The Iced Coffee Hour - FBI’s Most Wanted Con Artist: How To Get Insanely Rich | Matthew Cox

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

NetSuite: Take advantage of NetSuite’s Flexible Financing Program: https://www.netsuite.com/ICED Oracle: Free test drive of OCI at https://oracle.com/iced Yahoo Finance: Visit https://www.Yahoofinance.com for comprehensive financial news & analysis    / @insidetruecrime   NEW: Join us at http://www.icedcoffeehour.club for premium content - Enjoy! Add us on Instagram:   / jlsselby    / gpstephan   Official Clips Channel:    / @theicedcoffeehourclips   For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [e-mail] For Podcast Inquiries, please DM @icedcoffeehour on Instagram! Time Stamps: Intro - 0:00 The First Fraud Mathew Cox Ever Committed - 3:24 Matt’s Secret To Staying Calm Under Pressure - 12:34 Exploring Matt Cox's History with Fraud - 18:00 How Much Money Matt Was Making From His First Scam - 24:14 Matthew Starts His Own Fraudulent Brokerage - 30:16 Getting Caught By The FBI (Wearing A Wire) - 48:03 Why Criminals ALWAYS Turn In Their Accomplice - 58:52 Matt Cox On Cheating and His CRAZY Ex Wife - 1:06:51 Making Synthetic Identities & Buying Houses W/ Them - 1:11:16 How To Make A Living After 13 Years In Prison - 1:46:07 How Matthew’s Henchmen Started Getting Arrested - 1:55:31 What It's Like To Be "On The Run" - 2:06:43 Matt Almost Gets Caught At The Bank - 2:16:58 Why Matt Started Stealing Homeless People’s Identities - 2:23:42 Matt’s Scheme Begins To Unravel - 2:28:23 Running From The Secret Service & Fleeing To Tennessee - 2:53:33 Matt’s Big Mistake: A New Girlfriend - 2:56:42 Matt Gets Caught - 3:06:38 The Lawyer In Prison Who Stole $200 Million From The Federal... - 3:36:14 Matt Cox On Meeting His Ex Wife - 4:01:24 Why It’s Easier To Commit Worse Crimes After You’ve Done One - 4:08:47 The Real Story Behind The Movie "Catch Me If You Can" - 4:13:14 How The Fraud Matt Cox Committed Could've Been Stopped - 4:15:21 Matt Cox Teaches Jack How To Get A Girlfriend - 4:18:23 Closing Thoughts - 4:25:50 *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I was on the most wanted list for the FBI, the Secret Service, and the U.S. Marshals. And I've just stolen $11.5 million while on federal probation. Like, it's not going to end well for me. I've had 27 driver's licenses issued to me in seven different states. She said, I opened up a popsicle box that had $30,000 or $40,000 in cash. And I was like, oh, yeah, okay, there's some problems. I do call the FBI agent. She's saying, look, you come, you cooperate, you'll get like seven years.

The moment the FBI came looking, they all buried me. For those unfamiliar with you, you were sentenced to 26 years for bank fraud, mortgage fraud, identity theft, passport fraud. I thought this was very interesting. You were called the Bonnie and Clyde of mortgage fraud. Well, it's also very interesting. FBI's most wanted and on the run for years. Yeah, that's not true. No?

No. What is true? That's Danny Jones, by the way. Really? Yeah. And it's been everywhere. Everybody uses it now. Yeah. How do you come up with that then? Well, because I was number one on the secret service's most wanted list.

And so when he did the title to the first video I did, he put number one on the FBI or something like that. Or FBI's number one, you know, whatever. Most wanted or something. And I called him up. I said, hey, bro, that title's not wrong. And he goes, nah, it's okay. It's click bait. His title doesn't mean anything.

Just get people to click. And I go, yeah, but it was a secret service. He goes, nobody knows that the secret service even has the most wanted list. And he's like, I got this. And I was like, okay, I just don't want you to think that. I don't want people to think that I said that. Like, was I on the FBI's most wanted list? Yes, there's probably a thousand people on that list.

You know, was the FBI looking for me? Yes. But I was number one on the Secret Service's most wanted list. So, unfortunately, after some reason, I had spragging rights or something, you know, to be number one. But nobody even knows that they exist. I did to agree with them. From an audience standpoint, sometimes you have to go with the term. Yeah.

It's a little more well known for SEO purposes. Well, it definitely worked for it. And then everybody's jumped on it. And then after like the third video, I got tired of correcting people. But you were FBI's most wanted on the secret service. I was on the most wanted list for the FBI, the Secret Service, and the U.S. Marshals. But I'm saying I wasn't number one. Like, Danny's, I think, says like he was the number one.

Like, that's Osama bin Laden. You know, like, I'm not. You're not Osama bin Laden. No. So he could have dated. He's making his identity, though. Yeah. Okay.

So you committed essentially fraud, a lot of it. What exactly is fraud for those that don't understand? I mean, really, fraud is any time you lie, you lie to obtain something falsely, right? For the most part, it's like you go in, you apply for a loan or a credit card, and you lie about it. You lie about something on your application. Either it's your name, your social security number. Typically what people do is they just lie about like their income. You know, oh, I made, they'll say they made $200,000 when really they made $120, because

they want to be able to get this $40,000 credit card or they want to get this $100,000 car they don't, you know, they don't actually qualify for. So typically that's it. But, I mean, fraud could be anything. You're lying to obtain something. How is it different from a scam? If someone says that's a scam, it sounds like a fraud is almost the same thing. Yeah, scam, fraud, scheme, although scheme's not really, it seems like it's a bad word. It's not, you can have an investment scheme and it's perfectly legal. And when did you first commit fraud? The first loan I did. So I became a mortgage broker. You know, I genuinely was broke.

Like Ford Motor Credit is looking for my car. You know, I'm almost a month behind. I'm on mortgage. And I had just become a mortgage broker. What year was this? I want to say this was 99. Mm. So I had two or three customers as a mortgage broker.

You know, you get mortgage, you get borrowers, right? They're looking for houses. So a woman had come in. She wanted to borrow money to buy a house. So I said, okay, I took an application on her. I got her W-2s, her pay subs. I got a verification of rent, verification of deposit for her down payment, everything. Put it together in a file, gave it to my manager, because she reviewed everything before we sent it off to underwriting so that the lender would review it.

And she looked through the whole thing and she took one page out and closed it. And I was like, well, what's going on? And she goes, the verification of rent on your customer, she's been 30 days late in the last two years. which that's a deal killer. So no bank wants to lend somebody who's been 30 days late on their rent because you're probably going to be 30 days late on your mortgage, if not more.

My manager actually pulled out a whiteout, the old whiteouts where they go, she was like a bottle of white out. You know, it wasn't like the stick. And she said, if I was you, I would white out the 30 day late, make a copy of it, stick it in the file, send it to underwriting,

they'll never catch it. This is my manager. So it sounds like she had been doing this for a while. Yeah, she had, And I can certainly say she had because she ended up, you know, getting indict. She and her husband got indicted. And what about all of the other mortgage brokers at that office, at that firm? I think to a degree they may have been doing a little here. There are some people who will, you know, they'll, oh, I massaged it a little bit. Like, and usually, you know, brokers will tell you like a, let's say a verification of employment.

You know, they might say, well, this person worked for a year and a half, went and worked for somebody else for three weeks, quit there. and then went to work for somebody, the same company they're working for right now. So it's like, doesn't look good that they've got three jobs in two years. So they'll remove the one job and just change the numbers so that there was, they jumped from the year and a half job to the last six month job and they miss that one job. Does that make sense? Yeah, and that's fraud as well. It's fraud because you're lying because you have to give all the information to the underwriter to

determine whether they're going to lend the money or not. Do you think she would have been disappointed in you, your superior, if you didn't wipe that out? No, I don't think she cared, to be honest. She was. It was just a suggestion. Yeah, it was just a suggestion. Wouldn't she get a little bit more, maybe like a performance bonus if her office issued a certain amount of loans and like your loan kind of helps boost those numbers? Yeah, but honestly, this loan was like nothing.

It was like a 50, 60,000 dollar loan. So she was just trying to let's just scoot this forward. This is a no big deal. Right. Planting a seed. Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, she was really, this is actually, she actually wore a wire on me.

But the first time I got in trouble was because of her, her name's Gretchen. To exclude that completely, you know, she was just really very much kind of a jerk. She was a jerky, very pushy person. So, you know, when she did it, it wasn't like, listen, Matt, she was like, this is what I do. She said, I white it out and put it in there, boom, it'll be fine. And I was like, oh, that's fraud. That's fraud. I could go to jail.

And she says, nobody's going to jail. She's, the worst that will happen is they'll deny it. You can blame it on your customer. She was, and the worst that would happen if they thought you were involved is they'd fire you. She says, nobody's calling the FBI. And I was like, oh, I don't know. She's like, do what you want. Nobody's looking for my car.

And I was like, okay. And I did it. And I was terrified, but it went through. And what was that feeling like when it went through? Was it exhilarating? Oh, my God, it was so good. It was such a thrill. How many times have you had a customer that you didn't know if the loan was going to close?

And, you know, that feeling at closing. Everything's falling apart. It's a chaotic. And then they sign and you walk out with that check. And it's a done deal. You're like, oh, my God. Like I pulled it off. closing escrow. I always feel like something's going to happen in between. It's always something.

Yeah, I agree. And from that moment, did you think, okay, this is something that I could repeat doing? Or do you think, okay, this is just like a one-off? Sure, when I whited it out, I'm thinking that. But before that loan even closed, like the next guy that had come in, he had a W-2, he made like 55,000. But if he made 59,000, he could get the loan. So what do you do? I changed the 59,000 to 62,000. or whatever I changed it to. Do you tell the customer this? No. In that case, I didn't.

And the reason I didn't, most of the time, if it was something like I changed your W2, I don't want you to know. I want you to deny it. Because what if you get a call from the lender somehow and you go, oh my gosh, the broker did it. I told him not to do it. I don't know. I want you to just say, what? Huh? That's crazy.

I don't know what that is. I didn't do that. Then if the lender calls me and says, listen, we got a W2 here that says $62,000. and your customer says that they didn't give it to you. I'm like, are you serious? Are you telling me that my customer changed the W-2? My God, he looked me right in the face. I can't believe that guy.

Well, I'm not going to close that loan. Like, what am I going to do? I'm not going to say, you got me. Of course not. He gave it to. I have no incentive to commit fraud for this guy. I'm making $3,500 bucks. So what are they going to do?

They don't know. They're probably not going to fire me. Now, he didn't say I did it. He just doesn't know. what happened. In that case, yes. Now, if it was another, let's say, let's say you came in and I always used this as an example. I had somebody come in one time. He and his wife gave me W-2s. But literally, they were copies. And if you looked at it, like, you could see the staple mark was in the exact same spot on both copies of the W-2. Like, even the smudge was the same.

As soon as I picked them up, it was like, hold it up to the light and you go, you do this in front of them? Oh, yeah, yeah. And I'm like, huh, like nothing's changed except for. for their names and social security numbers. And they are wavy. Like you can tell they've been copied. They clued them on. They're crooked. And I'm like,

huh, look, I like where your head's at. Obviously, what? Do you own this business? What? No, no, I work for it. I'm like, no, I understand you've been to a couple places

you've been turned down. But obviously, you own this business. And they're like, I'm like, look, let me explain. I show them what I've seen. But like how I can, it's obvious. It's the same W2.

And it's fraud. I'm like, look, I'm going to get you the loan, but you've got to be honest to me with me. I'll fix these. Like they made the exact same thing. Same withdraws, same social security withholdings, everything. I'm like, look, I'll fix it.

But if somebody's going to call the employer and it was like AAA towing or something. I said, so what's going on? And the guy was like, yeah, I own it. I go, yeah, well, somebody calls. Are they going to, who's answering? Oh, no, no, no, my mom's going to answer. I said, okay, I pick up the phone. Boop, but, boom, call.

Phone rings. Hello? I go, hi, is this a AAA towing? Oh, triple A towing. And he's like, oh, man. I'm like, okay, I'll call back. And I hang up. And he's, oh, I'll talk to her.

I'll talk to her. Okay. So the next day, I call back. Hello? Hi, is Jim there? Oh, it's a triple A towing. I'm sorry, it's triple A towing. I called by the third time.

I said, you know what? I'm just going to go get a, like, I'm just going to go get a cell phone and set it up myself. You know, I still want to close the loan. the guy was doing like a $200,000 loan. I'm going to make like $6 grand, you know, on a broker fee, like, let's say $4,000. Then I'm going to charge like two points on the back end. So I go, I make $6,000 or $9,000. Like, I want your loan to close.

I just don't want to get caught in underwriting. So, you know, in that case, I have to tell him, right? He knows. He knew it was a fraud coming in. So in that case, I would tell him. But he's in on it. There's no incentive for him to say I did anything. So you went out and you bought this fake phone essentially.

then set up a voicemail or something. So if the lender ever wants to check on this person's work, then there's no issue there. Although, you know what, before we go into that, we got to do some quick math here, because the less money your business spends, the more money you get to keep. But the thing is, with higher costs and borrowing, distribution, labor, and materials, everything is costing more. That is why smart businesses are beginning to move over to our sponsor, NetSuite by Oracle. NetSuite is the number one cloud financial system bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform and one source of truth. With NetSuite, you could drastically reduce your IT costs because it lives in the cloud, and there's no

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Again, that is net suite.com slash iced. NetSuite.com slash ICED with the link down below in the description. Thank you so much. And now let's get back to the episode. So you went out and you bought this fake phone, essentially, and then set up a voicemail or something. So if the lender ever wants to check on this person's work, then there's no issue there?

Oh, yeah, bro, it's way worse than that. There used to be something called the business directory that lenders would check with the business directory. This is 20 years ago. This was back when, you know, they had yellow pages. And you don't even know what the yellow pages is. That's like the phone book. Right. There you go.

All right. All right. All right. Nice. 25. You know, that's how many years on it. I've heard about it. Yeah.

So you could go on the internet and you could put your business phone number in the yellow pages. And you had to fill out of like a phone number. form and everything, and then they would check into it. So if you had the tax I need number correct, and that your business phone number was listed with them, and that tax ID number could be verified, they would put you in the business directory. So now if the lender looks you up, it says this is a legitimate business. And then if they check with the W2, so let's say they go to the, they go to sunbiz.gov, and they check your business, the tax ID number is the same too that's on the W2, that would verify that this is a real business, then they would call the verify. And if they

called the number, I pick up the number. Like, they're not even questioning it. They know it's a legitimate business. It's in the business directory. The tax ID number is the same. The address shows up. That's on the W2 is it's all legit. So I answer the phone, you know, hey, AAA telling me, how can I help you? Hi, is Jimmy, we want to talk to somebody about Jimmy. He works there? Yeah, he works here. Who's this? You know, and you just have a conversation with him. Yeah, I'm as manager. Oh, do you have an HR department? No, bro, we have like less than 15 people here. It's just basically me and my wife own the place, you know, have a conversation. Yeah, yeah.

So good at this, though, because Jack and I were talking like your level of confidence is through the roof. I think if you put me in that situation, I would freeze. I'd panic. I would just get like antsy and feel like, oh, they're on to me. And I don't. You'd be shocked. You'd be shocked, howl. Listen, most of the time, if I got uncomfortable, I just stopped talking. because I think that when you get nervous, when I get nervous, I tend to talk, right? I send it a da-da-da-da. But in those cases, I would think, you know, as a salesperson, I would think, you know, you make your pitch and you shut up. I had a broker one time that literally would came to me one time.

He's like, hey, man, can you pitch these guys? They're asking questions, this, that. I was like, yeah, sure. No, I'll not pitch them, but disclose to them. You know, all the disclosures, you know, the insurance, you know, disclosures. And you have all these anti-coercion disclosures. I went in it, I disclosed to him like, oh, this is your anti-coercion. We didn't force you to get insurance through this company.

This is your insurance saying that you have insurance on your home. This is, you know, I go through them flip, flip, flip. I go through the whole thing. And they're like, and this is your truth in lending. This is how much you're going to make. This is how much the adjustable rate is that bob. You go through the whole thing. And then the guy's like, okay.

And he starts signing. I just disclosed. He's signing. We're good. That's it. I'm not talking again. I'm just like right here, right here, right here. That's all I say.

The broker goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I wouldn't, don't even worry about the adjustable rate. Like, it'll be, we're going to refinance it in two years. Hey, Ontario. Come on down to BedMGM Casino and check out our newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. Don't miss out. Play exciting casino games based on the iconic game show.

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I was like, who the fuck said it? Who said an adjustable rate? Why would you say adjustable rate? And the guy's like, well, how much is the adjustable? What does it adjust to? What does that mean? He just signed. He's signing. What are you doing? Like, you can only lose the sale. We've got the sale. He's signing. He's got to close in a week. So I just know that you go in. If you're opening, if I was opening, let's say a bank account in somebody's name, like I would make a fake ID and go open up a bank account in the name of Brandon Green. I'd go in, give them the ID, walk in, sit down. They would pull up Brandon Green. I've got a social security number for them, everything, not a stolen identity. It's a, it's a synthetic identity. So let's say they pull them up

and they would go, and I've had this happen where they went, huh, you know, you don't want to hear, huh. And I just sat there. I mean, everything in me is like, run. Get out of the bank. Run to your car. Get out of the, you know, but I didn't. I just say. sat there and they're like, huh, I didn't say, you know, what's going on? What's wrong? What? I was like, I was like, everything okay? And she was like, yeah, it's weird. It says fraud alert. It says you've never had a bank account. Have you ever had a bank account? I said, yeah, with my ex-wife, like, that we opened like maybe five or ten years ago, but I pretty sure she closed it. And she's looking at me and I'm looking at her. What I mean, you know, I don't want to keep running my mouth. I'm just

going to get myself in trouble. I don't know what she's looking at. And then she's, She goes, and does this with the ID, you know, to see the, um, hologram. I made the ID. So I'm like, oh my God. What is she doing? And she goes, hold on, gets up, goes in, goes across the bank, talks to her manager. Her manager comes out. She holds up the thing, looks at it, looks over at me, says something.

They have a conversation. She goes, yeah, walks over, sits down. She says, okay, do you want a gold plan or the silver or the, I was like, I was Like, I don't know, whatever, you know, whatever. And I pick an account or a plan that I want from my checking account. She opens it. I never talk again. I sign the documents.

I get my stuff. I leave. Probably should have panicked. And what felt panicky? But what choice do I have? I can't run out of the bank. I'm done. If I run out of the bank, I'm just screwed.

My car is parked in the parking lot. They're going to know something's wrong. I have to just sit here. Did you ever lie or cheat as a child? Like maybe in a school test? No. Well, like, is there any, like, indication that maybe you had, uh, uh, you know, a leaning towards doing something that was maybe on the edge? No.

My mom said I was a good boy. Um, uh, no, I don't think so. I don't think so. Listen, I was almost 30 the first time I ever committed fraud. Like, I'd gotten a couple tickets. I think I had to go to traffic school one time when I was, you know, in my teens. But, you know, I, I mean, I, I was already had a problem anyway. I had a learning disability.

I was going, I had to go to schools for kids with learning disabilities. So I wasn't in like a normal high school or junior high. It was always, I was always going to these schools that, you know, there's 20 kids in the whole school. I mean, that's a problem in and of itself. But the schools are so small. And there's no, there's no cheating. Like, it's not like I'm cheating. It's not like I'm stealing anything.

I was raised upper middle class. My parents had money. So I don't think there was any reason for it. I don't think I would either. Like, I don't think I would be interested. in in picking up your Rolex, you know, going into, like, I've got a buddy who's like, oh, I would go into my buddy's houses and, like, say I have to go to the bathroom. Like, meet some guy.

You hang out like it. You're 15 years old. Hey, come to my house. Go to his house and say, hey, I got to go to the bathroom. Sure, it's in there. Walk in and then swipe like a watch or some jewelry or something and then leave. Then stay there the whole time for another two hours, play some video games and then leave with the watch.

Like, I wouldn't do that. You know, I wasn't interested in doing that. you know, struggling just to get through life in high school, you know, just to graduate high school. And then I went to college, you know. It's interesting because I feel like a lot of people put in that situation where you're struggling to make the payments on your car and you're barely living, right? And you're very impoverished. And you get put in a situation. What all you have to do is do something like a little bit of a whiteout on something that seems like it's completely harmless and you can make $3,500

bucks and that's the world to you. I think a lot of people would do that. And I would say that most people in that situation would do it. But I've also had those brokers. Like when I opened a brokerage business and I had whatever around 12 guys working there. Like I had a guy he had worked for like, I forget like Lehman Brothers or, you know, Berners. What is it? Bear Stearns or something. Like he had been in a program.

You have to work there for like two years. They train you for two years. And then you can quit. If you quit before that, you owe them money. I don't know if you know that. You owe like, whatever, 60 grand or something. them. So he waited the two years, quit and came to work for me. But after about three months of seeing people do things, he said, yeah, I can't work here. So it's like he was like that's a,

that's what he should have done, right? That's what I should have done, you know, but I didn't. How did it progressively get worse from doing whiteouts? This is just gentle, massaging. Arrogance. You know what I'm saying? Like I, it's funny because I tell my wife this is like, because I'm super, I'm super cocky, super arrogant. like just narcissistic, like just love to talk about myself. Like it's an issue. Like it's an issue that I notice when I'm talking to someone. I'll stop myself periodically and be like, bro, shut up.

You keep, you know, this guy's trying to tell you something. You interrupted with one of your stories. Like, you give a fuck about your story. He's trying to tell you something. It's something that I'm conscious of. But I wasn't earlier in life. And I was telling my wife that every bad decision I've ever made was based on arrogance. I didn't want to lose my car.

because I'm going to have to go to my dad and say, dad, I need you to give me $1,000 because my $500 car payment is behind two months. I've got to pay it. They're going to take my car. I don't want to say that. Or I'm going to lose my house or whatever. I'm going to lose my townhouse or whatever. Like, I was embarrassed. I didn't want, I didn't want to be embarrassed in front of my father. So what percentage of your loans that you did at that first firm you think were fraudulent? What percentage? Yeah. Almost every one of them. At the first place I worked was called Eagle Lending. It got shut down by the Department of Banking Finance and the FBI, I think, has nothing to do with me. You know, one day we showed up and they're locking the doors.

They actually, they locked the doors and me and another broker, I never talked about this. Me and another broker, actually I had to climb up on the roof of the business and slide a window open that like never locked or something or I had unlocked it. I forget what happened. But I slid it open. We stole all the files. Like we went from desks that we got all her files, all my files, and then a bunch of files from other people. And then we went to another brokerage business and closed them there. And then I opened up my own, you know, I don't typically get into all that.

But I eventually, after a few months, I opened my own place. I hired like 12 guys, you know. And because back then in Florida, if you were a mortgage broker for $250 extra, you could become a broker's business owner. You know, unlike in real estate, you have to wait a few years. You have to take a hold of the broker's test, which is, you know, not easy. back then you didn't have to do anything to become a be able to hire basically salespeople. But before we get into that, AI actually might just be the most important new computer technology out there.

I mean, we literally use it on every single episode of the ice coffee hour. And people ask me, they say, Jack, what do you use it on? And guess what? I'm not going to tell you. But billions of dollars are being invested, so you better buckle up. The problem, however, is that even though billions of dollars aren't being invested, AI still needs a lot of speed and processing power. So how do you compete without these costs spiraling out of control?

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Thank you so much. And now let's get back to the episode. So how much were you making at the end of that first firm? Maybe $10,000 or $12,000 after they take their money? Mm-hmm. Probably was making $8 to $12,000 for six months, but within six months, it's over. And listen, the first month I closed like four loans, which was unheard of. Like we were generating our own leads.

It's not like really good money too, like 1999. Right. It was great money. I was thrilled. So you can imagine how I felt, you know, six months or eight months later when that whole thing fell apart.

I was crushed. Then they kept all the files. We break in. We get the files. I hate to say break in. I slit the window. It were my files I felt. So I took the file.

else we closed those. We made like 20 or 30 grand because we got very little money. Eagle was paying like 70%. I found out then most places give you 40 or 50%. But they give you leads. Eagle didn't do that. So we closed those. They still took 40 or 50%. I got a chunk of money. I opened my own place. Hired a bunch of guys. That doesn't make a lot of money right away. But within a few months, it starts making money. Especially when these guys, you start to, when they start to realize pretty much anybody that walks in the door, I'm going to make sure they get alone. Like unless. you're in bankruptcy or you claim bankruptcy six months ago, I'm going to do anything I have to to get you alone. I have to stay afloat. And after a few months, that place starts to make good money. Is that from word of mouth, people saying, hey, I went to this place, I got a loan? Yeah. Does anybody question if they come in and they, like, they have a low income and they say, I want a $300,000 loan? But you changed the numbers without them knowing. Do people question how they got it? They just don't know. No, because they feel like they should be able to get a loan. Right. Right. Like, I don't know why my credit union turn me down and the bank turned me down, but my

real estate agent said, I should go to you. You know, and it was always bothered me, too, because the real estate agents would send me stuff, especially, it's funny, this one woman, Lynn Cadella, this chick, I must have done two or three million dollars worth of her loans. She's a real estate agent. And I'm doing, I mean, I got her into a ton of property that she could not qualify for. And she would send me people, but she, she would send her customers to, like, her good customers that had good job, she sent him to, oh, I send them to Brad.

Because Brad does conventional loans and he can get him a good rate. But if the guy is horrific and Brad turns him down and his credit union can't do him and he's been to three other ones, you got to go see Matt. So, well, I'm thinking I should get Brad's stuff too. That's what I think. I'm only getting the crap. And she was like, yeah, but he gets really good rates. I'm like, yeah, but I'm signed up with countrywide and all those.

I'm so the same lenders. I can get them that rate. Keep in mind, she knows all her loans are fraudulent. She knows that not just that. She's a real estate. She had been doing it like 20 years. So she's buying a duplex. So you'll appreciate this.

Sure. That's here. Oh my God. So she had like a house, her own personal residence, right? So when you pull her credit, she's got like a, keep in mind, these are 20 year old prices. So it's not like that there'd be a million now. Sure. She would have like a $250,000 loan on her house, her personal.

her personal residence, a single family resident. I would say that was a quadplex. And I would change her like schedule ease on her taxes. Or I'd bring her last two years taxes and I'd bring them to a bookkeeper who would change them. So we'd say that the house she's living in now is a quadplex. Then I would turn around. She would be buying, let's say, a duplex. I must have bought 12 duplexes within about a month for her.

All of them owner occupied. So she's getting 95 to 100% loan to value. So she's bringing, let's say she's bringing for $100,000 duplex. Let's say it's a 90% for the sake of argument. We jack up the purchase price to cover the whole thing. And then she'd bring $10,000 for her closing for her down payment, which she doesn't need because the 90% covers it. And then we would get that money cut back to a construction company

for work that had supposedly already. already been done. Does that make sense? So now she gets her money right back. So we just turned a 90% LTV into like 100 to 105%. And if we could get the value, I'd have her walk away with more than her down payment. I had people that would come with 20,000 down and walk away with 50. And the more you do that, the more the area, if you stay within a certain area, it keeps going up. But up, but up, she's a real estate. She's a real estate broker, actually. She's a real estate broker. I had another woman named Kelly, Kelly Bailey. Same thing. Millions of dollars in loans. Lawyers did loans for lawyers, did a loan for a doctor. How do they justify it? Like the real estate agent. Does she just feel I know the area? I know what I'm doing is, you know, shady. Yeah, exactly. The banks are so harsh. Yeah. They don't, you know, it's it's just the banks. And I'm going to make the payments. The fact that she doesn't actually qualify for the loan, you know, doesn't, that didn't affect her. As far as I know, she made all the, all those. But wouldn't you have a disproportionate? Portionate amount of borrowers for clothes as opposed to other brokers.

They didn't track it back then. Keep mind that. Oh, so it was just like out in the ether. So as soon as you give it to a borrower. Within 30 days, those things are being. So let's say I closed with, there's a company called, um, how not household bank. Well, there was a household bank, but there was one called, let's say mortgage warehouse. It was a lender.

Let's say we closed a loan with mortgage warehouse. within two, three weeks, they've already packaged it together with a $2 million bundle and they've sold it to household bank or they've sold it to Wells Fargo or countrywide. It's just a mortgage and a package of 20 other mortgages or 150 other mortgage, which honestly within three months gets sold again. Within six months, it gets sold again. And they didn't track it. They don't track it. They don't, you know, now mortgage brokers have a specific number that stays with them and they track it. They didn't do that then. So then you decided to create your own brokerage, right? And then you hired out 12 or so people to do loans. What did that look like for you? And did you try to

instill these values in the other brokers? Like, okay, well, just in case like. Yeah, no, it was a mill. It was a mill. Like I mean, I like I, guys would come in and they'd say, listen, bro, I got a loan. Okay. The guy's got 720 credit scores. He currently owns his own house. I'd be like, okay, is he self-employed, employed? He's employed, but he doesn't quite make. His debt to income rates like 70%, but he's going to rent the place out that he buys, but he doesn't have the down payment. Okay, well, here's what you need to first find out. And I'd be like, find out how much we can get it appraise for.

