Lex Fridman Podcast - #409 – Matthew Cox: FBI Most Wanted Con Man – $55 Million in Bank Fraud

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

Matthew Cox is a former con man who served 13 years in federal prison for bank fraud, mortgage fraud, and identity theft. He is the author of many books, including his memoir Shark in the Housing Pool, and runs the YouTube channel Inside True Crime. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Freud's Last Session: see it in select theaters - Babbel: https://babbel.com/lexpod and use code Lexpod to get 55% off - BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/lex to get 10% off - NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/lex to get free product tour - LMNT: https://drinkLMNT.com/lex to get free sample pack EPISODE LINKS: Matthew's YouTube: https://youtube.com/@InsideTrueCrime Matthew's Instagram: https://instagram.com/insidetruecrime Matthew's Art Instagram: https://instagram.com/coxpopart Matthew's TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime Shark in the Housing Pool (book): https://amzn.to/3S52EEy PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (08:43) - Mortgage fraud (23:32) - Creating fake people (57:17) - Arrested by FBI (1:14:08) - Omerta: Code of silence (1:36:26) - Fake ID's (2:05:48) - Getting caught (2:19:12) - Going on the run from FBI (2:30:54) - Identity theft (2:51:34) - More scams (3:03:23) - FBI Most Wanted (3:05:51) - Close calls (3:36:46) - Break up with Becky (3:41:26) - Calling parents (3:43:25) - Calling FBI (3:49:06) - Running from cops (4:10:56) - Getting arrested (4:26:21) - Snitching (4:42:35) - Prison (5:00:08) - War dogs (5:06:50) - Frank Amodeo (5:42:21) - Freedom (5:53:15) - Family (5:59:19) - Regret

The following is a conversation with Matthew Cox, a con man recently released from Federal prison where he served 13 years for bank fraud, mortgage fraud, identity theft, passport fraud, and other charges. He has admitted guilt to all of it. He has written true crime stories of many of his fellow prisoners, and now he continues this work by interviewing criminals about their crimes on his YouTube channel that I recommend, called Inside True Crime. Exploring the mind of a criminal is exploring human nature at the extremes, often in its most raw and illuminating form, and that is something I definitely want to do with this podcast to understand the human mind, and everything it is capable of.

Alright, this is as batch 134 Matthew Cox. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got Freud's last session for a great movie, Babel for learning new languages, better help for mental health, that's sweet for your business management, and element for electrolytes. Choose wisely, my friends. Also, if you want to work with our amazing team where I was hiring, go to lexfreedman.com slash hiring, and if you just want to get in touch with me, go to lexxfriedman dot com slash contact. And now onto the full ad reads as always no ads in the middle.

I try to make these interesting, but friends, if you must skip them, please click check out the sponsors. It really is one of the best ways. If not the best way to support the spot, yes, I really do enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This episode is brought to you by a new sponsor. Freud's last session. It's a movie, a new movie, and it's out in select theaters now. I'm really, really, really excited. First of all, I'm excited that Austin is showing it, And so I'm excited to go see it in the theaters this week.

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slash Lex. This is the Lex Friedman podcast. Disport it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Matthew Cox. What was the first crime you committed? The first mortgage I ever did. A mortgage is me borrowing money from a bank to buy a house. How can you find a way to commit crime in this? How can you do fraud in this space? It's very difficult for the average guy to commit fraud because there's so many safeguards set up. You know, if you were to go in and say, I make $300,000 a year, okay, well,

we want your W2s, we want your pay stubs, we're going to call your employer, we're going to check to make sure your employer, how long they've been incorporated, we're going to check to make sure they're registered, we're going to, it's like your whole plan fell apart, you know, because the average guy can't do that. He can't even come up with the with the pace of W2. So the average person, you know, or I'm going to put down this much money, but you're going to borrow that money from the seller, you know, okay, well, then they start asking for bank statements, where does the money come from? How long has it been in your bank? Like, you can't even have it put in your bank for a day, get a letter. You know, it's got

to have been there for 90 days or 60 days, depending on the bank. There's all these ways for the average person, it's very difficult to commit fraud. The average guy that works at Walmart and makes $60,000 a year and he's been there for five years and he's saved his deposit. It's a very, that's really the guy that those transactions are set up for. To borrow a mortgage from Bank of America, that's the guy they're looking for. So to commit fraud in this space, you have to misrepresent some aspect of your identity, of how much your worth, how much money you have, this kind of stuff.

Right. You have to be able to lie to the bank. Anytime you lie to the bank, you've committed fraud. And it's funny when I was doing it, I would say, that's in the gray area. There's no gray area. You're lying in some capacity or you're not. So it's, for instance, the very first loan I did, I, I, widened out my borrower, had been 30 days late on her, on her rent. So they're really looking at the last two years. So when you go into the bank and that most of what they're asking is a two-year window, they're saying how long have you been on their job? They care about two years. And how long have you been at your residency? They're looking for two years. Now you could be at three places in two years. That's fine as long as you consistently paid for two years. When she had been in an apartment complex, but she'd been 30 days late. Now she caught it

up, but she was late. The bank doesn't want to lend you money if you've been 30 days late. So I was a broker and I whited out the 30 day late. I just got rid of it. And my manager is the person that told me to do it. She said, it'll be fine. And she was right it was. What did it feel like? So that was the first fraudulent action you committed.

Yeah. I mean, I was worried, you know, I was say, you know, I sweated bullets for four or five days, you know, but I mean, I was concerned. And I don't know that I was concerned that I had broken the law. I was concerned because I was behind on my on my truck payment. I was behind on my truck payment. I was behind on my mortgage like I had banked on being a mortgage broker and I'd gone deep, deep behind on all my bills to do this. So in the last minute, when this loan isn't going to close and I have to commit fraud to make that happen and that the idea, my fear was they were going to figure it out and maybe I'd get fired. You know, I didn't think I was gonna go to jail

because my manager assured me you're not going to jail. Like, they'll go get fired at best. So my concern was they were gonna catch it and I get fired and I wouldn't get paid. Like, I needed that money so bad. So we'll maybe paint the picture here. Where were you working? Who was the manager?

The manager was funny because I, I don't think I ever really mentioned this. Her name was Gretchen Zeyes. She eventually, I don't mind saying it, she eventually ended up going to jail for fraud. Her name was Gretchen Zeyes and she was the manager. I was working for a company called Eagle Lending and it was in Tampa and I, this was like my first month. So my very first deal three or four weeks into it, into that first month and I walk in, I put the file in in front of my manager, she looks through everything, you know, oh great, good, good. And put this one piece of paper over here and sat there. And then when she was done, I said, uh, what's what's going on? She is perfect, files perfect. She was, but your bar was 30 days late on her rent.

And she said, that's, that's, it's done. She's like, that's a deal killer. And I was like, oh my gosh, you know, what do I do? And I remember, she pulled out a, what thing a white out? thing a white out, not the sticks with the one she started going, and I was like, what she was if I was you. And she handed she said, I'd white it out, make a copy, stick it back in the file. She said, it'll be fine. And I went, I was like, that's fraud. I could go to jail. And she goes. And she was like, it's, they're never going to catch it. She said, look, we do stuff. I do stuff all the time. She said, they're not going to catch it. Nobody's calling the FBI.

She was the worst case scenario. If underwriting catches it, then they'll fire you. That's it. Nobody's calling. You're not going to jail. I trusted her. I was like, okay. And so I did what she said, I stuck it in the file, and I mean, like I said,

for four or five days, I was like, oh my god, I'm so scared of seeing it. How old are you at this point? Probably 29, I think it was 29. Like I had gone to college, and so many things had not worked out. You know, I got a degree in fine arts. It's not, there's not a lot of people looking for anyone with a fine arts degree. And you know, I tried my, I tried to be a, try to be an insurance adjuster, try that for about a year, a year and a half, that

didn't work out, ended up, ended up working construction for a few years. And you know, so finally, the girl I was dating said, you got to be a mortgage broker. You know, she's just had just started as a mortgage and the mortgage industry. And she was like, you have to do this. Like, you were born to do this. This is perfect for you. What does she see in you?

She said it's just your salesman. And I was like, cause I was like, you know, I barely balanced my checkbook. Like, I don't know. I don't know anything about numbers. And she was like, it's nothing to do with that. It's sales. It's putting together deals. You know, you're, I barely balanced my checkbook. Like, I don't know, I don't know anything about numbers. It's just like, it has nothing to do with that. It's sales, it's putting together deals. You know, you're good at that. You're good at negotiating.

You're, you know, you're a natural salesman. And I figured, I need to try something. So what aspect of mortgages is sales and deal making? And what aspects require the charisma that you clearly have. Well, one, you've got you have clients that have lots of options. They can go to Bank of America, they can go to Sun Trust, they can go to Chase, they have options. If they have perfect credit, I ended up working for a company that was a subprime lender and those people didn't have a lot of options. But honestly, by the

time they got to that to Eagle lending, their options were over. So what ends up happening is you're negotiating with sellers. You would think a lot of the stuff that in that industry that real estate agents should do, the brokers end up doing it. Because real estate agents are used to, you meet them at the house or they take you to several houses, they, you know, they open the door, they walk around, they write up a contract, that's legit, a legit contract, and you already, you're already pre-approved. Everything works out. But subprime, that's not the case. You got borrowers with horrific job history.

They don't have enough of the down payment. They can't. Maybe they have the down payment, but they don't have the closing cost. So you have to go to the real estate agency. Listen, I need you to raise the purchase price and have the seller pay the closing costs, which is legal, but that's not to a degree, but that's not how they wrote the contract. So now you're having to get them to rewrite the contract or you're having, you know, there's

little things you're trying to do. And the more the more deals you get done and the more you deal with certain real estate agents the more you start to realize that there, you know, you know, which ones are completely above board and which ones are willing to twist the rules. And a lot of it works on personal relationships. Right. Right. For some reason, people tend to like me and trust me. Yeah. I don't know why. It hasn't worked out for so many people, but people naturally seem to trust me. And so if I say, hey, I can close the loan,

but you gotta do this, it'll be cool. Don't worry, we do it all the time. It's like my third loan. And you know, I've been doing this for years, and they go, okay, and then they raise the purchase price. They add some money, they have the seller of the house, give the borrowers, okay, and then they raise the purchase price. They add some money. They have the seller of the house, give the borrowers some money. They stick it in the bank or they put it in the, an escrow at the closing company.

Like now you're starting to massage deals. What was the second time you committed a crime? So how did it start to evolve from the way it out? What, I mean, when that went through, you know, I, I think a normal person probably would have said, wow, there was a one time thing, got away with it. Whew, I'm good. But for me, it just emboldened me. Like I just got a check for like, I don't know what it was,

$25, $3,500, I was thrilled. And by that time I was already working on another deal. But that guy, he made, I forget something like, he'd made like, let's say, $45,000 the year before in his W2. If you based on his, based on his current track record or his year to date of his pay stub, he made it just enough money. But if you factored in last year's W2, he was shy. So if I change that 45,000 to 51,000, then he could the loan closes. I get a check for 3,500 bucks. He gets into a house.

I'm doing him a favor. You know, I'm doing God's work. So I fix it. I kick back. I'm terrified a little bit, you know, worried about it. Sure enough, it closes four or five days later. They call me, he's ready to close a week later, we close. I get a check. Next guy that comes in, I mean, I got very, very quickly. I was concerned, do you have a house? Do you have a deal? Is it ready? I can get you, I can get you done. Now, do you have a house, do you have a deal? Is it ready?

I can get you done. Now, if you were in bankruptcy or something, there are some things you just, you pull their credit and you just couldn't help them if they had a $5.50 credit score or something and no job. I mean, they had to be within reason. But very quickly, it was changing W2s, changing pay subs, changing appraisals, fixing, like I said, verification of the rent. So it evolved very quickly for me.

And you're essentially helping people. So I told myself, giving them a chance, people that have been really struggling financially in life. So you've been telling yourself that this is is you're doing good good thing for people. I told myself that right up until that those loans were solid and I was helping those people out right up until I went to prison and and I was in prison and I had to write the government asked me to write an ethics and fraud course for to help teach the nation's

mortgage brokers. You know, all loan officers and brokers have to take, I think it's nine hours of continuing education every single year. And I was approached to write the ethics course. And it was about that time and about the same period of time I was writing a book, my book. And that kind of, you started reflecting on what I had done. And the truth is, and this is a horrible thing to say, because the first time I heard somebody say this, I remember thinking, oh, that's a horrible thing to say.

Some people should not own a house. They shouldn't be allowed to borrow. They're not in a position financially. And there were many occasions where I put someone in a house that they 100% swore they could afford. I was helping them. I told myself I was helping them. And a year and a half later they're going into foreclosure, their stuff's on the corner. They don't know where to go. And the truth is, is that I'm not smarter than the actuaries that came up with those underwriting guidelines. So in this whole process, how are you making money?

Are you taking a percentage? Prograthy. Yeah, I charge a prograthy. Or you charge yield spread. So yield spread is, let's say the interest rate is 8% interest If I charge them 25 basis points over the 8% so I charge them 8 and a quarter You know 8.25 then I get 1% of the loan back as a fee So if I charge them 8 and a half percent, I get two points back.

So if it's a $100,000 piece of property, and the bank says your interest rate is going to be 8%, and I tell you 8.5, and I'm charging you a $3,500 broker fee, now I'm making $5,500. So on even a $100,000 loan, you could make a nice chunk of change. I mean, it's so how much gray area is here? You said that there really isn't when you're lying or not, but I mean, you're feels like there is, but every time I change something, it wasn't gray area. I just committed, I just committed fraud. At this level, you're either, you either meet the guidelines or someone has massaged it in such a way that they've committed fraud. That's it. There's tons of ways where you can commit fraud and they just can't figure it out. Does that make sense? You've committed fraud and it's like they've

looked the entire, they look at all the documents and they double check everything and they know there's fraud in here and they just can't find it. It's just because they can't find it. It just because they can't find it doesn't mean it wasn't fraud. As part of this, you did a lot of fascinating things. One of the things you did, you talked about creating synthetic people, meaning creating fake identities. What does it take to do that?

To do that well. So your credit profile is made up of your, you know, your, your at your name, date of birth, your address, and, you know, your social security number. And, you know, those are the kind of, you know, and then there's other things where you work. That sort of thing. But what people don't realize is there's so many people out there that think that the credit bureaus already know who you are. But the truth is the first time the credit bureau has ever heard about you was when you told them.

The first time you applied for a credit card, they created a credit profile at that moment. Prior to that, they had no idea. So the first time you apply, you give them your full name, date of birth, social security number, and your address. And they create a credit profile. And they say, Hey, no record found of this person. He has no credit. Nothing probably got denied. Well, what I realized through the course of, because eventually I ended up leaving that one company and I opened my own mortgage company. When I opened that mortgage company, I was on the inside. Does that make sense?

I wasn't just a broker that was sitting out with everybody else and would periodically come in and ask questions or would call underwriting, but really didn't understand what was happening and exactly what the underwriting guidelines were. Now I was actually talking to the underwriters and you're talking to the, to the owners of the lending institutions and the banks and you're talking to all of the account executives. And now it wasn't just Eagle lending I was talking to. There were 40 different account executives coming in on a weekly basis basis trying to get us to sign up with their lender.

And they're on the inside telling you coming in showing you programs and saying, look, if your borrower is self-employed, we don't ask for this or this, we just ask for them to say their self-employed like Lyre loans. You've heard the term Lyre loans. Okay. No doc loans. Where they don't ask for any documentation. If he's got over, let's say, a 700 credit score and he says he's been a plumber and he works for himself, then he's got over a 700 credit score. He just has to say he's worked for himself for over two years and they don't ask for any

documentation. He's got the money in the bank. He's got a 700 credit score. Says he's been on the job for two years. He's self-employed. We're going to raise his insurance rate by 1%. And he's got, you know, that's it. He's got the loan. So, but you start to, you start to know how things work because I hired a bunch of brokers to work underneath me. And when they would get caught, I would get the phone call. So I get the phone call from the owner of a banker, a lending institute, you know, a lender. And that lender says, Hey, Matt, we got a problem. I'm like, what's up? He's like, listen, we called it a fake W2.

I'm like, what do you mean? Yeah, your broker so and so sent us a file and this person had, there's two fake W2s and we're assuming the pay subs are fake. And I'm like, are you serious? How did you even catch that? And they go, oh, well, here's what we did. We checked with sunbiz.com, you know, sunbiz.gov,

which is the Secretary ofariat states website that registers corporations and we checked and the tax ID number didn't match. And now I know every W2 has to have a matching tax ID number for whatever corporation issued it. So there's a sequence of checks they do to detect fraud and different documents like W2's. Right. And then you're slowly learning. Slowly. Yeah. Exactly.

What's the process for detecting? I mean, I had a pretty good understanding anyway. Yeah. But so I'm starting to learn and sense understanding. So I'm putting these things together and I remember one time I had a woman come in and she came in and she had perfect credit. She had like 750 credit scores. I mean, it was perfect. And she came in and one of the brokers came and said, and she had perfect credit. She had like 750 credit scores. I mean, it was perfect. And she came in and one of the brokers came in and said,

hey man, can I show you something? And I was like, yeah, what's up? And he just looked. He said, I've got this woman's W2s here. I said, okay, I looked at him. And he goes, here's your credit report. And he goes, here's the application. This is the social security number.

I went, all right. And he said, this is the social security number on the W2. And I went, okay, keep mine. You go to get a car loan or credit card, they never asked for these things. So, and he was like, I'm really shocked. He even noticed it. I probably might not have even caught it, but they were different. And I went, really. And he goes, yeah, he said, so I did, you know, she just brought him in, you know, she's here. And I was like, oh, bring her in here. So she came in, sat down and said, listen,

here's what we just found. And she was like, oh, okay, you know what, I don't want the loan, I just, I go, no, no, no, I said, listen, you're getting the loan. You got a 750 credit score, like I don't care what we have to do, we're getting you the loan. I just want to know what's going on.

How did you get 750 credit scores under this social security number when clearly this is your real social security number? You've been working for this company for 10 years and your credit profile says it's only like three years old And I was like what happened and what she told me she did was She had been she went through a divorce She had been married for 10 years, used her husband's, I mean, his surname for 10 years. So she has no credit under her maiden name. But when they got divorced, she switched to her maiden name.

Because when she pulled, tried to get anything in her, in her husband's surname, it was denied, bad credit. So he had bad credit, their credit went bad. So he switched to her, she switched her name and a friend told her, if she needed to get her electric or anything turned on, she could use her name and use her daughters or sons, social security number, which was like a four year old kid. So she used that and it went through. She had to put a deposit down, but it went through at least. It wasn't denied. So that went through.

Then she went and she applied for an apartment with that. Sure enough, it went through. She had no credit, but they said, you don't have bad credit. So she said, once she moved into the apartment, she then started getting these pre-approved credit cards. So she, she was, but I knew I had applied there using my son's social security number, let's say. So she started filling those out. And sure enough, she got a credit card. And then she got two. And then she got a pre-approval from Ford Motor Credit. She went and got herself a new car. Got a proof. She'd been making the payments ever since. Just 750 credit scores. She thought she'd try her hand at buying a house in his name and his social security number.

And we caught it and she got a house in that name. We closed it. I just was like, wow, like this is great. I can ask you a question about that because it seems like she's able to pay for everything. Right. So while this is highly illegal, is it unethical? Is it like, it's unethical in that it's messing with the system on which a lot of people rely. But it feels like there's some aspect of the system that's broken in that it doesn't give people a current second chance.

She could have claimed bankruptcy. and then two years later, listen, two years out of bankruptcy, you can go into Bank of America and get a conventional mortgage. Assuming you have perfect credit outside the bankruptcy, you have the down payment, you make enough money. There's a whole bunch of, you know, a bunch of underwriting guidelines you have to meet, but that's possible. But you're right. For instance, she wasn't getting an apartment using with her back credit. She wasn't getting her utilities turned on.

She wasn't getting any of those things done. So getting your life back on track is just harder. It's extremely hard. So there's a temptation to take the shortcut and the shortcut is often going to be illegal. Right, and she stumbled into it. But she basically explained it to me. And I, I mean, I don't think she had walked out of the of my brokerage office before I went and I just started

making up, you know, names and I think I went, I went into our file cabinet and grabbed some people's 1040s, which we had, you know, their tax returns and looked up children's social security numbers and just grabbed some random kid social security numbers and their name and went and pulled them. And you know, but I changed their date of birth to be an adult, pulled it and sure enough, it came up no file found. You know, it didn't say fraud alert or fraud or anything.

They didn't say mismatched this mismatched. They didn't say anything. It just said, you know, no file found. Well, then we went and we pulled applied for a couple credit cards using a child social security number. And then we went and pulled our own credit report and sure enough, it didn't say no file found. It just said that there had been two inquiries applying for credit cards. So I was like, wow, like that's a credit profile. So that turns into me going to social security and calling

social security and trying to get them to issue me social security numbers to adults that had never had a social security number issued to them. I need to get social security number to give me a clean social security number. But I called up and of course, I'm a novice, I don't really know what I'm doing. So I call up and I say, hey, yeah, I was, I'm never had a social security number issue. They were like, how old are you? I was like, 31 years old, you know, and they were, yeah, that's not possible. Do you have a driver's license? Yeah, you have a bank account. Yeah, you have a social security number. Bring your driver's license in and we'll pull it up. Okay, well, that's not going to happen. Hang up. Call back. Hi, my son is seven years old or three years old and he never had a social security number issue.

Oh, okay. Was he born in a hospital? Yes. Well, he has one. He has one. Go ahead and get your son come in here. No, I'm not doing that. Hang on. Call back. So I called back probably ten times. probably ten times and eventually someone said I kept altering it, kept altering what I was saying to I got to the point where I was saying my son was born with a midwife not in the hospital and the pediatrician told us that we needed to go we need to get social security to issue a social security number. And they would say, well, he should have issued it, but that does happen sometimes. So bring your son in and we'll, you know, you can fill out paperwork, we'll have one

issued. You know, first we'll check to see he never had one issued. And if he hasn't, we'll issue one. And so then it turned into my son is out of the country. And I need this. And then that turned into, oh, I'm sorry. Well, how old is he? I was like, you know, he's three and they go, well, I'm sorry. If he's over the age of 12 months old, he has to come in, hang up the phone call back.

My son is 10 months old. He's out of the country, born with a midwife, never had a social security number. And then they go, oh, okay, that's fine. Just get his birth certificate and a shot, his shot record, and you can come in, fill out the paperwork, will get issue a social security number. And that's what I did. So I figured out how to create a birth certificate. You know, I ordered the security paper where you make a copy, it says void if copied. So I ordered, I had to order a bunch of that, and I went online and figured out how to make a fake birth certificate. It was great too, because the county, actually, they give you a blank form, and then they

actually show you what it looks like filled out, like a hand-written one filled out. So I knew if he was born this day, he got these shots. Two months later, he got these shots. Six months later, he got these shots. So I just filled it out. I even had to order a seal. So you have to have a seal that says like Hillsborough County Vital Statistics or Richland

County Vital Statistics or something. And I County, Vital Statistics, or something. I couldn't get anybody to make that. I changed it to Richland County Office of Virtual Records. Then I took like 220 grit sandpaper and hit it over and over and over again to wear it down. Then I did the embossment on the corner. And I printed it on the security paper, embossed it. Nobody looks at those things.

You can see Richland County. You could kind of see that. And then really they just grab it and they go like this. This is what you realize after you, when I started getting, started getting driver's licenses issued by, by the state DMV, right? The state, I figured out eventually it was easier

to just go into the DMV and have them give me a driver's license to actually make one. But you notice they would just grab the thing, they feel the form and go, okay, they don't even look at it. So which is upsetting if you put as much work into these documents as I am for them to go, okay, yeah, that's good.

Sit over there. I felt like going like, hey, bro, take a look at this. This is artwork. Yeah. But they're looking for the low-hanging fruit of crappy fraud. Right. Yeah, this stuff was right there. Okay.

So, so, birth certificate gets you a social security number. So, it's interesting because you've also, you've done a lot of different approaches to creating synthetic people. This is homeless people involved. So sometimes it's grounded in real people or real names. And then you're, right, like some parties fake, some parties real. Sometimes and sometimes it's completely all fake. Right.

Because now I have the name, I have the social security number. And what's great is they mail you. What's even better is you get, then you get to pick whatever name you want. You know, because when you pick your child's name, he doesn't even have to have your last name. You pick any name. So I would pick a name and I'd just say,

oh, my wife's last name is this. If it, they question it, which they never did. But, you know, I've got a name and I'd just say, oh, my wife's last name is this. If they question it, which they never did. But, you know, I've got a social security number. And then I would go apply for credit cards and I'd get denied, of course, but they would all offer me a secured credit card. So I, I then fill out the secured credit card and I send them, send the bank the money and they would give me a secured credit card for $500, $300, $1,000, whatever it was.

And then once you start making the payments, I pulled the credit. And a credit profile shows up saying that this 31-year-old man with the Social Security number that I know was issued, you know, a couple months ago, has three credit cards. They don't even say secure. They just say, there there's like this credit card is $500. It was issued by Bank of America. This one was issued by Capital One. This one, so I've got three of them, but I had no credit scores. So at that point, I kind of kicked back and waited. I just kept making payments. And I remember thinking to myself, I bet you they don't,

that the credit bureaus don't generate credit scores for at least a year. And I was like, God, this is going to be a year-long process. And while that was happening, I started, I was starting other ones because I figured at least in a year, I'll have a bunch of these secure, you know, these, um, we call them like phantom borrowers, but now they call them synthetic identities. So at least I would have these synthetic identities and maybe I'd do something with them. But what happened was it six months, I went and I randomly pulled the guy's credit,

the person's credit and 705 credit scores, 705, 701, 695, I was like, oh my God, you only needed a 620 to borrow, to get a 95% loan from the bank. So I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. Sure enough, a month later, the other ones I had started all of them, bam, bam, bam. So what do you do with a fan of borrower? Like, what, how do you make money on this? So I think most people if you were just like a scam or fraudster you would You would probably just get credit cards and Maybe build up that history or maybe try and borrow a personal loan Which is limited, you know, it's personal loans are used to be

You used to be you could go to an FDIC in short bank, which borrowers money, those, you know, the personal loans they lend out at the max, $15,000, you know, so you could do that. So you can go through this whole process of creating a fake identity, getting a card, paying it off, building up credit, and then you get $15,000 at the end. Right, you get 15 maybe, you know, if you want to keep making the payments, you know, if you could wait a year, you could probably get $15,000 maybe, you could maybe get 20,

30,000 and a bunch of little smaller ones, you know, you get $7,500 because I did, I didn't, there was $7,500 from Citibank, you know, $5,500 from American General. So you maybe get what, $25,000, you know, maybe 30,000 in personal loans. Maybe you can, you could, you could then apply for, you could maybe get another 20 or 30,000 in regular credit cards, you know, 10,000 here, 8,000, 5,000. And then you go to the lower department store cards and you go to Home Depot, you get 1,000, you get 500. So it ends up man, maybe you can get 50, 60,000. Maybe if you really good, you could get up to 80 or $100,000

in credit cards and personal loans. If you really knew what you were doing, but per person, per identity. Per identity. But I had the ability to leverage that perfect, those perfect credit profiles against properties. And ultimately, that's what I end up doing. And so each one of those identities was worth, you know, a few million.

He explained how that works. So it's to leverage them against property. So how does that work with the mortgage? So what I did eventually, I mean, this was like, is down the road. But, you know, I mean, at this point, when things are just my whole life, it kind of gone off the rails. I was on federal probation, and so what I did decided I was going to do was start running a scam, a much larger scam.

And what I was going to do was, I was going to start flipping properties, right? Like, buy houses cheap, fix them up and sell them. There's an area of Tampa called E-Word City. So I was going to start flipping houses in E-Word City. And, you know, I thought, okay, I can buy these houses for, you could buy a really crappy house at that time for $50,000, $60,000. Let's say $50.

And then you could put $25,000 into it in renovations. You could renovate time for $50,000, $60,000. Let's say $50. And then you could put $25,000 into it in renovations. You could renovate it for $25. And maybe you could get an appraisal for $100. So I thought what I could do is I can buy these houses, renovate them and sell them to I can buy these houses, renovate them, and sell them to regular people. But I also had been working on the synthetic identities. Then I thought, well, or I could just sell them to synthetic identities. Then I wouldn't have to dump 25,000 into it. These guys are perfect. They have perfect credit.

I can provide W2s and Pace Devses because by this point, I'm manufacturing businesses. So I've got, I've got, I've incorporated businesses, I've got websites for the businesses, W2s, pastes. So these guys have, these guys look perfect. So I figure I'll buy these properties for 50,000, sell to these guys for 100, maybe I'll pocket 40 or 50,000. I don't really have to do anything. But that seems short-sighted.

So I thought what'd be even better is that if I did a little bit of renovations and then I sold it for much higher, maybe I put 10,000, clean up the outside of it, because these guys don't care what the inside of the property looks like, they don't exist. So, and then I, but how am I gonna get an appraisal for $100,000?

Well, do you know how appraisals work? Okay, so the bank sends it an appraiser out or at that time you could provide an appraisal. They can review it. So they'll do what's called a desktop review. They review it. They review it on review, they review it, they review it on the computer, they never go out to the property, or they send someone out, they call that, you know, it's like a field review, they send someone out, and they just look at the house, they don't go in it though. So I have to clean out, they clean up the outside of the house. So what I did was, but the problem is, is if your house is, you're trying to sell that house for, let's say, 200,000, the other houses, they have to pick three comparable sales in the area that are also going to support a $200,000 sales price.

Well, there's no other house is selling for 200,000 near this house. So I thought, if I wanna get these things appraised for 200, 250,000, I have to have comparable sales. And that appraisal is going to be reviewed. So what I did was I started, I went out and I bought this house for $50,000 and I recorded the sale at 200,000. So when you buy a house for $100,000, you pay $700 in Doc stamps.

But if you pay an extra 700 bucks, the sale shows up for $200,000. I'm buying these things for 50, so I'm paying $350. And I'm just paying an extra $1,050. So it ends up being $1400, just paying an extra $1,050. So it ends up being $1,400, but the sale shows up at $200,000 on a house that's a crack house I bought for $50,000.

Now I go, I trim the trees, we mow the yard, we clean up the porch, we put a porch rail on maybe, we paint it real nice, We black out all the windows You can't see inside But from the from the curb it looks great and I get an appraisal So I do that with that house. I do that with another house all within a mile So I buy four houses knowing I could use The all there's a subject and three comparables for all of them

so the first thing I did is I bought four houses for 50,000, 60,000, 40,000 and I recorded the values at 210, 200, 190. So I get an appraiser to come out there. He appraises it. He said, of course, he says it's horrible, but there's comparables here. Now, of course, it is in bad shape and he says it's in bad shape, but I go ahead and I correct all that. So I correct it. So now if you review the appraisal and you're in California, or even if you drive your car down your, the appraiser comes to the house and looks at it from the street, it looks fine. But the truth is, I've got $60,000 into this property and you're appraising it for 200,000. So the banks rated not they're not going to lend 200, but they'll lend 190. So the bank is ready to lend this synthetic borrower, $190,000 on a house that I have 60,000 in.

So I walk, so I schedule a closing and We close on the house and I walk away with $60,000 You know, and the thing is like The problem was is by the time I got to this point I knew so many people in the industry. I nobody had to really at that point show up Although I've had people show up for the synthetic identities and sign for them Almost all the closings nobody ever showed up. I just showed up and said to the title, to the title agency and said,

hey, my borrower, he's at work right now, he can't make it, can I just take the file and I'll have him sign all the documents at his work and I'll bring them back. He's like an hour and a half away from here. I'll be back in two or three hours. They're like, oh wow, that, that, that, thank you so much. And they would give it to me.

And I'd go sit in the parking lot and I'd sign all the documents. I'd wait an hour or two and I'd come back in and say, here you go. How are we able to keep all this in your mind? Because you have to not slip up and any of these conversations. It's pretty easy for me to keep them

everything in the correct category. Does that make sense? I'm not great at a lot of things, but this I was very good at. But there's these fandom people that exist. And they were becoming real people in your mind, isn't like you're able to tell good stories with with those people, right? Like because if you're talking to the appraisers, you're talking to the everybody involved, we'll keep mind the appraisers almost

never meets the bar or never, not even almost like 99.99 99% of the time they never meet them. But you have to talk about them. Yeah. So I guess what I'm asking is you're able to converse fluently about these synthetic identities. Yeah, they all had different jobs. They all had, all the jobs were basically, they were all on the job for five years. They were all, a lot of it was, it was a template. Yeah, exactly. But, it listened all, matter of fact, almost every one of them had the same birthday, you know?

So because I, you know, who knows? There's, so it, yeah, it wasn't difficult. And keep mind the, a lot of the brokers barely ever meet, meet the bar. They call in on the phone, but it didn't matter anyway, because I'm walking and saying, I got a slam dunk deal for you. And they're like, oh, wow, Matt, you got the W2s, the paystubs, you've got all the rental history, you have everything done, it's perfect, thank you so much.

They're happy to do it. Hey, I print up the docs and I'll have them go sign it. Great, wow, thank you. You know, assuming they didn't already know about it, and almost everybody involved in this, by the time I was done was involved. There's probably 15 or 20 people that all knew what was going on.

The full of it. They knew the full depth of it. Yes. Yeah, maybe not 100% everything, but they definitely knew this is fraud. And they were still going along with it. Yeah. Keep in mind that even when, I give you an example, one of my, you know, let's say in this

happened with almost all of them was he would buy five houses. So the guy what happens, the basic design was I buy the houses, I record the values higher, and this person buys all five houses, refinances him, he ends up borrowing a little bit over a million dollars in his name. Then of course, then I go and I get personal loans from several banks. I get credit cards, I run up all of his credit cards. By this point, I've got $10,000, $20,000 worth of credit cards in the guy's name. So the guys are all worth like a million, million in change. Well, once I stop paying, you start getting letters from the collection companies, right, from the banks, you know, and then they sell

them off. So after about three months, you're getting tons of letters. And what I would do is I would take my borrower's name, I would go online and I would find or I'd go in the newspaper and I would find I would find an article about let's say like a 12 car pile up. You know, so there's you know the huge accident on I-4. It's very dangerous. So there's a 12 car pile up and someone in the accident was life flighted to Tampa General Hospital. I would cut and paste that article and I would just insert my bar was name into the article saying that, you know, Brandon Green was life flighted to Tampa General Hospital's currently in critical condition. I would then print that article out on newsprint. I then make a copy of the cut it up, make copy of the newsprint,

highlight his name, and I would write a letter from Brandon Greene's fictional sister to the collection companies saying several months ago, my brother was in a horrible car accident. He is currently, they've got the article, they have the highlighted name. He clearly was in this accident. He is currently in a coma and the doctors say, even if he wakes up from the coma, he will never work again. So you might as well just foreclose on stop writing the letters and take the houses back. That's all they're looking for is a is a reason.

