's just arrogance and stupidity and you know and you know and narcissism and you know um you know that's ridiculous and it's like you know but then you look into it and you kind of think about it you're like what was your end game knowing that you're on the run that you're on the radar now, big time. What was your end game, you know, after you got the 450 grand? Well, I mean, that was just, that's not enough money. I can't live on that. But what did you think about fleeing the country?

Like, what was your exit strategy? No, no, no, no. At that, I wasn't even thinking about fleeing. At that point, I wasn't even thinking flee the country. What I was thinking was you just, you just start another identity, right? And acclimate, you know, I mean, and then kind of, you know, weave your way, to kind of sink back into society, buy some real estate, and just kind of, you know, be hiding every in plain sight.

Because these are newspaper articles. That's nothing. There's no, there's no real, the internet, like, they're not tracking you. Like, there's nothing. I'm not worried about that. It's, these are some newspaper articles in Tampa, Florida. Right now I'm in Georgia. And I'm not going to be in Georgia very long because I take off.

And I, and I've neglected to mention by this point, I was running ads that said, you know, good credit, bad credit. good credit bad credit no problem um government loans available free applications call now and people would call me and i take a mortgage application on them and i've taken thousands so they think they're applying for a mortgage and then um i get their information i just asked like three two or three more questions that you typically wouldn't ask because you it's a at a residential loan applications, it's very intrusive, right? You answer a lot of personal questions. So one or two extra questions isn't a big deal. What are some of those extras? What's your mother's main name for security purposes? Sure. Where were you born? You know, what county were you born in? And like, what high school did you go to?

The reason I did that was I would want to order their high school transcripts because you can use that to get their driver's license. Wow. You can also use, and I need their birth certificate, so I need to know where they were born. And I can't get your birth certificate. certificate unless I have your mother's maiden name. But by that point, they've answered date of full name, date of birth, social security number. Give you your social. Holy shit. Of course, all over the phone. Wow.

And sometimes they would say this. They'd go, um, yeah, I don't know about giving you that over the phone. I said, oh, you know what you can do? You can go to the website. You can go to the website and, uh, I said, you can apply online. Well, of course, by that point, this is 2006. Mm. you're not used to going on.

In 2006, people aren't, they don't want to do that. They're like, oh, that's fine. It's not. Keep on, I don't have a website. So, you know, and I remember the chick I was there. What if they said, okay, I said, oh, I'd give them the website. She's, well, what would happen? I'd say, it's like, United Capital, United Capital Mortgage.

com. She's like, is there one? I'm like, no. No. I'll be off the phone. And they'll call, even if they call me back, I'd be like, oh, my gosh, it's down. Like, what are they going to do? Call the police or call the FBI and say, United Capital Mortgages's websites, you know, not

up. They don't know who they're talking. She's like, okay. And they never did. They always just gave it to me. So, and think about how legit it sounds. You can go to the website. Oh, there's a website. Yeah. Or you can stop by one of our local offices where you look at it again. So it's a Denny's. So, oh, wow. I love gullible people. So what ends up happening is they give me their information. And then I would order their birth certificate, social security card. Sometimes I'd register a vote in their name or their high school transcripts. And how do you, you can just do that? You can order somebody's transcripts like that. Oh, yeah. As yourself. You need a notarized letter. Okay, but you got that.

You got that. Okay. And then they mail it to you. Sometimes they charge you, you know, whatever. They'll charge you for a certified copy of your birth certificate. Depending on the state, it might be $22. It might be $17. Whatever it is. I mean, I'll look it up online. I get the application. I fill it out. I send a money order. Yeah. You know, I know their mother's made name. And they'll, they're going to, ask for a copy of your driver's license. Like, that's hard. So, you know, I send that in. And for social security, they would ask for, they want an original. They want you to send an original. So you got to send your original driver's license, which I don't have. Or a copy of your military ID, which I don't have. Or a copy of your, not a copy, sorry, an original ID, an original military ID or an original

passport or an original student ID or an employer ID. Well, how hard is it to make an employer ID? Like I go down and I buy a little lamination machine and I get the little laminate. You know, they used to laminate everything. Right. You get the laminate and I, I'd make one and look really cool and I'd put my wanted photo on it. And I'd put the guy's name and everything and I'd run it through and I'd mail it to Social Security and they'd mail it back and a couple days later, I get the card. So I get all that stuff. And as long as the person didn't have a driver's license in the state, and they don't, I'm running these ads in other states. So they're calling me from Alabama. They're calling me from Florida. So if he's got a driver's license in

Florida, well, then I go to Alabama. And I get a driver's license in this guy's name from Alabama. Sometimes I would order their driving record from Florida. So I walk in with a driving record. Here's my driving record. Here's this, here, that. None of it's got photos on it. And, And so they immediately go onto the hub, see if he's ever been, if he has a valid driver's license somewhere else. And they go, okay. And then they say, okay, stand in front of the, stand on the red line and take a picture. And here it's $40 or $22, whatever it was. It was cheaper then.

Now it's like $50. It was like $20. So I get the ID. So now I've got a driver's license. Now I've got a driver's license. So I've got a driver's license. I can up a bank account. I can do whatever.

So I'm doing that. How many identities did you have at the height? I've had 27 driver's licenses in seven different states, but I've had more than 50, 50 identities. But a lot of those were fake ideas. Like, those were all real driver's licenses. I've had 22, I want to say roughly 20, a little over 20 passports. So one of my charges are passport fraud and use of a fraudulent passport. Now, of all of those identities that.

you stole, did you run any, or did you get any money out of them? Did you get any loans or mortgages using them? No, not those. So, okay, so the first few were from the phone calls. Those are legitimate people. But I knew I only did a few of those. So I only got a few of those IDs. So here was a problem is that the chick's name was Becky. Becky and I were driving around. And I was like, the problem with those IDs or driver's licenses, those identities, is that it's, is that I talked to this one guy. And I asked, one of the questions I would ask was like, do you have a felony? And the guy was like, I don't think I have a felony. He's like, I did lose my license a few years ago for a DUI, but I don't think it was a felony.

And he goes, but I got it back. It was only I lost for like a year. And I remember thinking, fuck, like I hadn't thought about that. Like, how can I, what if I'm driving around as this guy? I have a driver's license in his name in South Carolina and I get pulled over and he lost his license. You know, in Florida and I have a, maybe I have an owner of Warren, but it's suspended. And now I'm going to get arrested. I can't get arrested.

No. I can't get fingerprint. I don't want to get fingerprinted. That's for criminals. Right. That's ridiculous. So I thinking, so I was like, that's a problem. These guys are out there and they, who knows what they're going to end up doing.

And so Becky was like, well, what do you want to do? And I went, we need identities from people that aren't using their identities. And she was like, like who? And I had just, we had pulled up to a stoplight. And I remember looking over. And she was in there like, what? Like prisoners or she's like, what about like maybe somebody in a mental hospital? And I'm thinking like, how are you going to get any of that?

And I just remember looking over and thinking, that guy. There was a guy standing I will work for food sign. And I went that guy. And she goes, I remember she said hobo. I know who says hobo? She's the hobo? I said, yes, the hobo. So I pull over.

I walk over to him and I said, hey, man, I said, can I ask you some questions? He's like, well, I'm kind of doing something right now. Yeah, I'm working over here, man. So I give him 20 bucks. And he answers a bunch of questions for me, you know, like, and just questions that I thought might know, are you from here? What was the last time you were gamefully employed? Do you currently get social security?

Do you get food stamps? to you. And as I'm asking him all these questions, like, do you have a felony? Do you have this? I remember he said, are you a social worker or something? Like, what are you doing? Taking a survey, and I went a survey. And I was like, you get a lot of surveyors out here. He goes, sometimes social workers come out. And I remember thinking, nice, they're used to being surveyed by social workers. So I get the information from them. I go back, I go back home. I type up a statistical survey form like 105 or something. I figured I named it. And from the government or whatever. So I then print it out.