Find out what the rents are. Find out, you know, and we go through all the things that we needed to know. Once they came back, I'd structure a way for that loan to get closed. You know, we can get him a 90% loan that will cover the entire thing. He's going to have to bring the down payment. I'll get him the money back. If he can't come up with it, I'll bring the down payment. we have to close one of my title companies that we work with because let's face it, I don't want to, I'm not giving him the money to put in his bank account. That's actually part of the reason I ended up opening a bank, like I started my own, it's not a real bank, you know, a bank, an online bank, because sometimes, you know, you have something called seasoning. Bank of America, if you're coming to them and you're buying a house and you're putting down 5% down payment, they want to see that it's been in the bank for 90 days because they don't want the seller to have given you in the

money, right, they want to know, no, no, we need to see three months bank statements showing the money's been in your bank. I'm not giving this guy, you know, 20 grand to sit in his bank. I don't know him, you know, so I can't do that. So what we would, we would figure out, do we, maybe we changed the we changed the bank statements, you know, or we'd structure it in such a way that we could try and make it seem like he had a car that got sold and we'd had, and the money went straight into the, into escrow account or, you know, it gets hard. So what we ended up, what I ended up doing was saying, look, I'm just going to create an online bank called a, we had a few of them, but one of them was a bank of ebor.

So it's like bank of ebore.com. And I came up with bank statements, color bank statements, front and back. You have to trim them down. Bank statements are a little bit smaller to trim them down. I had to go make envelopes and the whole thing. So I did that and then I, you could go online and you could look. There was, it was only four or five pages, right? You can look, but it looked very official.

It had a phone number. And so they could call the phone number. If they called the phone number, then it rings to one of my phones. And then I answer the phone, you know, Bank of Vmore. How can I help you? Or it would go to voicemail. And the voicemail would say, it would have a little thing about, you know, hey, this is Bank of Vbor.

We're small local bank located in Bore City just outside of Tampa, Florida. You know, please, we're currently experiencing high color volume. blah, blah, blah, right? You don't know, like, now you can't call anybody, right? But back then, you could, and you'd leave a message. A small local bank that can't get to the phone call right now makes sense. Now, you can't say it's a big bank. So they would call, leave a message, or I'd answer the phone.

I'd call them back, and I would verify the money was in the bank. Typically, we'd ask them to fax over a verification and deposit, and I would verify whatever they told me. I wouldn't just say, oh, yeah, yeah. I'd do the whole thing. Like, you type on the thing. Hold on a second. like what was the name? You know, do you have the account number?

Okay, that was what again? Hold, okay, I'm sorry, could you say it again? Okay, shh, yeah, listen, I can't tell you what they have in the, what they have in the bank, but I, in their banking out, but I can, I can, you know, verified if you can tell me. Oh, says that their 90 day average is, you know, 27,000, 250 bucks. That's it. You're good.

Okay, thank you, click. How did you know they were calling for this? that did you have different phone numbers set up so that if someone calls on this number that's this bank i have like yeah i got like 12 phones you have 12 phones and you keep track of them and like a label of each you just put a on the back of it you just put like this is brand brandon green's phone and you put a piece of tape so if i grab that phone you just look at the back brandon green this is his work phone okay hi express tax services how may help you you know or you or you call you know tracy my um my um my um secretary and it Tracy Tracy Tracy Tracy

She was like, oh, God, who is it? Brandy Green, it's his work. He works for such and such. Okay, hi, this is. And she answers. How did you find people that were okay with working with you on this? I mean, I told you like all the time, I can only really think of one guy that wasn't okay with it. Very quickly.

Look, did you have to pay more? It's like for these people like, but I'm already paying a lot. You're getting 70. So we charge an application fee of like $325, which actually would probably be $600 now. Yeah. But $325 application fee. So I get that, right? The house gets that.

And then we get 30% of any fees that come in. So you get 70%. Nobody's paying 70%. They're paying 40%, 50%. Most of our customers are coming from real estate investors or realtors. So realtors, real estate investors. And of course, you could do the cold call thing where you call, you know, the ads for people trying to sell their own house. And you just say, hey, a mortgage broker, can I come put a sign in the front yard just to make sure that whoever is buying your house is qualified?

but let's face it, if you're a real estate agent and your customer has been turned down by three people, three banks, and then somebody at the brokerage business where you work says, listen, you need to call this guy. And you call me and that thing closes two weeks later. And you're like, wow, what happens the next time you have a loan that's tough that you know this guy's got a problem?

He's had four jobs. He's had this. He got turned out by his bank. He wants to buy the house. My customer wants to sell the house. He didn't know if he can, get qualified, you're going to be like, you don't call this guy. Because you really haven't done anything. You might think, I know something's fishy, but you're just a real estate agent. You didn't

do anything. I just told him the guy that's closed like three loans for me. I thought he was good. You know, if the FBI ever came and said, hey, why do you send this guy 25 people in the last six months? You go, what are you talking about? I thought he was good. He's a great broker. Why? You're committing fraud. Okay, well, I don't know that. You got nothing that says I know that. You don't have a text. You don't have a phone call. You don't have anything. So, you're a So you're going to send me people. And we had tons of people. Listen, it got so bad that other brokerage businesses in the area would call up and say,

Matt, can you come by the office? We have a loan. I go, okay, stop by a couple hours later. What's up? They pull out the file and they'd say, here's the problem. And I'd look through the file and I'd go, okay, well, you're, you know, the property is three and a half miles from the closest comparable. It needs to be within, it's supposed to be within half of a mile.

They'll go up to a mile. But after that, it gets to be a problem. All three of your comparables are six miles, eight miles, nine miles. Like, come on, what are you doing? You're cherry picking the comps. Nobody's going to do this loan. The appraisal's bad, is what I'm saying. And so I would say, okay, all right, well, give me the file.

And I'll send you $500 bucks. You know, I try and do that, like, you know, a referral fee where you, I'll give you a referral fee. No, no, no, no, we want to close it. It's a $400,000 loan. What are you talking about? Well, you can't close it. But then close it. I do that. I'd try and get the loan. But if that didn't work out, then I would try and do well, then great, I'll tell you what's wrong. See if you can fix it. Send me a thousand bucks. Whatever. So I'd try and help them out like that. Maybe I'd make the W-2s and pay stubs, charge them a grand. They're going to make $7 or $8,000 or $10, whatever their fee is for $400,000. Throw me a grand. I'll make some W-2s and pay stuff. I'll even verify it for you.

How much are you making at the peak of working as a broker like that? See, as a broker, I don't think I was making that much. I think maybe $100,000, $200,000 a year. Like, I'm probably making $10,000 or $15,000 doing that. Now, obviously, that changes when I start committing fraud because eventually I get caught. So eventually what happens is my brokerage businesses, my brokerage business and all these brokers are committing fraud. I had gotten married. I had a son.

my wife does not want to work. You know, she wants to, she wants to be a stay-at-home mom. And I said, well, that's great. But, well, how about this? We buy a bunch of rental properties. You can collect the rent from the rental properties. You can rent them out. You meet the maintenance guys, that sort of thing.

She said, no problem. So I get about 54, 55 rental units within about a year, all fraudulent. Like, she didn't have a job. And they're all in her name. Yeah. So we're bringing money. We're bringing $20,000, $30,000 to closing, walking away with 50, 60 grand so that we've got 20 or 30 or 30.

30 in our pocket so we can do some renovations. We rent out the properties. Life's good, right? She's renting them out. She collects a rent. Things are good. Does she have any idea? Absolutely. So she knew it's all fraudulent. Yeah. And if you ask her to this day, she'll say, I had no idea. She was a licensed mortgage broker. And we used to work at a bank. Got it. Stop. Every application said she worked for some, I think, I don't know what, who'd I have her work for? Somebody like, God, was it like a, like, one of the businesses I created was express tax services. So, you know, she knew. And we actually have a good relationship right now.

She sees this. Luckily, she never watches my stuff because she gets infuriated. So she's not going to see this. So I can say it. Okay. Even if she did, she just called me if you can say, you, you scumbag. She'd tell you I was a scumbag. You keep my name out of your mouth.

So she's got all these loans. And we're buying them. You know, we're keeping them. Well, it turns out that they were buying places, renovating them, renting them out. And sometimes selling them. sometimes keeping them. And she's got like 50 some odd units. Turned out that remember my old mortgage broker or my own manager, Gretchen, Gretchen had started her own company called, this, you're going to love this,

creative financing, creative financing brokerage business or something. Anyway, she and her husband. So she and Pete had opened there, had done this. And so what I did was I would go and buy a piece of property and I would renovate it. And then I would sell it to my wife at the time. She never took my last name. Our addresses were never the same. Like I made sure that we appear to be two completely separate entities, right?

So she doesn't have my last name. None of our jobs overlap. None of our addresses overlap. So that because if you did that, then when you pulled her credit, it would connect us. They'd say, oh, this person lived at a house here with this guy, Matt Cox, and he's the owner. You know, now you don't want that. Buy properties, renovate them, sell them to her. And the reason I did this is seasoning, right? So I buy the property for $100,000. I renovate it for $50,

and I can't refinance it. So the way people think, oh, you bought it for $100,000, let's say it's a quadplex. You bought a quadplex for $100,000. You renovated it for 50 grand. Now it's worth $250. So just refinance it. You can pull out your 150 that you have in it plus 50 or $60,000. You're right. You can in a year. For about a year, they won't let you do it. But if I'm just, you're just, you have. of some guy who bought the property, renovated, I can sell it to somebody for the full value and make my money. So that's what I would do. Buy the property, renovate it. Now it's worth $200,000 or $250, whatever the appraised value is I'd sell to her for $2.30.000. She would bring $30,000 to closing and she ends up with the property. Of course, the $30,000 is ours. So it doesn't

matter. She ends up with the property. She rents it out. And that's it got it rented out. That doesn't seem like anyone's suffering, though. What about taxes on that? Wouldn't you then be showing that you sold the property for a profit and have to pay taxes on that? I mean, you would, but I was actually audited one time. And I remember, I was during this whole thing, I was audited at one point. Keep in mind, too, she was, she actually went American Express tax business services. So American Express actually has a tax service company. We actually sent her there for like two or three days to be trained to keep the books. So we're also doing things like, see, this is what, I guess in a way, this is bad that he's asking. Most people don't ask these questions.

Okay. So let's say I have, this is bad. Don't judge me, Jack. So let's say I have some, a group of Mexicans come and put a new roof on the house or on the quadplex. And they charge whatever prices back then, $5,000. I would write, you write an initial check to them for, let's say, $2,500. So you would write like, um, I can't put, let's say more like $900. So you put $900, you know, $900, but you don't put it all the way on the line. You put it farther back. And then so you go and you go to give them the thing, you go, hey, you know what? Do you, are you going to deposit this? Like, are you going to go cash it? I can cash it.

I got the cash right now. They go, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to cash it. I go, well, you want me to cash it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, well, here, sign the back of it to me, write your, whatever. your your, whatever numbers you have for your license, your license, if they have a license, or write your license number, whatever, your social security number, whatever, whatever,

right, ever all the year so that I can 1099 you at the end of the year. Yeah, yeah, no problem. Roof, these roofers and stuff and, you know, they're not licensed. So they're never going to claim any of this money. So I can 1099 them. So I give them 900 bucks. Take the, take the check, and I write $3,900. And then I go deposit it. Comes out of my business account. into my personal account, and it looks like I just wrote him a check for $3,900. And the next check, I do the same thing. $500, $400, $400, you know, $800, you know, $1,800. So I just right on the front of it, you know, whatever, $2,500.

So if you're selling it $2.30, basically you're showing that you made no profit on this. Or maybe a little bit of profit. I don't mind paying a little bit of money. You know, you're going to pay a little bit. I mean, we were paying $5, $10,000, you know, every month. Well, we're doing, you know, the quarterly withholding. Sure. You got a little count.

You just keep putting the money in. At the end of the year, you pay in 20, $25,000. Do you think those guys ever got audited? No, and listen, I would 1099. We actually one time. For the full amount or for the actual amount? Oh, you know, no, the full amount. They would get a check for like $55,000.

And I remember one time a guy called him said, what is this, this thing? You sent me $55. I don't know you $55,000. I go, no, no, no, no. That's first for tax purposes, bro. That's just the total of what we spent on the property. for the renovation. Even though they only earned like $5,000. They have no idea. Like they don't, they're, they're illegal and they don't claim. They've never claimed. And so you're banking on them

basically getting a 1099 and not doing anything with it. We sent out tons of them and got one or two phone calls questioning. Maybe one guy might have said like, I don't remember it being that much. But I'm like, well, are you going to claim it? I mean, you want me to go over the book? No, no, no, no, don't worry about it. Of course don't worry about it. You don't claim taxes. But you, but you would send this to the IRS. Yeah. Oh, yes. I'd send it to the IRS. So it's with the IRS. And he signed it. He wrote his driver's license number on it, everything.

I mean, let's face it. That is an independent contractor's nightmare. Yeah, but did they ever get audited or like, did they suffer? Not that I know of. Listen, I've done much worse than that. I sleep. I don't have a problem with that at all. But here's the thing.

It would be tough for them to fight it with the IRS because the IRS is going to have. They've never claimed taxes. And they're not going to fight it. They're illegal. Like, you're not even supposed to be here. They're not claiming taxes. First of all, if I. told him, hey, I paid you $55,000 when in fact, I only paid you $15,000.

There's probably another $30,000 or $40,000 in $1099s coming to him, too. What does it matter? If you're not paying it on $50, it doesn't matter if you're not paying it on $100. You're just here to make money to send back to Mexico. Yeah, he probably doesn't even exist in the eyes of the IRS, right? Probably. Probably not. And if they audited him, you know, because they get all these $109s with this social security number,

then if they audited him, let's see. say they'd say, hey, you owe $40,000. What does it matter if he owes $40 or if he owes $20? He's not paying it. You know, he doesn't care. But we never had that comeback. Like, listen, I'm in charge with almost everything. So that's the one thing, you know, well, no, I was charged with money laundering. So I guess that would probably fall in. Well, no, I guess it'd be tax fraud too. Well, you know what? Before we go into that, I just want to say that overall, we talk a lot about investing on the channel. We talk a lot about business. But without exaggeration, investing has changed my life. It's something that I got into when I was like 18, 19 years old.

From that point forward, I started investing as much money as I possibly could. I found the financial independent retire early community that got me into the whole mindset that you could make your money last a lifetime. You don't have to start with a lot. And as long as you invest consistently, as long as you do that for a long time, that'll turn into a substantial amount. Like just investing $5 a day could leave you with a million dollars in like a few decades. I would say investing to me means more confidence in the future.

And I feel like I can provide more from my family. What family you're talking about, Jack? You're single with no kids. What family? Graham, I'm on Tinder. I'm working through this. Okay. But the point is, investing is really important. And if you are investing, it's better to know what you're doing. And if you want to know what you're doing, the best resource is our sponsor, Yahoo Finance. Honestly, without exaggeration, I've been reading Yahoo Finance. For years, I've come up with a lot of my video topics from Yahoo Finance. I've quoted them in many of my videos. You're honestly just a fantastic resource to use if you just want to learn more about the market or just casually read to see what's going on. on day to day. So if you're interested, the link is down below in the description to visit Yahoo

Finance. Finance, I'd highly recommend it. And I'm so excited to sponsoring today's video because they're just a place that I would read regardless. So thank you so much Yahoo Finance for sponsoring today's video. And now let's get back to the episode. So when do things escalate from just like, you know, whiting out and being in and massaging some numbers in the loan documents to then creating fake people? This is one of the most fascinating things. I think I've honestly ever heard. You got caught in between, right? Right. That's exactly what happens. What happened? Which is funny because, by the way, this is vastly different than any other interview I've done.

Because you are asking vastly different questions. Cool. Like this is going completely off the tracks compared to my normal spiel. Cool. What happened was, remember those loans that I bought renovated and sold to my ex-wife? Yeah. I didn't do her loans at my company, right? I can't do that because I own the property.

It's not an arm's length transaction. You know, it has to be an armed loan. Like they're like, Mr. Cox, you own the property. you can't also do a mortgage for your borrower. Okay. So I send her to Gretchen. Gretchen owns creative financing or creative mortgage brokers or whatever it's called. So I would prepare the whole package, give it to Gretchen and we would close the loan.

I give her a couple grand. And the loan closes and that's it. So Kayla's got the house. She just borrowed 150 on this property, 190 on this one, ends up being like three or four properties. It's like half a million dollars, I think she ends up owing. What ends up happening in the meantime, and this has been years. We've been, I've been in business a few years at this point. What ends up happening is Gretchen had done what's called a straw man scam with some guys.

Some investors had come in. They bought a bunch of properties that could appraised for, you know, let's say a million dollars. But they were buying them for like 600,000. So they got a loan for like 900,000, pulled out 300,000. And they did this for five or six properties, right? So they ended up making like half a million, a million. I don't know exactly what they made. But Gretchen did all the loans.

These guys never even made the first payment. That's the first payment default. If it's the first payment default, they're going to invest it. I'm sorry, investigate it. So now I think it's up to a year. There's not even such a thing as first payment default. Now, if you, it gets investigated if you don't make the first 12 months payments. So the FBI comes in and investigates it.

They say, you know, they realize they look at the paperwork. It's a strong man scam. Like this person, it's, the W-2s are fake. Everything's fake. They go into Gretchen's office. and they don't raid her office, but they show up with give her the business card,

the whole thing. And so she calls me and tells me that, hey, she's like the FBI came by, you know, oh my gosh,

I went to her house. We all had a conversation. I was, oh my God, you know, I'm just concerned she's in trouble. No big deal. She says,

can you refinance my house so I can pay an attorney. This attorney wants like 75 grand. I was like, yeah, I was like, yeah, but Gretchen, you don't have,

you know, like, you're cooking the books too. You're claiming. in very little money. And she said, you know, look, I'm going to give you W-2s and pay stubs. I was like, okay, so she gives them to me.

I put the loan through. She gets $75 grand. She pays an attorney. First thing that attorney says is, you need to wear a wire on this guy. So she goes to the FBI, says, listen, here's three or four loans. I think was three. Three loans that he did for his wife. He said he wasn't married to her.

All the W-2s and pay subs are fake. So they set me up and we meet it like a pizza place and we sit down because she calls me up. She's like, oh my God, I got to meet you. The FBI is asking questions about you. We go, we meet. I'm like, what's going on? She's like, look, the FBI, they're asking all kinds of questions about Kayla, about you. And I go, oh, my God, you didn't tell them the W-2s were fake, did you?

You didn't tell them we were married. You didn't tell them, like, I just bury myself. Did you have any idea she was trying to set you up? Like, is it ever a good idea? have someone's like, hey, we got to talk in person to check them for a wire. Well, not my business is not. But I mean, if you're just a regular guy, sure. But you know what I'm saying?

Like I should, you know, and here's the thing. Look, could you have checked? Like said, hey, I need you to like lift up your shirt a little bit. You know what I could have done? Yeah. I could have just listened to my ex-wife because I didn't know anybody that had ever been arrested, right? My ex-wife is Puerto Rican and she has family members that did 10 years. She knows people that have been arrested.

She told me, don't go see them, don't talk to them anymore. They're going to cooperate and they're going to get you fucked up. And I was like, these are friends of ours. This is my friend. Like, we went to Puerto Rico together. Like, we've been on vacation together. We went to Disney World together. Like, what are you talking about?

She's not going to turn on me. And she was absolutely right. She was right. Like, I should have just listened to her. I should have been like, you're being investigated, especially when she asked me to refine it. I should have been like, look, I don't want nothing to do with it. Right.

But I'm thinking I'm being a friend. So anyway, so when she asked me those questions and I just bury myself, I didn't realize what was happening until when I started saying, look, okay, here's what you do. I said, tell them that you never met Kayla. Tell them she called, you, you only talked to her on the phone. Like, I'm trying to come up with a way that she can just separate herself. Like, look, I got a phone call. I set up alone.

The girl closed. I've never met her. I can't help you. You know? So I said then, well, and she said, no, no, no. She goes, we can't lie to the FBI. We can't lie to the FBI. Like, what are you talking about?

I go, I mean, you've been lying. You're already lying. Like, your mortgage was a lie. Like, you're, what do you? And her husband stands up. And he goes, he stands up. And he goes, we've never lied to the FBI. We may not have told them everything, but we've never lied.

Oh, my. And I was like, so, I mean, like, I, I know that's not true. Right? I just did your loan. I know that that's not true. So it's like, like, who are you talking to, bro? like you're not talking to me because I know that we I just committed fraud for you so I was like and I thought oh fuck and like I remember both their cell phones like literally when they sat down

they put their phones like right next to me and I was like like first of all whatever you just said that's totally not what's happening and two your phones are here and honestly I don't know with their phone it may have been wired I don't know if there's a phone but I just remember seeing the phone yeah and I thought wow and I looked it and I go well I hope you're getting something for this. I go, hope you're getting something for me. And she looked at me, she immediately welled up and started crying. And she goes, I don't have to go to prison. She is, Matt, I have a kid. I, I'm sorry. And I went, I said, I don't have a kid. And I said, listen, tell the FBI agent, do not come in my office. Because when the FBI went to her office,

everybody quit. She had like six or eight people, they all quit. And I said, tell them not to come in my office. Call me. I'll come down and talk to him. And I got up and I left. So I wasn't, it took me 15 minutes to get to the office. I wasn't there five minutes before my secretary walks in and says, hey, there's an agent Scott Gale on the phone for you. And I was like, holy shit, get on the phone. He says, hey, I'm sure you know why I'm calling, not even pretending, like, didn't even wait a couple days. And he said, I understand that you're willing to come down and talk to me. I said, yeah, okay. I said, I'll be down there on Tuesday or something. So instead, it was like a Thursday or something. So I immediately go out and start interviewing attorneys. I pay an attorney like 75.

grand apparently that's a going rate he calls them he calls off that meeting we negotiated over the course of several months and keep in mind by the time as we're negotiating one they wanted to charge my ex-wife and i was like she didn't have any idea what's going on she only signed the documents she doesn't know anything you know completely untrue um but i figured if anybody's got to get in trouble i'll get in trouble you know i'm going to be the tough guy right i'm going to be i'm not i'll i'm to protect you even though we're in the middle of a divorce um but I figured there's no reason for me. If somebody had to go to jail, like, it should probably be me.

Like, I'm not capable of taking care of a kid. I could barely feed my dog, you know, I mean. And she had family and everything else that could help her. And I honestly really didn't think I was going to go to jail anyway. So what ended up happening was I end up saying, look, I'll plead guilty to wire fraud. You drop all the charges against her. And they said, okay. But it was so funny, too, I'm going to tell you this.

my lawyer at the time had said, I remember like our first or second meeting. He goes, how close are you to your wife? I was like not close at all. We're getting a divorce. And he goes, you know, he's like, all the loans are in her name. He said, I mean, I could probably. And by the way, we were selling the properties. By this point, we'd already sold like two of those properties.

We've got another one that's going to be sold. Like, it's all going to be sold within a month or two. So these loans don't even exist. We made all the payments. The loans don't even exist. There's no loss. Now there's something called potential loss where you could have lost money, but there was no potential loss because the properties were worth two or three hundred thousand dollars and the loans were only like 130, 180, 160, something like that. There was more than enough equity to cover that. So there's no potential loss. So I can't even go to jail based on the federal sentencing guidelines. And he says to me, we can do something called a pretrial intervention. Since these are all going to be paid off, all you need to do is go and cooperate with them and go.

go and it's my understanding based on Gretchen and Pete that you're running a mill, right? You've got a bunch of guys in there doing fraud. So all you have to do is go into the brokerage business and get a bunch of the most egregious files that your brokers have committed fraud on. Bring them to the FBI, explain the whole thing, and I can keep you from being indicted at all. You don't even get charged. And I was like, I'm not going to do that. Yeah, but then your guys would get in trouble, right? Yeah, they would all get in trouble.

Yeah. It all be in trouble. And I was like, I'm not doing that. I'm not going to, you know. But the truth is, you know, looking back on it, what I, you know, so I thought, once again, you know, arrogance, stupidity. I'm going to be a stand up guy. I've seen Godfather. You don't talk.

You don't tell on your friends. And if I knew then what I know now, I would have gone into the Friday meeting that we had, you know, how real estate, you know, every Friday or whatever. Yeah. One day a week. Everybody gets together. You have a meeting. How are the files going? How is this?

How is that? I had gone into that meeting. with a dolly and scooped up one of the file cabinets and wheeled it in the back of a pickup truck and told those guys, you're probably going to be contacted by the FBI if I was you, I'd get a lawyer. And I'd have gone and cooperated and buried every single one of them.

Because the moment the FBI came looking, they all buried me. You see what I'm saying? Like I thought... There's no sense of loyalty at all? None. None. But these are like normal people. These are...

Yeah, they're all committed. You're all committing. say you turn yourself and, you know, against this guy, then you're going to get off. And they go to you. You got to turn against this guy and you get off. And then it's whoever comes in first, I believe. And with the most information. That's who probably gets the best deal, the guy that kind of starts first.

And because there was no loss and it was just a white collar crime, I could have kept from being indicted at all. But, you know, and that's the thing everybody thinks they're like, you know, I always say a gangster. You know, not that you think you're a gangster. But everybody thinks they're like a tough guy. Like I could, you know, I love that if you, you know, don't cook. commit the crime if you can't do the time. Isn't that catchy? You know, it is. So if you go and you

commit a crime and you think, well, what's the most you can get for this? And you go, I'll probably get probation. And they say you're getting 10 years. Now what? I'll do it. You say you'll do it because you haven't had handcuffs on you. You haven't spent three months in a jail cell. You haven't seen what you're going to be around the whole time. You haven't seen that all your buddies already stopped talking to you. And if you're gone more than, if you're gone for three months, your house, you lose your house. Your wife is calling you with your little kid sitting in the, in the visitation room, crying her eyes out begging me, don't you care about me? Don't you care about your son? What about your daughter? Don't you care? All they want you to do is cooperate. Fuck those guys.

See, everybody's a gangster sitting at the table with their buddies, but when it comes down to it, it's not that easy. And your buddies that you're protecting are all taken off. They're all talking shit about you. They don't answer the phone. They don't nothing. So it's like, you know, the whole Omarta thing, right? Like the Godfather, the Omarta, the Code of Silence. Like, it doesn't really exist. It certainly never existed in any of my cases. But theoretically, if everyone did stay silent, it would be much more difficult for them to put that together. But that's not what's going to happen. You know, listen, the federal authorities, not only will they, if nobody talked, they'll just find some guys in the, in the, like if you're locked up for three months, guys in the, guys in the,

unit that you're talking to will call their FBI agent say, listen, there's a guy named Matt Cox in here. He committed two or three million dollars with a fraud. I know you guys want him. He's fighting his case. He told me all about his case. He's committing fraud. I can help you. They'll put that guy on the stand, even if they didn't know anything. They'll take that guy, put him in a room with your file so that he can figure out how to help them. I actually wrote a book about a kid where they did that. They put him and another kid, gave him pizza and orange soda, a crush, orange crush soda for like two days straight so that they could get their story straight and testify against somebody. Is that legal?

It seems highly illegal if they have nothing to do with the case, but it's just like their word. Yeah, but I mean, how legal is it for police officers to shoot people that are unarmed and they don't get charged? Or they beat someone almost to death. Or they, you know, that happens all the time. They don't even get charged. Maybe if they're lucky, they get fired and then two months later they're hired at another another place. Listen, federal prosecutors are legally allowed to lie to you.

They're allowed to lie in your case. They're allowed to lie to the court. They never get charged. It's almost never happened. And it's egregious. Defense attorneys, if they get caught lying, they'll get disbarred. They'll get prosecuted the whole thing. And the system is so – and I'm not saying this because, like, I dislike law enforcement.

Trust me. I love law enforcement. You don't know who Grady Judd is? Grady Judd, you've seen the videos. He'll get in front of the microphone and he'll talk about, you know, he'll say, well, this guy, you know, this person right here barricaded himself in a double wide and was firing at the police. And we shot 180, 180 bullets into that, into that double wide and killed them. And when a reporter says, why did they fire 180 bullets into the double wide? He says, because they ran out of bullets.

He goes, dead can't be, he is evil can't be dead enough. Like he seems like a real backwoods jerk off. But that's the guy I want showing up. I don't want somebody who's going to be soft and cuddly. You know, I want, I want law enforcement. All, almost all the FBI agents in my case, you know, they may have been a jerk offs at one point or another. But honestly, like, you know, how, how upset can I be that you're, I'm ripping off banks. I'm stealing money and you're an asshole to me.

So what? I don't deserve for you not to be an asshole. No, my understanding, though, police officers can lie in interrogations to try to get a confession. So that to me at least kind of make sense if they're trying to get you to admit something like, hey, listen, we got the proof. If you tell us right now, it's going to go easy. That I could at least wrap my mind around. And not only lie to you, they can promise you things. They can make overt promises.