At this point, even if they look into brand and green, they can't figure out if he's a real person or not. Because he's got a social security and he's got and everything went bad at the same time. He's got multiple rental properties or his primary residence, all of his credit cards went bad. everything went bad, we have an excuse, we have a letter, that happens. People get divorced, they lose their job, they get an accident. It's reasonable. When they look into it, it all looks legitimate. Even if they ordered another appraisal, by this point, it's not four comparable sales or three or four

comparable sales. By this point, it's like 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, because I kept making more and more of these guys. What was your, just to almost like a tangent, what's your thinking process? There's a lot of cleverness going on here. So like the car pile up is a solution, newspaper, you mail it. Are you sitting there alone and thinking through this? How do you come up with that idea? It's a very interesting, a very clever, innovative idea.

So at first, I thought about making like a fake death certificate. He died, but I thought, I don't know. Like, what if, you know, like some of these places had like, you know, the primary mortgage insurance, like, what if the primary mortgage insurance. Like, what if the primary mortgage insurance, like, what if they try and claim because he was dead? Or like, I don't know, I don't know that side. So I'm like, I don't want to do that. I want to do something that's semi-verifiable

and third party, it's like a third party telling you, this is what happened. I thought, well, like the newspaper, you know? And, you know, or do I claim bankruptcy? And I've done that, I've gone and got the bankruptcy forms. Right. You can go to the bankruptcy court and they'll give you forms to mail to all of your creditors and you mail them.

They stop contacting. They wait to be not located by or notified by the bankruptcy court. But my fear there is, you know, nobody's ever going to notify them. Like I'm not going through bankruptcy for one of these guys. So it was like this is a better bet than just writing a letter saying, I'm going through a divorce. My wife's keeping those houses, that's her problem.

There's lots of things you can do, but to me this was, they're not gonna try and, how do you shut it down without him dying? How do you shut that down? This is how you shut it down. Is that a coma? He'll never work again. He was in a car accident.

Here's the proof. He can't even write you. I'm a sister. I wrote you the letter. It's a one time letter that seems to tie up all the exact. Exactly. You know, I get one of the exactly how that.

You know, what sparked that as much as there were so many other avenues that I could have gone that I just didn't know. But you were thinking through all those different avenues? Yeah. Are you mostly thinking alone? I mean, you know, I had guys that I was bouncing ideas off of. There were other guys that were involved in the scam. You know, everybody, I think that scam ended up making like the FBI

said, I was like 11 and a half million or something. But there were so many other people that were involved in that scam that were, you know, this guy's getting 50, this guy's getting 20, you know, 17,000, 20,000, 25,000, and you know, we're just doing it constantly. And so the bank would foreclose on that property. They'd take it back. They put it back on the MLS. They put it back on the MLS for $200,000. It wouldn't sell.

Then they drop it to, you know, $150,000, then they drop it to $125, $130,000. They drop it to $90,000. And somebody buy it for like $90,000. It wasn't worth $90,000. But by that point, that whole for like 90 it wasn't worth 90 but by that point that whole area Had should we done so many houses at that point? the whole area shot up and the FBI said we did 109 houses. I don't think that's true, but We we when I end up leaving Tampa after that scam falls apart and the FBI shows up Forbes came out with an article

Whatever six months later and they said That the Ebor city zip code was one of the top 20 fastest growing appraising areas in the country and you know everybody was like oh, that's Matt because this place is a dump Like this is a horrible place like this is a horrible place, like this is, and I remember one time I had talked to a guy, you know, years later and he was like, ah, all the comparable sales have dried up. Like when you left, there was just nothing

even close to 200,000. You mentioned, right before, telling the story of this elaborate scam that you were on federal probation. How did that happen? So I mentioned that I owned the mortgage company. Right. So I had started a mortgage company. I had maybe a dozen guys working for me.

And they were fraud. You know, like I would say, it wasn't all fraud, but whatever. Sixty-seventy percent of it was fraud that was going in there. And from the outside of that business, it looked very legitimate. We were an FHA approved lender, we were a VA approved lender, we did conventional, probably signed up with 40 or 50 subprime lenders. But there was a considerable amount of fraud. And it kept getting, it became a game. it kept getting, you know, it became a game, right?

You know, it, you start, you start, I started getting just more and more creative. Like I said, every time I would get away with something, like you become emboldened by it, it's like nice, you know, like, hey, the underwriters looking for this and looking for this and you sit there and go, man, so that she, you know, that's, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?

What am I gonna do? We could create our own bank. What? Yeah, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna go on, man, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? You know what we could do? We could create our own bank. What? Yeah. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to go on, like, how do they know if this bank exists? These people are in California. They're in New York.

Like, they don't know. So what we're going to do is we're going to go online. Keep mind this is 2000. You know, this is 2000, 2001. Like, this is the internet's in its infancy still, right? So, we figure out, I remember, go daddy, I think, had just come up with a site where you could build your own website, like how cool is that?

So, I go online with a buddy of mine and we create something called the Bank of E-Bore. You know, we cut and pasted things that we like from other banks and we got a 1-800 number you could call, or 1-8-6 number whatever it was, and you could call it and it would go to a voicemail, and so we set up this bank, and then I ended up making bank statements, which by this point I already had been making bank statements to prove someone has their downpayment. Because a lot of times people, they have good enough credit to borrow 95% or 90%

but they don't have their down payment. So we'd raise the purchase price high enough to cover their 5% or 10% down payment. And we would bring their down payment for them or we'd have the owner of the house, bring the down payment for them. And then we would have a check cut out of the closing statement to a construction company that I owned and we get our money back. So they get into the house for a hundred percent financing or 110 percent. Some turn into 130. We want to pay off their car, give them an incentive to sign. They don't have so much money to buy it.

So we're doing all kinds of insane things. Well, at some point, remember Gretchen, Zeyes, my old manager. Yeah, the original. Yes. That's what she came and worked for me for a short period of time. And then she and her husband went and opened their own mortgage company, which you should have known it was going to be fraudulent from the big hit go because it was called creative financing.

It was, yeah, creative, C, CFM, creative finance, no, creative, creative was in the name. Yeah, yeah, creative was in the name. So, it's really on the nose. So she, uh, she's doing very well. And we became very close, by the way. We're, we go on vacation, went to Puerto Rico together. Um, I got married at the time.

I got married. Uh, our kids, you know, played together. We babysit. We go to each other's parties. We're close, we're good friends. And she's got her own mortgage company, she calls me up periodically and asks me, hey, can you make a W2 or hey, can you make me a pay stub? Sure no problem for friends.

That's what fraudulent friends do. So if I needed somebody to verify somebody's rental history or employment. She had cell phone, she would answer that sort of thing for me. Well, when it ends up happening is, she gets in trouble. She starts doing fraudulent loans for some guys, you know. And these guys are doing what's called a cashback scam. So they're getting like a half a million dollar loan

on a house that's worth $300,000. So they're buying the house for what, $600,000. It's really only worth $300,350. But she happened to be in an area where she could get it, the appraisal jacked up. So they buy the house, they get $200,000, $1,000 back. And it's a, it's a straw man's game, right? It's a cashback straw man's game.

So it's a real person that's buying the house. He's got perfect credit, but he's willing, he's willing to let to ruin his credit to get a couple hundred thousand in his pocket. So, he never has any intentions. So, it's not a synthetic identity. It's not a stolen identity. It's a straw man. He's a fake kind of a, not a fake person, but he's just a straw man. He's a stand-in. So, he stands in. He signs a paperwork. He buys the house. they end up getting two, 300,000. Well, this guy buys like five houses. So it's a cut, $2, 3 million. They've lost $500, $600, $700,000. And these guys never even make the first payment.

They just let them go in for closer. So the bank immediately investigates and realizes this is fraud. So the FBI comes in, they grab Pete and Gretchen. She has to hire an attorney, of course. And she doesn't get thrown in jail or anything. They just come to their office and they tell them they're investigating them, they know what's going on.

And they want to talk to them. They're like, well, look, we want to talk to you. And you're going to be indicted. Okay. So she comes to me, well, actually Pete came to me and said, look, man, can you refinance our house and get a 75,000 out to pay our attorney? I said no problem. Gretchen gives me W2's pay subs, fake the whole things fake. I get I refinance, I get a second mortgage on our house, $75,000, they pay their

attorney. Their attorney immediately says, you need to wear a wire on this guy. Like he just got you $75,000, you know, I don't know how you got $75,000, but the attorney know how you got $75,000. The attorney knows something wrong because the attorney's like, your home workers company was just shut down. There's no way you could borrow $75,000. He's like, this guy is doing fraudulent stuff. She says, yes, of course he is.

He says, you need to work with the FBI. Where are wire against this guy? She calls me one day and says, listen, I got to talk to you. The FBI is asking questions about you. I go, what? And she goes, yeah, I was like, um, meet me at the piece of place down the street. So don't come in my office because everybody knows she's been indicted, like everybody in her office quit when the FBI, the FBI shows up and gives you a business card and announces

there are the FBI, everybody quits. So I said, do not have, do not, don't come here, because they already know, they're already concerned. So I go and I meet her and Pete and we sit down at a restaurant, you know, a little P3A and I sit down and she starts telling me that the FBI is asking questions about me. I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, what are they asking? She goes, look, they came in, they took all our files and like, I was like, I don't know

any of this. I'm like, when did this happen? She's like, yeah, they have a couple of weeks to go. And they, and they have some of your files because I had closed several loans for my wife at the time. We were buying rental properties. My wife didn't have a job. So it's all fraud, but I couldn't close those loans at my mortgage company because I owned the property. So I'm selling those properties. I bought properties, renovated them, and sold them to my wife to get around something called seasoning.

Seasoning says you have to wait six months to a year to refinance at the market value. Otherwise, you want to refinance. That's fine, but you have to refinance at the price you purchased the property at. But I bought these properties for 80 or 100,000, renovated them, sold them for 2, 300,000 to my wife who got a very, didn't even get a big mortgage. We were just trying to kind of get around a guideline. But my wife was not working, and I provided W2s and pastes. So when she says all this, she says, yeah, they're looking at the loans you gave me at

your wife's loans. And I went, oh my God. I said, well, you didn't tell them that the W2s were fake, did you? You didn't tell them the pastes were fake, did you? You didn't tell them that the down payments were, you didn't tell them thats were fake, did you? You didn't tell them the pay stubs were fake, did you? You didn't tell them that the down payments were, you didn't tell them that we were married, did you? I mean, just absolutely buried myself. And as I'm telling her this, I was like, okay, I was like,

I kind of caught myself and I'm like, okay, wait a minute, look. Okay, here's what you're gonna tell them. You're going to tell them, you never met her. She called on the phone, like I start trying to devise a plan that will answer their questions without getting my wife in trouble or them in trouble. And if nobody cooperates, the whole thing should shut now.

You know, it doesn't go any way. There's nowhere for them to go. If everybody just kind of stone walls them. So as I'm saying all this, Gretchen says, Matt, we can't lie to the FBI. And I go, what are you talking about? You're already lying to the FBI. I mean, you've been lying to the FBI. I mean, I just refinanced your house and before I can really say anything, Pete jumps

up. Her husband stands up and says, we've never lied to the FBI. We may not have told them everything, but we've never lied. And I thought like, what, who, who are you talking to? Like, I know that's not true. So you're not saying that for my benefit. So I was just, I kind of look at them and I'm like, what?

And I just, I remember looking down and this may mean nothing, but both of their cell phones were right next to me, right? And I remember, they probably just wearing wires, but I just remember thinking those cell phones are microphones. They probably weren't. But I remember thinking, oh, wow, I just looked at it and I went, wow. And I said, well, I hope you're gonna get something for this. You see, you immediately start to cry, and she says, Madame, sorry, I have a kid. I can't go to jail. Do you have kids at that point?

Yeah, I have a kid. Like, I have a kid. And I was like, wow, wow. What have you learned about friendship for that? Like loyalty. Oh, yeah, just know. That's sweet. That must have hurt. It's cute. I mean, I love the idea of it. You don't think that? No, I'll take a wipe. So I go back to my office. I remember our tolders that tell the FBI agent to call me on the phone, do not come in my office. So I go back, I'm still trying to figure out how to weather this, right? I go back, I sit down.

Phone rings. My secretary comes in and says, hey, agent, I'll never forget the name, agent Scott Gale with the FBI. And I was like, okay, he's on the phone. And she's standing there, I was like, close the door. I get out and close, and she's like, so get on the phone, he asked me if I'll come down.

I said, yeah, absolutely, let's schedule it for next Tuesday. I put it off four or five days. I go to my brother-in-law immediately, who's a lawyer, and he says, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't really tell him exactly what's going on, but I tell him this is what's happening kind of, and I'm maybe in trouble.

I need a federal defense attorney. I don't even know what a federal defense, I don't even know I'm maybe in trouble. I need a federal defense attorney. I don't even know what a federal defense. I don't even know the difference, but he said you need a federal defense attorney's to FBI. So we go on a couple, we meet a couple lawyers. I end up getting a lawyer. I give him like 75 grand. And he started to have me convince.

Initially, he had me convinced I was probably going to go to jail for a few years, but really that's what they kind of do to justify you giving them $75,000. Right. And then, but the more I thought about it, you know, and read, he gave me the guidelines that, that supposedly I had, I had, you know, the, the, the fraud that I had committed and what the, the guidelines that oversaw that. And I read it and I was like, I'm not really in trouble here because I'm looking at a felony, but I'm not going to go to jail because there was no potential for the bank to lose money.

So because I bought the house with like a hard money loan and then I renovated it with my own cash. And when I sold it, it appraised it 250,000. My, my ex wife borrowed like 180. So there's plenty of, of equity. If the whole thing had gone into foreclosure, they still would have got their money back. And to be honest, by the time all this happened, there was only like three of the three properties. It was like five, but we'd already sold a few. And at this point, we'd just sold another two. There's like one or two properties left So we're selling at that moment. We were selling them So I was like now I kind of argue with them

But then he wanted 75 grand. I gave him 75 grand and then he comes back and he says good news There was no potential fraud so I can get you three years Now here's the thing here's here's what I always kind of look back at When I first got went into his office, he said, he said, listen, you haven't been indicted yet. I spoke with the FBI. I spoke with the US attorney. They believe and they've been told and he said, look, they didn't tell me exactly what they have, but they said what the evidence that they have on you based on two confidential informants, that you cannot go to trial.

And I was like, right, of course I knew that. And I was like, okay, he said, but, he said, you haven't been indicted yet. And they are fairly certain that you're running a mill, right? A fraud mill over there. And you guys are churning out fraudulent loans. Now, they can't come in, they can't come and rage your office

and do anything about it yet, because so far they only have you. But here's what I'm saying is that he said, I can keep you from being indicted. It's called pre-trialrial is a pre-trial intervention, where we go in, and what we'll do is you go, you go in, talk to the FBI, you go grab a bunch of your mortgage brokers, most egregious files. Grab them, bring those files to the FBI, go work with the FBI, they will indict them and you will not be

indicted. And I said, which I kick myself to this day, I said, absolutely not. I'm not going to snitch on them. I'm not going to cooperate. I'm not going to, you know, I'd seen the Godfather. You're not supposed to cooperate. You're supposed to be loyal. Now, I'm not going to do any of that. And, you know, and so I say all of this, we're looking back like I would have, if I could go back in time, I would have gone into our weekly meeting with a dolly. And I would have walked in front of everybody and scooped up two or three of the file cabinets and put them in the back of a truck

and said, listen, you guys are gonna be talking to the FBI soon, I suggest you get attorneys. And I would have driven off. But I didn't, I thought, no, be loyal. You know, don't do that. And what happened was, when the other thing falls apart, right, when the next scam falls apart,

every one of these people go to the FBI. Like, they're not even coming to them. These guys are going to the FBI with lawyers. I want to cooperate. I want to tell you what Cox did. I want to help. I want to, and I'm thinking like, I never had to get invited I did to begin with.

So you think that most of these people from your experience are going to sacrifice all integrity. That's a funny word. Sacrified. Why is this? But that they're going to sacrifice friendships and loyalty for just to save their own ass. Yeah. I only had one person that did not talk to the FBI. I had one person that every time the FBI

or the Secret Service went to that person's door, she said, don't come to my house again. I don't have anything to say about Matt. I have nothing to do with any of this. Talk to my lawyer. You just have to open over and over again. And that's my ex-wife She's a gangster So are there people in this world? You trusted or you still trust? I

You know the problem is Eventually I cooperate and At the time I didn't want to cooperate, I didn't believe in cooperation, but after seeing how many people cooperate and the way the system is set up, I think that my understanding of loyalty is vastly more realistic now. And I think that if you're committing crime, if you're absolutely like the things I did, I did a bunch of scumbag things. I mean, I'm not killing people, but I'm doing scumbag things. I'm lying, cheating, stealing, that I'm a thief. You know, you boil down to it. That's what I am. So you can't go around behaving like a scumbag, dealing with scumbags and then expect those same scumbags to suddenly abide by some kind of a street code and not roll over on you. And it does happen. But it's like in the 90 percentile

of people that cooperate. 90 something percent and people cooperate when they're not even looking at any real time. So if you're looking at 30 years and especially after going to prison, you go to prison and it's like, this guy's a stand-up guy over here. He got 30 years. He could have cooperated against all of his co-definance, but he didn't. Nobody comes to see him. His wife divorced him. You know, his kids ended up in foster care. His, you know, his, his friends are are are cleaning out his house. Nobody puts money on his, on his, his

books. Nobody comes to see him. Nobody answers his phone. Nothing. He took 30 years. Most of those guys turned around. They end up getting indicted for other things years later. They cooperate. And the best thing this guy's got at going for him is that he can walk around and say, well, he's a stand-up guy. That guy's going to the same halfway house as me. He's probably, he's going to do 30 years where I'm going to do. Stan up guy meeting he never snitched. Right. And so everybody's seeing this example and saying, well I'm going to snitch then. But it sounds like what people are doing is they're signaling, virtue signaling. Like they would never snitch and actually do secretly. I mean, what is it? I talked to one of the CEOs at the prison one time and he said, he said, I said, shit, I

said 50% of the guys here snitched. He was more than that. He said, but listen, he was 100% of them relying about it. He said, so you'll, he was, there's nobody here that's going to tell you they snitched. Nobody. So there's guys tons that's going to tell you they snatched nobody. So there's guys tons of them that cooperate. If 80, 90% of defendants cooperate, you start doing the math. And if you ask 10 guys and prison all of them, I didn't cooperate.

I didn't cooperate. I didn't cooperate. You ask 100. I didn't cooperate. Nobody's going to say I cooperate. It's that break your heart a little bit. The people backstab each other like this. It does, it does, but.

But I have such a low opinion of people, you know what I'm saying? Like I don't expect, it's not that I don't like people. It's that I just don't expect anything of them. You know, I don't expect you to look out for me. You know, there was a time when I did, I thought, I look out for you, you should look out for me, but I just don't expect that anymore.

See, but I think humanity flourishes because there is a lot of people out there that do the thing that is difficult to do in terms of integrity. That may be, but these aren't people with integrity. These are criminals. If these were decent human beings, and all of them will tell you, well, what'd you do that? Oh, you know, I was a drug addict, or I needed the money. Well, if you were a decent human being, you would have gotten off the drugs, you would have gone and gotten three jobs.

You can work 80 hours a week. I've done it. You can work 84 or 85 or 80, you can work 90 hours a week. You can do that. Oh, I did it for my kids. No,'ve done it. You can work 84, 85, 80, you can work 90 hours a week. You can do that. Oh, I did it for my kids. No, you're lazy. You could have worked three jobs for your kids. Instead, you decided to sell methamphetamine. Well, I was addicted.

You could have gotten off me. It wasn't important. It was the easy way out. You're not someone with integrity. So for you to sit there and say, hey, I'm gonna act like a scumbag, but now I got caught or you got caught. And I don't want you to tell on me, well, you're a guy that Rob's bank. You stick guns and people's faces. You kidnap people. You torture people. You sell drugs.

You're not. You're not a moral ethical person, but you want, you want everybody else to hold up to some ethical code. Well, while you're Rob and grandma. That's not right like you know So you know I get I get the whole Omar to a code You know and there was a there was a time when I was you know delusional enough to believe that but You know after you go after you're going through it, no. And after going through it multiple times, no. I have to really think about that.

I deeply appreciate your honesty on this. I think, I mean, there's all kinds of criminals in this world, and they all have all kinds of stories. And your story is one of, I don't know if it came from desperation versus a love of this kind of game. Right, like it wasn't part of it, an attraction to the creative aspect of this, of breaking the rules when nobody else can, and you figured out a way to do it.

I think initially it was, I needed the money. That's the first thing. You say, oh, okay, well, if you ask most guy, oh, well, man, I need the money. You need the money. And then I definitely needed the money. But then you get $50,000 in your bank. And then you get 100. And then it's 200. and then it's 200 and then

it's half a million and then it's a million and what the hell are you still committing fraud for? You've got half a million or a million dollars in the bank or worth of real estate or you're making $5,000, $10,000 a month just in rental income. Why are you still committing fraud? So it turned, I think it morphs into the creativity and part for me. And two, it was a chance for me to prove to everybody how smart I was. You know, I mean, it was done at a desperation initially. And then it just turned into pure narcissistic arrogance. Look at me, look at how I can do things that nobody else can do.

Look how smart I am. I just walked into Bank of America, handed them seven documents that were all fraudulent. They cut me a check for $250,000. Like, wow, I'm amazing. And guess what? They're never going to get their check. And they won't know, even know where to start to try and find the person because they're looking for a phantom. So, you know, and you feel great. I felt great. I used to, I felt like, I felt like James Bond. I felt like 007. It was amazing. And, you know, and it did it. It faded my need to feel important. You know, even if it it was, it was, it was even if that was a lie, because all that success was just a lie. Well, no, you're good at it. It was good at it, but it was, it's not, it was illegal. Like I'm Elon Musk.

You know, I'm saying like there's, it's not like you're an I'm an exceptional human. I'm an exceptional human being at a horrific thing at F.Cubiting fraud. Well the question is how many people are getting hurt? Because initially the thing is initially nobody got hurt. That's the thing. Nobody ever lost any money directly. Like I didn't go and say give me $50,000 and I ran off with your money. Like I wasn't doing that and that was a great justification. But at some point and we'll get into that, you know, I take off on the run and people do lose money. I didn't take that money directly. In for some reason, in my, you know, sick mind or whatever the case may be that seems like a distinction to me that makes me feel okay Is that I never said give me 300 give me?

$10,000 and I ran off with it, but I put people in the position where I Damage the credit or damage the the title to their house And they had to go get a lawyer to fix that. And so that they had to go pay a lawyer $10,000. So I absolutely caused that person, did I still, to meet your victim and I owe you that money. And it was a shitty thing to do because even at the time I was like, oh, they'll make a couple of phone calls, it'll be fine. It wasn't fine.

And if I had really put a thought into it, all I would have known, it's gonna really affect these people. And those people had done nothing wrong with the exception of trusting me. They rented me their house, or they owner finance their house. They made the mistake of bumping into me. And now they owe $10,000, $20,000. And I'm sure a ton of anguish. So what happened when you were caught that first time? So I was caught. I got three years

probation. I took the probation just that involved initially it was It was such a slap on the hangout on the wrist. We allowed to still practice Okay, so I wasn't I had to I couldn't own the mortgage company more That was a good question because like I you would think you know when it be creative I could keep on going But what they said was you know you, you have to forfeit your brokerage license and your brokerage business license. And what I did was I transferred my brokerage business license to a guy that essentially bought my business. They allowed me to work as a consultant in the mortgage industry, you know, because they went, you know

They go my my lawyer goes to the judge and says what else can he do? so um and So I have a friend his name's Dave Walker. He was a CPA. He came in and he bought my business and he paid me like $9,000 a month and that covered my bills my wife and I got divorced. So she's my ex-wife. And I don't know what to do, right?

Like I don't, I'm, I could, you know, and I would say, you know, I could have, like, you know, you look back and it's like, I could have claimed bankruptcy. I could have moved into my parents' spare room, something like that, but, because I had, I lost everything in my divorce. I had huge child support payment.

Not that that has anything to do like with my ex-wife, like I absolutely signed up for that. Like I wanted to pay that. But it was a chunk of change, you know. So we're going to make a couple thousand dollars a month for, you know, for child support. She got all of the apartments that we have. We had about a million, a million and a half dollars worth of apartments, which isn't a

lot now, but that's probably a five or six million dollars now. So she got all the apartments. So she got everything. So now I'm sitting here like I got, can't be a mortgage broker. I can get my $9,000 but I have to help this guy run this company train people do that sort of thing. So what I decided to do was I was going to start flipping houses with a gin and a million. Well initially I thought about doing it legitimately, right? But at the same time I was also in the middle of figuring out how to make these synthetic identities.

So I'm making the payments every month, remember? Two months in, no credit scores, no credit scores, no credit scores. And I'm also saying, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna start buying houses, renovate them, sell them. So to the truth is, we actually renovated probably one house completely. I remember it was on 26th Street. We renovated the house completely on the outside and the inside. Yeah, outside inside. It's done. It's good. Okay. Right.

Me and the other guy actually Dave Walker, the guy that bought my business. So we renovated it, and it just so happens at the same time I go to pole credit one day and wow, 700 plus credit scores. And I went, we don't have to sell this thing at all. Like we just, I can sell it and put it in this guy's name and let him refinance it. And so that's what we did. We ended up selling it to this synthetic identity. Do you remember the first synthetic identity?

The first one was a Joel Cologne. Yeah. And then I started getting creative because the ones after that I started naming. So I had like Joel Cologne and an Alan Duncan. But then I, do you remember the movie Reservoir Dogs? So I started naming the characters after guys in the Reservoir Dogs. So I had a James Red, you know, I had a like a Michael White Lee Black, I had a William Blue, David's over Brandon Green. So then I start developing these guys. Now I thought, oh, forget those, those

normal things. I'm going with these with the Reservoir Dogs. And I thought I was developing these guys. Now I thought, oh, forget those normal things. I'm going with the reservoir dogs. And I thought it was so cute, too. You think of the retrospectives? It was so stupid. That was just, there's so many mistakes I made. Within the fraud, there are mistakes I made. But other than just the overall committing fraud, but it was just like I thought it was so cute.

And then you get in front of the judge. And the judge is hearing about the reservoir dogs. And Mr. Green and Mr. Black, Mr. White, Mr. this, Mr. And he's looking at me just like you jackass. Like, and you know, what am I saying? I'm like, I thought that was cute. You know, but nothing's cute. So, you know, plus I'm making fake banks. What's the purpose of the fake banks?

Well, sometimes you have to have your down payment in the bank, right? So you have to, they want three months worth of bank statements to see that, hey, he's got his $50,000 in the bank. And the more, the more properties you buy, they want, start to want to see what's called reserves. They want to make sure that you can pay all your mortgage payments.

If this guy loses his job, can this guy maintain all these mortgage payments for the next six months? And so they do that and they think you're going to go, you know, oh, no, he can't do it. They go, well, then we won't lend it. Well, when they do that to me, I go, of course I do. Of course he's got it. Let me send you over the bank, bank statements. Oh, you want to call the bank? Call them. So there's a phone number, there's a website. Yes, you can call. We'll get on there. I'll do the whole, you know, and hold on.

Okay, what's the name again? Do you have the account number? Hold on. You wait a little bit. You come out. Okay, I got to hear. I can't tell you the exact amount right now, but what was this balance last month in the day? Oh, yep, that's it.

Exactly, okay, thank you. Click. Would you do different voices? Or would you be, you know, I've done different voices or I just have somebody else do it, you know, Gretchen would have done it. Or one of the brokers, Susan would have done it. One of the brokers that worked for me,

or you know, Kelly or Johnny Moon, I have so many guys and you know, they just get on the phone, they do it. Cause they're all doing something fraud and we're all working together. So hey, I have so many guys and they just get on the phone, they do it. Because they're all doing something fraud and we're all working together. So, hey, I needed to call this guy. I need to call this guy and verify this. I'm at the bank.

Okay, I'm at the bank, okay, cool. And they call back. Does this feel like an organized system or was it more improv? Just like dealing with the different situations. The government would definitely say it was organized. I always say it was, you know, you're a bunch of, you're just a bunch of guys, you know, to, you know,

it's, you're joking around with everybody, you're helping each other, and it's not like everybody's, you know, kicking up the Tommy, you know, so, so then all these new puzzles come up and you figure out which is the right. You go in and you say, hey, I've got, I've got this loan, I need to get this loan, and this guy is trying to buy this house and I need a loan that looks like this. Where can we go?

And by the way, they cannot order a copy of his tax returns. So you don't want to have to sign what's called the 406. So they're like, oh, okay, listen, so and so has got a program that you go back and forth, but you have to have this much in reserves, but you got the bank, yeah, I got the bank, I could do that. So you go in and would, but you have to have this much in reserves. But you got the bank, right? Yeah, I get the bank. I could do that. You know, so you go in and you throw it out there to five or six guys and you're going to come up with an answer.

So you're on probation here just to self reflect. Did you start doing this while on probation because of the money or because it gave you meaning? God, I, you know, I mean, part, a big part of that the reason is I, I did not want to move back in with my parents. And I didn't want my father to see me struggling and I didn't want him to, it was my success. he had no idea. My success had been the first time he'd ever really been proud of me.

Does that make sense? Is that my nature of success? Yes. At which point, what was the first time you told him, you did something, he was like, you could say, he'd been proud. Oh, when I became a mortgage broker, when I became a mortgage broker

and I went to work for the company and we're talking about within a week, I got a client. Three days later, I got a client, a week later, got a client, two days later, got a client, like I close four loans my first month. And my dad was like, well, how much money are you going to make? And I'm like, I'm charging this much this. I got a point on the back. I got this.

I got boom, I'm thinking I'm going to walk home after taxes like 10, 11,000. Jesus, God almighty. you know, are you sit well? Well, we'll see don't start counting your chickens before that, you know, and then you know two whatever three weeks later four weeks later, you know, boom, I got to check it's like $9,000 or something or and then you know the next month it's 12 and the next month, it's 12, and the next month, it's 16, and then they make me a manager. And, you know, it just, he didn't know it was illegitimate. No, he thinks, he thinks, my son, he's brilliant. He's great, he's wonderful.

I had, you know, was certainly not proud of me prior to that. But, you know, my dad was athletic. He was extremely bright. I mean brilliant and I was a kid who had to be put into special schools who barely graduated high school Who ended up going to college and getting a degree in fine arts because I was never going to be able to get a degree in business ended up going to college and getting a degree in fine arts because I was never going to be able to get a degree in business. It wasn't going to happen. So when I graduated college, I remember with the degree in fine arts, he said, the best thing you could do with that is maybe you could draw caricatures at Disney World. You know what I'm saying? Which wasn't a compliment by me. It wasn't like, hey, you could draw. So yeah, he, you know, and then I turned around and I tried to go to work for State Farm Insurance,

which is who he worked for. He worked for them for like 40 something years. And I failed the aptitude test. So then I went and worked for another insurance company and I was an insurance adjuster, but I couldn't keep up with the workload. Then I ended up working construction. I'm still barely paying my bills. You know, that's basically where my dad felt like,

that's, that's, you know, he's polite to me. You know, we were, you know, cordial. But yeah, I wasn't, I think he felt he deserved a better kid. So when you, when you started doing mortgages, that's when he was like, of course, he. He was like this kids got something. I'm driving I'm driving a new I gotta just pull in in a new car and I got I just bought a house that was you know four or five blocks away from his house From where I grew up from where he lives, you know lived at that time, you know Six blocks away from where my sister's married to her lawyer husband, like, I'm

doing pretty good. And then within three months, we bought, you know, where my new wife, we buy a quadplex, and then we're buying a triplex, and another quadplex, and a 10 unit, and then a duplex, and another duplex, and a quadplex. And it's like, what the hell is going on? This guy is blowing up. He's going on vacation here and vacation here. And so when the FBI comes in and they indict me

and I take the three years probation, like I mean, probably the worst thing in the world other than going to prison would have been just having to just sell everything and go move in and start over and sell used cars. Not that there's anything wrong with selling used cars, but I just felt like, you know, I just didn't want to disappoint him any more than I already had. So I thought I'm gonna flip houses and then I'll start maybe a development company, so I'll buy some vacant lots and all this and that.

The problem is, these houses on mine for 50,000 if I fix them up and sell them maybe I make 20, 25,000 and then you got to find a qualified borrower. It's very hard to find a qualified borrower that wants to live in Ebor city back then. I still think it's rough but those same houses are going for three and four hundred thousand. So you know, I'm buying houses I going for three and four hundred thousand. So, you know, I'm buying houses, I gotta get qualified borrowers, I've due to all the renovations, it's a nightmare, you know. And if I, you know, looking back, it's like, okay, well then you've got to bite the bullet. It's just what you have to do. I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to

do it, whether it was laziness or I don't know. I just thought, I'm good at this. I'm going to run, I'm just going to start running a scam. I'm going to figure out how to drive the prices up. Buy the houses for 50, record them at 200,000 and then have these synthetic identities buy all the properties, refinance them, pull out the cash, make six months worth of payments,

let them all go into foreclosure. And that really, really started working well. Very well. I had one time where I had a guy, it was James Red, the synthetic guy that he was James Red, and he'd bought two or three houses. And there was somebody at the office who was friends of somebody who knew the title company where we were closing the loans.

And he called that her, her name was Mary and said, Mary, this guy James Red, like Cox is doing something shady. James Red doesn't even exist. She goes and looks at the file her last couple files. And she realizes, of course, obviously, like this guy never showed up. She remembers, Cox picked up the files. Like, and he's saying he doesn't exist. So she freaks out. She calls the mortgage broker. Mortgage broker calls me. Mortgage broker calls me up and says, listen, Mary said she's not closing the next loan unless James Red shows up. And I went, wow, that's a tough one.

And she's like, okay, so what do you want to do? Do you want to go to another title company? Like we're supposed to close in like three days, two, three days. I said, well, I mean, he's gonna have to show up then. I said, I'll figure it out. Like, like, give me a couple of days. Give me, let me figure this out.

And she's like, okay, well, I don't know how that's gonna happen. You don't exist. Keep in mind, at this point, I don't need IDs. I don't need a real ID. I mean, I can, I figured out how to kind of make a real ID, right? Like I could make one, I could take sandpaper and sand off the information on a regular ID, and then I would print the the corrected information in reverse on a piece of transparency, and I would glue it over there. And you could still see the holograms and stuff. It actually worked pretty good.

I don't know, the cop's not gonna, it's not gonna pass muster with a cop, but somebody that bank, like I was able to go in and I would open a bank account with it. Well, so, one of the things I had done when I was closing these loans was, I would go online and I would pick, you have to pick a photo of somebody to put on the driver's license.

I'm not making a fake ID for all these guys because I don't need a fake ID for all these guys, not with my picture on it. But I need a copy of an ID. But I need a picture. Where do I get the picture? So I go to Hillsboro counties, arrest website, and I would find people that I knew that had been arrested. And so I found a guy named Eric Tomorgo, who had been arrested. He had like, I don't know what it was, the DUI or domestic violence, I forget what it was. But there was a picture of him. So I print out the picture, I cut it up, I paste it onto

a driver's license and I make a copy of it, you know, for James Red. That's what I'd been giving the title people. When I would close, I'd sign all the documents and I'd leave them that copy so that it looked like they made a copy of it. And then they would not arise all the documents, even though they'd never seen this person. They have a copy of his driver's license, everything's signed, cock said he signed it, it's good. Notarized. Here's your check. So what I do is I think, let me see if I can get Eric to do this.