I get a clipboard. I get a bunch of these. I make myself a Salvation Army statistical surveyor. Badge. Badge, you know, employer with my picture on it. And I walk out and I said, and I start surveying homeless guys that are about my age. And I said, hey, man, can I take a survey? Oh, I'm not interested.

And I go, pays $20 bucks cash right now. You're going to be $20 cash right now. I said, yeah. What do you need? Name, data, verse. Just everything. Yeah. They're thinking nothing.

They're thinking, what's this for you? Well, I work for the Salvation Army and we're trying to determine where we place our next homeless facility. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just take, so that makes sense to them. They want it to make sense. They want the 20 bucks. Take all their information.

And I don't want them to know that they've done this. So I want to trick them out of it because I don't want them thinking, that guy stole my, he's going to use my identity because it'll always be in their mind. Right. So I don't want that. So I end up. surveying these guys and then I start ordering all their documents online and then I go and I get driver's licenses in their name. Obviously, I don't go in the state wherever, you know, so we would

drive two states over, survey five guys, get the information, come back and get a South Carolina or North Carolina driver's license or Alabama or Tennessee or Florida, whatever. So we get these, we get their, get a driver's license and Becky got one, two, she got several two. And we would order passports. And by this point, I was in South Carolina. I was living in North Carolina. We went to South Carolina. We bought a couple houses. And I... With the money that you originally got from the hard money lenders? Or did you... Well, part of it. Yeah. And then you take loans out. Well, I would... Fake IDs. I would convince homeowners to owner finance their house. So you've got a house for $250,000. You're a doctor. And I go to the house and I have a real estate.

agent shows me the house and I come back and I say, great, offer him. I'll put $25,000 down. He owner financed the house for me. I'll refinance it in a year. We can have a, do a wrap around, because he has a mortgage on the house. I'll do a wraparound mortgage. So I'll pay him. He can pay his mortgage. And in a year from now, I'll refinance it. And they'd be like, how much now? 25. Okay, cool. We'd do that. So what's the, oh, I'm sorry, go ahead. Like, how do you make money out of that? Well, because then I go straight down to public records. I get a copy of the title. I create satisfaction of mortgages for his mortgage and the wraparound mortgage. And I satisfied those.

And now I own a house for $250,000 in the name of some homeless guy that I met in Las Vegas named Willie Brown. No, Gary Sullivan. Okay, gotcha. I barred $1.3 million in Gary Sullivan's name. And so anyway, I end up, you know, and like you said, you know. Now bank accounts really quick. So if you are able to get 1.3 million out of banks using a fake name or a name, somebody else's name, you're on the run in Florida. Are you still able to operate bank accounts under your name elsewhere?

My real name? Yeah. No, I'm not using my real name at all. I'm living as other people. Okay. So you have a bank account open for every ID that you've got, you've got a bank account linking one. You can open about three bank accounts in somebody's ID. Because what happens is you get an inquiry every time you do it through either check systems or acu-check.

And so when you go to the next bank, they see one. They don't think anything. By the third bank, they're like, in the last three days or two days, you've had your credit pulled twice. Did you open bank accounts? So you can explain that away a little bit. Yeah, I did. I opened up a checking account here and a savings account here because I don't want to have access to the same bank. I didn't order a debit card, nothing.

I just won it for, oh, okay. And I was like, well, you know, my wife and I had opened up this checking account. So that's ours. But I want my own checking account here that my wife doesn't know about, you know, and they're like, oh, okay. By the fourth one, they don't care. By the fourth one, they're just like, it doesn't matter what you said because I've tried like three different times. And every time they're like, I'm sorry now. Or they'll just say, oh, I'm sorry, it's denied.

And it's like, I know it's denied because I have three inquiries. So they think something's wrong. So you pull another Shanahan. You pull another Michael Shanahan, but with these homeowners in Georgia. Yes, in Georgia. Only in Georgia, I got arrested in a bank. Wachovia's head of their fraud department figured out that I had borrowed like six mortgage. No, he only four, three.

He figured out I had three mortgages on this one house. I actually had six, but he found three. So they got three. And that's a whole thing on how that happened. But he got it. And so he put it in like a red, what, notice or whatever. So they grabbed me at the bank pulling out money because I'm just pulling out cash. Keep mind.

There's no Bitcoin. There's no. I'm just going in like, hey, I need $8,000 in cash. I need $7,000. Right. They're just draining the accounts. Wow. And I got like $6 or $700,000 out.

And then they grabbed me. They handcuffed me. The local, these two big deputies grabbed me. And then the local, the, the detective from Richland, I hope I'm saying it right. Rich, Richmond, Richland County, I want to say. And it was in Columbia, South Carolina. And so Richland County sends a deputy down. He comes down. They get Wachovia on the phone. He explains that this guy's running some kind of scam. It's got multiple mortgages. And I convinced the deputy that I don't have three first mortgages. I have a first mortgage, a second mortgage, and a he lock, a home

equity line of credit. And that I came to Wachovia and their loan officer is the one that help set up the other two at the other two banks because they were all, all these people are friends. And I said, I don't think I've done anything wrong. They all seemed like they were okay. Like, I don't know what happened. Golly, G. Wiz officer, I wouldn't know how to do this if I tried. How did you talk your way out of it? It's a little bit hard to explain without going into this huge explanation. But what ends up happening is while I'm kind of arguing through the detective with the head of Wachovia Bank's fraud department, he ends up, and listen, the guy from Wachovia knew exactly what happened.

And he only got three. If he'd gotten four loans, I don't know what I would have said, would have changed anything. But it just so happens, it is perfectly reasonable to have a first, second, and he locked. But he knew they were all first mortgages. But there's nothing really that shows that. There's nothing that proves that, even on the mortgage itself. It's really the placement of the mortgage that determines it. The mortgage itself doesn't say first mortgage.

So the, so I'm arguing through the detective with this guy from Wachovia, and he's saying arrest him. And basically the, I end up convincing the detective that these brokers or these loan officers at the bank, they did something fraudulent. They may have. I wouldn't know how to do anything like this. And then while we're arguing, the guy from Wachovia says, check his ID. It's a fake ID. It's fraud. You know, he's running a scam.

And he goes, his ID starts with zero zero zero zero. In South Carolina, their IDs start with zero zero. This guy's in California. So the detective says, look, you know, keep mind, he's talking on the phone. He's not a speaker. So he goes, he said, no, no, no, no. He said, look, I ran this guy through NCIC. It's him.

It's not a fake. It goes, our IDs start with zero, zero, zero. And I had a real ID issued by the, by the state DMV. So I lean in and I go, what? Now I'm not Gary Sullivan? I go, bro, what are we doing here? And he goes, I know, Gary, I know. He said, look, I think you guys have a problem with the bank.

I'm going to take this guy downtown, fill out a police report. I'm going to talk to the U.S. to the district attorney and I'll let you know. Guy screaming and hollering, he hangs out the phone. He said, follow me. So I follow him back. And by the way, this is all going on in the bank in front of other customers. There's people staring at us.

The customers are all standing there, staring at us. I'm sitting there. And initially, I was in handcuffs. Like I convince him, can you just take the handcuffs off? Because am I under arrest? Like, he's like, oh, yeah, yeah, take him off. So he takes the handcuffs off. And I follow him in my vehicle.

I follow him back to the police station. And there's some other ridiculous stuff that happens. Like, first of all, the homeless guy that I was pretending to be, Gary. Gary Sullivan had been arrested multiple times for prostitution. He was a male prostitute. That I had. So when. And they, so you have to understand.

He thinks he's talking to a guy who's been arrested multiple times. He ran through NCIC. So, I mean, how embarrassing is that? And then they check my ID because they go, do you have a driver's license? Because I only had an ID. So you have a driver's license? And I was like, oh, yeah, it's from Nevada. And the guy's like, oh, okay.

And so they check it. And the cop comes back and he goes, well, he's, he goes, yeah, it's good. He goes, I mean, it says he's 5 foot 11. And they all look at me and I go, with a good pair of shoes. And they go, oh, Gary, follow us. I mean, they were like, oh, oh. I should have been grabbed multiple times. So I follow him back to the police station.