If you tell us this, you will be. let go and you can leave right who's who's able to make this promises and you actually keep them u.s. attorneys are okay but never police officers right but they'll they know but u.s. attorneys will never do in writing or they have a way of saying it they'll say listen if you tell us this we'll take it in consideration and we'll reduce your sentence and you go okay here and you tell them and then they go and they go and they're supposed to reduce my sentence you said i wouldn't have to go to jail or whatever and they go yeah i know no we said we consider it and we did consider it and we did consider it. And it's not enough. So how do you do that if you're in a position like that? Are you

supposed to say, I'll only tell you if you get it in writing? Right. And they'll say, huh, go do the time. Go do your five years. See you. We won't put it. And I wrote a bunch of true crime stories when I was locked up. Out of all the cases I've heard and all the guys stuff that I've looked at, I've seen one person make or get a letter that was signed by a prosecutor that promised 100% this person would get a sentence reduction if they simply told them what was going on in the case. One person. Do you know who the prosecutor was that wrote that document? Robert Mueller. He was a U.S. attorney. He eventually became the FBI director and then he investigated Trump. He's the only person that's ever actually I've seen or written one. Typically, they just say, look, we'll consider it. And your lawyer says, what choice do you have? Tell them and they'll do something. Like, look, And honestly, 90% of the time they do do something, right?

Like if it bears fruit, if you tell them something and nobody ever gets arrested, they don't give you anything. If you tell them and they get arrested, there's about a 90% chance they'll give you something for it. You know, so, you know, most of the time it works. Yeah. Sometimes it doesn't. So in your position then, talking with the attorney, what was their advice to getting out of this given that you did not want to turn on people? I mean, my attorney's advice was to cooperate against my brokers. I think I can keep.

At this level, it's so minor. You know what I'm saying? There's no money has been lost. Nobody lost money. There was no potential lose money. It was basically you lied on an application. It's wire fraud. So he's like, I can keep you from being indicted.

But I didn't want to do that. You know? So instead, I said, I'm not going to do that. I'll take whatever they give me. And we thought it was going to be probation. I ended up getting three years probation. They dropped the charges on my wife. I get three years probation.

I sell my. business to a guy named Dave Walker who was a he was a CPA and he started running my business and he kept me on as like a consultant and was paying me like eight grand a was that legal yeah that was fine I actually got permission from the court saying he can act as a consultant for his old business he can't own it anymore but your honor it's all he knows how to do and it was such a minor thing it was it was it was wire fraud it was for you got three years probation and right then that's one of those things that I talked about where like that's when I should have said I'm gonna claim pay I'm gonna claim

bankruptcy. I'm going to move in with my parents. I'm going to start my life over. I'm going to figure out something else to do. That's what I'm going to do with my life. But what happened to all the real estate portfolio that you were developing at the time? Did they just take it all? No, why? No, they only had three. They never talked to my wife. They had no proof that any of these other loans were bad. But couldn't they investigate it? I mean, they have to have a right to pull a warrant. They have to have, they don't have anything. Because like you said, you were a small fish. Right. I'm a small fish and they got me for this and I pled guilty. Okay, we got bigger. We're going on to something else. So who owned all of that real estate then?

My ex-wife. Your ex-wife owned it because it was in her name. So you were completely removed from that. Right. But remember the three that she did? By the time I played guilty, she'd sold them. Interesting. And they don't know that everything she's done is fraudulent.

I never spoke with them. Did you, my lawyer talked to them? So they were never able to ask me questions. During the divorce, did you try to get any of that real estate? Yeah, but honestly, she's Puerto Rican. She's just way too mean. She's just very mean. And she was, she loves to fight and love to argue.

you, she really just loved it. I mean, she's one of those women. You, it's like four in the morning and you're desperately trying to go to sleep for an argument and she just keeps going and going and going. It's like four in the morning. We've been arguing for six hours. Please stop. I can't see why.

Anything. Why did you guys get divorced? What was a, was it? Was it that? Take a guess. No, I'm just curious because it's. I mean, I think, okay, first of all, we dated and within two or three months she's pregnant. Okay. Okay. So, you know, the alternative wasn't something I was okay with. I was Catholic.

And not that I'm saying there's anything wrong with that, but there are certain, there are certain reasons that I can say this is acceptable. You know, we're not broke. We're not, I'm not 15 years old and it's going to irrevocably destroy my life or change my life, let's say. So I can't use that. It's not incest. It's not right. You know, I had money. We'll get married, you know. And listen, you know it's bad when you start the marriage off with everybody you tell you're getting married. And this is how you tell them. I'm getting married. And if it doesn't work out, we'll get a divorce.

That's always that. That's not how you say it. You know it's doomed. And so it was doomed. And, you know, and we were both fairly young and we barely knew each other. And honestly, you know, I had a lot of money. I'm driving nice cars. I'm having sex with a couple of my mortgage brokers.

Oh, so you're cheating on it. Yeah. After, no. Within, she figured out, within about a year, she figured out she got a private investigator. He's following me around. She knows way too much. Did you know that there was a private She said no, I didn't until later. She told me later. Well, after we were divorced, she had told me. And it's funny, too, because I was dropping off my son one day and she had mentioned it because we were still friends. We still have a kid together. And she mentioned, I go, that's not true. And I go, that's not true. I go, milka. Her mom's milk. I go, milk. And she goes, it's true. And I was like, no. My God. She goes, yeah, she says, you're lucky. you only lost what you lost. She's like,

why did you start cheating? What was the catalyst on that? I mean, I think I was just young and arrogant and just, you know, it's so funny because I can't imagine, like I'm married now. Yeah. I can't imagine jeopardizing what I have now.

But I was such an asshole, bro. Like, even now you can see that I'm obnoxious. I'm slightly arrogant, you know, like, this is tame. This is tame. I was a complete jerk off. Yeah, it just didn't work out. And look, she got remarried.

She married a guy. Listen, she married the guy. She married a guy that had been in the military for life. She was like, he was like a Marine for like six years. He only got out because he had broken his wrist and couldn't do like some thing that they have to do. They were like, you can go to the Army. He was like, I'm not doing that. He gets out.

So we're talking about he was. He was also like 100% Puerto Rican. His whole family had been in the military. He had been in the military. He's been, was a Marine. I was like, you know, like, this is a perfect guy for her. Like, he's the only, she's the only one. who's going to put up with her.

What was the value of that real estate that she ended up getting at the time? Oh, it was, it was a million, million and a half worth, maybe more than that. And that's 20-something years ago? And how many units was it, you said? It was actually 54. The most we ever had at one time was 54. Was that not hard for you to stomach? Like, okay, all this work and all these units in a year.

So you thought, okay, I can get this back. Yeah. Well, that's, listen, that's nothing. I mean, I don't know that we'll get to it. But listen, I've walked away from tons of money just because it's like, look, you know, like I said, it's not the money. At this point, I've got all the money I need. Like, I've got money coming in. I'm paying my bills. I'm driving a fucking sports car. I've got two or three rental properties of my own. I've got a property. I'm renovating.

We got divorced and I owned a piece of property. And I should have moved back in with my parents, like I said, but just out of arrogance, I just said, you know, I'm not going to do that. I didn't want to be embarrassed in front of my father as more so than I'd already was embarrassed that now I'm a felon. That's when I decided to start making synthetic identities. that's when I started making there was no such thing as synthetic identities back then they were called

it was we called them phantom borrowers I don't even think the synthetic identities even came into it the term came into existence so probably five or ten years later when you were on probation did you know immediately okay I'm not done running scams yeah I would say roughly the same time maybe even months

beforehand I had already kind of started creating a synthetic identity was part of that because you didn't want to give up the lifestyle that you'd become I'm accustomed to, like driving a nice car, having a nice place, nice clothes. Yeah, definitely, definitely. You know, that was super important to it. This was maintaining the image initially.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. What was the car? And, you know, I had an Audi. I mean, I've had a few Audis and BMWs, but I remember at that point, I had like an Audi TT Quadro and they just come out. They was just a super cool. That was at 2004, I believe they came out? No, this was in 2000.

No, this was in 2001. 2001, 2002. I just realized that old. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, oh, this was like the first year came out. They were really sporting cars.

They were super cool, right? And I figured it. R8. Yeah. I remember my, my business partner was like six foot six. That guy, Dave Walker. He tried to get in at one time. And he looked like, and he looked like a clown cars, a little clown car.

Like his knees, like, it was so, it was hilarious. I used to have a Lotus Elise. So seeing people get in over six foot tall and they'd be there and their legs are like scrunched up there. You feel bad for him. Yeah. The first time I've ever felt. bad for somebody who's over a six-foot tall. Yeah, so anyway, I, that I had a property I was renovating in Ebor City, which is an area just outside of Tampa that was built back in the early 1900s,

cigar factories, right? Cubans would come and work to cigar factories and they would make all these, or then they had tons and tons of these old houses. What I decided to do was start creating fake people. The reason I did that was initially what I thought was, hey, look, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to start renovating properties. I'm starting, you know, rehabbing properties. properties. And, you know, because you could buy them for $50,000. You could buy rehab. If you put 25 in it, you could sell it for 100, 150, right? Maybe, let's say 100 within reason. Buy it for 50, put 25 in it, sell it. You make 25, but you don't really ever make 25, right? You still have carrying costs and everything. Probably have to give your, because the people in those

areas don't have good credit. So I'm probably going to have to give you your down payment. Maybe we get an FHA loan. Maybe, you know, have to give your down payment, pay your closing costs. You'll probably quit your job three days before closing. You know, that's the kind of stuff that these guys do. So I was like, you know, I'm going to buy these properties and renovate them. But then I also have to spend $25,000 or $30,000. I don't want to do that. So it was like, okay, how can I, what can I do here to make good money without having to go in and do the construction myself?

And I was already flipping properties. I've always been flipping something, you know. I decide I want to buy these properties. They will only appraise it between $100 to $150,000. how can I get them to appraise higher? And really, to be honest, like 100,000. How can I get them to appraise higher? Well, by that point, I was dating a chick at a title company.

And so I go to her and I say, look, how can I get, how can I buy a property for 50, get it to a, get the sale to show up at 200,000? And she was like, well, you can, you can pay the extra doc stamps. She said, because if you buy something for $100,000, you pay $700,000. in doc stamps like 0.007, 700 bucks. She was if you paid an extra 700, it'd show up for 200,000. So this is a stamp that they put on the documents? It's just the terms doc stamps. It's just a term.

It's like, let's say taxes. Yeah. If you pay $700 in taxes, that's, so let's say that. So I was like, okay, well, I'm buying these houses for 50, paying 350. So if I pay an extra $11.50, that $50,000 purchase will show up at $2,000. And it's more complicated than this because I would vary it. Obviously, some would be 210, 215. And wouldn't it affect property taxes or insurance or all these other costs because

they'd see a higher value that they would. Property taxes would be higher insurance would be higher. Once it got assessed, right? But I'm only keeping it for a few months, six months. Wouldn't they want that reassessment though? Because even for any properties I purchased, they've always gone back and said, okay, you pay the lower amount now, but then the year later you paid last years. Right.

But I don't own it. And I'm not buying it in my name. Okay. So I'm going in. So what I decide is I'm going to buy these houses for 50,000. I'm going to record the sales at 200,000. And that way, if I fix it up and sell it, then I can make a huge profit margin. But nobody's going to buy a house for 200,000 in Newport City back then.

So I thought, okay, then I need to get a straw buyer, right? A straw man, a fake person. Or let's say Graham's got perfect credit. Graham, we're going to go in to do this together. You're going to buy five houses. We're going to pull out 100,000 out of each houses and we'll split it. We're not to split it with a gram because most people will let for 250,000, most people will destroy their credit for that. They're like 250,000 in my pocket.

Yeah, I'll do that. Well, but I don't want to split it with him. And he's going to be a problem anyway. As soon as it goes bad, he's going to bitch and moan. What if he says something? No. So what I need to do is create my own borrowers. And so what I end up doing is I figured out, and I already knew how to do this because a customer had come in who had used her son's social security number and had built up credit under his name using her name and his social security number.

And she had perfect credit. So I knew that was possible. So what I did was I figured out how to go to social security and I convinced social security to issue me social security numbers for children that don't exist. So, you know, in the way I did that real quick is I just called them once. And at first I said, hey, you know, I forget how old I was then. Let's say 31. I'm 31 years old and I've never had a social security number. And they're like, that's not true.

Do you have a driver for license? Yes. Okay, do you have a social security number? Click. You know, then I call back, hey, you know, I was born. They were like, you were born in a hospital? I was like, yeah, they're like, you've got one. Hang out.

Then I said, hey, I was born with a midwife. and I never had one. Well, do you have a driver's license? Yes, you've got one. Damn it. You ever had a bank account? Yes. I'm like, yeah.

And then, you know, I tried to say all these different things. Then I figured, okay, who wouldn't, say, but there's no, somebody said there's no way you can get to be 30 years old and not have it. And get your driver's license, come down here. We'll look it up for you. What I want to do that. So I went, yeah, I'm too old. So I call back and I say, hey, listen, I got a three-year-old son. He was born with a midwife.

He never had a social security number issued to him. And they went, okay, well, come down here, bring your son, you know, fuck, hang up, call back. I say, I can't. He's in, you know, Columbia with my wife or wherever. She's going to have him there for the next year or two, but I need this to claim him on my taxes. And so they come back and they're like, the one woman, one woman says, yeah, oh, gosh, that's too bad. She goes, how old is he?

And I went, oh, he's three. And she goes, oh, that's too bad. I said, why? She's, well, if he was under 12 months old, you wouldn't, he would. would need to show up, you could just bring his birth certificate and his shot record. Yes. I hang back, hang up, call back. Hi, my son was born with a midwife. He's 10 months old. He's out of the country. How do I get a social security number? They said, oh, bring his birth certificate and his shot record. So I go online. I print out a shot record for Hillsborough County, vital statistics. They show you how to print one out.

They even fill it out. They have one that's an example of one that's filled out. So I just use the date of birth. right, that I just chose for this fictitious person. Then I made a fake birth certificate. I order the security paperwork. You know, one of those, you make a copy of it. It says void of copies. Like I make get that. It's multicolored.

You order like a thousand sheets of it. It comes. I end up coming up with a birth certificate. I go in to social security. I give him that, give him the shot record. They go, oh, that's so weird. Hold on. They check.

And they go, oh, wow, you're right. He doesn't have a social security number. They go, you'll have one. Here's your stuff back. They gave me a little printout that said almost nothing that I had ordered one or something. They said, you'll have one in 10 days. Sure enough, two weeks later, boom. Comes in the mail.

I got a social security number in a name that I just made up. What is a midwife? A midwife is a woman who usually goes to your house and assists with a birth at home because some people don't want to go to some religions, of course, they may not want to go to a hospital. But then some people in general, they don't want to pay $15,000 for what they've, or maybe they've already had a kid and they know I can have a kid by myself. I just need somebody to help. And a midwife is trained to help.

Kind of like a nurse for birthing. Interesting. And I only know that because I saw it on like 2020. It was like 2020 or 60 Minut ran an ad. Like, I don't know what a midwife is. I only knew that because I'd seen that. So what's the value in just having a social security number now? Because it's to a 10-month-old that doesn't exist.

Well, most people think that the credit bureaus know that social security number goes with this name and this date of birth. But they don't know that. They only know that when you tell. them the first time you applied for a credit card, you told them, my name is Jack, so-and-so, here's my social security number, here's my date of birth, here's my address. That creates a credit profile. If you'd given them the wrong social, or the wrong name, they would have created a profile in that wrong name. Now, of course, if you then changed it and gave them a different name, they would connect it because the social security number, the date of birth was the same.

And maybe even the address, and they'd say, ah, fraud alert, something's wrong, but I didn't. I said, you know, the name was, let's say, this wasn't the name, but let's say it was a Brandon Green, Social Security number, date of birth. And I said he's like a 31 year old guy. And it said, so I pulled the credit. I actually applied online for a credit card, denied. But the next time I applied, there was an inquiry. And keep mind, I can pull my own credit. So I can go to like network credit and I can pull the credit and see exactly what shows up. So I can see the inquiry that I just did online an hour ago. Or if I do. three, all three inquiries show up. So I'm like, now I know. So what I did was I got three secure, I would do that first, and then I would get three secured credit cards, 500 bucks, $800, $200, and I would make the minimum payments on those credit cards. And in six months, the credit bureaus automatically generate credit scores. So now you've got a 710 credit score, 605, whatever. And, you know, it worked like a charm. So what I, I had already been doing that when I started buying the properties and recording the values at 200,000.

By the time I was sentenced to three years paper, I already had people ready to go. So then I go out and I buy some properties for 50,000, record the values at 200. And I bought three or four of them. So for every appraisal subject property, you need three comparable sales within roughly, let's say, a mile that are sold within roughly a year. You know, they want six months. It happened, whatever. You know, one mile, one year. Well, keep in mind, I went into Ebor City and I bought this property that's 1,500 square feet, and this one that's 1750, and this one that's 1820, and this one is 1910.

I bought all those those within two or three, maybe within half a mile, we'll all within half a mile. Some of them literally you could stand on the porch and see that one and that one, and maybe another one's a half a mile away. And so I cleaned those properties up, bought them in different names, and then called an appraiser to come out and appraise the property, which by the way, the properties are gutted. So like, I'm just cleaning up the outside. The appraiser comes in. He looks at it and but he, because he does so many appraisals for my brokerage business or my old brokerage business, I tell him I'm renovating the property. We're just going to pull out some money and do the renovations. He's seen me do a bunch of flips. He goes ahead and does the appraisal. We pop some, some photos in of the inside of another house.

I get an appraisal for $210,000. I refinance it, get an 80% loan. So you get like, whatever. you know, $170,000 or something like that, right? 165, whatever it comes to. Get $165,000. I only have $50,000, not even that. I only have 50 or $60,000 in it. So I make $100,000 profit. So Brandon Green buys this property, or he refinances, he buys this property,

refinances, buys this property refinances, buys this property refinances it, buys five of them refinances it, gets about a million dollars with a mortgage, is pulls out $600,000. Then, of course, I run up his, by this point, I've got credit cards for five, for 10,000. You know, countrywide used to, if you put down like 10 grand immediately, but, I mean, we're talking about within two weeks, you've got a pre-approved $10,000 credit card. So it's like 100% financing, right? They're going to give it back to your credit.

So I got the credit cards. And then, of course, I turn around. I apply for credit cards. You get one for whatever, $15,000. Then, you know, then you know, then you're, you know, then your score starts to drop, then you go to, you get another one. It's, you know, $1,200 bucks. Then you go to Home Depot and you get a $500 credit card. And then you go to the gap and you get a $350 credit card. And then everybody's just denying you. But it doesn't matter.

You end up with $50,000 in credit cards. You, at the same time, I would go into multiple banks and I'd get personal loans for $15,000. So I go to Wachovia and get $15,000. I'd go to, I go to all these places and get $15,000. That's another $400,000. So I'm getting $100,000 and It's like $700,000. I make the payments on those houses for three or four months, and then I just stopped paying, you know? But you've got the money. Oh, I've got the money. I made the payment.

And keep in mind, too, they're not first payment defaults. And they've been sold three or four times by now to multiple different banks have bought these on the secondary market. But where is the money sitting? Different accounts. Under this guy. Right. So remember I said I could go in. I could take that ID and I could go in and get a bank account.

So I can put the money in his bank account or in my bank account. But then how does that money get from him to you? If it's in his bank account, then he could just write a check. It's me. I can write myself a check. I sign Brandon Green on Brandon Green's account. But isn't that too obvious, though? It is obvious and it is stupid.

I agree. I feel like I'm trying to start. It breaks down. But you also have to keep in mind, too, that I'm not thinking I'm going to get caught. Keep mind, I've been in the business, you know, whatever, three, four years at this point. Well, let's say two or three years at this point. And I've seen guys buy a house make four payments and it goes into foreclosure. And it's all fraud.

All your W-2 is fake, pay stubs. We faked your down payment. Everything's fake. You made three payments. You pulled out $50,000 and it went to foreclosure. Nobody came looking. So I've seen this happen over and over and over again. What I knew was a guarantee was as long as you make the first payment.

And keep in mind, too, because I am these people, I'm in control of them, I know when somebody's calling to re-verify their employment. I know when somebody's calling any of these phone numbers, nobody's calling. Like, you might have some creditors call after they're 90 days late or 60 days late, but that's all they're doing is calling. Nobody's showing up. Nobody's saying fraud. I mean, at this point, those files, the original files don't even exist. At this point, they've turned those files into just like a series of numbers. Like, it's now just, it's now just on a series of numbers on a ledger somewhere. Remember how during the financial crisis, people were getting their mortgages forgiven because they couldn't even find the original truth and lending. Those loans are gone,

even if they're warehouse somewhere. They're not with whoever the creditor is at this point. Now this is some guy in California calling some guy who he thinks works, you know, who's a laborer, he thinks he's a laborer or works for express tax services. They're calling from California to try and get in touch with this guy. They don't have the files. Maybe mortgage warehouse has the original file. They don't. So they're not looking for fraud. They just want you to pay. And if you don't pay, and you give them a reason why you're not paying. And that's what I would do. I would take an article for, let's say, like a 10 car pile up on I-75. Like there's a 10-car pile up. And someone was life-flighted to Tampa General Hospital. And I would take copy and paste that article. And I would put my guy's name

saying my guy, Brandon Green, was light, was in the crash. And he was life-flighted to Tampa General Hospital. And I would take, Amper General Hospital and he's in critical condition. I print the article out. I printed on newsprint. I'd cut it up and then make a copy of that. Then I'd write a letter from his sister, you know, Jennifer Green, saying my brother was in a car accident. He's currently in a coma.

The doctors say even if he wakes up, he'll never work again. Sorry about your loss. Go ahead and take the house. We're not going to fight it. And I would mail those to every single creditor that wrote a letter trying to collect. And they wouldn't double check. No. How are they even going to check? Couldn't there be like a death or hospital record? So I never wanted to do, I thought about doing a death certificate. He might did a birth certificate. My fear with a death certificate was like, I didn't know what they could do.

But I knew if he's sick or he lost his job or like, that's possible. Like the hospital's not going to say if you're there. They don't even know where he is. Like he could have gone to Tampa General. He could now be staying at, you know, whatever at St. Petersburg, you know, Baptist Hospital. Like, who knows? So they don't know. And they're not even if they could find out. So he is there. Okay. They're not getting your money.

They don't care. It's some person answering a phone one call after another. You've seen them with the headphones that we dials. They're like, look, I'm just trying to put what's in the file. The guy's not going to pay. Take the house. They take the house. They put it back on the market.

It doesn't sell. Three months later, they drop the price. It doesn't sell. Three months later, they drop the price. A year later, they're selling it for 90,000. And they're only selling it for 90,000. Because by that point, I've, I've driven the prices of the whole area.

So I did this to the tune. I did the FBI said I did 109 houses. I think that's not true. I think that's, I think they threw in some other properties in there that I didn't do this with, you know, just properties where I bought a property and I sold it to Graham or I sold it to you or whatever.

They just threw it in there, whatever. They said it was $11.5 million for that. And keep in mind, they also turned around and they investigated, this is when it all came came to a head they investigated my mortgage company and they said my mortgage company had done $40 million in fraud that I was attached to her for a conspiracy, right? Like you did some, you did some, but because I owned the place and I helped you, then I'm responsible. So at that point, so by the time it gets to around 11, you know, I've got multiple, I got a bunch of these guys going. I've got Brandon Green. I've got James Red. I've got

David Silver, I've got Lee Black. So I named them all. So there was a movie called Reservoir Dogs, which is a Quentin Tarantino movie, all of the guys that are involved in like this bank heist, no, but then of them know each other. So he, everybody has a nickname. So there's a guy named Mr. Pink, Mr. Black, Mr. Red, Mr. White. So I thought that was cute. So I put, you know, I got Michael White, Lee Black, you know, so I did all. So everybody's got a different name. How many in total? How many people did you create? So I didn't get to use them all. So let's say I could say 10 or 12, but I only, I didn't get to use all of them. I mean, if you said a million a piece, if you said it was 11 and a half million dollars, right, then there should be like 11 or 12

of them. But I don't, I didn't get to use all of them. Yeah. Can people still create fake identities using your method? Oh yeah. Yeah. And it happens. How is it still so, you know, simple. It's the same thing. It's like it's like to be. Right. But it's like fraud, right? Like, you know, they could make mortgage loans so that there's no fraud on a mortgage loan, right? But think about how difficult that would be. It would, like, it would slow the process down. It would make it so difficult. Almost nobody would be able to get a house. And you say, yeah, but it would only be qualified people. Yeah, but some people that aren't qualified get houses, lots of people that aren't qualified get houses. And they still make the payments. I guess in that case, too, even if they wanted you to bring in a

child, who's to say you could bring in someone else's a baby and be like, here's the baby. You can't speak or talk and, like, sleeping right now. But like, this is a kid. He could be five years old. He's still not going to do anything but sit there right you know you're not but yeah i wouldn't you know listen i'm already terrified i might get arrested i'm not walking in with my three-year-old son you know and you know saying shh don't don't say it you know just there's a certain line you know the bar's low it's low but there's still a right there's still a bar yeah it's like okay i'm not going to do that so you're making some pretty serious money with every fake person that you would create right but i'm also you know keep in mind too like i'm not making all of this money

because I have people helping me. So I have other people. I have mortgage brokers. I have partners that are getting the property. Like I got a real estate agent that's going and finding these houses that meet this criteria. And the houses keep getting more and more expensive. So we keep jacking up the price of the area too. You know, like I'm saying this.

You know, initially like we go to a guy. He wants a sales house for $60,000. And I'm like, he's like, nah, I want $75. I'm like, you had it listed for $60 like two months ago. He's like, yeah, I know. but I want 75 now. Oh, forget it. Three months later, you know, it's, we're, the area is drying up, right?

We're buying a lot of stuff. And now investors are coming and buying up stuff. Do we go back to the guy and go, I'll give you 75,000? He goes, yeah, I want 90. 90. 90. Two months ago, you wanted 75. And he's like, yeah, I want 90.

No, you're, yeah, it's not going to happen. I'm sorry. Yeah, good luck. A few months later, you come out. I'll give you 90. He's like, yeah, I want one 10. Where are you getting these prices from? He's like, have you seen what these properties are selling for?

That house over there sold for $230,000. Yeah, I know. I own that house. It sold for 50. I recorded it at 230. Do you see what I'm saying? Because I was creating all these comparables, people that had houses that weren't worth shit were now thinking they were worth something. Now they think it's worth $100,000.

It's worth 50. So I was working against myself. And Forbes.com ended up listing the Ebor City zip code, which is a 33605, as one of the, In 2003, they listed it as one of the top 20 fastest growing zip codes in the nation. So, I mean, I jacked up the price. You know, by the time I was done, it was around 300. Because by that point, we stopped doing single-family homes and we were doing like multifamily homes. We were doing triplexes, quadplex.

Those were recording like 500,000, 550. By that point, the FBI shows up. What tipped them off? Like, what were some of the flags that alerted them? All the properties that had gone into foreclosure. they never got tipped off, not once, right? So we're talking about whatever, 70, 80 of them at this point have gone into foreclosure. What year was this?

The 2000, late 2003. Okay. So I've been doing it for about 18 months to 20 months. And, you know, it was at like 11 and a half. And that's their number. You know, I don't know exactly what I don't know if it's more or less. Like I wasn't keeping tabs. So, and keep in mind, too, that money, everybody was like, where's that money?

Well, we were also building new, we were doing new construction. and we're buying lots. We probably had 100 vacant lots that we're buying. Because think about it, we've driven the prices up. We want to take advantage of it. Let's go ahead and build multifamily properties on these vacant lots. And that way we can pretty much get anybody in for nothing. And the other units pay their rent.

Did you ever have an unsuspecting buyer purchase one of your homes for like 200 and something grand? It was only worth 50? No. They were that bad. Okay. Like nobody's going to fall for that. Okay. The only people that might buy one like that.

is somebody where maybe you pulled so much money out of it for the guy and told him to renovated himself, which is kind of like what happened here. So I get to a point where I've saturated Ebor City. So I start to run a scam with a buddy of mine in Orlando. He buys a couple houses and renovates or refinances those houses. He gets a bank account. We're pulling money out of the bank account and cash. He's coming up every day. Every couple of days, he's pulling out money coming to me, giving me some money, making the payments on the houses. And then I start running another scam with a chick named Allison. And so she buys a house and she gets multiple mortgages on that house. But this guy's actually got multiple mortgages too. So now we're doing multiple mortgages.

So we're buying a house and then we're satisfying the loan on the house. So if I go to you and I say, hey, I love your house. Can you owner finance it to me? And you say, yeah, you own or finance it. So I give you 10 grand down. You owner finance $100,000 house. And you've got a mortgage on it. We then go downtown and we create a satisfaction of mortgage,

a fake document saying we've paid it off. We file that with the clerk of the court. And now your mortgage is no longer. It shows up, but it says we took a mortgage out, bought your house, you gave us a mortgage, and we paid it off. So if somebody else searches the house, they go, yes, he owns the house free and clear. he doesn't owe anything so when they get the title search it doesn't even say your talk about your

mortgage says he owns it free and clear notice that though the bank with the mortgage that something had been filed like like is there no alert on a property that would come up or it's like hey something was filed on the property that you have a mortgage on this is the mortgage was satisfied but nothing it's public records they record that's it they don't verify they don't double verify they don't notify anybody they record it in fact even if they buy believe there's a fraudulent document, but it looks, all the lines are filled out, they have to file it by law. They cannot, and they cannot investigate it. So here's something I was curious about is the due on sale clause with mortgages. So if I have this mortgage here and I sell the house to

Jack, my understanding is that the mortgager would have a do on sale clause that when the home closes, they get an alert and they know the home closes. They don't. They don't get up large. So theoretically, I could sell the house to Jack and just tell Jack, hey, take over my payments. I've done that. be late and they won't know no they'll never they would only know if they sent an abstracter down there to record the mortgage now of course they do it online they could go online and they could look but even then what's the likelihood that the banks going to for try and foreclose on him if he's making the payments now they technically they can right why would we most banks lose 20% of the value of of of their mortgage if they foreclose why would I foreclose he's making

the payments I'll wait till he doesn't make the payments now what if though you have a low mortgage at 3% wouldn't it be in their interest to say we want to get rid of this 3% loan get it off our books assuming they still own it but if if it's a 200,000 dollar mortgage and the house is worth 220 230 keep in mind they're not selling the house for 230 they're going to sell it for like 180 they're going to lose 20 grand so it's better just hey as long as they're making the payments somebody's making somebody's making the payments they don't care it's interesting because we had pace more beyond about a year and a half ago he was saying is due on sale clause that most of the time He's never had the bank.