He's been, I knew he'd been prison before. So I call up Eric. And I remember one of my buddies like he's never gonna do this. And I was like, I think he will. I think he will. So, that's how, and that's really that kind of like you think, what do you think? No, let me try. I don't know, bro.

Like that's the kind of conversations you're having. Like, but really looking back, I would love to hear the open or a few sentences that you have with him. I got, I can tell you exactly what I said because it's burned in my mind. He comes in. So what Eric was doing at that time, he was actually working for us. He worked for somebody else, but periodically we would, you know, we'd buy a house and we'd call him up. We'd say, hey, can you, you're in your boss, can you guys come over and trim the trees of this house? Trim all the trees, take all the crap in the yard, clean it up. They go, yeah, sure, no problem. Cause that's what he did,

it worked for like a handyman service. So they would come and they'd clean it up and they'd do that. So I say, can you come over? And he was like, yeah, so he comes to the office, whatever, a few hours later, and he comes in the conference room. I said, hey, Eric, what's going on? And he says, he says, hey, you know,

how's it going? I said, yeah, I said, um, listen, I said, I'm gonna tell you something. I need a favor. He's like, okay, cool. He's like, what is it? I said, you know all, I said, I'm gonna tell you something. I need a favor. He's like, okay, cool. He's like, what is it? I said, you know all these houses we've been having you going clean up.

He's like, yeah, you painted that one house. He did this. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. Right. So here's what we've been doing. I've been buying these houses for $50,000 recording for $200. And then I have these fake people buy them.

And I just lay it out for him. And he's like, wow, that's, he's like lay it out for him. And he's like, wow. That's, he's like, that's fucking bro, that's ingenious, man. That's smart. Like, oh, I was like, okay, I said, yeah, I know, that's great. So here's the thing, I said, the title company who's been closing some of these loans, and we have a closing in a couple of days,

she wants this guy James Red to show up. And I need someone to show up as James red and he goes wow he is Who are you gonna get to do that and I was just thinking? Just like you're not understanding. I'm not confiding in you because I need a friend, you know So and I looked at I said well, I was thinking you might do it. He was like whoa He's that's a big favor. I said, it is a big favor. I give you a lot of trouble. And I said, I know.

And he goes, well, wait a minute. He was like, I can't go. He said, you have to give these people a driver's license. You said the driver's license is you were, you were using mug shots. She said, she's closed a couple of these. She already, she's seen this guy's picture. And I go, she has seen this picture.

I said, the thing is for James Red, I pulled the mug shot Offline of you when you were arrested a couple years ago and he jumps up and he goes Mother fucker and I go, I said Eric. I said, wait a minute. I said hold on hold on. I said listen I said I only did that because I knew if it came down to this moment You were the only person that I knew that could pull this off, that it had the balls to walk in and do it. And he sat there and went, yeah, you're right, you're right.

And I mean, I don't, I couldn't believe he fell, listen, this guy would beat the brakes off me. He was, he's like 5, 10, 5, 11, he's boxed, he's a big guy. Yeah. So, you know, it's like I've weathered that part of the storm. And he sat there and he was right, right?

And he goes, well, I'm not doing it for free. I'm not doing it for nothing. I said, no, bro, of course not. I mean, you know, what he's like, you're making a lot of money. I said, well, keep in mind, a lot of that money goes back in the property. It's not like we're walking away with, you know, I think I said like tens of thousands. We're really walking away with hundreds of thousands. And it's not like we're walking away with a bunch of money here.

You know, it's, you know, we got to put it it, we got to buy more properties where I keep it going. We got to make payments. No, I know it, but still I can get a lot of trouble. I said, I understand, bro. I go, well, what do you want? And I remember thinking if he asked for more than like 10 or 15,000, like, I'll just, I'll do it myself. We'll just change title companies.

And we'll go, and I'll, I'll do it myself. And he sat there and he went, I want $500. And I went $500, listen, I almost started laughing. I mean, I was like, I put my hand over my, I was like, $500. It's gonna take you 30 minutes. And he's like, I don't care bro, I get a lot of trouble.

I was like, oh, well yeah, I'm not paying you now. You got to sign first. And he's like, oh, you know, I'll sign. I'll sign. I know you're good for it. For 500 bucks, I made a fake ID form. He goes into the place. He signs James Redd.

Comes out. What was even funny about you, what was funny about that was when we walked into the title company. We're sitting in the lobby. And Mary comes walking out. She looks at me. She goes, Mr. Crocs, I don't know why you're here. She says, I told Kelly, that was the broker. She says, I told the broker that I'm not closing alone unless James Red shows up. And Eric stands up on Q and he goes, I'm James Red. And she was like, and she goes, hold on a second. She runs

in the back, comes back with a file, opens it up, looks at the picture, and she's like, and she goes, hold on a second, she runs in the back, comes back with a file, opens it up, looks at the picture and she's like, oh, I'm so sorry, give me five minutes, I'll, I've got the file, I'll, Prince of the Docs, he goes in, signs, and when we're there, she's passing out the checks, 5,000 here, 25,000 here, 35,000 here, 7,000 here, 6,000 here. So he sees all these checks and I'm like, oh, I got that I and the construction coming in and I have that I'm I'll take care of that I'll take care of that so I get all the checks and I leave. We go sit in my Audi and he sits down He's like, bro, there's a lot of money. There's a lot of them money goes back in the properties here And he's like, I still bro

And I said um, and I got an out 500 bucks, but listen, a week later, we had another closing. So I, he comes in, I said, Hey, bro, he's, hey, what's going on? And I said, uh, I need you to do the, the James red thing. He was, yeah, I've been thinking about that. I did that way too cheap. I said, I get it, man. Well, how much do you want? What do you want? And I'm thinking if it's more than $10 or $15, I'll do it myself.

And he sits there and he goes, I want $1,000. I go $1,000. He's like, oh my God. So I give him $1,000 and he did another one. And but by that point, it was like five or six. We'd done five or six with that guy. And after five or six, plus the credit cards, plus all the other things, their credit scores

start dropping. If it was 700 now, it's down to like 600. And at 600, you couldn't really borrow enough to make it worth it. So I have other people in the wings waiting. So, you know, we would just, I'd go out and I'd run up the credit cards and pull them as much money, pull all the money out of the banks and close the accounts and then stop paying. And you said a lot of people knew. So he was one of the people that he was one of the people. Why do you think nobody's said anything? Well, I mean, I think everybody was making money. The appraiser at that time I had an appraiser. Eventually

I ordered a appraiser software and I just start doing the appraiser myself. Like why give this guy 500 bucks? So you were doing the appraiser yourself. How's that possible? How's that? Is there a check against it? Is there There is it's funny. Nobody ever questions that. You actually have to have a license to get the appraisal software. So I get an appraisers that we're working with. I get her license. And I create an email address as her. So it was a synthetic appraiser. Right. It was a real person, but I ended up ordering the appraisal software by by emailing. It was called Alamo, Alamo appraisal software. So I end up emailing them as her and they go, well, we can't give you, we can't sell you the software unless we

need a copy of your license. Boom, here's your license. So I send the license, then the license, and then we paid for it with a credit card, you know, you could go get like a green dot card, you go put 500 bucks on it or a thousand. The software was like 1500 bucks or something. So you pick them like back then, you know, it's a long time ago. So 1500 bucks, they mail it to us. And now I've got the software. So now I can, you know, I can do the appraisals myself. What stops you from appraising it not for 200,000 but even more. There's no comparable sales. So no matter what you sent to the bank, they're going to look at it. Like they're going to have a their in house appraiser is going to do a desktop review. He's going to go online. He's going to check to make sure all the appraise, all of the comparable

sales are sold for what you said they sold for are the same square footage were built, what the pictures look like, how far they are, they're just going to double check everything. But you know, he's some guy who's on salary and he does, you know, whatever, 40 or 50 of these a day or something, it doesn't take him long. And so it's cheaper that way where we pay for the appraiser appraise the whole thing. Got it. So everybody's getting paid, long. And so it's cheaper that way, where we pay for their praise or praise the whole thing. Got it. So everybody's getting paid. Right. And so at this point, I'm doing that, right?

And I'm getting caught periodically. Can you give an example? What do you mean getting caught? I'm living in Tampa Heights, which is right next to Ebor City and Tampa, right? So this is all, these are all like little suburbs of Tampa and they're all built back in the 1920s, right? 1890s, 1910, 1920. So I've bought this eight-unit building. I renovated it into a triplex. I mean, I'm driving an Audi. I'm dating a woman that I should not have been dating. I mean, I don't know what she was thinking.

So I'm, you know, I'm going on vacations. Like everything life's good. So, but everyone's so all, you know, like we're, you know, we're things happen. You get a phone call. Hey, this is what just happened. And I, one time I got a phone call from same broker, Kelly.

Kelly called me up and said, listen, we got a problem. This was, I wanna say this was Alan Duncan. This was one of the first ones that I had done, right? Well, we used him, but, and so, he, so she calls me up and says, listen, Alan Duncan never made his first mortgage payment. And I had a friend of mine, or one of my co-definents, when we closed on that loan,

we both got checks for whatever, 40 or 50 grand. Keep in mind, we're also buying some of this money's going into a business account, we're buying property, we're buying, so it's not like I'm pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even 20 or $30,000 on every closing. I'm more like I'm getting 25, 10, 20, and this guy is getting 10, and this guy is getting 15, and then we're taking 60, and we're putting it into the business account.

We're buying a bunch of vacant lots, or we're building some new houses. We're trying to kind of take all this and turn it into a development company. But we still have to pair bills. So my buddy's got to go to Amstradram at least for two weeks. He's from Belgium. Apparently you have to do that at least once a year. So when I gave him his check, the check, I said, look, it's like 20 grand or 15 grand, but you got to make the payments on this thing for the next six months. He was no problem. I said, okay. So she calls me up a month and a half later and says, Hey, um, Alan Duncan did not, did

not make his first payment. And I went, uh, oh my God. And I, he was actually renting the apartment downstairs for me. So I run downstairs and I open the door and I go, bro, I'm like, did you make Duncan's payment? And he turns around and he's like, is it do? And I was like, oh my God. So I run back, I grabbed the phone, I'm like,

he didn't make it, he didn't make it. He's like, okay, well here's what's happening. The account executive is calling, they've got the file and it was called South Star Bank. South Star Bank has it, they're reviewed it. They've already been ordering documents. They're saying that this guy, there's a problem.

They are, it's falling apart. Like the whole thing's falling. They know something's wrong. But they don't know exactly what. It's just something suspicious. And that, she didn't tell me that on the phone. Like she, she's saying there's something wrong. They're freaking out.

Because the account executive didn't really know. She just got a phone call saying, hey, have you ever met this broker? Did she meet the guy? Who is the guy? He hasn't paid. We're calling the cell. Nobody's answering.

And really most of this was, was my buddy Rudy's fault. He just not doing any of this stuff. Any of the things he was supposed to be doing. So we go to the office and I call South Star Bank, I get the secretary and I said, look, I need to talk to whatever the guy, the big guy was. It was one of them was like the president and one was like the somebody else. Anyway, vice president. So I said, I need to talk to so and so the vice president. She says, I'm sorry, he's in a business. I said, well, listen, tell him this is Alan Duncan. Like, you know, go tell him

his Alan Duncan's on the phone right now. I'm sure you he wants to talk to me. And she's like, all right, hold on. And I mean, like 20 seconds later, you know, speaker phone, hey, Mr. Mr. Duncan, uh, this is so and so. And, uh, you know, I'm here with the, uh, with our lawyer and the president of the bank and our head of fraud. We were just discussing you. And I was like, okay, I understand that you guys, I haven't made my first payment. I said, it actually came back in the mail.

I had the wrong address. That was completely my fault. And I apologized. I said, but I can get your cashiers check. Today I will overnight it. No problem. I hope that's gonna be okay. I say, they said, way, we're way past that.

Way past that. I said, okay. What's the issue? And they were like, I mean, look, to be honest, I don't think I'm talking to Alan Duncan. I don't think there is an Alan Duncan. He's like, I mean, your social security number was issued a couple of years ago. We called the bank. that we called the bank. And this was, we had gone with like, south or sun trust bank, right? So it was a real bank. So it wasn't our normal bank. And they called, they don't have any record of you.

And I was like, well, I've never been happy with south star bank there. It sounds like a banking error. And they're like, yeah, I don't think this isn't cute. He says, I don't think I'm talking to Alan Duncan. I know. Right. And you were a terrified. It just terrified. I'm not out. But you have to be playing a cool, I guess. I mean, I know what am I going to say? No, you're talking to Matt Cox. Like I can't say that. Like I'm just going to keep running with it. Just like, okay, we'll look, you know, and he's like, you know, we called the DMV. This,

you know, they don't have a list for you in the, in the, you know, in their website, we think that the, you know, we don't think you exist. Yeah. And we're still waiting for our phone call back from who, so and so and so and so and so and I'm just like, oh my god. And I said, um, have you called, have you called the authorities yet? And they were like, no, we haven't. But once we put our file together, we will. And then the head of the fraud department. They said oh by the way

Mr I forget it. They had the fraud department worked for the FBI for like 10 years or something or 12 years and I and I so I mean I'm just like and by the way the apprae the broker is there And by the way, the broker is there, and my buddy Rudy is there. And I mean, he's pacing the room, she's in tears crying, and I'm like, okay, well, fellas, I said, where's this headed?

Where's this going? What are we doing? And so they're kind of chuckling and joking about it. And I remember being like, thinking, what's the deal? It's weird. And I said, look, why don't I just, let me just pay you back.

And I said, we'll get the money, we're not worried about it. So you don't seem worried about the money about getting in the money back. Like, don't, why don't you just let me, I'll cut you a check.

I can get you the money back. Like, what are I, I owed him like 150 or something. I forget exactly. There's nothing. Like, I'll give you 150,000. Let me cut you a check for 150,000. And they were like, no, no, you know,

that's, we'll get the money back when we foreclose in the property. And that's when I was like, oh, they think the property's worth like $195,000 or something. And I went, oh, I said, I understand. Okay, I said, you have the appraisal in front of you. And they were like, yeah. And I said, open it up. I said, take a look at comp number one. That's owned by a guy named, you know, Lee Black. Comp number two, you know, is owned by, you know, whatever David Silver, whatever the names were. And I'm like, you know,

like black silver red. I said, I am all those people. And I said, let me tell you what I've done. And I tell them, just laid out, boom, boom, boom, boom. I said, so you can call the FBI, but you're not going to get all your money back. Or you can let me give you your money back. And we can let this, we let sleeping dogs lie. The whole thing goes away. I apologize. You know, I had every intention to make it all the payments.

It's a glitch. You caught me. No, my bad. And so these guys are just like, oh my god, like now they're, they put me on hold, they're looking through the file. They come back. And I remember at some point we go back,

forth, back, forth. And finally they come back and they say, they come back, and I remember at some point, we go back, forth, back, forth, and finally, they come back and they say, listen, you still have the money? I said, yeah, well, first they come back, they threaten me. Oh, well, when we give us the FBI, you're, and I said, that's not true. I said, the money was deposited into a bank account.

It has since been moved, the bank account. Bank account has been closed, it's been removed in cash. That money has gone, you will never see that money. I will be cutting you, if I pay you back at all, it'll be from another account. And so the FBI agent ends up saying he's right. Even if we caught him red handed, the likelihood that any of these funds will be

ever be recouped is zero. Like there's almost no money's ever recouped. And so we end up, they put me on hold again, they come back and they go, how quickly can you get us a cashier's check? And I go, like that day I go, get them a cashier's check, overnight the cashier's check, they never called the FBI.

They never did anything. Now at that point, we actually ditched that whole, that James or Alan Duncan, I remember at that point, we went toed that whole, that James or Alan Duncan. I remember at that point, we went to the mall, ran up all the credit cards and just threw everything away and walked away. Because it was sharp, you know, that whole, that guy was sharp. I think we borrowed whatever, $800,000 or $900,000 in his name. So, with the banks, it's really, really all about the money.

That, listen, when I go on the run, I got one where I was caught so red handed. It's insane how bad it was. And listen, that's nothing. I got caught by washing to mutual one time. I was caught by washing to mutual where we had done six owner occupied duplexes. So if you say you're gonna live in a house, you can get about 95% financing.

But if it's an investment property, you got to put down 20%, you get about 80% financing. So a buddy of mine who was a sheriff's deputy, we had his wife by, I'm going to say six owner occupied duplexes saying she lived in every single one of them. Well, you can't owner occupy six dwellings, like it, if that's fraud. Now, we're in her W2s and Paceups, we're correct, but she didn't put the down payments, even the down payments we didn't put down. We actually got cash back. But months later, we, they called the, a lawyer from Washington Mutual, ended up calling the mortgage broker and saying that they ended up with two of the owner occupied duplexes because Washington Mutual had a credit line extended to

one of the lenders who'd lent the money. So it actually was Washington Mutual had a credit line extended to one of the lenders who'd lend the money. So it actually was Washington Mutual. So it was a couple months later when they went to sell it and they package them together and sell them. They realize we have the same customer with two duplexes side by side, both on our occupied. This is fraud. So she comes in, she tells me, oh my gosh, this lawyer's on the phone. This is what happened. I'm like, oh, wow, this is horrible. I end up getting on the phone with him. We have a huge, we have a conversation. And I'm like, you know, he's like, look, you know, this is a big deal.

We could call the FBI. I'm like, look, who knows who was involved in this? Maybe somebody on your side was involved. Maybe somebody on my side. I don't know what my mortgage broker did. I'll deal with her on my own. Why don't you just let us refinance the properties? Not only did we talk him into refin—allowing us to refinance the properties, he gave us a reduced

balance of what we owed him because we couldn't borrow enough to pay him off. So they took like a $20,000 hit just to refinance those properties. Never called the FBI. Never did it. It was absolutely fraud. I had a broker one time. We got called with over a million dollars and loans that he had done that were fraudulent. Penical bank court, which was out of a Chicago. The owner called me and he was like, look, your mortgage broker did this. There was a bunch of canceled checks. They were fake canceled checks. They looked like they had run through the bank for this somebody's rent.

But they hadn't. Does that make sense? You pay your rent. They deposit it. It goes to the bank and they've got all the numbers and everything. I had a bunch that were blank. All you had to do was fill out your, your borrower's information.

And then you cut and pasted his full name and his address at the upper left hand corner. You make a copy of it. It looks like cancel checks. We had 24 of them. Well, one of my brokers was using them for all of his files. Like even if the person really had a rental history, he didn't want to order it. He just did this. It was easier.

It's faster, yeah. Yeah, just, wow. So they catch a million dollars worth of loans. They call me up and then they caught another million dollars, but they had already sold them to household bank. So while I'm on the phone with the owner, his name is Gary. And we're talking, he's like, look, this is what we found. This is this. This is what happened. And I remember I said, Gary, at the end of this conversation, if you think I'm cutting you a chefe for a million dollars, I said, I just don't have it. I don't have it. And this is what I own the mortgage company. And he says, uh, no, I, what I'm asking you for your word that if any of these come back on us, they're in Florida, they're in your area, you'll help us get rid of the properties. You'll, we'll foreclose. We're going to have to resell them. I don't want to be flying down there. Just help us get rid of them.

I said, absolute, of course, no problem. I said, what about the, I said, well, what are you going to do with them? He was, well, they're going to be a part of a package, like a $3 million package. We're selling to household bank. The other ones they had caught had already been sold. The ethical thing to do is to contact household bank say we will buy those back. We are going to take care of it. It's not what happened. In fact, Gary flew down a couple weeks later, took me and several of the brokers, not that broker, but several of the brokers out to dinner, had a few drinks and he openly admitted he's like, look, I don't care if all the loans have fraud in them as long as they don't come back on me. That's what I'm concerned about because there's a clawback clause for one year. He's like, so if they can perform for one year,

I don't care. That was it. How many people in the industry do you think are operating like this? How many people in the industry do you think are operating like this? And by like this, I mean, in the aforementioned gray area, I would say there's probably after like the, like after the 2008 financial crisis, I would say it cleaned up considerably, but I would say at this point it's just as bad as it ever was. And keep mind these, a lot of the loans that caused the problems were like, they called them liar loans or no qualification, no qualifies, right?

No income. Well, those loans are, they exist again. There are subprime companies that are doing that again. I don't think I call them subprime anymore. They call them so they got some other name. They rebranded a little bit, but it's happening all over again. But it's happening all over again. It just seems the whole real estate slash banking system is very prone to this kind of corruption. I mean, but how can you fix it? Like, a lot of the things they fixed, a lot of the manipulation they fixed, but if you tighten it too much, then the average person can't get alone. And the thing is some of these loans, sometimes changing a W2, should that person have

gotten into that house? No, he shouldn't have. He didn't qualify. But he makes all of his payments. So it's like, is it a fraudulent loan? Yeah, but it performs. So, I think that, I would say that, I forget what the FBI statistic was. It was like 20% or 30% prior to the financial crisis.

It was like 20 or 30% of like bank loans they were saying that contained some kind of fraud, even if it was just a lie. If you wanna cut 30% out of the, out of the, you know, that's a ton. That's a ton. So you're on probation and you're doing these, you're almost getting caught.

You're almost getting caught. And you're doing these really large scale scams. How does it get to the point where you're on the run? So I'm doing multiple scams, right? So it's not just that I'm doing the scams with the the reservoir dog scams, right? I'm not just doing those guys. I have. I'm also creating other identities because I've got other people that are involved. They want to do a scam. So this chick I was dating. She wanted to, she wanted to run a scam. So I set up a scam, it's semi-complicated, but the bottom line is she ends up stealing a real person.

We steal a real person's identity. I have a real person's identity. We get a driver's license in her name, open up some bank accounts, go rent a piece of property in her name. And I transfer the deed, or the deed from the property out of the real owner's name, I transfer it into her stolen identity. We then refinance the house like three or four times. And so she starts going to these different closings. And she's her name is Allison and she's pretending to be a Puerto Rican woman named Rosie Depres.

Allison has brown hair and blue eyes. Rosie Depres clearly doesn't. So Allison, when we make the ID, she dyes her hair black, curls it a little bit, and gets the pictures taken of herself. But before she goes to the first closing, to get a check for like a hundred thousand dollars. We've got like three of these scheduled. We've got like three of these scheduled. She... She changes her hair color like that. She dies it back like like a dirty blonde and She goes to the first closing and she gets a check. I'm gonna check for a hundred thousand. Let's say I don't know What it was like it was a 95 or 105 whatever roughly a hundred thousand dollars. She gets a check at the closing, they give it to her. We then go to the next closing. Well, the next closing, the, the title person has her sign all the documents, but she's looking says, this doesn't look like you. And she's like, you know, you don't look Hispanic and she's like, I'm half Hispanic.

What do you, what? And she's like, you don't, I mean, but keep in mind, the photograph was her. So she's saying, this doesn't look like you, but it's her. Grand in the hood, she had, you know, the curly hair a little bit, but that's it. So Allison is like, it's me.

And she's like, look, I'm not going to get cut you. I'm not going to give you the check. Yeah. I'm, let's just sign the documents. You know, we can get you need the check. I'll let you know. So she goes, gets in my car, she said, yeah, listen, there's a problem. So we're driving on the road.

She explains it to me. I realized, you know, okay, that's done. It's over. We're not going back. She's like, what about the other closing? No, no, no more closings. We're done. And, and I, you know, and it was probably more of a yell screaming and yelling, like, what the hell did you do? Why told you not to change your hair? Why would you change your hair? Like that when she came in like the day before and I was like, what did you do? What did you do? She's like, I changed my hair. What's the big deal? It's still me. Sure enough.

You know, and that's a, like, it's not that I knew that that was going to happen, but why tempt fate? How did you meet Allison? Like, what? She was a mortgage worker. Okay. And I had done some fraudulent. She need, she works for another mortgage company. Sorry. She worked for another mortgage company. She couldn't get a loan closed. The owner of that mortgage company called me and said, look, we got a loan, we need it closed. And I said, great. And I sped, guys would call me. I said, great, I'll come pick it up. I'll give you a $300 or $500 referral fee. No, no. It's a couple of $100,000. We want to close it. Well, if you then close it. Well, I can't close it. We need a W2 or we need this, we need that.

We can't figure out how to do it. So I go over there and typically I convince them, just give it to me, it's not gonna close. She was, she was, you guys see this, check. She was gorgeous. She was gorgeous, very flirtatious, made me feel like I was thin and handsome. So, like, she gets whatever she wants.

Yeah. So I'm like, okay, look, here's what you do. And I explain to her, do this, do this, do this, send it here, it'll close. And we close it. Well, then she starts calling me, right? Hey, how's it going? We go to lunch, next thing you know,

we start sleeping together, she realizes what's happening. She says, I want to, I want to end on this. So, now we do the closings. We're on our way. I say, look, that checks dead. What about the other one? I go, no, no, it's all dead.

We're walking away. Now, that was easy for me to say. Because for me, I had money. She's going through a divorce. She's broke. You know, like none of this that I take into consideration through a divorce, she's broke. You know, like none of this did I take into consideration at the time, by the way. To me, it's like, nah, that's dead, we're done. We'll start over again.

Well, and she's to her, in her mind, she was about to make, we were getting probably, that was a million dollar scam. She was about to end up getting, you know, whatever it was, half or one third of half a million dollars in the next week. Now she's got nothing. So, um, she says, look, let's at least cash this one. And I had a buddy named Travis Hayes, who had been, you know, we actually were, we've been friends since high school. We were like best friends, right? Really close friends in high school. We were still close. Travis was running a scam.

This one with hers was in clear water. His was in Orlando. So I'm all over the state at this point, right? So he's running an Orlando scam that's already yielded half a million, maybe more. He's still, we're still refinancing properties, right? So he's about to close on another half a million dollars with our properties.

He's got a bank account that's open. She says, let's give it to Travis, have him deposit it in his account. He's already pulled out like 300,000 out of the account. And she's like, shouldn't be a problem. I was like, no, no, no, and she's let me call him. She calls him, I think I called him and I explained the situation. He's, you think it's okay? And I said, no, I don't think it's okay. She calls them, I think I call them and I explain the situation.

He's usually, he's okay. And I said, no, I don't think it's okay. I don't think it's okay at all. And he's like, no, it's not a big deal. Just give me the check. So I give him the check. He goes, he deposits the check. They say they're gonna hold it till it clears.

That was kind of a thing. Back then, it takes, I don't know. I don't know how long it took. Five days, six days, whatever it was, he was supposed to go back and it would have cleared and he would have been able to start pulling money out. And so I call him one day, because Allison's bugging me, so I call him.

And I go, hey, where are you at? He goes, I'm actually on my way to Orlando. And I said, okay, so you've let Allison know I'm not getting any money. He said, the bank manager called and said that because the check was over $100,000, they have to witness me endorsing the back of the check. Or they had to see my something, right?

And for me to come in, I'm like, oh, I said something's wrong. Something's wrong. Don't go to the bank. What do you think's wrong? I think the cops are waiting for you. That's what I think's wrong. And he goes, no, the cops aren't. He goes, man, I'm in the I'm, ooh, I said something's wrong, something's wrong. Don't go to the bank. What do you think's wrong? I think the cops are waiting for you. That's what I think's wrong. And he goes, no, the cops aren't, he says, man, I'm in the parking lot right now.

I just pulled in the parking lot. There's no cops. I'm like, they're not gonna be in squat cars. Like, and he's like, no, he said, it's fine. You're overreacting, bro. And I'll never forget what he said. He said, you're shaking like a little girl, bro. Calm down.

I got this. I'm cool with the manager. Like the manager, like because you've chopped'm cool with the manager, like the manager, like because you've chopped it up with the manager, he's going to let your fraudulent check go through. So he walks in the cops are in there. They locked the door. He just told me later, you know, they closed the door, locked it. The cops are in there. They grab him and they bring him downtown. He didn't say anything. He won't say anything. That's not true, by the way. But he's so he has where he told me even saying, I told him I'm talking to you,

covers. Oh, he told you, but he actually did. He actually did talk to him. So he, what he ends up doing, what ends up happening is we can't get in touch with him. Yeah. So we're calling and calling and calling and then finally I decide, you know what? I'm not going to call his cell phone anymore. I'm going to call the name of the person he was the synthetic identity's number, right? So I go and I call the synthetic identities number. I call and I say, somebody answers and I go, Hey, is so and so there? And he said, and it's a gruff authoritarian voice, you know, this is law and for it. And he's like, no, who's this? He's no, he's no, this is office or so and so. Who's this? And I go, I was like,

this is Lee Black. I said, he said, he was, how do you know so and so? I was like, oh, no, click on, I just hung up. And I called for like a pay phone. So I turned around and I said, he was, how do you know so and so I was like, oh no, click on it, I just hung up. And I called for like a pay phone. So I turned around and I said, he got arrested. And then later on that night, he showed up on the, the county website, you know, the, the arrest website showing he had been arrested. And the next day he calls me and he asked me to get him out of jail. Like, hey, I, I, you got to go. So I have to give his brother-in-law money. Um, you know, we get him out of jail. Like, hey, I, you got to go. So I, I have to give his brother-in-law money. Um, you know, we get him out on jail. He actually got out for bail. Yeah, he got out for like nothing.

And here's where I should have known that he was cooperating. He had, it went from like $300,000 bond down to like $10,000. So it's a thousand bucks. So right then, I didn't know it at the time, but obviously that means we're going to let him out of jail. He's cooperating. So they let him out of jail. I go and I get him a lawyer, a state, this was state, by the way, it wasn't federal. So I get him a lawyer for like $15,000. He comes, you know, of course he tells me, look, they asked me a bunch of questions. I told him that, you know, I, that he, you know, he made up some story about there's a, he's working with another guy, but he doesn't know the guy's name. He made up a name. Like, it's a whole, he has this whole kind of thing where he tells them about me, but not me. And he's like, and then, you know, the numbers,

none of the numbers led anywhere. So they're all lead, lead to cell phones that are only being used for those scams. So it's a dead alley or blind alley. And I'm like, okay, okay. And I'm paying him, like he's coming in, man, my truck's no good, I need another truck, I buy him another truck. Hey man, the electric's gonna get turned off and I need a thousand dollars.

Of course, here's a thousand dollars. I don't know what I'm embarrassed you had to ask. Here's a thousand. Week later, he needs two later, you know, he needs 2000 for this, a thousand for this, 2000 for this. He wants to start a tree trimming company. He needs to buy a tree trim, or how much are those? $5,000 of course, such, 10, so I give him another $25,000,

starts like a tree trimming business, which he runs to this day. What I don't know is that, you know, the whole time he's actually working with a task force that's been put together. Federal. This is state at this point. It's a state task force because there's multiple counties involved at this point.

And it wasn't hard for him to explain like this, this is, this comes back to reservoir dogs. I got a much, all I had to say to the officers was, listen, you got to let me go. I can't do any prison time. I'm going to tell you about a much all you had to say to the officers was listen, you got to let me go. I can't do any prison time. I'm going to tell you about a much, much bigger scam and they go, okay, well, how can you prove that scam? Pull up Hillsborough County, uh, Hillsborough County's tax appraiser website. Okay, look up the name James Red.

Look, all of these were built, bought six months ago, six months later, they're all in foreclosure. Pull up Lee Black, all of these were bought. Look, six months later, they're all in foreclosure. Pull up Lee Black, all of these were bought. Look, six months later, all of them are foreclosure. Hey, pull up James, James, you pull up Brandon Green, pull up. So all of these are going in foreclosure. I mean, it's so it's like, you know, that what I thought was so cute, not cute. There's a stupid. And so he very quickly, they put together task force. He's working with them on the task force. And um,

we're still buying houses, flipping houses, doing everything because I believe him. I believe he's not, you know, he's saying, look, if I go to jail for, you know, a year or so, like, you know, and he's also paying, you know, he hasn't paid them back yet, but he, but we're saying he can pay them back. Like, it's like, look, if we get to the point, you know, when we get to that point, like, we'll pay them back. Um, but we haven't paid them back yet because we have no way to show where that money came from. We can always go to like one of his relatives and give his, give his dad 40 grand, give his mom 20 grand, you know, that kind of stuff and start putting money that way. And all that money was taken out in cash, too. So we could always show up with a chunk in cash regardless, you know, it's still in the process. And I think we're still in the process and it could

be six months or a year away because it's a slow thing. I've already been through the process. My first time when I got in trouble and it was a year but from the time that I was spoken to until I pled guilty and was sentenced. So I'm not concerned about it. Well, that's happening. We're still flipping properties. And one day, I have a buddy named Steve Sutton, and remember the sheriff's deputy. And keep in mind it's funny because like,

I've done bad loans for police officers, sheriff's lawyers, doctors police officers, sheriffs, lawyers, doctors, everybody across the zone, like all, you know, guys that, you know, these are all like, you know, construction workers or guys that work in your mechanics or something. These are like legitimate people that have credit problems or whatever the case may be. So one day I'm sitting at work and I'd been getting phone calls for the prior week from people at title companies saying, hey Matt, wanted to let you know, we just had some subpoenas served on several of your files.

And I'm concerned, like that had me concerned. Then a guy named Jeff Testerman starts making phone calls. Jeff Testerman is a reporter for the St. Petersburg Times. He's calling people saying, hey, I noticed that you sold a piece of property to Lee Black. Have you ever met Mr. Black? You soon, and they're just hanging up on him or saying, no, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm Lee Black. Have you ever met Mr. Black? You soon, and they're like, just hanging up on him

or saying, no, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm not sure what that guy's name was. Let me call you back. And I'm getting phone calls from people. So I know something's up with the newspaper. Now, now I know something's being looked at, but nobody's really talking. I know that there are subpoenas being served.

And I'm nervous. I'm very concerned. Then one day in my office, and the sheriff's deputy walks in, Steve Sutton, in his uniform too, which everybody always stiffens when he would walk in. So, it walks in, I go, Steve, I said, what's going on? He's head. Usually, he's jolly and laughs and stuff.

He says, I got to talk to you outside. I was like, okay, I walk outside, what's up? And he says, he used to date this girl in the Tampa Police Department or something, right? I was like, okay, she showed up in my house this morning at like six o'clock in the morning. I went, okay, he said she said that she's been working on a task force.

And he said, apparently one of your buddies got arrested in Orlando. They're investigating some other thing in Clearwater. They're investigating a ton of properties here in E-Board, Tampa Heights. And I mean, there's like a hundred properties involved. And my name came up because you've sold some properties to me, which I had. And he's like, so she came to me and said, look, your buddy Cox, he said, and I

go, I was like, okay, he goes, he said, well, the task force is on you. And she said to stop talking to you because they're going to come arrest you in a couple days. They just handed over the task force findings to the FBI and the FBI is going to come arrest you in a couple days. And she said not to talk to you because you're going to cooperate and because all white collar guys cooperate. So she thinks you're going to cooperate and not to talk to you because she's afraid you're gonna get me himed up and she said just to walk away and he was like, so I thought you should know.

And I was like, okay. And he said, what are you gonna do? I said, oh, I'm, you know, I'm, well, first he said, what should I do? And I go, tell him, tell him that I arranged all the loans for you, you came in, you signed the paperwork, I filled out all the documents, you signed the paperwork, you, you know, I arranged everything. I'm like, you're not a mortgage broker, you don't know if this is legit.