I fill out the police report. He tells me to wait, well, I guess his lieutenant's sign off on it. And my wanted poster is hanging on the wall. There's probably 50 of them, but mine's one of them. Like, I'd never seen it. I'm like, holy shit. In the station. And by the way, at that point in time, I had just been raised to the number one in the

Secret Service's most wanted list. I was on the FBI's most wanted list. But the FBI has, by the way, they were like 500 or, thousand people it's not that's a joke you you're nobody so but i was number one in the secret service like for them it's a big deal and keep in mind there's there's articles constantly coming out now it's the chicago tribune is running a fucking uh like a three-part series on called the fugitives i've been you know bloomberg business week is running something i'm i'm in a couple months fortune magazine comes out with a 6000 word article and these all include your photo all of them

have my photo but by this point also i've had plastic surgery So I've had two hair transplants or hair grafts. Don't say it's not there not plugs. Oh, trust me. Okay. I'm with you, brother. I'm in the community. Nice.

If you're going to see me this time last year, it was a different story. Traffic was backed up. So I had a nose job, right? I had, they called it a mini facelift where they go in and suck out all your neck fat. So, and I had my teeth were done, right? I had veneers. not all of a few in the front and I had them whiten and stuff you know liposuction everything so you know I do look a little different right if you see the picture like trust me the hair thing

is huge so I I leave so he walks me out like he walks me out of the police station I get in my car and I leave the chick I was was seeing Becky is she's freaking out I actually go to two more banks this is how cocky I was I go to two more banks and pull out more money by the third bank they basically almost run to the phone when they see me walking, and I turn around and get my car. And then they actually run outside to get my tag number. They didn't realize that already they grabbed it. So I'm thinking I'm not going to get out of,

be able to do this again. So I just leave. I don't, like at this point, I can't keep getting money out of banks. Because I was thinking, man, if I stay here all day, maybe I can get $100,000.

You know, I can't. It's over. Like, it's not going to happen. So I jump on the interstate. I drive. The girl, we had already relocated from North Carolina to Houston, Texas. So I pack up my stuff immediately into a U-Haul van, leave my car, drive all the way to Houston, Texas, unload all my stuff in a U-storage-type place, get into a massive argument with Becky.

I take $100,000 and I leave. I leave her with like half a million dollars. And there was a whole argument on why that was a good idea. And I genuinely thought it was a good idea. It probably was. She kept saying, like, you'll go somewhere else and you'll do this again. I can't do that. You know?

And she was right. Like she can't. She was, she never even tried to figure out how to do anything. She was, you know, she was basically just spending money. Like, she was like a crackhead with money. And at that point, were you guys splitting up for good? We were like, listen, in, in North Carolina and Charlotte, like, I had a, I had a, apartment, a really nice apartment.

And she had an apartment because we had already kind of broken up because basically she was bipolar. she'd scream like she'd come home drunk at two in the morning and and get into a huge argument with like I'm asleep she's out with her friends drunk and it's like you're gonna get arrested like you know and then she wakes me up she wants to have sex and I'm like I'm not interested to have sex with a drunk chick at two in the morning like no no just leave me alone like I'm disgusted with the way her behavior and then she starts screaming oh I'm so disgusting that you can't have sex with me I you're just like what are you doing we're both once? The cops show up. Luckily, I bolt before the cops show up. So the cops show up and they're like, look, if we, you know, if he was here, one of the two of you has to go to jail. Like at that time, I don't know what it is now, but that time, that's what they, their policy was. It's probably still like that.

That happened multiple times. You're, she's going to get me arrested. So, so look, when I go to Houston and we get into another argument, I'm like, just take the fucking shit. I'm done. Yeah. Well, 100 grand, I can make a couple million. Did she ever rat on you? Did she ever, with those loose lips?

She gets caught. Okay. That's why the Fortune magazine. So within, actually, it took a long time for her to call. I'd say maybe six months to a year. Was she wanted to? Oh, she's one. Well, she's been helping me.

Right. Like she's making phone calls. She doesn't really know what to do, but it's like, look, I'm going in the bank to cash a check on an account that she opened. It's got $100,000. I'm going to cash a check for $9,000. The bank, because we just opened the bank account for the first six months, they're going to call to verify. So they're going to call you. Okay.

Be ready. They'd call her. say, hey, we've got somebody here. We've got Michael Shanahan is here trying to cash a check. We want to if you can verify it. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, that's my contractor. It's fine.

And then they cash it. So when we go to Houston, we separate. I get back in the U-Haul van. I drive all the way back. I actually called the FBI agent that was in Tampa because I called a few people on the way home just to check in. Hey, how are you doing? How's everything going?

Wait, what? You called an FBI agent? I called the FBI agent because one that, the, one of my brokers that I, I called, does you see how things were going? What's happening? Has anybody been arrested? Like, they don't say anybody's been arrested in the newspaper. What's going on?

Anybody have been indicted? Okay, so these are the brokers back in Florida, your original gang. Right. And, of course, she's telling me, she tells me immediately like, oh, I've talked to the FBI, man. I've told them, I've told them everything. She's like, everybody has. Everybody's gone in.

Everybody's been talking. And I'm like, okay, no problem. And she's like, and the FBI agent said, if you ever spoke with you to tell you to call her, I'm like, I'm not calling her. And she's a call her, man, you don't, you don't know what could happen. Like, call her and see if you can turn yourself in. You know, maybe get a couple of years in a camp, a camp. What is?

I don't even know what a camp is. She's like, look, she's just call her. So I was like, all right, well, you know, I'm a big believer and listen to every opportunity. So I call her and she's not a nice person, bro. Not a nice person. She's yelling at me. She's extremely unprofessional. Her name is Candace Calderon.

Oh. And shots fired, Candace. She retired and she now teaches gun safety. That's the chick she is. Those are the kind of people that come out of Florida. Defense, she teaches defensive gun and like hand-to-hand combat. I mean, she's a badass.

And she's six foot tall and wears heels. That's a tough broad. It is. So we get into an argument. She's trying to get me to turn myself in. She's telling me that, you know, if you cooperate and turn yourself in, maybe you'll get, you know, seven, eight years. And we actually called several times.

She calls the U.S. attorney, comes back. But the big thing was cooperate, cooperate. And I was, you know, I'm not going to, I wasn't going to cooperate. Who do they want you to cooperate against? My brokers. And she's telling me, I don't, she's telling me, literally, I don't know why you're being so stubborn. They've all given you up.

Like everybody's cooperated. The only person that refused to talk to them was my ex-wife. She slammed the door in the U.S. Marshals's a fake because they're looking for me. You know, FBI, Secret Service. has come. She's like they've all tried to stop her, try to go by the house, everything. No, not going to happen. Call my lawyer. So, um, you know, she's trying and they're trying and I said no. And I, I just don't understand why if they're telling on you and you're maybe going to tell on them, doesn't it all cancels each other out. Like, what is the government going after here? Um,

like you're the big fish. You're the one that has the $15 million. It sounds like more. You know, if you count like all the money you pulled out and all like the hard money lenders you fucked over and you know what I mean? Yeah. And keep in mind, they also count fraud at the mortgage company. So they added 40 million. So it ends up being 55 million.

That's the ticket. But I, we argued it down. Eventually I argue it down to 15 million. Okay. And my restitution, they wanted 9.5 and I argued it. We argued it to 6 million. Not that I could pay off 6 million any easier than 5.9.5. That changes everything.

So you could just have a bill paying $6 million restitution for the rest of your life and not pay it all off. Yeah. How am I going to? I had things would have to go really well. Right. So anyway, I end up, I end up talking to her. That's not going to happen. I hang up on her.