He said one time. One time out of like hundreds. Yeah. Of properties. Which is unbelievable to me. I can't even imagine he had it once. Yeah. Yeah.

I can't listen. I literally had when I was on the run, I'll tell you this story real quick. Real quick. When I was on the run, I bought a house. So I, this is even funnier. I bought a house from this guy, Lauren, in the name of a fake person, right? Well, yeah. It was a homeless guy that I'll get to.

Anyway. We'll get there, guys. So I buy this house from this guy. And then he owner-fine. is it. He's actually got a mortgage on the house. So I do a wraparound mortgage, right? So I owe him $100,000. He owes the bank 95. So I then go downtown. I do a satisfaction of mortgage for Lauren and I do a satisfaction for the loan he has on it. I'm paying Lauren for like three months. He stops paying them. So he was going into bankruptcy. That's why he was selling the house. So he stops

paying. They start foreclosing on me. My name was Gary Sullivan. So I call him up. I'm like, bro, I've been paying you. What's going on? I'm in a foreclosure. And he's like, oh, I'm sorry, I'm going into bankruptcy. So I go down to the, it's a local bank like a credit union. I go down to their lawyer, the local lawyer. And I go in and I say, look, this is what's happening. I show him the paperwork and they know he doesn't own it anymore. They go, oh, you're Gary Sullivan.

I said, yeah. He said, you bought it from law. I said, yeah. And he said, he hasn't been paid. He's been having troubles for a while. He said, okay, well, can you? And I'm like, how can I reinstate the mortgage? And he comes back.

is give me $3,700. So I can whatever, it's $3,700 and change, boom. And he says, okay, I said, well, look, how can I keep this from happening again? He said, give me your address. We're going to have them just send you all the payments from here on out. It'll still be in Lauren's name, but you just make the payments, you'll be fine. Wow. Why didn't they foreclose?

They had a due on sale clause. It was in foreclosure. They knew 100% what had happened. So I'm so confused because in this market, why couldn't sellers just say, hey, you take over my payment? and 99% of the time, we're going to be fine. And that way, a new buyer just takes over the existing payment. I know it's still going to be in their name. So if they default on that, it's still up to you.

Yeah, but that's a subject to, that's a subject to mortgage, right? You're buying the house subject to the mortgage. Right. That's what it's called. And it happens, maybe not all the time, but it does happen. And I've never seen any lender ever say, hey, you're not the person. and we lent the money to, we want the house back, we're going to foreclose. I'm making the payments. I'm making the payments. Like, I have a hard, I have a hard time

believing you're going to go in front of a judge. And I'm making the payments on this house for six months. And you're going to convince a judge to foreclose on me on a house I'm paying on. I don't know that that's possible. And I don't know why they would do it. Why do they want to do it? You know, maybe, I see, I don't think the banks make those types of decisions because I don't think there's somebody laying in bed thinking, if we foreclose on this property, there's so much equity there. We could make $80,000. I don't think that. It's just a number. It's a process. They don't care. That's so interesting. It's a great, it's a moneymaking opportunity. When the market's down and people start going into foreclosure, you can go look for those foreclosures and say, look, I'll catch your

payments up. And you just, you leave, I'll catch your payments up. And then you rent the property out. Well, I'm thinking more of the times of now where if I were to sell this house, my mortgage would go from like 2.8 to 7%. And so for a buyer who's buying this house to be able to pay a 2.8, not that I would do this, but I'm just hypothetically, you know, if the buyer pays a 2.8 saves, you know, an extra 6% on Oh, yeah, yeah, that would be 5%. Right. It's huge.

Right. I was actually going to say someone in this market can probably already qualify for that loan, but you're right, they're not going to get that interest rate. Yeah. So I can see that. See, I was thinking someone's going to foreclosure. You catch their payment up because really how. how I deal with, never mind, how I do this person is going to foreclosure, you catch their payment up,

and then you just go list the property. You say, look, I've got $6,000 into catching their payment up. You go list that property. You go make flyers and go to an urban club and say, an urban club, and you say, hey, for $20,000, you can take over these payments. I'll take $20,000 in cash. Some guy's going to come, you old man, what's up? I got you $20,000 in cash. You take the $20,000 in cash. You say, your payment booklet you transfer the deed into his name run with it you just made 20 well you got 20 plus the 60 he just made 14,000 dollars he'll never qualify for a loan he's a drug dealer right so not that that's a good idea but it's not not in this but really not in this market because it's not really there yet right a year from now when things start going south you know because you know how many guys

I've known that they have some, some, they've got a woman who rents a house for them because they can't even get, they can't even rent a property. Like you're a drug dealer. You cannot even get into a decent piece of property. You have to have your, some friend of a friend's girlfriend rent the property. And then you move in it and you, you know, you pay the rent. But it sucks for them too. Like they can't, they can't put in hardwood floors.

They can't paint it. They can't do anything. Well, this is your house. But I need 20 grand in cash or 30 grand or 40 grand in cash. And you are only in that position. And they don't even care if they're up. upside down. Even if they were 20 grand upside down, they don't care. They own the house. It's your house. You'll never own one. So you're upside down. Two years from now you won't be. Six years you won't be.

25 years, because you don't even have a 30 year mortgage. You got maybe a 22 years left on the mortgage. Maybe 25. 25 years. You own the house. I saw that idea, right? Like, they do that. I can definitely talk something in that. Holy shit. You don't have to be at the airport at 7.30. Oh. Oh, is it set to Easter? This is what happened with Lack by the way. When we were done here, you know what? Let me run into the bathroom. Yeah, go for it. We took a break. We took two breaks.

We took two breaks. And then when we were done, he's like, how long do you think we've been talking? I went, oh, man, I said three, three and a half hours. You got seven and a half hours. He trimmed it to six and a half. He cut out an hour? He cut out an hour. Do you?

I mean, I was what? My wife was waiting in the lobby. She'd gone to get lunch. She'd walked on the beach. I had shut my phone off. She went and got in the back of the car. and fell asleep. I thought she's,

that's it. It's over. It's over. And it's funny. Afterwards, he was like, listen, he said, um, would you mind if I mentioned your name to Rogan?

I go, does anybody say no to that? And that's funny. Because I just think you guys would have a great conversation. I think so too. He would find you fascinating. I was like,

right. But the truth is, I know that people have already mentioned me to Rogan. He actually, Rogan watched my soft white underbelly. Yeah. And talked about it on his show. Didn't say,

name you just said I watched this one of a con man on soft white underbell. Well, I'm the only guy. At that time, I was the only guy. Right. And, you know, had Mark on. And it's just, I think two or three people have mentioned him. I know hundreds of people have told them in the comment section and stuff. So I know they've heard my name. They get inundated, obviously. And it's just, I'm pretty sure at some point. And I know Lex mentioned to me. And I've never heard anything. So because people are like, bro, you got to go on on, on Joe Rogan. But it's just not going to happen. You know, which, Let's face it, like, I've had a great run. Like, honestly, a few months, but the last few months of my prison term, I laid in bed every night and thought, how are you going to make a living? Anybody that looks you up, it just says scumbag, scumbag. Like, I was, honestly, we've told you, what's the chances of you living in someone's spare room and just writing true crime books the rest of your life? I just said 90%.

And I thought maybe I'll get frustrated at some point and I'll go get a job. after probation selling cars or maybe working for a development company or maybe like and then I got out and I mean what a 180 flip though it seems like that humbled you a lot the prison experience because you said you're like struggled with arrogance if you watch the the whole podcast with Lex like there are certain things that if I even think about I'll I'll immediately tear up you know and honestly like the appreciation and humility that I suffer from is so, I'm so disgusted with myself. Even though honestly, it's not even, it should be that, you know, I took this guy's

house and I threw him into turmoil. He had to go get a lawyer to get his fucking house back to clear that. Like, I should be upset about that. But, you know, I'm not. That's where I'm like, I'm sociopathic. My opinion, you know, people say, oh, I don't care what people think. Like, your opinion of me means about as much as that. fucking furniture's opinion

to me. Like it really is, I don't, like when I hear people get embarrassed or upset because so-and-so says that I don't even understand it. The anger and when people say in the comment section, like, it doesn't affect me at all. I laugh. Were you always like that? I think I've always been like

that. But so but when I think about the person I was and my behavior and how I thought, and even still today, at least now I can see it. Listen, bro, I lived in someone's spare room for 18 months. And I was happy. I have been happier with virtually nothing now than I ever was when I had a million,

$2 million in the bank and a shitload of friends that didn't give a fuck about me. Not one of those people cared about me. The only people that came to prison to see me was people that I'd never done anything for. High school friends, guys that I had met, you know, that used to make it do with air conditioning for me, some guy that I met one time. Like, those are the the people that kept in touch with those. I can never help this guy do anything. You know, this guy, I made him a million dollars. He didn't go to prison. He didn't have any problems. He made a million dollars. This guy has three million dollars worth of properties. He's still collecting money on. He never did anything, never answered my phone calls, never wrote me a letter, never returned

a letter. Why do you think that is? I don't know. And I, you know, I would love to say because they're all scumbags, but the truth is the only correlation between any of them is me. So it can't be them because if everybody says you're an asshole you're probably an asshole 50 people say you're an asshole at some point you have to say I'm probably an asshole and nobody wants to believe that about themselves so I just think it's so funny too because the friends I have now are all friends I I knew in prison and it's funny because did you ever see the town is that a horror movie no it's a it's a bunch of bank robbers and Ben Affleck goes oh I did with the masks yeah yeah yeah Ben Affleck goes to one of his buddies and he goes, listen, I need your help.

He goes, I need your help. You can't ask me what it's about and we're going to hurt some people. And the guy goes, whose car are we going to take? And those are my friends now. If I said it's 2 o'clock in the morning, get out of your fucking bed, I need to move right now. They would say, I'm getting my car. That's it. I didn't have any of those friends before because the people I thought were my friends

weren't my friends and now these people that that are honestly, you know, horrible people. They've done horrible things. My buddy Pete does podcasts with me. I have another, they never asked me for money. They never say, hey, can you pay me back for this? Can you reimburse me for it? Never. And I don't think any of my other friends ever did a fucking thing for me without want to know what they were, what was in it for them. I got out of prison and was extremely humbling and I'd never been humbled like that before. And I'd never been appreciative of anything I'd ever done in my life ever. I deserved it. I'm Matt. Cox, bro. I mean, I deserve this. I'm amazing. That's what I thought. So when you get out and you think

you're going to live in someone's spare room for the rest of your life and take the bus, everything started falling in place. Everything. Not because I'm brilliant, but just coincidentally, hey, Matt, you're talking about doing a true crime podcast. Yeah, but I don't really know what that is because YouTube wasn't even around when I went into prison. And the word podcast was, I wasn't even invented it until 2009. I'd been locked up for two or three years. So by the time I get out, I've heard about it. And I got a buddy who says,

there's a guy that lives in St. Pete down the street from me. His name's Danny. He has a podcast. You should call him. Ask it. He'll probably answer some questions. He talks to guys, he talks to this guy, Ben Mala's on his program all the time. You know, he'll probably want you.

He doesn't want me. I just got out of prison for fraud. So I go. I call Danny. I emailed Danny. Danny called me. We talked in the phone for an hour. I bugged him for the next three or four months while I was in the halfway house.

And then one day he calls me, says, listen, man, I have an issue, at a problem. I haven't had anybody in the program in two weeks. I'm running out of content. I'd have to interview somebody. You said, if I answered your questions, you'd come on the podcast at some point. And I was like, fuck, I did say that. So I said, all right, all right. And I drove over there and I did the podcast.

The next thing, you know, Patrick Bet David's calling me. Can I fly you out to here, you know, to Houston. He lived in Texas at that time. Now he's in Florida. And then the next thing you know, Vlad's calling me. And then the next thing you know, I'm going to L.A.

and I'm doing this one and this one. And that's it. And the next thing you know, somebody's saying, hey, can you come to Puerto Rico and have lunch with me and a couple investors? We'll give you a couple of grand.

And fly you out, of course. Why? Because we saw your thing and you're amazing and we think that you've got great insight and your story is inspiring. I just got out of prison. I live in this chick's spare room.

She's running out running a rooming house. In the next spare room is a cop. Like, what are you talking about? And they give me a couple grand. And then two months later, I phone out and here. If you'll do a speech, you know, we'll give you $5,500. And then $8,000 and then $3,500. And then I'm doing speaking engagements.

And I'm like, what is happening? And then I publish my book and my book starts selling. And then I start the podcast. And then, you know, Colby, you know, that guy, bro, like, I would never tell him this. But I joke about it with him, but you know, fucking listen. And every once in a while, I'll have some somebody, because our deal right now, guys, people will say, like, bro, you're paying him way too much, way too much, right? And but I made an agreement. And I don't think I could have gotten anybody.

He didn't have to work for a year. He only worked for about three months before he hit the two grand. But I know Colby and he'd a fucking work for now. nothing for a year. So, so if you have an agreement, you have an agreement, then, you know, I'm always got to feel obligated to him because I don't think anybody else would have done it. I also drive him nuts, you know, I genuinely. What do you think Kobe saw on you in the very beginning? Why did he say yes to you? He looked at the analytics. I don't know. Look, I'll tell you one. Yeah. Which is probably, you know,

an issue. Well, not an issue. It's probably wrong on people's part for the most part, you know. But for some reason, despite my past, people just believe me. If I tell you this is what's going to happen, boom, boom, boom, boom, they believe me. I don't know why I just got out of prison. I got fucking 40 felonies. I mean, I got felonies you don't even know. You can't even, you don't even know what they are. But yet I talked to him.

I explained the situation. And, oh, well, I mean, I did do certain things. And I did all these things that he didn't ask for. If I'd said, hey, I want all the money to come to me, but I didn't. I said, you're going to have to go set up a corporation and you're going to open an account and all the money is going to go to you. And I said, and I'm doing that because I want you to feel comfortable that you're going to get paid. And he's, well, no, I'm sure you'll pay me. I said, yeah, I know, but I'd feel better not having you doubt that.

And it still took them, I think, like a month or two to do it. You know, I think he looked at the analytics and we talked and he saw and he said, hey, I think you could have something here. Like you're putting up nothing and you're making, you're making 300 bucks right now, you know. And he's like, I think if you actually interviewed people, you'd be great.

And I've seen some of your podcasts and they're great. You know, and it did. It's worked out really, really well. We did it for what? About two years before it, last year and a half like that is paying all my bills and then some.

You know, I'm waiting. You know, I, like everything's going great. everything's going great. So, yeah, I'm, yeah, I don't, I think it was just prison was such a humbling experience that, you know, that I absolutely deserved and had coming. I don't think I deserve 26 years, but I definitely deserved to go to prison.

How did you get to the point of prison? Oh, I'm sorry. Because as of right now, through our story, you had not quite gotten caught yet. I think they had just gotten their suspicions. You created these fake identities. Remember I had somebody in Orlando and I had somebody in, I think it was Clearwater. I'm in Tampa and they're running scams. Well, the girl that was doing the scam in Clearwater, her name was Allison.

And great scam. We refinanced the property several times. She goes into a closing. I'd had her change her hair because she was Rosita Perez. and so she had she dyed her hair black right her hair was well lighter than either one of your hair right lighter than mine but she died it black and took a photo i make a fake ID goes into one closing fine no problem gets to get to check for like a hundred grand and then goes to the next closing signs little paperwork but the woman the closing agent looked at her ID and said this doesn't look like you now keep in mind a couple days before she had changed her

back to being light brown with highlights. But it was still her photo. Does that make sense? Yeah. It's still her. So she said it just doesn't look like you. You don't look like a Rosita Perez. And even though Allison actually said that she called another closing agent into the room.

And she looked at it and she goes, yeah, that's her. She says, no, something's not right. She said, I'm going to let you close. I'm not going to give you a check. She said, I will, I'll let you know. I'm going to make some phone calls. She made some phone calls and contacted. I don't even know, to be honest,

exactly what she did, but she got to the original owner and realized there was a mortgage on the property. And, of course, we'd satisfy that loan. So it very quickly comes unraveled. Somebody pulls their credit. They see a bunch of inquiries. They start making phone calls. They find out she's had another closing.

and they put a flag on the check we have. So Allison comes out, she tells me what just happened. What's the scam exactly? It's just multiple closing, so you're getting... Right, the scam is she went and rented a house. We satisfy his loan on the house that he has with his bank. And then the deed, we just transfer the deed, right? I just make a new deed, file it.

It looks like he sold her the house for $200,000. She then borrows multiple mortgage. One of them goes through. She gets a check. The next one, she doesn't get the check. So she then gets in my car. We're driving. She's like, this is what just happened.

I'm like, oh, that's done. That's over. And she's like, no, no, no, we still have the one check. I said, yeah, but we're not moving forward with it. It's over, you know? And I get her point of view is she didn't have any money. Like, she's going to get half this money. And so she's like, no, no, no, no, we can go give it to Travis, which was my buddy who was doing the one in Orlando.

And so we called Travis. I explained what's going on. He was, okay, so you think the check's good? I said, no, I don't think the check is good. But keep in mind, I've got money. It's easy to be cocky when you've got money. So I'm saying, tell him, no, no, no. And he goes, man, listen, I'm cool.

I'll deposit it. It's not going to be a problem. He was, I remember he told me. He was, man, you're shaking like a little girl. He said, calm down. I said, oh, I don't think it's okay. He deposits the check four or five days later. It used to be, took, like, four or five days for a check to clear.

So she had endorsed it. and he'd signed it. So four or five days later, I called him. I said, hey, what's going on? And he says, listen, I was going to stop by and get money from the bank, but the bank manager called me and he told me that they needed me to endorse the check also because it's over $100,000. And I thought that's not something's wrong. Something's wrong with that. I've deposited many, many checks for over $100,000 in someone else's name.

And they never had to see anybody sign. So I said something's wrong. don't go back to the bank. And he goes, no, I'm pulling in right now. There's nobody here. There's no cops. He pulls in. He hangs up the phone.

He goes in. He gets arrested. I go get him an attorney. I get him out. But I didn't get, I didn't go. Like, I gave it to his brother-in-law. You can go. Here's the money.

So get him out on bond the next day. Get him an attorney. Listen, and I mean, this guy, he worked me pretty good. Because like, literally he's like, look, I don't, obviously I can't do this anymore, but I want to open up a business. It's going to cost $25,000. Of course, of course, Travis. Here's $25,000.

You're just giving him this money? Of course. He just arrested. My fear is he's going to cooperate. Yeah. So you don't want to do anything fraudulent. I totally get that. I don't want you to.

You're already in trouble. Just keep my name out of your mouth. Don't say, don't. Were you afraid of a wire, though, of saying anything that you wouldn't want them to know about? I mean. It seems like that's a very just like a let's meet in person. Lift up your shirt. Yeah.

I mean, there may have been some of that. I don't recall exactly, but I wasn't too too concerned, although he probably was wired. But keep in mind, too, I'm not, I don't have to be too too concerned because all he's got to do is open his mouth and I'm done. Yeah. So I give him 25 grand. I buy him a truck. I get him a buoy. He starts like a tree trimming business, which he runs to this day.

I'm paying his rent. I'm paying his electric. He's coming in every week or so saying, listen, I hate to ask you. I need $1,500 for this. Of course you do, Travis. I'm embarrassed that you had to ask. I should have offered my bad. Here's your money is the money.

Do not mention my name to them. Keep in mind, he's being told he's telling me what his lawyer's telling him is that he's not going to have to go to jail. If he does, maybe six months. And I was like, that's fine. I'll maintain everything you have for as long as you're in jail. But the truth is, he got arrested. And the next day he met with the detectives and was cooperating.

and they put together a task force because it's multiple counties. So multiple counties, now I'm running them, running scams and multiple counties. So multiple counties get together. They put together a task force. This goes on for months. I'm still committing fraud. One day, and there's all kinds of stuff that happened, right? Like I, this would be forever.

So one day I, a police officer that I know, a sheriff's deputy comes in my office, This is his name is Steve Sutton. He walks in. He says, he says, hey, Matt, can I talk to you? And I'm like, yeah, what's up? I remember he was completely dressed. And I was like, yeah, what's up? And he said, I used to date this woman on the Tampa Police Department.

I said, okay. He said, she's a detective. And she was on a task force over the last few months. And I went, all right? He said, they just handed over the task force to the FBI. He said, all right? He said, the task force was on you. And he said, do you know somebody who was arrested in Orlando?

out. And I'm like, yeah. He said, okay, she came and told me not to talk to you because the FBI is probably going to come arrest you in a few days. You're already on probation. His name came up because he'd bought a bunch of properties from me. Right. So, and he bought some properties from some of the fake people, right? Like, we refinanced it and then he just took over the mortgage, that kind of thing. Because he thought, hey, I can turn this. I can make this into something. We gave him a little bit of money like they're not all going in foreclosure necessarily um or whatever or he's we bought a property from him that so his name is in one or two transactions so plus i'd done about a million at least a million and between he and his ex-wife two million dollars worth of so he knew what was

going on oh yeah he totally listen his ex-wife bought i want to say eight owner-occupied duplexes we close within a day wow okay so it's a quick question you keep naming these people first and last. Right. Like have all of these people gone down or does any party, no, does, do you consider like, okay, well, you know, maybe. No, but keep in mind too, like, I've reached out to Steve Sutton. I've never heard from him. I got no loyalty to you. Steve Sutton used to work at the Hillsborough County, uh, as a sheriff. He actually is listed all my indictment. As an unnamed co-conspirators, it's just, it's just, um, SS or something. Yeah, yeah, exactly. S. I know who that is. You know, like it, like, they'd be like DW, Dave Walker. My Dave Walker's dead.

by the way, which is sad because I always liked Dave. Even though he never contacted me when I was locked up, just a prick thing to do. Even though I wrote him letters, never responded. But I did like Dave. Dave actually died like two weeks before I went to the halfway house. He was never in good shape. He was an older guy.

He was always in his late 60th by the time I got out. And then other people like I've seen out and I've been like, hey, what's going on? Kelly Bailey. Like I said, a ton of bad loans and knew all of them were. fraudulent and actually still works to this day as a broker in Tampa. I see her one time. I'm like, Kelly, hey, and I'm hanging out with another guy I know. And he's like, hey, look, it's Matt.

And she's like, she goes, hey, and turn around and walked away. Listen, sister, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like, you could have been in prison. You should have gone to prison. She wouldn't have done much time. She'd have gotten a couple years. But do you see what I'm saying?

It's like just because you had the veil of, legitimacy doesn't mean. And then it's funny too because I've had people say, yeah, bro, you throw the name. Aren't you afraid about, aren't you afraid of being sued? Sue me. I'd love to be sued. I'll pull out the documents to show that everything I'm showing is 100% true. I'll probably get some people in the St. Pete Times or Tampa Tribune to write an article about it. Now you're really be fucked. So nobody ever says anything. And you know that like if I was saying negative things, if I was saying completely wrong things about Graham, Graham would probably sue me. You need to shut up because this is all not correct, but whatever thing I'm saying, 100% true.

So you don't hear anything. Interesting. So the police officer was tipping you off because he was somewhat involved in to a certain degree. He did want to protect you a little bit. He did. Yeah, which is funny. That's what bothers me because I liked Steve. You know, we would go to Steve.

We were overall. Steve was a good boy. So he shows him he's like, you know, Matt, like, what I don't know what's going to happen. What should I do? I said, bro, just if they ask you, tell them you came to me. I'm a mortgage broker. You asked me to do a loan. I did a loan.

Like how you don't know anything. It seems like you're talking to all these people that could be wearing wires. Yeah, I'm pretty much done. I know I'm done. Okay. You know, I'm deeply. I'm already on probation. Like, this is not going to go over well in front of the, in front of my, my judge.

Like, he didn't seem happy when he gave me the three years. And I've just stolen $11.5 million while on federal probation. Like, it's not going to end well for me. Steve's like, what are you going to do? And I said, oh, I'm leaving. I'm leaving. I'm saying, I said, do you heard me say, I was like, I can't go to prison.

Look at me. I'm adorable. And this is 20 years ago. To a guy with a life sentence, I might as well be wearing a dress. I have blonde hair, fair skin. No, I can't go to prison. So I saw Shawshank. You saw what happened.

That dude's six foot two. So I take off on the run. And with a girl that I was dating. What's it like to be on the run? Like, how do you decide to pick up in the leave? Could you have done that? Just like, you get home and you like stuff a suitcase. You're like, we've got to go right now.

That's exactly what I did. I was the girl I was dating shows up and I'm stuffing a couple of duffel bags full of clothes and money because I probably had you know I had about 80 grand at that point so in cash so I'm stuffing it in there she comes shows up because I hadn't we were supposed to go on on a date like Friday night and I had hadn't called her all day and returned a call and she said she showed up came by my house all my car walked inside and I just turned around told her she was what's It's going, what's going on? I just told her, boom, this is what's happening. And I'd only been dating her a couple months, right? Not even six weeks. He felt like you could trust her? I didn't feel like I could trust her.

But nobody I tell right now is going to say, I'm calling the cops right now. They're just going to be like, oh, wow, you got some problems and leave. That's not what she says. She says, well, I want to come with you. And I was like, well, we don't even know each other. She's like, no, you don't understand. I think I'm in love with you. I want to come with you.

I was like, okay, well, I don't think this is ever going to become love for me. I was like and honestly I have my own set of problems you know and I always look back like it was such a huge mistake to bring her with me. Why didn't you just lie to her and tell her, hey, I'm rethinking this relationship. We got to break up. Yeah, we got to break up. I'm in love with somebody else. I'm moving out.

Like it's just some story to get her. In retrospect, that's a good idea, right? But you know, you know how many things I'd change. Yeah. You know, it was, look, if that's the only stupid decision that you think I've made. made. You're missing a whole bunch of stuff. Okay.

So, and I remember her art, part of our argument was, listen, I'm, you're going to go and you're going to steal a bunch of money, right? I was like, yeah. And she said, okay, well, I could help you. And I was, and the thing is, look, like, most people can't up and just leave. That's why guys, you'll give them 10 years in prison and they'll turn themselves in at the gate. Like, they'll be released and they'll show up two months later when they're like, okay, well,

you got 10 years in prison. show up on May 13th and they'll be there. Like you're gonna go, did you just show up to get 10 years? You're getting 10 years. You get me 10 years. You're gonna have to come catch me. Like, I'm not showing up the fucking prison.

Doesn't that make your sentence worse? Or no. Not really. You got sentenced. They might, they might. If the prosecutor's pissed, he might charge you and you get a couple of years.

But you're already doing 10. Listen, I know guys that have left prison and got caught after they've escaped. They got from like a camp. So they don't call it escape. They call it absconding. They get caught and they lose like 30 days game time or good time. Like they don't even recharge them.

And I know multiple people. I knew one guy that got caught in like Italy or Spain and they just put him on a plane, flew him back. He lost, listen, he lost like 34 days good time. Oh my gosh. And two months later, he got caught stealing some two or three pieces of bread out of the chow hall and they took away 54 days. 30 for the escape. He was gone for a year and a half. A year and a half.

Yeah. But for the bread, he got four. And I've known other guys, people in the comment will say like, oh, I knew a guy and he escaped and he got an extra year added on or two years. You know, that does happen. It just depends. So often, though, is that the people escape and they're never caught. I doubt. I mean, I think most 99% of the time they get caught. Most people don't, you know, this is going to sound angry. Most people don't have my skill set. Keep my, by this point, I've figured out how to go into the DMV as Graham Steffen. and get a driver's license issued as Graham Steffen in the state of Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Texas, you name it. I've had 27 driver's licenses issued to me in seven different states. I would get tickets as people. I've gone to traffic school as somebody else.

I got so many tickets in the guy's name because you drive like a maniac when you don't care about the points. So what happens is I talk to this girl. We run up my credit cards, of course. You know, I don't want to leave any money on the table. So I run up my American Express for 30 or 40 grand. We're buying. I go get another Audi.

I get like an Audi, I think it's an Audi A8 or something. It was a Fordor. Is that wrong? What's the four door? Like it's a big, it's got like 400. The four, the six, the eight. Right. It could be.