Like you signed, you have perfect credit, you signed the paperwork, you walked away with a check for 30,000. You don't know. And it was like, because he did it, because he had a job, he was just a share of step you do. Like, I'm not a, you know, I went in in I applied I would applied for a loan at a bank. They said if we can buy you can buy the house and we'll give you $30,000. So of course I'm going to do that.

You know, that's not going to happen, but he doesn't know. And I said, tell him, yeah, tell him you'll cooperate like absolutely. Um, he's what are you going to do? I said, me, I said, I'm leaving, bro. I'm leaving. I said, I can't, I can't stay here. I can't go to prison. Like, I was just sentenced. I'm on federal probation right now. Like, the judge isn't going to be cool with me getting popped again. Like, I mean, he, I can't do it. I can't do it. I said, I'm leaving. I can't go to prison.

I'm adorable, bro. Like, you know, I can't, I saw Shaw Shank for redemption. I know what's going to happen. I can't. Yeah, I can't do that. Let's not going to happen. Like, I can't, I saw Shaw Shank for redemption. I know what's gonna happen. I can't. It's too good looking. Yeah, I can't do that. Let's not gonna happen. Like I can't, you know, I can't not gonna defend myself against a guy who's six foot three and tatted up. No. So, and, you know, and I can't, I'm not gonna,

I'm no benefit to a gang. Like I'm not a nonviolent, you know, soft white collar criminal. So I was just like, I was like, yeah, I'm leaving, or I'm leaving. So I actually went home. Well, actually, I was able to, I started cutting checks to people, right? So I cut checks to Allison, to Johnny, to like everybody I could think of, here's 5,000, here's 7,000, here's 8,000, here's six, here's nine, and had them going to all these different bank accounts pulling out cash. But this is like a Thursday at four o'clock.

So the next day they show up with cash, write some more checks, they go again, I get about 80 grand in cash. That's all I can get. I go home that night, I start packing my bags, and I was dating this, this chick named Rebecca Halk. We've been dating about a month and she shows up at my house. You know, I hadn't returned her phone calls all day and apparently we're

supposed to go out and I'd forgotten about it. I had bigger issues. And so I'm packing a couple of duffel bags and she walks in. She's like, what's going on? I'm like, I'm leaving. Where are you going? I thought we supposed to go out at such and go do something tonight. I'm like, I'm leaving. It's over. And she says, what happened? I tell her what happened. This is what happened. She's like, oh my God. Like, she had no idea. But she had no idea about anything you were doing. No, I barely knew her. Like, I mean, she's coming over two, three times a week for a month. Like, I've, you know, this isn't love. This isn't, you know, this is a booty call. That's all it is. Like we're hanging out. We're having sex. And that's it. I don't even know you. So

she suddenly just begs to come with me. You got to bring me with you. You have to do this. You have to do that. I'm like, what are you talking about? Like you've got a, you've got a sun. I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, you've got a son, you have your mom lives here, and she's just in tears and crying, and she suddenly said, and this is what's so funny about it, she said, she had just moved from Vegas to St. Petersburg to work at the dog track, to work for a company that owned the dog track, right?

A casino interest, like a gambling company. And she said, you don't even know why I'm here. I was like, okay, why are you here? She said, I'm here because I was working for a law firm that worked for the, the casino company that I work for. She said, I got caught in bezeleling nothing. It was like $10,000 or $15,000 from my boss because she had a gambling habit. And she said he didn't call the police because we were sleeping together and he was afraid

his wife would find out. She said so instead, he banished me here to St. Pete. My son just came to live with me. He's been caught sneaking out, because the father had raised him. He'd only been living with her since he got the Florida. And she's like, I was about, I was gonna send him back. He's failing school. He's smoking pot.

He's been caught sneaking out after curfew. I'm like, okay, I don't know, I don't know any of this. She's like, he was going back in December. No, I don't know. He was going back after the school year, which'm like, okay, I don't know any of this. She's like, he was going back in December. You know, I don't know. He was going back after the school year, which would have been like May. Okay. And I'm like, so, where before, five minutes earlier, I thought she was this sweet secretary, sweet innocent secretary. And she's like, you know, I've been married three times. I am a gambler.

I've played bankruptcy. I'm sleeping with my boss. I got like, you know, she went from this, you know, thieving adulterous, you know, and I thought, these are all really beneficial to my, you know, my future plan. You know, and I shouldn't have, at that moment, I was so just flipped out and concerned and up and leaving your life and everything you know,

behind, that's terrifying. And so now you're alone in a strange place. And I'm just the first time you've done something like that, like leave to go in the road. Yes. So I'd never just up and moved and keep my now, I can't call home. I can't, like I'm leaving.

There are things that I feel like get you caught. And I've watched tons of these TV shows. And there are certain things that get you caught. And one of them is keeping in contact with anybody in your old life. So I'm thinking that's not gonna happen. Like I'm not contacting anybody. I'm leaving and that's it.

That didn't really happen. I kept in touch. I call my mom every once in a while. But I was like, okay, that's cool. Did the loneliness of that hit you early on or no? Like as you're gathering, I never did. Well, you're leaving your life. I mean, mean there's a it feels like a fundamental transition. Oh listen Think I mean look let's not just that like I'm leaving my my son. I have a son and

I'm you know, I was I was leaving everything. I was just terrified of going going to prison and you know, I mean everything. I was just terrified of going to prison. And you know, I mean, I just, it's just so stupid. It was just arrogance. And, you know, I should have stayed like I made things so much worse. But I also thought, I'm smart. I can, I can figure this out. Like, I can change my identity, blend in. I'll be fine. Aren't you already like people know what your face looks like? They do. They do. But one of the first things I did was I got plastic surgery. What kind of plastic surgery?

I've got a nose job. I got what they call a mini facelift. They go in through your back of your ears and they suck out all the fat in your neck. Does that change your parents much? A little bit. I got, I was balding. I got a two hair transplant, you know, two hair

grafts. So the hair in my head, listen to my hair, it's my hair, but it's from back here. So there's they cut it here and they appreciate it. So they re-implanted it there. You know, got liposuction, just some, you know, other stuff. And you know, got my teeth done, that sort of thing. You know, so, you know, and I, that was kind of like my plan. I'll go, I'll take off, I got 80 grand, I'll steal some more money, you know. But I, I let her come with me. And we ran up all my credit cards over the next few days,

packed up the car, traded in my, my Audi and got like an Audi, I don't know, was it like an A6 or like a Ford or like a big Ford or whatever it was. Got that and Drove straight to Atlanta and So I wrote a letter to my parents before I left just explaining this is what's happening. I'm leaving. I'm done. I'm not going to prison Love you Sorry Sorry, sorry This is what's happening. I'm leaving. I'm done. I'm not going to prison. Love you. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I know I'm a disappointment. Sorry. Bam. So I take off. Go to Atlanta.

When we went to Atlanta, I already had the name of a guy named Scott Cugnell that I'd done alone for. So, I had his, you know, his, his vital information, right? Like I have his name, date of birth, social, security number, mother's made name and where he was born. One day we were having a conversation and I just slowly pride all that out of him, right? Like I already, we'd done a loan form. So I had his name, data birth, social security number, but I need to steal his identity. I need to know where he was born and his mother's main name.

So through the course of a conversation, I just pride, you know, you know, Cugno is that, you know, what is that? Is that like Irish? Is it, no, it's such and such, or what's your mom's name? Oh, such and such, you know, you know, Kugno is that, you know, what is that? Is that like, I wish is it? No, it's such and such, what's your mom's name? Oh, such and such. Okay. Yeah, you know, we born here, you're born in and we're watching from, oh man, I was born here, I was born in such hillbroke County, you know, like I so was no big deal. We get to Atlanta, I make a fake ID for both of us, but keep mind, I don't have But I don't have a driver's license.

I do, but they're fake. Like I can give this to a cop. Can't give a driver's license as David Freeman. What's David's residence, Florida, or is this Georgia? No, this was Florida, but it was just a made up name. I'd gone to high school with a kid named David Freeman. So I had an ID, but I can't give that to a cop. Like that's enough to get like rent a place

or do something or. So we go, go to Atlanta, make an ID, set it up, make some business cards, set up a couple websites, set up some, get an HQ, which is like a company that will, you can do virtual, you can rent offices and they'll answer your phone for like a company that will you do virtual, you're going to rent virtual. You rent offices and they'll answer your phone for like a hundred bucks a month and they'll afford them. So it seems like you have an office.

They'll, you know, they give you a phone number that you call up and they say, you know, hi, United Southern Bank, you know, and they'll answer the phone and forward messages. So we get one of those, make a business card for Becky. She rents a house from a guy named Michael Shanahan. So we rent Michael Shanahan's house, it's like $200,000, $200,000 house in Alphoretta. And I then go to Alabenton, wait, I then order Scott Cugnose,

Burst Certificate, social security card. I think I registered a vote and hit his name, and I made a lease agreement in his name, and I think that's all I needed, and then I went to Alabama and got a driver's license in his name. So I went in the DMV, give them all these documents, and which are almost all of them are real except for the lease.

I said, sit over there. I sit over there, I sit down, boom. 20 minutes later, I have a driver's license. It's $20 something. It's nothing. So I get the driver's license now, I'm still driving a car that, an Audi that is in the name of Matt Cox.

So I park that, I then go, get social security to issue me a social security number in the name Scott Cugno. And I then turn around and I go and I get alone. You put down 20, 30%. There's all these first time buyers. 30% down, get like a Honda or something. So now we're living in a house.

We've got some furniture, bedroom furniture, and I go downtown, I pull the title to this guy, Michael Shanahan's house, and I go downtown and I satisfy the loan on his house. So he had two loans with Bank of America. And so I create two satisfaction of loans from Bank of America. And so I create two satisfaction of loans from Bank of America. So Michael Shanahan owns a house,

in the name Michael Shanahan, he has one mortgage with Bank of America in a second one. When you pay your mortgage off, the way public records knows it's paid off is they mail public records a Satisfaction of mortgage the one-page document and it's not rice So I fill that too. I created two of them. I just ordered you know, you can read to research So when I went downtown I researched

Bank of America satisfaction of mortgages and thousands show up. So I just grab a couple of them. Now I know what the basic template is. They're all different, by the way. So it's not like you even have to be that close, but whatever. I mimicked some of them. I had a notary stamp, not hard to get. You go in and you go into three different office three different, um, you know, uh, office

depots and you say, hey, I need a notary stamp and you give them the information and you come back four day or whatever a week later and they give it to you. So I've got these notary stamps. So I notice the satisfaction. I go downtown, I file them, boom, the mortgages are gone. Keep in mind Bank of America, he's still paying the mortgages. They don't know that they've been satisfied in public records. They're not notified. So those are gone, but it takes about a month or two for it to show up Atlanta was that far behind.

It was Fulton County. They were just way behind. So we just kind of have to dick around for a while, right? So we're going on little vacations. We're going to New Orleans, we're going to different places. As Scott Coutner driving cars, Scott Coutner, we open up several bank accounts, we have multiple bank accounts. And then we end up going to Vegas and we don't get, we do go to Vegas, but what happened was we're driving around and I remember thinking telling her, I was like, you know, this is the problem. driving around and I remember thinking, telling her, I was like, you know, this is the problem. Like, we have to get real IDs, real driver's licenses. I mean, this is real, but this is a real person too. And he may stumble across it.

And so what I did was I started running ads in magazines saying, home loans available, good credit, bad credit, no problem. Call now, government loan, you know, government, you know, VA, FHA, finding, you know, whatever, call this number. So people start calling. And I'm getting their information. One of the guys I got was Michael Eckert, yeah, I remember Michael Eckert, poor Michael Eckert. I actually legally changed his name to Michael Johnson at one point, but at this point it was just Michael Eckert. So I don't I wanted to see, you know, I'm bored. I want to see what the process is. How much is the cost? Kind of is this possible? Let

me see if I can change this guy's name. It was it was 1500 bucks. I changed it with him ever showing up anywhere. So you can. can fake the driver's license in his name. Right. I am him. So he did show up. He showed up at the lawyer's office. So you know, right. So I'm, so I do that.

I'm living in the house. And we're driving along one day. And I'm saying, we got to get real. Like these people that are calling like that, one guy I get his information, but during the course of taking the application, and I'm asking like these government survey questions at the very end, there's like 20 questions

and I'm rambling them off. And at some point he was like, he volunteered. Like I never even asked anybody about criminal history. And he just, he ended up saying something, well, I do have a felony. Does that matter? I mean, he was a DUI. I've had a couple DUIs, but I got my license back.

And that was part of the reason he had bad credit. And it was like, okay, no, no, it doesn't matter. Don't worry, I'm thinking, you know what I'm gonna love. So this is I'm just taking your, I'm just stealing from you, starting your information. So I get all this information, I'm gathering it. And so one of the things I said to Becky, while we are sitting at this stoplight is,

I'm like, we gotta get real, people's real information. And I said, like, for instance, I said, what if I steal somebody's identity? I get a driver's license in his name, four states from where he lives, and he gets a DUI. I could get pulled over two years later and get arrested for a DUI that he got in Florida. And she's like, well, what do you,

what do you, what do you think anything like, like criminals or I'm using it like, like prisoners, like mental patients, like, and I went, I mean, I don't, and I looked over it and there was a homeless guy holding a sign. And I went like that guy. And I don't remember the phrase she goes, she's the hobo? Like, I don't know who calls the hobos.

And she's like the hobo. And I said, yes, that guy. I said, hold on, pulled over to a subway, got out. She went inside to get subway. I walk across the street, pulled out like 20 bucks. And I said, hey, bro, can I ask you some quick questions real quick? He's like, yeah, what's up?

And I go, here's 20 bucks. I said, listen bro, can I ask you some quick questions real quick? He's like, uh, yeah, what's up? And I go, here's 20 bucks. I said, listen, um, I said, when was the last time you were gainfully employed? He's like, ah, whatever. 10 years. I'm like, okay, uh, do you have, do you have a criminal record? He's like, ah, I've been arrested and misdemeanors like, you know, vagrancy and he names off some things, you know, drunk in public, whatever. And I was like, are you on probation?

He's like, I can't are you on probation because I can't Can't I can't do probation. They don't give us probation. They keep us for 90 days. They release us Like they the judge knows I can't do I'm not gonna show up for a probation I'm like, okay, do you have a driver's license? He's like maybe I don't think so. I think it's just like it was it Just give to you. I was like, no, I think it's just expired Did you have a driver's license with you? He's like, no, I got nothing. I'm like, I go, is it just good to you? I was like, no, I think it's just expired. Did you have a driver license with you? And he's like, no, I got nothing. I'm like, okay, well, you know, he told me lived in like a tent

in the woods. And so I give him like another 20 bucks, asked him a few more questions. And then, oh, and I remember in the middle of it, he said, he goes, well, you're taking a survey or something? And I remember thinking, I go, I kind of chuckle. I go, you get a lot of surveyors out here, like that, and he goes, yes, and sometimes.

And I was like, really? He goes, yeah, he said like the, he said people from like, you know, halfway houses and what do you say, social workers and stuff. They'll come out and they'll pass out stuff and they'll ask us questions and stuff. And I'm like, oh, okay. And I thought that's good to know.

So I go back, I get grab Becky and she's like, oh, did you give me money? I said, give me like 40 or 60 bucks or something. Forget what? She was like, yes, what a waste of money. That was good. That was money will spend. I said, that guy's perfect.

I said, that guy is, he's got everything. He has no way to be contacted. He has no documentation on him. I said, he's not gonna drive a car. He's not gonna get a UI. He has an expired license. I just have to get his license reinstated. And I can be him.

So I went home, I typed up a what I called a federal statistical survey form. And I made a little thing. I mean, I went online, I mean, I'm always filling out federal documents as a mortgage broker. So, it looked identical. I mean, I had like this little like the recycle symbol and it was like, you know, federal form, 17-017. You know, and so I print out these forms, I get a, go buy a clip board, I make a little, a salvation army ID, I pin it on me and I go out,

and I start doing a service. I start serving people. I'm almost, homeless people, don't judge me, bro. I was in a bad spot. I was in a bad spot. I see the judgment. I see the judgment. I see the judgment. Let's maintain civility here.

Like stay neutral. Stay neutral. So these homeless guys, I mean, they have a social security number, they have a birth certificate, I guess. I mean, they're a real person. Right. They're a real person. They're just not using their real person.

Yeah, they're not actively engaging with the economic system, the financial systems. They're not employed, they don't have housing, all that kind of thing. They don't file taxes, they don't. So I, one of the questions I even asked the guy, at the, one of the last questions I said, do you believe that you will be gainfully employed

within the next two years? Everyone said no, no, no. So, you know, it's like okay, they're not even trying and they all had alcohol problems or honestly that few of my talk to like was pretty clear. I mean it takes literally five minutes less than five minutes to fill out the form and I filled it out form of course, um But even filling it out and that brief just asking questions back and forth, half of them you could tell you've got some mental illness like something's not right with you. Like these aren't guys that are going to go out and get are going to get jobs. They're not cleaning up. So they were perfect for my purposes as horrible as I know that sounds. So if you're bad about this little small, now, do I feel bad about it?

The homeless people in society are really, it's a difficult life. Like dealing with mental illness, dealing with drug addiction, all that kind of stuff. I mean, being in prison, and then the people that are in prison, that are going to be homeless or have been homeless, or the mental illness

that I've dealt with in halfway houses and even doing this. I don't know what you do with these people. I don't even know that you house them. You can't necessarily even house them together. They cause such problems. I don't know what the solution is other than just kind of keeping them fed maybe and keep them away from normal people, you know, so they don't cause crime or whatever. I don't know about housing them in one area.

That seems like a mistake. Like, there is absolutely no good solution to that problem. None. Because it's not like, hey, if we gave you a house, so we gave you a job training and we gave you this, okay, you might get 5%, 10, but most of them are on the street because they've just messed up over and over and over again.

And they just kind of gave up. But, you know, I guess we still have to remember that they're human beings. I mean, we mentioned off my soft white underbelly, he highlights the humanity of people who've had a real difficult life. He does it well. He's, Mark, Leda is amazing. He's amazing.

And one of the things he had said was, like, these are, he was like, these are real people and he's like, their stories. He's like, they have stories and they need, you know, but if you also talk to Mark, he'll tell you, you can't just, you can't give him money You can't like you can't like he's tried over every time he's reached out and tried to help these guys Put them in apartments fed them got them back on their feet within six months. They're back on their back on the street I mean just it just happens over and over and over again I mean, I think the amount of

money that would have to be dumped into happens over and over and over again. I mean, I think the amount of money that would have to be dumped into correcting that problem, I don't know. You can say, yeah, but just, you know, you should do it because it's the right thing to do. I don't know who's paying for it. It's complicated, but for your purpose, they have a security number.

They got $200. They seem very happy. There you are with a clipboard taking survey. Right. Took a survey, went home, ordered there, and of course they give me everything, named, data birth, social security number, mothers made a name where they were born.

Have they ever been in the armed services? Have they ever had a passport issued? What states have they had identification and have they ever been arrested? They have been on probation. Have they ever claimed social security, disability, SSI? I mean, I had like 17 questions and it absolutely answered everything. What high school did you go to?

Because high school transcripts are great for documentation. A lot of times they'll ask you for high school, you know, can you get us a copy of your high school transcripts? Like, that's good now. And I'm a big believer in overkill. So I mean, I ordered a ton of stuff. If I needed three things to get a driver's license in your name, right? You know, I'd come in with like six.

Because what you do is you get in front of the guy at the DMV and you kind of fumble through like, oh, I got this. Uh, what else do you need? Uh, you know, I know exactly what you need. But you know, they'll be like, oh, was that high school transfer? I'll take that and we're, oh, I voted for registration card. Give me that.

Yeah, that's your perfect. You're good. Sit down right over there. Who's, by the way, lurking in the shadows trying to catch you? You've mentioned FBI, Secret Service. Yeah. You mentioned, I think I've heard you mentioned, yes, Marshalls, which is interesting, cops in general, the police, CIA, I guess I've heard you mentioned yes, Marshall's which is interesting cops in general,

the police CIA, I guess, CIA is international only. FBI is internal. Yes. Okay. Well, so who is when you're doing this? Who are you afraid of? So by the time I've gotten to Atlanta within four or five days, the FBI rated my office. I guess I kind of missed that back.

So Florida back in Florida. Back in Florida, when I left and drove to Atlanta and left, remember this FBI was gonna show up a few days later, they were gonna arrest me. And they did. They did. They showed up like I left on a Sunday night or something because for some reason, my stupid thought, I thought,

well, they won't arrest me on the weekend like they don't work on the weekends. So, they came on like a, whatever it was like a Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday, like within a few days they come in the office, they rate it, they're looking for me, but I'm gone. Nobody knows where I am. And so, now I'm surveying the homeless guys and I turn around and I'm ordering their documents and as their documents are showing up, I'm going to different states and getting IDs.

So I'm going to Florida, so over the course of this whole thing, I've had 27 driver's licenses and like seven different states. I've had two dozen passports, because if you're gonna get the driver's license in the guy's name, you might as well get a passport because a passport is not difficult to get. They don't fingerprint you. All they look, all they're doing is saying, this is your ID and where you're born here and then they run a check and if it comes back or it doesn't. Back then you could do it expedited it and I'd have it in like two weeks.

Like now it takes like 90 days or 60 to 90 days to get one. But if you have multiple ideas for a single identity that's more proof, like. Right. So, what number did you say, how many ideas? How many identities? So I had, well, I've had over 50 identities but I've had 27 driver's licenses issued from state DMVs, Department of Motor Vehicle,

like legitimately. Legitimately. I walked into the DMV, said, hi, my name's Michael Eckert, and I just moved here about three weeks ago, four weeks ago. Here's my lease, and here I lost my last word driver's license, Brown. Like I don't know what I did with it. I don't know what happened. I don't know. And they're like, it's all right. What do you have?

I need a proof of residency. Well, I have my lease. Oh, OK. I need a primary, OK, here's my birth certificate. OK. And I need a secondary. Here's my social security card. But I also registered to vote. My girlfriend made me vote immediately and she said, I would need, you know, it's

perfect. You're good. I mean, need that. Okay, great. Stand over there. Pay that perth. They call your number to seven five. You know, 45 minutes later, you go, you pay your 25 bucks, you stand in front of the screen, they take a picture, you got a driver's license, you walk out, it's still warm. It's beautiful. it smells like pop plastic, it's amazing. And so I, I'm opening up different, different bank accounts in these guys names. And just what do you say? Well, what are you mostly doing with A-Dead is you're opening up different bank accounts. Right now. You're doing a credit, starting to establish credit or not. Some of them.

Like I might order, I might order secured credit cards. So I can't get credit. I'm building their credit. Like it's not helping me in any way. I'm just sending out $500 to get a capital one card or a bank of America secured credit card, whatever., I'm sorry, a bank of America, secured credit card, whatever. So I'm building their credits, but not all of them, only a few because I'm collecting them. I'm also going to be moving soon. I'm only here to get a few hundred thousand dollars and move.

I need some kind of a base. So I don't want to start getting credit cards and building up a history in Atlanta in anybody's name, but I am getting drivers licenses in other states. So I'm in like North Carolina, South Carolina. What's the primary method of income here when you move to a place, South Carolina? How do you make a hundred thousand at this? At this time. Well, I'm right now I'm living in this guy's house and I Satisfied his loans the house was worth 200 thousand got it so what happens is one day we go and we Check public records and I told you it takes months for it to show up and it shows up He's got no mortgages on the house. So now I turn around and I make a fake ID in the name Michael Shanahan

And I'm living in his house, but I have no credit, right? There's no credit. So I've got a, the ID, I've got a social security number. And I order some secure credit cards in his name. So if you pull that credit profile, it does, it shows up. Things got some credit cards, but it's, they've only, they're only a month or two old. So I can't go to like Bank of America. I mean, I could, but I needed to get the money as quick as possible.

Like I want to get out of Atlanta. So and at this point, by the way, there's multiple articles showing up in Tampa. So the St. Petersburg Times is writing multiple articles about me with your face with my picture. Yeah, but it's honestly, it's pretty, I mean, not pretty, but it's post internet, but it's in its infancy. Like, no, nobody's, it's not huge.

And honestly, it's a, it's a, it's a local newspaper in Tampa. It's not that big of a deal. Like I'm not concerned about that so much at this point. What I'm concerned about is getting a chunk of money and just moving on and kind of reestablishing ourselves in a better way where we're not living in a building that we're going to be committing fraud in with or a house. So, but I'm living in this place. I make a fake ID in the name Michael Shanahan and I call up three hard money lenders, a hard

money lender is a guy that lends his own money or other investors money on property. Kind of like a bank, but he's lending his own money so it doesn't have a really neat banking requirements. And he can charge a much higher interest rate. These guys are charging 12, 13% interest, simple interest. And they're only lending you a much lower percentage of the value of your home. So, they're not lending you 90% of the value. They're lending you 65%, 60%.

So I call three of these guys. They all come out to the house at different times and each one of them says I'll end you a hundred thousand or it's like a hundred fifty thousand hundred fifty like they all then roughly a hundred fifty thousand So we schedule three separate closings and none of them know about the other perfect So what I do is I close I close one loan on let's say Monday and then one on Tuesday and then then whatever Wednesday or Thursday or that may have all been the same day to be honest. But I don't remember.

The point is I go to three separate title companies or real estate attorneys and we close and I get checks for, you know, after a cost and everything, the total ends up being roughly 400,000. So I've got 400,000. get checks for, you know, after a cost and everything, the total ends up being roughly 400,000. So I've got 400,000. A Beck and I run another scam in in Tallahassee, Florida, and we get like 50 grand. And plus we the 80, the 80s do not go down to close to nothing because we we had gone on several vacations. We went to like Bermuda and I think we went to Jamaica. We actually stayed at the Ritz in Jamaica. So it was very nice.

You went back. So Becky turned out to be pretty good in terms of scams on the road. No, she was useless. She was horrible. And she just spent money all the time. And what I realized too, very quickly quickly is she's bipolar. So she's bipolar and she's absolutely insane. She smokes pot all the time. Did that matter for you personally or did it actually affect the... How good you were able to do these particular scams? It was that she was the type of person that would start an argument at one o'clock

in the morning and scream at the top of her lungs and get the cops called. So I can't have the police called. I can't get taken downtown and fingerprinted. I can't have the police showing up. I don't know who's really who's looking. We haven't had plastic surgery at this point. We're still pulling money together. So, Becky, yeah, Becky's a problem. And at some point, I actually, we send her to like a psychiatrist and they give her, they put her on zooloft. and they give her, they put her on Zoloft. She takes it for like a month or two, and then she stops taking it. She thought she was all better.

Like you're not all better. So give me a time out here. How long are you able to be on the road here successfully? Three years. Three years. This is me. This is the first few years. Three years.

Well, so three years. Yeah. What happens is we get that little chunk of money. We put it deposited in these bank accounts and we start pulling out cash. It works out fine because we got a bunch of accounts and we're pulling out little amounts, $7,000, $5,000, $8,000. And I would cash checks against her accounts. And they would call her to verify, there's someone here trying to check for $9,000, can you verify the payee and they go,

oh yeah, that's Scott Cugnell, oh, okay, thank you and they cashed the check. These are new accounts. So it looks odd, but we're always, I open the account. So what ends up happening is, we're cashing them and I remember getting really frustrating because just taking forever. And I got into a bank one time and they have banks that they cash. They actually cash like large checks. Like, if you go into Bank of America and you try and cash check for $15,000 or $25,000,

they probably won't do it. They'll tell you we don't have that much cash on hand, we don't this, we don't know that. They have certain banks that do that. So they told me where one of those was. I went there. I had a check for like 29,000. That had been cut on a closing for Michael Shanahan. Remember I had refinanced Michael Shanahan's, and then I got a check for 29,000

that was issued to Scott Cugno. So I'm sitting in the bank, I go in there, and I say I need to cash this, and she says, you're gonna talk to the manager, I go, okay, she says, go sit down, now over there. I go sit down in the little glass cubicle He comes over and he says I see you're trying to cash his check and I was like right He goes why don't you just deposit in your own bank? And I went

My bank account my bank is a credit union or something and it's in like Florida Like they'll hold this thing for like two weeks like I need the money now. I have people I need to pay He's like, well I'm not sure and I was like well, it's fine. It's a cash well, I'm not sure. And I was like, well, it's fine. It's a cashier's check. Like, it's good. And he goes, no, it's, it's good. It's good. As you have the money. And he's like, yeah, we have the money. He said, it's just odd. Hold on. He goes back in the back. And he comes back. And he says, where did you get the check? Cashier's check. I said, it was a cashier's check.

It was drawn off of a closing for somebody's property that I were doing the company I worked for. We're putting on an addition on. Okay, that makes sense. It comes back, well, what do you need cash? And I was like, I'm caching guys checks that work for the company.

Like, there's a lot of these guys that are like Mexican guys, they give them a check. They go to a check caching company or they get charged five, 10%. So I cashed them. I'm like, I don't under like what the checks good, right? Like my, and he's like, yeah, we're just trying to verify some stuff.

Anyway, yeah, hold on. And he leaves again. And I remember my cell phone ring. And I pick up the phone is Becky. What are you doing? What's taking so long? I go, ah, the guy's being a, and I pick up the phone, it's Becky. She said, what are you doing? What's taking so long? I go, ah, the guy's being a jerk, you don't want to give me the money. Oh, she's like, oh my god, get out of the bank, get out of the bank.

And I want to get out of that bank. The guy's got my ID, he's got my credit card, my ID, and the check for 29,000. Like, he's going to call the police if I just jump up and run. And I go, don't call me again, I'll let you know it'll be fine. Hang out the phone. She calls back, same conversation. I'm bouncing all the way. I'm like, I'm going crazy.

I'm like, it'll be fine. Hang out the phone. He comes back out and he goes, he said, I said, hey, I said, what's taken so long? And he goes, we're trying to get in touch with Michael Schranahan to verify the check. That was not good for me. I'm thinking, right, right?

Okay. Okay. And he walks away, the phone rings, specky, what's going on? They're trying to get a hold of Michael Shanahan. He's like, oh my god. Oh my god. And I'm like, oh my god. I don't remember thinking I shouldn't let

there are the keys. There's a good chance I run out of this place and she does, she's not there. But by the way, when you're sitting there, who's Scott? You're Scott? I'm Scott Cugno. And then the other guy, Michael Shanahan.

Right, they're saying they're trying to get in touch with Michael Shanahan. So then the phone rings. My phone, cell rings again, I look and it's not Becky's, not Becky. So I pick up the phone and I go, hello, and she says, hi, this is Kim. Is it from Sun Trust Bank? Is this Michael Shanahan? So I'm like, yes, it is Michael Shanahan. And she says, there's a guy here, he's trying to cash a check. It's very large. Could you verify the payee? And I go, sure, it's Scott Cugno. He's trying, I said, I believe they amounts $29,000.

And she goes, that's right, thank you very much. I appreciate it. I said, okay, I said, hey, by the way, how'd you get my number? This is my cell number. And she's like, oh, I'm sorry, we called the title company. And the title company gave us your phone number. Well, I closed those loans, that's my cell.

That's why if they'd look in any other way, I would have they could have gotten in touch with a real Michael Shanahan. So I was like, okay, hang up the phone. You're sitting you answered the phone from the bank while sitting in the bank as as my God as Scott as Scott pretending to be my So I just verify the check myself as massive pretending to be Scott as pretending to be my, so I just verified the check myself. As massive pretending to be Scott, as pretending to be my, right.

So I wait there, terrified still. They come out about two minutes later, the manager comes out plus a woman, I'm assuming maybe that was Kim, she never said anything. And she walks out and she says, and he counts out the money twice 29,000 29,000 and I stand up and I mean just like I like shoving the money in my pockets like I'm trying to get out They're so quick. I'm like, hey, I'm like, okay, cool. Um, like I'm thinking this whole thing. I is You know feels bad and I'm getting up and I'm so I'm

Starting to walk out of the bank and he goes, he said, excuse me, Mr. Cugno. And I said, yes, sir. I turn around and he goes, I'd like you to know that I feel very apprehensive about this transaction. And I go, really? What is it exactly? He goes, I can't put my finger on it.

And I go, it'll come to you. And I turn around, I just bolt right out of there. And to keep my a week or so later, the secret service shows up. Did you cash a check for $29,000? So what's so funny is like, that was one of the last checks we cashed. So we ended up with like $400,000.

Was there a connection between the secret service and this guy? No, the FBI's looking for me as kind of in Tampa. Yeah. And they've put out a fugitive warrant for me, which is how the US marshals got involved. So the US marshals tracked down fugitives? Yes. Federal fugitives, they tracked down. But everybody's after you, you're on every list. Right. I'm on the FBI's most wanted list. At that point, the Secret Service got involved once I leave Atlanta. So when Beck and I pack up our bags and we leave Atlanta, the Secret Service got involved

because of identity theft, banking, identity theft, the Secret Service doesn't just do counter fitting and protect the president. They also protect the financial infrastructure of the United States and they especially have jurisdiction when identity theft is involved. So identity theft plus bank fraud, that's when they move. Yeah, that's their territory. So they don't... So, just as far as just fugitives, they don't do any investigation. They all kind of work. Okay. But they're't marshals are just fugitives. US marshals just fugitives. They

don't do any invasions. They're all kind of work. Okay, but they're all kind of working together. Yeah. Yeah. The, you know, like the US marshals are like let's say up an arm of all of the various law enforcement agencies, federal agencies, not the states. The states have their own fugitive task forces or fugitive, so when you leave Atlanta, basically everybody's after you. Everybody's after me. Did you know this at that time? Or did you do it?

Well, in this sense, no, I mean, now, every day you're looking at, you're looking your name up every day. Like I'm not, cause I'm just trying to get a bunch of money and just blend in, right? Things were not as interconnected at that time as they are now, but they're starting to get interconnected.

But of course, I have no idea how much. I barely go on the internet for anything, you know, dating. That's the only thing on the internet. I'd never been on Facebook. At this point, on Facebook is even out yet. This is 2006. Still, were you trying to stay low?

Yeah, I am. I'm not a flashy person. Like, I'm not driving, you know, like I didn't go out and buy a red Lamborghini, you know, I'm driving, I'm driving $40,000 or $50,000 cars, you know, I've had some sports cars, 70, 80, you know, maybe that's $150,000 sports car now, but it's still about flashy. It's not like it's bright red or yellow. I mean, these are, it's always something, you know, non-descript. And I'm living in areas that these cars are everywhere. You know, I go to, so I end up going to Charlotte, North Carolina. We rent an apartment. We decide to run a scam in South Carolina. So I go to Columbia, South Carolina, and in between this period of time,

we go to Las Vegas. And I, when we go to Las Vegas to drop off a bunch of money to Becky's son's father, who's taking care of her son. We drop off some money there. We go and we start, and while we're there, it's like, hey, there's homeless people here. So we, so you know, usually I don't feel bad telling me to still make me feel bad.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, my judgment is showing. No, but you have to be collecting identities, I guess, to be constantly creating you at these. So I got my survey forms. So I go and, you know, we go out and we're taking I'm taking surveys and I end up going up to this guy who's like two or three guys that are standing on like a bench or sitting on an extra bench or something and I see him and I walk up and the guy one guy gets up and he comes over, he's like, hey, what do you need? And I went, I'm taking a surveys for the Salvation Army

to determine where we place our next homeless facility. And the guy goes, oh, I'm not interested. And they always said that. And I say, it pays 20 bucks cash right now. It'll take you five minutes. And they're like, you 20 dollars cash right now. I was like, yeah, I make sure I'm the cash. And they go, okay, yeah, yeah, what do you need?