I drive back to Charlotte to get my car. Because at this point, I've got $100,000. I got no IDs. Like I had packed up all my, all my IDs are in the storage unit, which Becky wouldn't give me the key to. So I'm driving across the country in a U-Haul van. And the only idea I have is Michael Eckert. And Michael Eckert is wanted. You know, this is an idea that's still, that's bad. Right. So, I mean, I've got Gary Sullivan. He didn't even have a driver's license. So I've got a driver's license in Michael Eckert's name. So I end up driving back. And it wasn't even Michael

Eckert, to be honest with you, it was, it was Michael Johnson by then because I legally had the guy's name changed. I'm sorry. I feel bad about that. But I was curious to know if I could change someone's name. So I hired an attorney and had Michael Eckert's name changed to Michael Johnson legally. I wonder if you got to change back. I have no idea. And I feel bad about that. He forgives you. Yeah, he's okay. So he's in the under a bridge somewhere. So, oh, listen, I got so many tickets as a guy one time. I had to go to traffic school because I was going to lose his license. And I got like two cars in his name in an apartment. So anyway, I, so I go back. I get my drive.

I get my car. I had like an infinity G35 or something when they were brand new. You know, that super was a brand new car. So I get it. I'm getting coffee. And when I'm getting coffee, across the street from my apartment complex in downtown Charlotte,

one of the, one of the people in the apartment complex recognizes me. They're there getting coffee. She runs out. She leaves one of the guy, a guy that's there. He's also. from the apartment complex. He stays there. The girl runs out the back. I don't know what's going on. I know

something's happening, but I'm not thinking anything. Runs across the street to the apartment complex. The U.S. Marshals were interviewing them. Tells them he's across the street at the Starbucks. By that point, I walk out, get into my car, sit down, start the car, put my seatbelt on. You remember CDs? Of course. How young do you think I am? I had one of those CDs. It had like, you know, it had like eight or 10 of them. And I'm sitting there clicking through the CDs and everything, checking the traffic. And I look and the guy comes out, the guy from the apartment complex comes out and he's just standing there staring at me. he's holding like a tray of coffees staring at me. And I'm like, and I remember thinking it was because I hadn't paid my rent yet.

So it's like this fifth or six or something. And your rent was due on the first. But I took off. Remember, I will laugh. So I'm not going to pay my rent. So, but now he sees me. And I'm thinking, what's she? What's going on?

And I check for traffic. No traffic. I'm about to pull out. And all of a sudden, he starts screaming. He's right here. He's right here. And I look, I look up. And there's two guys running towards the back of my car.

And it sounds dramatic, but they were like a 50, 150 feet. Like they're not that close, but they probably would have been there in 10 or 15 seconds. And I may not have even gone anywhere if he hadn't said anything. And I checked their traffic already. So I just hit the gas. Boom, boom. And I zoomed down. It sounds dramatic, but it's not like they were on the cusp of the, you know.

So I leave them. I drive straight down the street like a mile down the street. And I stop at a homeless facility and survey three guys. You're out of your mind. But I can't be driving around. I got to get, you know what I'm saying? Are you under massive adrenaline, like stress? Yeah.

So yes. And you know, the other thing is I get asked this question all the time. Like how, you know, you must have been looking over your shoulder all the time. The truth is like, you know, I know that's the right thing to say. I was anxiety and I was so upset. But the truth is like being on the run was like the best part of my life. Why is that? You know, up until that point of my life.

Because it was the adrenaline. It was getting away with it. it was beating the system. It was beating the cops and beating the, you know, even then the whole time after I left from being let go from the police station, I couldn't stop thinking to myself. There used to be a show called Masterminds. And I used to think that's going to be on my masterminds. That's that. They just let me go from the bank.

I went in the police station. They let me go. Like, this is insane. So it's essentially a drug. You're just getting one dopamine hit after another as you beat these guys. No. Keep in mind, not that I was trying to set these things up. But when it does happen, like, you're just like, oh my God. How did that happen? Everything says that shouldn't have happened. You know, and it was. It was, you know, I always say I'd rather be lucky than good. So I end up leaving. I end up going to Nashville, Tennessee. I rent a place. I have the three IDs from these guys I surveyed. But not IDs. I didn't, their information. I rent a place and in the name, the guy's name was Joseph Carter, no, Joseph Marion Carter, Jr. So I went with Carter.

I just introduced myself as Carter. So I rent a place in Carter's name. I then go, I order all of his documents. I get him within maybe a week or so. I immediately go get a driver's license in his name. I'm still driving this vehicle that they're. the cops are looking for. I then get that vehicle. I drive it all the way back to Nashville. I leave it in Nashville. I get in a plane. I, I, I drive it, I'm sorry, I'm in Nashville and I drive it all the way

back to Charlotte, North Carolina. I leave it in Charlotte in like long-term parking. I get on a plane. I fly back to Nashville. I go within a day. I go to CarMax. I buy a car. I have the rental, I, I I get a open a couple. I've got a driver's license now. I open a couple of bank accounts. Within a few months, I've, I dated for about three, four months, just dicking around. And then after three or four months, I turn around and I start and I go out and I buy four properties. I get these guys owner finance the properties. I'll record the values, like I'm buying them for 65 and 75. I'm recording the value at like 240, you know, 190. I refinance them. Now I've got about half a million dollars. And this is under Carter? Carter's ID. Okay. Yeah. And Walter.

Holcomb. I had a few ideas at this point. Finally, finally, these homeless guys have our homeowners. Yeah, they're all homeowner. They could have not been homeless. You could have solved it for them. So they, so I end up pulling out like $3.5 million. This is in Nashville. Yeah, not out of those houses because I end up buying like 10 or 12 properties.

I refinance them all multiple times. So I get like $3.5 million. And I'm dating a girl named Amanda. She moves in with me. We're hanging out. She knows who I am. She finds out who I am. I don't even want to.

I didn't tell her. I didn't tell her who I am. She found out. Like it was a, it was, she went on my computer one day. And it was honestly, she wasn't even snooping. It was by accident. Like it was my fault. We had a corporate attorney that had opened up a couple of corporations.

And one day the corporate attorney said, hey, I need a copy of something, some document. And I told her, hey, go on my computer, pull up this document, print it out. send it to her, email it to her. She was okay. And she went on my computer and it was in Word. And she saw it while she was looking for it, she saw something that said letter to mom and dad. Because I'd written my parents a letter when I left Tampa. And she clicked on it. Saw my real name, four or five paragraphs that summed it up pretty well. She knows my name's Matt Cox. She looks up Matt Cox. Holy shit. She did know I was on the run. She already knew I was on the run. She just didn't know my name. What were you communicating to your parents? I really called.

my mother for maybe three or four times the whole time was on her. And that would only be like if I went to Vegas and I was surveying people or I went to, you know, maybe it was, you know, we actually spent a week at, it's been a week at Disney one time. I called from Orlando, like just before we left. And were you, you, I assume you're using burner phones. Yeah. Phones. Yeah. Or you could, back then, you could, you know, you could get a handful of quarters. You'd go to a pay phone. Right. So I went to New Orleans. And like, so like literally, as we're leaving, you stop. You cop, make a few phone calls. And they know you're on the run.

What's going on with them? I mean, you know, the cops stopped by several times, you know, the FBI, and they're, they're like, I'm not going to talk to you. I have nothing to say. I don't know where he is and I'm not going to say anything. But are they, they don't encourage you to turn yourself in or what are they saying? My mom didn't really. She said, I wish I would love to see you, but I understand that it's dangerous.

And my dad was just kind of a jerk, you know, I remember he said, I specifically remember him saying, you know, every time your name comes up, your mother cries. And I remember thinking, you never cared when she cried. Like, like, you know, like all the times you were drunk and you did this or did that. Like, you never gave a shit about her crying before. The fuck do you care now for? You know what I'm saying? Just so. So he wasn't proud of you anymore. No, no. I don't think of it. Yeah. That was short-lived. So, um, anyway, I, so I run up, we got, a bunch of money. We're building houses. Oh, what happened with your girl? Your chick after she found out.

She was fine. I mean, she was fine with it, but she knows who I am. She's turned on. She, fuck, this is hot. So she knows who I. And keep in mind, we're going everywhere. We've gone to, where are we? I mean, we've gone to, you know, like, I've traveled all over. Like, you know, Mexico, Jamaica, Croatia, uh, uh, uh, Italy, right? Venice, Italy, Italy, Greece. Just to vacation or you make it moves? No, we're just, you know.