You do all of this as Matt Cox. Yeah, I do. But I get a paper plate. It's funny. They're like, oh, we're going to transfer your tag. I said, no, I want a dealer plate because I know I got 30 days. And it only comes back to the dealer. So we do that.

we pack that car so full of stuff. I got multiple computers. Like, I don't want to spend the cash I have. Now, we've got probably, we got a ton of stuff in real estate and we've probably got a million or so in the bank, but I couldn't get it out in time. You can't just walk in and say I want $100,000. They won't give it to you. So I had to have people going and ask for $5,000, $3,000, $7,000.

On five or six different bank accounts, we could only get, I only had a day, a day in a couple hours to get out $80,000. So that's what I get $80,000, run up my credit cards, and on Sunday night, I leave. I go immediately to Atlanta. We rent a house from a guy named Michael Eckert. It was like a $200,000 house. I make an ID as Michael Eckert, so I'm Michael Eckert now. I go downtown and I satisfy the loan.

He had two loans with Bank of America on the house, so I satisfied both of those. And he didn't know about this. Oh, no. He just made the mistake of renting to me. And so basically, the city is under the impression or whatever. Like, the loan bureaus are under the impression that the loan has been satisfied. Although it actually hasn't. And then you could borrow against it, basically.

Because what happens is when you go, if I have a loan from Wells Fargo and they have a lien on my house and I create a fake satisfaction of lien from Wells Fargo, it looks just like Wells Fargo. And I record it. Now, they mail it back to Wells Fargo. But you have to understand if you pulled 50 Wells Fargo liens, there'd be 50 different addresses of where they go. They have so many different departments, so many different banks, so many different. Like they don't all go. Like they get recorded. and they mail them back, but they don't all go the same place.

So when I record that satisfaction of mortgage, I just put an address to some abandoned house or to a UPS or to a PO box or to whatever. They mail it back. They record it. They mail it back. Wells Fargo never gets that. So they think their mortgage is still on the house. So then if I go and I apply for a loan with Bank of America, they send an abstractor down there.

I mean, really is the title company, but for simplicity's sake, an abstract. an abstractor goes down, they look at the title. They say, oh, look, this person bought this house, had a mortgage, paid it off. So I'm going to create an abstraction report, a title report that says that John Doe owns the house free and clear. So when Bank of America gets to, they go, oh, look, he owns a house free and clear. Yes, we'll lend him $150,000 on the house. But really, I have a $200,000 mortgage with Wells Fargo or whoever. It's still they should.

It's just not there. anymore. What I do is I go to Michael Eckert. I rent a house from him. I go satisfy his two loans with Bank of America. I then call, because Michael Eckert has, like, even though I use a different social security number for him, I didn't use his, obviously, I don't have it. So I create a profile for him. I got a couple of credit cards as him, but I didn't have six months through the credit score. So you don't really have anything, right? I call a couple, three hard money lenders. Each one of them comes out to the house. And I got a couple of them. And I They look at the house. They go, yeah, it's worth about 200,000. And what do you want to do? I said, I want to borrow $150,000. And they go, I'll lend you $150, sir. So then I close on the following Monday with one, Tuesday with the next guy, and maybe later Tuesday that day with the next guy.

So within a day or two of each other, I close with all of them. They're going to prepare the documents. And then the title company is going to prepare the documents and mail those documents, those mortgages to public records. So it's going to take a few days for those to show up. And even when they show up, they just record them. Nobody at Public Records goes, hey, wait a second, there's three mortgages on this house. You can have three mortgages. You can have a first mortgage, a he-lock, a second mortgage.

Doesn't each loan say it's going to be the first mortgage? The actual document doesn't. The placement of it, the title company promises you with the title policy that you'll be first. The document's just a mortgage. So there's nothing that's going to say, like, who do we put his first, who's second, who's I don't know what it is now, but it wasn't then. It was just a lien. Okay.

Right. So because let's face it, if it's a second lien and then they pay off the first, it becomes, that second is now the first. All right. So I do this. I close within a couple days. I get roughly 400, $450,000, let's say, on those, on that. I take that money. I deposit into the bank.

By this point, I've now got a few real IDs and real bank accounts. And I, um, I start pulling that money out in cash. Like there's no cryptocurrency. There's no, you know, I don't know what I probably, now I realize I probably could have gone and bought diamonds immediately or gold or something. I didn't know. I don't know any of that. I did go to prison to learn all that.

So what I do is I know cash, get cash out. So I've got multiple IDs. Becky has multiple IDs and we're just going into different bank accounts, cash and and checks, $6,000, $8,000. And if she cashed a check for $6,000 on my account, then the bank says, hold on a second. Like, this is a new account. This is weird. guy's got 100,000 in the account.

Somebody's pulled out money two days in a row. So what do they do? They call me. Hi, we have somebody trying to cash a check for $6,000. Like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's Rebecca so-and-so. She's, oh, okay, they cash it. It's not like I'm stealing money out of a real person.

I open the account and put the money there. They have nobody to call. So we do that. We get, whatever, $400,000,000 out of the bank. We buy a new car. We've obviously already bought. By this point, we've got a new car. We took that car, the Audi.

We left it at a police substation in the parking lot. So somebody, I'm sure, got that. So we get the money out. Why not just keep the money? You have like, let's say 500 grand and just say, we could start a legitimate business on this, make sure everyone's paid every month. And we got a lot of money to work with. Right. But keep in mind that I've also, at some point, those mortgages are going to go into foreclosure.

Michael Eckert is going to figure it out. they're going to track the money. So at some point, I have to take it all out in cash. Okay. I can put it back somewhere. But right now, I can't. I need to get it out in cash. So I get that money out in cash while I'm getting it out in cash.

You know, there's multiple times when I got stopped. I got questioned. I actually one time went into a bank and I was in the bank and the guy, he actually, it was trying to cash a check for $29,000, which was stupid. I was always under the $10,000. At one time I got frustrated. It was like, I'm just going to cash this one for $29. And I actually went to a cash transaction bank where they can do large.

And we went there and I tried to get them to give me a $29 grand, I'm sure, you know. And they questioned me. Like they were really, it was under the name Scott Cugno. And so I'm trying to cash to check. And they were like, well, what do you need the cash for? You know, why don't you deposit in your own bank account? Like, because my bank's in Florida and it'll take 10 days for it to go through. Like it's good or the check is good, right?

The cashier's check. Yeah, yeah, it's good. But why do you need it? I was like, well, I mean, I cash people's checks. Like I work for a labor company and we have laborers and typically they get charged 10% to cash their checks. But I know the checks are good because it's with my company. So I just cash them. And they're like, oh, okay.

You know, like he keeps coming back. He knows something's wrong. The manager keeps coming back, coming back. So at some point, he's in the back. And my phone rings and I look at it and I don't recognize the number. So I answer it. I go, hello. And the person goes, hi, this is Kimberly from SunTrust Bank.

is this Michael Eckert? And I'm sitting there as Scott Cugno trying to cash a check. And I go, yes, this is. And it's, she's, she's behind like a glass somewhere. And I'm sitting in the guy's like little cubicle. And I'm like, but I know I can, you know, it's, it's a glass cubicle. Like I'm, I'm like, uh, yes. And she says, um, hi, we have someone here trying to cash a check, a rather large check.

And I was just wondering if you could verify the, you know, the check. And I said, oh, for a light. And she said, it was for 29. thousand dollars. I said, oh, yeah, yeah, that would be Scott Cugnow. And she said, okay, so it's good? I said, yeah, absolutely. By all my money, you can cash it. And she goes, okay, thank you. I said, hey, by the way, how did you get my number? The check had originally been cut from a check from a title company that we bank with. So we called the title company and they gave us your phone number. And I hope that's okay. Absolutely. No problem. You're just curious. Hang out the phone.

the manager walks out with a woman that I'm assuming was Kimmerly. She never said anything. And they sat down and he counted out the money twice. And I remember I stood up and I'm shoving the money in my, in my, you know, pockets. And he says, Mr. Cug now? And I said, yeah. He said, I want to mention that I feel very apprehensive about this transaction. I go, really?

What is it exactly? And he goes, I can't put my finger on it. And I go, it'll come to you. and I just walk off. And so like when I leave, we got out all the money and the FBI showed up or a Secret Service, I think, showed up like a week or two later. Were you concerned that your voice was the same? No. What do you mean?

Like, because you're answering the phone as someone else as well as speaking to them as someone else. But you're using, like you have this, you know, a very recognizable voice. It never came up. Like, first of all, I talked to Kimberly. Right. So I mean, she walks in there. Exactly. She never talked.

I don't know if it was her. Like maybe she could have recognized me, but she said nothing. And keep in mind, too, most of the time, when he did, he walked up and just counted out the money. I've got the money at this point when I'm like, what is it exactly? Like that's all I said is all she heard was what is it exactly and it'll come to you. So I, she never said anything. Did you ever have to use different voices? I've done that where they've called, like if it's their calling to verify employment, which sounds silly.

But most of the time, Becky is the one who calls back. Or you're calling back and it's not even the same person that you're. you're calling. Right. You know, what voices would you use that? Oh, he was do like the whole 20, like, hey, you know, what's going on? You know, you try and throw something. Can we hear a few the voices? I can't do the voices. I can't even remember. I just remember one, I did a really, really thick. Listen, I had a title company one time who showed up to del-so. So, you know, this is, see, this is the problem is like, you understand that typically Fannie Mae doesn't want to let you get out more than $100,000 on a refy. Okay. So what I would do is, I would do is, I,

I would put a lien from a lender on some of the properties. So they have to pay off this property. They might give me a check for $30,000, and they would mail $110,000 to the lender to, like, let's say, a post office box or like a UPS box. One time the title company showed up to deliver it, and then they called the lender, or they called the lender, or they called, me they called the lender and left a message and I had to call back as the lender. So I called back with a rail heavy accent. Yeah, because I don't even know who I'm talking to, but I knew I had gone to the closing. I just, you know, did a whole, you know, yeah, well, and she's like, well, I tried to bring it by your office and I said, oh, well, no, no, I think, I said, we got a,

one of them mailboxes of things. And she's like, I know. I was just wondering if I could maybe bring it by the office. I was like, oh, sweetie, where I'm, I'm out of Florida. You know, I'm in Orlando, Florida. Oh, okay. So we just, we just collect. We just have everything sent there. I'm just not giving them out to my, you know, I'm just not giving out my address to just anybody.

And she's, oh, I understand. I understand. And then that was it. It was silly. There are quick conversations. It's silly. I feel silly doing it. And it almost never happened.

I typically had somebody that would call. Anyway, the thing with the guy, what's his name, right? Like, um, the one where I get the 29,000. So we take off. Then I go, at that point. we start surveying homeless people. I see the judgment in your face, Jack. So I'm surveying homeless people at this point.

And that happened because, you know, we're using these fake social security numbers for kids, right? And you can't get a driver's license in the number. You can get an ID, but not a driver's license. For some reason, I don't know what the problem is. But every time I went into get a driver's license, we couldn't get it. But if you said an ID, they would give it to you.

So we're like, we need to be able to get, we need to be able to do what you're saying. Like start a real life as somebody. And it was like, well, we need somebody's identity that isn't using it. And so it was like, okay, we need to figure that out like who. And it was like, well, like prisoners or people with mental patients, you know, mental patients. Like who? How do you get to those people?

And I remember while Becky and I are discussing it, I look over and there's a guy standing on the side of the road with a will work for food sign. And I went like that guy. and she was like I remember she said hobo because I know who says hobo she's the hobo and I was like yeah I've not heard that term he's been a very long time so we pull over she goes into like a subway yeah um you know sandwich shop she goes in there and she and so I go across the street and I talk to the guy and I say hey listen man can I ask you some questions I give him 20 bucks I said yeah what's up I said um you know when was the last time you were gainfully employed so like five six years do you think you'll be gainfully employed in the next year or two and he's like No, this is it for me. And I said, well, do you have a, you know, I started just asking them all kinds of, you know, do you have a record? Do you have a driver's license? Is it suspended? Is it this?

All these questions gave him another 40 bucks and left. And I went back to Becky and I said, this, I'm going to start surveying homeless people. I said, this guy, he's got a, not even suspended. It's just an expired driver's license. He's never had a DUI. He's just an alcoholic. Like, that's, he lives in the woods. You know, that's what you told me.

during that conversation, the reason I came up with the survey was he actually made a joke. He was, we're not not a joke. He goes, what are you doing a survey? And I go, I said, you get a lot of surveyors out here? And he goes, sometimes we get social workers, people from the Salvation Army. And I thought, nice, nice. Okay, cool. Like, good to know.

So I go back home. I make a statistical survey form. It's got like 17 questions. Ask for your name, date of birth, social security number, mothers made name, county and state you were born in. What identification have you ever had issued? Do you ever had a passport? You ever served in the military? You ever had a claim social security, social security disability.

Do you currently receive any benefits? You know, boom, boom, boom, boom, anything I could think of that I might need. I make print out 50 of them, put them on a clipboard, make myself a little salvation or make myself a little badge that said, statistical surveyor, took my wanted photo, printed it out, glued it on, ran it through a laminate, little laminate machine I had, you know, put a little clip thing on it. very professional, went out and started surveying homeless people. I would get their information. I would go back, wherever the county they were from, I would print out an application for a birth certificate and I would fill it out. One of the things they asked for is a copy of his driver's license.

Well, I would make a driver, you know, you go into, you know, you make a what looks like a driver's license. It's not, but I'd make one that looked like a driver's license, make a copy of it, mail it to them with 20 bucks and I get a certified copy of their birth certificate. I'd make a fake employer ID and I would mail that plus an SS5 form to Social Security and I'd get a copy of his social security number. So I've got a social security number, his birth certificate, I would register to a vote in his name, I would order a copy of his high school transcripts, I would get a couple credit cards in his name, his almost no credit or maybe a couple medical bills, which I paid off. And then I'd turn around and I'd go into the local DMV and I'd say, hey, I want, they, you know, they want two forms of idea when a primary, two secondaries in proof of residency. I have that. I have a, because I would make a fake lease agreement. Plus the other thing that counts for that is if you register to vote as them in that county, shows residency. So I've got this, this, this, this, your birth certificate. And they go, great, stand over there, get a pitcher taken. You got a driver's license. Sometimes I'd have to take the test. Sometimes they would have, their license was suspended. And I'd have to pay four or five hundred bucks to get their license unsuspended.

I'd have to mail the money off four states away wherever they've had a driver's license. And I'd go in, as long as they didn't have a driver's license in that state, I could get a driver's license. So I got a driver's license. I got more credentials than this guy's got on him. I can go open bank accounts. I can buy houses. I would buy a car. So you were more this person than this person actually is.

He couldn't. If you had approved doc, he couldn't provide anything. And I know everything. I know where you were raised. I know which high school. One of the questions was what high school, because one of the questions was what high school, because one of the things people don't realize is part you can use for secondary identification, your high school transcripts.

There's all these things, and I've got all real stuff. So now that this is fake. I buy a car in his house in his name. I buy a house in his name. So I did this with whatever, a couple dozen people at least, at least. And this one guy, Gary Sullivan, I went to North Carolina. I was living in North Carolina. I went to South Carolina.

And I bought two houses in his name. One of them, I bought a house for 200 and like, I want to say he was like 200. $230,000, let's say, put 10% down, convince the owners to owner finance it to me. And right after the closing, two weeks later, I went down to public records. I satisfied their loan and the wraparound loan because they did a wraparound around their mortgage, around their original mortgage, satisfied both of them. I then turn around and I borrow, I also bought another house for like $110,000. So I borrow $1.3 million on both these houses.

I open a bunch of bank accounts and I start pulling money out of these banks. refinanced this one house over and over again. It's funny because this isn't on the bigger house. This is on the house that was 110,000. As I was refinancing it, one of the title companies made a phone call, or they called another, the original title company to get the warranty deed because they wanted to issue a set, you know, you know, they can reissue title. They only have to search back to the last and I just bought the house. Somehow or another, they call to get the original HUD. The HUD I had given them. showed that I paid cash. They get the original HUD. It shows there's a mortgage. So they know the document I gave them was false. Like, I couldn't account for them calling the title company.

So I was like, oh, my God. So they end up calling Washington Mutual. They call Washington Mutual. They tell Washington Mutual who had the first mortgage on it. Now, keep in mind by this point, they've also done a search. Washington Mutual knows that they're in second position. They know there's a mortgage ahead of them. So they have a lawyer.

for, and this isn't the first time I've been called by a lawyer. Sure. So I get called. So Gary Sullivan's phone rings. I'm in wherever. I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina. I'm hit the phone rings. And he's like, hey, you know, this is whatever.

You know, Todd, I'm a lawyer with Washington Mutual. I'm like, yeah, Todd, what's up? He's like, we were contacted by the title company. They discovered our loan on the property. There's another mortgage in front of ours and we're supposed to be in first position. And I went, okay. And he said, this is an issue. So I'm wondering how this happened and what we're going to do about it before I contact.

He goes, and as he's talking, I said, you haven't contacted anybody, the authorities yet, have you? And he goes, no, not yet, but that's my next call unless we can figure something out. I said, you know what, Todd? I said, listen, let me go to my, I'm going to go right now. I'm going to talk to my lawyer. I have a corporate lawyer, which was in South Carolina. Let me call him. I'm going to call you back.

I can pay you back. I said, if I pay you back, we don't need to, this doesn't need to go any further, does it? He goes, you can pay me back. It doesn't have to go any further. I said, okay. I said, give me an hour. Hang up the phone. Call my corporate lawyer.

While I'm driving all the way back there. Becky's, don't go, don't go. And I'm like, I'm in the middle of a multi-million dollar scam. I'm going. Like, I'll pay him a hundred. She's like, let's just keep the money. I'll give them the $110,000. We've got $700,000, $800,000 still in the bank.

So let me just pay them off. How do you know they won't call? They won't call. I've done this before, and I've done it in Tampa, been caught multiple times, just paid them back. So, you know, I didn't get into those. So I drive all the way back. I get a call my corporate lawyer because they had opened up a corporation where I was laundering money through opening bank accounts. So I call him and he says, okay, listen, he said, my partner is a criminal defense attorney.

So I'm going to set up a meeting real quick. By the time you get here, we'll both meet with you. I said, okay, so I meet with them. I walk in, I sit down and I say, hey, they go, okay, Gary, what's going on? I said, here's what's happening. And I tell them I bought this property and this property. I bought this property. I've got like five mortgages on it.

I forget how many. It might have been four or five. I said, Washington Mutual just figured out that there's a mortgage in front of them. And they want me to pay them off. And he said, okay,

well, you said there's also a couple of mortgages behind them too. And I said, yes, but they don't know about those. They go, okay, so can you pay off the first mortgage? I said, yes,

but I need you to call him and get him to say that this is in writing that they're not going to contact the authorities, that this is, he goes, well, why would they? It's a creative financing. error. I'm pretty sure it's not. Yeah, what did you tell them the reason was? Did you just pretend, like, I don't know what's going on? I told them that the brokers, I always tell them like,

like, look, I went into the bank and the broker said, look, I can, I told them I needed to borrow like half a million because I was flipping properties. He said, I can get you half a million. It might have to go through a couple different banks, but I have some buddies. We can all get you mortgages. I said, I kind of knew it was fucked up. I said, I knew, but look, let me, I just want to get out of this. And they're like, okay, well, it's a creative financing error. You didn't know what you were doing you're not a mortgage broker you're not a professional let's just pay this guy off i said okay he calls up he says listen todd um you know gary said he can pay you off he said okay i said okay i'm gonna go to the bank and get how much is it exactly and we haggle over it because they wanted to charge me

like and i actually paid everything like i didn't haggle but my my my lawyer's like oh he shouldn't have to pay that he shouldn't have i'm like just what you doing no cheer he's like i got you know he's like oh it says something about there's um there's yield spread on the back fucking pay it. Like he's like, I end up paying whatever 110, $1,000, $150,000. So I go to the bank and I get the money. I come back there. And they're like, tell them to drop it off at a Wells Fargo, no, at a Washington mutual bank. I said, bro, I'm not doing that. Are you fucking crazy? I'm not going to go into a, they're going to call the cops. Like, no, I'm not going to do it. I'll give it to you. And he goes, okay, he calls it back. I have it. I'll send it. I'll send you a copy.

He make, I'll make a copy and fax it to you. Okay. So we're, we're done with that. And I'm like, I remember he said, well, okay, well, Gary, we got a problem here. I said, what's that? He said, well, this was actually before I went to go get the money. So once I said, okay, let me go get the money. He goes, well, wait a minute, there's an issue. You've still got multiple mortgages on these, this property. After you pay him back.

And I said, right? He said, do you have the money? I said, yeah, I have the money. He said, okay, well, we're going to have to pay these back. I said, no, no, I'm not going to pay them back. And he goes, well, what if they find out? And I go, he goes, what if they find out that there's other mortgages, these other mortgage lenders find out that there's other mortgages on the property.

I go, then I leave town. And he goes, Gary, Gary, Gary. He said, you can't just leave town. They've got your name, your social security number, your date of birth. He said, the FBI will find you. And I go, you're assuming my name is Gary Sullivan. And I mean, they went, they both look at each other. And he goes, well, I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Right. I go, my immediately problem is getting rid of these people. Let me go get the money. What type of lawyers are these that would take on this? Is it a better call Saul sort of deal? Right. Like little town small time lawyer in Columbia, South Carolina. But they're cool with it or they're like. I know. I wouldn't say they were cool with it. But they're also not going to see their client in. Yeah. He can't call up and say my clients. He's not going to do that. He's already saying there's just a creative, a creative error, creative financing error. Like he's already downplaying it. So. I go, I get the money, come back, give him the money, he makes a copy, he sends him a fax, he tells him he's overnighting it, they're happy. And I remember I got up to leave and the guy goes, well, I didn't get up to leave, but he said, listen, he said, we need to talk about my fee. I said, okay, you've worked about an hour. I said, how much is that?

And he said, I think 1,500 would cover it. I said, okay, no problem. And I get, I start pulling out cash. And he goes, well, we don't take cash. And I go, you take a check from me after what you just heard? And he goes, I'll take the cash. And I said, I gave him the cash, got up and left. Oh, my gosh.

Kept pulling out money. Ended up pulling out of that scam like $600,000 or $700,000. And one day I walk into a bank as Gary Sullivan. And two sheriff's deputies walk up behind me and handcuffed me. And so they handcuffed me in the bank. And I'm like, fuck. And they go, Mr. Sullivan, we're detaining you. come with us and they walk me.

And listen, the bank, there's like lines. There's like 20, 30 people in the bank. Like, what the fuck? So they walk me into the manager's office. They sit me down. They say, we're waiting for a detective to show up. I thought it was the FBI was going to show up. You know, because I don't really know the difference between an agent or detective.

Like, I don't, the terms that I say and I know now, I didn't know then. Right. So I remember thinking FBI's showing up. And listen, by this point, there's been 30. articles, 30, 40 articles on me. You know, they rated my office. FBI rated my office. When I left, when I got the 400,000 in Atlanta, there's a bunch of articles, secret services after me. Like, it's, it's, it's heating up. There's, they're John, John and Jane Doe warrants. They're calling us the Bonnie and Clyde of bank fraud. I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's, you know,

it's, you know, post, she's a poster child for identity theft. I mean, it's, like, it's heating up. So I, I, I end up, waiting there and the detective walks in. He's like a gray suit. He's probably in his late 20s. And he walks in and he says, hey, Mr. Sullivan, you know, he sits down. He said, here's what's going on. Wachovia Bank says that you're committing, you're doing something called a shotgunning scam and that you borrow the money so fast that they, they couldn't catch it.

And now you're removing the money in cash. Why are you removing the money in cash? And I was like, why? And I explained to him about my cash checks. for these guys that work at the company I work for. And it's a labor company. And by this point, I said, look, do I have to have the cuffs on? Am I under arrest?

He's like, oh, no, no, we're just in handing you. I said, well, I feel like I'm under arrest. He goes, we'll take those off. Takes them all. So when I say, I work for a labor company, I pull out my business card. And he says, okay. And he says, I said, I cash a lot of these guys check. So I said, also a lot of these guys, I'm flipping houses.

I buy houses and fix them up. He goes, oh, yeah, that's right. You own another house on shady lane or whatever. I'm like, oh, shit. And he's like, yeah, I said, you're right. So we just had a new roof put on. And, you know, the Mexican guys, like, they want to be paid in cash. I said, you know, how it is.

He's like, right, right. I know, this is why I pull out a lot of cash. I said, I'm, you know, but I'm, you know, it worked perfectly because I said I'm flipping properties. So I need these lent, these loans. And so he gets, head of Wachovia's fraud department. And this is a guy from California. And he's, you know, he's running a shotgunning scam.

He's got multiple first mortgages. And I explained, well, wait a minute, I read those mortgages. none of those are first mortgages. I said the one from Wachovia was a first mortgage. But then I, and I, he, I had like six mortgages, but he only found three, they only discovered three of them. And so I said, I mean, walk, and he said, well, why do you have three mortgages? Even though this guy is saying, they're all first mortgages.

And I'm like, oh, they're not first mortgages, bro. I said, I came to Wachovia. I asked for a first mortgage. The, the loan officer got me a first mortgage. I told her that I really needed to get three, four hundred thousand. dollars because I'm flipping a bunch of properties. You know, on the side. He goes, okay, I said, and she said I've got a friend that can get you a second mortgage.

So she sent me over to SunTrust Bank or whatever it was, you know, I forget it was like Fieldstone mortgage. Fieldstone mortgage got me a second mortgage. The person at Fieldstone said, look, you know, your credit's good. You're eligible. I could probably get you a helock. I got a friend at SunTrust and get you a helock. So I said, okay, cool.

So she calls over to her friend and gets me a helock. I said, they all knew about it. Guy from Wakobia screaming, this is, that's not true. They're all first mortgages. I said, then I read those documents, not one. I said, you can't show me one mortgage that says it's a first mortgage. I said, I read those documents. And so he's screaming and hollering.

And so why is he pulling the money out in cash? I explained that. Why has he got multiple bank accounts? I said, I have a couple corporate accounts in my corporation's name and I have two bank accounts. What's the problem? Like, he's coming up with all these things. And I said, look, bro, I said, what makes more sense that a guy who works for a labor company figured out how to defraud three major banks out of half a million dollars or a bunch of loan officers

figured out how to get me half a million so they could make a broker fee? And he goes, and I go, I think they got a problem at the bank. And he goes, yeah, I think you guys have a problem at the bank. And they go, oh, my guy, screaming hollering. He goes, he said, I think, you know, I'm going to bring him downtown, have him sign some paper where he goes, wait a minute, look at his ID. It's a fake ID. I had had the ID issued from the DMV in South Carolina. He was, look at the ID. It starts with zero, zero, zero. Now, he's from, he's from California. So this guy says, listen, I'm sorry. He said, this is a real South Carolina ID. I've already run it. I've run him through

NCIC. This is, this is Gary Sullivan. And I go, bro, what? Now I'm not Gary Sullivan? They go, the fuck are we doing here. And he goes, I know, Gary, I know. This guy's losing it. He tells him, I'm going to bring him downtown. I'm going to talk to the district attorney. See if he's even broken a law. I don't even think he's broke. He's, I don't even know if he's broken a law. Hanging up the phone. They follow, I follow them downtown. The detectives in front of me, the sheriff's car is behind me. You know, I feel like they're escorting me. But he may have just been going that way. Because when I turned, he didn't turn in. They just kept going. So, you know, I go and as I'm going. But when I'm going.

Becky has called like 30, 40 times. I was in there for 30, 45 minutes. You know, one, getting rested or handcuffed, then waiting for the guy to show up, then talking to the... So she's called over and over. So when I get the phone, she's like, oh my God, where the fuck have you been?

She said, they just listed you as number one on the Secret Service's Most Wanted list. An article just came out and you go, listen, I got bigger problems. So I was just handcuffed in a bank. I'm on my way to the sheriff's department right now or police department, whatever it was. And she's like, oh my God, get on the...

get on the, get on the interstate and run. I said, I can't. There's a cop behind me, cop in front of me. I'm not going to out run, you know, a helicopter. I'm not an indie driver. Like, it's not going to happen. Like I'm, I've, all those, you've seen all of them in badly. So I pulled out.

I said, look, I can do this. I was in handcuffs 10 minutes ago. I can talk my way out of this. And I said, the worst it'll happen. And if they arrest me, they'll arrest me as Gary Sullivan. My identity won't be in question. Because at that time, if you had an ID, unless you're, identity was in question, they didn't run your fingerprints. They fingerprinted you, but they didn't

run you through APHIS. So I said, you can get me out, go get me a lawyer. She's, I'm not getting you a lawyer. I'm not getting you out on bond. She says, I'm not risking everything I've got. She had like $6,700,000 a cow. And I was like, holy shit. So I said, well, then I guess I better not get arrested. She's like, get on the interstate. I said, no, I'm not going to do that. So I hang up the phone. I go in the police station. I fill out a police report. I'm standing in the hallway because at first I was his cubicle, but he had to go get his lieutenant to sign off on it, right? So he says, Gary, I can't leave you in my cubicle or my office, whatever it was. It wasn't an office. It was a cubicle, but he said, can you wait in the hallway? I go, sure. So I walk in the hallway and my Secret Service's

most wanted poster was in the hallway because the Secret Service was actively looking for me. And the FBI, I'm just, there's a warrant. Like, they're not, secret service is mailing stuff out. I remember I saw it. It was among a bunch of other, a bunch of other wanted posters, you know, like bike thieves, you know, car thieves, burglar, and there's mine. And mine was the only one that was in color, which is the only reason it even stood out. But you also have to think, too, by this point, I'd had plastic surgery, right? Like I'd had two hair graphs. I'd had a nose job.