Name, date of birth, social security number. So when I get to criminal record, the guy, he says, criminal, he's like, yeah, I've been arrested, he's, I've been arrested like three, four times for prostitution, he said, but they're like misdemeanors. And I went, okay, and it was like, okay, well, prostitution, to me, women get charged with prostitution, you know, men get charged with solicitation. I went prostitution and he goes, and he went, he said, yeah, yeah, he said,

I offered to blow an undercover cop for 20 bucks. He said, that's what I thought you were coming out here. And I was like, and I was like, no, no, bro. I said, okay, and he's like, yeah, he said, you know, he goes, he goes, I mean, he said, I mean, a girl's got to do what a girl's got to do. You know, it's any made some comment or something. I was like, okay.

So I jot down the rest of it. We're good. I give him 20 bucks. I get my car. I leave. We get back to North Carolina. I ordered all of his documents. His name was Gary Sullivan.

I then go to South Carolina. When I go to South Carolina, I get a real estate agent. We drive around for a day. We look at like five or six houses. I put five owner financing contracts on five different houses. So I get him, he writes up five contracts. All of them I'm asking for owner financing. I'll put down 10% on one owner financing. Two of them end up coming back and saying, yes, we'll do it.

I have two closings. One of them's a house. This works like 225,000. I put down 25 grand. Another one's 110,000. I put down 11,000. So I buy these two houses. I then satisfy the loans on both the houses. Everything seems like it's going okay,

although Becky's a lunatic. At this point, she's had so many, she won't take her medication, she's had so many outbursts that, and we've had, by this time we've had plastic surgery, like she's gotten plastic surgery, she's gotten a boob job, she's gotten liposuction, I mean, all kinds of stuff. So look way different. Like appearance changes or thinner, better looking, you know, just tight everything up. I guess, you know, she was in her, she'd had a, she'd had a kid and she was 30, 33, 34. I don't know how she was 20, 32, 33. I don't roughly my age. So yeah, I thought she looked, you know, she lost

like 15 pounds like she was not because of the surgery, but just in general, we're not, we're just working out. We're going mountain climbing. We're you know, we're riding bikes We're doing, you know, there's frauds not a full-time job. So, you know, we have plenty of time so we're we're goofing off and But she's also a lunatic, you know, she's getting the cops called, she's able to go out and she's able to stay stone 24 hours a day. She's going out with friends, drinking, I never leave the house. You know, even to this day, I really barely, I leave the house. I'm very much a homebody kind of person. So like the idea that I'm able to make my living doing YouTube and I'd never have to leave my house.

I love that. I don't ever go anywhere except for the gym and back home. That's it. So what happens is I've actually moved her out of the my apartment. I had an apartment downtown 30-story building. Actually moved her into another apartment. She's that much of a lunatic. We can't even be in the same place. Multiple times I've tried to leave her. She's called me up and begged me to come back. It's horrible. So I end up buying a couple of houses in Columbia, South Carolina. I satisfy the loans on the houses. I've got an ID, not a driver's license, but an ID in the name of Gary Lee Sullivan. And I refinance, I refinance those houses because keep in mind they were

owner financing, but they also had mortgages. So there's something called a wrap around mortgages. So these guys did wrap around mortgages. So let's say you buy a house for $250,000 and the bank lends you 200,000 and then you owner finance the house to me. So we do a I give you 50 grand down But I'm not I'm not able to get a loan from the bank to pay off your mortgage. So what we do is You do a wrap-around mortgage. So I'll pay you your mortgage and you pay the bank So there is a second mortgage on the property, but it's called a wrap. It's a wrap. It's wrapped around that you're first legal yeah, so So there is a second mortgage on the property, but it's called a wrap, it's a wrap around that you're first. That's legal. Yeah.

So I wouldn't lie to you. So there's, these have wrap round mortgages. So you're always selling. I, and you're good at it. So I go, I satisfy the loans, the owner finance loans, the wrap round mortgages, and I satisfy the loans, the owner finance loans, the wraparound mortgages, and I satisfy the loans, they're the original loans that these people took out on their own mortgages. One of them, by the way, I said, you know, you have to sign as the president of the bank, right?

So I sign it as C Montgomery Burns, which is the aging tycoon in the the guy that owns a power plant in the Simpsons TV show Yeah, so I signed that and I notice it Which I thought was cute I actually wanted to sign all of them cartoon characters and Becky was screaming her head off and wouldn't let me do it Right like I wanted to do all the Simpsons, right? But she wouldn't let me do it she's screaming and hollering so I ended up you know No, we know so C. Montgomery Burns is so I sign it. Not it. All of those are satisfied. I then go to the multiple bank banks, and I refinancing all these properties multiple times. So I'm applying for these loans,

and I'm getting the loans, and I'm closing. So I've got like five or six loans on this one house. So the house is like 225,000. I think it was like 230 whatever. I I I get I borrow like four or five loans on that house. So I borrow like a hundred and ninety thousand dollars like five times. So I've got like eight hundred thousand dollars. And then I borrow another three or four hundred thousand on the other house, the one the smaller one, right? So it ends up being like 1.3 million dollars. It's actually like 1.5 million. It was more, but what happened with that was, so keep in mind, I, you can only open up

so many bank accounts in your name. You can go to Bank of America, they'll open one. Then you go to SunTrust, they'll open one. They're going to, they might even ask you, ask you, did you open another bank account today? Because every time you do it, there's an inquiry into something called check systems or Acute Check. And so then they go, so then by the time you go to the third bank, they'll say, listen, something's not right.

You've got multiple inquiries. You know, if you go to whatever mercantile bank, they might be, they might go, okay, we're going to open one. They're going to need an explanation, but you're not opening more than three. By the third one, they're going to be like, absolutely not. Something's wrong. So, I've got multiple identities, but I can only open up so many banks. The other problem is that these checks, they'll only give you so much money on a refi.

Usually after 100,000, they only want to let you walk away with let's say a hundred thousand dollars. So one of the things I did was I would, I would typically record another mortgage and have them pay that mortgage off. So I had to open , I opened a corporation to do that. So I could then turn around and go open corporate bank accounts. Because now it's not going off, my information is going off the corporation. So I can open up multiple corporate bank accounts because now it's not going off. My information is going off the corporation. So I can open up multiple corporate bank accounts. Well, these corporations are fake or real? No, no, I went to a real corporate bank, a current corporate attorney and had him open them. I gave him whatever, gave him like $1,500, $2,000 and he opened up a corporation for me,

Gary Sullivan. Yeah. And I then turned around and I went and opened up multiple bank accounts in that, in that, in that corporation's name. How, how are you keeping track of all this because I don't all this? So I'm in your head or do you have good information? No, no, I have every single identity has its own file with plastic inlays, sleeves for their passports. That's nice to know. For all this. It's similar. You open this, I'm Gary now. Right, that's exactly what it is. Like you kind of go over

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you sit in your car for a minute, you put it down, you're walking. Well, what happens is it went up like 1.5 million. And I'm pulling money out of the bank. And then one day I got a phone call on Gary Sullivan's cell phone. The guy, it's a, it's a lawyer. They call up. He says, Hey, I'm lawyer with Washington Mutual. We have an issue. I say, what's that? He says, we got a phone call from the title company. One of the title companies that I was attempting to refinance one of the piece of property

with notice that I, they've been sent, they've been sent a document that showed that I had purchased the property and I said I purchased it cash and I the documents that I purchased it cash and they got that and there was actually a mortgage on the property and so somehow or another they if they connected it and they called Washington Mutual and they said look there's an issue. There's a fraud we have a fraudulent document here.

And he was like, he said, so we went and we looked and it turns out that we pulled public records and that there is a mortgage in front of us. Several mortgages in front of us. So there's like three or four mortgages in front of me, Washington Mutual, UOS, and it wasn't that much. It was like 100, it was like 100 grand, right? Like 95 or 100. And I said, okay.

And he said, so there's an issue here. You've got a few mortgages in front of us and we're supposed to be a first mortgage. And we're not supposed to be two mortgages behind or three. And I was like, okay, sounds like an air, not a big deal, have you contacted law enforcement? He said, no, I have it. I was hoping we could rectify this some other way. I said, you know what? I think we can. I'm going to have my lawyer call you back. I'm going to go to his place right now. Give me about two hours. No problem.

I immediately run, jumping my car head towards South Carolina, call my corporate lawyer. Tell him, look, I need to talk to you. Here's what's going on. I explain it to him. He doesn't really understand. He says, this sounds pretty complicated. I have a, my bit, my wall partner is a criminal defense attorney. I'm going to have, I'm going to set up a meeting right now with all of us. Okay, I get there 45 minutes than I, later, I walk in the door. I sit down. He says what happened? I said oh, they said, you know, Gary, this is this is sudden sound right. What's what? What happened? I said, okay, so listen, bought this house. I bought it cash. I then refinanced it. I didn't buy a cash, but I told them I bought it cash. I refinanced it like four or five times

within a day or two of each other and they were like, how is that even possible? I was like, well, I went to different title companies and I explained how I do it. I said, washing to mutual just found out that they're in like second position or third position. And, or I said, but they're probably, they may be in fourth position. You know, they mail these things in.

So you never know. And he was like, oh my God, he's like, that's what do you want to do? I said, I want you to contact them and agree for them to not contact the authorities, provided we pay them, I paid them off. He said, do you have the money? I said, I do have the money. I can go get the money right now.

He calls the lawyer. This is back when fax is, right? So they fax some documents back and forth. They make, they do a couple of emails back and forth. And they have a conversation. I remember the lawyer started arguing because he wanted to charge me, um, like yield spread and fees and stuff. And I was like, what are you talking about?

Like, I'll pay it. Like, so it ends up being a little over a hundred thousand. And I'm like, that's it. So he's like, okay. And so he says, okay, um, that sounds good. And so he said, okay, all you have to do is go get the check. And he said, bring it to a Washington Mutual branch. Tell them to call, I said, I'm not going in a Washington

Mutual branch, bro. I'll bring you the check. So he calls them back. He's not doing that. And he's not, okay, I'll bring it here. You guys take care. He said, no problem. Okay, hang up the phone.

And he turns to me, he says, okay, well, we have a problem. He said, we still have the problem of these other mortgages. And I went right. And he said, and he goes, okay, well, I said, they don't know anything. He said, I know, but Gary, he said, what if they find out? I said, they find out that they're like in second and third and fourth place. He's like, right, I said, I leave town. Anyone, they, so they both laugh, they, Gary, you can't just leave town. They have, they have a copy of your driver's license,

they have your social security number, they have your birth certificate, I said, they'll find you, it's the FBI. And I go, you're assuming I'm Gary Sullivan. Wow, you tell him. And they, listen, they looked at me and they went. And I remember he said, he goes, well, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. And I said, it's right, my immediate problem is getting rid of these people.

And he goes, right, right. So I go get the check, bring it back, give it to them, never called the FBI. I can't believe you got away with the Washington, Detroit. Oh, bro, this is, I mean, these are all really close calls. It seems like you, no, this is the close call. I have two more close calls that my hands wet thinking about it. I walk in, I walk into walkovia. I just opened this account two months ago.

So it's a new account. So whenever I would go in there and I'd say, hey, I need a $7,000 or $6,000. Anything over $3,000 they had to call to get permission, right? Like authorization. Authorization. So she's like, okay, I got to go call. I said, no problem. So the girl walks in the back.

I'm sitting there waiting. All of a sudden, a massive person reaches over my hand and grabs my wrist. And somebody grabs it from the other one and they pull my hands behind my back. These are two of possibly the largest law enforcement officers I've ever seen in my entire life. And they're massive. And they handcuff me and they say, your, um, uh, Mr Sullivan, you're being detained, we're taking you into custody and, you know, putting you, uh, we're holding you until a detective gets here. Who are these guys? Is this yes, Marshalls or is this cops or what are these are sheriff's deputies? Sheriff's deputies. And as they walked me in the back,

they're calling me Mr. Sullivan. They sit me down. And by now, the Secret Service are looking for me. They're calling me, they were calling us John and Jane Doe, but now they figured out who we were. And so now I'm on the Secret Service's most one and less. I'm not like number one at that, right? Like I probably was, but we just found out I'm on the secret services most one of the less. I'm not like number one at that, right? Like I probably was, but we just found out I was on that list.

So it's getting bad. So they sit me down and I'm waiting. And I remember thinking that the FBI was coming. You know, I don't really know. At that point, I couldn't tell you the difference between everybody. And then five minutes go by and, you know, I'm sitting there going, what is going on? Do you guys have any idea what's going

there? Like we don't know. We're just grunts. We should do over told. So suddenly the sky walks in, he's probably in his early 30s. Maybe he walks in grace suit. I think he looks like he's FBI. He says, hey, I'm a detective with the, I want to say Richland County, you know, whatever, church department, or police department, whatever. And I was like, oh, okay. And he says, yeah, listen, we've got an issue, Wacovia, Wacovias wants this, they want us to arrest you. He said that they, they're saying that you've got three mortgages on, on your house. And I go, is that illegal?

And he looked at me and he went, you know, to be honest, I don't know. And I distinctly remember thinking, I'm walking out of here. All I have to do is convince this guy I haven't done anything wrong. He's already said he doesn't know. So he gets on the phone with the head of Walkovia's fraud department.

And he's telling it saying, this guy is running what's called a shot gunning scam, which is absolutely right. And so what is a shot gunning scam, which is absolutely right. And so what is a shotgun? It's where you close on so many loans simultaneously, they can't catch it. Anyway, they start going back and forth. And he's on the phone, he's like, um, why did you close three loans? And I said, I, you know, why are you pulling? I said, it's not illegal. I have a first mortgage, a second mortgage, and a home equity line of credit.

That's perfectly legal. And he goes, and you can hear the guy, yeah, they're all first mortgages. And I said, I read every one of those documents, not one of them said they were first mortgages. And they don't. First mortgages, don't say they're first mortgages. It's the placement of the mortgage.

Placement of the lien that determines is their first, second, or third. So it's possible that I wouldn't have known it certainly that I could have read those documents and not known. And he's like, that's not true. And he's screaming. And so I go, yeah, listen, and he said, well, you're taking out a cash. Why are you taking out a cash? I said, well, I mean, I don't know if this sounds like I don't know. This might be illegal. I said, I don't know. I said, I mean, I work for a labor company, labor on demand. I pull out my business card.

You can call. So I'm like, I work for labor on demand. And I said, we hire a lot of guys that like they don't have banking out, so the company pays them. And then usually I'll pull out money and I'll cash their checks because they get charged like 10% of these check-caching companies and I feel bad. I know the checks are good, so I just deposit them. I mean, I don't think that I said, but I don't know if that's illegal. I don't think that's illegal. Like if, and he's like, no, no, it's fine. It's that's that's the decent thing to do. It's not,

that's fine. I'm like, oh, okay. So we're, so he's talking to the guy and you know, Wacovi is screaming at hollering. He says, he's going back and forth, back and forth. So we're going back and forth. And I'm just derailing everything this guy says. And at one point, he says he's screaming, he's committing fraud, we want him arrested. And he's like, I don't know what to charge him with. And he's like, he's saying these aren't,

you know, how did you, you know, how did you, he's like, hey, look, how did you even do this? What, I go, look, I didn't do this. Said I came to Wacovia, I met with a loan officer. I said, I need a first mortgage. I need to pull out like $100,000. I want to start buying houses. He says, that's right, you own another house here too, don't you. I said, I need a first mortgage. I need to pull out like $100,000. I want to start buying houses. He says, that's right, you own another house here too.

Don't you? I said, I do. I said, we're putting a new roof on it. We're going to build an addition. We're putting in a pool. I'm buying one right down the street from that one. I said, I'm obviously, I'm pulling out money. I said, so I told my need $100,000.

They said, that's fine. They said, they could only get me $100,000 out out for something about Fannie Mae guidelines, which is true. And I said, so then she said, I can get you, I can send you to a friend of mine who's a loan officer. She can get you a second mortgage, which she did. I said, then I told her she could only get me a hundred thousand or so, 190,000 in the out and she said, you should get an equity line of credit if you're going to be doing like renovating properties. So she sent me to somebody and you should get an equity line of credit if you're going to be doing like you know Renovating properties. So she sent me to somebody. They got me an equity line of credit. I said I Said I you know I haven't committed fraud. I said I wouldn't know how to commit fraud if you told me I said what sounds

More reasonable a guy that worked for a labor company Ripped off a bunch of banks for over half a million dollars. I said, or some loan officers got together and did something illegal. I said, there's a problem at the bank and he says, I think you've got a problem at the bank. And this guy goes nuts. And while he's screaming, he needs to be arrested. This is fraud. My loan officers have not done anything illegal. They wouldn't do that. He says, look at his ID. His ID is fake. His ID starts with 0, 0, 0. South Carolina ID start with 0, 0, 0. This guy's in California. He has no idea. So when he says he, the, the detective looks, looks at my ID and he goes, listen, he said, this is a real ID. I ran this guy through NCIC. He said, this is Gary

Sullivan. And I, and I looked at him, I go, now I'm not Gary Sullivan, I go, come on, bro, what are we doing here? And he goes, I know, Gary, I know. And he says, I'm going to take him downtown. I'm going to talk to my, whatever lieutenant, whoever captain, and I'm going to fill out a police report, and I'll let you know. Any hangs up? I get up. They've taken the handcuffs off. I stand up. As we're walking out with the detectives, as we're all kind of walking out. He goes, Hey, you have an ID. Do you have a driver's license? And I went, um, I do, but it's in like Nevada. And he goes, Oh, that's right. He was

here from Vegas. And he looks at the two deputies and they all kind of grin. And I think he ran me through NCIC, which means he ran a statewide criminal database, which means he thinks I've been arrested three times for prostitution and Vegas. I listen, I'm humiliated. That was just like, and the grin told me, and I was just like, oh man. And so one of the cops goes, here, give me the ID.

Takes the ID, he goes, I'll check and see. Because I have to follow him back in my car. So he goes, and by the way, my car is in the name, Michael Eckert. So Michael Eckert, he doesn't have a photograph of Michael Eckert. Because you can't pull up photographs from other states. So he doesn't have a photograph of Michael Eckert, because you can't pull up photographs from other states. So he doesn't have a photograph, but he knows that's not my car.

And he asked me, who's car you drive? And I said, oh, that's my boss, Michael Eckert. And I said, my boss and he goes, oh, Michael Eckert, I said, yeah, exactly. And he's like, and I'm like, oh my god. So I'm thinking he knows Michael Eckert knows it's registered in North Carolina knows the address Which is where I was currently living. That's a problem. So The police officer or the I'm sorry deputy grabs the ID walks outside comes back I have no idea if this homeless guy has a driver's license in Nevada I don't know he had nothing on him. He comes back and he is he is does he have a valid license?

He goes yeah, it's valid and he hands it to him or he hands me comes back and he goes, does he have a valid license? He goes, yeah, it's valid. And he hands it to him, or he hands me the ID. And he says, he goes, his valid, and he looked at me and he goes, yeah, well, he says he's like, he says he's five foot 11. Like, it was like five, 10, five 11. And I'm clearly not five 10 or five 11. And they all look at me and I go,

fellas with a good pair of shoes like that. And they all go, follow us, Gary. Yeah. I follow them back to police station. Becky is calling me on the phone screaming her head off. Now, I'd always told Becky, if I ever get arrested, immediately go get me a lawyer. The lawyer will be able to get me out on bond because it'll be arrested for something stupid.

I said it'll be something like trying to cash a check, fake check or use of something. I said it won't be, all my IDs are real so it won't be for fake IDs. So my ID won't be in question. And most police departments and sheriffs at that time did not run your fingerprints through AFIS. So they didn't, because they charge them for that.

So they don't, they don't typically do it, unless your identity is in question, mine wouldn't be. I have a valid driver's license or a valid ID in that state. So I go back, she's screaming, she's like, oh my God, you don't understand. I just checked the, I just checked the, just checked the internet, the website, you are number one on the secret service

is most wanted list. And I was like, I got bigger problems right now. They just held me in the bank. I'm following them right now. And she was like, yeah, get on the get on the interstate. Go, go. I cannot go. The detectives in front of me. The cops are behind me. They're escorting me to the police. Listen, she's like, oh my god, run, run. I go, look, not a NASCAR driver. Like I'm driving, it's a sports car, but it's not going to

outrun a radio or a helicopter. Like I have not that's not gonna happen. I know it looks it seems nice. I'm not that guy. So I was like, I can't I said, look, you don't understand. I was in handcuffs 30 minutes ago. I just taught my way out of them. I'm gonna get out of this. And I said, the worst that happens is I'll be arrested.

As Gary Sullivan, you can get me a plea. You can get me an attorney. He can get me a, um, an attorney. He can get me out and she goes, I'm not getting you an attorney. I'm not getting you out on. I'm not risking everything I've got for you because she has all the money. We've got seven, eight hundred thousand dollars at this point. So, oh, and by the way, she's not even in North Carolina at this point. She's relocated to Houston, Texas. Because when this scam fell apart, we were going to move to Texas. So we were already moving there.

So, but by the way, just a small tangent, where do you store money in situations like this that, like when you talk about 800,000, you have to keep moving accounts to make sure it's not accessible by FBI. Well, there's about six or 700,000 accounts, but keep in mind I'm getting that out in cash. Like there's no Bitcoin, there's no, none of that stuff exists.

So my, you know, I probably should have bought diamonds or bought gold or bought, like don't know any of that. All I could think of is go in slowly, be patient. Don't drain the accounts. Fluxuate them. I was writing, getting cashiers checks from one account to another so the balances were doing this. They weren't just going, they were doing this.

Then one day, boom, they're going. Okay, got it. So, we got out like whatever, we got, we got now like six or seven hundred thousand. They're still like six or seven hundred thousand in the bank, but I'm not going back, I'm done. I actually, to be honest with you, so what, well, look, I go in, so I go into the police station.

And what first she says, if you go in the police station, I'm done. If you get arrested, you're done. I said, well, I better not get arrested. I hang up the phone, cop standing behind my car. Get out. I go in the police station. I walk in. I fill out the police report. He tells me I got to talk to my captain real quick. Can you wait? He couldn't leave me in his cubicle. He was, can you wait in the hallway? I can't leave you in the queue. I said, no problem. So I go and I wait in the hallway. And the hallway are a whole wall full of,

on the cork board, wanted posters. Black and white, black and white, black, you know, car thief, you know, rapist, murder, secret services most wanted. And I'm on the, on my face right there. I'm like, holy Jesus. And, you know, everything in me told me, run, bro, just fucking haul ass right now.

Right now, just go, you're, you're, you're looks run out. Not that I even thought he was, they were so many, I didn't think he was gonna see it. But it just, everything in me just said run. The problem is if you've ever been a pleat into a police station You're not getting out of it. You understand that there's a lot of cops Well, not just that but they buzz you in yeah, you get in the elevator You have to punch in a code right you have to punch in a code to get back out of the elevator

You have to punch in a code to get into the next door. There's like I mean it was It's impossible like I'm never I'm not gonna get in the elevator So guy comes back up, the cop comes back up, he said, hey Gary, appreciate it. No problem. My captain said we're good. We're going to wait for a phone call from the, no, the district attorney called already. They're looking into it. I'm going to go ahead and let you go. I go downstairs, he walks me out to my car, he said, look, do me a favor. He's like, we do have some serious questions at this point.

Like the district attorney said, there's some things up. He said, I said, not with me. And he said, well, just do me a favor. He said, don't leave town. I said, bro, I own two houses here. I'm not going anywhere. I said, I'm telling you right now,

I said, what, COVID, they fucked up. And he's like, I believe you, I believe you. I said, I worry you said whatever he's like, I hope you, I hope you're right. I'm sure you're right. Okay. So I get my car. I leave, I go to two more banks, pull out more money. But at one point, I go into a bank and like two of the cashiers practically slam into each other, trying to get to the phone and I get tell something's up. Like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I understand. Becky sounds like a handful. Oh my God, bro. So I go all the way back to Charlotte. I pack up my apartment. I drive all the way to Houston with my entire apartment packed up, by the way, in a

U-Haul. Like the next day, the next morning, we pack, she's got people there packing it up, movers. We pack it up. I drive the U-Haul all the way to Houston. It takes a couple days. I unload it into, we have some guys unload it into a storage unit because I'm going to stay with Becky until I find my own apartment. As we're driving around the neighborhood, super nice. She's living in like whatever like that. That 20th floor, something of some huge high rise. Great apartment. We drive by and I go, oh, stop the car. I want to get out. There's one of those

cone things where there's flyers for the house, for an uphouse. I jump out and I get the flyer. And she's like, what are you doing? I go, I just want to, you know, I just look at flyer. And she says, I don't want to do a scam here. I want to live here. This place is nice. I love it here. And I went, right, I understand. I said, I'm not going to, I said, no, but I have a fun

on apartment. And she is, oh, you just, I'm just so disgusting. You can't spend, stand to spend even a couple of weeks with me. You just, and she goes just ballistic. She's screaming at the top of her lungs, and I know she's gonna get me caught. She's never gonna get me out, right?

She's already told me that. So we go back to the apartment, we go upstairs. I was so scared of this chick, bro. I was so scared, I remember I was going up in the elevator and this girl gets on this clearly a stripper. I mean drop dead just but wearing stripper clothes. And I'm staring and I'm sushi gone on Becky gave me that whew where the face and I'm like this, I'm like staring in the corner and never look at the girl.

And I remember we get off the elevator. Bing, it opens. I bolt off it. Becky bolts bolts office and I off the elevator. And I remember she squeals. I bet you just love to fuck that tramp and the girl has the elevator doors are closing. She goes, Hey, I thought that was funny. So I go to the apartment.

Yeah. We have a screaming match kind of, don't wanna split up the money. She tells me she's not gonna give me split the money. Why? Because she said, you can go somewhere else and do this again. You'll have a million dollars in six months.

You know, I have to live off this money. Did she threaten you? Oh, she threatened the, it was funny because the conversation back and forth, I remember saying, no, I want to happen. And she goes, and she said, uh, I'll give you $10,000. I said, you're mine. I said, I said, I'm telling right now you come up with something reasonable. I'll take all of it.

And she said, um, what did she say? I said, I'll, I'm telling right now you come up with something reasonable. I'll take all of it. And she said, what did she say? I said, I'll take all of it. She's in what? Escape in that you haul, they're going to, she's a cop, she's going to be looking for in five minutes. And I went, I just remember thinking, oh, wow. And keep mind all of my IDs, everything are in the storage unit that she has a key to. Like, I'm not getting this.

It's over. I got an ID right now that says, my name is Michael Eckert. I am driving a, I got, I am driving a you-haul van. Yeah. Sounds like she has a lot of negotiation leverage. Right. So we start arguing back and forth and she says $100,000. I'll give you $100,000 and I said, I'll take it.

She counts it out. Counts out the $100,000. Later when I recounted it, it wasn't even $100. It was like $98,000. That's fine. That's fine. But we've got a mallmark, $2,000 even a hundred, it was like 98,000. That's fine, that's fine. So, but you know, we've got them all marked, 2,000, 5,000, 6,000. She's like, 2,000, 5,000, that's terrible. That's it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, She'd always called me before on the phone and begged and pleaded and cried. I messed up. Please give me a chance. I'm sorry.

I'll take my medication. I'm sorry. I thought it was better. I thought it was okay. I remember walking out. I put my cell phone on the counter and just walked out, went downstairs, got in the truck and drove. And drove when I got to Louisiana, I stopped at Baton Rouge and got a, I mean, at some point

I stopped and I got like, I think I got a room or something. At one point I know I stopped. So you drove without a plan? Essentially. I drove back to Charlotte to get my car. So I can't be driving. I can't be driving. I can't use my phone. So I stopped at Baton Rouge at one point and got a cell phone, you know, like a burner

phone, like a Verizon Virgin mobile or something. One of those little phones. So I bought one. I call a few people at home, back home, call my mom. She's in tears crying. My dad's yelling in the background. I call... Would your mom, just a small change of will it, would your mom and dad say, you know, anything stand out to you?

No, my dad, you know, you know, well, I hope you're happy. You know, your mother, every time someone mentions your name, your mother cries, which is funny to me because like growing up like he was never concerned about her crying. So it was like since when did you care? And I just so I mean my dad's like he's an alcoholic. You know he's been sober for two years, a month and a half drunk drunk and binge or drink sorry drinking binge and then sober for six months and then did it again and then sober Solber for two years, a month and a half drunk and binge, or drinking, sorry, drinking binge, and then Solber for six months and then did it again,

and Solber, you know, just went back and forth there. And in and out of alcohol, you know, drug programs, but like I said, it worked for State Farm, and State Farm, he was a top selling manager. And so what they would do is they put them into a 30-day program. And I mean, like he has to stay there. And they had, they were the only ones that had that kind of control, because they're like, you're going to do this, and you're going to pass it, or we're firing you. You know, he made a lot of money, and he made a lot of money for state farm, and he hired,

he hired and trained a ton of agents, and he had one of the top performing agencies. So he was worth a lot to them. But so I end up, what ends up happening is I'm driving through, I get that phone that I was telling you about and I call. So I call, talk to my mom, she's crying, she's like, I love you so much. I just want to make sure you're safe. I end up calling Susan Barker, which was one of the brokers that worked for me at the time. Call her and I say, hey, what's going on, Huzzy? She's like, oh, Matt, you know, what's going on?

FBI is everywhere. Like they're there. They've been talking to everybody. They, you know, and this has been, it's like a year and a half at this point. And she's like, it's not, you know, they're, they come around every once in a while, everybody's gone in, everybody's cooperating, everybody's talking, everybody's blaming you, um, including her. And, uh, and so as we're talking, she said, look, I've, I've the main FBI agent on the case, she told me if I ever spoke with you to have you call her. And I was like, yeah, I'm good. So she was, her name is Candace,

and she wants you to call her. She was at least call her. For God's sake, maybe you could just turn yourself in. Maybe you can negotiate just like a couple of years, like a, because they're not gonna catch you, then maybe turn yourself in. Maybe it'll help, at least hear her out. And I was like, okay, all right, you're're not gonna catch you, then maybe turn yourself in, maybe they'll help,

at least hear her out. And I was like, okay, all right, you're right. Hang up the phone, I call Candace. She picks up the phone, I go, hey, she has this. And I go, this is Matt Cox. And she goes, hey, hello, Mr. Cox. How are you? And I go, I'm doing okay, how's it going?

I understand you wanna talk to me? She was like, do I say, what can I do for you? She's, you can turn yourself in. I go, well, that's not gonna happen. I said, what else do you need? And she said can I do for you? She's you can turn yourself in. I go, well, that's not going to happen. I said, what else do you need? And she said, I think that you should think about turning yourself in. I said, why?

What am I looking at? She's well, that's not how it works. The way it works is you turn yourself in and we take that into consideration. I said, no, no, no, no, that's not good enough. I said, I'm not stupid enough to turn myself in and hope for the best. So she says, well, let's talk about this. And I said, well, what am I looking at? She

said, I don't really know. I can't, you know, really, I can't tell you that. And she's, I said, well, then we don't have anything to talk about. She said, well, wait a second. She said, let me, hold on. Let me call the US attorney. Maybe we can work something out. So she calls the US, she, so I said, okay, I'll call you back. And she said, we'll give you your phone number, I'll call you. And I went in and I said, I'll call you. I said, I'm gonna hang up the phone. I'm gonna turn the phone off.

I said, for all I know you're trying you're letting this phone call right now or something, and she's, oh, give me a break. She's, you're not that important. And I remember thinking, who do you think you are? Like, like, right, like, you're just some little fraudster guy running around, you know, like, you're not a terrorist, you know, like, and I almost, I almost was like,

okay, here's my number. Which she probably already had. But I almost was like, okay, I'll wait for your call and left my phone. I said, now you know what, it's that I'm gonna hang up the phone. I'm gonna turn off anyway, and I'll call you back. She's all right, whatever, I hang up.

I turn off the phone. It turns out I found out later when I ordered the Freedom of Information Act. She actually immediately called the US Marshals, and they immediately called, took the phone number and tracked back the phone and immediately had two marshals from Baton Rouge or go immediately to that place where I had been.

Damn. Oh, listen, yeah, I mean, this is fast. Yeah, she's good too. Not just that, I made the initial calls sitting there in that where I went and bought the phone. It was like a gas station. There was also like a subway station. I had ordered like a subway.

I was eating a subway, playing on my computer, programmed the phone and making phone calls. So by the time I talked to her, and they're driving, by that point I walked and gotten into vehicle, my vehicle, and I leave. But you know, who knows? I don't know if they showed up 30 minutes late. I don't know. Like I could have hung out.

Like, oh, I'm just going to finish my food. I could have shown up. So I go, I call her back an hour or two later. She says, listen, you know, at first time he wasn't heading back with her. Then he did. Then he came back. He said, seven years. He's got to turn himself in here. So, okay, seven years. That seems like a lot. And I was like seven years. And that's seven years for, I was, and I kept saying is that seven years for everything. And she goes, yeah, that's for everything. I was like, that's everything. Like, everything and that happened, like in Atlanta, like of some stuff that you don't know about. She said, look, what's important is you turn yourself in in Tampa. And I was like, okay, well, I'm closer to Atlanta.

Why wouldn't I turn myself in Atlanta? And she's like, look, you know, you don't want to do that. You don't want to do that. Well, because that would have been the secret service would have gotten credit if I'd walked in there, right? So, you know, and I don't know anything about rivalries and how they work at that time. I do now. But so we go back and forth, back and forth, and I continually ask her, does that include Atlanta and everything? And at some point, I realized like, oh, she's just not answering. And so finally, I said, listen, you keep dodging this question. And she said, all I can speak for is Tampa. So if you come back to Tampa

and you cooperate against everyone seven years and she's telling me, she wants me to cooperate against my ex-wife. And I'm like, I'm not gonna do that. I said, my ex-wife didn't do anything. She doesn't know anything. She didn't do anything. She's never, you know, that'm not gonna do that. I said, my ex-wife didn't do anything. She doesn't know anything. She didn't do anything. She's never, you know, that's not what I heard. And then she's going on and on.

And I was like, no, no, I was like, oh, wow. I was like, so that's just for, and she's like, that's right. I said, all right, we're done. She's no wait. I can call the Atlanta, US attorney. I said, now, lady, I wouldn't believe you if you told me water was wet.

I don't trust you. And I hung up the phone, threw it out the window. And I end up going to Charlotte, drop off the U-Haul van, go to my, I wouldn't have brought it back to the dealer. It's not like I evaded, I brought it back. So I bring it back, I go to my old apartment in downtown Charlotte and I remember thinking I would be okay. I know by this point that they knew Michael Eckert's name. They had the address in Charlotte. So I know they, they, by this point, it's been five, six days.