And part of you wasn't like, God, I should just stay here in Italy with a suing name. You know, I still, imagine how arrogant you are getting caught and going to police station and convincing them when it is clearly fraud. You didn't do anything. They let you go. Right. I felt pretty invincible. Invincible. So what happens is there's a there was a TV show called Dateline that was coming out.

Matt, where do you think I crawled out from? Am I a 21 year old TikTok Gen Zier? You're no date line. So I, um, so Dateline's caught there's a followed by this tiny little show called and fucking I bombed that one. I don't know. Couldn't think of anything. So, so she, uh, she caught.

One day she's like, oh my God. And I'm like, what? First, I remember, first, I remember she was like, aren't you afraid about being caught? And I was like, I'm not going to get caught. I was like, listen, the chick that I left with, she's never been caught. She was like, Becky. And I'm like, yeah, she was, oh, she was caught about a month ago. I was like, oh, my God.

It was like, no. So she's like, oh, yeah, yeah, she was caught. She said there's a Fortune magazine article. Like, you know, so like, oh, shit. Well, it came out, actually, that magazine article didn't come out right then. It came out a month or two later. But she told me, yeah, she's been caught. And then like a month or two later, fortune came out.

So can you imagine walking to Barnes & Noble's grabbing a fortune and it's flipping through it with your picture on it and everything else? I'm like, I'm not that worried because I did look vastly different. But the point is that then when we found out datelines coming out, it was like, okay, this is bad. Like this is a first point ever when I thought, yeah, you're going to have to leave the United States permanently. You're going to have to do that. And you were prepared to do that. Yeah, yeah. We start pulling cash out.

We're pulling cash out of, we refinancing. a few times and I've got refinances. I've got refinances that are scheduled. And I'm pulling out, we figured three, four million. And at that time, if you went to, if you went to Australia with, and it was nothing, it was like a couple hundred thousand dollars. If you show up there with a couple hundred thousand dollars, they would make you a permanent resident alien. You could buy real estate. You cannot take a job, but you could open a job. So if you show up with 200 grand, and a business plan. That's all they want it.

So if I show up 200 grand, and I'm going to show up with millions and a business plan. They let you hire Aussies. You can open a job, you can open a business, hire Aussies by real estate. You can't vote.

And you get you to have a driver's license. Like, I'm good. Yeah. I don't need to vote. I don't care. So what ends up happening is that's our plan. And we're pulling money out. And so your chick is down.

Oh, she's coming with me. She's coming with me. She's, yeah, 100%. Right. Oh, they do. And, you know, they think it's, super sexy, right? Of course. Is Becky cooperating now? Oh, she cooperated. Yeah. And whatever

happened to her? I mean, like, after she gets arrested, is she able to bail out? Oh, no. Okay, so she's sitting and what is she facing? She's got a passport in somebody else's name. Right. Right, good point. That's a good point. What are her charges? How much time is she fixed? She's charged with, I think, bank fraud and wire fraud. Okay, so she's facing a lot of time, too. She gets 40, 51 months? Uh-huh. And then as soon as I,

got caught, they reduced her sentence to 31 months plus, you know, plus good time, plus halfway house. I think she did 18 months. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. So they could see that you were the ringleader. So what ends up happening is we know date lines coming out.

We're going to take off. We're having people cash checks. Amanda and I had, it was a friend of Amanda's that. You know, she and I would fool around with, you know? Sick. Right. So. You hear that, honey?

Such a guy. So Amanda gives her some checks and says, can you cash these? Like cash one, wait a couple of days, cash out. That sparked a conversation with what's going on. There's $30,000 of the checks here. What is happening? Amanda says, we're cashing money out. We're going to leave.

his name is not really. Del confides in her. She's like, okay, I understand. I'll cash his checks. She goes home, tells her mom.

They call the secret service. They negotiate a payment, which is like 10 grand. Nothing. Oh, the secret service paid them to give you up. I've never quite understood it. It was a secret service or Becky's mom.

Keep in mind, when they caught Becky, she had less than 100 grand on her. Was there ever a reward out for you? No. Okay. So Becky had. they called Becky,

give mind, Becky, I left, there's half a million dollars. She bought a motorcycle, a car, she's paid rent. She got like a,

she paid full, in full for like a beauty school or something. She hasn't worked in six months to a year. And when they catch her, she's got less than 100 grand, but you couldn't have spent half a million dollars. Her parents have retired and bought a house and moved to Florida. Becky's mom,

for her to give 10 grand, you know, she didn't have, this wasn't a woman that had ting right so anyway um so i'm about to i'm thinking you know whatever one day i i end up pulling up in front of my house so the short version is i pull up in front of my house secret service have been watching it for three days they jump out get on the ground get on the ground ground around i get arrested i do not talk my way out of it um i end up yeah so i end up getting i end up getting um arrested i get moved to atlanta georgia where all my cases are consolidated

Are you in the news, by the way? Does it come out that the fugitives caught? Yeah, of course. I'm on all the local news. And I was, we were already on the local news in like Atlanta. And just for when we hit the scam, they're looking for us. So there's every time you do it, you're on the local news. Yeah.

And then there's, of course, articles in the local newspapers. There's 50, 60 articles on me and just newspapers. So I go to Atlanta. I get my public defender and, you know, her, her advice is, you know, know, you've got no, you can't, you can't go to trial. You're super, sorry, you can't go to trial. You're guilty. You're extremely guilty. Like they had enough evidence on you. Mountains of it. You know how many times, you know how many photos I've seen of myself walking in the bank staring at the camera? Of course. So, you know, you're done. We've got, we've got every, we got, we got, we've got, we've got 27 driver's license that they know of photos of you.

They have over 20 passports. Like, and they've got millions of dollars that have been. pulled out of bank accounts. You're done. Over done. And everybody that's ever bumped into you in Florida is ready to cooperate or has already spoken to the FBI. You're so done. You've already been indicted in Tampa, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee.

There's four different jurisdictions. She's like, so sign this. We're going to get them to combine all those. I was like, well, I don't want to go and fight them individually. She's like, yeah. And then they'll give you 10 years and they'll give you 15 and they'll give you 10. and they'll give you 20 and you'll end up with fucking 150 years and that's if you plead. You'll never get out.

I was like, fuck. Who was your attorney? Did you end up getting a paid lawyer? No, no. I got a public defender. They don't let you keep any of the money. I have no money. All my money is is gone.

Right. Amanda doesn't get arrested. She takes off. She goes back to her parents' house. Oh, so they never got her on anything. No. So you're kind of telling on her right now. No, no.

She, telling on her. I mean, she talked to them. She told, you know, cooperated with. with them. They never charged her. And they just didn't charge her. Because she wasn't really involved. I mean, what she did, she knew what was happening. They could have charged her, obviously. You know, if I'm refinancing a property and I've got $60,000 and I have it cut to her in her name and she deposits it. Like, you know what, you know, this guy is totally. Right. And, you know, she's opening up corporations in her name. She's putting properties in her name. We're putting money into the corporation's name. We're

buying properties in her name. Everything's in her name because she's legit. I'm a homeless guy. shocking though. So, because, you know, the feds are, when they want you, they are ruthless. So they really could have charged her and set her away. They could, but she's also cooperating. Yeah. And at that point, I'm saying, like, she didn't really know anything. She didn't do anything.

They're like, okay, well, she left the voicemail for this company. That's her voice. I'm like, yeah, but she only did that because I asked her to and she didn't know what's going on. And I'm trying to downplay it. She didn't really know anything. I was fucking her so good. She wasn't thinking. She wasn't thinking, man.

I was the same thing I wanted I wanted to do. So what happens is I end up, you know, my lawyer's like, you got to cooperate. So I go, okay, I'll cooperate. So I cooperate. Okay. So let's get into it. And we'll round it out because this is where we're going to. This is way longer than we thought.