I had a what they called it a mini facelift. I had my teeth done. And this was all on purpose to disguise somewhat or was it? No, I mean, I don't, I mean, obviously I think it's advanced. It's probably a combination. It gave me an excuse to do it. Okay, that's fair. Like, I'd never done it before, but it's something I'd always thought about, and this certainly gave me a reason to do it.

So, you know, Becky had had a bunch of stuff done. So, you know, and we're, listen, we're going to Mexico. We're going to Jamaica. We're traveling all over the place. You know, we're blowing money. We're acting like a bunch of idiots. So he walks me out. The cop walks me out of the police station.

I get in my car. he actually tells me listen we have we do have some questions do me a favor don't leave the area i said where am i going i'm flipping come on i own two houses here i'm flipping i'm not going i haven't done anything wrong he's okay i go straight to two more banks pull out some money jump on the interstate and immediately go back to charlotte north carolina i pack up all my belongings i get a u-hall van i drive all the way to texas where becky is at this point we go to houston we get into a huge argument we split up the money when i say split up the money she got five or six hundred thousand and she gave me a hundred thousand dollars her argument was that i could go and i she's in two

months from now you'll have a million dollars i have to live on this money the rest of my life and it was a huge scream right which makes sense like she's not a fraudster she didn't even try um and you know juggling all the different things that you're juggling like she wasn't any good at it so i leave we and it was huge horrible fight like huge yelling screaming and she was a menace anyway she'd had the cops called multiple times the middle of the middle of the night she was bipolar she get into the we get in these huge screaming matches and i'd bolt like i'd grab a bag and just bolt because i knew it's two o'clock in the morning you're screaming your head off cops are coming did you always attract this type of psychos it does seem right i'm just i'm just

notice picking up on a pattern here i don't know if that was like something and yet my yet my um my wife now is i mean she's not a pushover she's very quiet very shy um i mean I mean, my fear is she's the kind you really have to worry about, you know? Like, she'd just kill you. There wouldn't be a big argument. And she can do it, too. Like, she's a hunter. Like, she's like, she goes alligator hunting.

She hunts hogs. Like, she's, she's a, a deep Florida girl. Yeah, yeah. She's told me, like, they'll never find your body. Just letting you know. So, romantic. Yeah, like, I mean, for a date night one time, we went to Okeechobee and we went alligator hunting, you know, like, we're definitely two different people.

So anyway. So I'm a little bit scared of her. So anyway, so I go there. We get into an argument. I drive that U-Haul ban all the way back to Charlotte. I get my car. I have no IDs because we had unpacked the entire thing before we got in the argument. So all my stuff's in a Shores unit, including my IDs.

Because we're just going to lay low for a while. Wait for this thing to hit. We know that's going to hit. You just got caught in the bank. You got arrested, brought downtown, convinced them you'd done nothing. They let you go. there's going to be an article at least one. And there was.

So we're like, we're just going to lay low. So I put everything in, we put everything in storage. We get into a huge argument. She gives me 100,000. I drive all the way back. I actually called the FBI agent. I called some friends in Tampa just to see how things were going. You know, called my mother, called my ex-wife, called just some brokers.

And they, one of them said, you need to call the FBI agent. She said, if I ever talk to you to please have you call her. She's like, Matt, maybe you're going to be. turn yourself in, maybe you could just get a few years, like, you know, you know, and I probably could have got a few years. I probably should have had to turn her in, you know, and everybody else. And I was still on this, just that complete, you know, delusion that I didn't want to tell on anybody. So I do call the FBI agent. I talked to her a couple of times on the phone on my way back to Sharra. How do you know they're not tracing the call? They were tracing the call. Yeah. I didn't know

that. Like I stopped, you know, I stopped and I got a burner phone, right? I stopped at like a gas station. You say, yeah, I'll take a, you know, a, what was it, next tell? Sure. Is there still next towel around? I don't know. I think it was next time. Pretty sure they got bought out by somebody. So it was like a next tell.

Sure. You know, you pay the 50 bucks or 20 bucks. And I turn it on. And then I called a bunch of friends. And one of them was like, call the FBI agent. Cool. So I was like, fuck, all right. So I call.

And the problem was she's saying, look, you come, you cooperate. You'll get like seven years for Tampa. Not Atlanta. not this thing in Charlotte, I'm sorry, in Columbia, South Carolina, which she doesn't even know about yet. You know, that still hasn't hit yet. It's only been a few days.

So I realized, like, I'm looking at 14 years. And I don't want to tell on anybody and I didn't want to do any of that. So I was like, yeah, I'm not going to do that. And we basically, she also kind of realized she was lying to me about a few things. I ended up saying, like, I'm not going to do that. So I throw the phone out the window.

I drive all the way back to Charlotte. I get my car. And I think I had an affinity G-35. Like, they just come out. Oh, yeah. Great car. Right. It's a great car.

It's a great car. It had like 360 horsepower. Like, who's like a badass car? Who were you at this point? The only idea I had was Michael Eckert. Still? I would be honest with you. It wasn't even Michael Eckert.

I stole a guy's, this is not good. I stole a guy's ID, his identity, got a North Carolina driver's license in his name, and then legally had his name change from Eckert to Johnson, Michael Johnson. Right. Why did you change his name? I wanted to see, like, I was trying to come up. with a process where I could alter an identity so much that I could, that if the person died or something, like, it wouldn't catch up with me. And I don't, and I realized after doing some of those

things, I realized, like, it wouldn't catch up to me, right? Like, my fear was if I reestablish my entire life as one of these homeless people and the homeless person dies, what's going to happen? I don't know what's going to happen. Does suddenly, you know, does social security get issued? How would they identify the homeless person who dies? If the homeless person has no identification at all. How do they even know? Maybe they've been arrested. They fingerprint them. Maybe they're like, I don't know, but I do know I didn't want it to catch up with me. So if I alter the name and then maybe I go back in and I try and get a new social security number issued, then how do if I start claiming taxes on a social security number that was issued to a child? Is that going to work? Like I had some issues. I'm trying to work these things out. It's complicated, right? Like I don't quite understand it, but I'm just trying to. I'm really curious about this Michael Eckert guy. Has he ever reached out to you since? And is he still Michael Johnson? Listen, there's a guy, there's a few guys that are named Matthew Cox that I've traded some emails with. Like, I'm like, listen, bro, I'm so sorry. He's like, bro, you've no fucking idea how many problems you've caused me.

It's like jobs, girlfriends, friends. And I'm like, I said, listen, if you want to call me up and just ream me out and tell me what a piece of shit I am, I said, I totally have it coming. I have no. I said, here's my phone number. He said, nah, bro. don't worry about it. This guy forwards my emails because people email me.

My email is contact. Matthew.coms. His is Matthew. cox at gmail. So people will accidentally email him. He forwards them to me. He's a genuinely nice guy. But you imagine this poor guy?

Don't people look them up and see that this is not the same person? Maybe. That seems common sense. People share, I bet there's a lot of Jack Selby's out there. Jack Selby actually was one of the founders of PayPal. Really?

Yeah. Nice. See, there we go. him up. See, that's something that when it happens, it looks good for you. I don't think anyone's mistaking. Well, I'm just curious. So Michael Eckert has not reached out to you.

No. Because he was just like a normal guy. He had, he was renting out of house. No, no. Michael Eckert applied for a mortgage long. See, one of the things I would do to steal identities is I would run, you know, one, of course, I made the fake IDs. Sometimes I'd survey homeless people, but sometimes I'd just run an ad.

Because it was a building. First it was synthetic identities, then it was running ads. You know, I skated, like, listen, the story goes, it's years. This has been years. So, you know, you can imagine there's tons of stuff I've left out. If I honestly wanted to give a shameless plug for my book, I go over all of it in my book. Link below. Yeah.

It's on Amazon. But, like, I can't do that here. You know, I don't want to do a six. You guys don't want me to do a six-hour podcast. I'm just surprised that no one has reached out to you because now, obviously, all of your interviews have gone so viral. You know, your book sells well, all of this stuff. Keep mind, most of these people are homeless. But also, or they either don't exist, they're homeless, or there's a few people that I've stolen there.

Look, you know, the guy Scott Cugnow. Yeah. I've reached out to him because I knew Scott Cugno. Like I had his, I did a loan for him. So that's why I had his information when I left Tampa. I've reached out to him. He's never once. As a matter of fact, a friend of mine that knows his wife.

Because I thought, well, maybe he didn't like, you know, you sent it through Messenger on Facebook. Like, maybe he didn't get it. And so his wife actually told a friend of mine, no, no. Matt Cox has reached out to Scott several times. He just doesn't want to talk to him. Like, I get it. What am I going to say? Like, it's not like he's got a bad reason.

He's got a genuine reason. You know, why? I mean, you know, I'd like to apologize, you know, but he didn't want to hear it. I think we'd have a good laugh about it. So what happens when you went on the run? So what ends up happening is I go into that. So I get my car. I drive across the street to Starbucks because I feel like I'm good.

I got my car. I dropped off the U-Haul. I got my car. And I thought, let me get a coffee real quick while I go to Nashville, Tennessee, because I decided I was going to relocate in Nashville. And so I go in the coffee place. I order a, you know, a Starbucks. I order a coffee. And there's two people from my apartment complex that are there. And they're like looking at me. And they're like, having this hush discussion. And the female. apartment person gets up and leaves. So the guy's just standing there. He gets his tray of coffee. He's standing there in the little foam tray. I get my coffee. I walk outside. He follows me.

Get my car, start my car. He's standing on the sidewalk. I start my car playing with the thing. Put the seatbelt on. I look. I'm about to pull out. And all of a sudden, he starts screaming. He's there.

He's right here. I look over. And there's two guys running towards the back of my car. And, you know, like, business attire. And I thought they were FBI or Secret Service, but I got my Freedom of Information Act, and it was actually the U.S. Marshals.

So two marshals had gone and had just interviewed those two people, and they walked across the street to Starbucks to get their coffee. So this is terrible timing. This is bad timing. So luckily, I was actually about to pull out when he started screaming.

I just, boom, hit it, boom, drive straight off. Couldn't you say, I think you're mistaking me with somebody else and show an ID? I mean, I, No. First of all, I didn't really have, the only idea I had at the time was the Michael Johnson.

Right. Right. And I'm driving a car. I was driving a car as Michael Johnson. Yeah, so I was curious, to say, I know where these people are. I made you're mistaking me. Like, they seem crazy.

This is me. I don't want to go through that. Okay. You know, I just punched it. Yeah, sure. I drove down the street about half a mile to a mile, and there were a couple of, uh,

or not cling cut, but there were a couple of white guys that were homeless. I pull over immediately, pull my half a mile to a mile away. It was like a homeless shelter. They call the dog pound. And I see these guys sitting outside. There's like three of them.

And I whip around, jump out with my thing, said, hey, would you guys like to take a survey real quick? It pays $20 cash right now. And they're like, uh, you're 20 bucks right now. I just need, we'll take the survey. It takes a five minutes. Yeah, all right. What's up?

Take their information. Jump back in the car, drive to Nashville. I end up ordering all the documents for, well, all three of them, but one of the guy's name was, um, was Marion Joseph Carter Jr. And I went by Carter. So as Carter, I immediately get an apartment. Three, four months later, I dated for three or four months just to kind of see what was going to come out in the newspaper, you know, like I don't want to start kind of lay low. Three, four months later, I said, ah, fuck it, I'm okay. There was a bunch of articles, um, about me getting caught in the bank. And so I start buying houses for $60,000 in an area called J.C. Napier just outside of Nashville, the city of Nashville.

I start buying these houses recording the value at $200, $210, $190. I start the whole process over. Over the next year, I pull out about $3.5 to $4 million, maybe $4.5. I forget what the paper it says. So I pull that money out. I start building some new houses. I get a girlfriend. we move into a house.

Everything's good. I've got a few identities. What do you tell the girlfriend for your past? I mean, the girlfriend figured out, she figured out that obviously something's, well, first of all, it looks odd. Like I talk about my parents, but I never talk to my parents. Talk about my son. I never talk to my son. I talk about my brothers and sisters and friends.

I never talked to him. She's never seen me make a phone call. She's never seen me get a phone call from anybody that I don't know in Nashville. There's nothing in my house, because this is trust me, this is the argument we had. It wasn't an argument. She was like, there's nothing in your house that is more than four or five months old. Nothing. There's no photos.

All your furniture's brand new. Everything's brand new. And she goes, and the other night when you asked me to go downstairs and get you a popsicle? I said, yeah. She goes, she said, I open up a popsicle box that had $30,000 or $40,000 in cash. And I was like, oh, yeah. Okay. There's some problems.

So I basically said, look, I'm not going to tell you what, who I am. but I said I'm I'm wanted. Like what I really had initially I told her was I owned a mortgage company in Tampa and I got bought out by household bank and I had no compete calls for three years. So I have another year or two before I could do anything and I'm just going to start flipping houses, which makes sense. But the other stuff doesn't make sense. And you just said I lost it in a fire come up with the story. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I guess I could have, but I didn't. Okay.

You know, you get to a point where just like it lies are hard to keep. So if you're going to build a whole little scam around a bunch of lies, that's, fine. I only have to maintain these for a few months to get the money and leave. But this chick I want in my life, her name was Amanda. So, and keep in mind, it's like how often, how much lying do I want to do? Yeah. So it's like, look, and she's got me. She knows something's wrong. So I said, look, because she was saying she had talked to her mom or dad and one of them said he's probably in the witness protection program, which would have been great, right? I should have said that, but I didn't. So, oh, her mom thought I was married. She was, her mom saying he's married.

dad's saying witness protection program. They relocated him here. I tell her, look, I'm wanted. And she's like, wanted by who? And I said, like, all of them. I said, like, FBI, Secret Service, everybody. FDLE, Georgia, you know, like everybody. And she's like, okay.

She said, for what? I said, nothing violent. Like, it's like fraud. And I said, I'm reestablished. She's like, yeah, but it doesn't even make sense. She's like, I mean, everybody knows you. You know people here. Like, it'll catch up to you.

I said, well, that's another thing. I said, one of my charges is identity theft. And she's like, what do you mean? I said, well, I'm not Joseph Carter. I said, so don't look to see who I am. If I ever hear you utter my name, I'm leaving. And she said, okay, like, she's deeply in love with me. You know, of course, the fact that I bought her a brand new car and she's now got a chunk of money in the bank.

I'm not saying that helped. I'm not saying she was a gold digger. That's not true. I like to manage you as a decent person. But she was also suddenly doing very well, right? dating me doesn't financially harm anybody so you get it you look very judgmental very for a person that i've never seen scowl dude this is like his resting face is a yeah this is for me like uh watching a movie oh okay they need to turn this into a movie is what i think yeah already optioned

my life right so i've been to l. i've had those meetings um so we're working on that uh after about a year and a half because it's been about a year and a half over a year with amanda you know and we've gone everywhere we've gone to to um to italy uh Croatia we've gone to you know on you know the greek aisles like i've you know we're traveling her parents have met me it's a great relationship not as good of a relationship as my current wife of course so um Colby'll make a fucking video he out that will be a short all right go for it Colby yeah so It was a good relationship. And so what ends up happening is she does end up finding out who I am.

One day our corporate attorney called because I had opened up a corporation to start building these houses. It's a development company. I had built a website saying that this entire area was being revitalized and they were tearing the projects down. It was totally untrue. I had these banners on every house that said Nashville Restoration Project. That was the name of the corporation. And that's all in her name. So at some point I'd sent something to a corporate attorney.

She sent me an email. I said, hey, I sent this to the corporate attorney. She said she never got it. Can you please go on my, go into Word, print out the document and email it to her. She goes on the Word and she sees letter to Mom and Dad, which is a letter I'd written the day I left, explaining to my parents what was happening. So she clicks on it, George and Margaret Cox, Matthew Cox, address. She looks up Matthew Cox. Boom.

Bank fraud. fraud, mortgage fraud, you know, Secret Service is Most Wanted, FBI. She spends, honestly, I don't, I, I, I didn't even know there were this many articles. Like, you know how you get hit the history bar? I mean, wow, it was like, woo, woo. I mean, she spent all day reading. So when I get home, I go to turn off my computer and you know how you go to close things out and I saw that word was open. I go to close out word and the last, you know, the last thing that's open shows up and boom, letter to mom and dad.

And I thought, I hit the, I hit, immediately hit the, the, um, history bar. I thought, oh my God. What is she done? I go in and I'm like, what did you do? She's like, nothing. I got out back. Like I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, not dinner. What did you do?

And she's like, what are you talking? I said, I said, I just hit the history bar. Boom, immediately starts crying. I'm like, I, I'm sorry. I love you so much. I wasn't trying to pry. It just, I saw the letter. from mom and dad, from her mom and dad.

I'm so sorry. Please don't, please don't leave. Please don't leave. So we have this huge crying, you know, thing for the next hour or two. And she begs me to stay. And, you know, and I was in love with her. Like, you know, people do stupid things for love. And so I stayed.

And I stayed and things were good up until we found out that Dateline was coming out. So there was an episode of Dateline coming out. Dateline's coming out. She, she, because now she's searching me constantly. right every time an article comes out she's like an article came out i'm like jesus like i'm not even looking and so there was an article in fortune magazine she read it there's a couple articles in bloomberg becky gets caught she gets arrested boom she got caught for she had told her mother that she was in houston one during one phone call another phone call she had said that she had

paid for um like uh whatever the cosmetology to cut hair she was in school for cosmetology her mother called the uh called the uh uh you or called the uh secret service or fbi and told them she's in houston at a cosmetology school because her mother was very much a drama queen just like be becky and she's like i just want you to be safe and so she called and told her and i'm sure she was doing she thought she felt like she was doing the right thing i get it like she's afraid that you know you know but in her mind he's with this psychopath this guy might kill her like in her mind she really drummed up this insane thing so they end up coming in one day and they grab her at the uh um um at the cosmetology school.

So she gets busted, like all these things are happening. And then one day we find out datelines coming out. And so it's like, okay, an article in Fortune magazine, big deal. I don't know anybody that reads Fortune. Bloomberg, I'm hanging out with construction workers, you know, like, you know, people that have regular jobs. Like, nobody reads this. Nobody's going to recognize.

Even if they saw me, they wouldn't recognize me. So I'm not that concerned. You know, articles in Tampa and Chicago and like this is where these articles are coming in like Chicago Tribune did a whole series of articles called The Fugitive. Okay. So what? Nobody in Nashville is reading this. And the internet is in its infancy, right?

This is in 2006, late 2006. YouTube, Facebook had just been invented, you know? Like Amanda was on MySpace. Yeah. So I'm not that worried, but Dateline, there weren't 190 channels back then. There were, they were still like 40, 20. and people only watch six of them. Dateline is something people watch.

My fear was even if I up and moved the day before Dateline and was on the, you know, kind of in transition and laid low, it doesn't matter. Dateline will be re-aired in three months and then two months and then a year and a half and then it doesn't matter. Someday I'll reinvent my life. And one day the barista at Starbucks will be watching TV and be like, that's John Thomas.

He comes in every morning and gets a Vinti Vanilla latte. Huh, I'm going to call somebody and they call and I walk in to get my coffee and boom, there's a cop stand. You know, there's three FBI agents or secret service. Like, I got to leave the country. So we decide we're going to go to Australia. Australia at that time, if you showed up with like $200,000 in a business plan, they would allow you to stay as a permanent resident alien. You could buy property. You can open a business.

You cannot take a job as an Aussie. You cannot vote. I don't care about voting. I don't care about taking a job. job, I'm going to show it with a couple million dollars and just start a business. I can buy real estate, rent out the properties. Sounds good to me. While we're doing this, we're having guys cash checks. We're getting cash, getting cash, getting cash. And Amanda ends up telling a friend of ours, a girl friend of ours, she tells her who I am because she asked her to cash a bunch of checks.

And I'm pretty sure that sparked a conversation. Why are you cashing $30,000 in checks? So I'm pretty sure that's what sparked the conversation, although I don't know. But regardless, she found out who I was. She contacted the Secret Service. Secret Service washed the house for a few days. One day I come home, boom, they pull up. Er, er, get on the ground, get on the, you know. You've seen the movies just like that.

Threw me on the ground, pick me up. That's it. I was arrested. Didn't initially had a little discussion about whether I was me. One guy's like, I don't think this is him. I wouldn't say anything at first. But then when they said, no, this is Matthew Cox. You are Matthew Cox, right?

And I was like, yeah. Like, I'm not even, like, I know I'm done. Why did this time feel different versus everything? I was just, I'm in handcuffs. They've got my, they've got my photo, my wanted poster. They've got my name. They're right here. Like, I was never that close before.

So they take me downtown. I get moved to Atlanta. The short version is I get moved to Atlanta. I end up getting, I get sentenced to, the short version is I get sentenced to 26. years. And, you know, while I'm incarcerated, I end up getting my sentence reduced twice. So I don't know if you have any specific questions. I don't know. The lawyer that you used. How long you used. The lawyer you used was amazing. The story in jail. Oh, you mean, oh, I was going to say my public defender. Yeah. Which she was actually a very nice person. Like, I didn't give her any like. There's nothing she could have done.

No, so yeah. So what happened was I went to prison and. Well, okay, so when I get arrested, I cooperate, obviously. I tell them, you know, like, who helped me, you know, like I tell them everything I could tell them, but it's been three years and changed. By the time they interviewed me, it's almost been four years. And everybody's already cooperated, right? So some people have already gone to jail and gotten out, like Allison had already gone to jail and was getting, and was in the house, like getting out in the halfway house. Becky was in jail. She got 70 months and it got cut down to like 30 months.

when they arrested me because she got cooperation because she had told them everything she could tell them. And they said, okay, you've helped us. We'll cut your sentence. So she left almost as soon as I got arrested within a year. She's gone. But everybody I'd worked with in Tampa had already cooperated against me, but they had never arrested them. So by the time they're talking to me, it's late, it's mid to late 2007. What's happening in 2007? Things are getting bad in the economy. me. It's starting to collapse. So they always say the financial, 2008 financial crisis. Yeah, but that was going on for six or eight months before 2008 financial crisis is because in 2008, that's when they did the bail out. That's what it was so bad. We've got to bail these guys out. So it's bad. It's bad. There's a lot of press. I cooperate. But they don't. And they say they're going to go indict people and I'm supposed to get my time cut. So I get 26 years. I was also interviewed by Dateline. They did a one hour. special on me. They came and interviewed me. I get sentenced 26 years. I go to prison. I'm at the medium security prison. And it's a real prison, exactly what you think. People are getting stabbed,

riots. I didn't have a problem. You know, you talk to these guys who, you know, I had to fight the first day I got in there. I got a shank. And then that happened. And I was at a medium. Guys were getting stabbed. Really? You know, were you scared of going to prison like that? Terrified. I know you look at me and you think tough guy. But that's not true. I'm not a tough guy. I'm as soft as fucking cotton. I mean, I'm not a fighter, you know, so I mean. So how do you not get taken advantage of in prison? You know, it's so funny because the only time I ever had anybody even try and extort me was when I went to the low. And whenever I tell this story, I always get people in the comment section, they're like, this guy's lying,

he's lying. But at the low, low security, low federal prisons are filled with sex offenders and people that cooperated. Like, you're either half of them or sex offenders. The other half, 90% of those guys cooperated. So if there's 1,800 or 2,000 people, there's a thousand that,

1,000 people there that aren't there for sex offense. Out of that thousand, there's maybe 100 that didn't cooperate. And that doesn't mean that they didn't try and cooperate. They're like me. They cooperated.

They just didn't get anything for it. So there's very, the only people that you can be for sure didn't cooperate are people that went to trial. And I can't tell you how many times I've read somebody who's like they're,

they call them a twilight. It's a, it's a, it's a habeas action where you're trying to say, hey, my lawyer was ineffective. I can't tell you how many times,

guys, I've read them where they're like, look, I pled guilty. My lawyer never told me I could cooperate, so I didn't. Does it make sense?

So like, you're walking around like, fuck those snitches, fucking snitches. Well, I read your 2255. And had you known you could cooperate. operate. You're saying you would have. You know what I'm saying? Like, sometimes they just don't know. And I've

had friends that I talk to. Why is that more dangerous, though? Like, why are those people more dangerous than the higher security? The medium security? You said the low level is filled with those guys. It's more dangerous. No, no, I'm saying that's the only time I was ever extorted. Okay. I'm not saying it's more dangerous. Got it. It is dangerous, but it's dangerous like a really, really rough high school, right? Like, you could get stabbed, but honestly, if you just go to class and just keep your nose down, like, I always say this, like, if you get stabbed in prison, you had it coming. If you get your ass beat in prison, you had it coming. People aren't walking around just smashing people, right?

Like, I had to do something. Maybe I ran up a debt like with you. I owed you $200 or I borrowed something from you. And you said, hey, man, I need to get that back. And I said, fuck you. Okay, well, you're going to get hurt. You might get away with that once or twice, but you're going to get hurt. You're not a lot.

Maybe you're gambling. You run up a debt and you don't pay it. You owe the bookie $200. He's got to do something to hurt you. Maybe you run up a store debt. Like some guy sells stuff out of his locker. He's got like a little store, they call it. And you're getting potato chips and you're supposed to get them two potato chip bags.

And you said, fuck you, I'm not going to do it. Or you're disrespectful to somebody. Right? Like you're not, you start, or you gossip. You start talking about something. I start talking about grand, grandma, grams a snitch, graams this, fuck, Graham, he's a fucking, you have to do something about that, right? You can't sue me.

That's how people get hurt. And typically the guy's, Graham comes to me and says, listen, man, you need to watch your mouth. You need to, you know, or, hey, you need to check in. You need to go to the shoe, go to the hole, right? You know, people call, it's called the shoe. You need to check in or you're going to get hurt. Man, fuck you.

You ain't going to do nothing. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? Probably 80% of the time, and even in the low, they're going to do something. But how common is it that someone big will come up and be like, like, oh, you're going to be with me tonight. Oh, yeah. And then if you, yeah, and then if you fight back on that, then you could get, like, hurt.

Is that? So there's, it's more likely that they, they call it that they pressure you, right? Like, you, and I've actually had this happened where it almost happened. Like, I'm walking. I see there's a click of guys, right? They call them, this is going to sound horrible. Yeah. Booty bandits.

You've heard the, have you heard the term? No, I've never heard of that term. Because, look, in the prison genre, this is, like, common. Like, guys do whole. videos on it. There'd be like booty bandits where they chase other guys around. This is so not your your your yeah your your yeah your your guys a thing. But so what happens is one time I'm walking, I'm just walking around the unit. And this guy goes, yo, yo bro, hey Cox. Oh, come here. Let me talk to you for a second. And I go, no, I'm good. I said, what's going on? Well, come here.

Let me talk to you. Now what I notice is his cell doors open. Two of his buddies are standing on the cell next to it, just talking like they don't even know what's going on. Another guy standing over here. And I already know, he's saying, let me talk to you in my, in myself for a second. So he's either trying to get me close to the door or give me in his cell. As soon as I get into a cell, these three guys are going to run in, close the door, and they're going to pull out knives. What are you going to do, bro? And then it's suddenly going to get very serious. And they're going to want you to do something. They're going to want this or you're going to get stuck and you're scared to death. Would they actually stab you? I don't know.

No, but I knew right then I actually grabbed the handrail. I said, no, bro, I'm good. I said, if you want to talk, we can talk right here. Well, you think I'm going to do something? I said, if I don't go in your cell, I don't have to find out. What's up? No, man, I'm just saying if you need anything, you need shoes, I can buy you shoes. You need dope.

Whatever you want, I got you. He's just a nice guy, right? Like, why would you do that? they're trying to make you indebted to them because suddenly he bought you a pair of $120 shoes now you owe me and in a way you do owe him and he feels like you owe him so then you might get hurt

so I'm like yeah bro I don't need nothing now man I see you wearing these shoes all the time they're all bad man they're fucked up I'm good man I'm good you know and that's just and I'm holding on this because I know if he grabs me or tries to pull me or all of them I'm gonna lock on and just start screaming

didn't happen How do the officers just not see this? And there's not cameras everywhere? I mean, there are cameras, but honestly, like, half of them don't work. You know, and the officers, like, they're worried about you causing a fight, like, fight or something like people stabbing you. Like, they're not, you know, and look, here's the other thing about that the whole situation is that keep in mind, there's gay people. There's gay guys in prison. There are that, you know, they call them punks, right?

So there's punks in prison. There are transgender. And I mean boobs. Like there's three guys walking around the compound with boobs and butt implants. And like it's it's like this is insane. Are they popular in jail or are they serious? They're extremely pot. Listen, if you're a punk in prison, you run that place.

I mean, these guys are desperate, desperate to be with this guy. Because there's a lot of like people that are gay in prison. Like I don't know what percentage of people that go to prison like end up, you know, having gay intercourse. Right. But is that because they're like born gay and they just never get a chance to like, you know, have sex or something like that? And then and then once they hit prison, it's like somehow socially accepted. I think it's probably a scale, right? Like you have some guys that are just 100% masculine, right?