So I know they've they, by this point, it's been five, six days. So I know they've tracked him, him back there. So I figured if I could get my car up, I'm fine. So I go into the apartment complex and it, you know, it's like five, or those four, five, six story apartment, you know, those are parking things that stack up. So I go into this, you know, underground, it's not underground, but whatever, this parking garage thing. So I go in, I'm on like a third floor or something. I look at my car, you know, and I get my car, and I remember, as soon as I drove out of the parking garage, I was like, I'm good. So I can go ahead and pull across the street and stop at Starbucks. So I stop at Starbucks. I walk in the Starbucks. I order Starbucks. I'm standing there waiting for the barista, I look over, and it's two people from the apartment complex staring at me.

Like that's what I'm like, and they're whispering and pointing and knowing, and I remember thinking this is like the fifth of the month, I didn't pay my rent. And been there, so I thought that it makes sense. Maybe they, like I'm picturing an eviction notice or a three day notice on my door something and I'm like, okay. And then one of them bolts out the back, the woman, there's a guy on a girl, the woman who runs out the back, he stayed in the staring at me. I get my my my my my Vinti Vinella, right? I get my little proof. I get my fru fru drink. Yeah. So I got my fru fru drink. I walk out, I get into little fru-fru drink. So I got my fru-fru-fru-drink. I walk out, I get into the car. He follows me.

Get in the car. I set everything up. I put my seat belt on. I'm okay. He's standing there staring at me. I'm thinking something's wrong, like what's up. And I check to see there's no traffic. I'm good.

I'm about to leave. And he starts screaming. He's right here. He's right here. He's right here. I look in the rear of your mirror. There's two guys running towards the back of my car. I punch it and I take off. Sounds dramatic.

Wasn't that dramatic. I'd already, there was no cars. I knew there was no cars already pulling out. Wasn't like a TJ Hooker where I jumped over the slid across the hood and sl, you know, they didn't catch the car and hang on the back. But you know, I, so they're running and I boom, hit it. Just pull the car off here.

No, because it's one of those little things. It was actually nice, but it just sounded like you were pretty calm. What's your panicking here? I was terrified. Yeah. Terrified. So you're under, under fear, you're still operating. Yeah, I operate.

Like, it's funny you say that because the, the secret service, when they talk to these guys, they, all the people that they spoke with said the same thing over and over again. Like, I was a professional. He never seemed upset. He never seemed agitated. He always, he was never in a professional. He never seemed upset. He never seemed agitated. He always, he was never in a hurry. Yeah. He, you know, like, but most of the time I wasn't because I,

you know, it wasn't until the police got involved. I said the law and federal law enforcement got involved that I started really, you know, getting anxious. So at that point, I drive, I take off. I drive about a mile down the road. Who are the two guys, by the way? I thought it was FBI. I ordered the Freedom of Information Act when I got to prison at some point in the future. And it was US marshals. All right. So it sounds pretty dramatic to me. US marshals running towards Jakarta. You pull, I mean, I mean, you know, but it's all right. It's not to tell it like it's dramatic. I understand. But it was,

there's not much traffic. It's, yeah, it's not like they're, you know, their fingers were at the back of the car. They're holding on. You know, but it was, yeah, if I had waited an extra 20 seconds, yeah, they would have been on my car. They would have been right there at the door. You consider giving up there? I know. No, I like to think of this. My instinct is, get out. Go, go, go, go, go, go. I'm already on the run. I'm already in trouble.

It's not like they're gonna add anything. Although to be honest, it only got worse because at that point, actually, at that point I drive down the road, I stop at a homeless facility, I survey three guys. I'm a mile down the road. Like looking back on, I think, what were you thinking? But there were three homeless guys that were in their early 30s, and they were, they were all Caucasian. That's hard to find. So trust me, I've looked,

spent hours before trackifying in these guys. So that's like the golden thing you're looking for is white guys in the 30s. Right. Because that's what I was in my 30s that I was an old man like I am now. So I surveyed them, I drive straight to Nashville, get to Nashville, drive through an area called Green Hills. Well, at first, when I got to Nashville,

I stayed the night and the next day I went into, I'm gonna say a UPS store, it was actually a Kinkos, they used to be called Kinkos, but. I remember Kinkos. They got bought by FedEx, I feel like. Oh, is it FedEx? Okay, then it was a FedEx store. So I go in there and you give them like 50 bucks

or something or 20 bucks or something, they give you like 100 business cards. So I bucks or something they'd give you like a hundred business cards so I get a I go get a burn a phone number a burner phone I go in there I make up oh I call and get a phone number from HQ The local HQ I come up with a name manufactured funding group I've got two phone numbers. I get business cards made with the name one of the guys named that I surveyed was His actual name was Joseph Marion Carter Jr. I went by Carter. So I get business cards made at Joseph Carter. I then drive through Green Hills took him like an hour to get the card. So I'm driving through Green Hills. I'm playing. I'm going to an apartment, but I'm still I don't have an

idea. I don't have anything like I'm wondering how what am I going to do? How I'm going to an apartment, but I'm still, I don't have an ID, I don't have anything. Like, I'm wondering, what am I going to do? How am I going to get in a place to stay? I'm going to stay in a hotel. Like, what am I doing? I'm using an ID that the cops are looking for. So as I'm trying to find this big apartment complex, there's a guy putting a sign in the front yard of like a townhouse, because several townhouses. And I probably in his 60s, I I pull in jump out of the car and I

said hey is that this for rent he said yes it is I said oh okay yeah can I see it sure I go in check it out come back downstairs it's perfect I said listen I you know I work for a company you know manufactured funding group boom hand in thing I said, I've been in Europe for the last, so I forget what I said. I said, England, I had some little town outside of London and you know, whatever, Dexter, you know, London for the past five years, I don't really have any credit, but I said, I can put down a double security deposit

or, you know, whatever you need. Here's my business card. He looked at me and he looked at my car and he goes, you look like an honest young man. He said, I'll, I'll take the first month's rent and a, and a positive. And he said, now go get a leash right now. And I said, okay. And I said, okay, fill that a leash right then, game in the keys. Like nice, like very trusting in very trusting in in that town. Oh, yeah, but there must have been nothing about you

was you just I mean I don't got a nice car Look, I know you're gonna get a lot of comments to say white privilege, but I think the charisma has something to do with it Well, I so he, I appreciate that. So he gave me the keys. Listen, I ordered all of, all of Joseph Carter's vital information, right? Like all of his burst certificate,

social security card, everything. That night from like a Kinkos or some of the, I forget where. But from one of these places I went online, you could go online back then, right? Like there wasn't Wi-Fi everywhere. So I ordered the stuff and it shows up a couple days later. I take that information, I go and I get a driver's license. We're going to go within like seven or eight days. I've got a driver's license in his name. I've gotten that car, Michael Eckert's car.

I drive it all the way back to Nashville. I leave it in long-term parking. Get on a plane, fly back to Nashville, go in and buy myself a brand new car. Was a brand new, it was a couple years old. But from like CarMax, I went out within two weeks. I am completely 100% set up.

I start dating for three, four months. That gets really boring. And where again, naturally, so I start dating a bunch of chicks. And then I end up meeting this one girl. By the way, are you lonely here because you're on the run? I'm telling you right now, being on the run was the best part of my life. Really? Everybody, you know how all these guys say, it was horrible and I was so, it was so concerned and looking over my shoulder and it wasn't, I wasn't. Keep mine, I've gotten, I've gotten five or six traffic

tickets while on the run. I went to traffic school as someone else, I got so many traffic tickets in his name, I went to traffic school as him. Like if I got a pulled over, like I'm not concerned. So your confidence just was, and I'm driving a vehicle in the name of the driver's license that I have that was issued by that state,

full coverage insurance. I'm not an idiot, I'm not driving around a stolen car with a broken tail light and a body in the trunk. Like I'm covered, like I'm not concerned about the local cops. Plus you're going to Starbucks, sipping your coffee and driving away from US Marshall. Right. That was, you could start believing that it's impossible to catch you.

That is exactly what it is. It's every time I just kept getting more and more emboldened, more and more cocky, arrogant, like they're not going to get up too good. You know, which is great until they catch you. And so I, I mean a girl named Amanda Gardner. Well, what I end up doing is, let's keep my number one out of 100,000 or so. So I go and I start buying houses in the area, in this area called JC Napier. Next, it's just close to downtown. And I buy these houses and I start, I buy them for like 60, 70,000. And I record the sales at

210, 190, 1205, that's the same thing. And I refinance the houses, I start pulling out money. I meet this girl, Amanda Gardner. She, we hit it off within a few months. She's moved in to, we move into a house in that area. I renovate a house. We move in there. I borrow $3.5 million and I'm buying houses. Now I'm buying houses, recording the value. I started all over, you know, I borrow like,

whatever, $3.5 million. I meet Amanda, we move in together. We're, we're, we're, we're, we're, do you tell her? Do you tell her? Oh, you kind of, you know, what she knew was that, you know, it's, it's, it's odd, right? I have no photographs. Everything I own is brand new. She's like, you don't, there's nothing in this house that's more than four months old. So six months old, you have no photographs. You have no internet presence.

You have no, you know, every stick of clothing is brand new. You don't have old pairs of jeans. Do you tell their stories about the past of it? Is there fabricated? The initially that was a fabricated version that I owned a mortgage company. My typical story was like I owned a mortgage company

and I got bought out by household bank. Start doing very well. I got bought out by household bank. I have a non-compete clause. I ended up with like half a million dollars after paying off all my bills and just decided to kind of travel around the US and now I'm here and I'm gonna start renovating houses.

But that, you know, you don't call home. Nobody calls you. Your family doesn't call you. You tell stories about your mom, your dad, your brother, your sister, friends. I don't know any of these friends. Never seen any of these friends. They never call you.

They never, you know, it's just like, it's like, ah, shit. So at some point, I basically just said to her look. I'm, at one point, I just said to her look. I'm... At one point I had to have a check cut, I refinanced the house, right? And I had like, I want to say... I'm going to say something like, it might have been 30,000, but let's say 20,000. I had a 20,000-lar check cut to Amanda Gardner.

Because you have to have these checks, you can't have them cut to me. So I would say, hey, there's a second mortgage on there, and I provide a second mortgage or I'd provide, you know, I provide different things. And I knew I need names of people to cut these things too. So I had a check cut for whatever. So I remember we're at dinner one night. This is before she really knows who I am. And I said, Hey, I said, oh, and she was, oh, did you have to refine? She's had that thing, though, you're refinanced. I go, oh, thank God you said that. Boom, I said, I need you to deposit this. Give it check for 20,000. She's like, I can go tomorrow and I can deposit it.

And I'm like, no, no, no, it's fine, just deposit. I can get, as soon as it clears, I'll get to your cashier's check. I was like, no, just deposit it and keep it in your bank. It's fine. So she's like, what is just deposit it and keep it in your bank. It's fine. So she's like, what is going on? So we have this conversation and I tell her, look, people are looking for me, who law enforcement, which ones, all of them.

She's like, that doesn't even, for what? I go mostly bank fraud. And she's like, well, how are they not finding you? I mean, everybody, you know, people know you, like, you know, your general contractor, which I met four months before, this guy six months before, this was two months before, you know, she's like, so and so, so and so, so. And I'm like, right, right? Well, I said, well, she's like, I mean, they've got your name.

They've got your, well, that's identity theft. And she was like, what do you mean? I said, well, my name's not, you know, my name's not, it's not Joseph Carter. And what is your, what is your name? I go, look, you know, it's, you don't need, don't even worry about it. This is what's happening. This is where I'm at. And this has been months into the relationship.

I mean, this is, or, oops or I say maybe a month or two in, but you know, she was just too inquisitive. And oh, I know what it was. She found like $40,000 in cash in my freezer one night. That was another thing that happened. She went to get a popsicle and she opened up the flip to get a popsicle and she opened the wrong one and there was all cash. And she was like, like, you know, I had the other day, you know, in this conversation, she's like, the other day I opened up the popsicle box in their cash. And I'm like, so I kind of explain it, but I had a feeling she's not going to, she's going to be okay with this, you know, so she was, she was okay with this. Like, I mean, to me, that's just a fascinating conversation to have like it was a great conversation

Because oftentimes in relationships you learn about each other and you find out new things and here you find out Dozy. Yeah, it's a good one to find out The name you're using is not your real name and The secret service the FBI and everybody else are looking for you. Yeah. And to be honest, you're not a violent criminal. So it's like, but she didn't know my name.

Like she was like, she, and I was told, or I said, look, if you start digging, if you find out my name, like I'll leave, like there's certain things that catch you. Staying in contact with people that you know, that's how you get caught. Going back to see people, that's how you get caught. Telling people who you are, that's how you get caught.

And I was like, so I'm Joseph Carter. Everything's fine. And she was like, okay, and keep mine too. This girl, do you, you owe your cars broken or your car's not doing well? Take it and trade it in. We'll go get you in the car. We'll go get you, you know, an infinity, you know, FX or whatever, you know, a $55,000, $60,000 vehicle. She's driving the equivalent of a beat up old Nova. You know, I mean, it's, you want to go on vacation? We'll go on vacation.

You want to do this? You want to do that. So, you know, we're buying houses. I, I'm, we're, we're renovating houses. We're, we're building brand new houses. We're buying lots like she's like in the middle of this life. Holy Jesus.

There's hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank in our bank account. Her bank account, I open up a corporation in her name. She's opening up bank accounts, she's got web, there's websites, it's, it's a lot. And while this is happening, we start seeing a friend of hers. So this other girl comes in the picture, her name's Trina. This other girl comes in the picture her name is Trina and Trina is

semi-lasbian so This is like a sexual thing. Yeah, so actual relationship. No, it's more like she's coming over a couple times a week So we've got a ton of tons going on and So we've got a ton of tons going on. And I put this. So while this is happening, I end up coming out in like several magazines. So I'm thinking this whole thing's dying down, but it's not dying down because now I just got caught and handcuffed in a bank, walked out of the police station, out ran marshals. Although that part, the Marshall thing was never in the papers. But the getting caught and handcuffed in the bank, when that hit the papers, that's everywhere. That's huge.

Suddenly Chicago Tribune is running a series of fugitives. I'm in Bloomberg Business Week. They run an article called Sharks in Bloomberg Business Week. They run an article called, you know, Sharks and the Housing Pool. Then you've got a Fortune magazine comes out with a thing because by now, guess what? Becky's been caught. Oh, Becky. Becky.

Oh, Becky. Is she in Houston or whatever? In Houston got caught and did she, but gangster, bro. Like the way she, here's the thing. Hey, there you go. No. Oh, no, she told on me immediately Oh, she did oh, no, it's fine. She took the right thing. So here's what's funny about that about that She here's what she says little tease everything in the world She's that you're not disagree on I just took off I just took off still

Out on her and left her with with with listen with like six or like five or six hundred thousand dollars is what I left her with. It's not it's not all about money Matthew. It's also about just like you know, right or die. There's a meaning to that. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Oh, she told us she said everything. Well, here's what when I say gangster when she gets caught. Yeah. Um, they come in, she's in the middle of beauty school. She's paid for beauty school. She's going through beauty school. She's going to open like a salon or something. So she's in there cutting hair in a class, you know, on a man again and all of a sudden like five or six secret service agents come in guns,

drawn screaming, get on the ground, get on the ground. She said, everybody dropped the ground. She said, I'm sitting there with scissors going. You know, they grab her, they handcuff her, they bring her in and the whole time. Now at that point, she was Rebecca, oh, she was, her name was Rebecca Hickey. She went by Becca. So she's Rebecca Hickey, which is, you know, she's got a Texas driver's license,

the whole thing and they're screaming at her., they put her in the car and they're driving the whole way. She is the guy, the secret service agent told me 45 minutes. She's telling us you're losing your job, bro. You're losing. I mean, he's like, I couldn't believe it. Like we've got pictures of her. We're like, this is you. She's like, that's not me. Are you insane? Look at that chubby little thing. Oh my God, she's, would not budge till they actually put her hand on the scanner. And she goes, okay, I'm Rebecca Halk. What do you need?

They're like, where's Matt Cox? She's like, I have no idea that fucker left me like a year ago. So, but she contributed to the story, to the legend that's already growing. Oh, because she was interviewed by Fortune magazine and it was horrendous. The article is horrendous. He was abusive. He's a dawn wand that forced me to fall in love with him, commit mortgage fraud, and then took all the money and left. By the way, they found like 40 or 50 grand on her

and maybe another 30 or 40 in her bank account and no other money. Yeah. Where's the other money? So anyway, and she was by the way, she got caught, she was in communication with her family. It was so she's talking to her mom. And she got cut off.

And her mother through multiple conversations, one conversation being, mom, I'm doing fine. I can't tell you where I am. Exactly, but I'm in Houston, Texas. I'm fine. Next one, six months later, I enrolled in beauty school. Houston, Texas, beauty school. How many are there?

In her mom bipolar, I just want to see my daughter. I'm going to call the secret service. Yeah. I'm doing the right thing. Yeah. And honestly, she did do anything. So, um, so you get more and more famous. Isn't that nationally? Right. So I got all these. You, you, you, you're having three, some of the similar Amanda and Trina. And what ends up happening is we end up going up, you know, and listen, Amanda and I, we've gone on, we've gone to Greece, Italy, Croatia,

where we've gone on, we're going on multiple, just multiple trips. And when we've just gotten back from like a 10 day We've gone on multiple just multiple trips and We've just gotten back from like a 10-day cruise of the Greek Isles and There's we get home and Amanda goes online and there's a blog about date line About there and one of their new specials called the thiefief of Hearts. And that's me, apparently, on the Thief of Hearts. And I'm apparently going around and it's based on Rebecca's Becky's story that I'm wooing women to commit fraud, stealing all the money and then leaving them to hold the bag. Well, they interviewed her, they're interviewing multiple people, multiple in my case,

they put together this, they're putting together an episode, gonna be released in a few in a month or so. So I'm terrified. I have at this point, I've been on the run three years and I'm like, there's lots of things I could care less about. Fortune, I don't know anybody who reads fortune. Bloomberg, come on, I hang out with, I'm hanging out with contractors and laborers and you know, I'm not hanging out with these guys. So, you know, local news, who cares? You know, even even local news channels, you know, I don't care. But, date line, there weren't 400 channels back then, you know? So, date line comes out, even if you don't see it the first time, they're going to rerun it in three months or six months or 10 years from now, they might rerun it again.

My face is going to be on it. So I can be perfectly fine five years from now and one day, the barista that I go to every other day, looks at date line and goes, oh my God, that's Mr. Johnson or that's Mr. Tom Mr. Whatever. So the point is, is that I was like, I gotta go, I can't stay here, I gotta get out of the country. So I was gonna go to, well we really started doing research and Amanda ended up saying Australia.

Australia at the time, I don't know how it is now, but at the time, if you went to Australia with like $100,000 and a business plan, you could become a permanent resident alien. You can't vote, but you can buy property, you can open a business, but you can't get a job. And they didn't require a fingerprints. So there's no criminal background check. Now, if you wanted to be a citizen, you have to get an FBI criminal background check like I got it. It's not good. So I was like, wow, I can go there and start a business. And I'm

going to start show up with a couple million. So what we do is we start refinancing houses. We're start pulling out money as quick as we can. I'm asking guys to laborers, guys that I work with, my general contractor, my real estate agent, hey, man, can you cash this check for 6 grand? Nobody says no. Everybody, yeah, no problem, no problem. Not a few guys like, yeah, man, if you could be 10%, yeah, I'll give you 10%. So that's That's happening. We're pulling out cash. One day, Amanda gives Trina a bunch of checks and asks her to cash them. That sparks a conversation that like what it was happening. She confides in, by this point, by the way,

Amanda knows who I am So by this point she's actually came across the letter that I wrote to my parents when I left Tampa So she's figured out who I am She tells Trina his name's Matt Cox Dateline's coming out. We're gonna we're leaving. We got to get a bunch of cash and Trina goes, okay, I'll cash the checks. And what she does instead is she calls the secret service. They watch my house for three days.

I come home one day. They pull the cars up. And they rest me. So, you know, it's a little bit longer than that, but that's short of, that's a short version of me getting arrested. And, you know, I's a little bit longer than that, but that's shorter. That's a short version of me getting arrested and you know, I've probably skipped over. It's still simple because you've gotten the way with much more complex situations. It's women, man. It's women. They also are the thing that make life worthwhile. Listen, God bless, Trina. She did the right thing. It honestly, based on... There you go, back to the right thing. But I mean, God bless, Trina, she did the right thing. It honestly, based on

there you go back to the right thing, but I mean, based on what she saw, based on what the secret service told her and what and the articles that she's reading, I'm a bad guy. I mean, I'm a bad guy in general, right? So I don't do their loyalty. I don't think so. I'm ripping people off and she's thinking that her friend is in danger. You know, the FBI is saying I have a weapon. He's dangerous. He's got a weapon. We believe he's armed and dangerous. When I was in Florida, I had to conceal weapons permit. But I got rid of both my guns when I was placed on probation. I've never had one since. I've never touched a gun since. But they use that to say, you know, they said, I've never had one since. I've never touched a gun since.

But they used that to say, you know, they said, oh, he had a concealed weapon for him. Okay, well, then he's armed and dangerous. Like there's these little things, and I think they're telling her, read this article, look, he forces girls to fall in love with them, and that's what she's going to do your friend. So she negotiated it. Also, I think she got 10,000. I think it was just embarrassing. I'm ashamed that she got $10,000.

And said everything. Yeah, and told them this is where he is. His name is Joseph Carter. This is where he is. They watch it. They grab me. They rest me. They bring me downtown.

What did you feel like when you got? And it feel good, bro. It was bad. It was a bad day. It's a bad day. First of all, Casino Royale was coming out on Friday. It was a first Daniel Craig as a game bond. Yeah. And the whole week I'd been telling Amanda, I'm going to go see Casino Royale.

She go, okay, well, on Saturday, we're gonna go to the festival, I go, that's fine. But on Friday, Christina, she's like, right, Christina Royale. And she's like, okay, by the way, on Thursday, I thought we could go to dinner, that's fine. But on Friday, Christina Royale. And when they put the handcuffs on, you were the first thing I thought of.

I'm not gonna fucking sit to see Christina Royale. I'm not gonna get to see it. I'm not gonna see it. And I saw it about about five, six years later, and when on the institution's movie channel, you know, it's nice. It's not the same. But, um, yeah. So I, they, they bring me to Nashville, but then they transport me to all over the place. I go on, you know, uh a con air, they fly me to Oklahoma, they fly me to Atlanta, then I get go to Atlanta, I'm placed in the US Marshalls holdover. I get assigned an attorney going in front of the judge, plead not guilty, meet with my attorney.

You always plead not guilty, you know, whenever you face people, you can you believe that he pled not guilty? This is the first thing, you don't nobody walks in and pleads guilty. You plead not guilty while you kind of figure out what you're gonna do. But I plead not guilty, there's no bond. Obviously, I've got, they caught me. When they caught me, I had four or five passwords. So that's no good.

They charged me with, you know, bank fraud, conspiracy, commit bank fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, passport fraud, conspiracy, or aggravated identity theft, money laundering, use of a fraudulent passport. And there's like, there's like, you know, 30 accounts of this, 20 accounts of this, 20, but none of that matters. Like even if you just took the, dropped all the accounts, the one account stacked them, it's like 150 something years, not the same. Yeah, so everything, everything they do.

And this though they always say, you're looking at 150,000, you know, and your lawyers, they're like, you're not looking at that, you're looking at 54 years. What? There's No better? That's no better. So yeah, so my lawyer comes in and sees me one day,

you know, like our first meeting, and I, she says, you know, I'm milly, milly done. And she says, listen, I've looked at everything. For first they say, you're responsible for, it's like 25 or 20, or 25 or 26 million dollars in loss. And I'm like, that's, I've never, that's not true. That's not true. And I was like, you know, not even,

I said, not even potential law. There's just no way. I mean, it's not way. And then they come back, she comes back and she says, well, they're saying 19 million. Now, I stopped possible, tiny thing, I didn't know. So, when the FBI saying like 40 million,

they're saying 11.5 in Tampa, plus 40 million for the mortgage company. So, it ends up being like, plus what I stole on the run, it ends up being like 55 million, but stole on the run, it ends up be like 55 million, but she gets them to drop like the 40. Like that's, that's, that's, that's just brokers, that's this, that's that drop it. And they're like, we've, he's so done. It doesn't matter. They drop that. So it ends up, it ends up being like 15 million. And then it's down to what is

you? They said 9.5. And I got it down like 6 million. So, you know, which, you know, I'm good for. So what ends up happening is they've charged me with all these things and she's like, okay, you know, you're like, you can, you can play guilty and you can go with the sentence and guidelines, which is going to be like, she's like, I mean, it depends. She said it might be whatever, 50, four years. She's, but if they run them, you know, concurrent or consecutive depending on which one they do, she said it, most likely it ends up being like 30 years.

You know, it's like, that's not good. That's not good. So we kind of go back and forth, back and forth and figure out, try and figure out where I'm looking at. Now, as we go through the whole thing, we end up, she ends up with, she ends up saying, you know, she knocks off a bunch of stuff that they're saying I did, you know, enhancements. Because you all have a base level and a base level of let's say level eight, you know, that should be That should be maybe a few years, but then they start adding on enhancements, you know

Did he what did what he do was sophisticated? Yes, okay three levels for sophisticated means Where there are more than how many victims were there more than 50 victims? Yes. Okay. That's Six more levels. Okay. Did he change the jurisdiction to evade detection? Yes. That's four more levels. Okay. Did he they start adding boom boom and when you start adding up all those levels Plus your criminal history and I have a big criminal history because I was already on federal probation And I committed a new crime on federal probation. So that was another enhancement. And this, you know, this case, so I'm in like a category, I like category two or three. So they come back and they're saying, I forget it's like 20. Well, they don't come back right away, but she ends up saying, you're probably looking at 14 years. Okay, that's reasonable.

That's reasonable. And so she's saying, so we get the, when we get the PSI back, we eventually get what's called a pre-centage report. They're saying 26 years. But they really said 32 years. And I argued and we got it down to 26 years and four months. That's what it is. It's 316 months. That's how they do it in months Doesn't sting that much. I guess she's saying months Yeah, so she says to me Millie sits down with me and she says listen You got to cooperate and I was, okay, and she said, because you're guilty. You're extremely guilty.

She's like, you can't go to trial. And she said, so you need to cooperate. I was like, well, what do I get if a cooperate? And she's the way it works is you cooperate. And you hope for the best. And I was like, are you serious? You tell them everything, you know, and you hope for the best. And she's like, are you serious? You tell them everything, you know, and you hope for the best. And she's like,

the, the part of the problem is she said, everybody in Tampa's cooperated. Rebecca has cooperated. Everyone across the board is cooperated. There's nobody that hasn't cooperated. By the way, when you said cooperated, I mean, they're informed, they told, they said, a K Snitch, right, they, they came in, they sat down with their lawyer and they said, this is what he did, he did this, he did that, they showed him documents, yes, yes, yes, that's my signature, I didn't know what that was.

You know, everything was my fault, they didn't do anything, it was all me. So, they've all cooperated and they haven't been charged, they've been indicted, they're all named as unnamed co-conspirators on my indictment. So, I've got like 12 people, even though there's probably 20 people that are involved, but there's like 12 of them that are, so I've got all these names, you know, KB, DL, C, W,

you know, it's like, I know who that is, like I know who DW, that's Dave Walker, I know who, you know, I know who these people are. And so there's just a list of them, there's like 12 of them, you know, plus me. So, and some of them walked in and said, I'm guilty, I just want to be pleaded guilty. The girl, Alison, she walked in, said, I'm too, I'm tired of waiting for you to come get me. Walked in with her lawyer

and said, I just want to plead guilty. And they sent in certain, she went to jail. She got like 36 months or 30 months. She called the prison that she went to the low security. It was a female prison at the time, female camp, called the camp and asked for if she could come by for a tour before she went. And they went, excuse me, she said, well, I'm going to be there for about two years. So I'd like to come in as a tour I can take because I like to know where I'm going. I mean, what it's going to be like, how I should prepare.

And they just started laughing. They said, there's no tourist, we'll give you the tour when you get here. You got to love that, like she. Yeah, I mean, I thought I was, I didn't think I thought I wasn't prepared. I mean, there's no door. So Becky, Becky got 70 months, but when I got caught and when I was sentenced, they reduced it to like 30 or no 40 to 40 months, they reduced because she cooperated that term. Right. Do you want to say snitch? Or there must be, I mean, snitch is too harsh of a word, but yeah,

the rat it, I mean, you're saying, I don't know, we can get there. We'll get there. All right. All right. So where did the sentencing end up? So, where did the sentencing end up? So I should say first, on the cooperation subject, my lawyer wanted me to cooperate, and by this point I realized, like, you don't have a choice. You know, no, that's not true.

I could have been a gangster. Yeah. What's the need to be a gangster in this case?. Like a stand up guy, I could have said, I'll just take it, give me 54 years, go fuck yourself. I'm not gonna snitch on nobody. And I know you look at me and you think, tough guy. I'm not a tough guy at all. I'm not doing 50 some odd years, like I not doing it. I don't want to do 30 years

You know, I was hoping for you know, I knew it wasn't possible But I would have satisfied first another slap on the hand like I got the first time It really thought I deserved honestly when you if something when my lawyer asked me What do you really think you deserve? I thought I deserve 10 years, you know, I deserve 10 years, but So she said look they want to talk to you. So the FBI, well, first of all, the secret service flies in. They come in and they interview me. Who's more terrifying? FBI, secret service.

The secret service was so overwhelmingly professional. The FBI and really only, one of the FBI agents they interviewed me, I don't know how he's an agent. I don't know. He was just ineffective in competence. Oh, so it's a competence issue. The other one was Candace. Oh, you met her.

Of course I did. Of course. She's five eleven, where three inch heels. She's a giant and impeccable shape, attractive. One of the angriest human beings I've ever met. And every FBI agent that I've met since then that knows her and I mentioned, they all say, oh, is she the girl? And I'm like, what? Why? They go, and I was like, kind of aggressive. They, yeah, yeah, she's a bulldog. She's, I mean, all of them are like, yeah, yeah, she's, she's something else. Like, secret services a little bit more like, very personally,

very, you know, it's their job. It's like, hey, this is just my job. They're polite, professional, you know, that's it. So it's just, this is just a, this is my nine to five. So, but they, they, they, they come and they fly in and they meet with me for three, four days. One of the, one of the funny things is that when I first, first sat down with them, One of the funny things is that when I first sat down with them, one guy's name was Dan like, Brasen Scouse ski or something. He sits down and he says, look, before we get started, we need to talk about something. I said, he said, we know you've hidden money. I was like, what? And he goes, we know you've got money hidden.

I said, I don't have any money hidden. What are you talking about? My Lord is like, do we need to talk you've got money hidden. I said, I don't have any money hidden. What are you talking about? My Lord is like, do we need to talk? I'm like, no, no, I don't have nothing. I give you everything. I give you all the accounts. You got everything. And he's like, you're looking at an obstruction charge

at this point. I was like, I don't have anything. And he says, we know you have money. We know you have money in different ideas, different identities, names. And I go, what are you talking about? And he pulls out a bank statement and he slaps it on the counter and he goes, you've got money in Southern Exchange Bank. You've got $190,000 in Southern Exchange Bank. And I look at it and I went, it was in the name Walter Hulcomb. And I went, did you call the bank?

He said, yeah, we call the bank. I went, okay, did anybody call you back? And they go, they said, we're not, we've left several messages. I said, did you go to bank website? He goes, yeah, I went to the website. He said, what do you think? And he went, what do you mean, I was just a bank website? I said, yeah, but it was professional,

right? It was like a professional website and he goes, it's a bank website. And I go, yeah, but it's, it was well done. And he goes, oh, God. And I go, yeah, convincing. And I went, I go, it's all an illusion. And I said, the bank doesn't exist. It's a fake bank. I made the bank, made it when I was in not even in Tampa. I think I got into Nashville when I made it. I was like, yeah, it's in the loop. The bank statements, he's like, they're color bank statements. I'm like, yeah, I'll know shit. So there's no, I said, a matter of fact, I said, who did you leave of? I haven't paid for the service in months. And he turned around and he called it and it went, you know,

boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo,, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, boo, it went, you know, boo-da-da, you know, it was disconnected. And I was like, how do you not know that's a bank? What turns out, there was a Southern exchange bank. And I'd use their bank routing number. And so, I mean, I always thought that was funny that they, it's like, well, I remember, it really first split second there, I was kind of like a really embarrassed

that they called me. I was like, believe this. You're the secret service. Anyway, I talked to them. I, you know, there's there's really as far as the secret service is concerned, there's just not much I can tell them. There's just, you know, like it was me. Becky's already told them everything. Amanda's already told them everything. It's not hard to track. And when they rated my house, they've got boxes and boxes. So it's laid out. We still, it took forever. I still went through everything. I explained how I got the driver's licenses, how I made the bank statements, how I made

the birth certificates, how I, the whole social engineering of figuring out how to, what these little loopholes are. It's like seven days total with these guys. So you mean like in my question? Yeah, it was like they question me for all day, and then they take me back to the Marshalls holdover, and then the next morning I wake up, and they chain me up again and bring me back. What's that like? What's that process of questioning? Like are they? I mean, you're somebody who is exceptionally good at conversation. Charismatic. It was part of the games you played. Are they good at conversation? I mean, the problem is they're not there to shoot the shit.

You see what I'm saying? Like, they have an agenda, but they have to use their words to get information out of you. Aren't they trying to lend you? I'm not holding anything back. Okay. It's not like I'm sparing Jim. You know, trust me, Jim's gotta go. I mean, you're looking at,

you're like 20 some odd years, but Jim can do five, Bill can do some, Tom can do six. I don't even like, I don't even like Jerry, Jerry can do 20. You know, so I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm ready to, I'm ready to cut everybody's throat. But you're not guaranteed that you're not, you're getting anything for that. Right. And all my time, I've seen one, one time where an inmate got a guarantee to have his sentence reduced. And it was signed by the head of the FBI with Robert Mueller,

gave it to him to have a conversation with him. That's the only time I've ever seen that document. Okay. So a lot of days of both the secret service and the FBI. So FBI was a Candace was a irritated, didn't like me. And I remember when I, she un-took the cuff off. I was like rubbing my wrist. She has your wrist hurt and I go, yeah, and And she has get used to it. And she was just

an asshole. Yeah. Just all around. Not that she didn't have a right to be, but everybody else was professional. You know, so, okay. And this, so we, you know, we, we, we talked for three or four days with the FBI and they asked a ton of questions. They brought a ton of documents. So it's like, hey, who signed this? It's like, oh, that's not my signature. That's so-and-so signature.

Or I signed that, I signed that, I signed that. That's so-and-so. Where'd this check out? Who is this? So that's so-and-so. You're looking over everything. One of the things they wanted to know about was, which I never talked about, because it seemed so minor,

is I bribed the politician. I got him elected because we got him elected to the city council, so he could vote to get the lots. We bought like 100 vacant lots in Ebor City, and I wanted them all, they were all single family. We wanted them to own multi-family. And so we bribed him and got him elected. That doesn't seem minor It's not as sexy as the rest of the that's pretty I mean So that's a whole another thing like I mean, you know, all right, so what happened is

When they got all of the bank accounts, they see all these checks going to Kevin White. And so they're like, why did James Red donate $500 to Kevin White? Why did Brandon Green donate? Why did Alan Duncan donate? Why did, and so I had explained him, oh yeah, well, we wanted him to be city councilman, so we paid, gave him a bunch of money

so he could run the ads, so he could get elected, so he could then get all of our stuff. But because he never did, you know, I took off on the run before he was able to do that. And then he ended up getting not long too too long after that. He ended up about five, six years later. He ended up getting indicted for bribery, but not mine on somebody else's case. It take a small tangent here. Yes. How many politicians do you think commit crimes are a little bit or a lot of criminals?