Absolutely. Well, I kind of figured it's so goddamn interesting. I can't just get the cliff notes. But I still don't understand. You're the big tuna. You're the big tuna. You're the one. with the Fortune magazine articles, you're the one that the Secret Service has been, how long have

they been after you now when you get arrested? Three years. Three years, manpower, resources, time. Who could you cooperate against that's more important than you? Well, it doesn't have to be more important. I just have to give them people that they can't get. Okay. So the people that have cooperated against me, have all mitigated their role in what, what happened. Like, I know that Matt did this. He had me signed this document. I didn't know what it was. He was my boss.

I, you know, so they've, they've all given me up. Even when it blatantly looked like what, that they had done something illegal. And these are the 12 guys that you were originally employed. It's more than that. But yeah, it's also appraiser. it's title people, it's all kinds of people that were involved. So they, you know, they've, and in some cases, it's obvious that they're involved. They just never indicted him because they were hoping we catch Cox, he'll put it together for us.

We need a lynch pin because a lot of these people don't even know each other. Right. You know, the title person here doesn't know the appraiser, doesn't know the broker, doesn't know. So I'm like the lynchpin, you know, Cox knows everybody. So they wanted you to basically build their case. Yes. Was it a like, you know, it kind of sounds like they wanted to build their version of like a RICO case where they can they do, did they do that? Do they tie everybody together?

No, it is. They're all, they're all indicted on the same. It's all the same indictment. And they've already got their initials. Like they just have to go in front of like a grand jury and add the initial or unseal a document that says you're, he's this person. He's already been indicted. So they meet me. I talked to the FBI for three or four days, go through everything.

explain everything. You know, did you sign this? No, that's not my signature. That's Dave's. You know, that, you know, this check, you know, is this your bank account? I'm like, no, that's so-and-so's bank account. They deposited this check and they're like, okay. You know, and they already know.

The problem was they already know all this. So I'm giving them all this. I tell them what's going on. And then Secret Service comes in. I interviewed with them two days, maybe three days. So, you know, I do that. And then what's supposed to happen is they go out and they indict people. And then they indict them and then those people cooperate or they plead guilty.

The problem is when I talk to the Secret Service, there's really nobody involved. So the Secret Service, most of it's Becky, which is already cooperated, and me when we were on the run. Yeah. The Secret Service's case is pretty cut and dry because by the time I went on the run, I didn't need an appraiser. I ordered the appraisal software and did the appraisals myself. Hang on, just because I'm a little confused and I think the listeners might be, the Secret Service had a different case than the U.S. attorney. Is that it? Than the FBI.

So the FBI has me in Florida. Okay. The Secret Service has me in Georgia, South Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee. Right. When you're already on the run. So it's just you and Becky. Right. That's a lot easier than this big indictment that they're trying to put together in Florida.

Yes. I see. And Becky's already told them everything. Like there's nothing I can really say. Right. You know, for three days, I'm verifying stuff that Becky already told him and then stuff that I did on my own when I left. Like, who helped you do? Did the broker know?

She might have known. But, you know, or did this broker know? Yeah, that broker knew. Well, of course, that broker says, I didn't know nothing. He had an ID. How am I supposed to fucking know? You know, did the appraiser know? No, the appraiser didn't know.

You know, I've got the appraisal software, so he gave me the appraisal, and then I just redid it on my appraisal software and eliminated this. So, you know, by this point, I, my skill set was vastly, you know, I learned very quickly when I took off on the run. So I can be multiple people. I can do multiple things. I don't need any help at this point. So what happens is now I'm so. That doesn't help me.

Secret Service doesn't help me. They don't have much to go on. Right. Then I've got the FBI. we you know six seven months after i've i've talked to them they haven't done anything like you're sitting in jail in atlanta right and my and so now the u.s. attorney's like okay well we're schedule we're going to schedule his sentencing and this is bad for you because if nobody's indicted then they what they do is this they they call it okay so you cooperate and we'll take your

cooperation into consideration we'll consider it substantial assistance if you substantially assist the government, they will reduce your sentence. So they said, you cooperate, we'll consider it substantial assistance, and we'll reduce your sentence. So I go, so okay, because I don't have a choice, because I can't do 50-something years, you know? And if I, you know, and I'd love to say that, you know, like, it sounds good. Like they already, you can't cooperate against people that cooperate against you, right? So I didn't do anything wrong. But the truth is, if none of those people had cooperated, I cut all their fucking throats at that point. I saw every single person's head off with a file because I was looking at too much time. If you ran it all together,

it's still 50-something years. You know, luckily, I get like the money laundering charge dropped, which was an outrageous. It was like 30-something. It was like 30 years, which I was like for money laundering. That's crazy. And that's just because you removed fraudulent money from the bank. That's it. Like, how else am I supposed to get the money? How is that money laundering? I thought money laundering was like, you make it clean. Right. No, it's just removing it, money laundering. And they added it all along. Yeah, it's the most broad law.

Okay. So you're worried now because you're cooperated. You're sitting in jail eight months in Atlanta. You've cooperated against everybody that you know. Right. And they're not charging anybody. So is that going to affect your sentence? Yes, because here's what happens is finally I get a pre-sentence report.

And we go back and forth on the pre-sentence. First pre-sentence report said 30. years to life, which is ridiculous. You can't get life, but whatever. 32 years. And we argue, I don't know that much money. I wasn't involved in this scam. That's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We get it down a little bit. We get it to 26 years in four months. So let's just say 26 years. So get it down in 26 years. One of the things that they had asked me to do is the the U.S. attorney the U.S. attorney in charge of my case, the assistant U.S. attorney, she said, Dateline had already come out with that one hour special came out. That was great, sitting in there

with the guys watching me. You got respect, huh? I did. But I was so delusional. Like, I was just like, that didn't happen. That didn't happen. That's not the way that happened. But it's like, I look back now, it's like you were arguing the difference between they said you were, you know, bag of the 12th order and you're arguing you're a scumb bag of the ninth order. Like you're still a fucking scumbag. Like, what are you doing? Shut up. Who give a shit if your car was silver and not white?

Nobody cares. You know, so, you know, so I'm sitting there and the U.S. attorneys came to my attorney and said, look, we want him to be interviewed by Dateline. Okay. And she said, we'll consider it substantial assistance. Great. So Dateline comes in. You know, the guy with a dog, with a face, like, you're a. you're a bad person.

Today, he's like Canadian or something. He's got white hair. So Keith, Keith something. Morrison. Thank you, Keith Morrison. So Keith Morrison comes. He interviews me. And they reissue it.

So rerun that one. Why did the U.S. Assistant U.S. attorney want you to go back on Dateline? I think she just wanted to be interviewed again. But honestly, she. Wait, what do you mean she? It was a she. The U.S. attorney was a...

No, no, no. But why did she want you to go back on Dateline? Right. I think they intervie. they run it again. And her argument was it brings awareness to the seriousness of, I see. I see. So you're like getting it out there.

Yes. And that other law enforcement bodies might see it and then it becomes more of a priority. Who knows? But deep down, I think she just wanted to be on day line. The fame. Oh, yeah, right. Oh, so she was part of the initial interview. I see.

So I'm interviewed. They do it. So now I'm coming up on sentencing. Nothing's happened. and my lawyer comes and calls her and says, okay, they go, well,

you know, the FBI hasn't indicted anything. They haven't done anything really. Why? I don't know. Why? All these people, how many people were,

should have been part of that indictment in Florida? At least 15 or 20. Wow. So, and keep in mind, they've been indicted like, they invited like 12 or 13. So there were some people that I'm,

I'm added to the list, you know, that they didn't add. Yeah. So they did add probably five people to the list with my help. But, no, it doesn't,

doesn't do any good. So, so they're like, she's like, oh, and this is the other thing. At this point, it's late 2007. So the economy's starting to collapse. Right. You know, people want to say that, oh, the 2008 financial crisis, but it started in 2007. So what's happening is by mid-2007, the FBI is starting to say, this bank's starting to collapse. This one's got, and fraud complaints are blowing up. So they're like, we're investigating this bank. It's apparently 900 million. million dollars is missing. So, so they've got some bigger priorities. So they're not this five year old case at this point, five, six, seven, eight year old case. Like, we're not that concerned about that. We'll get to it. Well, what happens is, um, my attorney says, hey, is he going to get sentenced? Yes, you're going to get sentenced. They say, okay, she goes, well, what about giving him a five K one. They call it, they file a five K one at sentencing. And she said, yeah, I'm not going to do that. Nobody's been arrested. She said, yeah, but what about?