Super masculine. And then you have, you know, and it's a scale. Like, you know, you, so it, you know, goes to like, you know, you're by. You have sex with men and women. And then maybe you only have sex with, you know, men. So, you know, it's a scale. So some of these guys are maybe by, but they, you know, never act on it because they're in a culture where it's not acceptable. Like in the black

community, it's really not acceptable. You know, like, oh, these guys really frown on it. So they never act on it. But then they, and you'll hear this term a lot, gay for the stay. You'd hear this all the time. So they stay because. No, no, they're when they're in prison for their prison sentence, their stay. So he's gay for the stay. He's gay while he's here. But when he gets out, he's not. He was only having sex with other men because he was incarcerated. I just have a time believing that they're not gay if they you know what I mean because like you take a perfect like a perfectly straight person versus a perfectly gay person like I think it would be probably hard to convince that person you know like it's kind of a silly conversation like I'm straight and I could like I don't

know if I was in prison away for like 30 years and it's like you're 25 that that's that's the thing that's why I always joke about that I'm like look to a guy with a life sentence I might as well be wearing a dress like to a guy with a life sentence like he's given up on all pretenses and if he had any inclinations to toward being a homosexual he just goes all in why wouldn't he he's got 30 years he's probably going to die in prison are there like bullies for gay people in prison yeah like that's what i'm saying they'll pressure you like they'll give you stuff or they'll no no no but like do people bully people for being gay in prison or is it kind of like no that's really interesting because you think i know i know i agree i mean i agree like i i feel like most of the gay guys

in prison were treated very well and were typically extremely most of the gay guys in prison are there for um for fraud by the way most of them and they're very manipulative and they'll have multiple guys buying them commissary getting them shoes uh they'll have multiple boyfriends they'll charge you know for sexual acts they have money on their sorry money on their books like your inmate account they'll people will put money on their books they'll end up getting they call them a war daddy a big big big guy that, you know, is... That, like, defends them? Yes.

Does it happen often where people go to prison, not knowing they're gay? They turn gay in prison, then they continue to be gay outside of prison. Jesus, you've really thought about them. Because here's the thing. That's oddly specific, Jack. For me, this is like, I feel like it's like a human phenomenon that it just so happens. It's confusing to me that someone can just go to prison because I put myself in those shoes, right? I imagine myself having a life sentence and I'm like, there's just no way.

There's no way that it could ever That it could happen. Right. So I'll tell you one thing. Here's what's funny is a lot of guys will, they'll get the like the nudie magazines, the girl magazines, you know, whatever. You know, they're not played with like penthouse or whatever. And they'll just look at that like that seems like that's all they ever you ever see them looking at. But I never did that because I remember thinking that's going to make my time.

I'm going to, I'm not going to focus my time on that because it's just going to make my time harder. So I literally when I got locked up and as I was locked up for a longer period, of time, I started thinking to myself, like, you know, two years go by, three, four, you kind of give up on the idea. As I was approaching, you know, my mid-40s, I kind of, and I thought, you know, probably you're going to be getting out when you're 60. That's over. That part of your life is over. You'll never be in love again. You're not going to be, you're not going to have a girlfriend or a wife. You're not going to kiss a girl. You're not, that romance portion of your life is over. So there's no reason to look at those magazines. It only makes a lot.

things harder, you know? So I just, I just didn't. But there's lots of guys that that's all they focus on. And so as an escape, right? They hit their fantasizing, whatever's going through their mind. You know, and I just never did that because all I thought was, it's just going to make things harder, you know, I don't know that I answer your question, but how do people sneak in everything to jail? Oh, you, well, you're talking about like a, oh, well, you know, I guess it just happened like, like internet access or like, no internet access. So I see people posting like, like, you know, like, you're talking like, Like on YouTube from jail. Okay, well, now those may be, that may be somebody who has a cell phone.

Yeah, right. So guards, it depends on the custody level, but guards will bring in a cell phone for somebody. Like you give them like a, like they buy a $80 phone. Or maybe your, maybe your girlfriend goes to the guard and gives him a phone. And then you, and she gives them $1,000 and he gives you the phone. Now you got a phone. You know, or guys will, you know, hoop it. saying they'll yeah

I don't know do you not do you actually not understand this they'll place it in their they'll go to they'll go to visit and they'll keester it or put it in their prison in their prison purse and then they go and they get

strip searched but they're you know they don't catch it obviously they don't it's you know supposedly you bend over cough and some there's supposed to be some kind of reaction do you charge it though you can get a charge you you get a charge yes no I mean what do you mean?

Well, no, no, but there's an outlet in the... Oh, no, you can find... You can find an outlet. Yeah, but wouldn't someone see it? Like, a guard season? You know how many, like, honestly, do they have been, like, for 2000? And, no, they don't see it because they're, they're in their office.

Like, you literally could go six months to a year without ever talking to a guard. You're going to see them periodically, but you don't have to have any interaction. You don't want to talk to them, right? No, not really. You know, there's no real reason to. It doesn't look good for. It depends on where you're, what, what custody level you are. But yeah, but you can find access.

Look, you all have lights in your cells, right? Like you can pull the light off and find this, find a way to plug in the charger to charge it and charge it. These guys are, they can be brilliant. You know, let's say everybody's got jobs, right? So you go to the job, there's outlets in the job, you know. So if you're working in a factory or you're working in, I worked in education, I taught GED. So there's plugs there. How do you prevent your items for being stolen?

You have a locker with a lock on it. I mean, people could still steal it, but literally guys will track that. These guys, they police themselves. If someone stealing from two or three people's shoes end up missing, these guys will track down who the person is. Like being a thief in prison, that's bad, bro. Like you're not going to make it long. These guys will just beat, like five guys will just catch you in the bathroom and just

beat the crap out of you. Did people die while you were in prison? And people die, but not from like stabbings or anything. They died just from from medical. You know, like some guy, one, this is just one instant. A guy got off the bus. He was, he needed, he was asthmatic, extremely asthmatic. Got off the bus and they had his stuff, right?

And so they didn't, they wouldn't give it to him. They said, well, medical has to check it out. They have to give it to you. Okay, well, it's four o'clock. I need my asthma medication. Oh, well, when you get to the unit, tell them to call medical. Medical closes. But he doesn't know.

The guard just trying to get him off. get well you go to the unit tell the unit uh tell the unit manager and they'll get it from medical because i have to bring this to medical so he brings it to medical goes there unit manager's not there goes to the co hey man i need my stuff okay okay we'll take care of it uh after count it's four o'clock count everybody has to stay in there and they go around they count everybody by 430 they're done he goes back hey man i need my i need my my my uh inhaler you don't understand. I could die. I could, all right, calm down, calm. I'll call down there. Call it down there. They're not there. I need it. Or they're not there. I don't know what to tell you. Look, look, when you go to dinner, see if the, see if the assistant warden is there and talk to the assistant warden. Goes their assistant warden's not there. Goes to try and talk to the lieutenant. Lieutenant says they're closed. What do you want me to do? You'll get it tomorrow. Guys in tears. Guys calling his, his, calls his family at home. I'm here. I'm in, I'm in Coleman. I just got here. They've got my stuff. They won't give it to me. I don't know what to do. Everybody's freaking out. Nobody wants to help him. That night, he has a massive asthma attack and he dies. He wakes

up the next morning. He's as hard as a fucking rock. Like, you know, done. Died in the middle of night. Who's responsible for that? Nobody, you can't sue anybody. It's just a mistake. And you know where they said he died? They, what they'll do is they'll come during count. They'll realize he's dead. And they'll go, they'll then call. Then they'll call the outside ambulance. The guards will put him on one of these orange things that they carry you, they'll strap them down. And they'll go, hurry, hurry, the guy's dead. Rig of mortis is set in. He's done.

They rush him out, get him outside, put him in the ambulance, and then they say he died on his way to the hospital. So he left here alive. Everybody knows he didn't. But there's nobody really. It's shocking to me that the family has a record of him saying he's been trying to access medication, can't, but warned about it, and he's dead. It seems as though

How many police officers are on camera violating people's rights, beating them up, breaking their arms, hurting them. They fire the guy. Maybe they do a payoff only because they're on film.

These people aren't on film. Do the officers care about this person's life? Because it seems like even just as a human, it's like if the guy needs his medication, they probably see a lot of people fabricating things, exaggerating, lying. And so they just use their best judgment

and it's very skewed. Right. And that's really the problem. And I always say, I always used to say, you know, every time the administration would try and do something for the inmates, they ruin it. The inmates ruin it every time. They want to, they had this thing where they were, you could rent movies, not rent movies, just sign up and you get a movie. They had a whole list of movies you could get. Very quickly, the guy that's running that, the inmate that's running it, now you have to pay him to get to see a movie.

And before you know it, he's selling slots to two different people. And then suddenly there's fights. And guys are getting stabbed over it. And it's like, they're paying you to sit here and schedule people. You're charging people $4 to watch this new movie they got in. And you're scheduling it so much. This guy shows up late and this guy's pissed off. And he's not done yet.

And mom right here, tell him to, you know, these guys aren't normal. Like they're. And next thing you know, that guy walks in and just picks up a fucking picks up something and smashes the guy in the head. And does jail screw with people's minds? Because it seems like being in that environment maybe causes some people to like act out in that. I think most of those people probably had issues to begin with, if that makes sense. Sure.

You know, because I did 13 years, and I'm not saying I'm, you know, the picture of health, but I don't think I'm mentally any worse off now than I was. But I also wasn't in a penitentiary. So I wasn't in a violent place where you were, and there are some penitentiaries like California penitentiaries are some of the worst, right? Like, yeah, guys are literally like, and they are getting, you know, there are stabbings. there are, but I committed a federal crime. I shouldn't have even been in a medium. I should have gone straight to a camp. I have camp points.

But because I had so much time, they sent me to a medium. I stayed there for three years. After three years, I went to a low. And what's the biggest difference between medium and low in terms of security? In a medium, if a guy puts a Snickers bar on your pillow, don't eat it. Don't touch it because he's going to come back for it. You better be there, right? If he doesn't, you own.

in the low you can eat the fucking Snickers you know what I'm saying? Does that make sense it? It's a very serious more serious. You remember I was saying like if somebody gives you something like, oh now you owe me. Now you owe me. You know?

So it's like if somebody left the Snickers, it'd be like take that thing and just stick it outside and be like, I don't know what you're, you know, or don't even touch it. Like I don't know what you're fucking around. Get your shit off my off my pillow. But at the low, you could eat it.

Nobody's going to probably do anything. Like I said, at the low, when I got the low, I'd been there a month or so. And I had a guy come up to me. me and tell me, he walked right up to him and he goes, you know, man, this is how this is going to go. You're going to get me $50 in commissary. I don't know what the exact amount was, but $50 in commissary every single month

and nobody's going to bother you. I said, yeah? He said, yeah, I ain't fucking around. I said, all right. I said, well, what do you want? And I guess he didn't expect it to go that smoothly. He goes, man, I ain't playing around. I said, bro, I heard you.

You want $50 commissary. He said, but I need to know what you want. I said, nobody's going to. bother me. He said, no. I said, well, give me a, can you give me a list? I ain't joking. I said, bro, what do you want me to say? You just told me $50 in commissary. What do you want? You want me just get you whatever I want you to have? And I said, give me a list. All right, I'll get you a list. I said, make sure you put your, like, whatever, whatever, you know, they call them cells with their cubicles and the lows because they don't have doors.

Tell me what, what cell you're in? He says, what will you need to sell for? I said, because when I, when I take, I said, when you give me the list and I go to the counselor and I tell the counselor, what am I supposed to do about this? This guy wants me to give him by $50 in commissary. I said he's in, I want to be able to tell him he's in this cell so we can go straight to you and we can talk about it. He's, oh, that's how it is. See, normally in the comments, people, if I've said this before, they're always like, he'd be smashed. That guy would have beat your ass. You never tell.

I was in a low security prison, federal prison. Half the guys are sex offenders. 90% of the other guys are, are, are, have cooperated. This is not a tough, tough place. Not saying people don't get stabbed. They do. Right. But, and he sat there and he's like, oh, that's how it going to be.

You're going to snitch on me? I said, of course I'm going to snitch on you. I said, bro, I said, almost everybody in this fucking place is a snitch. I go, I just came from the medium for three years and nobody ever extorted me. Do you think I'm going to get extorted at the low? And he goes, all right, all right, you're going to have some problems. You're going to have problems. I said, all right.

Well, if I do, I'll know where to find you. I'll have problems. I'll have problems. I said, if I have to get smashed and I have to go to the fucking shoe, then that's what I have. I said, I got 20 fucking years to go. 20 years. Do you really think that I don't expect to get smashed a few times? I said, bro, I promise you're going too.

I said, I can keep my mouth shut. Okay. We're going to see you. They're going to come back and bite you when he walks off. Yeah. They never heard anything else with the guy. Saw the guy. He's in my unit.

I see him every day. I used to avoid him. Yeah. I would avoid him for like months, right? Like he, I see, he was luckily, he was like six foot six. super tall, thin, but super tall. So I could see him everywhere. You could, anywhere you stood up, you'd be like, oh, there he is.

I'd walk this way. So I'm kind of avoiding him. But at some point, something happened and he just like, it was, I had to move cells and I swapped out a cell with a sex offender. Some guy moved in my cell. I didn't want my cell. So I went to the sex offender and I said, look, I'll give you 35 bucks if you'll switch cells with me.

So while the other guy is sleeping, we swap out all of our stuff. I get the counselor to agree to it. We swap it all out. And then when the guy wakes up, he realizes, one, you moved into myself without asking me. And now, and I'm pissed. And you basically told me, fuck you, it's tough shit. I got permission, nothing you can do. And I then go to the counselor and convince him to let me move the sex offender in there.

He says, okay. And I move the sex offender in there. So when this guy wakes up from his nap, he's now living with a sex offender. It's a worst thing you could possibly do. So I do that. And everybody, it got around to me. Everybody's laughing their ass is awful. like damn cox so that guy that guy the six foot six guy one day i'm walking down and i see him i look up

he goes cox and i thought oh fuck with this guy and i go yeah what's up he said that shit you jup they call him chomos he was that shit you did with the chomo and i go yeah he goes veteran fucking move bro we dab hands he goes veteran fucking move and he just walks off which i don't understand why is it the worst thing to be paired up with a sex offender because they're a sex offender and they're like the you know in prison in the hierarchy of prison, like, that's the worst possible thing you could be. Because it's like being paired with them isn't, is that. Well, no, no, I'm saying I have to live with a sex offender. In some prisons, the guys will tell you you cannot, like, if you're in a gang or something,

like you can't live with a sex offender. And what they mean is like, you tell him, he's got like 48 hours to move. He needs to get himself moved. But if the sex offender says, I'm not moving, well, then you have to smash him. Or you're going to get smashed. Do you see what I mean? Like, it's interesting. You know, like I honestly, I had a very easy, not that any of it's super easy, but in comparison to the prison experience I could have had, I was blessed.

I really was blessed. It could have been really bad, you know. I could have gone to a much worse place. I could have had major problems. I got very lucky. I taught GED. I taught the real estate class. They have a real estate class.

It was super popular. Um, you know, I, I went to the, I went to the, well, I went to the, well, I went to the, when I went to the guy Frank Amadeo, I see, I, I've been interviewed, let's get back to that. I got, I've been interviewed by Dateline. And the U.S. attorney in my case said, if you're interviewed by date, well, first, if you cooperate, we'll consider it, what's called substantial assistance and will reduce your sentence. I did it, but they didn't arrest anybody. So when we said, okay, but I cooperated, they said, yeah, but it didn't lead it to anything. So,

we can't do anything for you. Then they came to me and they said, look, if you'll be interviewed by a Dateline, we'll consider that substantial assistance and we'll reduce your sentence. So I'm interviewed by Dateline. They air it. We go back to him, say, hey, he was interviewed.

And they go, yeah, it's just not enough. Okay. And so then American Greed contacts us. They contact the U.S. attorney. They say, hey, we want to interview this guy. She tells my attorney, have him be interviewed. Okay, I'm interviewed by him. it's released, it airs.

I have the episode. And they say, it's just not enough. Then I'm contacted by a guy, Jim Montram, who runs the National Mortgage Origination Group. All mortgage brokers have to take like nine hours of continuing education every year, right? Three hours is on ethics and fraud. So he comes to me, he goes, goes, gets my lawyer, goes to the U.S. attorney, and they come back and they say, look, we want Cox to write the ethics and fraud course that's going to be used to help teach the nation's mortgage. broker. I spend three months writing this course, well, probably two or three months, writing the course, 9,500 words. He starts, he implements it. He starts using it. We get a bunch of

letters from people saying that it's being used. We go back to the U.S. attorney. We say, here, you promised if I did this. And they go, yeah, it's just not enough. So at this point, what do I do? At this point, it's been five, six years. It's been six years. My outdate with good time. So with 15% off my sentence, if I got no good time, my out date is 2035. But I'm a good guy.

I didn't lose any good time. I'm a good person. I'm a good inmate. So I'm going to get all my good time. My outdate is 2030. I'm supposed to be right now in prison. So finally, I realize there's nothing I can do. So I said, well, I'm going to file something, right?

Like there's paperworking file, something called a 2255. It's a habeas motion. I know that means nothing. nothing. It basically, it's saying, hey, my lawyer is inefficient. It was ineffective. Like, my lawyer didn't know what they were doing. And so you try and take back your plea. Like, I was given bad information. I want to take my plea back. I want to start over. So you have one year to do that from the day you're sentenced. It's been six years. So I've called a bunch of people, lawyers on the street.

They've all said, you don't have a chance. There's nothing you can do. You'll never get back in the court. So I go, I have a buddy who's been working with this guy named Frank Amadeo. He's a despard lawyer. He's doing 22, he was doing 22 years for, for tax fraud. He's bipolar with features of schizophrenia. So some bipolar have such bad bipolar that when they become manic, they become like delusional, right? So they don't just get upset and angry. They actually have like fantasies.

His fantasy, and he would disagree with this, is that God is telling him that he is preordained to be emperor of the world. That's how he says it. Not ruler, king, emperor of the world. He's preordained. God has ordained it. It's going to happen. And he believes God's telling him this, which is how he ended up in prison. He stole nearly $200 million from the federal government.

Whoa. How did you do that? So listen. And this actually happens a lot. You don't hear about it. Let's say some big company. You know a lot of these companies that go under, right? They claim bankruptcy, whatever.

So most companies do what? They'll stop paying their vendors. They'll pay the. But they'll almost always pay their employees, right? But a lot of times what happens is if you're W-2 employees making $1,000 a week, your employer takes out your taxes, right? Let's say $200 a week. And then plus they pay in a little bit, right?

Yeah, yeah. $50. So that $250, every quarter, they send that to the IRS. Well, a lot of times when these companies get into financial straits, they tell the IRS, we have the money. Well, we owe you the money, but we don't have it. We spent it. As long as they notify the IRS, that's okay. So what happens is they can get further and further behind.

And so what Frank did was Frank would go in and buy companies that were in distress. He would then immediately say, look, all of your employees, I'm going to have run, we're going to have them lease. We're going to have them work for this company, a payroll, not payroll company, but a employee leasing company. And they're going to lease the employees back to you and we'll do all the payroll. And he owns this company. So now there's hundreds of thousands of dollars every week for your company going into the payroll company. And Frank is paying the employees, but the money he's supposed to be sending to the IRS, he doesn't send it to him. He keeps it.

He keeps it and he's using it to do things like he's trying to buy F-16s. He starts a private security company that has contracts in Afghanistan that is in charge of, you know, guarding convoys that is guarding diplomats that are. are kidnapping people in other countries and bringing them back to the United States. Like if you're a drug dealer, the DEA wants you, but you're a Brazilian drug dealer who's hanging out in Colombia, the DEA can't go get them.

Frank's company comes in, watches them for a week, grabs them, throws them on a plane, flies them back in, calls a DEA, gives them to the DEA, DAA cuts you a check for $250,000. No questions asked. He's wanted. If he shows up here, we don't ask questions.

There are companies that do this. Blackwater, these are private companies. They guard oil. oil rigs. They, you know, so he's got companies that do these things. He's got a private, a military company that builds portable satellites. Like it's all these things that are, they have military applications. Frank goes to prison and he starts representing clients, like, I'm sorry, inmates.

So he's in, he gets 22 years for doing for, for, for the money that he wasn't sending the IRS. And it's a super interesting story, by the way. It's like, if I actually, never mind. I wrote a book. But it's, so I will, I really lay it out. really interesting and he's a fascinating character and a hilarious and honestly um so he was there a few years before i ever talked to him i wasn't going to talk to him because he's delusional like i don't

want that delusional guy doing my my my my legal work but he's doing legal work for other inmates and so every once in a while somebody comes up to me and goes hey man you know you know jake yeah fucking immediate release tomorrow i think i had like 10 more years no Frank got him immediately release. He's leaving. Are you serious? Frank? Yeah. Two weeks later. You know Pookie and B3? Yeah, I know. I know. But we have with the dreds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bro, they're putting him for a halfway house. Frank just got five years off his sentence. He's leaving. Really? Three weeks later. Somebody else. Leaving. Somebody else. 10 years off his sentence. Somebody else. Immediate release. Somebody else. Four years off his sentence. Anything something. You got eight years and you get four years. years off and you're already been locked up three years. You're going home right now with good time.

They're going straight to a halfway house. So it's like, holy shit. I heard this for six months to eight months. So maybe a year. So after a year, I go, so now it's been like seven years. I go to Frank. My buddy Turk says, you got to come talk to him. I go and I tell him my case. Here's what happened. Here's what they said. Here's what they said. And I'm going to do Frank for you here. Frank's like five four. And Frank goes, yes. I'll tell you. You just, you just. just has these spikes of bipolar, right? He goes, I tell you, he said, that just, I'm not going to let them do this to you. I will not let them do this.

When my, when my legions march on Washington, the president will bow at my feet and, and I will burn the Constitution. And everybody's, me, Turk, and another guy, I realize these other guys are just like standing there, like, and I'm thinking, the fuck is happening. And all of a sudden he goes, Turk, I'm going to need a form, a 2255 form. I'm going to need Jimmy start a file on Matt Cox. Mr. Cox, I'm going to need your transcripts. I'm going to need a copy of your indictment.

I'm also going to need a copy up your play agreement, blah, blah, blah. And I'm thinking, what just happened? This guy just said his legions are going to march on Washington. And then these guys are like, absolutely, Frank, absolutely. Jimmy turns around and bolts off or Todd or whatever his name was to go get my file. And he, Turk, you're like, come on, let's go. Turn around. I'm like, what the fuck just happened, bro?

I remember thinking I'm spending every day of my sentence in this place. He's crazy. How do you pay him? I didn't pay him. I never had to pay him anything. He just does this because he enjoys doing it. He does it because I think it was he's a huge thorn in the side of the B.O. Of the, not the BOP, but of the government.

Yeah. So what happens is we fight the case. So we fight the case. I don't know what I'm doing. Okay. You know, I'm not doing anything. I'm just Frank says do this. Yes, sir.

And I'm still seeing him cut people loose. He prepares the documents. He sends them off. They come back. Government says this guy's time barred. Frank says the time bars reset every time you requested he do something. Mr. Cox could have done something immediately, but you requested he'd be interviewed by Dateline.

So he didn't because he expected you to do what you were going to do. He said my lawyer, which was funny because he didn't say a lawyer was ineffective. My lawyer, because you don't have the right, by the way, for an effective lawyer under the Constitution. you just have a right to a lawyer. So that's why a lot of people, he lose. He said my lawyer was just didn't understand the law. So we argue back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

This goes on for six, eight months. And then finally, when it looks like I'm going to get what's called an evidentiary hearing, where they're going to bring me back to court where you can argue in front of court, the court, the government suddenly tells the court, we want you to give Mr. Cox a lawyer so he can, decide whether or not to accept a what's called a rule 35, a sentence reduction or continue on to do his, to do the, um, the evidentiary hearing. So they just said they're going to give me a rule. They're going to reduce my sentence. Not by my, they said one level that. I'm sorry, they didn't even offer that. So the lawyer, they give me a lawyer. Lawyer flies down. She says they're offering you one level. It's like 40

months off my sentence. And so I said, oh, no, no, that's not enough. So I said, Frank said that, that we want four levels. And she's like, well, okay, who's Frank? And I said, Frank's the guy that did all my legal work. And I explained to her that he's, you know, she goes, what's he here for? And I tell her what he's there for. And she's like, you've got a mentally incompetent guy doing your legal work. I said, yeah.

I said, but it doesn't seem to affect his legal work, does it? I said, because everybody, she said, yeah, but all the, all of the, all of the competent lawyers said they wouldn't do it. She's like, yeah, well, you don't have a chance of winning. I go, and yet you're here. I've already one level. They've already agreed. I said, if you're saying I don't have a chance, she goes, no, I said, if I don't have a chance,

why wouldn't they just crush me? Why are you here? He says, yeah, I don't, I don't know. So anyway, long story short, we go back and forth, back forth. I end up going, they bring me, they go up to like, they're going to give me, they give me one level and they agree, look, here's what we're going to do. We're going to bring you back to court. You can argue in front of the judge.

So we go back to court, we argue in front of the judge. and the judge says, I'm going to give you three levels off your sentence, which is three levels is the equivalent of seven years. Wow. So you have to think incrementally, each level represents less and less months of incarceration as you go lower. So this is seven, right? Three levels is seven. So I come back to court and I go up to Frank and I remember because I would love this that he said, this is so funny. He goes, I went to Frank. I said, hey, Frank, I just got back. And he's like, yeah, I heard. I said, I got seven years off my sentence. And I said, I really appreciated. And he was right. Yeah. And I said, but I was hoping it would be more. You know, and he said, he said, I know.

He said, you know, Matt? He said, looks like we're going to have to eat this elephant one spoonful at a time. He said, you keep your ears open. He said, something will happen. Something will happen. We're going to get you some more time off. I was like, and I just thought, you know, he's just. He's just, he's probably 10 years older than me.

So, you know, he's just trying to be, you know, nice and, you know, and it was even just for me to even say, I was hoping it would be more. Like, he was a dick thing for me to even say. So, and it's funny, I get upset because, like, I'm so fucking appreciative. Like, I didn't have a chance without this guy. Yeah. You know. And so I'm walking around the compound. And, uh, I walk around the compound.

around the compound a month later with this guy named Ron Wilson. Ron Wilson ran a Ponzi scheme where he stole $57 million from pension funds and churches. Not a nice guy. But I liked Ron. You know, it's an old con man. He's super cocky, super arrogant, reminding me of my dad. So I'm walking around the compound with him one day. And he's complaining because he's been locked up maybe a year or so. But he's cooperating in his case, hoping to get some time off his sentence. He's got like 19 and a half years. So he keeps saying they're not going to reduce the sentence. They're not going to cut any time off his sentence.

And I keep saying why. He goes, because they think I hid Ponzi scheme money. I said, well, you didn't. You gave him all the Ponzi scheme money. Ah, you don't understand. Okay. This goes on for months, two, three months. And then one day he keeps saying it.

And I said, why do you keep saying that, bro? Like, they would have to find out that you don't have Ponzi, that you have the Ponzi scheme money to withhold hold your sentence reduction assuming your cooperation leads to something. And he goes, can I trust you? And I go, probably not. And he goes, he goes, I did, I did hide some Ponzi scheme money. And I went, okay. And he said, yeah, he said, I gave my wife, not much, $100, $150,000 in some cash.

But she found out, since I've been incarcerated, she's found out that I was having an affair. I actually think it was before that, but she found out I was having an affair and you don't know my wife. She's crazy. She'll burn the whole house down around her. Like she didn't care. And she's so upset about it. My fear is she's going to give them that money to make sure that I do all this time. And of course, he's already decided he's going to die in prison.

And I'm like, because he's 60 something, right? He's like 61. And I was like, okay. And he said, I gave my brother about 30,000. I'm like, okay. And he says, so yeah. And I went, okay. And so we're walking.

And I said, well, don't worry about it. She's not going to do that. Blah, blah, blah. He's like, we'll see. And I remember thinking, is that enough to get me a sentence reduction? If I contact someone and tell them and they indict this guy. And then I thought, they're not going to indict this guy because the wife's not going to give up the money. Like, he's just griping.

So I don't say anything. So maybe a month or so later. I call my lawyer because she was supposed to send me my transcripts because I had written a book, right? I wrote my book and I wanted to include some of the stuff that was set up my sentencing. So I call her and when we're talking, she says, okay, yeah, yeah, I'll send him to you. I'm sorry, Matt, I totally forgot. Okay. She says, anything going on in there?

I said, no, nothing. And she goes, you sure, nothing? It was just weird, right? Like, you never wanted to talk to me before. And I was like, no, well, I said, yeah, you know what? Listen to this. There's a guy here named Ron Wilson. So she types them up.

She goes, oh, wow, this is a bad guy. And I said, this is what he told me. And she goes, okay, hold on. She said, look, I'll look into it for you. Okay. I figured I'd never hear from her. A week later, a correctional officer comes up to me and says, Cox, you got to go to SIS, which is internal security.