I mean, I think there's some ways that are there. They're seemingly legal. The four mentioned gray area. Well, that's not gray. Like, I, this guy was, I, at one point, I couldn't find anybody to write $500 checks anymore. So I just game cash. Like, I'm just handing them $78,000, $10,000 in cash.

So, uh, but, you know, I, I think most of them have legal ways to make ungodly amounts of money for influence. But, is it legal? No, it's their politicians. They've made it so that it's not illegal. If you really sat down and explained it to someone, the average person would say, that's not right. That's not right. That's, oh, no, no, that's legal. So okay. So at the end of these few days, what was the sentencing like? Yeah, I end up, I go to sentencing. I get my PSI back and it's 32 years to life.

And so we argue about it with the prosecutor just before sentencing and they get it down to 26 years four months. And then Millie says, listen, don't worry, because I'm trying to backpedal at this point. I'm like, I might as well go to trial. If I lost a trial, I couldn't get more than 32 years, because you can't get life. 32 was a max. It's just like a mistake. He more than 32 years. Because you can't get life. 32 was a max, it's just like a mistake. He said 32 is the life, you can't get life. So it was like, the most I can get is 32 years.

So I was like, I'll go to trial, I was like, go to trial and see if I can get them to reduce some of these enhancements. She insists that she can get the enhancements knocked down. And if you read, they actually read the enhancements, some of the enhancements, they didn't apply to me. So she goes and, and she goes and I believed her and I think she made a valid argument. We go to sentencing, my mom's there, she's crying, my dad's there.

He's looking at me like he's disgusted. And crowd, there's a whole bunch of reporters, like the whole place is packed. And I plead guilty. Millie gets up, my Lori gets up and she argues these enhancements. And every single time, the judge is like, I disagree. You know, overruled and it's like, boom, five more years. You know, bam, six more years, bam, because if she had won the enhancement she argued, I would have got 14 years. Now, keep in mind, two, prior to this, a month or two prior to this, the US attorney had called Million said, look, date line, date line had already come out, by the way. Remember, I was

worried about date line coming up. Well, it had come out. But they wanted to do a follow up because it came out like a month or two after I got arrested. And they were saying, Hey, we want to recut it with interviews with him. Well, Gail McKenzie wants, that's the US attorney. She wants me to do that. And she says, I'll consider that substantial assistance. Now, when you cooperate with the government, they consider it substantial assistance. That's what they call it. So I cooperate with you. It's substantial assistance. She says, if he's interviewed by date line, we'll consider it substantial assistance. And Millie says you have to do it. By the way, what's the idea behind that? Like, you serve as a warning for others or something like that?

Yeah, exactly. It's a, he, you know, you become a cautionary tale, like don't let this happen to you. So I go and I interviewed by Dateline. I've Keith Morris or whatever his name is, you know, that guy, Mr. Cox, Warsh, you know, that guy. So he comes and he, he, he interviews me, Becky's interviewed, I'm interviewed, Amanda's interview,

like Allison is interviewed, like everybody, the Secret Service agent I think is interviewed, like everybody, prosecutors interviewed. You know, it's funny at the time, I was when I watched it, I was like, that's not true, that's not true, and it honest was like 99% true. It's like looking back on it.

I'm like, my Audi TT wasn't blue, it was silver. It's just stupid, but anyway, so I'm interviewed by them, and they recut it and they air the video. So you said this was substantial assistance. And then the other thing is I was interviewed by the FBI and the Secret Service. Now, my lawyer calls the prosecutor the night before sentencing and says, look, he was interviewed by Dateline and he was interviewed by the Secret Service and the FBI. And if you do that, you said you'd reduce his sentence, you'd consider it substantial assistance and you would

reduce his sentence. What are you going to ask for his sentence to be tomorrow at sentencing? And she said, we did consider it substantial assistance and it's just not enough. What do you mean? Nobody was arrested. Yes, but what about date line? Millie, I don't know what to tell you. It just wasn't enough. We considered it.

We considered it. We will consider it and they did consider it. So, yeah, that's like that. You have to really, you know, the meaning of words is so important. I'm gonna use that at some point. I will consider, I'll consider it. I considered it.

So and still feel the same. She's, she calls me on, I'm crushed. And she's like, but look, you know, they're still investigating. They're going to make these arrests. And so when you get a sentence reduction at sentencing, it's called a 5K one. When you get a sentence reduction after sentencing, it's called a 5k1. When you get a sentence reduction after sentencing, it's called a rule 35. So she said, we'll file a rule 35 as soon as the arrest are made. Okay. So I go to sentencing and Millie says, you're going to get 14 years,

I'm going to argue these enhancements. She argues that enhancements. She loses the enhancements. Not that she's not an amazing attorney. She's an amazing attorney. The judge wanted to hammer me. He hammered me. You know, Millie was a great attorney. She was always polite to me. And by the way, to this day, we'll answer my phone call. Like most most public defenders, you call them now, you call them after your senses. They don't answer your call. Great person. Thank you, Millie. they don't answer your call. Great person. Thank you, Millie. I didn't give her anything to work with.

You know, it's like I'm a little overwhelmingly guilty. It's like there's no defense. So I end up getting sentenced 26 years. It's a lot of years. I would like to tell you that they, when they gave me the time, you know, that I was stoic and I stood there and I took it in. But the truth is I cried like a baby, like a small child, like you've never seen anyone cry like this

in your life. I was just, how did I get 26? How, what did I do to get 26 years? Like murderers, rapists. I've met guys at Kidnap guys that got 15. 26. So yeah, I, were you scared? I mean, you know, does a pub wear a funny hat?

Like, of course I was scared, terrified. And I mean, you know, does a pub wear a funny hat? Like, of course I was scarier terrified. And I mean, you know, but I kept telling myself, ah, they're gonna reduce the sentence, they'll reduce it, they'll reduce it, they'll reduce it. They're like, okay, okay, okay, it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay. But it wasn't okay. I got moved to Coleman, the Coleman complex

and Coleman Florida, the federal correctional Coleman complex in Coleman, Florida, which is the largest complex in the nation, federal complex in the nation. There's a, there's a, at that time, there was a camp, which was a female camp. There was a medium security, a low security prison for men, a medium security prison and two pinnets entries. And so I get moved to the medium. I'm moved to the medium not because like that's where like real criminals go, right? Like I'm a soft white boy. Like I'm no danger to anybody. Like I hurt, I hurt someone's feelings once, but other than that, I'm not a problem. But if you have more than 20 years to serve, you have to go to a medium.

So even though my security level said this guy should be in a camp, I had 20 years. So if you have, you can't go to a camp till you have less than 10. So as soon as I have given 26 years and 26 years, they knock off three, but you still have three years to get below 20, so they go to the medium. So I go to the medium and their guys getting stabbed. The very first day, people were being stabbed. I get locked into, you go to my cell, meet my celly,

they scream lock down, somebody got stabbed in the wreck yard. I remember I asked my celly, which I met 20 minutes earlier. I was like, what's, you know, he's like, hey, we gotta get in the cell. I was like, what's going on? He's somebody got stabbed in the wreck yard. I remember I asked my cell, which I met 20 minutes earlier. I was like, what's been going on? He's like, Hey, we got to get in the cell. I was like, what's going on? He's somebody got stabbed in the yard and I go, somebody just got killed. And he goes, nah, they just stabbed him up a little bit. And I thought, you're in a place where they say stabbed him up a little bit. Like, you're not prepared for this, bro. You got to get out of here. Yeah. So anyway, I go to the medium. I'm there. I go to the first day and night.

When I remember, I already had been locked up in the county. They're county jails, where they call them US, they're US Marshall, they're holdovers. But they're really county jails. They just keep you with the, with the federal guys. So I'm not mixed in with like hobos and, you know, people like that. I'm mixed in with the federal people.

So you already felt like you felt like a prison? Yeah, it's a music prison. I mean, it's jail, but it's prison and unless you've been locked up, you don't really know the difference. So it's a jail, a jail suck, jails are much worse. The whole time I was locked up in the jails

waiting to be sentenced, guys were like, I just wanna get sentenced and go, go to prison, Roger. And I was like, why did they keep saying that? Like, prisons worse than this. Like, I saw shank, shank. Like, it's horrible. And they're like, bro, prison, listen, prison. I can walk the wreck yard. I could go to the movie room, watch movies,

listen, within right after count for this four-clock count. They count everybody at four. So they are like, right after count, I'm gonna go to commentary. Somebody's gonna buy me an ice cream. I'm gonna be eating an ice cream. I'm gonna go to the movie room. I'm gonna go to the movie room. right after count for this four-clock count, they count everybody at four. So they are like, right after count, I'm gonna go to a commissary, somebody's gonna buy me an ice cream.

I'm gonna be eating an ice cream, walking on the rec yard the first day. Like, and I'm, you know, it's been months and months and months that I've been locked up in this county jail, and I'm thinking, I wanna go to prison, like that sounds nice, I'd love to, I'd like an ice cream. Yeah, but there was a stabbing in the first day. Yeah, I will, you know, I'd never be kept telling me, I was gonna go to a camp, you like an ice cream. Yeah, but there was a stabbing in the first day. Yeah, I will.

Everybody kept telling me I was gonna go to a camp. You're gonna go to a camp. You're gonna go to a low. I see. And honestly, I was, very quickly, I was walking on the wreck yard. I was, you know, so I was at the medium. I got there.

You know, it's a real prison with the doors, bam! And you can open the little tray thing and feed you out of the tray And there's a stainless steel toilet and sink and you know, they have that in the county too But you know, it's it's exactly what you think of prison as being but it feels like a fundamental different experience It was 26 years and the door locks and yeah, so I yeah, I have a celly and the door locks and yeah. So yeah, I have a celly and but I'm also as they sent me to a prison where guys have tons of guys have 30, 40, 50 years, you know, life sentences. There's there's gangsters there. There's there's murderers. There's serial killers. There's, you know, really bad guys. There's, you know, there's guys that are, guys that are trying to take advantage of guys.

Right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But by the time I got there, I'd hurl the, you know, how you can get yourself in trouble. You know, how you can, like, don't go in somebody else's cell. You don't know the guy, you're not 100% sure, do not go in his cell. Don't even go near his cell. Don't go into places where people can close a door behind you or they can trap you in an area. Don't, there's all these things that I've been told

not to do. Again, for sexual reasons. Right, because I'm a small guy in prison. Yeah. I'm tracked away, dude. Yeah, it's a problem, it's a problem. This, yeah, it's bad. It's all bad.

Well, it's good in the outside world, but that bad in the person. Yeah, my fear was there. Make me shave my head to make sure that the mop wig will fit correctly. But there's certain things that I always hate to say this, but I mean, this is the simplest way to say it is that if you get stabbed in prison, you had it common. You did something.

Like, they're not running around just stabbing people. You did something. You, and the things that get you hurt is you argue over the TV, what channel you want to watch. You got 50, 80 guys watching one TV. Don't argue about it. Like it's not worth it. Borrowing things and not returning them,

that's a problem. Running up debts, that's a big problem. Gambling, gossiping. Those are the problem. Those things get you hurt. Not being polite. Be respectful. I'm super respectful. So I was respectful very quickly when I got to Coleman. There are continuing education courses. One of the courses is residential real estate. The guy that was running the residential real estate didn't want to do it anymore because

he was doing legal work and it just was taking too much time. So he came to me and said, listen, you just got here, you got a real estate background. Like nobody else does. Can you take over this class and I was like, I'm sure. So I looked at his curriculum, I kind of rewrote it a little bit. And I started teaching the residential real estate class. And at one point I was teaching two classes like a semester or a quarter. And these guys loved it, right? They all think they're gonna get out in flip houses. So I started from the fundamentals,

I just talked about credit, how to borrow, how hard money lenders, different types of bar, like everything. And guys are walking, it's the first time in my life, this was funny. Not that I think I was really in a position for this to happen. This was really odd though.

Probably the second or third class, when guys are leaving, and I'm having to check them off the role, multiple guys are stopping and saying, yo bro, putting their hand out, shaking my hand and going, good class. It was a good class, bro. Then I have guys coming to me, telling me, hey, what are you teaching these guys?

What do you mean they go, he's, my cell is telling me he's going to get out and make millions. I'm taking Cox's real estate class. I'm telling you, I can do this. I'm going to be a millionaire. And it's like, this flipping house is like, this is not. But the truth is, if, you know, it is the flipping houses was what I basically told these guys, especially the drug dealers, right? You're a drug dealer and you were raised in the projects and you're going back to the projects, like this is the one industry that you will thrive at because you're a hustler.

You're not afraid, a 45 year old divorced white woman is not going into the hood knocking on doors to try and flip houses, but you will. And you know everybody in the neighborhood and you'll knock on those doors and you'll hustle and you've been told no before and you don't care. You're not scared. You're not this and there's tons of money to be made in lower income areas. And so I and then when I go through the whole thing and how you can leverage, you know,

leverage your credit to borrow money to get into the property and do the renovations with very little money down. I do the whole thing. These guys, like they loved it. What that did for me was two things. One, if you got to the class, 40 guys show up for the class and I say, look, if you don't want to go, you don't want to be here, you just want it because your counselor is making you get a certificate, you don't want to be here.

That's fine. Bring me two coffees and like two creamers from Commissary and I'll fill out all your paperwork and you'll pass, you'll get a certificate. I don't have to see you again. I have full a coffee and creamer because at least 10 or 15 didn't wanna be there. The other guys seriously wanted to be there and I don't want those guys to be there anyway,

they're gonna be a problem. So the other guys are serious about it and some of these guys sat through the class two, three, four times. Some of these guys got out and sent me money. So, you know, which is like a huge sign of respect, you know, by the way, because I don't know me anything, but I did that and I taught GED because you have to do something for money. And I met a bunch of cool guys and I was hanging out and I was doing well. And after about three years, they transferred me to the low security prison

At this point like the FBI start showing up asking me questions they asked me questions about the politician I bribes, you know, ask me questions about him special limitations was up and they were trying to tie him into the bank fraud because his name was Kevin White and one of my guys name was Michael Kevin White and so they were trying to tie him in, you know, did you, did he know about it? Because if he knew about it, it's actually limitations is 10 years. We could now, he didn't know. Um, should have thrown him in there.

But anyway, because like a couple of years later, he gets and died. He ends up going to jail anyway. It could have decreased your sentence. Yeah. Listen, listen, stop, stop. And listen, oh my God. I got all my judgment out after the homeless conversation. Listen, it's only gonna get worse. I mean, I really appreciate your honesty

and your insight about like, about snitching, honestly, that I have a sense that there's a, at least a desire for loyalty in the world. Wouldn't that be nice? Did you ever feel in danger and medium or low? It's funny. I had more problems at the, probably at the low than I did the medium, but at the medium, the only thing that happened was an article came out in the newspaper when I was at the medium. It came out and said, because they're still investigating things.

So this article comes out, and I'm on the front page of the St. Petersburg Times. It was about the politician, big article, and in the article it says, they interview Millie, my lawyer and she says, well, when Mr. Cox was being interviewed by the FBI, one of the first things they wanted to know about was this politician. So she just said Mr. Cox was being interviewed by the FBI. So I immediately get taken into custody and they put me in the shoe that the whole, right, for my own protection.

And I'm there for like 45 days. And then after 45 days they're like Cox, what do you want us to do? Do you want us to ship you? I was like, no, put me back on the compound. I'm like half the guys here cooperated and he goes, yeah, it's more than half. He said, but this is a guy from SIS,

which is like their internal security. So that's what he told you. That's pretty much higher percentage. Right. But he said, but he said about 100% of him are lying about it. He said, you just came out in the newspaper. I go, man, I'm not concerning.

If you are concerned, you got to come immediately to the lieutenant's office and tell us. We'll ship you. I said, okay, I get out there. People are giving me like the looking at me and what's up, you know, but I don't have a lot of friends anyway and I come there to make friends. And so at one point, this one guy comes to me.

I'm walking the yard probably two days later. After I get back on the compound, I'm walking. The guy comes to me. He has a goatee, and it comes down here and he's got a skull, like a little skull thing he'd made, with all that wood or something. And definitely looks scary. But so I'm walking and he's stopping you, he's like, hey, gocs, I've never talked to these guys. I've been there for a year or so, and never talked to any of these guys. They're all like bikers and, you know, air and brotherhood. And so, you know, I'm like, yeah, what's up?

He said, boba, boba's their leader. He was, he was, boba told me to tell you not to walk the yard. You don't wanna see you out in the yard. And I went, okay, I said, well, I'm gonna walk the yard tonight. And I said, and if I get the shit kicked out of me, then I get the shit kicked out of me.

But did you talk back to a guy with a wooden sculling enough? I did, but you know what? It was right in front of the guard shack, and so there were guards in the guard shack. You know, they're 20 feet away. Really, you weren't scared. I mean, I think I just got numb. Like, I'm not stupid, but I'm walking around.

I was scared from the moment I got there on, if that makes sense. So you get to a point where you're just numb and you're waiting for it, especially when I got out of the shoe. Got out of the shoe, I went straight to my cell, lay down, a couple minutes later it was locked down, they closed the doors, I wake up the next morning, I go to chow, I go to my job, like it starts all over again.

So I had a very packed routine. So I didn't spend, although there's guys everywhere, and I'm thinking at some point, I might just be walking around, I'd guide my walk up and just smash me in the head, but it didn't happen. And it's not that guys aren't getting stabbed, but they've got it coming.

I didn't tell on anybody here. I didn't do anything. It's not that on other yards, I might not have gotten smashed, but I didn't get smashed. And I'd been there a while and I taught the real estate class and everybody wanted to take real estate. So I think that insulated me to a degree. I also had made a few friends there. And I think they were probably also kind of putting out the words like, bro, cut this guy a break. So I'm walking across and I tell the guy, I said, look man, I said, you know, and I wasn't rude to him. He wasn't even rude to me. Really. He said, don't walk the yard anymore, but I didn't want you to walk the yard. I said, well listen, I'm going to go to chow and then I'm

going to go out there tonight and walk the yard. And if I get smashed, I get smashed, I go, because I got 26 years and I cannot walk around for the next 26 years not going on the yard. I said, so I'm going to be there and then that happens and that happens and he looked at me and he goes, man, I don't give a fuck what you do is that's what Bubba told me to tell you. He said, I told you anyway, I don't give a shit what you do and he walked off. I went out there that night with a buddy of mine named Zach, a guy named John Gordon, with my cousin and a couple of his buddies. We walked the track for about an hour, Baba and a group of his guys stood there and looked at us and as we walked probably,

closest we got to, it was 30 or 40 feet. That went on for 30 minutes and then they kind of broke up and went their separate ways. And there was a couple of times where I would go to the chow hall and I would go and I'd be sitting at a table and bubble would walk up and tell the other guys at the table, I want to let you guys know, you're, he didn't even call me a snitch. He said, you're sitting with a cooperating witness.

He said, he said, that's how you want to roll. He said, you ain't going to be rolling with us. If there's any trouble. And then they all kind of looked at me and they got, got, got their plate and they moved off. He didn't tell me to move. And he could have walked up and said, this is a snitch motherfucker. He didn't do that. Bubba was very respectful.

So as respectful as you could be, whatever you want to say, blah, blah, blah. He was a respectful man. He ever talked to him and never had a conversation with him. So that went on, but I mean, not when I say that one on, I mean, literally, that's a couple of times. He said the same thing to a guy in line one time Guy came up to me later said look man, but I'm sorry Matt I he was standing next to me in line. Bubba said something to him. He went like 10 or 15 people back and stood in line

Later on he came up to me and I'm sorry, but you know I You know, blah blah blah. I said bro. I said look I get it We're not friends. Don't worry about it. And here's the thing, at some point there, I got, I end up getting, well, the FBI started showing up there at the, at the prison, questioning me about my files in, in Tampa, the room of the 12 guys that were invited, they show up and they start asking me about it. And so they're still kind of working it. Well, at the same time, I end up getting moved

to the low security prison. I get to low security prison. They show up over and over again. But at some point, they come to me and they say, look, we went to the US attorney. We presented everything we have. We have it. I have enough for an investor.

I have enough to indict all of these guys. I think it was whittled down to maybe eight instead of 12. And they said, look, the entire economy is melting down. At this point, some of these are four or five years old. We've got banks that are melting down right now. We got 100, 200, 300 million, 500, half a billion dollar banks that we're investigating.

We don't have time to deal with this. We're not going to indict those people. So they get away. The agent I was working with, her name was Leslie Nelson, very nice person. She came, actually didn't have to do this, came to the prison to tell me this is what happened. And when she'd first come to see me, I told her, listen, I want to do all this, but no matter what happens, I need you to write me a letter if they don't indict

these people. I need you to write me a letter that I can present to the US attorney on my behalf that I did everything I could. And she says, I'll do that. That's not going to happen. We're going to get the indictments and that was okay. So of course, a year later, she shows up after nothing happens and they drop the case. She says up as she tells me what happened and he's not going to do it. I was, I go, do you remember that you, she was like, I got the letter right now. Gave me the letter. She was like, that's it. Great letter. You know, it says, you know, Mr. Cox has worked, you know, blah, blah, blah. He's done this.

This is great. And even said, you know, he deserves a reduction in my opinion, blah, blah, blah. So but there's no, there's nobody was arrested. So I call my public defender. I call Millie. I explain it to her and, you know, she starts, to her and she starts crying and she's sorry. What are we going to do? Well, there's nothing you can do.

Your time barred. You have one year to file a 2255, which is to say that you're a lawyer is ineffective or that the court has made a mistake in some way. And it had been over a year. It had been years. It had been like four years. And she's like, yeah, I mean, you're just, there's nothing you can do.

And she's in tears. And I kind of feel like I'm done. At that point, I'm done. And what I do is I start writing a book. I write a memoir, my memoir. And this is not a shameless plug for my memoir, by the way, which is amazing, just saying. But, so what happens is I actually,

I actually write it, I write it, and then I have to rewrite it, right? Couldn't really know what I'm doing. And I've been reading True Crime and that sort of thing, and I've always liked True Crime. I get a literary agent comes to see me, tells me I have to rewrite some stuff. We rewrite it. As I'm finishing up my memoir, there's a guy that comes on the compound and his name is Ephraim Devarole. Ephraim Devarole and his business partner, guy named David Pack-House, were selling munitions, AK-47 rounds. Really tons of munitions, but they got in trouble with this.

They were selling them to the US government for the Afghani security forces. There had been an article in Rolling Stone magazine about him, and I'd read it. Somebody points him out and says, hey, that's that guy. I went up to him and said, Hey, bro, you just got here. It's like, yeah, I said, look, if you want to write a memoir or anything, I'm finishing my memoir. I can always help you. I can help you write an outline.

You can get a professional writer, whatever. You need help. He's like, yeah, all right. Ephraim Devarole was played by Jonah Hill in the movie, uh, uh, word, ox. Mm-hmm. So a few months later, he comes to me and says, you know, hey, they sold the movie rights. I was like, oh, wow, that's great. And I'm like, you, and you don't want to write

a memoir. And he's like, yeah, man, it was sold to the guys from the hangover movie. And I was like, so the guys from the hangover movie are going to make a movie about you. I said, you understand they're going to call it like, dude, where's my hand grenade? And you're gonna be spikily from fast time at that rich amount of high. Like, you're gonna be a joke, all because you don't wanna write a memoir. And get your version out there

and he was like, holy shit. So I ended up writing an outline for him. We worked together. And then he asked, can I read your book? And I was like, sure, and I give it to him, and he reads it, and he comes back and he said, bro, he says, this is the best thing I've ever read in my life. And to be honest, I later found out he'd read

about three books in his entire life. But still it was very nice. You know, the Jeff, the other two. So he asked me if I would write his book, I write his book, we work out a deal. And we do that. And I'm saying all this because I basically settle in. I'm done. I'm going to do 26 years. By the way, just in a small tangent, how did you,

how did you know you'd be good at writing? I'd kind of written a manuscript prior to even taking off on the run. I used to listen to John Grisham books, I'd listen to him in the car, like I like John Grisham books, and I'd actually written a manuscript about a mortgage broker. He writes about lawyers, and it's like, lawyer being a lawyer is not exciting. If you can make that sound exciting, I can make being a mortgage broker. I wrote a book, put it in my desk, and the FBI found it, and had, you know, said, oh, it's a blueprint to the fraud that he's going to commit. It wasn't stop. It's as much that character was as much me as John Grisham's characters are him. But it's still kind of interesting

that it is. John Grisham didn't write. I mean, you know, if John Grisham did something similar to what one of the, yeah, I saw a quote somewhere that the criminal is a, is a true artist and the detective is merely a critic. So I'm like that. Does that resonate with you or not? I'll have to look that up. Okay. So you already knew you could write. Well, I knew I liked it, but yeah, I think I got better and better at it. I mean, you know, as you're writing, and they had created writing classes, you know, in prison at the low, you know, the low was a much different breed of animal, you know, like it, you know, it was, you could very easily get hurt, you could get hurt either place. But there were guys that have life sentences that have been working out for 20 years and were just

super angry at the medium. And if you got hurt at the medium, it was probably really go bad. As opposed to you get hurt at the low, it's more like a fist fight in high school. So with knives. with knives. So anyway, I, so I'm there. I'm writing. I'm doing that. And there was a guy on the compound that came on the compound about that same time. His name was Frank Amadeo. Frank Amadeo is a, a rapid cycling bipolar with features of schizophrenia. Rapid cycling bipolar with features of schizophrenia. So it's just constant, right? And so there are moments in his manic state where he, his reoccurring psychosis, I guess, is that he believes, and since he was in his early teens, has believed that he is preordained by God to be emperor of the world. He's a lawyer, despoured, stole close to $200 million from the federal government. They gave him 22 years

and they sent him to Coleman. But it doesn't, this is the part I love, the delusions don't affect his legal work. It doesn't say a ton for legal community, but I didn't know he's delusional. I'm just asking questions. Yeah, he's trust me. I mean, it's not me. It's like the transcripts, the lawyers, the doctors, the, you know, yeah, there's a ton of fun. And then if you saw him in action, you'd be like, oh, wow, you know, he would be completely normal. He would be having a completely normal conversation. And somebody would say something and he was, he'd go, that makes me so angry. I, I, I can't, I'm not going to let them do that. When my legions march on Washington, we are going to burn the Constitution and the President will kneel at my feet.

And he goes, I'm going to need your transcripts. I'm going to need a 22-55 form. We're going to file a, and everybody would sit there and be like, okay, Frank, I'll get this. And I'll get, he was insane. He was basically running a medium-sized law firm from inside of the prison. He was training people. He taught the legal research class and was training people

on how to do legal research in prison, how to put together motions, how to fight their cases, how to do the research, how to type them up, everything. He's teaching a law school, right? Like, he's teaching these guys, he, listen, they made such a mistake, awk in the sky, yeah. So he's a great lawyer.

Listen, it's gonna get worse. That's gonna get worse, because here's what happens, is at this point, I don't talk to him for probably a year or so, because everybody's saying he's crazy. And for like a year, he gets there, he's drooling out of the side of his mouth. They got him on a ton of medication, it takes him about a year to get them

to take him off the medication. So he gets them to take him off the medication. And then he starts kind of stabilizing his mood by drinking Pepsi. I know. It's crazy, I know it's crazy. I know how, I see you look at him, you like this guy's del Pepsi. I know. It's crazy. I know it's crazy. I know how.

I see you looking at me like this guy's delusion. I know. It works. But whatever works. So at some point, one of my buddies comes to me and says, look, you got to go talk to Frank. Well, here's the other thing. Over the course of a year or two that he starts doing legal work for guys. He starts just taking on guys' cases.

I'll do the motion. I'll do your legal work. I'll do starts just taking on guys cases. I'll do the motion. I'll do your legal work. I'll do this. Keeps him busy. But suddenly you start hearing people get released. You know, you know, Jimmy just got 10 years knocked off his sentence. He's going to halfway house next month. You know, Tom got an immediate release. Frank's walking people up to R&D shaken their hands guys are walking up to him in tears crying and And so you know crazy or not What choice do I have I I called Three different lawyers on the street and said this is what happened what can I do?

What can I do they they had me they told me to do this and this and this and I worked with them And then they decided not to proceed and what can I do?" And they said, you're hit, bro. There's nothing you can do. You cannot, in the middle, in the 11th circuit, you cannot force them to file a reduction on your behalf. You cannot do it. It's impossible.

You're hit. You're done. It's over. I love to take your money, Mr. Cox, but it's not going to happen. I'm just going to take your money, you're going to lose three different lawyers. I talked to I or TI's lawyer told me, bro, it's not going to happen. It's over. So my buddy says, go talk to Frank. I said, well, why wouldn't I?

I got nothing else to lose. So I go talk to Frank. He actually has a little manic moment. That little thing that I just showed you, that's exactly what he said the first time I else to lose. So I go talk to Frank. He actually has a little manic moment that little thing that I just showed you That's exactly what he said the first time I talked to him based on your case. Yes. I won't let this happen He's like, I'm gonna need your transcripts. I'm gonna need you to get this. I need to see your indictment I'm gonna need your pre-sentence report. I'm gonna need it's like okay, and I turn to my buddies like bro I know I know what you're thinking. It's fine. Oh And he's like, I understand, let just what

choice you have. I was like, fuck. So Frank files a 2255 motion on my behalf stating that I'm not time-barred, that Millie was, we filed it against Millie stating that she was ineffective. Right? That she didn't understand the law. She had me plead to something because she thought We filed it against Millie stating that she was ineffective. That she didn't understand the law. She had me plead to something because she thought I could get a reduction simply for doing date line. Oh, by the way, when I was in the medium, the government came to me and asked me to be interviewed by American greed.

I do that. I'm interviewing. They get me on the phone. They talk to me. Everything the prosecutor wants me to do it. She's re-interviewed. Everybody's re-interviewed. It airs. Millie goes to them to the government says, look, reduce the sentence. They go, no, Millie. It's not enough. Then they come to me and they ask me to write an an ethics and fraud course. I write an ethics and fraud course. The guy right the course with he they flies up to Atlanta. He with, I think he drove up, but he goes up to Atlanta, he talks with a US attorney, he talks to Millie, she insists

if he does this, I will reduce his sentence. I will definitely consider this, definitely consider. Yeah, definitely consider. And then we do it. It's being used all over the nation. Not enough. Consider it. That's where, at this point, I go to Frank.

I tell Frank what's happening. Frank says, yeah, this is, he was every time they asked you to do something, it reset the time bar. You have a year from that time to file a 2255. Now, he insists that that was a viable argument. Nobody else does. But he said, I'm not gonna let them do this. I'm gonna take care of this.

I'm gonna get your sentence reduced. Okay. Emperor. Okay, Emperor. So he is a character. Anyway, he, so he files a 2255. The government comes back. They say, he's time-barred. Frank comes back. They answer his motion. He files a retort. They file, you know, it just goes back and this goes for six months to a year. And at some point, I go to mail call and they call my name and they hand me this thing and I open it up. And it says, the government's filed a motion for a stay so that they can, they want the court to appoint me a lawyer and to discuss filing a rule 35, reducing my sentence. And I, you know, I, I'm like, I read it, but I couldn't even understand like what I don't

understand. So I mean, I rushed to go find Frank. I showed it to Frank and he says, he says, yeah, they're staying at, they're going to send you a lawyer and you're going to negotiate for how much they're going to reduce your sentence. He says, perfect. So they fly this woman down. Her name is Esther Panich. She flies down. We come through the visitation room.

They bring me there, the lawyers room, whatever they call it. And so we're sitting there and I remember talking and she says, uh, listen, your, your motion, your 2255 is written well, but honestly, you don't have much of a prayer. And, um, they're offering you a one level reduction, which is 30 months. And I went, oh, that's, that's not enough. And I went, oh, that's not enough. And she said, well, I don't know what to tell you. She said, they're willing to bring you back. And I was like, well, I don't know. I got to talk to Frank.

Frank said, I deserve this many levels. And we're going back for it. She's, who's Frank? And I go, Frank's the guy that's doing all my legal work. She just, he didn't write all this. And I was like, no, she is who wrote it. And I explained it to her. And she's like, he's who's Frank? And I go, Frank's the guy that's doing all my legal work. She was, he didn't write all this. And I was like, no, she is who wrote, and I, and I explained it to her. And she's like, he's an inmate. And I was like, yeah.

And then she's wiser here. And I tell her, well, because he's, she stole a bunch of money from the federal government because he's trying to take over the world. So I tell her that whole thing. And she's like, you're letting a, a mentally incompetent, you know, person do your legal work. And I was like, yeah, because all the competent attorneys wouldn't do it. They said, I didn't have a prayer.

Your people said, I didn't have a prayer. And I said, Frank said he could get this done. And she's like, well, I mean, you know, I don't even know why they're offering you one level. I was like, well, Frank said, you know, and I'm like, Frank, this, Frank that. And so she ended up saying, she's like, you're taking advice from a legally and incompetent person. I said, yeah. And she said, you know, you really don't have a

prayer. I said, then why are you here? I said, if they could crush me so easily, why are you here? I said, they're giving me one level. Let me talk to Frank. I'll let you know what we're going to do. So I leave. I call our a couple days later. I tell our friend and I talk to Frank. Frank said, go back, go back and argue for more. He said, I think the judge is going to give you more. He's going to give you at least, you know, between whatever he said, like six or seven

levels or something. So I get I get moved all the way back to Atlanta. The FBI agent comes to talk on my behalf, the guy that like multiple people show up to talk on my behalf. They say, you know, Millie, who I filed the 2255 against. So I'm basically saying, you're, you're ineffective. You're incompetent, you know, but she knows the game. She's like, I get it. She, she gets on the stand and testifies for me. So the judge goes, you know, listen, I think we were asking for like nine levels

or something outrageous. Prosecutor starts arguing for one level. And he said, listen, one level is not nearly enough for what Mr. Cox has done. He said, Mr. Cox, I know you're arguing for nine levels off. You're sending it to you. That was never going to happen. I was like, I'm like, I got slapped.

And he said it. So I'm going to go with six levels. No, no, I'm sorry. He said three levels. I'm going to go with three levels. He is, which is seven years, which he said, for somebody who has no arrest associated with this case, he said, I think it's pretty good.

And that's my, that's the judgment and blah, blah, blah, blah, and he hammered the gavel down and walks off. And that's it. It's over. I guess seven years. And I was hoping for more. So I get moved back to Coleman. I get moved back to Coleman.