Dateline. She was, yeah, you said you'd consider that substantial assistance. She says, I know, I did consider it. And it's not enough. Fucking evil bitch. And I was just like, you know, and I was like, but she said she could. She goes, she did consider. And she's like, Matt, you have to understand the language. Like I thought that was a guarantee. Yeah. Which my lawyer knew it wasn't. Yeah. So I go, oh, you know, okay. So I go and she says, look, we're going to make these arguments. You're probably going to get 12 or 13 years. Wow. Down from 32. Yeah, she's going to argue some of 20, 26. She's going to argue some of the enhancements. And she's, I'm going to argue them. They don't apply. I'll get them down. You're going to end with about 12 years. And then the FBI is going to arrest some people.

And they're going to, we're going to get your sentence cut by another 40%. Okay. You're going to end up doing four or five years. Okay. I've already done a year. So I get in front of the judge and my lawyer makes the arguments. and she doesn't get win any of the arguments and I get 26 years and four months. So that was a bad day, you know, cried like a small child and like inconsolably crying.

So I just couldn't stop. So by the time I get back to, I remember the jail, as soon as I got it, like, I'm okay by the time I get there. And I remember, you know, the ankle that you're walking all changing it. So I walk into the county of the U.S. Marshall's holdover with six or seven guys and we're all walking in. And they had just run the six o'clock news and everybody saw what I got. And I mean, immediately they're all staring at me and guys are just shaking their head like, bro. Damn.

Holy shit. And I mean, I, boom, I start crying again. Oh. In front of everybody in front of all the inmates? Probably 100 guys in that facility. Go straight to my room, close the door. And then I got like 10 guys that come by and open the door. and they're like, bro, I'm not going to forget about your Cox.

It's going to be okay. You're going to get that done. You know, they say all these things that make themselves feel bad. They're trying to make me feel better. But, you know, anyway, I end up going to Coleman. I get shipped to Coleman. USP Coleman. Yeah.

Is that FCI? Is that a medium? It's a, it's actually an FCC, a federal correctional compound. Uh-huh. Because there's two pins, a medium, a low, and a camp. At that time, the camp was off female camp. It's now male. Okay.

Hey, I want to talk about, I want to tease this. I want on the Patreon, we're going to talk about how you got that sentence down. Okay. She didn't end up doing 26. No. Thank God. But you did a long stretch. And then I kind of just want to wrap this up with like the restitution that you had to pay, that you owed.

That I still owe. I got it paid down by like 300,000 or something at this point. And you've been out for how long? Almost five years. Okay. Yeah. Coming off, right, you're getting out, coming off probation. The banks that you ripped off, I'm sure a lot of them are no longer in existence, right?

Yeah, I'd say out of the 50 banks, there's like 40, 45 of them went under. Wow. Yeah. No surprise there, though. Like you didn't know who, you didn't know who countrywide was. Right. You know what I'm saying? Like countrywide was huge.

They'd been gone. Right. being gone. Think of America gobbled a bomb. Right, right. What about like the individuals, the hard money lenders? The hard money lenders actually got their money back on, from, uh, title insurance paid them back. Really? Yeah, because think about it. You lent, you lent, you, you told me that this was a clean title, but it wasn't. There are multiple title, multiple mortgages on it. Now, their argument, of course, is like, yeah, he satisfied. I'm right. You didn't even call the banks. You said you guarantee it up to that it's clean up to 20 years. It's not. Even fraud, you should have covered. You cover. Right. So it's fraud. So they got their money back. One guy, I think one guy at the time of Dateline had not gotten his money back. But by the time I was sentenced, he had gotten his money. Were there any victim statements? Were there any people like on the stand trying to, you know, talk about how your crimes.

affected them. So there were two people. One was, one was a guy, was a Michael Shanahan. He said, Michael Shanahan. Oh, he showed up. He showed up. He, like, whatever it was, $6,000 he paid to a lawyer. He said, I had to hire a lawyer for $6,000. Okay. But, but like, was his credit shot? Like, he had all these loans that were taken out in his name. No, none of that, none of that happened. Because I didn't use, it wasn't his name. It was his name. It was his. His name, it was Michael Shanahan, but I didn't even use his real name. His name was like Michael, let's say, you know, Michael Sam or Samson, Shanahan or something. And I use like Michael Sean Shanahan.

I use a different date of birth and a different social security number. So he never affected him. So his, the money is gone from the bank. The bank's the loser. The bank was the loser. And those banks, most of them got paid back from the title companies. Right. But I still owe the title.

It's not like I don't owe anybody. I still owe the title company. So is that where your restitution is mostly going? I would say most of us going just to the government. And they might send out, because think about it, some of these places went under, went into bankruptcy. And they're just gone. There's nobody to pay. The government keeps it.

So I, so he was owed like six grand. And then there were the one house I had refinance, it was a doctor owed the house. A doctor and his wife owed it. And I owe them $11,000 or $12,000 because they paid an attorney. They paid an attorney. and they had to make, I think they said they made two mortgage payments where the house should have been occupied,

but it wasn't. Right. So you owe us those. Okay, I owe them. So it's 12 grand plus like six grand. So it's like, there's somebody else too. It's a total of,

it's four people, but only two people showed up. It's four people, but the total is less than 30 grand. That's not bad. No, it's not, no. At a 55 million, most of that's paid for,

through insurance or the or they're gone. Well, the payee is gone. Yeah, well, I was going to say, yeah, all that, that, the bulk of it. But yeah, there are four, those, those are four individuals that, that I owed money to. You know, whether the government's mailing them money or not, I don't know. Right. Like, you always wonder that, right? And you kind of, you kind of doubt it.

I don't trust them. Are they getting a check for $12 or $110 every month? Like, I don't know. So. And then your land back in Florida is seized. Yeah, everything was, everything was seized and sold and that went toward. But you have to think. most of the time this had multiple mortgages on it. Like, it's not worth anything. It's not.

So, yeah, yeah. So, so, so, so, so yeah, I ended up owing like at the day of sentencing, I owed like six million dollars, you know, and now I said, like I said, it's been paid down like, like 300,000. To date, have there been any indictments, uh, or arrests made of your old cohorts at the original mortgage company? No. A couple of them have been, they were investigated for borrowing money in other people's names or using like one guy, somehow or another, there was a guy that they, a couple of guys used to work for me were getting people new, somehow or another they had a plug into like the credit bureau or something.

And they, so they would find someone with the name Johnny Mitchell that had perfect credit. And yours is shot. and then they would have you, you would, they'd get into loan in that guy's name and have you walk in and sign for it because you've had a real ID. And you'd sign for it and you'd open a bank account and launder all the money and everything else.

And then the real guy would later find out he had four mortgages. And there was a whole thing. And then you got arrested. As soon as you get arrested, like these guys are idiots. You get arrested and you're like, these two guys are the ones that told me to do it.

But they never went to jail. They never got in trouble. Wow. Yeah. And all this happened is the whole, economy is collapsing. Right. So people, you know, you, you know, they, there's only so many FBI agents. And it's like, okay, this is a half a million dollar scam.

We've got an $800 million scam. Right. Which one do we go after? And of course, the economy is collapsing. So this is the one that we want to look good. Like, we're, we're investigating this. We're going after Citibank. We're going after AIG.

We're going after. And so all these little frauds were just. So in, in hindsight, if you're 50, million dollar fraud was a drop in the bucket compared to like the bigger institutional scams. I mean, I think so. And it's funny because I'll every once in a while some guys will be like, it's because of people like you that the financial crisis happened.