So you got to go there on the next move. I go, okay, so I go there. They go, come on in. The guy comes in. Come here, Cox, sit down. Okay. He dials the phone here. I said, well, what's going on?

like, I don't know the fuck's happening. I'm like, yeah, what's up? And this guy goes, hey, this is a secret service agent, Griffin. I think his last name was Griffin. Griffin. And I'm like, yeah, he said, I understand you know where Ron Wilson hid Ponzi scheme money. I go, yeah, but I need something in writing saying you're going to give me something. And he's, well, okay, I'll try and blah, blah, blah.

First, he told me that, oh, I'll make sure you get something. Well, I know you can't, you can't promise that. So I'm going to need something from a U.S. attorney. So after about, it takes about a month or so, he ends up sending me something saying that, if they recover any money, a substantial amount of money or anybody's indicted, they will consider substantial assistance and reduce my sentence. What else do I have? It's all I'm going to get. So I tell them what happened. They go, they interview Ron Wilson's wife and his brother. His wife, his brother, his wife first denies it. The next day his brother comes in and gives

him $150,000. He said 30. Then the same, an hour or two later, the wife comes in and gives them $350,000. That's half a million dollars, including gold bullion, silver, because he was a silver dealer. His Ponzi was based on precious metals. So she's got like a, like $100,000 in precious metals, gives it to him. They indict the wife, the brother, and Ron Wilson. Keep in mind, I've been emailing these people, the Secret Service this whole time. So that's, that's pretty dangerous. Like, I could get hurt for that. If the other. inmates found out I could get a beat real bad beat down but I went out of prison um and between ron wilson and me it's going to be wrong ron wilson so like you know i so wilson i know all this is happening he doesn't so one day i'm walking across the compound waiting for this shit that for him to realize and all of a sudden he cocks and i'm like oh shit i'm like hey ron what's up

and he says uh you're not going to believe this they indicted me I'm like, they indicted you. That's crazy. And he says, yeah, they indicted me and my wife and my brother. And I'm like, whoa, that's crazy. And he's like, yeah, so they're going to take me back to court. And so they end up taking him back to court. His wife gets like 100 hours of community service and like a year probation.

His brother gets like a year probation, like 50 hours of community service. Ron Wilson gets six months added onto his sentence. When I turn around and go to the court and say, hey, here's what's happening. You said you reduced my sentence. The court's, the U.S. attorney, they ignore my requests. Then I go back to Frank and I explain it to Frank and Frank files another 2255, goes back to the court and the government says, we don't even know what Mr. Cox is talking about. But I had that letter.

Wow. So I send that to the judge. The judge is like, listen, something's up. So suddenly they give me a lawyer. The lawyer flies down. They say, we'll give you one level off. We argue, we get three, we end up getting three levels off my sentence,

which is five years. And I told you incrementally it goes down. So it's five years. By the time that happens, I'm like a year away from being released. My sentence has now been knocked. Twelve years came off my sentence, but I've been locked up at this point.

It's been, you know, this has been 12 years, you know 11 and change so within whatever six months to a year i'm i'm released and i go to a halfway house and you know that's the that's so i i go to a halfway house i go to a halfway house and now i'm here what's it like adjusting to life outside of prison like technology i felt moved so quickly in that time frame like do you come out and you're like what is this like i'd never seen an iPhone i'd never been on youtube i'd never been on facebook i'd never or yeah, none of all of that is completely foreign to me. Like I said, I had written a bunch of true crime stories.

While I was locked up, I wrote a bunch of true crime stories. I got some guys in Rolling Stone magazine. I got a book deal. I got two book deals. Like I optioned somebody's life rights. But I did it all by writing and typing it on core links, which is like email, kind of like email and there's no access to the internet all of these things like all i knew when i got out was i wanted to do a podcast but like i said earlier like i there was no such thing as a podcast when i got

arrested i didn't know what it was guys are guys that are coming in are trying to explain it to me it's like a radio show but it's like and i'm like i don't understand what do you listen to it what is it oh on your phone on my phone i had a i had a razor flip phone you're not listening to nothing on a razor flip phone. So, you know, like, I don't know what it is. So, yeah, when I got, when I got there, I remember when I got to the halfway house, I got a job that a buddy hired me at a gym. Right away, my probation officer sent me, said, hey, I just emailed you a financial, like a financial statement you have to fill out. It's like 20 pages. I said, okay, I tell my, she said, you got to print it, fill it out and mail it to me. Okay. I go to my buddy and I said,

hey man she mailed me this i have to print this out and he goes um okay he said here hold on um okay there he was okay he said it's printing on the uh and i went no bro i need a i need like a physical copy i have to fill it out he goes it's on the printer i said but what are you talking about i said i mean i need to print this i need to print it so i can fill it out and mail it to her he goes it's on the printer. It's like 30 feet away. And I went, what are you fucking,

what are you talking about? I said, you didn't do anything with it. And he goes, oh, wow, bro, he said, listen.

I said, there's no wire. You have to plug it into. We have to print it. Well, you got to plug it in. And he goes, no,

Matt, I, I just connected you to the Wi-Fi. The printer's connected to the Wi-Fi. So I just, it just went through the Wi-Fi to the printer and it's printed. So I'm like,

what? Just go to the printer. I walk over the printer and there it is, 20 pages. It's magic. Like it's magic. Like I could watch movies. I could anything I ever wanted to know, 150 guys have made a YouTube video.

It doesn't matter how stupid it is. If you want to know about how to put the foam thing on, you know, your sure mic, like there's a guy, the proper way to do this is, you know, like it's insane. I'm shocked. And you know what's so funny is still to this day, I'll be with a. a couple people and they'll be arguing about something and I'll and I'll be like you have the most powerful device ever created in history. Let's look it up. You know, who, you know, created this? And then boom, I'm like, you guys have been arguing for five minutes. So it's just so funny because

like, although I still have little glitches. Yeah. It does. It absolutely seems like magic. What was the biggest adjustment for you? I mean, it was definitely. Was it the iPhone? Yeah, it was the phone and it was editing learning how to edit you know because i use final cut pro i don't know what you guys used but super hard like i didn't have anybody to help me so i'm watching youtube videos like baby step baby step babies and now of course like i can do shorts and i can do editing i can do whatever i need to do at this point yeah i would say just the technology in in general and then you know obviously reacclimating just to society like how did people treat you when you got out of jail you know i don't really hang out The only person, people that I really hang out with that I used to hang out with was, is my,

it's just a couple of friends that weren't really involved in the fraud at all. We were friends in high school. So friends from high school that had nothing to do with my fraud that I kind of, you know, after your high school friends, you go off and you get new friends, right? Well, I go out and off and I got my fraud friends. And so those high school friends were the friends that came and saw me in prison and got me a job immediately. The other people don't return phone calls. They don't return.

You know, you send them something on messenger. They don't return it. Instagram, text, nothing. So those people I don't hear from. I think for the most part, people have been cool that I knew me prior. But I think most people knew people when I meet them. It's always kind of funny. I'll go to a party and you're talking to somebody.

And I don't bring it up, but I'm not going to shy away from it, right? So you bring it up and there's somebody's, oh, yeah, I'm like, oh, what do you do, oh, I do this. We talk about that for 10 minutes. Oh, what do you do? And I go, oh, I, you know, I do, I run a YouTube channel, you know, and I do speaking engagements and, oh, what kind of YouTube channel? You know, and my wife will look at me, you know, and it's like, here we go. How long can I, what can I say that's going to not? You know what I'm saying? And I'm like, oh, it's about true crime. Oh, how did you get into that? Okay. I'm like, you know, I did 13 years in prison for bank fraud. And so I got out and I decided to start one. And they're like, the first.

Listen, this happened with three different couples about two weeks ago. Every one of their moods changed. You could immediately see it in their faces. And, you know, one guy was like, well, you know, I mean, you did the time. You did what you did. I mean, I don't know what it is. But I mean, you know, I don't have a problem with it. And it's just like, I didn't say you had a problem with it.

Like immediately went into this whole apologetic thing for me, apologizing on my behalf. And he's okay with, want you to know I'm okay with it. And I didn't think you weren't okay. I don't need you to be okay with it. But I was like, okay, no, I get it. I get it. And, you know, my wife and I are just grinning. And I met my wife in the halfway house. She had did five years for a meth conspiracy. What is meth conspiracy? You know, methamphetamine? Yeah, I know that. What's the conspiracy? She was working under a guy named Wildman in Okachobi, Florida. And there were like 30 people on her case. And so she's distributing meth. You know, she's got dealers underneath her. They're selling. She's selling. She's getting it from him. He's getting it from the Mexican cartel. Wow. So yeah, it's she's got a super interesting story. Why do you think you went in this direction? Because you're obviously very charismatic, confident, smart, well spoken. It seems like you could have excelled in just about anything that you would put your mind to. I mean, maybe, you know what I've

heard a lot as I always get that, that, you know, this guy would have been successful at anything he did. Yeah. Okay. He would have made way more money if he'd done something legal. I mean, honestly, the amount of money I was making for the amount of effort, you know, I wouldn't have. Like fraud. You know, and it was easy. And it was once again, it was just arrogance. And I just thought I was so smart. And I was going to get away with it. And they weren't going to catch me.

And every time they did catch me, I paid them back or I talked my way out of it, and I did this. So you can imagine how invincible you would feel having been in the, they handcuffed me. They handcuffed me. They questioned me. They've got the bank saying you're committing fraud. They've got me 100%. I walk out of there. I felt like they cannot catch me.

I mean, I just felt invincible. You know, I look back at stupid, obviously. How much time do you think you needed to serve in order to change? I probably should have gotten 10 years and probably done seven and a half. And that would have been enough to ensure that you never did anything like that again? Yeah, because after about three years, you know, I was like, like, I don't want to come back here. Like, I don't. And I really, I'd found like a passion for writing at that point.

And I think at that point, I had realized, like, you can live with very little to be happy. You know, like I was happier in prison with nothing than I ever was with everything prior to prison. You know, I was happier when I got out. Happier in the halfway house. Happier living in a spare, somebody's spare room. Happier now with my, you know, my wife and I, like, we don't have a lot of money, you know. But just super happy with almost nothing. I realized that.

And it took years. That's not like something where you say, oh, if I got in six months, no, I was. No, in six months, I was. In six months, I was still just an arrogant prick. I was scared to death because I'm at the medium. But by three or four years, I had had a definite change of heart, you know, definitely. You can't keep in touch with your prison friends, can you? No.

So that's illegal? Yeah. Yeah. But I do. But you do. Is that... Can you say that? I probably can't say that.

We should probably edit that out. No, it's fine. Because, look, here's the thing. Most of the people I'm in contact with, I've written stories about. So I have to be in contact with that person. I wrote a book about him. I wrote a story about him. Think about the podcast.

I'm not allowed to be around other felons. I'm around other felons at least. You got to get it. At least six times a week. At least six times a week. Well, let's say four or five times a week. I do four podcasts. We put out four.

I probably do five or six a week. Almost all those guys are felons. As long as it's for work, I'm allowed to be around them. That's been my agreement since the beginning. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Now, they don't do that for just anybody. But, you know, you have to understand the amount of, you know, what I've been through.

And I mean, I'm my probation officer 100% knows, like, this guy's, he's good. He's not doing anything. She's super, I don't want to say, impressed with me. But she wholeheartedly believes that, like, this guy's not going back to prison. If she could take me off probation right now, she would. But she can't because I still owe like $5.7 million. How does that feel to owe $5.7 million? I'm good for it.

if you guys have no sets of humor well i'm doing calculations in my head i'm like hey listen you do these things do they charge interest on that no that's not on mine most people they do but that is probably the only argument that my lawyer made because he's like look he's he's probably never going to be able to pay this off and who's getting the 5.7 million the banks so it's funny because probably 80% of the banks that i defrauded went under during 2008 so the government's mostly getting it. I'm sure that I have I have like three or four victims right that lost money like I didn't take money from you. Eckert? No, no, no. But I rented your house. And so I rented your house.

I satisfied the mortgage. I took out four mortgages, just five mortgages on it and then I took off. What do you do? You just start getting these letters and saying they're foreclosing. So you have to go out and you hire an attorney. Some people did it themselves. Some people just started making the phone calls themselves. And they fixed it. And they realized what was happening. Because obviously the FBI comes in, Secret Services, no, no, he's a victim of fraud, blah, blah, blah. And then they just quash it. But some people, they don't have that kind of time. And they were scared. And so they went and they paid $10,000 to an attorney or $5,000 to an attorney. So I owe to individual victims for people a total of about $30,000. So I assume every month.

month when I make a payment periodically maybe every quarter I don't know how it works but they get a little check you know what is is that check 16 dollars it's too bad they can't get paid first I thought about so one of the things I've thought about doing was once I'm off probation is I've thought if I could go back in front of the judge and say look can we arrange it so that I pay these people off first because nobody gives a shit about banks. especially 80% of the banks that went under. I agree. And nobody's laying awake at night thinking, you know, I hope Mr.

Cox makes his restitution payments. But these guys, I'd love to be able to say, look, how much have they been paid? And what do I owe them? Because if I had to pay those people individually, I promise you I'd make a hell of a lot more effort. I feel a lot better about making that payment. And it'd make a lot, I don't know that it'd make a huge difference. Because honestly, if you listen to one guy was a doctor. you know one guy is a CPA one guy is a hard money lender who lend i think two of them are hard money

lenders that lend money like they're multi-millionaires like it's not like i hit some guy that works at a walmart who's got three kids you know so but i would like to pay pay them off it's funny nobody ever said it's funny you say that nobody's ever said that and i've always thought that so i've always thought like what happens if what happens if something does get made like i could pay them off you know And so I would like to do that. Like I think that and I would love to do that. I'd love to be able to go to the court and explain, look, can we restructure this? And I don't see that the U.S.

attorney who would have a problem with it. I don't think so. Right. But, you know, I haven't done that because I've been on probation. And because while you're on probation, you're under the probation officer and there's nothing I can do under probation because it's already listed how I have to pay. So you'd have to go back to the court, restructure the whole thing. and I just want off probation, and then I'll do it. And I have to pay anyway, no matter what I'm always paying.

I just like to pay them first. Yeah. What I found really interesting was the escalation of crime that you experienced throughout those years. And I'm curious in situations like breaking bad, where it starts out as just like a standard school teacher. And then you just see like him devolve basically into someone who like ends up killing people and this and that. Like how applicable do you think situations like that are to just the greater public? do you think you can take a perfectly normal person and then just slowly like a slippery slope get them down and down and down and down until they start doing worse things like if if you

continue to get away with this how bad do you think it could have gotten i mean i'm not really a violent person so i don't think it would have ever gotten to i don't think it ever would have ended up being violent but at the same at the same time like i bet if you had told yourself that you'd be evading U.S. Marshals by driving away from them, you know, like you would just not have believed it. Right. I'll tell you, I have a friend who started making ecstasy with a retired professor at UCLA. So he started making ecstasy, which at that point, it was a party drug, right? It was a raves. There were raves back in the late 80s. And then it slowly evolved into methamphetamine. and then they were paying off FBI agents and confidential informants and they were paying off like a

it just got progressively worse and worse and worse and the amounts he was making was getting higher and higher and eventually two of the confidential and FBI confidential informants end up getting murdered and you can see the escalation of this guy who's just making. ecstasy. He's like, I just felt like I was making ecstasy. And then it became meth. But it became meth because they owed this money. They got ripped off by the FBI. They were crooked FBI agents. And then it just progressively got worse and worse. And they keep getting deeper and deeper. And before you know it, people are ordering murders. And it's like, these are a bunch of fucking high school kids. I mean, by this time, they're 20, 25, 20, in their early 20s. But it's like, what just happened?

If you hear the story, you're like, how did this happen? But I mean, I've seen that a lot. Like some guy just starts off slow and then it gets very, very serious. And when money is involved, people get crazy. I think mine would just have continued to be fraud and fraud and fraud. And I would have probably just continued to get fraud until I get caught. Everybody's always like, well, if you got into Australia, you'd think you'd have been good. I wouldn't know, bro.

I'd have done something. I'd have gotten caught. The other thing is people always ask me, like, would you do it again? you know or you know if you could change it would you change it like fuck yeah I changed it you know what I mean like I love those guys who are no because it made me the person I am today are you insane like I did 13 years in prison like you know my father died when I was in prison you know like by the grace of God I got out just in time to watch my two years I was able to spend two years with my mother before she died bro you know what I'm saying like if I could change that and go back and you know and have been

a decent son to a woman that didn't deserve to have a son like me like I would do anything to change that to have a relationship with my son yeah how are you keeping in touch with your parents during this time I know you're writing letters I wasn't I wasn't I wrote one letter and then I would call periodically you know if I we had gone on vacation to um Las Vegas I would go get you know, I'd go get a burner phone. And then I'd call or I'd call from a pay phone. They used to have pay phones. I'd call from a pay phone.

And I'd call and talk to my mom, you know, for a little bit. And then that would be it. Would she ask questions about, yeah, you know, she wouldn't ask too many questions. It's like, I love you. I hope you're safe. Are you okay? Like, you know, if you're not around and they think you're in danger. It's like, I'm not in danger.

She didn't want you to get caught. It's hard to say. I don't think she wanted me to get caught, but she wanted to know I was safe. And I always love that when people think, well, I just want to know You're safe. Like, you think I'm safe in prison? Like, I'm safer here. And, you know, and the thing is, I don't think she knew how I was living, too. Like, I'm not, you know, I'm not broke, you know, I'm driving brand new cars. I'm going on vacation. Like, I'm living very well. But she doesn't know that. You know, so, yeah, it's a shitty situation. Now, I'm really curious why the government

never decided to reach out to work with you. Like, you see, Catch Me If You Can was a great movie where they were creating fake identities and then eventually the government figures, this is a person we've got to work with to revamp the system and detect fraud. Why have they done this with you? But that's a movie. And that didn't really happen. But I saw the thing. I saw the thing at the end.

No. I know. The credits. But I read his book about how basically most of Frank Abingnell's story is a lie. Most of the movie. And which is nobody wants to hear that. What? And now it's horrible.

Because honestly, it's one of my favorite movies. Yeah, me too. There's a guy who wrote a whole book about how almost everything. It's funny, too. You know what's funny? Is his real life is actually super interesting. The two books he wrote, which I read and the movie are not, I'd say 10% of that is accurate. Really?

And then, but his actual, he actually had a brother that was a con man too. These interesting things that happened in his real life. Like some of it's true, right? Like he did dress up like a pan am. Inflamed. Right. There were things that he did do. Some of it was true.

And he did, like there are some similarities. And so if you find out what really. happen. You're like, okay, I could see. But honestly, I'd say maybe 75% of that movie's not true. But the thing about the FBI, and even though there's, by the way, there are videos of him talking about how he worked with the FBI, but that's absolutely not true. None of that's true. He never worked with you. How could they say it? And then at the ending to say like he's worked with it. How is it just a blatant lie? Who's checking? I just believe. Yeah, right. People just believe it. And nobody's checking and it's Hollywood and they assume it's true. And, and. So, and, and I get it like, well, there are, listen, there are professional criminals that are similar to that where they'll pay some guy to go undercover and work with them. But honestly, the FBI's like, the FBI Secret Service, like, they're not stupid. Like, they know everything that I've done, you know, the only thing I did, I did unique things because I did them in combination with other scams. And I did them on a larger scale. But, you know, they don't, they don't need me.

And they couldn't stop a lot of the stuff that I do, even to this day. So there's nothing that you could say if they did X, Y, Z, that. would prevent all this stuff from happening. Sure. Honestly, if everybody had their their home titles monitored, you know, by home title lock, right? Yeah, you would think like a like a credit report sort of thing. Right. That's what's so funny.

If you use your credit card, every time I use it, right, you get the push notification, right? So you're, so that's, you don't have that for your title, you know. So if you, if people signed up for something like home title lock, you can go to your local. county you can sign up for something where they notify you if there's a change. So what's interesting about a company like Home Title Lock is that they should be sponsoring you. They should be. Or you create your own company that does this. I mean, I think that would be genius. What's interesting about them is what makes them better is that if something goes wrong and you're notified and you go, hey, wait a minute. Home Title Lock just told me that my my deed was transferred

or my mortgage was satisfied. They'll say, hey, this just happened. Is this you? Do you know about And you say, no, that never happened. If the county notifies you, what do you do? You can't call a county. They won't help you. Yeah. You say, they go, oh, I don't know what happened. It's not our department.

We can't even refer you to someone. And you say, okay, well, I'm going to call the police. The police here and be like, okay, well, we don't know what happened. Something got transferred. It sounds like you need to look into that. We can't help you. No crime that we know of is being committed. But it's actually is happening.

Home Title Lock, when you tell them this is what, when they say, hey, is this you? And you say, no, it's not me. they immediately pull the title. They do the research. If there's a crime, they help you tell you who to file it with. They will hire an attorney to do a suit for quiet title to get your title back. They'll contact, but they'll do all that. So that's why when I hear people say, oh, well, you can go to your county and be notified.

Yeah, if you want to sign up and go to your county, you can. But what happens when they say, hey, your deed has been transferred and somebody just sold your house? What are you going to do? Well, I'm going to call the police, but the police don't want to help. help you. They don't even really understand the crime. See, but what they should do is like a credit report that you could freeze. You should be able to freeze your home's public record or your home's title. Right. And you put, you know, you have that notarized and you put a code in there that only you know. And if you want to remove that because you want to sell or refinance the house,

which people rarely ever do. I mean, what, every seven years or give or take? Then it's off. But if the freeze is on, no one could go and like, or anything. You'd have to make exceptions for for like your death for the government placing a lien on your house like what if you don't pay your taxes oh if you're your true let's say you could get away with that yeah there's like there's 3,700 counties in the United States 3,700 right all of those counties 3,700 in the United States would have to adopt this system to fix it and why would they it doesn't cost them anything you know why would the why would title companies want to fix it that's how they make money by selling new title insurance. If they made it full proof, we don't need title companies. I have a question

because along the entire way, this entire story, you consistently had girlfriends. Yes. How'd you do it? What do you mean? What was like, okay, because like you had this girlfriend and then this girlfriend, you're talking to multiple girls at the same time, you're talking to your wife and then you, you had alongside her, you had like three girlfriends, you're also seeing it the same. How are you such a ladies man? Stop it. How did you do it? Are you serious? Jack, Jack is serious. He is 100% serious. That is a serious question. I mean, I, I'm shameless. Give Jack advice. Are you serious? I'm shameless. I mean, I would like honestly, I would walk up to, I met my wife in the halfway house, you know, like I, I just, you just start flirting. I,

you want to know what the conversation was with her? I literally said, like, after we talked a few times, I said, I feel like you're sweet on me a little bit. And what's like, we're flirting a little bit? She says, no, we're not. And I went and I said, I feel like we are. She goes, I said, you know, I said, I have great intuition. And she goes, not in this case. She is, look, my wife wears cowboy boots. One arm is sleeved out.

She ran a hog hunting tour guide service for six years. This is a tough chick. And she goes, like this is a country girl. She goes, I make fun of guys like you. She goes, you're a city boy. She says, this is never going to happen. I feel like it is. And she goes,

And she says, you're delusional. I said, we'll see, we'll see. And then I kept texting her and she texts me back because we're friends and, you know, we're in the halfway house. And then it went out. See, I'm not buying that, though. That's not intuition. That right there is winning the heart of somebody.

And that's what you're good. That's not intuition. She gave me. I bet she was honest that she wasn't into it in the beginning. She may not. I was still tell her she was. She says that she wasn't interested. And then she contacted me later and she's like, look, I'm coming to Tampa when we were out of

the halfway house and she said, do you want to have? dinner. I said, yeah, well, we'll have, well, she said lunch. I said, let's have dinner like a date. And she goes, well, we can have dinner, but it's not a date. Because I'm not texting her. You don't know. I don't know. I'm texting every couple days. And she goes, no, no, I don't want it to be a date. She said, it was just friends. We'll go as friends. I said, I don't want to go as friends. She says, why can't we be friends? I said, because I said, there's nothing more useless than having a hot female friend. I said, the whole time you think we're building a friendship, I'm just waiting for an opportunity to have sex with you. And she went, well, then I guess we're not going dinner.

I said, I totally understand. She goes, you're serious. I said, absolutely. I said, I'm all filled up on my friend quota. I like you. I'm always going to like you as more than a friend. And if you don't, then that's fine. So we go back and this cut happens for two, three weeks.

And finally she says, okay, we can call it whatever you want. But she said, but I'm telling you it's not a date. I said, whatever. So we go to dinner. And I remember my ex-wife when I was on my way there, I got there a little early, but I didn't want to be too early. So I waited across the street. I'm in my car. My ex-wife's like, what are you doing?

This girl was on methamphetamine. She just got out of prison. She's told you she doesn't like you. Why are you going to dinner with her? And I said, I'm going to go to dinner. I'm going to be charming and funny. I said, and at the end of dinner, I said, we're going to go to the movies. I said, and at the end of the date, I'm going to try and kiss her.

And she goes, and what if she says, no? I said, if she pulls back and doesn't want to kiss her, me, then I know. I said, and I will know, okay, I made a move. It's a no. That's it. She's telling the truth. That's it. I said, but I don't think she's going to. I think she is interested. I feel like she's flirting. She's, Matt, you've been locked up 13 years. You don't have a fucking clue. What that is what she's happening. I said, well, it's like a Thursday night we're having dinner. I think I do know. And she says, okay, you're crazy. I get there. She laughed at every single joke I made. And we giggled and laughed. And the whole thing. thing and we went to and I'm extremely forward. We went to go, go to the movies. Star Wars had just come out and we couldn't get in. So, you know, it's crowded. So we go back to the car and got in the car and she goes,

so what do you want to do? So what do you want to do now? And I go, what do I want to do? I said, I want to make out in the car. What do you want to do? And she goes, and I lean right into her and she said, listen, my stomach jumped into my chest. And I said, are you sure?

And she goes, oh my God. Didn't pull back. Didn't anything. Boom, we started kissing. I haven't kissed like that since I was 13 years old. My lips were chapped for days. And we were like inseparable after that. So like it's like I'm shameless because I felt like it was true. And if she had said, listen, I'm not interested. Look, that's not going to happen. I would have been like, okay, that's fine. That's fine. But I'm not afraid to walk up to some girl in public and say, hey, what's up? And if she's like, no, no, okay, I get it. But then if she gives you your phone number, something, you don't know. So I can imagine after 13 years of like not even talking to a girl in that way, that's got to be pretty crazy. Oh, I'm super nervous, yeah. You're nervous? Oh, I mean, I'm nervous, but I'm, I mean, nervous, but I'm not, but I'm like I said, shameless.

It seemed, though, as she was, if she resisted it for like three weeks, that that resistance was honest. Three weeks. You said, months. Months. Okay, the resistance was like, she was steadfast in that. But she's texting me. We're friends. We're texting.

It's a shit. She could be lonely. No, it's a shit test. She's putting up the test. I wouldn't listen to this guy. I mean, what do I know? What do I know, Jack? I would say we got to take notes from you.

In the end, she said, like she will now tell you, I resisted being with him because she said, I thought he was, she said, I'd never met anybody like him. Like, she said, I'd never met anybody like you. She said, and I thought, this guy's going to be successful. And he's going to realize he can do better than me. and he's just going to break my heart. So I don't, this isn't the kind of guy I date. You know, she dates a guy that drives a forklift. She dates a guy that goes hunting for a living.

She dates a guy that, you know, as a mechanic. Like, that's the guys that she's dated her whole life. And she said, I knew you were going to be successful. And she said, I just thought there's no reason to even pursue anything. Like, that's what she says now. And, you know, it's funny because when she said that at first, I used to think she was bullshitting. But the truth is, after getting to know her,

she's just not a bullshitter. And I think that's what she really believed the whole time. And now we're married. I'm sure it can't hurt to look kind of like Sillion Murphy. I don't know who that is. Oh. Doesn't it? Doesn't he?

I was thinking that. I was thinking that. No, look at Graham. Like the fate head on, doesn't you kind of look like that? A little bit. I couldn't help. I think that for so much of this podcast that you look just like this guy. He's an actor.

And I think like a lot of girls can go crazy over him. Phoenix a little bit. Like if you said, if you said you were related, like, you know, a cousin or something, I could see that. Maybe this guy? Maybe. I don't know. I kept thinking you look just like that guy. Kind of.

I don't know. I could see it. I don't know. I don't know. I could kind of see it. What dating advice do you have for? Are you serious? I'm saying you don't have a girlfriend?

No, I don't have a girlfriend. No. Aren't there dating apps? It's a mystery. Yeah. Honestly, I don't know if I like necessarily need. advice. The only thing that I really struggle with is like a lot of the times I'll talk to girls that I'm not like super interested in. What is this? This is like a fleet or something. Oh, I?

Look that. What the fuck is it? I don't know. It's like jumping around. Do you see it? Yeah. It's not a flea. I feel like you guys aren't worried about me getting out of here. Oh, sorry. Yeah, we got to worry about this. Okay. Okay. Matt Cox, thank you so much for coming on the ice coffee hour. We really appreciate it. You're so generous with your time. My gosh. And it means the world to us. I'll drive me to the airport. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, so we could get out of here a little quicker. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely.

I appreciate it. I got to get a picture with... Oh, yeah, yeah. Also, if you're interested, Macy wants to give you some food to go. Oh, she just leftovers, yeah. Great. Okay. I'll text her a yes on that.

Sounds good. And all of Matt's links down below. Thank you guys for watching. Until next time.