And I go to up to Frank. And I said, Frank, I got seven years off. And he's like, I know, I know. I I said I don't mean to sound unappreciative. I said I just said I was hoping for more he was I was too. He said it looks like we're gonna have to eat this elephant one spoon full at a time and he goes something will come out. Something's gonna happen. He said keep keep your ears open. Something will happen. And I said, okay. And you know, I honestly, by that point, I'd done, you know, I'd done eight years, and I remember like if I got a year off of the drug program and good time,

and this and I had about eight or eight years left to go, or something, nine years left. And I was like, you know, I can do that. I'll write, you know, I'd been writing by that point, I'd actually written a story. Like I got a book deal for Devarole. And I ended up writing a synopsis of a guy's story and I got him in Rolling Stone magazine and I got a book deal for that like I got in advance. It's like $3,500 bucks for being in prison, a prisoner to get a $3,500 advance like a millionaire. There's a lot of money. So and then we option the film rights, basically the synopsis that I wrote for this reporter, journalist for Rolling Stone. He goes to Rolling Stone with my, with what I wrote and gives it to them and they, okay, it, they say, yeah, this is great. We want you to write an article based on this. Okay, he writes the

article. He tells me that the article will be from him, his name, Gielossin, Douglas Dodd, which is the name of the kid I wrote the memoir about, and Matthew Cox. A couple of weeks before the article is going to be published, he tells me Rolling Stone doesn't want my name on the article because I'm in federal prison and doesn't look good. But don't worry, he's gonna put my name on the article because I'm in federal prison and it doesn't look good. But don't worry, he's gonna put my name in the article.

And that's just as good, and I argue, it's not just as good. It's not. I'm like, I would be, I would be a writer for Rolling Stone magazine, like you understand, I'm trying to, I'm trying to come up with something here that I can rebuild my life as a true crime writer. That's no good. And that wasn't so bad. That wasn't the worst of it was 90% of the article that he published was taken directly from what I sent him. Like I mean sick to my stomach, bro. Just sick over it. So, but they option, they option the life

rights for that. And I got a piece of that. So there's like $7,000. I get a check for that. So I'm thrilled. I can keep writing because you have to understand writing on the computer there, they charge you. So I start right, oh, they charge you for phone calls, writing, comedy, every single thing costs money. So I start writing all these guys stories. I start writing books. I just come back from went back to Atlanta. Got recent, got seven years knocked off my sentence. Come back. And I'm walking around the compound. Now there was a guy that was there named Ron Wilson. Ron Wilson ran in the, if you look at the newspaper, it says it's like a $100 million Ponzi scheme, but really it was $57 million. So he had lost $57 million.

So it says $100, they always exaggerate. Because $57 is not enough. Ron ended up getting 19 and a half years. Ron was an old con man. Early 60s, 62, 61, I don't know. And Ron, I like Ron. So we're walking around the compound. And he's like, so what are you gonna do? I mean, I got, yeah, I eight or nine more years ago.

And I was like, yeah, you know, I'm gonna keep writing. And when I get out of here, maybe I'll have a huge body of work. And maybe a boo boo sell it. Or maybe I'll be able to option some more stuff. And if I could get together with Rolling Stone or get with some of these magazines, I could start writing for them. And I could option those. Maybe I could walk out of here with something.

So, right, right, right. So Ron was, who'd only been locked up like a year or so. He was cooperating with the secret service in his case against some of his co-definance. So he's already been debriefed and he's cooperating. He's actually thinking he might get brought back to have to testify at a trial. We're talking and we're walking and he keeps saying, you know, even if they charge those guys and even if this happens, they're not going to reduce my sentence. They're not going to cut my sentence. And you know, first of all, well, probably because you stole a bunch of money from pension funds

and churches that didn't help your case, but I don't say that. So I say, oh, they have to, bro, they'll have to, they've, you know, if you cooperate, they're gonna have to, and if they don't, we'll have Frank Fala 2255. And he's like, ah, that crazy man. So he says, okay, he's like, yeah, yeah, you don't understand, you don't understand. So this goes on for months. And I'm like, what is the problem? And he says, you know, they think I hid Ponzi scheme money, you know? And he'd actually dug up like five or six million dollars in Ponzi scheme proceeds that he dug. He buried in these, literally, literally buried in aluminum ammunition canisters.

It was super interesting guy. So he actually went and dug them up and gave them to him. And I'm like, well, you gave them all the money. You didn't hide anything, relax. It's not a big deal. And I'm like, well, you gave them all the money. You didn't hide anything. Relax. It's not a big deal. They're not going to find anything. Don't worry about it.

And so he mentions it a couple weeks later, a couple weeks later. And then one day I go, bro, why do you keep bringing this up? Like what are you concerned about? They're not going to happen. And he said, can I trust you? And I went probably not and he goes, I did hide some money. I was like, okay. I said, you bury it in a can somewhere.

And he's like, no, you say I get my wife like 150,000 in cash. I said, okay, well, she's not going to say anything. She's using you. You don't understand. Since then, she found out I was having an affair. And we're going to get a divorce. And she hates me. And I think she'll turn that money in just to make sure that I don't get a reduction. Because if you lie to the FBI, they're not going to, they, doesn't matter what you've done for them, they won't give you anything. And so he's played, I mean, I'm sorry, secret service or anybody. He is clearly lied to the secret service at this point. If she goes and says, this is what

he gave me. So he's like, I was like, Oh, wow. And he's like, and I gave my, my brother's holding maybe 30,000 for me. And at that moment, I was like, wow, like this poor guy. No, that's not what I thought at all. What I thought was, is that enough to get me a sentence reduction? He's so stupid. And I sat there. And you know what I thought?

I thought, I did, I thought no, I thought that's not enough. That's not enough, it's nothing. That's not even $200,000. Like, and they didn't want to give me a reduction. My prosecutor was pissed that I got seven years off. She wanted me to get 30 months. She's not going to give me anything. It's up to her. She's not going to do it. So I go, I lay down, I go to bed, like a month later. I'm on the phone with my lawyer, because I had written, remember I wrote, a man, I had a manuscript for my book. And I wanted to put some of the stuff that was

said at my, in my sentencing in the book. So I was trying to get my lawyer to mail me my transcripts. And she hadn't done it. So I called her and I said, listen, you said you're gonna, she's like, oh, man, I'm so sorry. I'm so busy. I'll do it. I'll do it. And then she went, this is Esther. She was, so what else is going on in there? And this, she never wanted to talk to me. Like, she didn't, you know, when they were paying her, she didn't want to talk to me.

And, and I was like, what do you mean? Nothing. I just need my transcription. She's like, nothing's happening. There's nothing you want to talk about. And I was like, and I was like, you know what? You know what? There's something weird happened.

Listen to this. And I told her about Ron Wilson. And she was, hold on. She looks at my computer. She was, oh wow, this is a bad guy. This is a bad guy. And he told you, then you know where to? That's absolutely.

And I can tell you exactly. And she was, okay, okay, okay. She was, let me look into this. I go, okay. So a week later, a CEO comes to me and goes, hey, Cox, and I go, what's up? He goes, listen, at the next move, because you know, they have controlled moves.

All the doors are locked, and they open them up for 10 minutes, so you can run to the chow hall, or you can run to the, you can't run, they know running on the compound. But you can walk fast, yes, to the wreck yard or the library, whatever. He says, at the next move, go to SIS. So I go to SIS on the next move, but I was used to going there, by the way, because I was constantly ordering freedom of information acts. And they would, so I'd order your, you're an inmate and I'd

order, I'm writing a story for you and I'd order it and they'd send it to me and then they would catch it and they'd be like, why are you getting Lex's Information so they'd call me down there and I go, no, I ordered it for him and I'm writing a story and I'd already been enrolling stone and they're like, what's the story? And I tell them the story, they got a pretty good story here. And so I go down there, but this is different. This the guy answers the door and his guy, they call him bulldog, he was a real asshole. He was a lieutenant as I asked and he's like, come here, get in here, cock, sit down. And he dials the phone and goes, here you gotta talk to this guy.

And I'm like, what? And I pick up the phone, I'm like, hello. And the guy goes, hey, this is agent Griffin with the Secret Service. I understand you know where Ron Wilson has hidden Ponzi scheme money, I want something in writing. I want, you know, so I start doing that and they go, okay, then I get his email address and we start emailing each other back and forth. And he ends up getting a letter from the US attorney

in South Carolina that says they will consider substantial assistance if they make arrests or recover a substantial amount of money. That's the best I'm gonna get is consider. So I start talking to this guy and he starts asking me questions about Ron Wilson. Like, hey, ask him this, ask him this. So I'm like, bro, I gotta kind of work that into a conversation.

That's an odd thing to ask. So this goes on for six months. So I'm asking questions and I'm typing up little reports and I'm a I'm a I'm a prison snitch now. So I'm not just like cooperate. I'm not a prison. So I've I've moved down. I've moved down, Ashley, from being just a cooperating witness or because you're in prison. in prison, so it makes you a prison. You can't even really say, no, you could say prison rat. You could say prison rat.

I think prison snitch. I think that's probably the closer to the term that most guys would use. Most difference between a snitch and a rat in prison. I'm not sure. It rolls off the tongue better. Prison rat doesn't sound as good as a prison snitch. I don't know. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about this. So what happens is I'm

I'm asking Wilson questions periodically and at some point they Contact me and they say listen Wilson's about to get some bad news I go okay Um, and they go he's you know, like, I want to tell you what it is. Let us know what happens. It's like two days go by and Wilson comes up to me one day and says, cocks, cocks. And I'm like, oh shit.

I'm like, hey, what's up, you know? And he's like, oh, I can't believe this. I got indicted. I was like, what? What happened? No. Yeah. My wife, they questioned my wife and my brother and my brother, my wife walked in. First she said, I don't have nothing. I don't know what you're talking about. The next day, the brother walks in and gives them $150,000 in cash. And so the next day, the wife comes back and gives them

$250,000 in cash and a bunch of silver, like gold, bullion and silver, because his Ponzi scheme was based off of silver. He was gonna invest in silver for you. So half a million dollars, they turn over half a million, like half a million dollars. I thought she was like a hundred thousand or something. And he was like, I know, I didn't know I could trust you. I'm like, Ron, what are you doing?

I thought we were. So he, um, I'll tell you something. Just for the icing on the cake, by the way, the ice on the cake. Let me explain one more thing. Yeah. There's, so if you're going to, if somebody cooperates with the federal government, let's say I get arrested and they go, you want to help yourself and you go, yeah, okay.

Look, uh, Jimmy is a, he lives next to me and he's running a math house, you know, a math lab, whatever. And they go and they raid Jimmy and he gets arrested. You're going to get something off of that, not a lot, but you're going to get something. Now, and they could just say, we were going to bust him anyway. We were already on to him, right? Now, the next level would be, you wear a wire. So I wore a wire and I was in danger. Now keep in mind, I'm asking this guy

questions inside federal prison, I'm in danger. So whatever, that's like the next level. You're taking an active participation in the investigation. And the third level would be you actually get on the stand and you cooperate and you you testify. There's no better cooperation than that. So when Wilson says to me, they're going to move me back to South Carolina. They've indicted me. They charge me.

What do you think I should do? And I go, I think you should go to trial. Because I know they'll have to, I don't want to walk out of here and have you feelin' like, hey, there's some, there's some good to this guy. No. So I'm ready, I'm ready to cut Wilson like a fish. So. But you are putting yourself in danger if you get a stand, right? I'm already in danger.

If people they're heard what I was doing, I'm going to be like, hey, I'm going to be in danger. I'm going to be in danger. I'm going to be in danger. I'm going to be in danger. I'm going to be in danger. I'm ready to cut Wilson like a fish. So, but you are putting yourself in danger if you get a stand, right? I'm already in danger. If people there heard what I was doing, I probably would have been in.

Does that increase the chance of them hearing? Or no. If you could, it does, but it also increases my ability to get more off my sentence. It's true. So what happens is a couple days later, he's on what's called the pack out, right? They're gonna move him. Maybe a week later. So they come and get him, they move him.

He gets back there to South Carolina, and he pleads guilty. They sentence him, he gets six months added on. So now from 19 and a half to 20 years. And by the way, when COVID hit, he was released. And by the way, when COVID hit, he was released. So he only ended up doing like six years on a 20 year sentence because he was older. He's by that 20s, 66, 67 years old. You know, he's an old anybody older than 55 was endangered, especially in the prison. So they had a COVID thing where they were releasing these guys and sitting in the home on an ankle monitor. Like's an old man. He's not going to hurt. He's not a danger. So they sent him home. So he ended up doing so. He didn't even serve the six months.

He didn't serve the original sentence, whatever, not that I care. So I'm just saying, it makes you feel like poor Ron. It's okay. So his wife got like 100, she got like 100 hours of community service or something or 60 hour and I think his brother got six months papers and they got charged with obstruction of justice. And they didn't, neither one, just like six months probation and community service. Nothing. So when we, I turn around, I'm waiting for my reduction, waiting, waiting after about 90 days, after this guy gets sentenced, maybe six months,

I send a letter, hey, what's going on to the prosecuting to my prosecutor there, but the prosecutor both districts, no response. Then I go to Frank, I explain to Frank, and Frank is known what's going on the whole time. And Frank goes, okay, I'm gonna follow a 20, 255. So we follow a 20, 255. Government comes back and they, first thing they say is,

you're honor, we don't know about any cooperation. We've never heard about any cooperation. So of course, then we submit the letter that we have. The judge comes back and the judge ends up saying, it's a little complicated, but he ends up saying, look, I don't have jurisdiction to hear this because you're, you may be time barred, but I'm going to let the, the appeals court here. Now typically you have to, you have to get what's called a, like a right of sort of, a

certification to appeal. You have to make sure that you actually have a case. He says, I'm waving the cert, and I'm waving the $500 fee to file with them. He said, and I'm basically expedites it for me, which is a subtle way of telling the prosecutor. I think he's got something, and I'm sending it up there And he in the way he writes his motion. It's basically saying I don't have the jurisdiction to hear to do anything But they do they need to do it and I'm paving the way you don't have to pay any money and you don't need that sir

So the prosecution immediately comes back. They file a one level reduction. And we immediately frank file something saying, hey, stop. We don't want the reduction. We don't want the one level. We want to come back to court. Please don't don't rule on it. So the judge says, okay, I'm freezing everything. I'm putting a stay on everything. I'm going to give this guy a lawyer freezing everything. I'm putting a stay on everything. I'm going to give this guy a lawyer to try and figure out what you're going to do. They fly down a lawyer, Leanne Weber. So she comes and she comes and sees me and she says, listen, I see that you want to go back and fight this and this, but honestly, I don't think

you're going to get anything more than one level. I talked to the prosecution. They said, they'll give you what she said, I can work on trying to get you two levels, but you don't have much of a prayer. You're going to get crushed. And I said, well, then, then why are you here? If they can crush me so easy, why don't they do it? Why would they pay you, like they pay them, like 12 grand or something, just to fly down and all your expenses to negotiate for me? Why not crush me? And she's like, I don't know.

So well, Frank said four levels. And she's like, who's Frank? I go, Frank's the guy that wrote all this. And she's like, oh, is he an attorney? And I go, is he in here? I'm like, yeah, he's in here. She's like, why is he in here? And I tell her, he was taken over the world. And she says, that's the strangest thing I've ever heard in my entire life.

And I said, I understand. But Frank said, and she's like, you're listening to an incumbent and, you know, I don't like you absolutely. And she and Frank said, four levels, we want four levels. She, he said, for me to tell you, we want four levels. She's okay, she leaves. She goes to US attorney, we argue, two levels. They come back to say two levels.

No, we go back and forth, we start filing motions, saying we want to go back, we want a hearing, we want to bring back all the FBI agents, the Secret Service agents, and she's like, well, you want to turn this into a circus? Exactly what do I want to do? we want to bring back all the FBI agents, the Secret Service agents. And she's like, well, you want to turn this into a circus? Exactly. I want to do it. I'm going to turn it into the biggest circus because I've already got one level.

They come back one day. She says, listen, three levels is the best you're going to get. She said, so I guess you'll be moved back here. We'll go to the hearing. I said, no, no, I'll take three levels. And she says, what are you talking? She said, you said four levels. You said, Frank wouldn't take,

unless you take anything less than four. I said, no, Frank said to tell you four. I was happy with three. I wanted you to argue for four. I'm good with three. I'm out here in like a year. Yeah. So, and I don't want to be moved back.

I don't have to get on that bus. You don't want it to be moved? It's horrible. So I said, I just want the three levels. So then we argue about the wording for about two, three months and then they file it and then I get five years knocked off my sentence because three levels at this, at the level I was at now isn't seven years,

every level you get a little less time. So I get five years off. So now I've got 12 years knocked off my sentence. At this point, I maybe have a year and a half to go and you know, that's doable. So I was super, super happy. And I'm going to tell you something. And I'm sorry, bro. But every time I think about it, and I just feel like I have to say it.

Like, Frank, I'm insane. But I can, like, I didn't have a fucking prayer without that guy. And as craziest he is, and much of a pain in the ass as he was. Like I could never repay him, bro. Like, like, I'm not, I shouldn't be here. I'm supposed to be in prison right now. My out date was 30, was 20, 30 without that guy. Where's he now? He got himself out. He didn't do all that time. He got himself out. I don't even know how he did.

They even threw him back in prison again for six months and he got himself out again. He's incredible. He's insane, but he's incredible. Is there really that insane? He's in Orlando. I mean, he seems like a good lawyer and a good man. He's he's he's great. He's great. I mean, there's no doubt in my mind I would be

in prison right now if it wasn't for him. And he's done this for others. Walk people right out 10 years off, five years off, nine years off, 10 years. I mean, it's, I didn't pay and I didn't pay for one thing. I didn't pay for my stamps. He paid for everything. Sounds like the other lawyers don't really believe as possible. And he does. It's interesting. Well, I think he's, he was willing to, he's willing to badger them into doing, you know, what they should have done to begin with. I actually wrote a book about it, which he loved about him, about him and his story. It's so over the top what happened with him. No, I mean, little I tried to take over the Congo. I mean, there's a documentary

about it. There's it's called Nine Days in the Congo. It's an insane story. I'm on one of those stories that's just like, how is this not a movie? It's not a movie. No, I've pitched it several times and it would be great. But so I wrote a synopsis and I turned that into a book. What's the name of the book? Oh, it's insanity. It's insanity.

Yeah. But about it like a year and a half later, like I ended up getting out of prison and I went to the halfway house Would that feel like freedom? I was uh oh This is bad bro. This is bad. I I Remember when I was leaving the prison So, you know, I'm at some great guys in prison, which is a weird thing to say But I've met better. I'm at better people in prison, which is a weird thing to say. But I've met better people in prison

than I'd ever met outside prison at that low. I mean, because it was the first time I actually had friends, like I really had someone that wanted to hang out with me just like I didn't have anything to offer them. I can't make you any money. I can't do anything for you. We just hanging out because we like to laugh or we have things in common or we're fascinated by each other or we just have good time and fun. So when I was leaving, I remember my mom showed up and my brother showed up and they picked me up and we were driving off. And I remember looking back at the prison and my brother said, I'll bet you're glad to see that,

to leave that behind you. And I started crying. And like nobody talked, I was so uncomfortable. It was just started crying. And it wasn't because I was like, oh, it's over. It was because it was like survivors guilt, you know, like I was leaving all of my friends. And I felt so bad that I was leaving them. But I went to the halfway house and I had, I had four, I had, so when I was getting out, I remember joking that I had exhausted my trueling account, my inmate account. I had exhausted it, I had nothing, I had like 18 cents,

I couldn't even figure out how to spend it. And they give you a debit card when you leave. And I said, like, and they charge you every time you, you sweat, you use the card, like, I don't even have enough to spend the 18 cents. You know, it's because it just charges like $3. So I was like, I was like, yeah, I was like, I wonder if they're still giving me my debit card. And I'm laughing. Everybody's like, what are you gonna eat? What are you this? What are that? And one buddy looked at me and he was like, you can't go to the halfway house with nothing, bro. And I was like, no, it's cool. I said, no, it's cool.

I said, no, it's cool. I said, I want to start at the bottom. I've got that coming. I got working at McDonald's coming. So I'm gonna work at McDonald's. I don't give a fuck. And it was like, well, I think you're gonna need to buy clothes. I think that's it.

I said it's at the goodwill. They'll give you a bunch of, they give you a bunch of crap if you don't have anything if you're injured. And I said, I'm injured. And a couple days before I'm leaving $400 ends up on my account. And I was like, what the fuck?

And it was from a buddy of mine. And I go to him, my buddy, Tommy, and I was like, Tommy, did you put $400 on my account? And he said, I can't let you go, but nothing, bro. So I get to the halfway house and I go to Walmart and I buy $300 worth of clothes at Walmart. I've never been in a Walmart. I go to Super Walmart. There's huge and I go there and I buy a bunch of clothes and I buy about 300 bucks with a clothes and I still have some of the blue jeans to this. And I still have some of the blue jeans. To this day, I still wear some of the blue jeans. And I stayed in the halfway house

and I called the buddy of mine, named Trion, Trion Kalta. And he owns a gym and I grew up with him. His whole family, they owned up a bunch of gyms. And I called him and I said, hey, man, I'm in the halfway house. And he was like, hey, what's going on? He said, can I do anything for you?

And I was like, I mean, I need a job. I didn't think it was going to give me a job. He was broke. You're hired. I'll give you a job. He's talking minimum wage. I said, that's fine. If I can stay out of here, you could work like 80 hours a week.

And I was like, if I can just stay out of here, 80 hours. And you pay me minimum wage. He's oh hell yeah, perfect So I'm at the gym and I got free reign. So I'm playing on my computer goofing off all day and My buddy Pete who's still locked up. He's texting me and calling me and he's like not texting me He's emailing me through the core link system and and he's Cauls me periodically. He's like, have you started a website? Cause one of the things I was gonna do when I got out was I was gonna start a website

with all these stories that I've written. And I was like, no Pete, I can't. Like, I don't have a computer. He's like, well, how much does a computer? I was like, I don't know, they're like 300 bucks. I was like, I said, I could probably get a used Apple like MacBook, like a five year old MacBook or something. I don't know, for like $350 or whatever.

And I said, but he's like, okay, so that's all you need, 300 bucks. I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,'t, I'm, I'm, I'm inept. I don't know how anything works. So he, okay. And I said, plus I need this, plus I need this. I mean, I know a bunch of stuff. I need $600 for this, I need $300 for this, I need $500 for this, I need $1,000 for this. And he goes, okay, he said, I'm gonna get you, okay, I got it. So he reads off a list, he goes, I got you. The Pete doesn't I got it. So he reads off a list of you, I got you.

The Pete doesn't have any money. And I go, how are you gonna give me any money? He goes, he goes, every day I walk across the compound. Some people stop me and say, how's Cox doing? And I say, he always okay. And they say, does he need anything? And I say, no, no, he's good. He said, I'm gonna start telling these fuckers, yeah.

Yeah, he needs something. You wanna do something for him? Here's what he needs. I ended up getting two laptops sent to me. I got the computer program, Final Cut Pro. I had guys in prison cutting me checks so that I could build a website and put all these stories on the website.

So I start putting the website, and I don't know what I'm doing. I mean, I put them on the website slowly, it takes forever. Putting pictures up, I'm trying to figure out how, you know, Photoshop works, how all this stuff, the whole time I wanted to start, because everybody, the last one I was just getting out of prison, everybody kept telling me like, bro, you gotta start a podcast,

you gotta start True Crime podcast. And I don't know what a podcast is. The term podcast came into existence in 2009 when I'd been locked up three years. I had never been on YouTube. So by the time I get out, the last year or two, guys are coming up to me giving me magazines. Like, this is what a pod, you need to read.

Look, true crimes huge. And you got to think, guys are asking me every couple of days, cocks, you got any stories? And I'm like, hey, did you read Caching Coke? And they're like, is that the one with a guy's or Robin the drug dealer? Yeah, I don't know, I read that one. Did you read this one?

No, no, I haven't read that. That's the one with a guy. And I'm like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. So I mean, I'm just giving these little stories and then they come back and give them to me. You know, it's, you don't have anything in there, right? So this is, guys that would never read in their life or reading.

And I'm writing about the guy in in B2, the guy in C1. So I put up the whole thing. And they're, well, anyway, they're all telling me to do a true crime podcast, true crime podcast. I don't really know what that is, but by now I'm starting to listen to them on YouTube, you know, serial and a cold case files, you know, that's kind of stuff.

And I think that's what I want to do. Well, my buddy, Trion says there's a guy named Danny Jones that runs a podcast called Concrete and it's in St. Petersburg and he lives a couple of miles from me. I see him all the time and I went, okay, and he said, you should, you should email him. He's got a guy on there all the time that does real estate. And I go, I just got a prison prison for for bank fraud related to real estate. He doesn't want to interview me He is well, you could maybe he does maybe you could ask him about starting a podcast

Okay, so I sent him an email and I remember a date he called me and he said hey is this Mac host I was like, yeah, this is Matt. He's like I got your email. This is Danny Jones and I was like, okay. And he says, he says, yeah, I got your email bro. He says, good fucking email. And I was like, what? He goes, I get a lot of emails bro. He said, that's a good one. That was a good one.

That was a really good, I mean, that was well written. He's like, I immediately knew I had to talk to you. And I said, okay, I said, because you know, I start off with, I think I started off with, Hey, my name is Matt Cox. And I'm a con man. I opened it was recently released from federal prison. And so he was like, Oh, yeah, I mean, who, who says that? So anyway, he said, Oh, what's going on? I said, Well, and I tell him what's going on. I want to start podcast blah, blah, blah. And you know, Danny, he listens to me for 30 minutes to an hour. And I've heard this and this. And he's like, yeah, right. He's a, you know, YouTube's

not really like that. And that's not really how we do it. And, you know, I don't know that you're going to have to get a production company and blah blah. He goes, but you know what? What you really need to do is to see if people are even interested in you or your story or you're able to talk. You should come on my show. You know, shameless, trying to get some content. Well, I mean, so as I told you off-line, Danny and Conquery Park, this is really good. So, you should definitely listen to it. Yeah, I mean, it turns out people do like listening to you.

It turns out, I mean, you're good at telling stories. Well, anyway, by the time I got it, I couldn't do Danny's podcast, like I can't do it, but I'm in the halfway house. So maybe I get out of halfway house in a couple of months go by, just maybe two months, three months go by. And one day I get a phone call from Danny's like, bro, you're out of the halfway house, right? And I was like, because I told my God out in July, it's like October or November. I'm like, right? He's like, listen, I had a guest fall through. I got nobody. I need you to come on. I answered all your questions.

You know, I'd call them five, six times, you know. I had you said, and I was like, ah, I was like, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll do it. That video got like a two million views. Then I did Patrick Bet David flew me out. Then I did soft white underbelly, you know, then I did Vlad, then I did all white underbelly. Then I did Vlad. Then I did, like people started, and I'm sorry.

And then, you know, it just blew up. And then people started asking me to come and talk for no reason, which was crazy. But you were saying, I'm sorry. Is your jazz still with us? No. He died when I was in prison. He came to see me, yeah, he came to see me two or three times.

What is the first time he found out that you were doing fraud? The first time I got in trouble. When you got the position. Yeah, because I had, you know, I had to kind of explain that, you know, something's happening. I didn't want him to hear from anybody else. So you, so you talked to him directly about it. Super disappointed. Did he ever tell

you he loves you after that? So I, after I got the 26 years and the government decided they weren't going to a night. But I really was like, wow, this is it. Like you're done. He came to see me, but just by himself. And I remember when he came to see me, he was by himself. He never came by himself. So I remember thinking, my mom, something happened to my mom. And as soon as I walked in, he walked in,

I was like, where's mom? And he said, oh, she's fine, she's fine. And he sat down with me and he said, and he said, how are you doing? I was like, I'm good. And it was just like, you know, he was getting sick, he was getting older. So, you know, he was getting sick, he was getting older. So, you know, we talked for a little bit just about the situation.

And I was like, yeah, I mean, he's like, what are you gonna do? And I was like, you know, there's nothing I can do. Like everybody I've called multiple attorneys, I've talked to people, there's nothing I can do. And he was like, you know, we're gonna, you're gonna figure it out. You know, he was, he said, your clever and your smart. And you're gonna, you're not gonna do all of that time. And I was like, I'm done.

It's over. I'm gonna get out of here when I'm 60 if I behave myself and if I don't, I'll be 64. And he was like, I got to happen. And uh, so he said, uh, I think that was the first time he, you know, I knew he was proud of me when I was making money, but he never said it. You got the look like he was like impressed, but we were sitting there and he said, I remember he said, because the only time I can ever remember him saying he was proud of me. And I remember he said, you're going to figure this out. He said, I'm not proud of where you ended up.

But you've done amazing things. I wish you'd use your talents for something different, but you've done things that I could have never done. And you've read an amazing, adventurous life, and I'm proud of you. And that, you know, I wish he could see you know. My mom, I know my mom's solving, my mom's funny because my mom came to see me, my mom's all me my mom's funny because my mom came to see me My mom's a gangster

My mom came to see me every two weeks for 13 years She missed about a month and a half when she had a stroke and Ended up in a wheelchair and then she came in the wheelchair and she would make my brother bring bring her. My brother and sister would be like, mom, are you sure you want to go? Like, you know, it's it's so hard to it's such a long drive and you get so tired while sleeping the car. I know, but you know, then you know, we have to wait in that that lot live that the, you know, in that um, the waiting area, you know, forever and it takes forever. Well, I'm in the wheelchair. So I'm fine. Well, I know, but it's such a pain to get in and out and then

in an out. She's like, she's, I'm going to see my son and you're taking me. She, uh, yeah. So I, I, so she, yeah, she was,, she was something else and, and I would say, you know, like if I had to say, you know, I don't think about all the things I did to get out. Like, I know, you know, there's all these guys that are like, you know, like, you know, oh, I wouldn't have done that. I would have been a stand- up guy and I'd have been, well, good for fucking you, bro. I wanted to get out. I wanted out. And the icing on the cake of me getting out. And I would have cut every mother fucker's head in that prison off. Every mother fuckers head in that prison off.

I was able to get out just in time to spend the last year and a half of my mother's life with her. I saw her two or three times a week, took her to dinner once a week, was able to go on walks with her in her wheelchair. I was sitting right next to her when she had her final stroke. I held her hand when she took her last breath. when she took her last breath. So if I have to be called a snitch, the rest of my life, I don't give a fuck.

Like I may not deserve more, but she deserved more. You regret that she just looked back. Would you do it? Would you do any part of your life different? Oh? I'd scrap all this yeah Yeah Yeah, I'd scrap all this to be you know You always hear these guys say I wouldn't change it because it made me the man I am today So the man I am today is a fucking 54 year old

today. The man I am today is a fucking 54 year old scumbag, multiple felons, starting my life over broke, you know, living off of scraps, you know, trying to make YouTube work. Like, you know, I've got, you know, two dead parents, I'm divorced. I have a son that doesn't talk to me. I have a son that doesn't talk to me. For good reason, not because of a misunderstanding because he understands. Like I, he's, you can't even argue with him. He's got a powerful argument.

Like I don't wanna be a part of this guy's life. He's a scumbag. He stole money. He went on the run. He abandoned me when I was you know three years old I don't want anything to do with him like I Get it like I you know and I tried to I tried to I've tried to do all the right things You know I wrote the letters I I drew in pictures, I've tried to call, and it's not happening. I would do anything to go back and just be that regular middle-class guy with the two kids and the wife working a regular job. That's a good life. That's a good life. You know, those are, that's a good person. And, you know, I, I just made one arrogant decision after another, after another until it snowballed

and I couldn't take it back. And then I did everything I could in and if I wasn't the calculating backstabbing, scumbag, mother fucker that I can be, I'd be in prison right now. Sorry. So yeah, yeah, I would much rather be a CPA right now. I would much rather, you know, should have stuck with me, an insurance adjuster or something. I mean, you know, I never should have widened that 30 day late. I'll never. There was a mistake.

That was your first mistake. That was a huge mistake. You think yourself will forgive you? No. Unfortunately, according to my ex-wife and my sister and everybody that he is a part of their lives. And I've seen him, my mother's funeral, I saw him, I've seen him at several functions, you look across and he looks right through me. I think that he's all, everybody says he's, he's just like you. He's just like you.

And everybody says I'm just like my dad. I've never smoked a cigarette. I've never drank alcohol. Not a drug. Never done any drugs. Because my dad was an alcoholic and my dad smoked two packs a day and everything in our house reaked of nicotine and I've never smoked and my dad was a pillhead. He was he was always on some kind of prescription medication. He

was drawing, you know, and I didn't want to I didn't want to be that person and I like one day I drew a line in the sand and I wouldn't do it. And I think he's drawn a line in the sand and he's decided, you know, this is the hill I'm going to die on. And I'm not going to back off it. And the thing is my ex-wife tells him, this, he's a good person. You should be in his life. His father, because he was adopted when I was in prison,

they adopted him. Nick is his dad. Nick has told him, and Nick came to see me when I was in prison. Nick has told him like, hey, this is a mistake. You're making a mistake. Nick, everybody that knows me knows him. And he said, he has said no. So I fully believe it's no. I mean, I hope it's not.

Well, I hope he forgives you. I think there's a lot of good in you. Despite you calling yourself a scumbag over and over and this keeps bothering you. You mentioned that earlier. What advice would you give to young people? Given that you've lived quite a non-standard life. What advice would you give to young people? Given that you've lived quite a non-standard life. What advice would you give them?

How to live a life that can be proud of? I mean, it's a fallment of position that anybody would listen to me. But because to me, and I don't have any advice, I don't think a father would give you. And it's like Work hard be appreciative. I mean things are so good out here I hear people complain all the time and I think a huge part of just being happy is being appreciative Like I didn't appreciate anything when I had this is so cliche, but when I had all the money in the world

I was miserable But when I got out with nothing I was miserable. But when I got out with nothing, I was happier in prison with nothing than I was with two or three million dollars prior to prison. And when driving a chicken, I was never should have been dating. Driving a sports car, vacationing all over the world, miserable. I'm crying driving away from prison, because I already missed my friends. You could have never told me that was gonna happen.

Turns out money, in fact, does not buy happiness. No, and I know, and it is such a cliche, right? But it's so true. Crying, driving away from prison. Yeah. You know what? I met my wife in the halfway house. So she had just gotten out of prison.

She was in the halfway house with me. She just did five years for like a meth conspiracy. I never would have met her. Fighting on a prison. Yeah. And now your date night is hunting alligators together. Yeah. That was like a month or so ago.

This is Florida folks. This is what this is what bad ass people doing. My my my while hunting is a former. She used to so she was a military, an MP in the military. She was she did she hunted she ran a hog hunting tour guide service for six years. Yeah. Went to prison for five years, got out and then, you know, now she's a marine mechanic. And yeah, our date night, the other night was, uh, we went in the middle of the night, went to a Lake Okeechobee and went hog, I went to alligator hunting. Yeah.

And if I may say so, she's quite beautiful. Thank you. And I did, and did nice. She didn't want to date me. I have a way out too. I kept saying, I feel like you're sweet on me. She's like, I'm not. I'm not. I make fun of guys like you. You're a city boy. I'm like, I don't know. I feel like. Well, you wore her down. I just, just like exactly what I did. Yeah, it's that charisma. It always works. Well, Matt, thank you for being so honest.

Thank you for being who you are. I do think there's a lot of good in you. And thank you for telling your story and the story of others who have made mistakes in their life. Thank you for talking today. I appreciate you having me on. I was a really short conversation. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Matthew Cox. To support this podcast, please

check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Mario Puzzo, author of the Godfather. Behind every successful fortune, there's a crime. Thank you for listening. And hope to see you next time. you