Like, bro, it's mine's nothing. Yeah. It's a drop in the bucket. Yeah. Yeah. So, but yeah, that's, so yeah, I went to Coleman. I went to the medium. Okay.

We're going to talk about that on the Patreon. And also there's a couple other things that I didn't get to that we, uh, nugget. in your wiki bio that we're going to talk about as well. But last question, your father, did you live, did he live to see you get out? Yeah, he actually, this is the weirdest thing. This is weird. And I'm going to say this and I'm not going to tear up. Okay.

Please don't. Okay. So he came to see, he came to see me maybe two or three times, usually with my mom. So one time he came by himself. And I remember thinking my mom had died. Like, you don't come by yourself. Like, you don't come to see me at all. My mother drags you here.

So she walked in and I walk in and he's there and I'm like, where's mom? And she hears, oh, she's fine. She's fine. I wanted to see you by myself. And we sat down and we talked. And it was, we sat down and we talked and he's like, you're. And I remember, he was like, well, what about this? What's going on with this?

What's going on with that? And I was like, ah, this is what's happening. This and that. And he was like, well, you're going to figure it out. You're going to get yourself out of here. And I went, no. I said, I'm fucking done, no.

I said, I said, I'm, I said, dad, that's something that people tell themselves to make them feel better. I said, I'm getting out of here when I'm 60-something years old and it's over. I said, I got 26 years and they've got me and they're not going to cut my sentence and I'm fucking done. He goes, no. He goes, you're smart and you're close. clever in a way that I couldn't imagine. He said, and you'll get yourself out of here one way or the other. And he said, I'm not happy where you ended up.

And I'm not happy at the things that you did. He was, but I'm proud of you. He goes, you've done things and lived a life. I could never imagine having lived. And he said, you're, you're an amazing person. And I was just like, and it was fucked up because it was the only time I can really remember him telling me he was proud of me. And he said, he was like, I'm proud of me. And I was just like, and it also sucked because all the things that I'd done that I thought he should have been proud of.

Right. You know, never thought I'd graduate. I have a learning disability. Never thought like barely graduated high school, graduated with an. straight A's, an A average from University of South Florida. Never said he was proud of me. Got a job that I couldn't have, shouldn't have been able to get. You know, never said he was proud of me.

Ended up owning a mortgage company who was making tons of money. Fraudgeoning or not, he didn't know that at the time. Never said he was proud of me. Ended up owning 54 rental units, more rental units, more real estate than he'd ever owned. Never said he was proud of me. Like there were all these things. And I'm sitting in federal prison. Now you're proud of me.

Like if you had said, and I'm not blaming my dad, it's my fault. But maybe if you'd fucking said any of that shit when I was fucking younger, maybe I wouldn't have wanted to make you proud of me all this time. So, yeah, it was, that was fucked up. So he died a few years later. He did die. But you were able, after you got out? No. No, no, he died while I was there.

Okay. He had Alzheimer's and it just progressively got worse and worse. And then one day they went in and there was a spot on his lung. And a month later, they came in for a second x-ray. And there were dozens of them. And he was dead within three to six months. Have you forgiven him? Yeah.

I mean, he lived. He grew up during the Depression. His father was a prick. He did the best he could. And I just think that I didn't live up to his expectations. of the son that he felt he deserved to have, you know. He was an exceptional. He was athletic.

He was smart. He was, he was an exceptional person, if that makes sense. And, and I wasn't. I was mediocre and I wasn't athletic and I wasn't tall and I wasn't an academic. And, you know, he just thought he deserved a better kid. And, you know, so I don't blame him because I think he was from a much harsher, A much harsher world. Do you think him finally telling you that he was proud of you

was his way of saying sorry and, you know, in fact, I am proud of you. Yeah, I was. It's better than never saying it. Yeah. No, it is. It is. I don't know what was in his, but listen, it was so out of character for him. Like, I don't even think it, I comprehended it until I probably got back to myself.

It was like, what did he just say? like I've never had heard that and even when he said it like I I don't know I just I don't think I was super shocked I was just shocked that he was even saying and then I didn't register till later I was like holy shit I'm like what was that yeah so yeah sometimes grief and that you know the absence like an emergency like your kid is gone for a quarter century right locked up sometimes that triggers like you know the emotion and the parenting that was never there before my dad did the same thing. You know, my dad found all this drug money one time. You know, my dad was a prick too, but he found like 250 Gs that I was just keeping at the crib, right, just before I went to

move it. Right. And he goes, wow, man, you should really do something with this money. Right. Like, he wasn't, he wasn't mad. I'm calling on the lease or what are you doing? None of that. None of that. He was like, whoa, wow, he made good. Look, even in drugs, like, it's, because I've met, you know, thousands of drug dealers. Like, it's not, at that level, it's not normal and it's not easy. Most drug dealers, most drug dealers, let's face it, they sell enough to pay their bills, sell enough to pay their bills. They never accumulate money. No. They do it. Most scammers only scam to pay their bills, maybe get a car, maybe. None of them say, hey, I'm going to turn this into an industry. I'm going to turn this into a scalable business. Right, right. Yeah. So typically they don't do that.

Matt Cox, what a story. Where can they find you? You want to get, what numbers do you want to get up? Your YouTube's doing quite well, but is there anything particular that the fans, we're going to plug your artwork too. Maybe we have some whales out there. I'm going to buy a few pieces. Matt's a terrific artist.

I've got, yeah, basically, I mean, I have a, obviously I wrote a memoir, which has been, you know, it's option. And so I'm hoping to actually re-release it as like, you know, currently going to be a motion picture. If that happens, we'll see. So, yeah, I've got, you know, I've got a memoir. I've got, you know, I've got TikTok. And it's all in the same name. It's like Matt Cox, inside true crime.

It's TikTok, it's Instagram, it's YouTube, Facebook. Like, I've got all of them. And so, you know, if you could probably check in the description box or something. Yeah. Yeah. And your podcast. Yeah, my podcast is YouTube. Yeah.

Yeah. So those are, you know, yeah, it's great. Like I do, well, similar to what you do, I interview only, I interview guys, you know, criminals, lawyers, the whole thing. But so you know who Julian Dory is? Yeah. But you got to remind me who he is, but I know the name. He's got a podcast. It's probably got six or seven. Yes. I know that guy. Sorry. Yeah. So funny. We were talking one time because this podcast was doing, you know, doing really well. And I was like, man, you're doing great. You're doing great. He said, yeah, but I'm thinking about going. You know, it is super high quality, right? And he said, I'm thinking about going your route, though. And I go, what do you mean? He's like, I'm going to go. I'm thinking about going over like going, you know, going with volume over quality. And I thought, I went, I said, you know, I know you mean that as a compliment.

And he's like, no, no, I do. Okay. Yeah, no, I know how it sounds. So yeah, but I put out like four a week. Yeah, you're pumping it out. You're like radio almost at this point. Right. So it's just like four stories. Yeah.

You know, some, some are remote. Some are in person. Yeah. But yeah. So no, that's there's that's two different. Those are the main routes, especially in our genre, but also other podcast genres, right? Like, it's either some, some episodes. It's either once a week, all in person like us, right?

Where Brian puts in the, you know, the real fancy first two minutes cold opening. Or it's volume. That's what he means. Right. Is like you sacrifice a little bit of the, the YouTube juge, if you will, in service of putting out, yeah, more content. So go go check out his podcast, you know, follow him, but absolutely go subscribe and listen, right? Yeah. And then you have Patreon.

If they love it, they can subscribe to the Patreon. Spotify. I got all of them. Yeah. And he'll probably have you on, too. If you're listening, you got a good story. The bar is low. If you call, if you're willing to.

to, you know, you're willing to come. If you can't get on my show, get up Matt. Yeah. And then you might graduate to the Connect. Yeah, there you go. Okay, we're switching over to the Patreon. Matt, thank you so much, brother. No problem.

Appreciate it, man.